A woman in Siberia

Posted on June 7, 2011

Elena Juciute was a high school mathematics teacher in Pilviskiai, Lithuania. (The Plioplys village is located in this city, and is where my father and his forefathers were born and raised.) In response to the mass deportations and slaughter of innocent people, she started to provide paper-work support to the underground resistance movement. She was caught and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in a Soviet gulag.

She was sent to Tayshet, in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. The photographs were taken while she was repairing the Trans-Siberian railroad. The head coverings were to protect herself from flies, as was the need to tie her skirt around her legs. At all times she had to wear her prisoner number on her right knee, and on her upper back. The death rate was so high that survivors from building this railroad stated that there was a body buried under each railroad tie.

After serving her sentence, she eventually emigrated to Boston, where she wrote and published her memoires. Her experiences in the anti-human world of Stalinistic horror have been translated into English, Footprints in the Death Zone (2001, GEM Publishing, Huntington Beach, CA).

These original items, brought from Siberia by Ms. Juciute, fill three large display cases in the Hope and Spirit exhibit opening June 18. This is just a small part of all of the documentary, historical, photographic and artistic materials on display. Original material from Soviet gulags, especially of such historic quality and quantity, is extremely rare.

I have organized this multi-faceted program with historical exhibits, historical documentation, art exhibits, photography exhibits, lectures, films, personal reminiscences, poetry and deportee letter readings. Detailed information can be found at:

http://plioplys.com/current-exhibits.php and

http://www.balzekasmuseum.org/Pages/hope_and_spirit_exhibition.html

The Hope and Spirit program opens on June 18, 2011, at the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, 6500 S. Pulaski Rd., Chicago, Illinois. All are invited to attend the quality-laden events.

With sincere thanks to the Lithuanian Research and Studies Center for loaning Ms. Juciute’s materials to this exhibit.