Senda Berenson was born in Butrimonys, an old village in southern Lithuania with a current population of nine hundred people. In Butrimonys there is a fountain that is an acrylic tank with a vortex inside. It glows in multicolored lights at night.

In Butrimonys there is a school, where locals welcomed us and gave us smiles and knowledge and lunch and afternoon treats.

“Grybas” it was called, a small gingerbread-like cake in the shape of a mushroom. I asked the principal:

— How do you say “mushroom” in Lithuanian?

— Grybas.

— So the treat is just called “mushroom”?

— Yes.

Grybas.

After lunch we drove just a few miles outside the village where there is a Jewish mass grave. Once almost eighty percent of the population of Butrimonys, Jewish people people were slaughtered by the hundreds in a massacre ordered by Germans and carried out by Lithuanians in 1941.

They were murdered by their neighbors, with whom they shared a town square, a school and a variety of shops.

The grave is large rectangle in the forest on the other side of a creek. It’s demarcated by a fence, and commemorated by one single headstone for all those who were killed. 

We discussed the history, the details, while we stood on top of hundreds of corpses. On top of the corpses there was grass and weeds.

Growth on graves.

I looked down and found a mushroom and I bent over to photograph it. 

“Grybas” the principal said, pointing.

“Grybas”, I repeated, nodding.