The question is - why did I try to collect family information? I do not know, I think that once I started looking I was drawn further into it. Mum used to say that I was "a ba'aI neies", I don‘t think she meant that I liked to know only gossip and scandals but general information about people. And it is true that I often used to browse through the telephone directory of Cape Town, the variety of names fascinated me and excited the imagination: there were many surnames beginning with "von" (such as von Moltke, yes in Cape Town) and after reading Buddenbrooks I suppose I wanted to read about the old impoverished Prussian Junker families. At home, we always heard Mum speaking about "die heim" but being young and busy with ourselves we did not listen and names and places remained blurred, and when visitors came who also were from Pakroy or other shtetlach they would spend such a long time reminiscing and we could have learned so much but it was all lost. We realized that the history was sad, that everyone had been killed and we were inhibited in asking questions. For many years when Mum spoke about the Maisel family in Pakroy and for that matter whenever she mentioned Lita and family she was tearful. So I suppose that is one of the reasons why we avoided asking questions. (Apropos of speaking nostalgically of Pakroy, I once asked Mum if it was nice living in a shtetel, and Mum answered unequivocally "Not if you were poor"). We took it for granted as young people do that there would always be time later to ask questions. Now we know better but there is no one left to ask. 

So, years later after Mum died and her generation had disappeared — when Lithuania became independent, I think in 1989, I wrote a letter to their President Mr. Vytautas Landsbergis asking about the fate of the Maisel family of Pakroy and received an annoying letter from the Ministry of Justice containing a feeble reply with almost no facts. I realized that I would have to be more insistent and asked them for places and dates, and they then referred my enquiry to a police officer in Pakroy, Andrius Gudzinskas. This was the start of a long association without which we would not have discovered many facts and documents; he became "our man in Lithuania".

the site of the mass graves in Morkakalnis