This story, as well as the drawing, were sent to us from France by Jacques Rossi, the author of the "GULAG Handbook". He had been working for the Comintern as a secret agent for ten years. He was arrested in 1937 and spent 20 years in prisons and camps. he was released in 1957 and returned to France ten years later.
Albinas was fourteen years old when we met in Siberia, in the huge
Krasnoyarsk transit prison. He had been convicted of "banditism" to
ten years in a forced labour camp. The year 1949. At that time the Lithuanians
were already trying to offer resistance to the Soviet occupants.
He told me that a unit of Red Army soldiers came to their farm. They drew a carriage with some longish, motionless thing in it - covered with a blanket. Maybe a dead body? An officer entered the house accompanied by three armed soldiers.
- Where is the old man?" - he asked the mother.
She turned white as chalk, looked around and was completely unable to utter a single word. The second lieutenant remained all quiet and insistently continued to ask the same question.
- I not know - he go away ... Far ... - the mother mumbled in broken Russian. Four little children, their eyes opened wide with fright, clang to their mother's skirt. Nijole, Albina's twelve-year-old sister, stood beside her brother.
- We want to drink! - the officer yelled all of a sudden. The mother did not understand.
- Vodka! - This word was well-known to every Lithuanian. She took the children and went to the adjoining room. She returned with a bottle in her hands. Having emptied it, the Russians became very cheerful. The officer gave some order. Two of the soldiers ran out into the yard, dragged the contents of the carriage into the house and threw it on the table. It seemed to be a dead body, indeed. The officer took away the blanket.
- You can be prod of such a husband and thank your lucky stars ...
Albinas saw the swollen joints, the fractures, the brain matter and the blood - the mortal remains of his father. The mother was scared stiff; she looked fixedly into the air without recognizing what happened around.
One of the Russians took a mouth-organ out of his pocket. Soon the room was full of noise, caused by the sounds of a wild Cossack dance. The soldiers searched through the whole house and found some more vodka.
- Dance! - the officer commanded. The mother stood motionless, with an absent-minded look. The officer took out his pistol, fixed a shot into the ceiling and then aimed the pistol at little Nijole:
- Dance, you children of a bitch!
Albinas did not remember how long they were forced to dance - his mother, he himself, Nijole. And suddenly they found themselves in the carriage right beside their father.
Soon after they were convicted, a procedure which did not take more than a couple of seconds - exactly as much time as one would need to put a stamp on a piece of paper: Nijole was sentenced to five years of forced labour, Albinas to fifteen years. Their mother received twenty years - all three of them for "banditism".
Magazin "Soglasie", No. 24, 11.06.1990