Calls and birthday greetings pour in, carrying words of admiration. Irena Veisaitė is turning 92. A remarkable woman and leading voice in Lithuania’s culture, Irena lived through the horrors of two totalitarian regimes—and came out on the other side—with an unabating belief that life should be radiant. The Nazi occupation cut her childhood short at just age 13, robbing her of birth mother and sending her to a Jewish ghetto. Then came another occupation, by the Soviets, which took away her second mother figure, who saved her from the Nazis by raising her like one of her own.