By Ed Staskus
Sigitas Kazlauskas didn’t know J. Edgar Hoover from the man on the moon. He didn’t necessarily want to make his acquaintance, either. He wanted to go home, even though he knew he didn’t have nearly the funds for the passage. The passage was across the Atlantic Ocean and then over the North Sea. He didn’t know the Justice Department man was going to be his ticket back to Lithuania.
Sigitas was living in Cleveland, Ohio in 1919, where it was Thanksgiving week. He had left home in late 1914, dodging forced conscription into the Russian Army. He knew being drafted meant the meat grinder. He also knew his political views were dangerous. The Czar didn’t brook his kind of man. He was living in Dope Town, a neighborhood west of East 9th St. and north of Superior Ave. Suicide Pier on the Cuyahoga River was down one end of the street and the town dump was down the other end of the street. Lake Erie was on the north side and Little Poland was on the south side.
None of his friends called him Sigitas. They all called him Ziggy. They didn’t bother with his surname since they weren’t his kith and kin. They were Eastern Europeans like him who had ended up in Cleveland for the same reason as him, which was opportunity. His opportunity had come and gone, which was why he was living in Dope Town. It was the only place he could afford a furnished room. The wrist a Cleveland policeman had broken with a truncheon during the May Day Riot six months earlier hadn’t helped, making him unemployable for three months and draining his savings.
Since then, he had been living on bread and homemade beer. When the beer was ready he called to his Polish friends, “Hey Polska, come get your right piwo.” He was well-known for his beer, attracting friends who were as friendly with his brew as they were with him, maybe more. They sang, “In Heaven there is no beer, which is why we drink it here.” He was hoping somebody would invite him to their turkey dinner on the big day. He needed a square meal.
Cleveland was a happening place in 1919. It was the fifth largest city in the country. Iron and steel, foundries and machine shops, dominated the economy. Skyscrapers were being built. The population was nearing one million. A third of the population was foreign born, working in the steel plants and garment factories. They worked long hours for low pay, but it was better than where they had come from, where they worked longer hours for less pay.
More than a quarter million Lithuanians left the Russian controlled Baltics between 1900 and the start of World War One. After the start of the war all immigration from Europe into the United States came to a dead stop. The new labor force that emerged was from the American South. There had been fewer than 10,000 Negroes in Cleveland in 1910. Ten years later there were nearly 40,000. There was enough work for everybody, though. Commercial construction was booming. The problem Ziggy had wasn’t finding work. The problem he had was keeping the jobs he found.
He was a socialist, which was his problem. He believed in social ownership of the means of production. He didn’t believe in private ownership of it. The word socialism comes from the Latin word “sociare” which means to share. The modern use of the word was coined by the London Cooperative Magazine in 1827. The First International was founded in 1864 in Great Britain. After that it was off to the races. The Second International was founded in 1889. Anarchists were banned. Socialists didn’t want bomb throwers in their ranks, if only because bombs can be unpredictable about who they blow up.
The May Day Riot in Cleveland on May 1, 1919, pitted trade unionists and socialists against police and military troops. The city was bursting at the seams with blue-collar foreign-born laborers. The activist Charles Ruthenberg got it into his head to organize a mass demonstration on Public Square on International Workers’ Day. He had run for mayor on the Socialist Party ticket two years earlier, polling nearly a third of the vote. He was well-known among the disaffected.
Ziggy and his friends heeded the call. They joined the more than 30,000 men and women who showed up for the demonstration. They marched from the Acme Hall on Upper Prospect to Lower Prospect to Public Square. The marchers wore red shirts and waved red flags. A parallel procession of army veterans in full uniform clashed with the socialists. Fights broke out and the police were called, who then quickly called for reinforcements and mounted forces. The city’s mayor Harry Davis called for the National Guard, who mustered in front of a beer hall before going into action with fixed bayonets. Tanks led the way, even though the socialists were unarmed. When Ziggy’s wrist was broken, a lady standing beside him used the 8 inch ivory hatpin holding her hat to her hair bun to stab the policeman in the chest. It was how Ziggy managed to break away and not get arrested.
Several marchers were killed, nearly a hundred were injured, and hundreds more were arrested. The Socialist Party headquarters at Acme Hall was ransacked by a “loyalist” mob. The next day all of Cleveland’s newspapers blamed the marchers for the riot, labelling them as “foreign agitators” even though most of them were natives or naturalized citizens, and demanded their deportation. The Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 later restricted immigration of “undesirable” Southern and Eastern Europeans, whether they were socialists, or not.
It was at Thanksgiving dinner with his friend Teodor Wojcik and his family that his friend hatched a plan about how to get Ziggy out of the United States and back to Europe. Agnieszka was Teodor’s wife. They had two children and were moving up in the world. Teodor went by Teddy and Agnieszka went by Agnes. They weren’t socialists, but didn’t argue with Ziggy about it. They believed the United States was a free country where everyone was free to believe what they wanted. They weren’t silly enough, however, to say so in public.
“There’s a new man in the Justice Department who is heading up the new Radical Division,” Teddy said. “He’s already gone after the Negroes.” J. Edgar Hoover was the new man. He was after what he called “terroristic and similar classes.” He was a District man born and bred. He was a law and order man bred by the times. “Something must be done to the editors of Negro publications as they are beyond doubt exciting the darkie elements of this country to riot,” he said in the summer when white soldiers and sailors rioted in the District, killing more than a dozen men and women, after a rumor spread that a Negro man had raped a white woman. The rumor was false. The deaths were real enough.
By the end of summer, he had turned his attention to anarchists and communists. He got busy sending the notorious Emma Goldman back to Russia. He helped engineer the arrest of more than a thousand radicals in early November, with the intent of deporting them. “The Communist Party is a menace,” he said. He meant to send them all back to where they had come from.
“What does this new man have to do with me?” Ziggy asked.
Agnes brought a plate of paczek to the table. They were deep-fried pastries filled with jam, caramel, and chocolate. The outer layer of them was sprinkled with powdered sugar and dried orange bits. They drank coffee the Polish way, which was strong with full-fat cream.
“What you have to do is forget about socialism and become a communist,” Teddy said. “Join the Communist Party. Volunteer for the dirty work. Become a firebrand. Make yourself known to the Radical Division. Make enough trouble and you should be on a boat on your way back to Lithuania in no time. It won’t cost you a penny for the fare and they will feed you during the voyage, too, so by the time you get home you’ll be back to your old self.
“They won’t shoot me?”
“Probably not.”
“They won’t throw me in jail?”
“They probably will for a month-or-so, but they don’t want to keep anarchists and communists in jail. They don’t want them here. They want to send them somewhere else, anywhere else, which will be easy enough in your case since you never naturalized.” Ziggy had never forgotten Lithuania and had never become a full-fledged American.
Becoming an official communist was easy as pie. Charles Ruthenberg had split from the socialists after the May Day Riot and joined several splinter groups to form Cleveland’s Communist Party. They allied with the Communist Party of America. The woman who had saved him during the May Day Riot was a close associate of Charles Ruthenberg’s. She put in a good word for him. He was given a revolver but no bullets. He gave the gun back. He was brought into the circle of fellow travelers. J. Edgar Hoover’s Radical Division had numerous informers and inside men. They put Ziggy on their list soon enough. He didn’t have to wait long for the Palmer Raids.
Seven months earlier the anarchist Carlo Valdinoci had put a bomb on the doorstep of newly appointed Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s house in Washington, D. C. When the bomb went off no one inside the house was hurt, although the anarchist mishandled the explosive and blew himself up, as well as the front of the house. Across the street where Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were sleeping the blast shook them out of bed. The attack was coordinated with attacks in eight other cities on judges, politicians, and policemen. The Attorney General had his eye on the White House. He got to work hyping the Red Scare. He put the Justice Department lawyer J. Edgar Hoover in charge of identifying and arresting as many socialists, anarchists, and communists as he could and deporting them as fast as he could.
The first raids in December filled a freighter dubbed the “Red Ark.” It sailed out of New York City bound for Russia. Its passengers were foreigners and suspected radicals. A month later the Justice Department went big. A series of further raids netted 3,000 men and women in 30 towns and cities in 23 states. Search warrants and habeas corpus were an afterthought. Ziggy was one of the communists swept up in the net.
Once everybody was locked up in holding facilities, J. Edgar Hoover admitted there had been “clear cases of brutality” during the round-up. His admission was beside the point. His point-of-view was guilty until proven innocent. Not everybody agreed. “We appear to be attempting to repress a political party,” said the U. S. Attorney for the Eastern District. “By such methods, we drive underground and make dangerous what was not dangerous before.” The Attorney General answered that he couldn’t arrest radicals one by one to treat an “epidemic” and claimed fidelity to constitutional principles. The Constitution didn’t necessarily see it that way.
Ziggy knew it was all hot air. He knew letting the cat out of the bag was easier than getting it back in. After he was arrested he couldn’t wait to be frog-marched onto a boat bound for the Old World. The New World wasn’t for him anymore. There was too much capitalism and double-dealing.
He had been rousted out of bed in his furnished room in the middle of the night by two uniformed Flying Squad men and a Justice Department man. “Are you the Hoover men?” he asked. “The only Hoover here is the vacuum cleaner kind,” one of the policemen said. “We’re here to get you into the bag. You got one minute to throw some clothes on.” A minute later he was in the back seat of their Buick Touring squad car.
More than a week passed before Teddy was allowed to visit Ziggy at the Champlain Avenue Police Headquarters, The complex of offices, jail cells, and courtrooms was overdue for replacement. A new Central Station was already on the drawing boards. “The moment the new station at E. 21st St. and Payne Ave. opens for business, the ancient Champlain Avenue mausoleum of crime, rats, and malodors which has been functioning as a police headquarters for perhaps twenty-five years too long will start to crumble before the wrecking engines,” is what the Cleveland Plain Dealer said.
“How are you doing?” Teddy asked. “They do anything bad to you?”
“No, except the food is terrible, which is bad enough. There’s no beer, either.”
“They tell you what is going to happen?”
“They are taking me to New York City on the train tomorrow. They made it sound like I will be on a boat soon after that.”
“That’s what you want, right?”
“That’s what I want, yes. I want to go home.”
“Home isn’t a place,” Teddy said. “It’s a feeling. It’s where the heart is, wherever that is.”
“There’s no place like home,” Ziggy said. “That’s where I feel the best. It’s my second chance.”
“You’re taking a chance,” Teddy said. “The Russians are gone now, sure, but the new Lithuania doesn’t like socialists any more than they do here. Socialism is no good. Sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.”
“Capitalism is no good, either,” Ziggy said. “Sooner or later all the money has been sucked up by the tycoons.”
“Good luck,” Teddy said.
The next day Ziggy was taken to the New York Central depot. He was handcuffed to a police detective who rode with him the full day it took to get to Grand Central Station. A day later, in a courtroom deciding his fate, was the only time he ever saw J. Edgar Hoover, who was sitting with the prosecutors, but never said a word.
He was younger than Ziggy had imagined him, maybe in his mid-20s. His short hair was shaved even closer at the temples. Ziggy was five foot eight and trim. J. Edgar Hoover was slightly shorter and just as trim. He was a lifetime District man and a Freemason, although Ziggy didn’t know that, or anything else about the man. He looked him in the face repeatedly, but the Justice Department lawyer never made eye contact with him. He left before the proceeding was over. He knew what the verdict was going to be before it was announced.
A week later Ziggy was on board a refitted troop carrier. It was a leaky old tub. It took twenty eight days to get to Finland. The deportees were assigned cabins in pairs. Sentries stood at the cabin doors day and night. Sentries patrolled the deck for the one hour every day they were allowed to walk in the outside air. Once in Finland everybody was taken to a special train, guarded by U. S. Marines and Finnish White Guards. They were put thirty men to an unheated boxcar fitted with benches, tables, and beds. Each boxcar had seven boxes of army rations, which included bully-beef and hard bread. They were taken to Terijoki, about two miles from the Russian border. Most of the men were being dumped into Russia like so much garbage. Ziggy was the only deportee going to Lithuania.
He took a train from St. Petersburg to Riga, Latvia, and from there he hitched a ride on a sugar beet truck across the border to Siauliai. He walked the fourteen miles to the farmlands outside of Kursenai. It felt good to stretch his legs. He found his family home without a problem, as though he had never left. “Labas, mamyte,” he said when he stepped through the front door and saw his mother peeling potatoes at the kitchen table. After the kissing and crying, after he had sat his mother back down, and his brothers and sisters were peppering him with questions, he knew he had made the right decision in returning to the Old World.
The worst feeling in the world is homesickness. Ziggy felt like a free man. He had shed his philosophies on board the merchantman. He could no longer determine which political way was the more bad way. “Eik i velnius” was all he had to say about the matter. If he had still been in the New World it would have come out of his mouth as “Go to hell.” Lithuania was a free country again after more than 100 years. The Russians were good and gone, except when they weren’t.
Sigitas Kazlauskas worked on the family farm for twenty years. He brewed his own beer and raised his own pigs. He always had enough to eat and drink, at least until the Russians came back in 1944. The politics of the 20th century caught up to him. They weren’t American idealogues. They were Soviet barrel of a gun communists. Either you believed in them, or else. He fought them first with the Territorial Defense Force and later with the Forest Brothers. They engaged the Russians in the woodlands surrounding their homes. Sigitas Kazlauskas was shot and killed deep in the Dainava Forest in January of 1945. His body was abandoned on the battlefield and decomposed the following spring, sinking into the bloom.
Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com.
A New Thriller From Ed Staskus
“Cross Walk”
“A once upon a crime whodunit.” Barron Cannon, Adventure Books
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Late summer and early autumn. New York City. A Hell’s Kitchen private eye. The 1956 World Series. President Eisenhower at the opening game. A killer in the dugout.
Lithuanian Journal 