Yesterday, I arrived in Kaunas. The trip out was easier than I expected, but not quite simple. After arriving at Vilnius International Airport from Istanbul, I board the first bus I could find that said 'stotis' (the Lithuanian word for bus/train station) on the front. Easy, right? The only problem: I don't know which stop the stotis is at. So I go a stop or two too far, and get to see a bit more of Vilnius than I bargained for. But, using my stellar cross-cultural communication skills (pointing and saying stotis) I manage to find my way through the wide, Vilnius streets and their...welcoming sentinels, squat buildings made of half-painted wood and aged concrete. Boarding the express bus to Kaunas proves easier than getting to the station in Vilnius, and after an hour or so of verdant farmland and dripping Baltic forest, I arrive at the Kaunas Autobus Stotis. Kita stotelė: the Sugihara House Museum, which has been set up on the former site of Sugihara's abode and consulate in Kaunas. Supposedly, it's about a fifteen minute walk from my hotel, most of it past houses that look like they just survived WWII. Some of them probably did survive WWII, actually. Kaunas is a bit of a patchwork. Fresh (or crumbling) concrete construction alternates with older buildings which roll across the lush hills of the city like a quilt. At some point, my walking takes me to the end of the road I've been relying on. But I still haven't found the street with the museum. The rest of my route, as it turns out, is up. Concrete stairs, almost lost in the clamoring growth of the Lithuanian summer, climb upwards across the hill through gardens and shivering trees. As I reach the top, I realize that this is the street I am looking for. Vaizganto, it's called, a narrow residential street in a quiet, back corner of Kaunas far from the city's center. But as I walk down this quiet street, I realize there's a problem. Because echoing down the pockmarked asphalt is the sound of construction. And it's coming from 30 Vaizganto Street, the address where the museum is supposed to be. Instead, though, the building is covered in a facade of plastic sheeting with a sign announcing the opening of a new restaurant. "Maybe I have the address wrong," I think, and proceed to run up and down the street looking for anything that vaguely resembles a museum. But there's nothing. People are peeking out their windows, glaring at the crazy American with her curly hair and her Imaging Dragons tee, but I'm past caring. I have to find the house where Sugihara lived. At this point, a nauseating horror sweeps through me. What if that gestating restaurant really is where the museum used to be? How crushed, how furious would my grandmother be, to know that Sugihara's legacy had become an upscale-yet-still-casual fine dining experience? I'm on the verge of tears when I notice a wet, paper sign clinging to one of the wooden beams on the construction site. "Entrance" is says, in English and Japanese, with an arrow pointing down into the pit. What else can I do? I follow it. After stepping over some loose lumber and getting down under the construction site, I find my way into the museum. All four rooms of it. As it turns out, my grandmother provided many of the materials they use in their exhibits. Her image and her story are on their walls, and there's even a picture of my family in the back room. And, on the desk meant to act as a mock-up of Sugihara's work space, there's a copy of Sonya Finklestein's passport. The strange thing, though, is that's not the end to the surprises. I'm at the museum for maybe fifteen minutes when the director, Simon, walks in with a tour group of three Americans. And one of them is from Houston! We talk about my project, and theirs, and I get to watch them decipher the German on the passport. It's something I remember doing with my grandmother, her going through and explaining the German terms, me watching the passport and her hands. On my second day in Kaunas, I had planned to visit the Ninth Fort. But that morning, something stops me. I'm not sure what. Maybe it's a certain hesitancy--I've heard that it's become a bit of a tourist trap. But I am a tourist of course. David Foster Wallace once wrote something about being a tourist; that it was like being a fly on the carcass of the very thing you had come to appreciate. Maybe that's a bit extreme, and maybe David Foster Wallace, despite (or maybe because of) his constant insecurity had some issues with being consciously inferior, but there is something to the idea. Why become one more fly (well, more of one than I already am) when what I'm trying to do is honor, not destroy? Why dwell on death I can't contemplate when what I want to do is give new life to old things? Perhaps, also, I am afraid. Of what, I'm not sure, but I can feel it floating inside me like an unbroken wave. There is something about that place which keeps me away. So, instead, I decide to do something that will connect me with my grandmother's memory: I go to an art museum.
My love of art museums was something fostered by my grandmother. We spent hours in them, growing up. She was the kind of person who hated to miss a single piece or exhibition. So, for both of us, I decide it will be good to visit the M. Čirlionis Museum, near the Kaunas City Center. I accidentally end up in the Great War Museum, which contains, among other things, a display of all the military helmets Lithuanians have worn from the middle ages right up into the nineteen-eighties. Guns, too. There's even a special children's room, complete with a little command tent and tiny supply crates for the kids to sit on while they watch videos about how the modern Lithuanian military is trained. I swear I've never seen anything like it, and I've been to Israel. Levity aside, though, it does put one in a certain mood to contemplate the glorification of national suffering and war. Perhaps I run the risk of sinking into cliche, or of applying a foreign set of values to cultural beliefs I don't understand. But, setting all of that aside, the museum was a disturbing alternative to the Ninth Fort. Because it means that the ideas and forces which caused so much suffering for so many people, Jewish, Lithuanian, Russian, German, are still floating around un-interrogated. Beyond that, I'm not really sure what to think. One last thing: the folks at the Sugihara House Museum are absolutely wonderful. Their museum needs lots of support, though, so if you have the time please, please visit their website at http://www.sugiharahouse.com/en. Maybe even make a little donation, eh? Who knows, maybe you're feeling crazy. Snaps for Kaunas, Sonia
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