Photos by P. Židonis

Jurijus Smirnovas is now in his 80s and all he remembers from his childhood is in the cross-hairs of a rifle scope. Many times over during his childhood he could have lost his life by being shot, hanged, beaten to death or poisoned, because during World War II he was marked by the star of David, soaked with the blood of millions of people.

His story, however, had a happier ending.

“I’ve been in Panevėžys for 75 years now. The Germans brought me here before I was eight,” he says with a deep sigh. “It’s very hard for me to speak about this, I haven’t wanted to tell the story and I don’t want to now either, to relive everything, to go back to that terror, fear. At these moments I feel awful,” the Jewish man said.

Full text in Lithuanian here.