Daiva’s Story

Roots & Inheritance

“In every conceivable manner, the family is our link to the past, the bridge to our future.”

– Alex Haley (Author, Roots)

I was the first in my family to be born in the United States. My parents carried with them family histories shaped by war, occupation, displacement, and the loss of their homeland.

Both my father’s and mother’s families fled Lithuania during World War II, eventually finding refuge in Displaced Persons camps in Germany. Both families came to the United States in 1949. My father’s family settled in Boston, and my mother’s in Los Angeles.

My parents met in 1959.

Their memories of Lithuania and the responsibility to preserve its culture from afar became the foundation of my identity and, decades later, helped lead me back to Lithuania.

1910

My great-grandparents Sena Baba (Stefanija Acenivičiutė) and Vladas Berentas' wedding photo.

1920

My grandfather Jonas Venckus (far left) with his mother and siblings. Jonas was the youngest of eleven children.

1920s

My great-grandmother, Sena Baba (Stefanija Ancenivičiutė). The granddaughter of a baron (Pranas Novogrockis). The Tsar stole her family's lands. By 1900, she was orphaned at ten and had to survive on her own.

1929

My grandfather Kazys' family. Kazy's brother Petras reads the newspaper to their parents, Katriutė and Andrius Karuža.

1929

My great-grandparents: Juozas and Paulina Vasilauskas (Bronė's parents)

1930s

My grandfather, Jonas Venckus (third from the top left), with his siblings and family. Half the Venckus family was sent to Siberian prison camps after World War II.

1931

My great-grandparents: Katriutė and Andrius Karuža (Kazys' parents). They lived on a small homestead in Vilkaviškis, which Kazys helped them purchase.

1936

The wedding photo of my paternal grandparents, Bronė and Jonas Venckus, in Lithuania.

1936

My grandparents, Jonas and Bronė, in Kaunas, at the Lithuanian Rifleman's Center.

1936

My great-grandmother Sena Baba (Stefanija Ancevičiutė-Berentienė), with her second husband, Tomas Migauskas, and my 23-year-old dgrandmother, Jadvyga, in their Kaunas apartment.

1937

My infant father, Romas, with his grandmother, Paulina, and his parents, Jonas and Bronė, in Lithuania.

1937

My father, Romas, with my grandmother, Bronė, in Kaunas, Lithuania.

1938

My grandparents Jadvyga and Kazys Karuža's wedding day in Lithuania.

1939

My grandfather Jonas Venckus worked as a policeman in Lithuania. In 1939, after the Kremlin gave the Lithuanian government an ultimatum to accept Soviet troops on Lithuanian territory, Jonas witnessed Soviet soldiers cross the border. He received orders to lay down his weapon so the Soviet troops could cross- the same troops that would soon overthrow the Lithuanian government.

1940

During World War II, the first Soviet occupation of Lithuania, my toddler father, Romas, went out into the streets to beg for food for his younger siblings when his father, Jonas, was imprisoned by Soviet forces.

1943

My maternal grandmother, Jadvyga Karuža, wearing a Lithuanian national costume. This costume was passed down to me.

1944

My grandmother Jadvyga's Lithuanian passport with stamps from the Free Republic of Lithuania and Soviet-occupied Lithuania.

1946

My father and siblings in Czechoslovakia after escaping from Soviet-occupied Lithuania. (Laimis, Dana, Juozas, Romas)

1946

My mother's family at the Displaced Persons camp in Germany. (Kazys, Jadvyga, Giedrė, Šarũnas)

1947

My father's family found refuge in the Garmisch Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. (Jonas, Dana, Juozas, Romas, Bronė, Laimis)

1947

My father's family in a displaced persons camp in Germany. For Christmas, each child received an apple. My father, Romas, and his brother, Laimis, received a sled that their father built, and their youngest brother received a scooter (also built by their father). Their sister Dana received a colorful ribbon for her hair.

1949

My grandfather, Kazys Karuža, is traveling with other refugees on a U.S. Navy ship to the United States. My grandfather is in the middle, wearing a suit blazer.

1950s

My grandmother, Bronė, had a second job in Boston as a waitress at an Italian restaurant owned by an Italian immigrant family. Brone's first job was as a janitor at the local hospital with Jonas.

1950s

Bronė and Jonas Venckus in front of their home in South Boston

1954

The grave of my great-grandmother, Paulina Vasiliauskas (Brone's mother), in the Siberian Gulag.

1955

My father's family in Boston, Massachusetts. (Jonas, Dana, Bronė, Laimis, Juozas, Romas)

1956

Three generations in their new home in Hollywood, California. My mother, Giedrė; my grandmother, Jadvyga; and my great-grandmother, Sena Baba (Stefanija).

1958

My father's family in Boston, Massachusetts. (Jonas, Bronė, Romas, Lamis, Dana, Juozas.)

1964

My parents, Romas and Giedrė, get married at St. Casimir's Lithuanian Catholic Church in Los Feliz, California.

1964

My parents' wedding photo with my grandparents. Kazys and Jadvyga Karuža, Giedrė and Romas, Bronė and Jonas Venckus.

1965

My parents, Romas and Giedrė, in their first apartment together in Los Angeles.

1969

The extended Venckus family in the Karuža home in Los Angeles, California. I am sitting on Bronė's lap in the middle. (Jadvyga, Jonas, Romas, Giedrė, Aldona, Dalia, Kazys, Linas, Bronė, Daiva, Juozas, Andrea, Dana, Rolandas, Šarūnas, Sena Baba (Stefanija))

Additional Story Galleries

Crossing the Iron Curtain

Inside the Revolution

Freedom & Identity Reclaimed