University lecturer, candidate of medical science, head of the traumatology department, First Hospital, Vilnius

I watched television that night until 2 o'clock in the morning. Then I realized that I had to go to the hospital. I had already gone through the door when the phone rang and the doctor on duty asked me to come to the hospital as soon as possible. I went to the yard and managed to hail down a car. I explained that I was rushing to the hospital because wounded people were being brought there. One of the passengers in the car was Russian but his reaction was the same as the Lithuanians in the car. Referring to these murderers of peaceful people, he said „to shoot such liberators wouldn't be enough." The hospital was already filled with wounded, as well as two dead people. In half an hour my colleagues and I managed to organize five surgeries. Doctors came without being called -there were even more doctors that nurses. Doctors also came from other hospitals. All different kinds of specialists came - anesthesiologists, neurosurgeons, traumatologists, even TB doctors. It was a real manifestation of professional solidarity. People were just brought together by the feeling of great misfortune. I've been working as a surgeon for thirty years already, but I've never seen injuries on such a scale. It was obvious that most of the wounds were from' gunshots or from being crushed by tanks. It was clearly battlefield surgery.

We began to prepare the wounded and to see which needed to be operated on immediately, which could wait, and which needed some kind of X-rays. Even in the first operations, bullets, splinters and plastic splinters were extracted. The type of bullets was also clear - war bullets with unbalanced gravitational centers. Only professional officers have such bullets, and using them is banned in the Geneva Convention, even during war.

As a person, I felt true horror during those moments, as I didn't know how many such patients we would have to take in. That tragic night we took in sixty five wounded people. Eighteen of them had to be operated on. By 7 o'clock in the morning we had done everything. Later only people with mild injuries came. People with contusions also came to the hospital after they had been beaten by soldiers with gun butts. But they were cleaned up and immediately went back. People with gunshot wounds also went back. We didn't hold them. But the people went back not to seek revenge - they had nothing with which to revenge themselves. Each one of them felt a duty to their homeland. All of their names are registered, any commission can check them. That night A. AIaunis, A. Šaikus, A. Gutauskas, V. Rimkus, R. Simonaitis, N. Purvaneckas and a number of other doctors worked selflessly.

Lithuania, 1991.01.13 : documents, testimonies, comments. - Vilnius : State Publishing Center, 1992, p. 194-195.