Jonas Kadžionis

“After the arrest for partisan activities and on the way to prison I was telling my wife, Malvina that very bad times are waiting for her. The KGB officers had been listening to my words and asked: ‘Why is she going to be so bad?’ I answered: ‘She had been sitting in the dugout and she knows nothing, but they will demand.’ And they told me: ‘You are not being taken to any prisons. You are being taken to meet the minister’. We were taken to the KGB building in Vilnius. In the KGB yard I was asked to come close to the truck board and jump out. Everything happened so abruptly, I was not able to say good bye to my wife. When I was jumping out, Malvina managed to utter: ‘Jonukas, don’t fall apart’. So, we were separated. Inquestor: “Were you sentenced?” J.K.:”We were sentenced later together, we were given 25 years in Gulag camps, but it was no difference for us 20 or 50 years. Inquestor: “Were you sentenced immediately after the arrest? How many days did the trial last?” J.K.:“No. The trial took place in three months after the arrest. I was not beaten. Nothing bad happened. Our living conditions were very good. Only now I found in historian Arvydas Anušauskas’ book that on the 4th April 1953 Beria released the decree of abolishing all the torture cells, tools and all the torture. Of course, if they knew that you could tell something, they didn’t shy away from beating. If the information coincided with theirs, they didn’t beat. My wife was not beaten too.”

“I do remember when Lithuania was occupied by Germans. People were waiting for them and met like liberators. Girls were bringing flowers to them. Lots of people ran to meet them: they were throwing some food, some flowers. One young soldier was standing in the truck hitch, he was hit with flowers to the face and injured, and I pitied him very much. The village didn’t feel the pressure of the German occupation, they were doing nothing, and the church was not persecuted, Lithuanian flags were allowed to raise. There were some policemen with Germans. The Germans ordered to pay some tributes; the German soldier came to our house together with the local policemen. The soldier was sitting with the gun in his hands and the policemen were w carrying out a search. They were searching for the grain, wanted to find out the number of people living in the family and the amount of land owned. After the search policemen explained the soldier that there was no spare grain. They made a note and left. There was no reference made to extortion of property. Inquestor: “Were there any Jews? Were there any shootings? How many Jews were there in your village?” J.K.:” There were some Jews in each small town, in Kavarskas too. At the beginning I didn’t know, but later I learned that Jewish communists were ready “to drink glasses of our blood“. Inquestor: “But not everybody was like that? Were there any women, children? J.K.: “Outside Kavarskas I am not sure whether a German or an insurgent had shot some Jewish activists, and 2 Lithuanians who were infected with communist bacillus, but there were no families killed. People were talking that the Savickai were killed. According to natives they were not bad people, but they were spreading the communistic ideas. At the shooting Savickas’ wife raised her hand and proclaimed: ‘I am dying for Stalin!’ 16 people, mainly Jewish were shot. There was an insurgent in our village who nagged Jewish people; he wouldn’t let them walk on the pavement. The locals hated him and he was given a nickname “The king of Jews”. The Jews were shepherded for some time, there were no ghettos in Kavarskas, so they were closed in their own houses. The people were not allowed to communicate with Jews. Some time passed, the Jews were taken from Kavarskas, several families tried to hide in the woods. I know that a few families were caught and brought back to Kavarskas. Later they were taken to Ukmergė and fusilladed. There were some Lithuanians who took part in shooting. I know personally: Ganietis, Čiukštys, Mitašiūnas – I was in the labour camp together with him, he told me that he couldn’t even look at those Jew-shooters. I told him that he himself had shot some of Jews. He explained me: ‘Jonas, I was young and not experienced insurgent. We were ordered to gather in Kavarskas. We did as were told. We were taken to Ukmergė, picked up by the Germans, armed. I was young and really frightened and couldn’t resist anyway but I shot only once. Now I can’t look at the people who were shooting Jews.’ And these partisans were explaining that, ‘we have to wash the Jew-shooters guilt with our own blood’. At the beginning some of Jew-shooters joined partisans, but they were not eager to fight into the partisan war, but wanted to bluff it out and get hired by KGB. But when it came into the open that they were shooting, they were brought to the labour camp. Jew-shooters had been hated by everyone. Inquestor: “What was the ordinary people reaction when the Germans started killing the Jews?” J.K.:“Village people reacted really badly. I do not know any particular surnames of people who saved the Jews, but I know that there were such people. Those people helped them not for money, maybe grateful Jews gave them something, I don’t know. Personally I was on good terms with Jews in the labour camp. Being an old prisoner I explained them some wile how to get used to the prisoners life. We were on good terms with Jews.”