The Hill: The Story of a Teenage Lithuanian Boy During World War II, or The Thoughts of a Jewish Physician Before His Patients and Neighbors Murdered Him and His Family During the Holocaust

This story describes true events concerning little Joe Martinkus, a teenage Lithuanian farm boy, and Dr. Schmidt, a Jewish physician. Lithuanian writer Antanas Jonynas first heard the story from little Joe Martinkus himself and published this account in 1966. When the Soviets occupied Lithuania in June 1940, they seized the property of local proprietors, arrested national leaders, and forced farmers into slavery under the guise of a land redistribution program. Deportation was used as a mechanism for enforcement of the oppressive policies, and within one year about 35,000 locals (1.3 percent of the total population) were relocated to Siberia and Soviet Central Asia. When the country changed hands in June 1941, the Germans abolished some of the Soviet policies and won the support of some locals. During the three-year German occupation, 94 percent of the Lithuanian Jews (220,000 individuals) were murdered, the highest percentage for any Nazi-occupied country in Europe. Antanas Jonynas published this story as the first part of his novel "In the Well" in 1966. That Jonynas penned such a piece in the hostile Soviet environment of the day was evidence of his tremendous courage, and that it escaped censorship was truly a miracle.