Interview with Andrew Klimaytys

Thank you very much, Moira.

I'm delighted today to have a chance to talk to somebody from Scotland or somebody who lives in Scotland.

Andrew Tamedis, you're very, very welcome to the Irish Talkers podcast.

Have you ever been interviewed on a podcast before?

Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

Everybody would like to have a quick chat.

But yeah, I'm really looking forward to this, Paul.

Just to be very clear, I might live in Scotland, but my family came here in 1880.

My roots are long and deep in this wonderful country we now call Scotland.

Where were your family before they came to Scotland? They were refugees out of Lithuania.

So a part of the USSR, as it was in those days.

And they escaped persecution, as did many Lithuanians, many Germans.

came across, stopped in the UK en route to the USA, and some stayed.

Mine stayed.

Were they victims of pogroms in Lithuania? Yes.

Lithuania was a Russian satellite state in those days.

The payment for retaining your independence was that the country had to surrender a huge number, about 100,000 young men a year, to serve in the Russian armed forces.

And because the refugees, if you like, because they were free, it was gratis every year, 100,000 men, they tended to be used as cannon fodder.

And many families thought we didn't raise a family to lose our sons at an early age.

And thus became a migration out of Lithuania.

Oh, so they weren't just Jews.

There were other Christians or Russian Orthodox even.

Yeah, and I think That's been one of the conundrums I've faced in life is that I've been able to trace my family trees back to the time of landing in Scotland in the port of Leith.

But before that, it's a mystery because most, a lot of records were destroyed during the Second World War.