Page - 36 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 4/2018

36 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 4 2o18 Katy Beinart | Khlebosolny/Bread and Salt Before we made the performance, we had set up a camera on a tripod, and William (our father) took photographs from this point. We had wanted to document our action in a replica of the film, Offere I, which we had made in South Africa.71 Our idea had been to take a series of images that could form an animated sequence of our performance. Later, looking at the pho- tographs, I am struck by the fact of our father’s presence, as photographer, with his gaze on us, the subjects. What strikes me is the absence in a photographic image of the person who takes it, which leaves the viewer to imagine whose gaze it is. In a very different context, the photograph I saw in the Holocaust Museum in Vilnius begs the same question. In the cemetery we were unable to discover the presence of our ancestors, and in the pho- tograph the viewer is not offered a clue about the identity of the photographer. This lack of visibility of the viewer – his or her obscurity – is concomitant with the search for roots, which is ultimately full of dead ends and disappointments. Do the photographs my father took act as a referent? And if so, to what? They might act as a referent to the site of the cemetery, which stands in for the disappeared who lie in mass graves. They might act as a referent to the spectral traces of these ancestors whose history has been left behind. Before leaving Rokiskis, we tried to find the memorial site we had been told about by Zigmas, at Steponi forest, one of the sites where the Jews of Rokiskis and Obeliai were murdered and had been buried. The Yizkor book (‘memorial’ book) for Rokiskis described the locations of the sites: “In the vicinity of Rokishok there are four communal graves (seven by another account); in Antanosa 5 Km. from Abel (Obeliai), about 200 metres from the left side of the road are buried 1,160 who were murdered on 25.8.1941: in the village of Rozonai about 200 metres to the left, on the road leading to the settlement of Juodupe, are buried 67, murdered in July 1941; in the town of Steponi 5 Km. from Rokishok about 150 metres to the right of the road in the direction of Swedishetz are 981 graves of those also murdered in July /August of 1941; in the forest of Valindova 5 Km. from Rokishok not far from the village of Baiorai, 400 metres to the right of the road which leads to the road to Juodupe, are buried 3207 men, women and children, who were killed on 25-26 August 1941. According to these facts the number of those murdered was between 4,700 to 4,800. After the war, those remaining from the surrounding villages erected monuments over the communal graves. In the Ste- poni forest the following is inscribed: ‘At this spot are buried 981 citizens who were mur- dered by the fascist German occupiers and nationalist bourgeoisie between 27/6/1941 and 14/8/1941.”72 Zigmas had given us directions, yet we were still unable to locate the site at Steponi. There seemed to be a silence about these sites, and a lack of signage. On the ‘Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania’ website, which details locations and information about each site (figure 18), I found directions: “Go from Rokiškis towards Čedasai. After about 3 km from the city you’ll reach the village of Steponys. There are no signs. Pass the first homestead and turn right. The road will take 71 Katy and Rebecca Beinart, Offere I (2010). 72 Meilech Bakalczuk-Felin (ed.), Yizkor Book of Rakishok and Environs, translation of Yisker-bukh fun Rakishok un umgegnt (Johannesburg: Yizkor Book Pub. Council, 1952).