Hill of Crosses

 

Because I’ve been reading about the Klaipeda region (former Memel), I’ve been checking out my own photos of the area. This was from one of our first stops, after spending a few days exploring the beautiful city of Riga in Latvia. 

We cycled over into Lithuania, cheated with a short van ride, and then ended up at the ‘Hill of Crosses’. Featuring at least 100,000 crosses, sitting seemingly randomly in the middle of farmland, this pilgrimage site has been growing steadily for almost two hundred years. (One memory in Ulla Lachauer's book, Ostpreußische Lebensläufe, speaks of hundreds of young Pioneers in training under the Soviets, being massacred by the Nazis in this immediate area.) Reflecting the Catholic faith and political repression, many of these crosses are homemade. This led me to the discovery that ‘cross-crafting’ is considered a UNESCO Lithuanian culture tradition (in the same way that borscht is recognized for Ukraine). 

Having little prior appreciation of how Lithuania was connected to my East Prussian quest, the ‘Hill of Crosses’, 120 kilometers southwest of Riga, was a stark introduction to this beautiful Baltic landscape that has absorbed much violence, much suffering in the name of politics. 

I could have spent all day climbing the steps, pausing over and over again at the rustic crosses put up to remember the Lithuanian victims of Nazi murder and Soviet repression (along with earlier struggles for independence).  The hill continues to be a symbol for peace and Lithuanian perseverance.

Cycling across four Baltic countries, required a different sort of perseverance and so Ramos, our Lithuanian cycling guide, dragged us away from the poignant Hill of Crosses, onward towards to the port city of Klaipeda, once known as Memel.

People and their Landscapes

I’m currently immersed in Ulla Lachauer’s book, Ostpreußische Lebensläufe (1998). It had been gathering dust on my bedside shelf for a long while. Not sure why I was avoiding it. Perhaps it was the effort required to read German. Perhaps it was the dark contents. After all the research I’d done for Crow Stone, about the downfall of East Prussia, I was leery of going into another dark abyss. But it’s January and full of resolution, I decided to get the dark, heavy reading over with first.

Turns out, I had nothing to fear. Ulla Lachauer writes in an engaging, easy-going style, that didn’t stress this English reader too much. It’s not a book about war, it’s about people and this book showcases her obvious empathy for the ten East Prussians featured here. She highlights the resilience of these characters shaped by their Baltic environment and the difficult years of political turmoil.

Photographs add to the depth of connection the reader gets to enjoy. I found myself turning, again and again, to the images searching out the stories etched in their faces like they're  landscapes of their lives. 

Portrait of my mom done by Julia Penny

As I read, I’m searching the internet for names of tiny, forgotten villages mentioned in the chapters, checking to see if I might have cycled past back some of these ruins back in 2019 when I explored the Lithuanian and north Kaliningrad area near the city of Klaipeda (once Memel).

This beautiful, conflicted area comes to life for me again as I read this book and I can imagine my own family members living their simple, rustic lives … trying their best to survive. Aren’t we all?  So grateful for books like this. 

Ruins near the Baltic in former East Prussia

Fairy Tale Setting

First book I read for 2026 was a fairy tale retold by the master of horror, Stephen King:  Hansel and Gretel (with illustrations by Maurice Sendek). 

Fairy tale retelling by Stephen King

The fairy tale caught my focus while I’ve been lost in research about the post-war period as East Prussia transitioned to Kaliningrad. Families broken, children hungry, forests dangerous, adults not to be trusted.  Those were not fairy tale horrors, those were real life dangers. There is an unworldly quality to the years between 1945 and 1948. 

I'll repeat mention of an earlier non-fiction book called The Wolf Children of the Eastern Front by Sonya Winterberg and Kerstin Lieff. It explores how the orphaned children managed later in life. Did they, in fact, live happily ever after? 

middle grade novel by Australian author
Katrina Nannested

I highly recommend Katrina Nannested’s middle grade novel, We are Wolves, for anyone interested in the plight of orphans after the war in this no man’s land corner of eastern Europe. And of course, read Stephen King’s new retelling of Hansel and Gretel. (spoiler alert: there’s a happy ending … which I wish for all of us in 2026). 

Kaliningrad: Portal to a dark past?