BioGraphy
Juliana ZARCHI
Juliana Zarchi was born in Kaunas in 1938 of a Lithuanian father of Jewish origin and a German mother. When Lithuania was invaded by the Nazis, her father fled to the east and was killed by the Einsatzgruppen. While still a little girl she escaped from the Kaunas ghetto and managed to survive the Nazi occupation.
In August 1945, as part of a purge of ethnic Germans, she was forcibly resettled by the Soviets with her mother in Tajikistan in Central Asia, and only returned in 1962. What made her suffer most when they arrived was not the heat or the hunger or the typhus epidemics but the fact that the village children called her a “Fascist”, whereas her father had actually been killed by the Fascists. On her return, she taught German at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas.
Her mother tried all her life to return home to Düsseldorf in Germany. She wrote hundreds of letters to the Soviet authorities but was never authorised to leave the USSR, where she died in Kaunas in 1991.
Since Lithuania has regained its independence, Julia regularly goes to Germany, where she is invited to give talks in schools to tell the story of her family and her experience of the two dictatorships.
The interview with Juliana Zarchi was conducted in 2009 by Marta Craveri and Jurgita Mačiulytė.
Memories of her mother’s
despair 1/2 (Original in Russian)
Juliana’s mother fled Nazi Germany in 1937 and settled with her husband in Kaunas. She could speak neither Lithuanian nor Russian, which she eventually learnt, poorly, in Tajikistan.
During the interview, Juliana remembers how her mother felt foreign all her life, how she cried each time she spoke of Düsseldort. “We lived out of suitcases”, because her mother was always waiting for permission to go home. Juliana chose not to have any children for fear it would be yet another pretext for not allowing them to leave Lithuania.
Memories of her mother’s
despair 2/2 (Original in Russian)
Juliana’s mother fled Nazi Germany in 1937 and settled with her husband in Kaunas. She could speak neither Lithuanian nor Russian, which she eventually learnt, poorly, in Tajikistan.
During the interview, Juliana remembers how her mother felt foreign all her life, how she cried each time she spoke of Düsseldort. “We lived out of suitcases”, because her mother was always waiting for permission to go home. Juliana chose not to have any children for fear it would be yet another pretext for not allowing them to leave Lithuania.
Arrest and deportation (Original version in Russian)
Juliana remembers when the Soviet political police arrived at their house in Kaunas and her deportation to Tajikistan.
Tajik children (Original in Russian)
In these two extracts, Juliana remembers how the Tajik children called the deported children “Fascists” and threw stones at them, her feeling of injustice and relations between the deportees and the Tajiks.
Relations with the Tajiks (Original in Russian)
In these two extracts, Juliana remembers how the Tajik children called the deported children “Fascists” and threw stones at them, her feeling of injustice and relations between the deportees and the Tajiks.
Identity and heritage (Original in Russian)
In this extract Juliana explains why she has felt different all her life and uses “they” to mean the Lithuanians, the Russians and the Jews. The only time she uses “we” is when she talks about the deportees.
Juliana’s mother in Germany before her marriage
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana’s mother, father and grandfather in Ukmergė
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana with her mother
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana’s mother
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana with her mother
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana with her father
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana’s father with his brothers
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana’s father
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana’s father
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana with her father
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana with her father
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana at age 4
© Juliana Zarchi
Before deportation
Juliana and her parents between 1937 and 1941
Juliana (bottom centre) with schoolfellows
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana (first right) with schoolfellows
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana’s mother in Tajikistan
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana (top right) in Tajikistan with her mother and <br/> other resettlers
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana (top right) in Tajikistan with her mother and <br/> other resettlers
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana (top right) with her secondary school fellows <br/> in Tajikistan
© Juliana Zarchi
Juliana (bottom right) with friends in 1962, just before <br/> her return
© Juliana Zarchi
Resettlement
Juliana celebrated her seventh birthday in the cattle wagon taking her with her mother to Tajikistan, where she went to school and grew up. Not until 1962 did she finally return to Kaunas.