The executions took place on the eastern outskirts of the city where a few years ago we used to go to watch the military shows. I learned later that some kids sneaked through the rye fields to watch the executions, mostly to see what the very much liked soccer player, Frede, will do. Finally, one day they saw Frede being marched with the rest of the group to dig their own grave ditch. They hoped that he would try to run away and not be shot in the back of the head like alI the rest. To their surprise, he did, but he did not get too far before stationed sharp shooters shot him dead. The boys were happy none-the-less that their hero did not take it like a lamb.

 

This scene could have been written to describe contemporary Aleppo. Instead, it harkens back to another occupied land in another time of war when another adolescent boy was forced to witness atrocities no one should ever have to see.

 

John (Gediminas) Velyvis lived a quiet and happy life with his family in his native Lithuania before World War II devastated his homeland in the 1940s.

 

He was one of the lucky ones. His family was resourceful enough to stay alive, find its way to one of the "displaced person" camps, the refugee camps of their day, and, ultimately, they emigrated to North America, where John got an education in Canada before settling in North Adams in 1962.

 

Here in North Berkshire, he never talked about the war years very much — not because he did not want to relive those days but more because he did not have time to talk about his life. He was too busy living it.

 

As the devoted husband of the former Claire Allessio for five decades, the father of three successful children, the grandfather of eight, a Eucharistic minister in his church, a youth soccer coach and an engineer at Sprague Electric and later in his own North Adams manufacturing firm, John Velyvis had other things to do with his time — a lot of them.

 

"It was segmented in a way," Claire Velyvis said recently. "His business was mostly an 8 to 5 sort of thing. It was just an innate thing with him that he would do things with the children, especially the boys, because he had done them himself as a child.

 

"It was marvelous as I reflect back that he was able to do that with the kids, and I see them repeating that with their own children. He had a passion for it, that's for sure, and it was never really a problem."

 

And talking about the life that led him to North Adams was never really a problem either. It just wasn't something that came up very much, according to Claire's brother and John's brother-in-law, Henry Allessio.

 

"I'm involved with the veterans back in Hopkinton," Allessio said. "And we have a handful of World War II veterans still alive. The rule is, 'Oh, he never talked about it,' or, 'Oh, I didn't know he was paratrooper or he was in Normandy.' In my humble opinion, a lot of the problem is we, people on the street, don't ask them.

 

"If you can establish some sort of a rapport … deep down, you like to tell people about it. But also deep down, it's not like being some egotistical S.O.B. who crows about it. You're humble. You've been there, but you have to be asked about it. And I have had several conversations with them."

 

He also talked to John Velyvis about his experiences as a child in war-torn Europe. A couple of years before John's death in 2014, the family got him to commit his memories to paper around the time of his 81st birthday, Allessio said.

 

The result is a 58-page memoir (referenced throughout this article) that gives a history of the family in pre-war Lithuania, an account of some of the horrors John saw during the war, and an immigrant's tale of success in the new world.

 

In the summer time, we had enjoyed the river and its many bathing and swimming holes. My father and mother had a secret family swimming spot in that river, about one kilometer from our house, and while we children were still young enough, the whole family would take a bath and do some swimming exercises there bare naked. My father and mother used to really enjoy that very private spot, especially since they were not very good swimmers.

 

The life Velyvis describes is simple and pleasant for the family of three boys and one girl. His mother tended the farm while his father was a successful accountant in the nearby town of Kanunas.

 

John himself, he reports, was born on Dec. 8, 1931.

 

He played in the rivers and forests, helped out with chores around the farm and went to school like any other child.

 

"A new soccer stadium right next to our school had opened up," Velyvis writes. "My oldest brother Algirdas was a good prospect to play soccer for our town's team, Sudavia. There was much excitement and such a great beginning to the summer, and then it came, an unsuspected and never-dreamed-of nightmare."

 

That nightmare was the occupation of Lithuania by Russia in 1940, one year after the war began with German's invasion of Poland. For the next few years, the nation Velyvis loved became a battleground between the Nazis and Communists. Though for Velyvis and thousands like him, it would always be the free and independent land it was before the tanks.

 

"He was very proud of being a Lithuanian," Claire Velyvis said. "But he was a good citizen wherever he went."

 

"Even in later years, he went back there and looked at the original [family] land then got some land in place of it — land that was taken by the Russians in the war. He loved his homeland a lot."

 

While history books rightly note that the Soviet Union was part of the Allied forces who defeated Hitler's Germany, John Velyvis remembered a brutal Russian occupation that attempted to strip the Lithuanian people of their heritage.

 

"We were told basically to spy on anybody, including our own parents, and tell on them if they disagreed with the communist methods or theory," he writes. "It was confusing and fearful."

 

Eventually, the Germans pushed the Soviets back, and life actually improved a little under German occupation, according to Velyvis' account. But things were anything but peaceful; the execution scene described above was the work of the Nazis.

 

During the war, Velyvis' mother had her fifth child, a daughter, born on Dec. 23, 1942. "Mother placed her under our Christmas tree for a bit as our little 'baby Jesus,' " he writes.

 

But hanging over the family was the ever-present threat of war and fear of a return of the Communists.

 

By the spring 1944, the war was going badly for Germany, and John's older brothers were pressed into service to support the war effort. He tells the story of his brother and two cousins being loaded onto a German truck and heading off to war, over the objections of his mother.

 

By summer of 1944, the Velyvis family farm was dug up with trenches designed to stop the Russian advance. The front was closing in on family's home. And it was only a matter of time.

 

Finally, one sunny Sunday afternoon, while my neighboring friend Joe Cekanavičiukas was visiting me and while he, my sister Ona, and I were playing in the yard, the Russian planes attacked and strafed right over us at the trenches and at us, shooting everywhere. I grabbed [my sister] Ona and, with my friend, ducked under a fence into the thick raspberry bushes. We heard the bullets striking the leaves of the bushes around us. We saw our mother in a panic, throwing pillow cases in the air which she had drying outside, hoping that the Russian planes would recognize and stop shooting at civilian farmers. When the air attack ended we knew that the time to leave had arrived.

 

The Velyvis family headed west, ahead of the advancing Soviet army and toward Allied occupied land in Germany.

 

While staying on another farm during their escape, Velyvis' mother had a harrowing run-in with a German officer who attempted to commandeer the family's horses for a military purpose. John tells how his mother grabbed the leash of one of the horses and told the soldier he would have to take it over her dead body.

 

"The German officer pulled out his gun, took mother and the horse behind the barn for imminent execution, but somehow lost his nerve and walked away," he writes. "We were very proud to know that our mother, who was in such peril, could do such a brave thing."

 

Letters from John's brother Romas, by then training in the German Luftwafe, helped convince German authorities to let the family cross over into Germany, which was far from safe itself. By this time, the Allied bombing raids were raining down on German cities day and night. Through grit and determination, Velyvis' parents were able to keep their children safe and their family together through 1944 and '45 as German defeat became an inevitability.

 

"It was a beautiful sunny spring day, and suddenly we saw tanks through the fields approaching the highway, and there was no mistake they were American Patton tanks," he writes. "We waved to them, and they waved back with the turrets open."

 

Throughout the ordeal, the teen-aged Velyvis managed to have something of a childhood, reporting active days with acquaintances he made living as refugee in Retmer, Germany, and meeting up with other Lithuanians.

 

The highlight was the return to the family of Romas and their cousin, Vladas, who found their way back to the Velyvis clan after the war.

 

Soon after, according this account, the Allies ordered that many of Lithuanians in occupied Germany go to a displaced persons, or DP, camp in the town of Oldenburg.

 

"There were dozens and dozens of camps," said Allessio, who grew up in Pittsfield with John Velyvis' future wife. "I have to say, from the photographs, that once they were in the refugee camp, they seemed to create a very workable community.

 

"They weren't in pajamas with stripes on them. Some of them were seamstresses. There was a building for a mess hall, another for a gymnasium, another for the churches. Not that it was a pleasant or happy way of life, but it was very tolerable in the food, clothing and shelter regard. There were schools for the kids, the young kids, especially."

 

And there was sports.

 

One very attractive matter about the Untermberg camp was that it was right next to the largest soccer field in the city of Oldenburg. Besides, there was no separation fence between the camp grounds and the stadium. This was the best blessing for us youngsters, as well as all sports-minded people in the camp. This open access to the soccer field continued for the next three years. Even after a very meager wire fence was installed in 1948, nobody policed it and we made entrances into it and used the field not only for soccer but also for all kinds of sports as well as watching all the city soccer matches for free.

 

A once active child growing up in pre-war Lithuania was now an athletic teen playing soccer and boxing in the DP camp at Untermberg.

 

Velyvis nurtured a deep passion for sports that would carry him through the rest of his life during the time he spent at the camp and as the family made plans to leave Europe altogether.

 

The booming economies in North America needed "cheap labor," according to Velyvis' memoir, and his family was happy to provide it in order to find a better, peaceful life across the Atlantic Ocean. They filed their papers, waited their turn and made the crossing to Canada — first his older brothers in 1948, then his mother and sisters and lastly John and his father.

 

While he waited to begin the next phase of his life, John continued to grow into a man in the DP camp, where he joined a boxing club and earned some renown.

 

"My success in the sport of boxing in Oldenburg was very extraordinary in not only winning many championships, but also enjoying the hero type of treatment everywhere — in the camp and on the streets of the city of Oldenburg," Velyvis writes. "Seemed like most of the kids on the streets recognized me as the champ Johann."

 

By 1949, Velyvis was projected as the next featherweight champion of the newly formed country of West Germany, but his career was interrupted by the opportunity to emigrate to Canada, which he and his father took.

 

In Canada, he went to school and played sports, hooking up with a couple of soccer clubs around Toronto and continuing to excel in the square circle.

 

In 1950, he scored a major amateur victory at Maple Leaf Gardens, defeating Quebec's lightweight amateur champion. And there was an offer for Velyvis, fighting under the name "Joe Sharkey" by this time, to join the Catskill, N.Y., gym of legendary trainer Cus D'Amato, who would go on to train Mike Tyson, among others.

 

But even as his athletic star rose, Velyvis was souring on the sport.

 

"I had a feeling that a boxer is treated as if he is some kind of commodity handled by some cigar-smoking gang of shady characters — gamblers or syndicates," he writes. "I felt a let-down after being exposed to very well-organized, proud boxing sportsmanship in Germany. Also, the monetary rewards in the 1950s for even very successful professional boxers, especially in the lighter weight classes, was not comparable to the present day rewards."

 

In the end, he chose to pursue academics, enrolling in college in 1953 and the University of Toronto in 1958, to study mechanical engineering.

 

Athletically, his attention turned to soccer, playing for the Lithuanian side, Vytis, in the Canadian Continental Soccer League in Toronto. In 1957, Vytis, which featured John and his brother Romas, won first place in the league.

 

Allessio explained that while John Velyvis may have given up on a possible full-time career in boxing, he never lost his athletic spirit.

 

"He coached soccer as well," Allessio said of Velyvis' later years. "One of his teenage teams in North Adams was the county champion. His boxing team won the state Golden Gloves championship. … He was the best boxer at the refugee camp. He was just a little guy, but he was very athletic.

 

"You could see his hands were muscular. You could tell he was a boxer."

 

Much of John Velyvis' memoir — before, during and after the war — focuses on the lives of his family members, and he takes considerable time to talk about his siblings' success building lives for themselves in Canada and the United States.

 

Eventually his own professional pursuits brought him to the latter.

 

In January 1962, I was interviewed by Dr.  Lazier on the campus of [the University of Toronto] and proposed to be hired by Sprague Electric company in North Adams, Massachusetts. After my visit in February to the plant in North Adams, I accepted their offer. But it was not until August of 1962, that my visa for working and living in USA was finally approved. And it was done with the help of hiring a special consultant, paid by Sprague Electric, to speed up the process of obtaining the visa for an alien from Eastern Europe, although, I already had the Canadian citizenship.

 

Not more than 20 years after the 11-year-old Gediminas Velyvis witnessed butchery in his native Lithuania, the 31-year-old newly minted engineer was moving into the Chase Avenue home of "a very nice land-lady, Mrs. Walsh," he writes.

 

In 1965, he married "the good looking and very energetic Claire Allessio," and together they raised a family of two sons and a daughter.

 

Meanwhile, John earned the kind of respect as a professional that he once enjoyed as an amateur athlete in postwar Germany. He earned a master's degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, earned a patent for his work at Sprague that helped send a man to the moon and continued with his volunteer work in the community.

 

"He believed in physical fitness," Claire Velyvis said. "He went to the Y, consistently, three or four times a week, from the day we moved here until practically the day he died. That was just part of his routine. And he was in good shape. I think it probably extended his life."

 

Despite John Velyvis' eventful and fulfilling life, he was "quiet and unassuming," according to his brother-in-law. He enjoyed making music on the accordion he managed to bring with him from Europe and following the athletic and professional accomplishments of his children.

 

"He tried to teach me Lithuanian, but it was very hard," Claire Velyvis recalls with a smile. "I learned about six words in 50 years.

 

"I would say he was a very disciplined man, which goes back to your original question: How did he find time to do everything? He always took care of the yard meticulously. He was very organized with the children. He was a church man, right to the end. … He was a good role model for the rest of the family.

 

"His good traits are even more obvious as the years go by, as we think about the kind of man he was. He was a good family man. He did all these things for the community. I think about and now and say, 'Oh, my God.' But when you're living in the moment, it's not as evident."