In the middle of the winter of 1941 an ordinance was issued concerning [19] citizenship. We were then permitted to travel to the larger town of Utena,395 where we received temporary passports.
One Friday night in June 1941 all the wealthy residents were arrested and deported – Jews, Poles, and Lithuanians, as well as Lithuanian nationalists and peasants. This provoked ferocious hatred of the Jews on the part of the Lithuanians, which later had frightening consequences. The Lithuanians said that since the Jews constituted a majority in the Communist Party, it was they who were responsible for the arrests, and this was a Jewish piece of work. They often expressed the wish that the Germans would come, for then they would settle accounts with the Jews as well.
On 21 June 1941, my husband left for the small town of Vievi396 near Vilna, where we finally obtained permission to move. I was supposed to pack up our belongings and come the next day with our luggage.
On Sunday 22 June, we suddenly learned that war had broken out with Germany.
[19a] That same evening around 9 o’clock I went to the station to take thetrain to Vilna. At the station my bags were taken to the luggage compartment.
On schedule, a few minutes after 9 p.m., the train departed as usual inthe direction of Vilna. Around 1 a.m. we arrived at the station in Święciany,397where we were to switch to the direct train to Vilna.
After we waited for a while on the platform, the train for Vilna arrived. We boarded the train and it set off, but suddenly a squadron of German aeroplanes flew overhead and began dropping a large number of bombs on the
