Day 4 Trakai Castle and then the Vilnius KGB Museum

Swing dancers

Mike, Judy, and Sybil with Trakai castle in the background.

Our group ready to make Karaite pies.

Trakai Castle

We drove to Trakai about 30 miles outside of Vilnius. This was the original capitol of Lithuania (in the middle ages). It is in the center of a chain of beautiful lakes and green forests. At the time this was the capitol its rulers ruled a very large area that went all the way to the Black Sea. The original red brick castle was destroyed many years ago but was rebuilt at the end of the Soviet occupation.

The original castle was destroyed long ago. It was rebuilt not terribly long ago. At one time the King of this castle was the ruled Lithuania and what is now Poland and the kingdom when all the way to the Black Sea.

One of the most interesting things about this town is that it is the center of a Jewish sect – the Kairite religion. This sect split form the traditional Jewish religion around the time of Christ. They rejected much of the evolving Jewish teachings saying they only needed the Old Testament. The lived in Mesopatamia and spoke a Turkick language. They ended up blending Judaism and Islam into their beliefs. During the middle ages the ruler who lived in the Castle of Trakai brough several hundred of these people to Trakai to serve as his guards. The have continued to live here and it is the center of their religion. They continue to worship in their own way and still speak this unusual language.

Unfortunately, some of the ways of the Kairite have caused them to decrease in time and it appears they are about to disappear. For one thing, they are absolutely forbidden to marry outside their faith and conversion to the Kairite faith is not possible. At the present time there are at total of 65 Kairites in Trakai, and about one thousand in the entire world. The Karite restaurant owner said that Internt. Now how is that for computer dating?

The Karites wear a certain costume that is very middle eastern looking. Their specialty of cooking are little pies (meat or vegetable) and these are very popular with everyone. Our group went to a Karite restaurant for lunch and were taught how to make the pies. We had great fun rolling them out, filling them, and sealing them out. We then had lunch including eating our very own pie.

After lunch we went to the Karite church where an ancient rotund Karite man, wearing a fez, told us about the Karite faith – but we would never know what he said. He lectured to our guide, Mina, in Lithuanian. She is Estonian and she speaks Estonian and Russian but only a few words of Lithuanian. She was only able to translate a little of what he said, but what she could understand some of what he was saying, and tole us it “sounded like nonsense. This guy is a bit scary.”

At the end of the day we visited the KGB museum in Vilnius. Now this was truly, truly a scary experience and one that was very informative but horrifying. In fact, the Museum is the old KGB headquarters in Vilnius. A guide took us downstairs to the prison. This place looked very familiar as we have seen many movies of such plances. Those movies have not been exaggerated at all. We saw the tiny rooms “boxes” where prisoners where first checked in. We saw the various cells:
1. Small ones that held one or two prisoners.
2. Padded cells.
3. A torture cell where there was a tiny circular platform about one foot wide that stood above a foot of cold water.
4. A cell for solitary confinement.

We also saw the interrogation room and the room where the KGB agents listened in the telephone conversations throughout Vilnius.

We learned about the kind of prisoners that were imprisoned and sometimes executed in this place. Most were intellectuals. Many were partisans who tried to resist the Soviets by hiding and fighting the Soviets in the forests. Many other prisoners were people who were suspected of assisting the partisans in some way (like giving them food). We saw pictures of many of the prisoners. We also saw pictures of some of the KGB staff including some of the ones who were in charge of this place. A particularly horrifying thing to learn was that the men who were in charge of the facility carried out the executions themselves. Good God what monsters was all I could think.

The absolutely worse sight we saw, and it has haunted me since, was the execution chamber itself. The executions took place always at night. The room is about 20 X 20 ft. and has a drain in the middle of the floor. At the end of the room is a slot at the top of the wall. The prisoner was brought into the in handcuffs and then usually shot multiple times in the head. Sometimes they were clubbed to death. After the prisoner was dead, he was lifted and pushed through the slot. Unbelievalbe – who could have done this????

Thankfully for you we were not permitted to take pictures within the KGB Museum.