OPEN ARCHIVES OF KAUNAS

Vilijampolė

Jolita: My grandparents lived "on the hill", in Vilijampolė. I used to visit them with my parents at first and later I went there alone. I used to take a trolleybus from the 6th Fort to get to Kaunas Castle, and then waited for bus No 4 to get to Kaunas Clinical Hospital; buses on this route drove more often too. If I'm not mistaken, it was also possible to get to my grandmother‘s Josvainių bus stop by taking bus No. 33 or No. 24. I do not remember the final destination of those routes, but it was somewhere "in the middle of nowhere"; the buses on these routes rode very rarely too. Once we rode bus No. 33 and got off at the Milikoniai store. For me it was like the end of the world - the last place for people to be found. There used to be an ice cream kiosk at the bus station of Kaunas Castle and I would often not buy a ticket for 4 kopecks so I could save some money for an ice cream. A cup of dairy ice cream cost 11 kopecks, sour cream ice cream cost 15 and fatty ice cream cost 19 kopecks. I never bought the latter though, since it had too much fat and it was too expensive. For some reason, the Castle ice cream kiosk often sold sorbets, which cost 6 kopeck. This kind of ice cream was the most desirable for us, since it was delicious and hard to find. After some time, I started to get off the bus more and more ahead of my stop and I would walk by foot through Vilijampolė and then up the hill. It is hard to believe it, but my entire childhood I spent with my relatives in Vilijampolė; I never heard the word "Jew" from them (or at least I do not recall), and most certainly no one ever mentioned the word "ghetto". I was stunned, when after a long time I saw the name "Slabotkė" on an American website and realized that all those years I had been riding the bus through the little streets of the ghetto. However, there was something in that district that fascinated me and it still does. My grandmother died in 1983. The family drifted apart. Šilainiai district started to rise. My childhood ended and so did my time in Vilijampolė. For thirty years, the orange bridge over the river Neris was the border of Kaunas for me. I realized that it might be time for me to cross it, especially when I started to get dreams about all those places I walked through as a child. I took a walk in the down side of Vilijampolė, and then I got to the Child Care service at the hillside. That building, with its massive gray walls, used to be both fascinating and intimidating for me as a child. I walked up the hill. Many places have changed, except for the territory of the fort on Pylimo Street in front of my grandmother's house; which was untouched and belonged to no one. Just like my grandma’s house did not belong to me anymore. Just like the pictures that I did not care for as a child and did not bother taking them as I left. (2017)