TE15 Lithuanian Honey Cake

Irena Veisaitė & Aurimas Švedas

dare go to the theatre, even though Ibsen’s Nora was being performed at the time, with Monika Mironaitė playing the title role. 14 But I did go to the cinema once. I saw a film that was very popular at the time, Veit Harlan’s Die goldene Stadt [The Golden City], which was based on a work by Richard Billinger. 15 After the screening, the doors of the cinema were blocked and Gestapo officers were checking documents at the exit. You can imagine how I felt. But luckily—thank God— everything went well. By then it was 1944 and the situation was changing dramatically. Everyone could see that the Germans would lose the war, and it seemed that the Germans understood that themselves. In July, the battles over Vilnius began. In reacting to the rapidly shifting situation, Mrs. Ladigienė’s family began to debate: what should they do—remain in Lithuania and experience a second Soviet occupation, or flee to the West? They decided to stay. As the front approached Vilnius and city was being bombed daily, Mrs. Ladigienė decided to take her children to stay with a Mr. Stabinis, who lived in what is currently the neighbourhood of Žirmūnai, but which Vilnius residents then called “Losiuvka.” At the time it was a suburb of Vilnius. She hoped that this area would 14 Nora —theatre director Romualdas Juknevičius’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s play, Vilnius City Theatre, premiere 1942. 15 Die goldene Stadt [The golden city, 1942]—film directed by Veit Harlan, based on Richard Billinger’s Der Gigant (The giant, 1937).

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