[Page 102]

Rachel: Would you care if we go on about what you were telling us last time? You were telling us about your involvement with the ORT organization. Is there anything you want to add?

Jacob: I would say in that period of my life, I lived a full life as a public servant, so to say, for the Jewish community, and satisfactory life. I was fully involved in my work, in my activities for the ORT organization, feeling I'm doing an important part. First of all, I was the first Jewish agronomist in Lithuania. Second one, the work I did for the ORT organization, and for the young people who attended the schools and the courses of ORT, and especially for the agricultural school of ORT, where I was the director, was very satisfactory to me.

As additional part, we tried and we started to publish agricultural books or brochures in Yiddish, for the Yiddish-reading Jewish public, certainly. And again, in this field, I was the first one to publish these books. With the help of the ORT organization, we published four full books and many pamphlets concerning agricultural activities for the Jewish population.

One of the activities of ORT was to turn a part of ]ewish shtetl residents into farming – not full-time farming but part-time farming. We call it in Yiddish vishtubikah landverschaft. Vishtubikah means near the house, agriculture or farming near the house. What does it mean? It means having a lot – and every Jewish family, almost, had a lot near the house – to turn the lot into a garden, into a little orchard, to keep, to raise some poultry. All of these to give the Jewish population, the poor Jewish population in the shtetlach, additional income to their life. The Jewish people in the shtetlach were very poor, very poor, and to find the sources for additional income was one of the concerns of the ORT organization. And in this part, I played – I felt at that time, and I feel the

[Page 103]

same now – I played an important role, an important part in this. So to introduce the Jewish people in the shtetlach into this kind of activity, to help them out economically, we published a book composed by myself and published by ORT under the name Vishtubikah Gertneri in Yiddish. It means “Gardening Near Your House.”

As I said before – turning a lot into a garden and to have income of all kinds of vegetables for themselves, for the family itself And – you'll be surprised – these booklets had a great success in the shtetlach. I don't say in Kovno or other cities, but in the small towns, it has a great success, because it was simply helpful, and I was proud of it! My name became well known to everyone, although people didn't know me personally, but they heard my name. And later on, when I was visiting some of the little towns, shtetlach – for your information, a shtetl is a town – they heard the name Agronome Rasein. My last name in Lithuania pronounced not Rassen, as we say it here in America, but Ra-sane', and “Oh, you are who published the book, this and this, and we read it.”

Later on, 0RT published my book under the name Sheinster Tsimmerbloomen. Bloomen means flowers; tsimmer means a house, a room. Inside plants – house plants, simply. And that also had a great success. We published a book about keeping bees. If you have a garden, you have an orchard, you can keep bees, and that can give you another income. So I was the heart of these publications what ORT did in that time.

Another part – the greatest, the largest Jewish newspaper in Lithuania, in Kovno, was the Yiddisher Shtimeh, the Jewish Voice. Yiddisher means Jewish; shtimeh, voice: the Jewish Voice. So I agreed with the publisher of the Jewish Voice, of the Yiddisher Shtimeh – a well-known activist, Reuben Rubenshteyn – and we opened a weekly page in this newspaper. The page was published every Thursday, before shabbas. The paper used to come into the shtetl, to arrive to the shtetl, Friday, Saturday, so Jewish people had a chance to read it. And the name of the page was in Yiddish Vishtubikah Landverschaft un Housverschaft. How to translate it in English? “Farming and Housekeeping Near Your House.”

We didn't go too far, to say, “The Jewish people, you should become farmers, to buy land or to have land and to become farmers overnight.” But we wanted them to introduce to a branch of income near their

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house, additional branch of income. This page had the greatest success in every shtetl. When it came Friday, they are waiting for the paper, and hundreds and hundreds of families used to read it, and they learned how to simply grow vegetables. They have no interest before. It was like introducing a new culture, of tomatoes, of cucumbers, of strawberries, and a lot of other vegetables. So that was something new for the Jewish people in the shtetlach. Again, I was proud of it, because I took great part in this. This newspaper page, the farming page in the newspaper, took part direct up to the Second World War, when a new life started. I think it existed for eight years, seven or eight years.

Rachel: Did you write for it all eight years?

Jacob: Yes, this page. For the last year, for the last couple of years, I had an assistant in the agricultural school. He was only the second agronomist to learn in Lithuania. His name was Yitzhak Kagan, and he helped me also with the publications. I used to prepare the material in advance – or some interesting material what we needed exactly close for that moment, I prepared – and I used to give to the paper in advance, and they published in the newspapers.

Well, everything goes well until it comes a point when you may expect big changes. And what were the changes? Historically, very big changes. We felt in Lithuania that time, in the 1930s – yes, am I right? 1930s, till 1940 – that some thick and dark clouds approaching us, coming over us, from both sides: from the east, from the Soviet Russia, and from the west, from the Nazi Germany. And we, a small country between the two giants – in addition, Poland from the south side. The fourth side was Baltic Sea. We didn't expect anything from the Baltic Sea and the Latvian republic. Dark clouds approaching, and Jewish life, we felt, is again sitting like on loose sand. It can happen anything to us, from the east or from the west. And whatever you did, you always added a remark or a feeling in your heart. “Who knows what next will be, what the Russians will do and what the Nazi Germans will do to Lithuania?”

So the Russians started first to do something. Probably I mentioned before to you that, first of all, the Russians looked for and they got

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military bases in Lithuania. The same thing they did to Latvia and to Estonia. Bases. They sent in military; in Lithuania, was in three parts of the country. After the military bases, we haven't seen the soldiers too often, but occasionally, from time to time, they came to city or among the population. After a certain time – 1 think about a year – under some pretext that they have to do something, the Russians occupied Lithuania. The Russians means the Communists. It was in a beautiful day in the month ofJune, and when I was coming to Kovno, I heard the news. “Do you know what happened? The Russians marching in into Lithunania.”

As I said, I would call it the beginning of the end of the Lithuanian independence. I think it was in 1939. I would call this part of my life “Two Years Under a Communist Regime.”

In the beginning, they didn't interfere with the inner life of Lithuanian republic. They just bought all kinds of merchandise, the soldiers – thousands of soldiers. Everything they found was for them new and something brought from foreign country; and it was abundance of food, of produce, of manufactured products in Lithuania. In two, three days, the stores were emptied out, everything sold. Sold for what? For Russian rubles: paper, paper money. In the eyes of the Lithuanian population, the paper money, the rubles of the Russians, had no value at all. But you have to sell it when they come in the store and buy. So two, three days, the stores were empty. Food was scarce already. Dairy products were scarce; meat was not available. And it didn't take long, a couple of weeks, and you saw it already: long lines standing waiting for meat, waiting for eggs to buy, waiting for other products under the Communist regime. I wouldn't go into details. That's not my business to tell you. You know it from history, or you'll read it from history books. But in my personal life, it came a big change. First of all, the ORT organization was nationalized, the ORT school together with other schools.

Rachel: Was it nationalized by Lithuania?

Jacob: By the Russians it was nationalized, taken away from the ORT organization, and they turned it into a school for themselves under their regime. So the old administration was gone, and, certainly, I lost my

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job with the ORT organization. And it started a problem for the whole Jewish population and non-Jewish population what to do. The farmers, the peasants, the workers stayed in their place. They had always what to do. But with the Jewish people – the storekeepers, the traders, the intelligentsia, so to say – they lost their jobs most. They were replaced by other people, Communist-oriented people.

So certainly, I lost my job with ORT, and I was quite confused, not knowing what to do. Nobody knew what to do. Meantime, I lived in Kovno that time with my family.

Would you be interested to know what happened to the rest of my family, in Pumpyan? Well, my brother – my other, younger brother, Abel – lived in Pumpyan with my mother. So they were considered the capitalist, the bourgeois of Pumpyan. We call it “ber-zhoo'-ee” in Russian. Bourgeois means rich people, who exploits the other people. Can you imagine what kind of a capitalist, a bourgeois, my brother was? He was well off in Pumpyan, but the life was poor, and the people were poor, and he as bourgeois, as capitalist, he lost his house. His house was taken away from him. He lost his business.

I told you before, he had a cheese factory, manufacturing Holland cheese, they call it – the Hollandic cheese, that is same what you call in America American cheese, the same type. He lost it. The factory remained, but he was removed from the factory. The workers stayed, but he was no more the boss, no more the administrator. Every day he was expecting to be thrown out from his house and to give the house away to somebody else, to two, three families to live there, or maybe to turn into some institution. It was in the center of the town.

My mother certainly was heartbroken. What to do now? I communicated with my brother, and he was asking me can I find a job for him somewhere, somewhere in Kovno or somewhere else? Because in Pumpyan, he was going under the name bourgeois, capitalist, and all the doors are closed for him. There were three families in Pumpyan the richest families: my brother's; his wife's family, the parents, Siegel; and another family, Levinstein. These three were considered the richest, and they were the people to be eliminated from life. So it was .not much nachas hearing such news, and it was not much joy living in Kovno under the Communists.

[Page 106]

Well, you know, we Jewish people are masters to adapt ourselves to life, to new ways of life, to adapt new ways of life and to adjust ourselves. Little by little, we got used to the Communist regime, and we were trying to do the best we could. To make the long story short, I became the director of a sovchoz. I have to introduce you to the word sovchoz and to explain to you what it means. Choz is the beginning of the word chozyistvah. Chozyistvah means farming, agricultural life or farming. Sov from Soviet. sovchoz means Soviet farming, Soviet estate. There is another word what you heard, colchoz, means a collective estate, collective farming unit. But this was sovchoz, under the supervision of the government, of the agricultural department of the government. So a few months after the Communists occupied Lithuania, they nationalized the agricultural estates in Lithuania, around Kovno and everywhere in the whole Lithuania.

They chose seven, eight – or more,  maybe, later on – estates to be taken over by the city. Not by the agricultural department but the city, in order to grow vegetables, fruit and vegetables, to supply the city dwellers – direct estates near the city and to grow and produce for the city itsel£ So they needed a man with experience to be trusted to manage this sovchoz. So I don't know under what circumstances I was recommended. I applied, and I got the job as the director of the Kovno sovchoz. I emphasize this sovchoz was not under the supervision of the agricultural department of the government, but under the supervision of the city government, and was called under the name in Russian Kovniski Avostchevodni sovchoz: sovchoz of vegetable supplies for Kovno.

Probably they accepted me because I know the Russian language. Most of the younger Lithuanians and my colleagues, the younger colleagues, didn't know the Russian language. They were brought up in Lithuania. I happened to know – as I told you before, I graduated from gymnasia in the Russian language, so I knew this language. When the interviewer, a Russian, interviewed me, we conversed in Russian language, and he was pleased to hear, as he said, a beautiful Russian language. And after a few days, I was notified that I was appointed as director of the Kovno sovchoz.

If it's not clear to you and want to ask me some questions, I'll be glad. Here is Joshua, too. Maybe Joshua wants to ask something. Did I

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clarify myself what the sovchoz meant? And what my position was? So I had a feeling – I don't know how to express myself – -from one side, I was happy that I got a high-positioned job. Under the Lithuanians, I would never have gotten a job like this. On the other hand, I was sorry that ORT activities cannot be continued anymore, and, in general, Jewish life cannot be continued as it was before.

I forgot to tell you, the Hebrew culture – Jewish culture – in Lithuania was very high. I say the highest, higher than all other countries in Europe. For example, the small Lithuania had twelve Hebrew gymnasias. Can you imagine? Twelve. Your mother learned in a Hebrew gymnasia. There were Hebrew elementary schools in every shtetlwhere there was a population. There were two Jewish representatives in the Lithuanian parliament; they call it Seimas in Lithuanian. There were religious schools.

Rachel: So tell us about yourself and your involvement at this point.

Jacob: Rachel, if you want to ask me, please, ask me a little louder and a question to be heard on the tape.

Rachel: Tell us more about yourself.

Jacob: Yes. So I was sorry that we lost all this Jewish way of life. But I was proud of my position, and honestly I approached it and started working with all my might, as you to say, and devoted all my heart. Finally, I liked this way of work. One other thing what made my work but put in a lot of sadness in my work. I was a man who had to take over the estates from the owner and formally introduce them into the sovchoz. There was not one estate; there was seven or eight estates around Kovno. All the seven estates have to form the one unit, the sovchoz, and I had to take over each estate, one by one, from the owners – to notify them and to make the estates work as a part of the whole unit.

Rachel: Were the owners allowed to stay or did they have to get out?

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Jacob: That's a question what we couldn't solve in one day or in one month. That was the most sad part of my activity. I had to go under the direction or instructions of the Communist regime. If not I, so another one would be sent to do it, maybe in a worse way. I tried just much as I could to be mild, to introduce them to the sad part that they have to leave the estate. Under the Communist instructions, they couldn't be left over forever there, but I tried to prolong their stay as long as I could. In heart, everyone believed and wished that the Communist regime will finish. So anybody who could didn't rush.

Especially tragic, as I remember, was to take over a Jewish estate. The estate was called Freda. It was the most important in the sovchoz, near Kovno about two kilometers, and the owner was a man by the name Frankel, a Jewish man. I came to him with my assistant. The assistant was a man who had an estate, too, somewhere else, and he was thrown out already from his estate. He became my assistant. Well, that is a long story, to explain to you who the assistants were.

So when I had to come to Frankel and to tell him – not in one word, not in one sentence, to introduce in many words, going around, to tell him that he'll have to leave his home, and he'll have to go out somewhere – I was heartbroken, and certainly his wife cried, and he and probably I lost a tear, too, telling them. In the beginning, they didn't know that I was Jewish. They accepted me as a Lithuanian. My Lithuanian language was perfect, and my appearance didn't look expressly Jewish. But when I told him my last name, he said, “I heard there was agronomist by name Rasein; is he a relative to you?”

I said, “That is myself”

So he understood tha:t I was Jewish. I couldn't do anything for him. I could do one thing: to let him stay as long as the higher government official did not require, so to say, to force him out. And he stayed as long as possible.

Another estate I had to take over to join the sovchozwas the estate of the archbishop of Kovno. The name was Father Skviretskis. The estate was called Linkova. It was located about three, four miles from Kovno. And here I have some sad experience, to come and to tell him that the government, the present government, nationalized his estate and the

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belongings. He, outside looking outwardly, he took it easily. “Well,” he said, “the regime decided. I'll have to go along.”

But it was not so easy for him, too. He also had to be removed. I didn't try to press him, by no means, but he understood. He had two automobiles, machinery, horses, and a beautiful estate, a small estate, sixty hectares – sixty hectares, that is a hundred and fifty acres – but it has to be joined. By the way, he had an automobile what I used in Lithuania. Here in America I don't see this one, La Salle. Are you acquainted with this automobile? It's a big car for eight people to sit, for eight people. The back seat had four and four – no, three and three and then three. I never saw here in America. That was, later on, my car. I used it.

Another estate was Parzeislee, on the river by name Neman, the longest river in Lithuania, and the estate was adjoined a monastery. It belongs to the monastery. I had to come to tell the mother...how do you call the mother?

Rachel: The mother superior.

Jacob: ...mother superior that the estate is going to be taken over by the government. It was emotional. It was hard days for me, as I remember now, to go and to tell them. Another estate belonged to a minister in the former Lithuanian government. I had to come to tell the administrator. The minister wasn't there, but the administrator was there.

Anyway, I took over six or seven. One was far away from Kovno, about fifteen kilometers, and this was disputed, that it belonged to the Kovno sovchoz or it doesn't belong. Anyway, I took over seven estates and two large greenhouses in Kovno itself, and that was formed into one unit by the name Kovno sovchoz.

It gave me a lot of activity later on, and a lot of satisfaction. We set up a big office. There were about twenty, or over twenty, employees in the office. I set up an administration for each separate unit, a manager and a specialist for gardening.

And now it comes to me one tragic point for some people. Kovno had a lot of Jewish gardeners, specialized in growing one product, cucumbers and, later on, also tomatoes. These products were sold in

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Lithuania, and cucumbers even were sold in foreign countries. They sent it to Germany and to other countries. And who were the managers? The main people were Jewish people – gardeners, specialists, and experts. When I took over estates, some of them, five or six, came to me. “Look, what shall we do? Can you employ us?”

I was glad to employ them, because I knew I deal with people, honest people, and hard workers and specialists. But I couldn't do it. In the eyes of the regime, they were capitalist exploiters; they employed very many people to do it. One of them, the biggest one, had about, in the season, about three hundred people working for him in the fields, in the gardens. The smaller ones had a hundred, a hundred and fifty. So in the eyes of the regime, they were exploiters, capitalists.

So I had to ask them questions, to bring it before my superior. I came to him. “Look,” I said, “Comrade Koryagin.” His name was Koryagin, and we call each other comrade. “I need people, and I want to employ them, this kind of people,” I said.

“Oh, they are.... No, we don't want them. They are exploiters.”

“Whom would you employ?”

“Here,” he said, “is the agricultural school for gardening. There are many pupils graduating each school.”

I listened to him. I was disappointed. I said, “Tovarish Koryagin, if you want me to employ them, I cannot keep the job. They are just finished the school; they have no experience, what to do, when to do. We will fall into bankruptcy in one week.”

I said, “I have people with great experience. If you want me, I will take them.”

He understood what I meant. He was thinking and thinking. And he said one sentence to me in Russian. I'll quote it in Russian. “Rasein, tre otvechayesh golovoy.” “Rasein, you are responsible with your head.” Meaning is if I don't succeed with them, if they do something wrong, my head is of£ I said, “I accept it.”

I knew the people. So he gave me permission. I employed six of these expert gardeners, and that was the best step I could do. In a few months, during the spring and summer, the ground was covered with vegetables, and in a great scale, in a big scale. When the war broke out, the Second World War broke out, out of the estate there were about

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five hundred acres – not acres, hectares – and about half of this area was covered with vegetables. And that supplied Kovno, the city of Kovno, with vegetables and with fruits, and I was proud of it.

Now to go further on, the war that broke out the 22nd of June 1941 made a stop to all activities, and it started quite a new period of life, in my personal life and my family and for the whole world. The Second World War broke out.

I have to add one remark. As a reward for my good work, I was called by the Russian Stachanovetz. Stachanov means “ideal worker” in Russian. And people who did a good work for them were called Stachanovetz. By the end of the year, every factory or every sovchoz gave a report how much they accomplished, and everything was built – excuse me for my expression – on falsehood and lies. My report was that I accomplished my mission one hundred twenty-five percent over the requirements. It was false. And other gave report one hundred fifty, one hundred seventy, and everyone knew that is falsehood, and nobody dared to open their mouth to say. It was bragging that the Soviet regime brought in new food. So as a reward for my good work, I was sent to Moscow, to Soviet Russia, for vacation, and the main thing, to attend the All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow. That was something great to see, the exhibition. I was notified within two, three hours. “Rasein, get ready.”

“What happened?”

“You are going to Moscow.”

“When?”

“Nine o'clock.”

I was notified six o'clock in the morning. “I have to prepare, to do something!”

“No matter. The train is going at nine o'dock. Be prepared. You are awarded to go.”

Anyway, I prepared. I took the main thing, a photo camera, and I was on the train together with over a hundred other people from other factories, and we spent two weeks in Moscow.

The exhibition itself was something to see. Whole villages were built on the grounds of the exhibition. It was something new to me; with fields, with orchards, everything was prepared and built. But my pur-

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pose, deep in my heart, was not the exhibition but-guess what? Can you guess?

Josh and Rachel: To see your brother?

Jacob: My brother. You are right, to see my brother and the family. I had no chance and no way to notify him. So after I fulfilled the official part of exhibition – I think during two or three days, I couldn't get away from the group; I have to stick with the group – I got freedom for one or two days, and I made my way to the location where my brother lives.

I don't know if that is part of the story, but if you ask me later on, and I'll tell you how was the meeting with my brother. One thing I'll tell you, when I returned home in June – about 17th, 18th, and being in Moscow for two weeks with my brother, with friends, talking with them – nobody mentioned and nobody had an idea that the war is fast approaching, and the war is going to break out. I came to Lithuania, back to Lithuania, and nobody was talking about the war. The Germans, they say, are building something; the Russians are building along the frontier line. And the war broke out the night of 21st to 22nd of June, in the morning of 22nd of June 1941.

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