Vilna Stories

Childhood Memories

I was born in 1929 in Wilno, Poland, the only child of Ida nee
Gerstein and Samuel Esterowicz. My Mother found the unusual name
Perella in a popular novel - "The Old Bridge". Since the name could
be used as the remembrance of my Grandmother, Pera, here I was, stuck
with a "funny" name and teased for it. We were well-to-do, my Father
was the successful representative of Tungsram, the
light-and-radio-bulbs and Tudor and Piastow, the battery and tires
factories. Father's success stemmed from the fact that, as the
Tungsram representative, he acquired as customers a small electrical
workshop "Elektryt". They stayed his loyal customers even when they
developed into the second-largest radio-receiver producer in Poland
and Father's even drastically reduced commission ballooned into a
hefty income - larger even than that of the factory directors. We
lived on the first floor of Zawalna 2, in a very spacious apartment of
which one side, facing the yard, housed our big kitchen which had a
back-landing with a trap-door into the cellar, as well as Father's
business office with it's two storage rooms. On the other side,
facing the street, from the entrance hall we entered a very large
parquet living-dining room which was furnished with antique-style
gracefully curved golden ash furniture. Beyond was my Parent's
handsomely carved mahogany bedroom and across from it, my modern-style
bedroom; my desk, cupboard and shelves were painted a very pale blue.
My Mother was one of the seven children (Lyova, Rachil, Nochem,
Vera, my Mother Ida, David and Mulya) of Mera and Gershon Gerstein.
Grandfather was very well-respected as a lumber merchant of modest,
but, thanks to Grandmother Mera's excellent housekeeping, sufficient
means; he was easy -going and very sweet-tempered. Grandmother was
the stricter Parent, but she led by example with loving firmness and
was venerated by both her children and daughters and sons-in-law.
Their eldest son Lyova was the most serious and well educated of the
Gerszteins; after finishing the Russian High School - not a small
achievement for a Jew in Czarist Russia, he graduated from a Medical
School in Germany. He and his Wife Marusia lived in Kovno, Lithuania,
cut off from the family in Wilno for twenty years (even though they
were just about 80 miles away) because of the closed, hostile
Lithuania - Poland frontier. Lyova had to go all the way to Austria
in order to enter Poland and visit the family; he was always the
source of moral support and love and of financial support for the
business after Grandfather died in 1931.
Lyova and Marusia had a daughter my age, they also named her Perella
- Marusia must have read the same novel... The other three sons,
Nochem, David and Samuel (Mula) worked with their Father in the
lumber business. Just a few days ago, by incredible coincidence, I
was given a letterhead with a 1932 bill-receipted in Polish and
Yiddish from my Grandfather Gerszon Gersztein's lumber-business
signed by my uncle Mula. All three brothers were hard-working,
especially the reliable and tireless Nochem; the tall and
exceptionally handsome David was the most talented of the three, he
was able to develop the business with his charm and salesmanship, but
he was also unable to bridle his passion for women and drink. David's
wife Mera, who loved David very much, was amazingly tolerant about
David's infidelities (she told me many years later that he may have
slept with many, but he loved only her) but she resented his drinking.
Father remembers that once, while visiting David and Mera's house
in Niemenczyn with the family, he witnessed the following: before
going back to Wilno, David gave Mera 10.00 Zloty for that week's
expenses, and when she protested that this was not enough, he lectured
her sternly about the financial difficulties they were in - that same
day one of the relatives, looking around for something, found a 100.00
Zloty bill tucked under Mera's pillow. It appears that David,
through devious manipulations, took big sums of money out of the
business for gifts for his mistresses and to appease his wife. All
this, as well as the difficult economic conditions, pushed the
Gersztein lumber business into bankruptcy. None of the family
could understand how this financial disaster could happen- all of them
took just modest salaries- the money just evaporated into thin air! A
little later my Father, who had lent the Gersteins some of the money
they defaulted on, checked their account-books and found that David
was siphoning out the money for "business expenses, to be accounted
for". Neither David nor his wife Mera ever forgave Father for this
discovery.
David and Mera were married while still very young, in 1920. They
met in Niemenczyn, soon after Mera's Father, Moshe Cynman and younger
brother Yoyne were murdered in 1919 by the Polish troops whom the
Cynman women had just housed and fed for days - it was a random
pogrom of Jewish men in Niemenczyn. David and Mera had a lovely and
vivacious daughter, Zhenya, six years older than myself. Samuel
(Mula), the youngest, of the Gersteins, was handsome, sweet-tempered,
intelligent but not energetic. He married Nina Rabinowicz, a very
vivacious, flirtatious, talented teacher of song and dance in the
Jewish schools. In 1936 they had a son, Gary (Gerus). I remember
going to admire my new cousin. Nochem never married, he did fall in
love once, but his family - mostly his sisters Vera and Rachil - felt
that the girl's family was lower class, not good enough for the
Gerszteins. Nochem did not stand up to their pressure, he remained
single and stayed with his Mother to whom he was very devoted. When
he was fatally wounded by the German bombing of Antokol in June of
1941, his last words were: "take care of Mama".
The three Gersztein sisters, Rachil, Vera and my Mother Ida were
well-known in Wilno for their beauty and elegance, Rachil was thought
the most beautiful woman in town. Rachil first married a physician
and went to live in Germany with him, but then divorced him and came
back to her Parents. After a prolonged relationship, Rachil married
Yeremey (Yermasha) Cholem, a very wealthy businessman, owner of
Wilno's largest commercial enterprise. Yermasha was an avid antique
collector. I remember that their house felt like a museum, full of
valuable filigreed things that I had to remember never to touch. They
had no children. Vera was married to Naum Zlatin, owner of a retail
fabric business, much older than she was. Vera was the arbiter of
Wilno fashion - many of the fashion-conscious Jewish ladies would copy
her attire. The Zlatin's had no children.
My Father was the precocious and indulged youngest of five children
(Yefim, Emma, Anya, David and Munya) of Margalit and Leiba (Arye)
Esterowicz. Grandfather was a well-to-do lumber agent well-known for
his impeccable probity. My Father venerated him and modeled his
business-relationships on those of his adored Father. Grandmother was
not educated, but a loving, very religious woman of great strength of
character. Their first son, my uncle Yefim (Chaim) was not very
intelligent or diligent. He was discharged from school after being
held back three times. At his insistence he was let go to America
in1909 to Grandfather's brother, but couldn't make it and came back
home to be supported by his family - mostly by my Father. Yefim got
married and had three children: Dora, Lasik and Lila.
The eldest daughter of Margalit and Leiba, my aunt Emma, even
though overweight, was everything that a parent could desire - very
intelligent, lively, with an excellent singing voice and a great sense
of humor. Her sweetness of character and self-sacrificing love of her
family and of the orphans she served in the orphanages were like a
beacon before our eyes - Father venerated her. She was married to
Aaron Eisurowicz and had two children, Gary and Eva.
Father's other sister, Anya was beautiful but unlucky in love -
while a refugee in Russia during W.W. I, she fell in love with a
married physician and was never able to love again. She was married
through a matchmaker to a supposedly wealthy man, Alexander (Sasha )
Mintz who, though loving, unfortunately lost his money and was unable
to give her the position in the Wilno society she wanted. They had a
sweet daughter Shela, overweight like her aunt Emma, whom Anya could
not cherish as the center of her life. Anya was dissatisfied - she
felt that her former girl-friends looked down on her. The other son,
Father's brother David, wanted to study Medicine, but W.W. I
interrupted his studies and then Grandfather needed his help in his
business while my Father studied at the Berlin Business School in
1922-24. David finally emigrated to Paris but never married and had no
profession. David survived the war and came to visit us in Grotta
Ferrata in 1951.

My Mother was the center of my world, her constant love and
attention illuminated and warmed me and gave me security, assurance
that I was loved, wanted and needed. My Mother was beautiful, had
exquisite taste and elegance. She was unfailingly tactful, very
insightful and she empathized with the feelings of those around her,
especially those whose situations were difficult. Surprisingly, all
these attributes notwithstanding, Mother was not very self assured -
I inherited my shyness from her. My shyness was not helped by the
fact that Mother wanted her beloved daughter to be elegant and
graceful, which I was not - or at least I did not want these
attributes badly enough to invest all my life's forces in them. I
could live up better to my Father's expectations of my intellect: I
was interested in lots of things - the world of ideas fascinated me
and I was willing to pursue it at all costs; the goal of continuous
self-improvement has been my beacon all my life. Books have also
been my great self-indulgence - the escape from reality into make
believe.
Father was very brilliant, with great knowledge of art, literature
and history and a photographic memory. He was a very good, honest and
sraightforward man, but stubborn, self-centered and with not even a
modicum of hypocrisy for getting along with people; he was truthful
to the point of impracticality, for example - Mother: "You shouldn't
have called him a thief to his face." Father: "Why not, he knows it
himself". During the WWII Mother and I lived in fear of whom of the
people of importance my Father would antagonize. I have inherited
his inclination to blurt out the truth, but I hope with a smidgin of
Mother's tact. Both my Parents were in agreement as far as being
invariably on the side of the underdog. Father looked down on
Mother's lack of formal education - she wanted to study Medicine, but
had to interrupt her High School education during the First World War
- he did not appreciate her tact and insight - always sparing
people's feelings, nor her great talent to impart beauty to our
surroundings at modest cost and arrange graceful if modest
entertaining and reciprocate people's gifts - what she called
"treating people kindly and respectfully while being able to keep her
head high". He called this "pride and hypocrisy".
I started my schooling at the private, Polish language elementary
school for Jewish children of well-to-do parents. The school was
owned and run by Anna Pawlowna Wygocka, apparently a pupil of Maria
Montessori. The only difference from regular school that I can
remember was that we had no real desks, no bells or recesses. My
Mother took me to the school when I was five rather than six, thinking
that her smart little daughter was ready ahead of her age.
Apparently they gave me some tests, the only things that I remember
was that there were buttons that I was supposed to push - which I
did... They told Mother to bring me next year. I had a hard time
learning to read - it took maybe a month until I understood that EM
AH EM AH (Polish pronounciation) reads mama - after that it was all
downhill and my lifelong love affair with reading had begun.
Immediately, inebriated with my ability to read anything, anytime, I
was reading whatever was written, including scribbles on fences. One
such scribble said: don't buy from "ZYD" I asked our maid, Wiera:
"Who is this "ZYD" ? She answered: "there is a missing mark on the
Z, it is really ZHYD - Jew, like you". I think I knew that I was
Jewish without being really aware that I was looked down upon by
Others. This must have been my first experience with anti-Semitism.
I was a very poor eater - I didn't even like chocolate - what a
thought! Breakfast was tea with rolls and farmer cheese, and supper
was boiled eggs with bread and butter. I liked these well enough, but
the midday dinner was a disaster! I was not permitted to determine
the size of the portions on my plate, nor could I leave the table
before I cleaned my plate, so I was sitting and endlessly chewing my
ground chicken croquettes - the only meat I would even consider.
After a while the chicken would form a hard ball in my cheek that I
could not swallow - then I had an idea: (this must have been when I
was very young) I would excuse myself to go out for farting, then go
and spit the abomination under a cupboard. In the fullness of time
however, my crime was discovered when the cupboard was pulled away
from the wall for cleaning - I was told endlessly about the
ingratitude of wasting food while children were starving in India.
All these stories of starving children did not help my appetite. Not
surprisingly, my appetite would become excellent as soon as there were
food shortages at the very beginning of the War. I learned two lessons
from that disaster: an immediate one - to discard something
surreptitiously, throw and flush it down the toilet ( I don't think I
made use of that one) and a long range one - I have let my children
determine the size of their portions, even though, after my W.W.II
hunger experience, I insisted that they finish what they took. My
Mother was very worried about my being too thin: I used to have
hacking coughs that persisted endlessly after colds and passers-by
would stop Mother on the street to advise her to check my lungs for
tuberculosis. I would also have been glad to gain weight, especially
in my long, thin legs - the kids would tease me, calling me "crane".
I would have liked to cover those legs with floor-length skirts, but,
to my disgust Mother, following fashion, clad me in cute pleated
Scotch-plaid miniskirts.
Since I was not musical, my Mother did not make me study the piano -
this was quite a brave innovation, since every well-brought-up Jewish
girl did so in Wilno. Perhaps she did that to spare me the heartache
she went through; when she could not continue her High School
education during WW I - she was cut off from school because there were
no more horse-trolleys to Antokol, where she lived on the outskirts
of town. She started to take piano lessons instead - I'm told by aunt
Mera that it was an expense her parents could ill afford at the time.
Mother studied and practiced for many hours a day for years, only to
discover finally that she was not musical enough...
My best friend was Mira Jedwabnik, who was very pretty but ungainly
like me and even more over-protected than I was. Our mutual support
was extremely important to me because I was painfully shy. I
remember agonizing before knocking on a door - I was SURE that the
people there did not want me; having a real friend was heaven! Even
though we lived just one block away from each other, for some years
Mira and I were not allowed to cross the street by ourselves to visit.
The only movies I was permitted to watch were those of Shirley Temple
I was much taller than all the boys in my class - I lived in fear
that I would become a "giant" like my cousin Dora ( she actually was
a medium tall girl by American standards). I was a voracious reader.
Every week I would check out a stack of books from the public library
- I heard much later that my Mother would iron each book page by page
for fear of contagion. Every year, Father would stay home for the
summer, but Mother and I would go in the early years to Niemenczyn, a
village a few miles from town, and later to Wolokumpia, a "resort"
even closer to town. My aunt Mera Gerstein (wife of my Mother's
brother David) had a house in Niemenczyn. I remember a phonograph
playing and Father dancing with me. Another, maybe earlier
recollection- or did Mother tell me about it - aunt Mera cooked
strawberry preserves and cooled them in a huge, flat copper bowl;
daydreaming, I stumbled and fell plunk into the middle of it - when
Mother came in, she saw me standing there, dripping crimson liquid...
Aunt Mera did not take kindly to the waste of all those delicious
preserves!
That was probably the time when I discovered the impermanence of
wealth. The chestnut trees in the Cielentnik park near the Cathedral
would let fall beautiful, shiny, glistening, chestnuts in the fall. I
adored them, gathered sack fulls and hoarded them in cupboards,
feeling very rich, And then, horror! My chestnuts were not shiny any
longer, they got dull and wrinkled - worthless.
I remember going for a walk with my parents in the country after
dusk when I was about five and being castigated by my Father for
whining and then my great feeling of vindication when I fell sick with
scarlet fever the day after. For some reason - perhaps our apartment
wasn't taken care of while we were away in the country, I spent my
sick-days lying in my Grandmothers darkened living room on Arsenalska
street, amid dark-green velvet sofas.
Mother fell ill with typhoid and then with glaucoma in 1936, I felt
bereft; always before, when I would be coming home from school, the
day felt dark and dull if I knew Mother was not home. This time,
after Mother recovered, she was sent to a mountain resort Zakopane for
recuperation. Her two childless sisters, aunt Rachil and Vera would
look in on me every day. Vera would cluck over me in a saccharine way
and to show her devotion, forbade anything I wanted to do. I said: "A
thousand aunts couldn't take place of one Mother". I was sent to
Niemenczyny, where occasionally a young peasant girl would take care
of me. Once we were crossing a plank over a wild brook, I was
carrying the girl's book, but slipped and fell into the brook - I
still remember how let-down I felt when her worry was for the book,
not me. All was OK with the world when Mother came back, looking
tanned, beautiful and happy.
All was not quite OK with my parents' marriage, however. During my
Mother's illness my Father got infatuated with my Mother's sister,
Vera. Vera was very elegant and flirtatious but apparently faithful to
her elderly husband, Naum Zlatin. Father told all about his crush to
Mother who, strangely, still continued to spend her days with Vera,
daily visiting their Mother and going to the dressmakers and
coffeehouses with her, thus flaunting the sexy Vera under Father's
nose. I had no idea about this - Father told me about it much, much
later; Mama, ever loyal to her sister, never mentioned it.
Most of the summers we spent in Wolokumpia, at the Eliazhberg
pension, situated among pine trees, near the shore of the Wilja river.
Even though all the kids there were Jewish, children of well-to-do
parents, we played much rougher games than we did in town, with feuds
and taking sides, winning games and fights was of vital importance to
us. I reveled in the active life-style of running, chasing each other,
having pine- cone fights - quite a difference from the sedentary life
in town. I even got a "pet" - a snail, I brought it to town and kept
it on the window-sill, in between the double windows. I brought it
leaves and grass from the park. It finally ran away, I saw its
glistening track down the wall.
In 1938 my Mother and Mrs. Lida Jedwabnik took Mira and myself to the
seashore in Bulduri, near Riga, Latvia - it was the first train-trip
for me. I remember the sleeping car and how beautiful Mrs. Jedwabnik
looked in her flowery robe - like the embodiment of spring. My big
achievement during that trip was learning to float in the salty
sea-water and then to paddle around like a puppy - only afterwards
did an instructor suggest I could swim like a frog, not a puppy - what
a delight! My Father did not want me to learn how to swim, as a
teenager he once almost drowned in a whirlpool on the Wilja river -
he almost pulled in a teacher who tried to save him. He thought that
if I did not know how to swim, I wouldn't fall into a whirlpool.
That was a mistake, I feel, swimming is much more often life-saving
rather than life endangering; moreover, swimming is one of my most
enjoyable outdoor pursuits, I have always loved to look at the view
and the sun's shimmer on the water around me, while getting
delightful, healthful exercise at the same time. Another seashore
adventure was much less successful, however: there was a short ladder
placed horizontally between two protuberances, about two meters off
the ground ; the kids were lightly running across it, but when I tried
to follow them, I fell so heavily and painfully that my breath was
knocked out of me. Apparently I did not fall all the way to the
ground, but this mishap gave me a painful lesson: ever since, I would
be reluctant to follow my dare-devil friends in adventures requiring
sure-footedness and balance.
I remember something that puzzles me about that seashore experience:
at the pension there were children from many countries, I think we
spoke Russian. One of the guests was the German (Nazi) ambassador to
Moscow, and his son was a very handsome, blond kid my age. An
important Jewish, conductor had a scrawny, ugly son my age. I think
that the German was picking on the Jew in our play - we were throwing
straw and sticks at each other. I was handing "ammunition" to the
German. A lady whispered to me: "he is doing it because that little
boy is Jewish" and I answered: "I know". End recollection. Why did I
side with the German? By that time I knew about anti-Semitism and
probably about the Nazis. What was I trying to deny? Or maybe I'm
just trying to read into my behavior more than the siding with the
handsomer stronger kid - bad enough - anyway, I'm not proud of this
"un-Esterowicz-like" behavior.
In the summer of 1939 my parents took me to Ciechocinek, a resort in
the Western part of Poland. On our way back to Wilno, we stopped in
Warsaw, the capital of Poland. What gave me the greatest pleasure was
going up and down in the hotel elevator - my first elevator
experience. On August 15th, my 10th birthday, we went to an amusement
park where I had my picture taken riding a camel. The other strong
impression from Warsaw was my first encounter with strictly religious
Jews, probably Chassidim, who wore what looked to me as outlandish
attire - I'd never seen anything like that in Wilno. That was very
embarrassing - it was fine when people from Africa to look exotic, but
these were Jews, like me!
When we came back to Wilno, I learned that her Parents took Mira
Jedwabnik to the World Fair in New York - luckily for them they got
"stuck" in the United States and missed the horrors in store for the
rest of us. When I met Mira many years later, she told me that Dr.
Jedwabnik thought about getting out of Poland to the Exposition, but
what happened to him in the Polish countryside really pushed him. Dr.
Jedwabnik owned one of the few cars in Wilno; while his chauffeur
was driving him from Warsaw to Wilno, on the highway they struck a
cow. Dr Jedwabnik immediately offered to pay for the damages, but the
peasants just about lynched the "Jew". After that experience he KNEW
that they had to get out. So that cow actually saved their lives.
They were on the sea, en-route to the United States when World War
II broke out as Hitler attacked Poland.
When in August, after the signing of the German-Soviet non-aggression
pact it became clear to my Father that the last barrier to Hitler's
attacking Poland was down, he immediately went to our neighborhood
Jewish shopkeeper and bought large supplies of soap, sugar, flour
etc. A few weeks later, when the war-panic burst out, there were
long lines at the shops and the owners could charge much higher prices
for all these necessities. The impressed shopkeeper's wife told my
Mother: "You should kiss your husband's hands and feet" and her
husband hushed her: "Never mind, the lady knows what she has to do".
September, 1939 WORLD WAR II BEGINS

I don't remember much about the bombings of Wilno by the Germans,
except for the scary alarm-sirens. Apparently a boy I knew, Alosha
Lipski, was one of the few victims. The first time the war really came
home to me was when, after a few weeks, one night, shattering the
windows, machine-gun bullets started to whistle through the
apartment. When my Father crawled to the telephone to ask the
operator what was going on, she knew nothing. It appears that the
first tank of the invading Soviet army lost its way, rammed the house
kitty-corner from ours, got stuck and started shooting. Polish
soldiers climbed onto the roof of our house and returned fire and then
threw an incendiary grenade into the tank, killing them all. It was a
miracle that later the Soviets believed my Father's assurances that
he had nothing to do with all this.
After the Soviets occupied Wilno, they gave it to the Lithuanians.
Father lost contact with the foreign factories which he represented
and started a private business of his own. I remember the huge
Lithuanian policemen in red - ornamented helmets- we called them
turkeys; my first Lithuanian word was "Kalakutas" - turkey in
Lithuanian. The fact that we were under Lithuanian rule came home to
me when in our school Polish stopped being the teaching language -
the Lithuanians hated the Poles, they never forgave them for grabbing
Wilno from them in 1919. They declared that Yiddish should be the
teaching language for Jewish children. That was a problem for me - I
did not know Yiddish, but fortunately neither did my classmates,
children of the assimilated "intellectuals". We spent the whole year
learning the alphabet and some basic Yiddish. Aron Kagan, who as a
teenager used to be a messenger boy in my father's office, still
laughs remembering how I was memorizing Yiddish phrases - he spoke
Yiddish at home. I was deprived of my best friend, Mira Jedwabnik who
was in the United States, but got very close to Nacik Bak, a quiet,
delicate boy, talented in music and math. The other kids taunted us
that we were "man and wife", but we were comfortable with each other,
I guess Nacik was also overprotected and shy - he became my "best
friend".
In the summer of 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Lithuania. My
Father's business was soon nationalized by the communist authorities,
and besides his business all my Father's personal property - bank
accounts and his inherited property on Wielkomierska 28 were taken
away from him. My Mother had to stay with Father in Wilno, but, not
wanting to deprive me of fresh country air, my parents arranged for
me to stay in Wolokumpia with Dr. Alosha Perevozki's sister Niuta (?)
Zilberkweit, a widow in strained circumstances who lost her husband in
France, and her fifteen year old daughter Zoya. Zoya was beautiful,
had waist- long blond hair and spoke perfect French; she was nice to
me, but I didn't quite like her because my parents put her up as the
model of all virtues to me. That summer I remember being sweet on
Marek Perewozki, the brilliant son of my Father's friend Alosha.
In the fall of 1940 I enrolled for the 1940-41 school-year into the
Russian-speaking school for the children of the Soviet functionaries -
most of the pupils of the Wygdska school did the same, as did Nacik
Bak. Even though we had finished 5th grade and should have been in 6th
grade, since we would have had six years till graduation from High
School, we were put into the 4th grade of the Soviet ten-year long
combined elementary and High School. Immediately, we started to get
indoctrinated into "correct socialist thinking". It became clear to
me that it was wrong to be well-off, to be a parasitic "Burzhuy". I
was mortified, when I brought classmates home, to find our maid home,
who referred to my Mother as "mistress". I was happy when we found
Mother ironing clothes wearing an apron - how virtuously proletarian!
I still remember the first "non Shirley Temple" movie I watched - it
was a Soviet film named Circus" about a beautiful blond girl who was
about to be lynched in America for having a black baby and how they
were saved by a visiting Soviet Circus.
Since my parents, as "Burzhuys" were to be kicked out of their
elegant apartment, they decided to move voluntarily to my maternal
grandparents, the Gerstein very modest house in Antokol -on the
outskirts of town, on the way to Niemenczyn. However, just a day
before we were to move, my Mother woke up crying, she did not want to
subject her "darling Perella" to the hardships and limitations she
was subjected to while living so far out of town. She asked my Father
to go once again to the department in charge of living space
apportionment and check if we could, perhaps stay in our apartment in
some way. He did so and was able to arrange for most of our
apartment to be taken over by David Kaplansky, the husband of Tatyana,
the sister of my rich uncle Yeremey Cholem; Kaplanski was
nevertheless left-leaning and well-regarded by the authorities.
Kaplanski was looking for an apartment for his chief, the Lithuanian
Sushinskis whose family remained in Kowno, as well as for his own
family: his wife and twenty-year old son Shelik. This arrangement
saved us from being kicked out, we could stay on in a couple of rooms
of our Zawalna apartment. This saved us later from the peril of being
killed by the bomb that destroyed the Antokol house and killed my
uncle, Nochem Gerstein.
In the meantime I was much more interested in the following doings at
school: in accordance with the theory of "Socialist Competition"
our teacher was choosing for each kid another one of about equal
scholastic achievement and designated them as "Competitors". For my
competitor she chose Lubka Kantarowicz who lived on Antokol, near
where I was supposed to move to, but didn't. Life was difficult for
my parents, my Father could not get a job being a "Burzhuy" and we
were in imminent danger of being deported to Siberia as "parasites".
But this didn't matter to me - I was obsessed with my competition with
Lubka. I was never much interested in my grades, but now they were
becoming crucial! In June, during our final exams, Lubka and I
whispered the math results to each other, they were different, Lubka
realized that she was wrong and corrected her results, thus she got
all A's. I, on the other hand, missed an "-" in the Russian
composition and got only a "B"!!! Horror!!! When my Mother came to
pick me up from school, I came out smiling, showing her four fingers
(a "B"). But when we came home, I had hysterics and my poor Mother
had to go back to school to check with the teacher if I would still
get an "A" in Russian - and indeed I was going to get an "A"! All
this during the beginning of deportations! I don't remember ever
being as obsessed by competition again - and just imagine my Mother's
sweet longsuffering! A Mothers love...
The Soviets did not deport us before they were attacked by Hitler on
June 22nd, 1941. My aunt Rachil and uncle Yermasha Cholem ran out of
the back door when the NKVD (Russian secret police) came to the front
door of their apartment, thus saving themselves from deportation. The
escape from deportaion turned very unfortunate for them, since
Yermasha was killed by the Nazis in a few weeks as one of Wilno's
richest Jews and Rachil perished during the liquidation of the Ghetto
in September of 1943.
THE HOLOCAUST

When the Germans attacked the Soviet Union they bombed Wilno. One of
the bombs destroyed my Grandmother's house on Antokol, she was
wounded slightly, but my uncle Nochem who lived with her was killed.
His last words were: "Take care of Mama!" My Father brought
Grandmother and her sister Sarah to our house. Sushinski , the
Communist who lived in our apartment ran away with the retreating
Russians; Father had his room locked and sealed by the
apartment-house manager. The Germans occupied Wilno soon after. A few
days later, on the night of Sunday, June 29th, we were awakened by
thundering knocks of rifle butts on our front door and a bayonet-armed
Lithuanian patrol led by a German officer stormed in when my father,
terrified and pale opened the door. The German yelled: did you
signal the Russians? When Father assured him with trembling lips that
we couldn't have, we even took the fuses out so as not to turn a light
on by mistake. A civilian Lithuanian broke into Sushinski's room and
triumphantly produced a Soviet emblem he found there. The civilian,
named Labanauskas, occupied the apartment across the landing from
ours. Apparently he was drunk and put on a light and when challenged
by the patrol assured them it was not him but the Jews across the
landing who were signaling the Russians. Father, Kaplanski and his
son Shelik were taken to the police station. Mother and I, terrified,
heard sporadic shots and feared the worst... I spent the night
trembling in her bed. At the police station a miracle happened: one
of the Lithuanian soldiers declared that the light was not in the Jews
but in Labanauskas window - Father and the Kaplanskis were free to go
but had to stay in the station because of the curfew. They saw Jews
being cruelly beaten and jailed by the Lithuanian police who arrested
them for possessing some food or leather. Suddenly, HORROR! a group
of ultra-Nazi SS came into the station and, after hearing that they
were Jews, lunged rabidly at Father and the Kaplanskis, placing them
face-to-the-wall, searching them and threatening to kill them right
there after they found some newspaper pieces in Shelik's pocket. Then
another miracle happened: Father was trying to translate the
innocuous newspaper pieces into German ( Shelik kept them in his
pocket as toilet-paper) when one of the SS-men asked: "How do you
speak such good German?" Father answered that he was a graduate of
the Berlin Business School. The SS-man asked whether he remembered
the Kranzler coffeehouse in Berlin, and Father with his photographic
memory said that, of course he remembered, he quoted its location,
and described all its delights. The SS-man said: "I was the Krantzler
violinist" and then, he repeated "You are not a Jew, you are not a
Jew!". He let them go at dawn. Father came home to us.
Father was visited by Boleslaw Poddany, a car dealer, a customer of
his who respected his honesty and with whom he had excellent, friendly
relations. Poddany's dealership had also been nationalized by the
Soviets. He told Father that we should not worry, he felt it was
his obligation as a honorable man to save people such as us.
Amazingly, he subsequently would have an opportunity to do so - the
Germans restored his car repair shop to him and his workshop was
co-opted for the repair of German military vehicles under H.K.P.
(Heeres Kraftfahr Park)-Army Vehicle Repair.
When the German authorities ordered all Jews to wear yellow,
star-shaped patches as a mark of shame and inferiority, I would not
accept it as such. When talking to Kirka, the son of our Russian
janitor Nicholai, I tried to make light of it, (I did not want to be
pitied, what "they" thought of me still counted) I said that perhaps
we will embroider flowers on the patches to make them more
fashionable. Wearing these patches and walking in the gutter (Jews
could not use the sidewalk) I went to visit Nacik Bak during the
hours in which Jews were allowed on the streets - this was the last
time I got to see him... Much later I heard that his rich grandfather,
Kashuk, bribed a peasant to hide Nacik and his mother; he also gave
them much gold so that they would be able to pay the peasant, but the
peasant just killed them and took the gold. Looking back, I really
appreciate and venerate the Niemenczyn peasants who saved my husband,
Wowa Gdud, (now William Good) and his Father at great risk to
themselves and their families.
Poddany did not risk his life to save us, but his help was priceless
nevertheless! During the summer of 1941 the Lithuanian police, the
so-called "Chapuny" were grabbing men, supposedly for work - we soon
learned that they were killed. The only protection from the Chapuny
was to have a certificate stating that the man worked in a place
crucial for the German war effort. Poddany employed Father as
storeroom keeper in his H.K.P. workshop. When the Chapuny came to
our house, they accepted as valid Father's photograph-bearing
certificate (shein), that he was working for the German military, but
refused to accept that of Kaplanski, which had no photograph. It was
a miracle that his wife Tatyana was able to bribe them with a golden
watch (her begging on a bended knee had not helped).
On August 31st, in the "provokazye" aktzye - (slander massacre), the
Germans accused the Jews of having fired at German soldiers in the old
Jewish quarter. They took all of about 8000 poor Jews living in
there, including women and children, to Ponary and executed them.
This massacre was so horrifying that Poddany, fearing more massacres,
suggested that Father with Mother and myself should come to sleep in
his HKP workshop on Wilenska 23 for protection. Mother insisted that
Father and I should do so, but she would not go - she stayed with her
Mother and aunt Sara, she would not abandon them. Fortunately there
were no more massacres for the time being, so Father and I returned to
the apartment on Zawalna. My Parents took advantage of the short
respite and took their best clothing, linen, furs and jewelry to
Poddany who lived just a block away on Portowa. When I said that
Poddany did not risk his life for us, that was not quite true: keeping
Jewish valuables was also a capital offense. The sale of these
valuables kept us from being hungry during the years of the Ghetto and
HKP - Poddany was trustworthy and would bring them over to the
workshop for Father to sell as needed. Almost immediately we had to
give up all the valuables we had not protected at Poddany's- Father
had to stand in a long line to hand in the table silver. I too
decided to hide something I valued: in 1938, when we went to the
seashore near Riga where I taught myself to swim, Mother bought me a
pretty little vase that I liked; now I hid it behind the steps under
the trapdoor to the cellar. Amazingly, after we were liberated I found
the little vase, broken but still there, in the janitor's room and
"repossessed it" - I still treasure it.
On September 6th, 1941 the Lithuanian Police chased us out of our
apartment with only the few things we could carry, Father carried a
huge pack in a bedspread, I wrapped a pillow, an electric cord and
many other odds and ends in my bedspread, but I guess I didn't tie it
securely enough. As they chased us down Zawalna street toward the
ghetto whose previous inhabitants had been killed we were hot and
sweaty from running in our winter clothes. My bundle was becoming
untied, I cried to Father that my bundle was getting untied, I would
soon be losing our stuff. Father, who was staggering under a huge
pack, couldn't understand why I couldn't manage my little bundle and
accused me of being heartless, having a heart of tin. I did manage
to hold my bundle together, we were chased by the Gestapo with yells
and threats into the Strashuna Street which had been emptied by the
"libel massacre" of its original inhabitants.
Since we were one of the early arrivals into the designated Ghetto,
we and the Zlatins were able to occupy a room on the second floor of
the first house on the right side - Strashuna #1. Standing in the
street Father finally saw Gradmother, aunt Anya with her daughter
Shela and aunt Emma with her daughter Eva and son-in-law Lolek. They
all squeezed into our room with their packs. During the day huge
crowds of Jews continued to be chased into Strashuna street; they
swiftly overcrowded the houses of the seven small streets ( Strashuna,
Yatkova, Shavelska, Shpitalna, parts of Rudnicka and Oshmianska)
which the Germans earmarked as the area of the "Large Ghetto".
Originally Lidski alley, parallel to Strashuna, was also included in
the "Large Ghetto". However, that evening the Germans decided to
exclude the Lidski alley from the ghetto and, according to that
decision, all the Jews who had crowded into apartments on Lidski after
they were chased into the ghetto, were driven on that same night to
the Lukishki prison from which only very few were able to return.
In addition to the "Large ghetto" situated on the three little
streets adjoining the "Great Synagogue" (the synagogue was defiled by
the Germans who made a warehouse out of it), a "Little ghetto" was
also established. The two ghettos were separated by the Niemiecka
street. The houses on both sides of this important thoroughfare
were not included in the "ghetto".
By squeezing into the few streets ( where previously about 8000
of the Jewish poor had lived in crowded conditions ) the Jewish
population of many tens of thousands the Germans created an
unimaginable congestion (even though from some quarters of the city
the Germans did not take the Jews to the "ghetto", but rather to
Ponary for execution). The number of people who lived in our modest
size, narrow, elongated room of about 6 by 24 feet grew to 26 by
evening. The following nights we had to sleep huddled on the dirty
floor, some lying down, some sitting since there was not enough
space for everybody to stretch out. on the floor at the same time; the
grownups had to take turns, but I was able to lie down on the pillow
that I had brought in with such effort. Next to me was sleeping a
teenage girl crippled by Heine-Medina (polio?), she must also have
had epilepsy. One night she had a seizure, made scary noises and
kicked me. The apartment we were in had another room which was full
of the Jewish criminal element, "the strong ones" whom everybody was
scared of. There was only one coal-burning stove in the apartment
which the "strong" women appropriated, letting the "intellectuals"
cook only during the Sabbath, a time when it was forbidden to cook by
the Jewish religion. The "intellectuals" meekly stayed away from the
kitchen during the week, but not my Grandma Esterowicz - she was not
about to transgress against her religion! When she entered the
kitchen she was menaced by one of those "strong" women, but far from
being intimidated, she pushed a frying pan into the other's face,
leaving a black soot-mark on her nose. From then on they let Grandma
cook during the week. This is the same Grandma who, when she found a
thief in her apartment on Wielkomierska street a few years before,
had grabbed the thief and held on to him until her screams brought
the police. She was killed by the Nazis with my Grandma Gersztein a
few weeks later during the "yellow life certificate massacre". I do
not remember what the toilet arrangements were, but do remember the
difficulties with menstruation pads - we had to use pieces of sheets
which we had to wash and dry the best we could. I had started
menstruating at the age of ten-and-a-half. In the ghetto I stopped
menstruating - most women did- what a relief!
All the outlets of the streets connecting the ghetto with the rest
of the world (with the exception of the Rudnicki street outlet
where a gate was placed) were blocked off by tall brick walls. The
Germans placed a placard on the gate bearing a large warning to the
rest of the population about "DANGER of CONTAGION". Perhaps the
horror of the inhuman conditions in the ghetto were made more
bearable by our hope that here at last the Germans would let us be,
that finally here at least our lives would be safe - we were cruelly
mistaken in this, of course.
The Germans immediately organized in the ghetto a Jewish police
force installing as its chief Yakov Gens, a tool of the Gestapo.
Gens, a former officer of the Lithuanian army, came from the Kowno
area of Lithuania; he was married to a Lithuanian who, together with
their daughter, lived outside of the ghetto on the "Aryan side". .
Uncle Yefim's wife Fania and her younger daughter Lila came to the
ghetto from the Esterowicz family house on the Wielkomirski street
together with my Grandmother, aunt Anya and Shela ; they found space
in the room in which Fania's parents were located. Yefim's older
daughter Dora who lived for the last two years in Kowno, as well as
his son Lazar (Lasya), succeded in making their way deep into Russia.
The inhuman conditions notwithstanding, the life in both of
the ghettoes in which about 40,000 Jews had been herded ( 30,000 in
the first one and 10,000 in the second ) was beginning to get
organized. At the very beginning of the German occupation in July of
1941 doctor Luba Cholem (the sister-in-law of my uncle Yermasha)
succeded in obtaining from the chief of the German Medical Service
protective certificates for all of the Jewish physicians of Wilno -
the doctors suffered almost no losses during all the bloody
"aktzyas". This, together with the fact that the Municipal Jewish
Hospital was situated inside the first ghetto, made it possible to
organize wide medical services and take preventive measures against
the epidemics threatened by the extreme congestion.
The Jews who worked in the German military establishments ( Father
among them) began at once to leave the ghetto each morning and go to
their place of work in groups walking in the gutter. The workshop
repairing the German military vehicles (H.K.P.), situated on 23
Wilenska street, was managed by Father's friend Boleslaw Poddany;
initially eighteen Jews worked there besides the sixty gentiles. In
addition to himself Father managed to get employment there for uncle
Mula Gerstein. The work in the H.K.P. workshops secured the vital
"Facharbeiterschein" - the qualified worker's certificate. They
worked six days a week, from six in the morning till six in the
evening. This contact with the Gentile population gave them a chance,
(by selling some pieces of clothing and linen) of acquiring food
which they then endeavored to bring into the ghetto - a perilous
undertaking.
I guess what "they" thought of me still counted for me then -
through Father, I sent a message to our former maid, Wiera, asking
her how Mardashka, our cat was doing. Wiera answered back: "Why are
you asking about Mardashka when people are falling like herrings!"
Wiera was right, of course, how Mardashka was doing was not important
to me, I just wanted to show her that we must be OK if I'm worried
about the cat, I did not want her to pity me.
We learned that being in the Ghetto did not give us safety as
early as on the 9th day of our stay there. On September 15th of 1941,
with the subterfuge that people not possessing the
"Facharbeiterschein" were to be moved to the second ghetto with
their families, about 2000 Jews were sent to Ponary. The predatory
character of the Jewish police and their chief Yakov Gens became
obvious during this first bloody aktzya of the ghetto.
Since Father worked in H.K.P. this aktzya didn't touch our
family, but a misfortune befell us too - I fell ill and since my
illness had some symptoms of scarlet fever, Father's friend, doctor
Alosha Perevozki notified the medical authorities; I had to be
transported to the Municipal Infectious Barracks situated outside the
confines of the ghetto, at the edge of town in Zwierzyniec. The fear
of being taken away from my Mother was indescribable - morover, I
knew nothing good came to those taken away. In the Infectious
Barracks I was put into an ice-cold shower the moment I arrived. I
missed my Mother terribly and was hungry - I seemed not to have been
very sick after all. They wanted to shave my head, warning that my
hair would fall out if I didn't, but I wouldn't let them and the only
bad result was that since I didn't comb it, my hair got terribly
tangled and matted, I also got lice-infested. The barrack was
infested by huge rats (they lived in the unused heating ducts) they
jumped on our beds and bit the parts of our bodies not covered by the
blankets - when one girl fell asleep with her hand hanging down from
the bed, a rat bit off the tip of her finger. I got used to sleeping
with my head under the blanket. I got friendly with a slightly older
Jewish girl, I think her last name was Markus. After a few weeks I
finally saw my Parents through the window, they came to save me!
These are the terrible events that happened in the ghetto while I was
at the Infectious Barracks, as told by my Father:
FATHER REMEMBERS:
The swiftly approaching death-dealing events gave us no
respite. On the evening of October 1st, at the end of the Jewish
holiday of Yom Kippur, (after I had come back from work) some
Lithuanian policemen accompanied by the young Desler burst into our
room, fired at the ceiling and ordered us all to leave the room and go
to the main gate to have our "scheins" (certificates) stamped. At
Desler's request the Lithuanians permitted my brother-in-law Naum
Zlatin to stay behind - Naum always used to play cards with Desler.
Down in the street we were pushed to the main gate by a solid chain of
Jewish policemen headed by Oberhardt, supposedly to have our "scheins"
validated. When I had reached the police station on the corner of
Strashuna and Shavelska streets I saw through the window Zlatunia,
the widow of the slain head of the first Judenrat, Saul Trotsky;
Zlatunia was sitting inside with her daughter Nina and seeing her I
also attempted to enter. I was blocked by the Jewish policeman
Berenstein who forced me to move on towards the gate - after the
liberation Berenstein was executed by the Jewish partisans for his
many treacherous acts. I did not cease my attempts to break away,
and when I came to the first open house-entrance I jumped in there
and hid in the depth of the courtyard. The prevailing darkness
helped me to remain unnoticed until the Germans, having caught the
designated number of victims (about 2000) had called the akztya off.
When I returned to our room I found to my great joy that in that
aktzya none of my dear ones had been taken.
On that Yom Kippur of 1941 the Germans began the "liquidation" of
the second ghetto. During the month of October all its inhabitants
were taken by regular stages through Lukishki to Ponary and were
executed.
With the liquidation of the second ghetto is connected the memory
of an event which opened my eyes to the full horror of our
situation.
In front of the windows of our workshop the Lithuanian police was
driving down the street to the Lukishki prison a multitude of Jews
from the second ghetto - men, women and children. In the passing
crowd I recognized some of my acquaintances. The scene of these
innocent people, my fellow Jews, being driven to their death shocked
me to the depth of my soul - this became even more poignant when I
realized that the Polish workers in the workshop looked at this
horrible injustice not with sorrow but with yells of joy and
satisfaction. "Look", they were jumping for joy, "the Jews are taken
to be killed".
The exhibition of antiSemitism was no great surprise for me.
But what horrified me while I watched the delighted Polish workers was
the depth of their hatred for us - it united all the surrounding
nationalities and members of social classes.. The Polish
Partisans, members of the (A.K.) acted in accordance with this
mood of the surrounding population. Though organized for the
underground struggle against the Germans - mostly the A.K. was
hunting the Jews who were hiding in the forest. Since they consisted
mostly of local people, the Polish partisans were excellently oriented
in the localities in which they operated and thus represented a
greater peril for the Jews who tried to find rescue in the dense
forest than did the Germans who did not dare to penetrate deep into
the forest. The Lithuanians were exceptionally active in the matter
of our annihilation.
I should introduce some heartening amendments into the sad
picture of Jewish - Christian relations There was a deep hatred
toward Jewry as a whole which was regarded as an omnipotent
monstrosity - this hatred was expressed in the bestiality of the A.K.
and in the frequent denunciations to the Gestapo.
However, if the matter did not concern Jews as a whole but a Jewish
friend or neighbor, the Poles in many cases (as in the case of
Poddany) manifested a humanitarian and disinterested desire to help,
even though this assistance involved great risk, in many cases even
risk to their lives. The older generation of Byelorussian peasants
did not hate the Jews and frequently expressed sympathy for us. The
fact that the Byelorussian peasants refused to charge the Jewish HKP
workers for their food was characteristic of their attitude toward
the Jews.
I encountered some of such exceptions even among the
Germans. They were openly indignant about the horrors committed
against the Jews. One of the above was a German soldier named
Berger who had been assigned to our automobile repair workshop and
with whom I became friendly. Berger exclaimed while watching the Jews
being driven to their deaths: "What this scum perpetrate here in the
name of the German nation - centuries will not suffice for us to
cleanse ourselves!" Upon returning from home-leave Berger related
an occurrence which demonstrated that the Nazi government hid the
truth from the broad masses of their population. Hearing about the
horrors committed by her fellow Germans in Lithuania, Berger's wife
at first decided that he must have lost his mind - his tales seemed
so monstrous and improbable.
After thinning out the amount of men in the Wilno Jewish
community and depriving us of our leaders, the Nazis succeded in
transforming us into a demoralized mass incapable of any form of
resistance as they in drove us into the ghetto.
The Germans would always leave us a ray of hope for survival. After
every succeeding bloody "Aktzya" (massacre) the Germans would
assure us through their mouthpiece, Yakov Gens, that we were needed
by the German military machine as workers. .
Through the endeavors of Gens none of the many "aktzyes" had
ever touched the ghetto policemen or their families - including, in
some instances known to me, even their grandmothers.
The destiny of the Jewish community was sealed, - the forces were
way too unequal. In Gens we may find the reason why the Wilno
Jewish community wrote the most brilliant pages of its chronicle
during its life, rather than at its death.
Even though forty years divide me from the ensuing happenings,
I approach their description with the feeling of shivering horror -
the earth opened under our feet and swallowed a huge part of the
surviving members of the Jewish community, almost all of the members
of my family among them.
Zhenia, the only daughter of my wife's brother David Gerstein
and of his wife Mera perished at the age of eighteen at the beginning
of October. The Gestapo arrested her when Zhenichka bravely tried
to deliver some bread handed her by a Polish woman to a Jewish manual
worker at the Gestapo headquarters and to do so removed the yellow
patch from her back. She was grabbed by the Gestapo, thrown into a
cell with some beautiful Jewish girls who were accused of
"Rassenschande" - dishonoring the race - sex with Germans; they were
soon executed.
The culmination of the horror came with the aktzye most bloody in
its consequences - the aktzye of the "gele sheinen" (massacre of the
yellow life certificates).
Having decided to diminish the number of the Jewish families of Ghetto
No 1 to about three and a half thousands, the German authorities
distributed to the military establishments employing Jews, and to the
Judenrat, the corresponding amount of new worker's certificates which
in contrast to the old ones were printed on yellow paper.
According to a plan announced by the Germans, in the Ghetto
could stay (and remain alive) only those workers who had received a
yellow certificate, together with their spouses and two children
under the age of sixteen. By this monstrous decree the Germans
condemned to death both the families of those who did not receive the
yellow certificates as well as the parents, sisters, brothers, grown
up children and third children of those fortunate ones who did
receive the yellow life certificates.
For the 18 Jews working in our workshop Boleslaw Poddany
received only six yellow certificates. In this case Poddany did not
ask for my advice, placing before me an accomplished fact: he gave
the yellow certificates to me and to the pharmacist Nadelman, as
well as to four young men who were able to carry out the very heavy
physical labor earmarked for the Jews. Those not accustomed to toil
did not receive the certificates, my brother-in-law Mula Gerstein and
my cousin's husband Kuba Rotstein among them. Luckily, both Mula
as well as Kuba Rotstein were able to acquire the yellow certificates
elsewhere.
In connection with the "Yellow certificates" aktzye there
began in the Ghetto a series of fictitious deals in which a widow with
the certificate would register a stranger as her husband and vice
versa. Parents with a certificate would adopt strange children. These
deals were done without any compensation but there were also cases
when it was done for money. In addition to all this, there were some
possibilities of buying the life certificates - some heads of the
military establishments, instead of distributing the certificates
among the Jews working for them, contrived to sell them in the Ghetto.
My brother-in-law Mula acquired one of such certificates.
Additionally, the following members of my family received the yellow
certificates: my wife's sister Rachel Cholem, her brother David
Gerstein and my sister Emma Eisurowicz. Rachel and David received
their certificates from the military authorities for whom they
worked. My sister Emma received her yellow certificate from the
Judenrat in recognition of her services to the community.
Thus in addition to those who were killed previously - my brother
Yefim, my two sister's husbands Aaron Eisurowicz and Alexander Mintz
and my sister-in-law's husband Yermasha Cholem, the yellow
certificates aktzye condemned to death my Mother, my sister Anya with
her daughter Shela, my brother's wife Fanya and daughter Lila as well
as Emma's daughter Eva and her husband Lolek Shelubski. My wife was
to suffer the loss of her Mother with her sister, aunt Sarah as well
as her sister Vera with her husband Naum Zlatin.
Describing a time in which our destiny gave us no quarter, one
should recognize that it was a time which bared people's souls.
Frequently we saw people ready for self sacrifice, especially when it
was to protect those they held dear. However, there were also quite
a few people who, though under normal circumstances would have ended
their days as model citizens, in these tragic days followed the
elemental instinct of self preservation; to save themselves they
would thrust others to their deaths - in some unique cases would even
forfeit their own children. As shown by the coming events, my
sister Emma belonged to the category of those people capable of the
highest self-sacrifice. In these horrible days Emma remained
steadfast to her own self. Even though realizing that by this act she
was condemning herself to death, Emma had insisted that the Judenrat
should transfer her yellow life certificate to her son-in-law Leon,
thus giving him the chance to save his wife - her daughter Eva. The
horror of the situation consisted of the fact that the yellow life
certificate did not legalize the survival of the parents, brothers,
sisters or even of the adult children of its possessors.
The terror of the coming disaster was deepened for my wife and
myself by our fear for the life of our daughter Perella, who still
remained in the Infectious Barracks on the outskirts of town in
Zwierzyniec. The blue life certificates were distributed to those
family members qualified by the German authorities. Immediately upon
the conclusion of the distribution, the Germans, having first
surrounded the ghetto with Lithuanian police, ordered all the
possessors of the yellow life certificates and their families to leave
the ghetto on the morning of October 24th and go to their work
places.
The nightmarish events of the night of October 23rd, 1941 on
the eve of the "aktzye of the gele sheinen (yellow life
certificates)" will never leave my heart. My pen is unable to render
a picture of the happenings of that night when for the majority of the
ghetto population the morning was to bring death, and the luckier
part was going to lose those they held most dear.
Throughout the whole night, the surrounding darkness notwithstanding,
the streets of the ghetto were overfilled with people - everybody
moving and hurrying somewhere.
Among those who could find no rest on that night were my wife and I.
On one hand we couldn't wait for the morning when we could hurry
to the Infectious Barracks and hand our daughter the blue life
certificate, thus saving her from the mortal danger which we knew
threatened her as an inmate. Our experience taught us that in an
"akzye", the Germans would first of all mercilessly kill the weak -
the old and the sick.
On the other hand we were unwilling to accept the looming disaster and
the whole night was spent in vain groping for ways of saving the
doomed. Before dawn, I remember we ran to my wife's sister Rachil who
lived on the opposite side of the ghetto to consider with her whether
there could be any chance that, because of her long established
friendship with Anatole Fried, the head of the Judenrat, she could
use her yellow life certificate to save her mother. Not wanting to
emphasize the tragic destiny of those left behind, we parted from
them without tears...
Hurrying to our daughter we were the first at the gate at dawn where
the German officials, headed by Franz Murer and Martin Weiss, after
checking our documents permitted us to leave the ghetto. In great
trepidation we rushed to the infectious barrack where we were
granted a minute of great relief when through the window we saw
Perella alive, even though very skinny and, as we found later,
healthy - the scarlet fever diagnosis established in the ghetto might
have been wrong. The hospital administration permitted us to take
Perella with us to the H.K.P. workshop where we were supposed to
remain all day. The other Jewish children left in the infectious
barrack were killed.
Prella's interjection:
I was overjoyed to be reunited with my Parents, being able to embrace
my Mother made me indescribably happy. Nevertheless when a kind and
courageous Gentile named Pawlin offered to give me shelter on the
Aryan side, my Parents gratefully accepted the offer. Instead of going
back to the ghetto, I went with Pawlin to his apartment on Mala
Pohulanka street where he lived with his wife and baby.
Father continues: After my wife and I returned with sinking hearts
to the ghetto, we learned that from our room the Germans took to their
deaths my Mother, my wife's Mother and Aunt Sara; nevertheless, when
we found that, beyond my expectations, my sisters Emma and Anya with
her daughter Shela, as also Vera and Naum Zlatin managed to hide and
survived - I must admit that I did not cry for my Mother. The fact
that on that evening the news of the murder of my own Mother was not
the worst possible disaster for me gives some slight inkling about
the mental torments we were subjected to. As I subsequently learned,
Fanya, the wife of my brother Yefim and her daughter Lila, who lived
in the ghetto with Fanya's family, the Shabsels, perished during the
"aktzye" of October 24th.
Nevertheless, the Germans succeeded in extracting from the
ghetto only a minority of the "illegals" on October the 24th. The
majority managed to come through - but for how long?
By that time the following occurrence forced our Gentile friends to
think twice before giving shelter to the Jews: Shortly before the
"yellow life certificate aktzye" Franz Murer came to the ghetto gate
and summoned my childhood friend Victor Chelem who was thought to be
very rich. Murer demanded that Victor give up to him the gold that
he had hidden outside of the ghetto. Nothing would happen to Victor
if he complied, Murer said, but if he refused he would be shot
immediately. Victor could do nothing else but take Murer to his
former apartment house and ask the caretaker, Nikolay Ordu to give
the gold to Murer. Murer kept his word and let Victor Chelem go -
but he ordered Nikolay Ordu hanged. The body of Nikolay Ordu was
hanging in Cathedral square with a board fastened to him announcing
that this was what awaited all those who hid Jewish property or who
gave shelter to the Jews.
End of Father's tale.
Pearl Good, continues:
I heard the Pawlins talking about somebody hanging in Cieletnik. I
insisted on being told about it, even though the Pawlins tried to keep
it from me; I then decided to go back to the ghetto, my virtuous
decision was reinforced by my being terribly homesick for my Mother.
I spent the night a few blocks from the Pawlins on Zawalna street,
hidden in the bed of the kind former servant of Dr Luba Cholem; the
servant had remained to serve the Lithuanian who took the apartment
over after the Cholems were chased into the ghetto. The bed was in a
cubicle partitioned out of the kitchen; fortunately, the Lithuanian
never looked into the cubicle, even though I heard him talk in the
kitchen. Next day I walked almost without incident to the H.K.P.
workshop on Wilenska street - as I was nearing it, I suddenly heard a
voice calling: "Pera!" - one of my Russian classmates recognized me -
fearing that she might denounce me since I was walking on the sidewalk
without the "yellow star patch", I didn't answer her and ran in into
the workshop; when in the evening it was time for the Jews to go
back to the ghetto, I came with them to the ghetto. The kind German
Schirmeister Berger went with us and told the guard at the gate to let
me in. I remember that I was especially eager to join my Parents
in the ghetto because I felt, incredibly, that my being with them
would protect them. Strangely enough, two years later I found in the
H.K.P. camp a "malina" (hiding place), which was indeed instrumental
to our survival.
When I came back to the ghetto, I remember that Mother found that my
hair was lice-infested after the Infectious Barrack. My cousin
Shelinka was very kind to me, patiently helping me comb out my
terribly tangled, matted hair. My mother then addressed the lice
question.
Since it was dangerous for Emma, Anya and Shela to stay in the ghetto,
they slipped out of the ghetto hoping to stay on the Aryan side
with Emma's long-time servant Stefania. When it turned out that they
could not stay there, Father had them transferred to Zawalna 2, to
the house from which our family was driven to the ghetto and where,
upon his request, the caretaker Nikolai agreed to keep them in the
basement and feed them.
Seeing the terrible circumstances prevailing in Wilno and
communicating through Nikolay, we decided that my aunts and Shela
should move to Byelorussia, to a little town named Woronowo situated
about 70 kilometers from Wilno. My Grandfather had died in Woronowo
of a heart attack on July 8th, 1926.
In the workshop Father met a German soldier who, for some
remuneration, delivered my aunts and Shelinka to Woronowo in an
armored car.
As Nikolay told us later, my aunt Emma must have had a foreboding of a
sad fate awaiting them, she was sobbing bitterly as she was stepping
into the car. To our great sorrow, Emma's forebodings turned out
to be terrifyingly correct.
The Lithuanian police came to Woronowo and arrested all the Jewish
refugees from Wilno, Emma, Anya and Shelinka among them, two weeks
after their arrival. After keeping them locked in the building of the
local cinema for 24 hours, the Lithuanian police shot all of them,
numbering about 300 people, on November 15th, 1941.
Thus perished on the 49th year of her life.my aunt Emma, an
incredibly wonderful person. Having sacrificed herself to save the
life of her daughter Eva, Emma's death was the culminating point of
her life in which she knew no limits for sacrifice and for love.
Remembering the death of his sister Anya, Father recalled that in
1963, at the time of their last meeting in Paris, uncle David
sobbed when they talked about Anya, (from our entire family only David
and Father had survived) Thus he expressed his sorrow not only
about Anya's untimely and violent death but also for her troubled
life. Well read, companionable and witty, Anya was favored with
intellectual abilities, a lively disposition and a lovely appearance.
But she could not marry the man she loved and did not find herself
fully in her role as mother. Anya did not find happiness in her
marriage to Alexander Mintz, though Sasha surrounded her with love
and devotion. Sasha was not up to Anya's intellectual level and, in
addition, he did not earn enough to make a proper living - thus
lowering Anya's social standing. One has to appreciate the importance
of social position in our provincial city to have insight into proud
Anya's sufferings when she was looked down upon by former bosom
friends. Thus, having tasted the inconstancy of fate and of human
friendship, Anya was not satisfied with her lot during the last
years of her life. My aunt Anya was 47 years old when she perished
and her daughter Shelinka (whom Father had nursed while he lived with
my Grandmother) was only seventeen.
Dissatisfied with the insufficient amount of victims of the October
24th killings, the German authorities decided on a second "aktzye".
This time those who possessed the "yellow life certificates" and
their families were supposed to leave the ghetto Number One on
November 3rd, and for a couple of days go to stay in the ghetto Number
Two which by that time had already been emptied of its inhabitants.
This time Yakow Gens was checking the "life certificates" at the gate.
Looking back I would like to emphasize that, hunting with a cudgel in
his hand for the "illegals" and condemning them to death, Gens in no
way resembled the leader who, with pain in his heart, sacrificed a few
in order to save many of the people entrusted to him - as he is
described by some of our historians (Arad and others).
My Parents were able to save, by taking her out to the second ghetto
as their second daughter, a 19-teen year old girl from Kowno named
Yocheved Shadowska who lived in our room. To look younger Yocheved
braided her hair and put on a shorter dress.
The lifeless streets of the second ghetto were horrifying -
the room we entered was deathly quiet, there was an unfinished meal on
the plates on a table, opened prayer books and prayer shawls spoke
about a suddenly interrupted life, about people who were caught
unawares when taken to their deaths. With us in the second ghetto
was the daughter of aunt Emma, my cousin Evochka and her husband,
also my aunt Vera Zlatin and her husband Naum. My other aunt,
Rachil gave her yellow life certificate to the Zlatins and during the
next few days did not return to the ghetto and stayed at her place of
work with the permission of her chief, Feldfebel Anthon Schmidt. The
more lengthy and detailed search for the Jews remaining in the
ghetto, mostly hidden in secret hiding places, "Malines" lasted
until November 5th at which time we were allowed to return to the
ghetto Number One.
The victims of the two "yellow certificates aktzyes" numbered more
than 6,000, and just from October 1st, 1941 the Jewish community had
lost more than 20,000 people.
Destiny knew no pity for us in that period - we lost seven members of
our closest family - both Grandmothers, three aunts, and two
cousins. The news of the tragic events of Woronowo threw Father into a
deep depression, I remember - strangely enough it was his fear for
the lives of myself, my Mother and his own life that made him hold on
to his strength in those days.
We were kept alive for the time being because of the German need for
a Jewish work-force. For instance, to supply their army with warm
clothing for the winter campaign, and faced with the fact that in
eastern Europe the furriers were all Jewish, the German army
organized furrier workshops for the manufacture of fur garments in the
Wilno ghetto. The Jews were ordered to give up to the Germans all our
fur garments, (I remember we had to cut out the fur from the collar of
my winter coat, it looked terrible, I regretted grabbing my winter
coat in exchange for the fall one which I was wearing when we were
chased into the ghetto). The workers of these workshops and their
families - about one thousand people - moved out of the ghetto, to a
separate, more privileged work camp named "Kailis". The "Kailis"
workers were untouched by the "Yellow Life Certificates" aktzyes
and were allowed to retain all the members of their families.
There were two more bloody "aktzyes" before the end of 1941. The
first, during which about 500 people perished, was directed
against the family members of the Jewish manual workers of the
Gestapo, who during the previous "aktzyes" had been permitted to
retain their brothers, sisters and parents.
The second, the so-called "aktzye" of the pink certificates (of
which about 400 people fell victim) was directed against the
"illegal" inhabitants of the ghetto and took place before Christmas of
1941. The family members of those possessing the yellow life permits
did not have to leave the ghetto this time, they were given pink
certificates instead. I remember that at that time while we were all
sleeping on the floor, a big bed was put into our room for a
nursing woman with mastitis and her baby - apparently she had
"protekzya" (pull with those in power in the ghetto). She seems not
to have had enough "pull" to get a pink certificate for the baby.
When the Lithuanians came to check the pink certificates, I was
holding the baby, dandling it - I showed them my certificate and they
did not ask me for the baby's. I don't remember what happened to the
woman, but the bed disappeared soon afterward...
I remember that at about that time Dr. Perevozki brought to our room
his lovely sixteen-year-old niece Zoya. Apparently Zoya, who spoke
perfect French had been placed as a French governess into a Polish
nobleman's estate but was discovered and taken to the Gestapo. By
some fluke Zoya was released "temporarily" to the ghetto, but then the
Gestapo wanted her back - she was saying to my Mother: "I am so
scared!" Alosha Perevozki hoped that if the Jewish police woudn't
find her in his room they woud not look for her, but the Gestapo
threatened him and he had to deliver her to them.
At the beginning of 1942, when there came some temporary
stabilization, the population of the ghetto (including the "illegals"
- people who, by hiding in "malinas" and leaving the ghetto for a
time were able to avoid what was intended for them) numbered about
20,000. A broad medical service was organized. Measures were taken
to forestall the epidemics which threatened the inhabitants of the
ghetto because of the unsanitary conditions engendered by the
unspeakeable crowding. All the departments of the Jewish Hospital
headed by Doctor Ilya Grigorevich Sedlis were functioning normally
from the moment we were put into the ghetto. At the Hospital,
clinics offering the services of all the specialists were opened.
Two bath houses were hurriedly built in which all the ghetto inmates
had to wash regularly - or be deprived of their food rations. In the
bath houses the clothing and underwear of the bathers were
simultaneously subjected to scrupulous disinfection. The Nazis did
not achieve our deaths through starvation exhaustion and infections
- as they did in the concentration camps and with the Soviet
prisoners of war.
The Jews working in the German institutions outside of the ghetto
were able to purchase some food-stuff by bartering their clothes and
underwear, or by paying cash for it. Gentile traders were waiting for
them at the places of work foreseeing that they could charge high
prices. Returning from work to the ghetto the workers would
contrive (at the risk of their lives) to smuggle the food in -
some for their families, others to sell.
This trickle of food into the ghetto was fiercely prohibited by the
Germans since it counteracted their plans of starving to death the
non-working population of the ghetto. On order and under observation
of the Germans - frequently checked by Franz Murer himself, the
Jewish police would scrupulously search the returning workers and
cruelly beat those trying to smuggle in food. In some cases Murer,
who was particularly brutal in the fight against the bringing in
of food to the ghetto, would send the offenders to their death. The
news that Murer was at the gate as they were returning, was very bad
news indeed. Father's group was twice searched by Murer personally
as they were marching down Zawalna street on the way to the ghetto.
Father managed to let fall into the snow the food carried by him
before Murer, pushing his finger into his chest asked: "and you?"
We continued to live in the apartment house on Straszuna street
No.1. Though that house had been selected as the living space for the
manual workers of the Gestapo, we were able to continue living
there, since uncle Naum Zlatin, who shared our room, had been
appointed house superintendent by the Judenrat. Since the bloody
aktzyes had reduced the number of inhabitants of our room to seven,
my Parents put a door on top of two trestles and covered it with a
comforter, thus graduating from sleeping on the floor up to a
"nara". For me we managed to get an iron folding bed without a
mattress on which I slept covering the iron rail with my pillow - it
was actually less comfortable than the floor.
Since the acute terror had abated temporarily, we had time to
become fully aware of our miseries. Our nerves were still stretched
to the breaking point. The utter lack of privacy was really
unbearable; I dreamed of having a closet-size space with a door to
exclude everybody else for just myself and my Parents I'm
embarrassed to admit that at that time being twelve and then a
thirteen-year-old I hated my mean aunt Vera more than I did the
Nazis. With the spring of 1942 my Mother started to go out with the
group for work in the H.K.P. at 23 Wilenska street. She worked till
noon as the cleaner of the office of Boleslaw Poddany and returned
alone to the ghetto with a special permit. Once both my Parents did
not come back at the appointed time - I was frantic, aunt Vera was
making fun of me: "Now you will be all alone!" The difference of aunt
Vera's saccharine sweetness before the war and her hostility now was
very glaring. I guess when she was flirting with my Father while
maintaining close relations with my Mother - her "best friend" she
needed to "to show off her love for me". Now things were very
different - besides our horrible "end of the world" conditions, uncle
Naum had suffered a heart attack and Vera was not willing to be kind
to a pesty kid.
A relatively quiet time for the Wilno ghetto began with the
beginning of 1942. It was taken advantage of by the Judenrat to
organize the life in the ghetto. There were the measures of hygiene,
medical help and the feeding of the needy and the care for the
ghetto children, the vast majority of them orphans. Schools were
opened for the first grades, with Yiddish as the teaching language.
My Mother arranged private lessons for me - some geometry from a
young, sickly physician (I always loved geometry ever since) and a
smattering of English from Mrs Poznanski - that is how I could attempt
to read "Gone with the wind" a year later in the HKP camp. There was
also a school of music and piano, my friend Lubka Kantarowicz was
enrolled in it. This was the same Lubka who a year before won the
"Socialist Competition" with me - I unwittingly helped her win, even
though it broke my heart not to be the best. What a difference a year
makes! By now I realized that just being able to go to school was a
great privilege! The books of the Straszun library - across the
street from us on Straszuna were greatly treasured. Books were the
only way of soaring above the horror of our lives - I craved them
incessantly. Although our house was across the street from the
library, at first I was unable to take advantage of it - the library
was incredibly packed, after going there and waiting to be permitted
to take out a book, on my first attempt I was not able to do so. After
waiting for what seemed like hours, I left, discouraged; later I was
told that I should have taken a number - I soon did so and
triumphantly got many books thereafter
That was the time in which there were performances of the ghetto
symphonic orchestra conducted by the composer Durmashkin; the choir
performed Jewish folk-songs. A Yiddish theatre was created, largely
due to the drive and endeavors of the chief of police, Yakov Gens,
and of his assistant, Josef Glasman. A series of concerts was
organized. Some of the songs performed had been composed in the
ghetto. The performers Abram Bergolski, a newcomer from Russia, and
Chayele Rosenthal, a native of Wilno, were especially popular. We
personally, grieving about the loss of those dear to us, did not
attend any performances in the ghetto. Father said: "You don't go
dancing in the cemetary".
A thirteen-year-old at that time, I would pace the congested,
truncated alleys of the ghetto with my friends Lubka Kantarowicz and
Ninka Kaplinska. We would look up at the sky, try to find some of
the rare sunny crevices and dream about walking outside, looking up at
the leafy trees, (there was not a blade of grass in the ghetto),
swimming in the river, inhaling the breeze, going to school. School
seemed glorious, learning a privilege I aspired to rather than the
drudge it used to be. I could not imagine how people free to enjoy
all these wonders could possibly be unhappy - life would be so
beautiful! We were becoming interested in boys, but none of them even
noticed us! Lubka was tantalizing us with descriptions of a music
school teacher (Durmaszkin?) groping the girls who later were vying
with each other about whom he touched more intimately - "he touched
you under your blouse, but he put his hand under my panties". Lubka
boasted to us that she bravely slapped down the teacher's hand when
he pulled up the front of her sweater. We were appraising each
other's looks - Ninka, olive-skinned with regular features and
dark-eyes was the prettiest, Lubka had beautiful large blue-green eyes
and I had the best hair, teeth and smile. Neither Lubka nor Ninka
lived to enjoy being the lovely young ladies I' m sure they would have
become.
I thought that after we got liberated I would get tanned and gain
some weight, maybe the boys would notice me then!
The tension in the ghetto was growing. Feeling that we were
nearing the final event, the active people (I'm afraid Father was not
one of them), began to prepare some havens for themselves. Some on
the outside, having provided themselves with counterfeit documents,
others inside the ghetto, utilizing basements, attics and the city
sewers as hiding places.
The awaited events were not long in coming. The liquidation of our
ghetto began in August of 1943, when the Germans arrested some crews
returning from work to the ghetto and loaded them into a railroad
transport which they were told would take them to Vaivary, a work
camp in Estonia. We were slightly calmed by the fact that, in
contrast to the former practice in which people supposedly taken to
work were actually ending in Ponary, this time letters arrived in
the ghetto from which we learned that Vaivary was not a myth, it
actually existed. After a couple weeks this was repeated. A few
hundred people returning from work were again caught by the Germans
and sent to Vaivary. Even though the percentage of people working for
the Germans was continually growing (by now even I, a
thirteen-year-old, was working, sorting and cleaning German army
coats), we knew that the catastrophe was near. The cataclysm was
upon us in full force on September 1st, 1943. When we woke up at dawn
to go to work we heard from our neighbors about the panic reigning in
the ghetto, everybody looking for a hiding place. During the night
soldiers, this time Estonian, surrounded the ghetto and wouldn't let
anybody out. We next heard that the Estonian patrols had entered
the ghetto and were seizing men. When we and the Zlatins rushed
outside, looking for a place to hide, we passed the gate of the house
across from ours on Straszuna 4. The inhabitants of that house (
Mother's cousin Jasha Shapiro among them), motioned for us to go in
before they would clang the gate shut. We hurried in - the Estonian
patrols were closing in. One of the basements of the house in the
back of the yard was transformed into a "malina", a hiding place to
which Jasha Shapiro took us and in which we hid for two days. During
the scary two days in the malina, Nina Kaplinska, (the daughter of
Jasha Shapiro' sister) and I were holding hands, squeezing them to
give each other courage in the darkness and the incessant listening
for the knocks which would signify that our hiding-place was
discovered.
From women whom the "aktzye" initially did not touch we heard about
the happenings in the ghetto: the houses on Straszuna No 12 and 15 had
been blown up when the inhabitants refused to leave their hiding
places; the Jewish police, headed by Gens, were taking a most active
part in the hunting down of men for transport to Estonia; the aktzye
did not touch the "privileged" who, wearing an armband were able to
move freely in the ghetto. In the Jewish hospital Gens personally
marked the majority of the medical personnel for deportation to
Estonia and physically insulted Dr. Sedlis when he protested against
this
When we heard that our house on Straszuna 1 was untouched by
this aktzye, since it housed the manual workers of the Gestapo, we
returned to our room on the evening of September 2nd. This was an
incautious step - on the morning of September 3rd, Neugebauer, the
chief of the Wilno Gestapo, accompanied by Salek Desler, came into
the yard of our house with a crowd of Gestapo officials and announced
that all the men living in that house are to pack immediately and go
down into the yard in order to be sent to Estonia. At that moment
there was nothing for Father to do but submit to his fate. However
after we had already sat down for good luck (in a gute mazldike shoh)
before leaving, with the bag already on his shoulder, Mother delayed
him, saying that after all he was not a worker of the Gestapo but of
the H.K.P., she wanted to go and talk to Desler about it. When
Mother approached Desler and started to beg him to let Father stay
pointing out that he was not a Gestapo worker, Desler brusquely
refused her plea. When Mother continued to plead a German suddenly
demanded "what does this woman want?" When Desler told him that she
was asking for permission for her husband, a H.K.P. worker, to stay,
the German (who we later learned was the Gestapo chief for all of
Lithuania) shrugged and remarked: "this one can stay for the time
being". Mother needed nothing more. In this terrifying situation we
had a truly joyful minute when my Mother ran in with the wonderful
news that Father could stay. After hearing these news our neighbors, a
carpenter and a shoemaker who worked for the Gestapo, took off their
bags and hid under the beds.
But no sooner did the Gestapo officials and their captives leave the
yard then Gens and Smilgowski rushed in to verify whether the orders
of the Gestapo had been carried out. When they found out in some way
that the engineer Malkiel, a native of Kowno, had stayed behind,
Gens started shouting: Malkiel ... Under these circumstances my
Mother leaned out of the window and said that the Gestapo had
permitted her husband to stay, upon which Smilgowski (a friend of
Nina Gerstein) made a sign that Father shouldn't move.
In the evening of that frightening day we and the Zlatins who also
left the "maline" went to my uncle David Gerstein to learn from him
what the situation of the ghetto was. David and my aunt Rachil lived
on Rudnicka 7. Uncle David knew how to make himself well liked,
especially by those who could be useful to him. He was able to make
Gens, the ruler of our destinies, enjoy his company. Their
relations became even more friendly after David supplied the ghetto
with fuel. Thus during the "Estonian aktzye", while we were hiding in
the malina, uncle David was able to move freely in the ghetto,
provided with an armband which made him secure against both the
Germans and the Jewish police.
From Rachil we learned that her friends, Anatol Fried, the head of
the Judenrat, and its member, the engineer Guchman, had assured her
that the ghetto would continue to exist.
David came back after seeing Gens late at night and informed us
that the Gestapo chief Neugebaur demanded 2000 women from Gens - thus
the next day there would be an aktzye against women. Rachil and
David's wife Mera got ready to go to Anatol Fried where they would
be safe. When my Parents asked them to take me with them they
thought they would rather not. We and the Zlatins decided to try
and go tomorrow morning to the parents of the ghetto chief of
police Desler, hoping that they would give us shelter. The old
Deslers lived with their son on Rudnicka 4 in the house of the
Judenrat. When we came into the yard of Rudnicka 4 on the morning of
September 4th, we heard Gens addressing a crowd from the balcony
with the following speech:
"Fellow Jews, I managed to obtain the permission of the Gestapo for
the wives and children of those deported to Vaivary to join their
husbands and fathers!"
With this treacherous trick Gens managed to lure 1300 women and
children who believed him into volunteering to go to Vaivary. After
hunting all day in the ghetto, Kittel and the Jewish police managed to
seize the lacking 700 victims and force them onto the transport.
The treachery of Gens is made even more horrible by the fact we
learned after our liberation - the transport of the women and
children was not sent to their husbands but to the gas-chambers of
one of the camps in Poland.. As a defense of Gens's shameful deeds
one often hears the argument that if not he but the Germans had
carried out the "aktzyes", "it would have been worse". I ask: worse
for whom? Certainly not for the many thousands whom Gens and the
police acting on his orders sent to their deaths. In this case worse
off could be only those who, by pushing others to their deaths, had
hoped to save their own lives, a hope in which they turned out to be
cruelly wrong.
The older Deslers kindly took us into their apartment. We and the
Zlatins did not err in our hope that we would find a safe shelter for
the women there (women were hunted on September 4th). After the
"four day aktzye" that started on September 1st, the Germans granted
us a respite. However, the fact that we were forbidden to leave the
ghetto and the Jews stopped going out to work in the city, augured
ominously that the days of the ghetto were numbered. For us, the fact
that Father was cut off from the H.K.P. workshop on Wilenska 23 was in
addition connected with a painful financial loss. In the automobile
part stockroom, which he had managed for more than two years, he hid
three antique enameled gold bracelets and two gold pocket watches
among the merchandise. Boleslaw Poddany with whom we managed to
communicate by letter informed us that he did not find the valuables
in the indicated spot.
H.K.P.
Into the ensuing dismal days filled with the fear for our lives
there came a sudden ray of hope: tidings came to the ghetto that
Major Plagge, the chief of H.K.P. 562, had succeded, after lots of
requests ( he went all the way to Berlin to achieve this ) to
contrive a work camp for the Jews working in his establishment. The
authorities designated for this camp the buildings of the so-called
"cheap housing" on Subocz street. They had been built by the
Jewish philanthropist, baron Hirsh.
Since a large number of the H.K.P. workers had been deported to
Estonia during the September "four day aktzye", initially there was a
possibility for some outsiders to be included into the number of
workers about to go to the newly opened work camp H.K.P. Father
took advantage of this opportunity and inscribed my cousin Eva and her
husband, the engineer Leon Szelubski into the list of the H.K.P.
workers. They were the only surviving members of his family and
moreover he did not want to be separated from them since they needed
his financial support. We still had some valuables which we sold as
needed to buy food. Uncle Naum Zlatin did not succeed in his attempt
to get into the H.K.P. camp. In addition, my other aunt, Rachil
Cholem, asked the Zlatins to stay with her in the ghetto, which she
assured them would continue to exist. She got this assurance from the
engineer Guchman, a member of the Judenrat with whom she was more than
friendly. Our departure for the camp H.K.P. was set for September
16th. Two days before, on September 14th, the ghetto was shocked by
the news that Gens had been killed. He had been summoned to the
Gestapo on that morning and the Gestapo chief Neugebaur personally
shot him at Rossa, the place on the outskirts of town where the
Gestapo arranged an asylum for about seventy of their Jewish manual
workers and their families, headed by their foreman Kamenmacher.
On September 16th, 1943 we left the ghetto together with my cousin
Eva and her husband Leon Shelubski and went to live in the camp
provided for his Jewish workers through the endeavors of the German
Major Plagge, the chief of the H.K.P. 562.

H.K.P.

The H.K.P. camp was placed by the authorities on the outskirts of
town on Subocz street, in the "Cheap hygienic apartments" built by the
Jewish Colonizing society. Apparently filled with bad forebodings,
aunt Vera cried bitterly when we said good-bye. Vera and her husband
Naum remained to live with my other aunt, Rachil, who had believed the
assurances of her close friends, the Judenrat members Fried and
Guchman, that the ghetto would survive. Uncle David had left the
ghetto a few days before and went to a village where a peasant
agreed, for some remuneration, to hide and feed him and his wife
Mera. Uncle Mula remained in the ghetto with his wife and son.
Before leaving the ghetto David handed over to Mula the secret of
his "maline" which was built in the city sewers and in which Mula
and his family hid during the liquidation of the ghetto.
The work camp H.K.P. to which we had moved, consisted of two long,
stone, three-story buildings, in which were located both the
workshops and the dwellings of the workers; it was standing in the
midst of a large empty parcel of land. We were separated from the
rest of the world by walls of barbed wire which were patrolled by the
Lithuanian police. The entrance gate of the camp was located on
Subocz street and the back bordered the Rossa outskirts of town. We
settled in a room on the first (upper) floor of a separate, lower
wing of the right-hand building. We shared the room with Aleksanra
Zaks, and her cousin, Rosa Milecka. My cousin Eva and her husband
settled in the next room to the right of ours, which they shared with
two families. In the room to the left of us lived Father's cousin
Nina and her husband, Kuba Rotstein (their son Tolek was killed by
the "khapuny"). They shared the room with the engineer Arik Malkiel,
and his wife Genya, and also with Alberg, and his wife Yocheved
Shadowska, (whom we saved in 1941 during the second "yellow life
certificates aktzye"). In the last room of our corridor lived, with
engineer Swirski, attorney Zmigrod who subsequently played an
important role in our survival.
Our camp, as well as "Kailis" was under the administration and
subjected to the Nazi "S.S.", embodied in a long-necked German whom
we had nick-named "Golosheyka" (little bare neck). The latter
commanded our camp through a native of Wilno, Nyona Kolysz, appointed
by the Jewish self-government. Kolysh enjoyed the same power and
performed the same functions for us as did Gens in the ghetto, but in
a much more decent way, perhaps thanks to the decency of Major
Plagge. The technical control of the workshops rested in the hands
of the German army through two so-called "Schirmeisters" subordinate
to the chief of the H.K.P., Major Plagge. It was thanks to the
endeavors of Major Plagge, who was guided by his desire to protect his
Jewish workers, that the dwellers of H.K.P., numbering over 1000,
were able to avoid, at least temporarily, the fate of those Jews who
remained in the ghetto.
Not surprisingly, therefore, Major Plagge, our protector
(who, in addition, according to those who had personal contact with
him, was a wonderful man ) was much beloved and respected by us.
The central workshop of the H.K.P. which was still located on Antokol
maintained its connection with us by means of a truck alotted to us
with its driver, the German soldier Beck. Every day Beck would drive
to the central workshops, delivering the fulfilled orders and
bringing back the needed materiel and parts.
A few days after our transfer to H.K.P. Salek Desler (appointed by
the Germans to head the ghetto instead of Gens) came suddenly to the
camp. He brought his parents, whom he placed in our room.
Apparently foreseeing that he would share the fate of Gens, Desler did
not return to the ghetto and hid with his wife Rega in a previously
prepared malina. Deslers's disappearance was immediately noticed by
the Gestapo - they shot his parents in Ponary on the same day and
began an intensive search for him. In place of Desler, for the
few days remaining to the ghetto (the ghetto of Wilno ceased to
exist on September 23rd, 1943) the Germans had put Borys
Beniakonski, a native of Kowno.
We learned about the liquidation of the ghetto of Wilno on the
morning of that day from B. Beniakonski whom the Germans brought to
H.K.P. with his wife and daughter. As we later learned, among the
women sent to their deaths by the Germans were my aunts Rachil Cholem
and Vera Zlatin and also Rashel Perevozki.
We had kept in constant touch with the Perevozkis who lived in the
ghetto in the "doctor's block". At the liquidation of the ghetto
Alosha and his brilliant son Marek were sent to Estonia from where
they were both transported to Germany. They both perished from
starvation, Alosha in Dachau and Marek who worked in the stone
quarries of southwest Germany succumbed just before the American army
arrived there. I used to be sweet on Marek in the summer of 1940 but
we didn't keep in touch in the ghetto.
As we only learned after our arrival to the United States, the fate
of the Zlatins was especially cruel. According to an eye-witness
(Adele Baj), when they were being chased from their apartment, Naum
Ionovich had a heart attack; Vera had been forced by a cruel
Ukrainian to leave her dying husband lying on the stairs and go alone
on her thorny way, which brought her to the gas chambers in the end.
But not all the ghetto dwellers left the ghetto as commanded by the
Germans on September 23rd. On that day, or even a little earlier, the
members of the combat organizations numbering a few hundred succeeded
in getting through, predominantly to the Rudnicki Forest where the
partisans were operating under the command of Zinmanas, a Jew sent
From Moscow.
A much larger number of Jews hid on that day in the "malines"
readied by them before. My wife's brother Samuel (Mula) hid in the
"malina" located in the city sewer with his wife, son and
mother-in-law. However, only a very few of those who hid managed to
survive. Most of them ended in the hands of the Gestapo:
either when they attempted to reach the Jewish camp "Kailis" which was
guarded by Jewish police only; or when, after the Germans had cut
off water in the area of the ghetto, they were forced to look for
water in the Gentile area. The behavior toward them of the Gentile
population contributed greatly toward the destruction of the majority
of those Jews who attempted to run away from fate by hiding in
"malinas". That behavior was indifferent at best and was basically
hostile. After holding the arrested Jews in the vaults of the
Gestapo on Mickiewicza street for some time, the Germans would send
them in large groups to Ponary for execution. At that time some
individual Jews began to arrive to our camp - they were given their
lives by Kittel at the place of execution in exchange for large sums
of gold hidden by them.. Among those who came to our camp from Ponary
was a mother and son Zhukovski. Kittel was so impressed with the
exceptional beauty of the boy, especially by his huge black eyes
with their long lashes, that he sent the boy and his mother to our
camp.
After the liquidation of the ghetto, our insecurity about the fate
of the numerous members of the Gersztein family whom we had left
in the ghetto kept my Parents under terrible stress. The information
we received that uncle Mula with his wife and son were in
"Kailis" was joyful but also deeply shocking. Mula with his son
Gershon, his wife Nina and her mother were caught and thrown into
the cellars of the Gestapo when, after having left the "maline" they
attempted to get through to "Kailis". As they were being sent to
Ponary, Kittel granted the pleas of Kamenmacher, the crew-leader of
the manual workers of the Gestapo, and agreed to send to "Kailis"
Mula, Nina and Gera but not Nina's mother. Finding themselves thus
in "Kailis" without clothes or money, they turned to us for help.
Since we were able to communicate with "Kailis" (I can't remember how)
we sent them 12,000 rubles and a large package of clothing. To our
distress the package did not reach our family, it was intercepted and
grabbed by one Motl Baran who was in their "malina" and managed to
get to "Kailis". However Mula's problems were not only monetary - we
knew that their situation as non-resident newcomers in "Kailis" was
very precarious. Since the fact that many hundreds of refugees from
the Wilno ghetto had found a haven in Kailis was known to the
Gestapo, the latter began demanding from the administration of Kailis
to supply people for work - those people would never come back. The
administration of Kailis, who had no other recourse but to comply
with the demands of the Gestapo, would send out the newcomers in such
cases. Thus about 70 newcomers had been taken for a crew which,
chained, were kept in a pit in Ponary where they had to dig up and
burn the corpses of the many tens of thousands of victims, in a German
attempt to cover up their monstrous crimes.
Thus Kailis was a very insecure place for Mula to remain in, even
though it was a point of transit which gave some refugees from the
ghetto (Dr. Ilya Sedlis, for instance) a chance to prepare a haven on
the Aryan side and survive. Access to the camp H.K.P. was more
difficult than to Kailis since it was fenced in by barbed wire whose
perimeter was patrolled by the Lithuanian police, but the situation
of those who managed to get in was more stable.
Since the camps H.K.P. and Kailis were controlled by the same "SS
official nicknamed by us "Golosheyka" (bare neck), Mother began to
endlessly implore Kolysz, the chief of our camp, for him to ask
"Golosheyka" to transfer Mula and his family from Kailis to our camp.
At first she was unsuccessful, tears and entreaties did not help,
what did help was the intervention of Yasha Shapiro, Mother's cousin,
who was Kolysz's brother-in-law (their wives were sisters). Yasha
had saved us previously - he had taken us into his malina in
September. To our great joy, soon afterward, upon Kolysz's request
"Golosheyka" brought Mula and his family to our camp. Since Mula had
no means of sustenance Father began to give him daily 200 rubles.
In H.K.P., just as it used to be in the ghetto, it was possible to
bribe the Lithuanian police. Taking advantage (by paying him), of
Beck's military truck, sufficient quantities of different foodstuffs,
including even alcoholic beverages, were brought into the camp. The
so-called "cooperative" food store managed by Wilkomir, was situated
on the ground floor below our room. The rations which we received
from the authorities were distributed and the foodstuffs which
Wilkomir bought on the "black market" were sold there.
The sympathy toward us of Major Plagge, the chief of H.K.P., had put
its stamp not only on our working conditions but on the whole way we
lived. Father worked not too laboriously as the stockroom keeper of
the workshop for vehicle seat-repair. They worked from 6 Am to 6 PM
with one hour interruption for dinner, which he ate in our room with
the family. In the room which we shared with people with whom we
arranged to live and in which there was running water and a kitchen
stove, we slept in beds and were able to wash ourselves and to cook.
Using hired help we were frequently able to change our personal and
bed linen and even had a carry-out privy which we placed in a
cubby-hole under the staircase - thus we did not have to use the
filthy, stinking enclosed pit in the courtyard. The cubby-hole played
a crucial role in our survival, as we will see later.
Similarly to how it was in the ghetto, the living conditions (as long
as one was permitted to stay alive) largely depended upon the
financial means one possessed.
His financial losses notwithstanding, Father still had in the camp, in
addition to a gold ten ruble coin (the remainder from the sale of
Mama's Persian lamb coat), a massive golden cigarette case and a
platinum mounted 1 1/2 carat diamond ring. All this Mama carried on
her abdomen under her girdle. However, since we did not know how long
we would be incarcerated, and we had to help our relatives, we ate
very modestly.
My cousin Eva was happily married, she loved Lolek very much. She
was then 22 or 23 years old and wanted to live! She told me: "If they
would just let us survive until I'm thirty years old, if they would be
good years, that would be enough for me!" She did not get her
wish...
At the gate of the camp there stood a small building which had an
entrance from the street and served as a receiving station where the
camp administration would receive the orders for the needs of the
German military. Since Jews served in this receiving station, it was
a place where we could meet the Gentiles who had access to it .
Borys Beniakonski, who managed in the ghetto the
workshops which serviced the needs of the German army, had organized
the same kind of workshops in the camp H.K.P. Mother worked in the
workshop which repaired German army coats, and I worked in the one
where the heels were knitted on to the torn and dirty socks of the
German soldiers. For medical help for the camp population (which
numbered more than one thousand) two physicians, the doctors Feignberg
and Shumiliski, some nurses and the dentist Swerdlina came to the camp
at the same time we did.
Simultaneously with us, some members of the ghetto Jewish police:
Tovbin, Migantz, Witkowski and Sakin settled in the camp, supposedly
to maintain order, but mainly to carry out the orders of the German
authorities. In our camp also lived those Jews who were known
agents of the Gestapo: Averbuch and Nikka Dreizin. The first with
his wife, the other with his mother. To these two was added a third
one - Jona Bak, a dental technician who was co-opted as an agent by
the Gestapo-man Tindens for whom Bak used to do dental work. Al three
enjoyed a privilege of which we were deprived - they could leave
the camp and move around the city. Some others had the right to leave
the camp, since they worked for Germans in the city: one Geller,
and the young daughter of Galerkin, who now worked as a smith in the
camp. They both, while living in the Wilno ghetto, had worked at
the administration of the Labor Organization TODT. At the time of
the liquidation of the Wilno ghetto the chief of the TODT
organization, by that time a high official of the Gestapo, placed them
in our camp. He arranged for Geller, who spoke German and Polish, to
be the translator to the official in charge of Jewish affairs in
the Gestapo of Wilno (Shroder?) and Galerkin to be the cleaner of
his private apartment. We knew from Geller, (an acquaintance of our
roommate, Aleksandra Zaks), who would drop in to our room, about
what was going on at the Gestapo. From him we later learned about the
circumstances under which perished the brother of my uncle Yermasha,
the engineer Moses (Mosya) Cholem.
In the beginning, when there was no regular accounting of those
living in the camp, it was rather easy to get out of the camp by
mixing in with the Gentiles who had access to the receiving station.
The terrible difficulties would begin for the fugitives on the "Aryan
side", since, because of the hostility of the gentile population, they
ran a great risk of being caught and ending their lives on Ponary.
There were also those few, however (among them those who would
become our very dear friends, Alexander and Emilia Sedlis) who, took
advantage of the chance to sneak out and survived by preparing a
trustworthy haven on the "Aryan side". It was Emilia (Mila) Sedlis
who, while living in our camp, had received through a Polish
railroad-man a letter from her mother, Genia Zeldowicz. She had been
sent to work in the camp Kaiserwald near Riga during the liquidation
of the Wilno ghetto .
This possibility of sneaking out of the camp disappeared, however,
in connection with an event which reminded us again that we were
living under a Damocles's Sword and that our lives were in the hands
of monsters. I do not remember the exact date, but it happened
before the advent of frosts which usually come in November. After
all the workers had been mustered out on the yard where the Jewish
police had built a gallows (on the command of the Germans) , the
gate suddenly opened and three Gestapo-men, led by Bruno Kittel, the
liquidator of the ghetto, drove in an open car. They brought with
them two fugitives from our camp they had caught - a woman who
belonged to a family of society's dregs nicknamed "Pozhar" (Fire) and
her unofficial husband. The deathly silence which began to reign as
the Gestapo-men moved towards the gallows with the condemned was
broken by the piercing cry of "mama!" which suddenly sounded from a
window on the upper floor of one of the buildings in which we saw a
child's head. Before the passing of even one minute a little girl,
maybe eight or ten years old, ran out from the building and rushed
with a joyous cry "mama" to embrace her mother (Pozhar). We
witnessed here a horrible, heartrending scene - the joy of the child
who thought that she had found the mother she was longing for, and
the distorted by suffering face of the mother who was passionately
embracing her child, knowing that she was walking to her death.
When the whole group arrived at the place of execution, Kittel
motioned to Grisha Shneider, the camp's blacksmith, (the brother of
Alexander Shneider, a violinist famous in the United States), to
step forward from our lines and ordered him to be the executioner.
However, when the man (whom they were hanging first) fell twice when
the noose tore, Kittel ordered him to kneel down and killed him by a
shot in the back of his head. Afterwards, while he was killing the
woman one of the other Gestapo-men killed the child. The Gestapo was
not satisfied with this, however. Having decided to shoot 36 women as
a punishment, to forestall any more flights from the camp, the next
morning, after the men had gone to work, the Gestapo ordered the
Jewish police to chase all the women and children out of the rooms
onto the huge yard adjacent to the buildings.
When the policeman Miganz, a man my parents knew, chased us
down onto the yard, we were immediately surrounded by rifle-wielding
Lithuanian police. Kittel mustered us out into rows and stood before
us with his arms crossed. My mother and I were in the first row,
Kittel was standing just in front of us. He was very handsome, like
a film actor. I will never forget his standing before us, regarding
us for a very long time - I had nightmares long afterward imagining
huge, flashing, fluorescent green eyes staring at me. Then Kittel
smiled and, I guess on a sign from him, the Lithuanian police
started to club us, herding us around the side of the building,
toward where they were grabbing and dragging women into the black van
standing in between the two buildings. My mother said: "Lets go,
why be beaten up before we die?" But I wanted to live so
passionately, I was looking at the tiny barred basement windows and
wishing I could squeeze through them. I pulled my mother away from
the side from which they were dragging women to the black van, at the
risk of being clubbed. My Mother was anxiously repeating: "I have
the golden cigarette case on me, dad will have nothing to live on
after they take us!" Then, suddenly, my father broke through to us
through the clubbing Lithuanians. The only man that came to stand
with his family... When it was over (they had filled their quota of
victims), and we could leave the yard, we ran like arrows to the
upper floor of the building - the ecstasy of being able to do this
simple thing was indescribable! Through the high window we looked
down on the yard - the black van was still there, we saw a frenzied
man in a paroxysm next to it, vainly begging the Germans to let his
wife out.
When Father happened to walk out of the workshop he saw in the
yard a huge black van with our German driver Beck at the wheel. On
the lot behind the building Mother and I were hemmed in with a few
hundred women and childr