Rescuers of Jews
Šmidas (Schmid) Anton
GATES OF DAWN MIRACLE
Dalija Epšteinaitė
The situation of Hermann Adler in the Vilnius Ghetto was different than that of many prisoners. Hermann was not from Vilnius and had neither relatives nor friends in Lithuania. He lived here for only a year and a half after a long and dangerous journey.
Born in Nurnberg in a family of a Jewish teacher, Hermann graduated from a teacher training school at Breslau University. Not long after Hermann started teaching at Landschut, in Bavaria, when in 1934, one of his colleagues, a police officer, recommended him to leave the city. At that time the Dachau concentration camp was already in operation, and some other camps also were under establishment.
Hermann was running from Hitler’s terror. He tried to settle in Czechoslovakia, however, when the country became part of the Reich, he had to run further to Poland and Ukraine. On the New Year’s Eve 1940 Hermann, together with other eight refugees, crossed the Lithuanian border by the frozen lake. Many refugees expected to reach Palestine, the then mandate territory of England, through Lithuania, which at the time was independent. The project failed as the Soviets occupied the country and closed the borders. Soon the Nazis marched into Vilnius and all the Jewish residents were imprisoned together in the ghetto. Inevitable death could have been distanced if Hermann had had a craftsman certificate, however, he was a teacher and there were only unofficial schools in the ghetto, so his profession could have only guaranteed him a quick death in Paneriai pits. Despite the imminent danger, Hermann made a mad decision: without any hope to survive he decided to take the responsibility for another person and got married in the ghetto.
Anita Distler was a Viennese opera singer and Hermann faced a number of challenges together with her during the time when they tried to escape to the East. The only thing they could do was hide, avoid people and stay in their small room at Ligoninės street. Hermann tried giving private German language lessons, however once on his way to class he was caught on the street without a yellow specialist card and was pushed into a line of those sentenced to death.
When the crowd reached Vokiečių (Deutsche strasse) street, the chaplain came out of the Lutheran church, stopped the people and asked for ten men to repair the church roof. Hermann was among the lucky ten.
The prisoners were so exhausted after the long starvation that the chaplain returned all of them to the ghetto leaving only Hermann, whom he found easy to communicate with. In the evening the simple roof repair was over and the chaplain let Hermann go. One could come back to the ghetto only by mixing in with the workers, but everyone had already returned and the curfew was about to start, so he had nowhere to go.
I heard the bells ring. It was the end of mass at St. Theresa church. My legs carried me there. I rang the bell at the presbytery door. The older man introduced himself: the parish priest Andrzej Gdowski (Andžejus Gdovskis).
The Church of St. Theresa, as well as the Chapel of the Gates of Dawn, belonged to the Monastery of the Discalced Carmelites at the time. There were other premises of the monastery next to the former defence wall of the city: cells of the brothers Carmelites, the library, the refectory and a beer house. The Discalced Carmelites looked after single elderly people, orphans, and served the parish of more than a dozen thousand church-goers.
Parish Priest Andrzej (called Frantiszek) Gdowski was not only a Christian of noble and humane soul. He had studied at Linz University, was consecrated as Father Andrzej at the Györ (Hungary) Discalced Carmelite Monastery, and he had supervised Carmelite fraternities in Krakow, Wadowice. He had also been delegated by the Roman Chapter to supervise the entire province. In Lvov, he started the construction of a new monastery and in 1936 was assigned to continue his duties in Vilnius.
Ostra Brama Monastery with the Black Madonna Chapel was famous in the entire Polish speaking region to which Vilnius City had belonged for quite a while. Then I, with no rights, persecuted fugitive of the ghetto, became friends with parish priest Andrzej Gdowski, who, risking his life would hide me in the times of danger.
Hermann Adler used to receive shelter frequently at the Discalced Carmelite Monastery. To avoid being caught and locked in the ghetto he would rush to the Carmelite brothers and would often sleep in the monastery and it was there he started writing his poetry and prose books. However, for Anita the doors of the male monastery were closed. Hermann decided to look for a place to hide his wife. Father Andrzej referred him to sergeant Anton Schmid (Antonas Šmidas), the head of the Wermacht distribution point. The parish priest had no doubts that Schmid would help. Quite recently Anton had visited the parish priest asking to issue a baptism certificate to one girl who had escaped from the ghetto. Anton Schmid was not German, he was Austrian, from Vienna. He hated the Nazis and would arrange a good certificate for Hermann too. Actually, Schmid gave much more: he let the Adler couple stay in his official three-room-flat. Father Gdowski got them the documents. These were the passports of the members of the parish died and secretly buried, which relatives agreed to give to the persecuted ghetto fugitives. When living in Schmid’s flat, Hermann used to visit the Discalced Carmelite Monastery. He was not the only guest there. Other fugitives found shelter in the monastery, next to the railway. It was a group of Jews who managed to escape from a train of people deported on 14 June 1941. Here they believed better times would come when the deportations were over. However, better times did not come, the Germans occupied the city and the fugitives had to stay in the cellars of the monastery.
When living in the flat of the head of the distribution point, Hermann and Anita were safe but they also tried to help other ghetto prisoners. They persuaded Anton Schmid to transport the groups of prisoners to other towns where the liquidations were not taking place yet. Anton Schmid transported about 300 people from the ghetto with a government truck from Vilnius to Voronovo or Bialystok to work in factories.
However, Anton Schmid was turned in by somebody and in the middle of January 1942 he was arrested by the Gestapo. During the search, the Adler couple were in the back room and managed to escape through another entrance. Once again the road led them to Father Andrzej.
/.../ Gdowski told us the addresses of his friends in Warsaw and provided us with the documents and we left.
Their way back to the West was probably even more agonizing than their escape to the East. The Adler couple were the witnesses and participants of the Warsaw rebellion. After Warsaw they were imprisoned in Hungary, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany where thousands of prisoners would die of starvation and inhuman living conditions. However, they both survived and managed to survive the difficult DP (Displaced Persons) camp, at the border of Switzerland. It was only in 1960 that Hermann and Anita received the Swiss citizenship. Their way back home lasted 26 years, the most beautiful time in the human life.
Having escaped from death together with his life companion, Adler lived according to the oath: For you have been purchased at a price. Adler was a poet, radio theatre presenter and dedicated his entire life to the Holocaust. The further away the ship of his life sailed from the shore of pain the more vivid were the pictures of his rescuers and friends that were left in the memory island. Sergeant Anton Schmid was shot for helping the Jews on 13 April 1942. Sometime earlier, in the middle of March, the entire Monastery of the Discalced Carmelites was arrested together with Father Andrzej. The Occupation Government accused the priests of disloyalty. Without having the evidence and without any trial, the monks were imprisoned in Lukiškės Prison in very harsh conditions, later they were transported to the Panevėžiukas concentration camp, and afterwards taken to Šaltupys, where they stayed till the end of the war.
After the war, parish priest Gdowski was reinstated. However, the premises of the monastery were not given back to the Carmelites. The war hospital was established there, later it became the student hostel. The monks lived in a private flat on Lapų street. At that time Father Andrzej was 78, seriously ill, and it was painful for him that he was finishing his days between the non-sacred walls. He died on 16 March 1948 and was buried in Rasų Cemetery next to the chapel.
It is difficult to say, how the news from Soviet Vilnius reached Hermann Adler. However, in occupied Warsaw, Hungary, Bergen-Belsen and in the concentration camp of displaced persons, Hermann followed the lives of his rescuers. In 1945, having no citizenship, Hermann submitted his book to the Zurich literary commission under a very unusual title: Ostra Brama and a collection of poems The Songs of the City of Death. The Commission awarded him for his literary works. The publishing house Oprecht published them separately. In the preface, Hermann Adler wrote:
These ballads are meant to pay tribute not only to the brothers of the same fate that I suffered with in the ghettos of Vilnius and Warsaw, the concentration camps of Krakow and Bergen-Belsen, but also to the bright memory of Sergeant Anton Schmid: he was executed for helping the Jews by a decision of the war tribunal and is buried under a wooden cross in Vilnius, at the edge of the German soldier cemetery. I also want to pay tribute to the Polish priest, the parish priest of Ostra Brama, Andrzej Gdowski, who was courageous enough to remain a true Christian under the most difficult circumstances and hide the condemned in the monastery.
Hermann Adler had a long life and managed to see the Third Millennium. He did not put any offering at the picture of St. Mary at the Gates of Dawn, but until his last days he continued giving thanks for the miracle, that had happen: the saving of his life.
From the 4th book Hands Bringing Life and Bread.
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum
Dalija Epšteinaitė
The situation of Hermann Adler in the Vilnius Ghetto was different than that of many prisoners. Hermann was not from Vilnius and had neither relatives nor friends in Lithuania. He lived here for only a year and a half after a long and dangerous journey.
Born in Nurnberg in a family of a Jewish teacher, Hermann graduated from a teacher training school at Breslau University. Not long after Hermann started teaching at Landschut, in Bavaria, when in 1934, one of his colleagues, a police officer, recommended him to leave the city. At that time the Dachau concentration camp was already in operation, and some other camps also were under establishment.
Hermann was running from Hitler’s terror. He tried to settle in Czechoslovakia, however, when the country became part of the Reich, he had to run further to Poland and Ukraine. On the New Year’s Eve 1940 Hermann, together with other eight refugees, crossed the Lithuanian border by the frozen lake. Many refugees expected to reach Palestine, the then mandate territory of England, through Lithuania, which at the time was independent. The project failed as the Soviets occupied the country and closed the borders. Soon the Nazis marched into Vilnius and all the Jewish residents were imprisoned together in the ghetto. Inevitable death could have been distanced if Hermann had had a craftsman certificate, however, he was a teacher and there were only unofficial schools in the ghetto, so his profession could have only guaranteed him a quick death in Paneriai pits. Despite the imminent danger, Hermann made a mad decision: without any hope to survive he decided to take the responsibility for another person and got married in the ghetto.
Anita Distler was a Viennese opera singer and Hermann faced a number of challenges together with her during the time when they tried to escape to the East. The only thing they could do was hide, avoid people and stay in their small room at Ligoninės street. Hermann tried giving private German language lessons, however once on his way to class he was caught on the street without a yellow specialist card and was pushed into a line of those sentenced to death.
When the crowd reached Vokiečių (Deutsche strasse) street, the chaplain came out of the Lutheran church, stopped the people and asked for ten men to repair the church roof. Hermann was among the lucky ten.
The prisoners were so exhausted after the long starvation that the chaplain returned all of them to the ghetto leaving only Hermann, whom he found easy to communicate with. In the evening the simple roof repair was over and the chaplain let Hermann go. One could come back to the ghetto only by mixing in with the workers, but everyone had already returned and the curfew was about to start, so he had nowhere to go.
I heard the bells ring. It was the end of mass at St. Theresa church. My legs carried me there. I rang the bell at the presbytery door. The older man introduced himself: the parish priest Andrzej Gdowski (Andžejus Gdovskis).
The Church of St. Theresa, as well as the Chapel of the Gates of Dawn, belonged to the Monastery of the Discalced Carmelites at the time. There were other premises of the monastery next to the former defence wall of the city: cells of the brothers Carmelites, the library, the refectory and a beer house. The Discalced Carmelites looked after single elderly people, orphans, and served the parish of more than a dozen thousand church-goers.
Parish Priest Andrzej (called Frantiszek) Gdowski was not only a Christian of noble and humane soul. He had studied at Linz University, was consecrated as Father Andrzej at the Györ (Hungary) Discalced Carmelite Monastery, and he had supervised Carmelite fraternities in Krakow, Wadowice. He had also been delegated by the Roman Chapter to supervise the entire province. In Lvov, he started the construction of a new monastery and in 1936 was assigned to continue his duties in Vilnius.
Ostra Brama Monastery with the Black Madonna Chapel was famous in the entire Polish speaking region to which Vilnius City had belonged for quite a while. Then I, with no rights, persecuted fugitive of the ghetto, became friends with parish priest Andrzej Gdowski, who, risking his life would hide me in the times of danger.
Hermann Adler used to receive shelter frequently at the Discalced Carmelite Monastery. To avoid being caught and locked in the ghetto he would rush to the Carmelite brothers and would often sleep in the monastery and it was there he started writing his poetry and prose books. However, for Anita the doors of the male monastery were closed. Hermann decided to look for a place to hide his wife. Father Andrzej referred him to sergeant Anton Schmid (Antonas Šmidas), the head of the Wermacht distribution point. The parish priest had no doubts that Schmid would help. Quite recently Anton had visited the parish priest asking to issue a baptism certificate to one girl who had escaped from the ghetto. Anton Schmid was not German, he was Austrian, from Vienna. He hated the Nazis and would arrange a good certificate for Hermann too. Actually, Schmid gave much more: he let the Adler couple stay in his official three-room-flat. Father Gdowski got them the documents. These were the passports of the members of the parish died and secretly buried, which relatives agreed to give to the persecuted ghetto fugitives. When living in Schmid’s flat, Hermann used to visit the Discalced Carmelite Monastery. He was not the only guest there. Other fugitives found shelter in the monastery, next to the railway. It was a group of Jews who managed to escape from a train of people deported on 14 June 1941. Here they believed better times would come when the deportations were over. However, better times did not come, the Germans occupied the city and the fugitives had to stay in the cellars of the monastery.
When living in the flat of the head of the distribution point, Hermann and Anita were safe but they also tried to help other ghetto prisoners. They persuaded Anton Schmid to transport the groups of prisoners to other towns where the liquidations were not taking place yet. Anton Schmid transported about 300 people from the ghetto with a government truck from Vilnius to Voronovo or Bialystok to work in factories.
However, Anton Schmid was turned in by somebody and in the middle of January 1942 he was arrested by the Gestapo. During the search, the Adler couple were in the back room and managed to escape through another entrance. Once again the road led them to Father Andrzej.
/.../ Gdowski told us the addresses of his friends in Warsaw and provided us with the documents and we left.
Their way back to the West was probably even more agonizing than their escape to the East. The Adler couple were the witnesses and participants of the Warsaw rebellion. After Warsaw they were imprisoned in Hungary, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany where thousands of prisoners would die of starvation and inhuman living conditions. However, they both survived and managed to survive the difficult DP (Displaced Persons) camp, at the border of Switzerland. It was only in 1960 that Hermann and Anita received the Swiss citizenship. Their way back home lasted 26 years, the most beautiful time in the human life.
Having escaped from death together with his life companion, Adler lived according to the oath: For you have been purchased at a price. Adler was a poet, radio theatre presenter and dedicated his entire life to the Holocaust. The further away the ship of his life sailed from the shore of pain the more vivid were the pictures of his rescuers and friends that were left in the memory island. Sergeant Anton Schmid was shot for helping the Jews on 13 April 1942. Sometime earlier, in the middle of March, the entire Monastery of the Discalced Carmelites was arrested together with Father Andrzej. The Occupation Government accused the priests of disloyalty. Without having the evidence and without any trial, the monks were imprisoned in Lukiškės Prison in very harsh conditions, later they were transported to the Panevėžiukas concentration camp, and afterwards taken to Šaltupys, where they stayed till the end of the war.
After the war, parish priest Gdowski was reinstated. However, the premises of the monastery were not given back to the Carmelites. The war hospital was established there, later it became the student hostel. The monks lived in a private flat on Lapų street. At that time Father Andrzej was 78, seriously ill, and it was painful for him that he was finishing his days between the non-sacred walls. He died on 16 March 1948 and was buried in Rasų Cemetery next to the chapel.
It is difficult to say, how the news from Soviet Vilnius reached Hermann Adler. However, in occupied Warsaw, Hungary, Bergen-Belsen and in the concentration camp of displaced persons, Hermann followed the lives of his rescuers. In 1945, having no citizenship, Hermann submitted his book to the Zurich literary commission under a very unusual title: Ostra Brama and a collection of poems The Songs of the City of Death. The Commission awarded him for his literary works. The publishing house Oprecht published them separately. In the preface, Hermann Adler wrote:
These ballads are meant to pay tribute not only to the brothers of the same fate that I suffered with in the ghettos of Vilnius and Warsaw, the concentration camps of Krakow and Bergen-Belsen, but also to the bright memory of Sergeant Anton Schmid: he was executed for helping the Jews by a decision of the war tribunal and is buried under a wooden cross in Vilnius, at the edge of the German soldier cemetery. I also want to pay tribute to the Polish priest, the parish priest of Ostra Brama, Andrzej Gdowski, who was courageous enough to remain a true Christian under the most difficult circumstances and hide the condemned in the monastery.
Hermann Adler had a long life and managed to see the Third Millennium. He did not put any offering at the picture of St. Mary at the Gates of Dawn, but until his last days he continued giving thanks for the miracle, that had happen: the saving of his life.
From the 4th book Hands Bringing Life and Bread.
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum