Natalija Jegorova-Melioranskaja
Dalija Epšteinaitė
Rivka Shmukler got acquainted with Natalija Jegorova in 1940 when she started work at the ELTA agency in Kaunas. This meeting was fatal to both women. It was the beginning of a close friendship.
After the ''Great action'' at the end of October 1941, the prisoners of the Kaunas Ghetto realized that the systematic extermination of Jews would be carried out. Together with her former colleagues, Vytautas Kauneckas and Sofija Binkienė, Natalija Jegorova offered her help to Rivka Shmukler. Natalija herself moved in with her friend Natalija Fugalevičiūtė, and on 29 January 1942, Rivka and Gerta Bagriansky came to live with them after their escape from the ghetto. From that day on, Rivka hid at the two Natalijas - Jegorova and Fugalevičiūtė. Like other rescuers, they had a pseudonym, 'Angels.'
Natalija Pavlovna Jegorova, tenderly called Pavlasha by the people she rescued, was always reserved, calm, and unusually modest. She usually had a kind smile on her face, but she was of an amazingly firm nature. Those who were unreliable in the time of danger would not even suspect that it was her who would wait for the smuggled children at the barbed wire of the ghetto and then take them to a safe place. All this lasted for two and a half years. Sometimes the assistance of her sister, Nadezhda Lukashova, was required, and her friend Liudmila Bronovitskaya, although in poor health herself, would shelter the young fugitives. Fruma Vitkinaitė, Rosian Bagriansky, Margalit Stender, and other ghetto children lived with her. Natalija had a wonderful talent for telling fairy tales, which would calm the children down.
After the war N.Jegorova moved to Vilnius and continued her work in the ELTA agency. As before, every day she would meet Rivka Shmukler and her husband, poet Hirsh Osherovich, who had survived the camps of Siberia. They were Natalija's family right up to their departure to Israel. Later, Natalija Fugalevičiūtė moved to Vilnius as well. Both Natalijas lived in the same flat again, and they were visited here by those to whom both Natalijas had become so dear and close.
In December 1999, Natalija's former wards will commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of their rescuer. Those who are able will go to Vilnius and light a candle in the Rokantiškės cemetery, while those who live far from Lithuania will most likely be eager to reunite and be together…
From Hands Bringing Life and Bread, Volume 2,
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. Vilnius, 1999
