Henia Sneh: It is important to mention the good relations that existed between our Tarbut School and the Lithuanian school in Dusiat. The liaison between them was the teacher Kuzmickas.
We had joint sports events; attended each other's end of year ceremonies, and the graduates of the Tarbut School were permitted to continue their studies at the Lithuanian school.
Yes, before the war there were also manifestations of friendship…
I remember the Lithuanian national anthem from that period:
| Kur bèga Sasupé | Where the Sasupa river runs |
| Kur Nemunas teka | Where the Nieman flows |
| Ten musu tèvyné | There lies our homeland |
| Grazi Lietuva | Beautiful Lithuania |
And we sang it as a “Zionist song”:
| Kur bèga Jordanas | Where the Jordan River runs |
| Kur Kisonas teka | Where the Kishon flows |
| Ten musu tèvyné | There lies our homeland |
| Grazi Palestina | Beautiful Palestine |
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Right: The teacher Yudel Slep with his students Seated on the bank of the river, extreme right: The three friends Chanka Pores, Tzilka Shub and Sonka Slovo |
Kuzmickas's son (Dusiat, 1998):
I can identify my father [the teacher Kuzmickas]. He is in a black suit at the back on the right side of the picture. My mother [Kuzmickas' wife] is on the left side, wearing a hat and brightly colored suit.
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Tzila Gudelsky: Kuzmickas was the principal and a teacher in the Lithuanian school in Dusiat. In 1914 he was exiled to Russia, where he married a Russian woman. When he was released he brought her to Dusiat, and he was the head of the Sauliu Sàjunga[3] in the shtetl.
I went to the Lithuanian school and the Lithuanian girl Marita Plonita and I were the only girls in a class of boys. I remember an incident – it was in the sixth grade. The boys imitated the accent of the Jews and made fun of them in our presence, and I ran away from the class crying bitterly. When Kuzmickas entered the classroom, Marita told him that they had insulted me, and I remember the moral behavior he preached, in short: “We the Lithuanians need to remember the time when we were under the rule of the Russians who mistreated us, and we must not now mistreat the Jews, who are a minority in our midst.” Kuzmickas condemned the phenomenon of anti-Semitism, and forced the students to apologize. Of course, I remembered this to his credit. He was a handsome man and I really loved him. I was an excellent and diligent student, gained his esteem, and on his recommendation would borrow books from the library he directed at school.
I recognize him in the photograph of the joint outing of the two schools – the Jewish and Lithuanian ones – to the Nieman River.
In the Soviet period (1940-1941) he was again exiled to Russia. After the war he returned to Lithuania, having received a pardon. Among those who signed the petition, there were also Jews. However, I know that Kuzmickas was a controversial figure: there were those who considered him an absolute anti-Semite and refused to sign the petition.
When I returned to Lithuania, I met him in Vilna (Vilnius). At that time, he told me that in the labor camp in Russia he became weak, lost a lot of weight, and a Jewish doctor from Czechoslovakia saved his life. The names of the teachers Hillel and Yehuda came up in our conversation, and he remembered the close friendship between them and himself. He said that if he had been in the shtetl during the time of the extermination he would have attempted to rescue them. [For reasons unknown, his only son suddenly left Dusiat in 1946, and returned in 1996.]
