Good Night Already!

A loving memory from my childhood is the bedtime routine my dad & I had established when I learned that he knew bits & pieces of numerous languages. I begged him to teach me how to say “Good night” in each of them, & we would go through the entire litany every night.

Not only did we have the obvious Lithuanian & English languages, but we also had Russian because my parents had been born during the waning years of the Russian Empire which had held Lithuania in its grip from 1795 until 1918 when Lithuania finally freed itself during the chaos of the Russian Revolution towards the end of the 1st World War. My dad was already nearing 16 & carried a Russian passport as that occurred.

During the 2nd World War, my parents & sisters fled Lithuania westward with the retreating German army fearing the vengeful advancing Russians more than the Germans. In the helter-skelter years of the war & for several years thereafter, Europe was a madhouse of people from all over trying to find a place of shelter where they would not starve or face the wrong end of a gun barrel or be on the receiving end of a mortar round.

My dad came close to these on at least 2 occasions. Once was when he, working as a slave laborer forced to dig trenches for the German army, was targeted by a U$er fighter pilot who swooped down & tried to take him out. The line of bullet holes was just inches to the side of where he’d been with his shovel.

During the flight west, my family passed through Poland & much German territory before the war…