(Belvederska 41/16, 99-100 Lenchitsa, provine of Plotsk)
They took me to the prison of Kaunas, cell No. 91 – reserved for political prisoners. All the other inmates had been sentenced on section 58, as well, for being active partisans. Only three months later we were joined by other prisoners who had been convicted on section 82 for having attemoted to escape. They were still very young at that time and had, in fact, tried to escape from the places of there internal exile. Only a few of them had left from there legally – as did I. I remember Vasiliy Prozorov, a Russian, who lived in Kaunas until the war broke out. In an utterly interesting way he told us about his participation in some expedition to Brazil and other South-American countries, in order to look for places suitable for emigrants to live in. He was already 66 years old. Everybody loved and adored him, Apparently he was given three years for having escaped from exile, but I do not know, whether he survived.
We stayed in Kolominskiye Grivy for two years. Then, in Jily 1943 they transferred us to Gorelovka, to the Chainsk district, about 150 kms away from olominskiye Grivy. In Gorelovka there were no people from Lithuania, merely Estonians. In1949 they brought a number of Letts, and in the autumn of 1951 Poles from Vilna (Vilnius). Until 1944 Polish Ukrainians were living there, but then they were released and transported away. Those among them who did not go to Poland but decided to go back home, suffered the same fate again one year later – there were exiled once again, this time to the Ural Mountains.
There were three kolkhoz farms inKolominskiye Grivy: “Rodina” (homeland), “Kultura” (culture) and “Serp” (sickle). We happened to get to the kolkhoz farm named “Rodina”, while the families from Birzhai and Central Lithuania had to work for the “Serp” kolkhoz. I can hardly recall them. From “Rodina”, however, I remember the family names of Strasdene, Terliatskene, Bimbene, Zhukauskene, Dambrauskene, Borisiavichene, Mitsiunene and others.
The husbands of all of them were killed in the Kraslag (Reshoty) during the first winter.
From Vilnius I received the memoirs of St. Ankevichius, who spent 8 years of his life in the 7th separate forced labor camp sub-sector (Reshoty) – from 1941 to 1949.
Annotation: Gorelovka is situated on the river Bakchar, 20 kms away from its mouth (confluence with the river Parbig) and the settlement of Ust-Bakchar.
K. SHUKAS, from the book of memoirs “A LOOK INTO THE PAST”
I arrived in Achinsk after midnight, around one or two o’clock. What should I do? I could not introduce myself to my new superior at this time of the day. For that reason I had no choice but to spend the rest of the night at the railroad station. The station hall was crowded with people, and the 1st class refreshment room was closed at night. I put sown my baggage somewhere in a corner, sat down and begann to doze.
From time to time local railroad workers and employees were passing by. One of them attracted my attention: his clothes were made of grey fabric, as we used tio have it at home. Each time a train arrived, he went out to the platform and registered the waggons.
When I became hungry, I took out a piece of cheese from my my pocket, which I had brought along from home and began to eat. And suddenly that very railroad employee approached me asking:
“Excuse me, where did you get this kind of cheese from?”
“It’s from Lithuania”.
“Does that mean you come from there?”
“Yes”.
“And you are able to speak Lithuanian, as well?”
“Of course”.
“But how did you get to this place?”
“Well, I was appointed telegrapher for this station. I just arrived. And now I am supposed to wait for morning to draw on”.
“Brother, my name is Kazis Gaigalas. I am from the Sventsiansk district. Let’s go to my place, I live close by.
I fetched my belongins and went home with him. He permitted me to sleep in his bed, then went back to work.
I took up my work in Achinsk. However, I never got sight of the kind superior they had told me about: he had left the town to take medical treatment for tuberculosis in some sanatory. Later I learned that he had died there. He was the son of a former rebel, who had been sent to Siberia.
On duty I was neither confronted with extremely difficult nor completely unknown matters. There was a lot of wotk to do, but this was mere trifle for a young man like me. Out of five work days I had to work at night-time twice, which was a little fatiguing. I lived with Kazis Gaigalas, for they would not assign state-maintained apartments to young telegraphers. Apart from this the town was quite far away from our railroad station, about 4 kms. In order to reach the town, the people had to walk through the woods, where they were often assaulted by robbers.
We lived like brothers and sisters, being happy to have a fellow countryman around. We disposed of too big rooms with heating and light fittings. The year 1900 approached.
My friend from Achinsk, Kazis Gaigalas, was often promoted, and at the time I left Siberia, he was working as a luggage cashier – he received a good salary. Later, when he had saved a sufficient amount of money, he returned home to Lithuania, as well, founded a family and successfully ran his own property in his home village.
In 1941 the Bolsheviks seized and arrested him and brought him back to Siberia. In Krasnoyarsk two Lithuanians were working as senior train conductors – Yatsyna and Krikshchiukaitis. They belonged to a staff working on express trains, which was considered a high career. I also have to mention the machinist Sidzikovskiy. He was from Vladislavov and always gave himself out to be a Lithuanian, in spite of his Polish surname.He drove express trains, among them such which ran at reduced fares or even entirely free of charge: they transported famous princes, ministers and commanders in chief. here were quite a lot of trains of this kind. In 1903, for example, before the Russian-Japanese War, the Minister of Communications, Prince Khilkov, went to Siberia five times by using such a train. It was very interesting to watch Sidzikovskiy driving the train. He himself was a tall, red-bearded man, dressed in a white shirt, a long tailcoat, white gloves and a medium-high top hat; he usually had a cigar between his teeth. The locomotive glittered like gold. Minister Zhilkov wood always sit in the machinist’s cabin, although he only travelled from one station to the next. In this way he paid reference to Sidzikovskiy, as if he were one of his colleagues. Zhilkov himself, after having finished high-school, lived in London for some time, where he at first worked as a switchman and later as a stoker and machinist. In those years I was proud of my profession. I worked as a common telegrapher for the important Tomsk – Krasnoyarsk railroad line, through which were sent all telegrams from Petersburg to Irkutsk, Chita, Kharbin, Vladivostok and in the converse direction. These were mainly telegrams sent by or destined for the government. My salary was soon increased to 45 Rubles. When the war broke out, I and a telegrapher named Rishkus, a Lithuanian, too, were appointed senior telegraphers, and so our salary, including extra pay for bonusses, came to 90 Rubles per month. Considering the low prices for foodstuffs at that time (meat was 5-6 kopeks a pound, flour 28-35 per pud and a hare 5 kopeks), we did not live in poverty at all. Rushkus and I divided all tasks in a way that he dealt with the administrative and personnel office matters (more than 90 workers and employees were in our sphere of responsibility), while I dealt with the smooth handling of the telegram matters, the correction of telegrams and the whole accountancy.
This is, how the former Lithuanian Minister of Defence, Colonel K. Zhukas, describes his meeting with Kazis Gaigalas and other Lithuanian railroad employees, who worked in Siberia at the beginning of the 20th century, in his book “A Look into the past”, which was publishedin the United States after the war. Kazis Gaigalas told his son lots of things about the years he spent with Zhukas in Achinsk (they had worked together for a couple of years and also lived together in the same apartment).