Forever Torn

C2: War and Peace (2/2)

Lithuania: Expulsion, Occupation and Independence.

The long journey of the Gilevic/Atlas family that had culminated in two little boys called Orcik and Solly arriving on the London Docks on a sultry July afternoon in 1930 had started over fifteen years earlier. The first expulsion or evacuation of Lithuanian Jews occurred in 1914 coinciding with the start of the First World War *, although the boys' father Dovid Gilevic had left Lithuania long before that when he had been conscripted into the Russian army as a teenager at some point between 1906 and 1908.

*The words of a Jewish writer following comments made by Tsar Nicholas II on July 20th 1914 from The Most High Manifest, a document concerning the War and the Jews of Russia (which includes Lithuanian Jews) and containing a call to forget 'in the terrible hour of trials ... internal strife.'

"Least of all do Russian Jews think about it (strife) in this fatal moment. In the general rush to the defense of the motherland, they stand shoulder to shoulder with the remaining population of Russia and by their heroic behavior show that now is not the time for internal altercations, now is the not the time to think about the deep offenses carried out and being carried out against us."

Dovid had left behind a teenage bride who he saw only on very infrequent leaves, being stationed often at great distances from his home. As the years leading up to the Great War passed, Dovid spent less and less time returning to Lithuania when on leave and his relationship with his first wife and his family, never great to begin with, soured completely.

It is unknown what happened to the bulk of the Gilevic family during the war years but on his return to Lithuania in early 1918, Dovid still retained the belief that he would find his wife and members of his family there despite the fact that the country had been under German occupation since 1915.

As an ex member of the Imperial Russian Armed Forces this might have been a difficult task to accomplish, but Avram and Dovid had dallied a while in Warsaw and it was there that they heard encouraging news that would hopefully aid them in their efforts to slip unnoticed across the border.

On February the 16th 1918, the Council of Lithuania had declared their re-independence and the right to self determination.

The two friends, now attired in civilian clothes with their rifles hidden within the large bundles they carried, carefully made their way north and east and slipped across the border near the small city of Lazdijai where they sheltered in an abandoned barn near a tiny village, having made contact with locals who brought them food and news.

The delays safely moving through Poland (which was at that time a puppet Kingdom under the control of Germany.) and Lithuania, were very frustrating to Avram who nevertheless stuck with his friend and at first it seemed there would be more obstacles; the Act of Independence had been initially suppressed by the German occupying forces but on March 23rd Germany acknowledged Lithuanian Independence at which point Dovid and Avram began to move again.

The friends still travelled carefully and by night, for while the new German policy of Mitteleuropa called for the establishment of satellite countries as an allied block, they still denied Lithuania its own military, police and civic institutions and the country was crawling with German soldiers. At this point Dovid still didn't know if his wife and family were still living in Lithuania or had been relocated.

The Atlas family was a more cut and dried case. Prior to 1914 most of the children of Smeras and Frade had emigrated and so when the soldiers came one day, it was to order the middle aged couple and their two daughters and son in law on to trains which would take them thousands of miles and through arctic wastes to what they knew then to be a city in Siberia. Golde, the youngest was 17 or 18.