Fate brought him from Vilimiškės manor in his youth to Vēžaičius

For many years, Danuta Perkūniena wondered what her mother’s words “go to our manor” could mean. Danutė, who was born in the Palanga estate in Vilimiškė, only after her mother’s death began to unravel the threads of the family history that had been kept quiet during the Soviet era. When she settled in Vēžaičiai, she had no idea that a few decades later, fate would lead her to settle in the house of the former owner of the Volmeri manor.
The fate of the martyr of Rainai
“My great-grandfather Pranciškus Telšinskas worked as a householder at the Reniai manor in Gargždai. He married a chambermaid Pranciska Nagevičiūtė, who gave birth to three children. One of them is my grandfather Antanas. He also had three children. Both sons graduated from the agricultural school in Kretinga and were sent to work on estates: Kazimieras – to the Salantai estate, and my father Jonas – to the Tiškevičiai estate near Palanga as a farmhand, – said 85-year-old D. Perkūnienė without haste. – The palace itself was in Palanga, and the manor was called a palivark homestead, – in the village of Vilimiškės. I was born there, my whole childhood was there.” In one house lived a farmer, a clerk and a horseman. Further on there were three more houses – they were called “metininkai”. Those who came to work lived here for at least a year. Some stayed, others left, but there were always a lot of children, so Danutė really wanted to go to the “year-olds”.
Living right next to the border of the Klaipėda region meant a more complicated movement – in order to come to Vilimiška, you had to have a permit from the Palanga municipality. Once in 1940 Danutė’s father helped the former manor of the manor to secretly transport the grain claimed for him as a pension across the border on horses. Unfortunately, the trip was unsuccessful. A person from Palanga who sympathizes with the Russians who occupied Lithuania also discovered a former farmer hiding under a tarpaulin among the grain in a cart. In 1941, after Danutė’s father complained, who also loudly expressed his opinion about the elections to the People’s Seimas, that is, he urged not to vote. January 10 arrested by Russian soldiers. At first he was in prison in Kretinga, then in Telšiai prison. May 24 was sentenced to 5 years in prison. “The father was a political prisoner. Before the Rainiai massacre, he was not taken anywhere and on June 25. shot with the other martyrs of Rainia”, Danutė told about the tragedy. Her mother married a second time when Danuta was 8 and her brother was 10 years old. Three more children were born in the second marriage.
During the war – three times from home
“I remember well the war, how we had to give up our house to the Germans, and we moved to another village. We moved about three times during the war. Whenever there was an opportunity, we returned to Vilimiška again. After the Germans, we found everything as we left it, the second time as well, and the third time, after the Russian soldiers settled, even the beds were chopped up and made in the winter”, D. Perkūnienė, who experienced many shocks, shared her memories. The one who complained about her father in 1940 “tried” during the war as well. In the winter, when the family had settled in a similar way 4 kilometers from Vilimiškė, near Girkalias, three Russian soldiers came to the house with assault rifles. “They put my mother against the doorframe, put a pistol to her chest and told her to hand over the rifle. I screamed and screamed, and my mother waded 4 kilometers through the snow, the soldiers following. My mother had wrapped my father’s hunting rifle in a cloth and thrown it into the manor’s raspberry garden. He dug it out from under the snow and gave it to the soldiers. They were disappointed that it was hunting, but they took the rifle anyway,” said Danutė. She remembered another incident, when Russian soldiers drove all the people out of their houses and told them to dance, raising long-burning lamps at night. Someone from Russia had a harmonica. It was not possible to disobey “have fun”.
“When the Russians came, a council farm was established, and until the restoration of independence, only the names changed: Kretinga council farm, then it was connected to Vydmantai and became Vydmantai council farm,” said the woman. The wooden mansion was still maintained. In front of the house was a round kolomba. All the women who lived there planted flowers and shared care. Danutė remembers long clay barns, two large granaries, a forge, a workshop, a toolbox for storing work tools. They say those barrels are gone. What remains is the “year-old” house, where families still live, and a poor manor house. Sometimes Danutė, feeling nostalgic for her hometown, where she spent 25 years of her life, asks her children to take her to Vilimiška, where only one of her acquaintances remains.

Mother’s word is sacred
When she grew up, Danutė started going to school in Palanga. The children of Vilimiškė waded to school about 3 kilometers along the bumpy, muddy country roads. At that time, Danutė’s dream had come true – she was already living in “metininki”, because she had to give up her house to another householder when he moved.
Danutė did not join either the pioneers or the Komsomol. Mother’s holy word “don’t try”, after all, the Russians killed her father, never once made her question her decision. After receiving a piece of paper and being told to write an application for admission to the Komsomol, she was left alone in the classroom and did not write a single word. Even some educators appreciated Danutė’s will – one teacher, met on her way home, told the girl that the teachers respect her.
In the summers, while working on the farm with her friend, the daughter of a blacksmith, they both decided that after finishing the 7th grade, she would enter Klaipėda technical school and study agronomy. Unfortunately, the documents were not accepted – there was no Komsomol girl. Then he decided to study accounting in Kretinga. Since there was no shortage of accountants in the farm, the director of the farm did not give the referral. However, the stubborn girl did not give up – she went to the center of the district. If it wasn’t for a person she met by chance, she would have returned without picking anything. After graduating from accounting, it was not possible to choose a job. “I remember being asked if I could ride. I answered that I can. Then he offered me a job in Kretinga district in Kalniškii, which I could only reach by riding a horse. My family didn’t let me out, so I worked on the farm for four years in the field brigade. I didn’t want to work like this all my life”, admitted Danutė.
As she had dreamed, she decided to enroll in Klaipėda technical school to study part-time. This time it worked. After graduating in agronomy, she received an appointment in Vēžaičius. in 1965 blessed by her mother and escorted by the words “go to our estate”, Danutė came to Vēžaičius. She never regretted persistently pursuing her goal, because she liked both soil research and making field fertilization plans, later working as a test technician at the Vėžaičiai branch of the Lithuanian Agricultural Research Institute, and then working as an agronomist-planter of an experimental farm. During the year of independence, Danuta’s accounting skills came in handy again – she worked as a cashier at the Vēžaičiau communal farm.
The precept hinted at a riddle
At first, the young specialist was accommodated in Samališkė, after a couple of years after the construction of an apartment building in Vēžaičiai, she settled in it. Mother, who came to visit Danute, used to tell how beautiful the manor garden was in Vēžaičiai, from the white gate, the park, the flower beds, how much she and her husband, Danute’s father, had walked here. The daughter asked the mother why they came here, but did not hear an answer. However, the words “go to our manor” did not give Danuta peace. After my mother’s death, I asked my aunt – my mother’s youngest sister – the meaning of those words. “My mother and her sisters were from Jašinskaite. The former estate of Counts Vollmeri was auctioned around 1936. bought by Kostas Jašinskis, from Gribžiniai. My grandfather on my mother’s side was Petras Jašinskis. Little by little I found out that K. Jašinskis and his descendants are my mother’s relatives”, Danutė was happy after opening the veil of family history. After the restoration of Independence, the grandchildren of K. Jašinskis regained the estate with all the lands.
Having once gone to Vilnius with a friend for work, the next day Danutė promised to dedicate material about family roots to searches in the archives. Fate unfolded favorably: she met the grandson of the former owner of the manor, K. Jašinskis, and tried to see his resemblance to her mother’s brother. On her way home, Danutė learned from her friend who was traveling with her that the heirs of the estate wanted to sell the former house of the farmer.
“That news hit like lightning. With the children, we had already decided that we needed a bigger house. I thought we could all fit in that house. One son was married. As soon as the children found out, they went to look at the house, and we agreed to buy,” said Danutė.
Brought to life together
in 1926 The house of a jäger (farmer in the documents) was built, changing owners and then tenants (the dispatch office of the Vēžaičiau experimental farm was located on its first floor before the restoration of independence), was quite inhabited. Danutė was not deterred from buying a historical building (an object of cultural heritage) 22 years ago, and the fact that one side of it was not suitable for living at all – a tree had fallen on the roof. Bringing the house to life required considerable effort and funds. Mother was helped by children: one son and daughter went abroad to earn money.
The red brick house remained largely unchanged from the outside after the renovation. Danutė tried to preserve as much of the authenticity of the house as possible – she found a craftsman who made arched windows, just like the windows of the former manor of this house, the old beams were cleaned, and the rotten floors and stairs were replaced. Daughter Rita, who went to work in Austria, stayed there, but spends summers in Vēžaičiai with her mother. The son, who returned from England, lives with his mother in the same house. “I feel very good here. I feel so good like living in Vilimiškė”, said D. Perkūnienė, who lives where her mother’s family roots brought her, smiling as she said goodbye.
Laima ŠVEISTRYTĖ
Author’s photo.