BY BRIAN J. LOWNEY, Acting Editor
PROVIDENCE — The Soviet occupation of Lithuania beginning in 1941 and the strong resistance movement that subsequently developed and survived for more than 50 years in that Baltic country are the subject of a powerful documentary by filmmaker Dominican Father Kenneth R. Gumbert. The film is part of a series focusing on human and civil rights in Eastern Europe before the fall of Communism.
“Red Terror on the Amber Coast: Soviet Occupation – Lithuanian Resistance, 1939-1993, chronicles the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, beginning with Stalin, and his 1939 mutual non-aggression pact with Hitler. The accord gave Russia control of Eastern Europe, including the three small Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
The 60-minute film was produced in cooperation with California-based Dominican Father David O’Rourke.
“Our film documents a tragic period of history in Northern Europe that is not well-known, and in fact, is even denied by some today,” Father Gumbert emphasized in a recent interview.
The priest added that for the two Dominican filmmakers, it was a matter of “human rights” to tell the compelling story, and to “give voice to people who have been silenced in history.”
The Dominican filmmakers traveled to Lithuania in 2006 and taped more than 30 hours of interviews with prominent historians, former prisoners, and slave-laborers who told harrowing stories about life under Soviet rule. The priests also interviewed several remaining members of the “Forest Brethren,” a resistance movement whose members fled to the forest and who slowed down the Soviets who employed guerrilla tactics.
With churches either closed or destroyed, faithful Christians were forced to go underground and prayed and attended religious services in secret.
The idea for the film came about during a discussion between the two Dominicans in which Father O’Rourke informed his colleague that he’d been invited to establish a family life center in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and help restore a Dominican presence in that Baltic country. Many Dominicans had either been killed or fled when Soviet forces initially occupied the republic, and a large monastery was destroyed.
Using archival film and photographs, as well as interviews with survivors, the documentary tells the story of the tens of thousands of Lithuanians who were rounded up, arrested, and transported by cattle cars to slave labor camps, prisons, mines, and death camps in Siberia and elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Even women and children were sent to the camps. Victims were often tortured by the KBG in prison and others were mistreated by doctors in psychiatric hospitals.
Father Gumbert said that the many of the people the priests interviewed are now in their 80s.
“That was one of the great privileges of doing the film,” he added. “The survivors got to tell their story to a Western audience for the first time.”
“It’s amazing that these people survived,” he continued, noting that millions of people perished throughout Soviet dominated Eastern Europe during the early occupation.
Father Gumbert said that Vilnius was once a vibrant Jewish cultural center, known as “the Jerusalem of the North” until the Nazis exterminated the city’s large Jewish population. The Soviets later destroyed many synagogues.
"As priests, our concern for human rights springs from our religious commitments and from the Christian gospels, which demand that their adherents be aware of human and civil rights issues," explained Father Gumbert. He added, however, that Red Terror addresses these issues "in a universal way."
"We portray the lives of ordinary people whose rights and histories are undermined — as much by disinterest and distortion as by active repression," said the filmmaker, who has been teaching at Providence College since 1992.
Red Terror on the Amber Coast:
Soviet Occupation - Lithuanian Resistance, 1939-1993
“Red Terror” will be shown April 29 at 8 p.m., in the Angell Theater on the Providence College campus. There is no charge. A question and answer period will follow the screening. DVDs of the film will be available. For more information, call (401) 865-1000.
