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My First Journey Through Samogitia  Zamet (Žemytė)  56°10' /
21°19'  by Uriah Katzenelenbogen  Translated by Gloria
Berkenstat Freund  My Desire to See Lithuania  In my early youth
I vaguely sensed that Lithuania was not a Russian land, but a
“Russian” province. The Czarist eagle–the regime of the Russian
empire –only strode over her. What I read in Hebrew and in
Yiddish told me about Jewish life and our past, but what I read
in Russian took my fantasies to Russia's more remote areas,
where a Jewish foot was not permitted to go. Our hearts were
captured by the majestic descriptions and heart tugging singing
about the Russian earth in the wonderful Russian literature–to
the northeast as far as Siberia and down to the southeast, over
the Volga to the Causasus. But, Lithuania? Barely a
reverberation about Lithuania was heard from that which we read
in Russian.  Perhaps I reflected about this for the first time
when I saw a procession of Lithuanian