Four Lithuanians go on an Expedition in the Siberian Wilderness. Your goal: to learn More about the fate of their grandparents, who were deported by Stalin. Karolis Vysniauskas reported from Vilnius.
A 35-pound backpack has not taken Gediminas Andriukaitis, and more. 500 km, it runs through Siberia, some 5,000 kilometres separate him to Lithuania from his home. “There’s an inflatable will fit in even the pure, inflatable canoe, it weighs just under seven pounds,” says the leader of the Expedition “In the footsteps of the Laptewen”, which is started at the weekend. Four men – Viktoras, Darius, Vigimantas and Gediminas be Hiking for a month through Siberia, and paddling through areas that are mountainous, and unexplored. “I have some medications, and hope that nothing Bad happens,” says Andriukaitis. “In the next village we come only in three weeks.” Go for it in Batagay-Alyta, a remote town in the North of Yakutia, the coldest and least populated Region of the earth. The participants want to reach the village of Kyusur on the river Lena.
Crimes in the Second world war
Kyusur is the last Remnant of a Gulag settlement, which once stood on the banks of the river. Thousands of people, mainly from the Baltic States and Karelia, were interned and had to make in 1941 and 1942, forced labor. Andriukaitis’ father of Vytenis, currently EU Commissioner for health, was born here. Over the place little is known, the participants of the expedition in the hope of meeting the time witnesses. “On the Internet we have found in a Forum someone took the steamer to Kyusur. He met the daughter of a Gulag Survivors,” said Andriukaitis. “Maybe there are more such forgotten witnesses.”
To be on foot and by canoe, the four on-the-go
The travelers are in normal life IT entrepreneurs and engineers, the Trip you have organized for themselves. Previously, they migrated through the Caucasus, the Alps and Kamchatka. A month in Siberia will be your biggest challenge. “The history of the deportations is so awful that we can’t grasp. We want to see places with my own eyes. We want to at least try to feel what is felt by our grandparents. Maybe I answered one or the other question, if I’m standing on the river Lena, and to me the landscape look at, to watch, 75 years ago my grandparents,” says Andriukaitis.
Journey into the past
When his was deported father, a chemistry teacher, he had no time to pack a backpack. In June 1941, an officer of the Soviet came to the secret service to him in the class room and gave him a gun in the back. He and his family had to get on a train, along with other teachers, political activists, and Doctors. You didn’t say where the journey goes.
At the end of the deportees landed in the vicinity of the Laptev sea in Northern Russia. The Gulag was created in order to supply Soviet soldiers with fish. Here deportees have become known as the “Laptewen”. Inspired by the journey the four men from an Expedition former Lithuanian exiles in the year 1989. One of them is Vitalis Staugaitis, who was deported at the age of twelve. He remained for 18 years in Siberia.
Every day, Vitalis Staugaitis thinks back to the Gulag
“I still have the images in my head of the dead, as they were there, and their bodies had been chewed by foxes. They had no ears and noses and more,” recalls the 88-Year-old. Alone in the first Winter after the Deportation 127 of 434 of the deportees died of starvation and disease: “There is no day that I don’t think it flies.”
Keep the memory awake
The reason why the group is setting out now to Siberia? At some point it might be too late. The Winter 2015 was the warmest in Russia’s history. If the Permafrost melts, it could be many Islands in the river under water. “On these Islands of Lithuanians were deported. The places of Stalin’s crimes are repaid by nature,” says Andriukaitis. “Moreover, die one after the last time witnesses. We must keep their memory alive.”
Almost 400,000 people were deported to Stalin’s death in 1953, from the Baltic States. Many of them died. “First it was all about, to eliminate the intellectual Elite of teachers, academics, writers, and so on. Without them, it was easier to reach people through Propaganda,” says Andriukaitis. “We must never forget that. The deportations were to the tragedy, not only for Lithuanians, but for all who lived in the country.”