Lithuania’s second city, Kaunas is home to a great walking avenue, interesting architecture and about a kabillion churches. The Intercultural Program sponsored a trip for students, and Casey let Beka, Pisey & I go along as sponsors. We left at 06:30, piling 37 blery-eyed students onto the bus, and got to Kaunas around 10. We went to Rumsiskes, had free time for lunch in Old Town, then went to Devintas Fortas. Some reflections…
Rumsiskes
The weather was cool and foggy, my mood contemplative and content, the grass damp and green. A perfect morning at Rumsiskes Open Air Museum. “’We have all come from the green country homesteads…our roots are where there are flowering meadows, clear rivers, blue lakes, murmuring forests, and the land soaked in the sweat of our fathers and forefathers, which fed and clothed them.’ So reads the opening text in the catalogue for sale at the entrance to this outdoor museum in the breathtaking Lithuanian countryside. Covering a total of 175 hectares, find a collection of old houses, farms, schools, pubs and mills representing the major regions of the country, complete with the flora specific to those regions. This is the adventure of a lifetime. As well as the architectural splendor, this is also a living museum, featuring men and women in traditional costume, baking bread and making pots in the old way.” www.inyourpocket.com highly recommended by this traveler. I had been to Rumsiskes as a Study Abroad, and my second visit, while different, was just as enjoyable as the first. This seems to be the theme throughout my life in Lithuania. Definitely different, but equally as wonderful.
Devintas Fortas
Built in the late 19th c., Devintas Fortas, or 9th Fort, was the ninth in a series constructed by the Russians to defend the western border of their empire. From 1924, Devintas Fortas was used as Kaunas’s prison, with 100 hectares of farm land and orchards worked by prisoners. During the Soviet Occupation before and after WWII, Divintas Fortas was a KGB prison, from which political prisoners were sent to Soviet camps. During the years of Nazi occupation, Divintas Fortas was a killing camp. The numbers are quite staggering – something like 50,000 people are buried in the field behind the fort. There’s now a museum commemorating the atrocities and the fort is open for tours.
One inscription reads:
Mes esame jusu sunus, ir jusu dukros, jusu broliai ir jusu seserys; jusu zmonos, jusu vaikaiciai. Mes esame dalele jusu. Amzinai gyvi liksite musu mintyse, musu sirdyse.
We are your sons, and your daughters, your brothers and your sisters; your wives, your children. We are a part of you. Forever you will remain in our thoughts, in our hearts.
You're not really supposed to take pictures inside the museum, and definitely not flash photography, so I shot 'from the hip' (thanks, Leah), leaving the pictures as blurred and distorted as my brainspace that afternoon.
"You shed abroad a plentiful rain, O God; You confirmed Your inheritance when it was parched. Your creatures settled in it; You provided in Your goodness for the poor, O God. Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden, the God who is our salvation. God is to us a God of deliverances; and to God the Lord belong escapes from death…Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth, sing praises to the Lord...Blessed be God." Ps. 68.
I don’t know how to deal with places like Devintas Fortas. This trip impacted me even more than being there as a Study Abroad. I hurt for those people. Walking where they walked, hearing footsteps on the stairs, seeing their cells, their letters, their pictures. It’s not the hair and glasses and Holocaust Museum-y crap that gets to me, it’s not even seeing how they were tortured and died. It was the passport and ID papers. These were people. The shoes could belong to anybody. That’s a faceless, nameless man being tortured. But that passport belongs to somebody. Somebody’s son, brother, lover. And now he’s gone. Where’s the compassion in that? Where’s God’s grace, His power? His sovereignty? But I know it’s present, even when I don’t feel it. Blessed be the Lord, who daily bore that man’s burden, who is his salvation. God is a God of deliverance – all escapes from death belong to Him. Jesus died on the cross to cover my debts, to cover my selfish sin. Jesus died on the cross for the Nazis and KGB persecutors. I can’t undermine the work of the cross by adding my own anger. His work in our lives is authenticated not only in the years of plenty, but in the famine. His grace is found in the parched land, knowing that the rains will come. Somewhere.
I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief.
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