Lygumai - Litte Shetl With A Sinister Secret

We take the scenic route (left) out of Kaunas en route to the motorway. The weather has improved significantly since Sunday and we are now enjoying brilliant sunshine.

Kaunas River

This gives us an opportunity to have lunch at a very scenic spot overlooking the Kaunas river. The coach inches its way down a narrow street to get there and as we walk to the Outlook, we pass an Opera school where they are clearly hard at work on the next performance.

We find a spot on the grass to have lunch. It’s chicken sandwiches again followed by an apple and a pear.



Chicken Sandwiches For Lunch



But no-one is complaining. The food arrangements so far have been excellent, given the difficulties of sourcing it. We have also brought along with us the Seminary Girls from the Chabad House in Vilnius that has been supplying us with meals. They are from outside Lithuania and welcome the opportunity to have come to Kaunas – and with our guide.



There is still quite a way to go to get to Riga before evening, and mindful of this we hurry back on to the coach to head off.

We know there is a long trek ahead and the party settles down on the coach. It’s still five hours to Riga straight, but three in the party have specifically asked if we can make a detour en route to Lygumai, which is where their forebears came from.



And so we do. The Branstons are one couple to pose by the town sign, narrowly avoiding a ditch which I myself manage to step into.

Lygumai has the appearance of what one could have imagined a shtetl might have been – if updated for the 21^st century.



Branstons By Lygumai Sign



The place is another with a chilling history. Lygumai's Jews were detained at the end of July 1941 and the beginning of September the detained men were kept in a cellar of a building, and the women were kept in the synagogue.

During the night of the 3rd of September and to the night of the 4th, the men and young women were shot, in the Junkaiciai forest.

Today, there is ‘a shop’, ‘a school’, ‘a village green’ and a few houses that we can make out. There is, rather out of place, also a very large brick church complete with large spire which could have passed for a cathedral.

Our fearless guide chats in Lithuanian to the locals and rapidly establishes where the shul was. Amazingly, it is close by and still intact, though we understand it is now used as a barn.

We walk up to it and take lots of photos, to the obvious bemusement of the local schoolkids – by now it’s 5pm and they have finished for the day. They cannot understand what the interest in this barn is for the coachload of thirty English souls who have rocked up for 15 mins to see it.

Philip ‘Spiderman’ Baigel climbs up to a high window to take a photo of the inside. We take lots of photos of Philip.



Spiderman Baigel In Action

Our guide, unprompted, then selects what would have been an‘old shtetl’ house and asks the owner if a couple of the party can see inside. Amazingly she agrees and we ply her children with sweets before a couple of us disappear inside.

We give the remaining chocolate brownies to the local kids who snap them up, then settle back down for the ride to Riga which is still apparently 5 hours away……