Elena Tvarijonaitė–Gustienė

"Our house had been observed since 1951. The KGB officers used to come to our house with long sticks and jab the ground everywhere, they were searching for the dugout. We had a box room and a bathhouse. The partisans had pitched the hiding place into the box room. We also kept potatoes there so no one could think of searching for partisans there. Sometimes KGB officers would come there, open the cover and would see only the potatoes and the other vegetables. In the summer when the box room was emptied we put there some vats and the other unnecessary things. When the partisans wanted to leave they would give us a sign and we would let them out. The KGB officers had been searching for this hiding place, but didn’t manage to find it. It was later, after the treason. The partisans kept lots of their documents in the box room. I am not sure whether we were right o not, but when we found out that we had been betrayed we burnt all the documents.” Inquestor: Who warned you that you had been going to be arrested?” E.T.G.: Lapė Prūsaitis, the partisan. He had been hiding for long time, till 1958. He had warned us that Karaliūnas was the traitor, which all of us were betrayed and there was no way out, just arrest."

“We were brought to the interrogation room at ten o’clock in the evening and brought back to the cell at four or five in the morning. We were ordered to get up at six, so there was no time for sleeping. If someone had tried dozing the warden immediately started knocking at the cell door and wakening. The lack of sleep was really agonizing. Everybody became yellowish like cheese. We got yellow in the prison even before the trial. Everybody was locked into punishment room as well. I had to stay there for 36 hours. The punishment room was knee deep filled with water, there was a log in the middle of the room, and one had to balance on it. We were not given any food, just water; we also had to empty our bowels at the same place.” Inquestor: So they wanted to break you down?” E.T.G.: “Yes.”

Inquestor: "Could you, please, tell us about the labour in the work camp? You were a young girl it is likely that you had to do hard labour? “E.T.G.: I was cutting timber and working as a logger in Kirov. At the beginning, after imprisonment, we were very weak. The other exiles were getting some parcels from Lithuania, since the whole our family was in exile we got no parcels. Our relatives were too intimidated by KGB, they were even afraid to write letters. We were afraid too, because we had been watched all the time. There was a standard norm of job which had to be done in the labour camp. If you couldn’t accomplish that norm, you were fined by reducing your food ration. For example, those people who had managed to accomplish the norm were given some soup, slice of bread, fish and porridge, and those who were not so successful were given only some soup and a slice of bread. There were 30Lithuanians in our brigade. We were diligent and hard working people. At the beginning we were not able to cut timber, but soon we got used to it. We managed to fulfil the norm and even to overtop it, so we were given more food.”

Inquestor: “Could you, please describe your neighbours’ reaction after you came from the exile?” E.T.G.: “They were ashamed. When we were arrested and kept locked in our own house, one woman came by cart. It was October, so there was a sheep butchered, there was some meat left, and some jam was prepared for winter. She put all the things into her cart and brought away. No one could believe that we would come back. Can you imagine our feelings while sitting locked in the room and our wealth is being plundered? There were some good neighbours too. When we returned to Lithuania after the exile we had nothing, even the spoon. There were some people who helped us very much.”