Rescued Jewish Children
Liuba (Lyusya) Borstaite
A Childhood of Orphanages
Liuba (Lyusya) Borstaite
From: Solomon Abramovich and Yakov Zilberg “Smuggled in Potato Sacks”, 2011
In 1924 my father Friеdrich Borst, a German by birth, adopted the Jewish faith and marriied Lea Nemanuncaite, born in a small town of Sesikiai. In 1930 my parents built a big house in Shanchiai neighbourhood, Kaunas, where they kept a bakery.
There were four children in our family: Ida (b. 1925); Leon (b. 1927), now known as Arie Borst; Frida (b. 1931) and me, Lyusya, born on. 01.06. 1941.
In 1940 the Germans had ordered all their citizens to come back to Germany. Knowing what was expecting Jews in Germany, my parents applied for and received the Lithuanian citizenship.
None of my mother's relatives survived the war. In one of the first rounds up my aunt Chaya Rachoviciene and her two daughters Rachel and Riva were shot in the Ninth Fort. Mother's two nephews, sons of her brother, who died before the war, served in the Soviet Army and were killed in battles.
After Kaunas had been occupied by the Germans, my parents were forced to move to the Ghetto.
My uncles from the father’s side heard about it, arrived from Germany and obtained permission for the whole family to live outside the Ghetto, on condition that there would not be any complaints from the neighbours. First of all my father was allowed to leave and then the whole family.
When rumours started spreading through Kaunas that families with even one Jewish parent were beginning to disappear, my parents decided to send us, the children, into hiding.
Ida was a blonde, so she was hidden in Kaunas. Frida on name of Grazina Baniavichiute was entrusted to a Karaim family in Shauliai. The real Grazina's mother Ona Baniaviciene had provided my mother with her daughter's papers.
Leon was sent to parents' acquaintance a peasant Mr. Kavaliauskas, where Leon worked as a shepherd. I was transferred to a family in Panemune. Nobody visited me there by anybody until the liberation. Unfortunately I have never met my rescuers after the war and I do not know their names.
Father died in 1943 from a stroke (according to Leon) or after an operation to remove a brain tumor (according to Ida). Mother was taken back to the Ghetto, probably because someone had informed on her. She met her end there.
In 1944 somehow Ida was issued a document to the effect that she was a Lithuanian and she left for Austria since it was too dangerous to stay in Lithuania with false papers.
After the War we all were returned to our family house in Kaunas. However, the house was nationalized by the Soviets, so we lived on our own in one room on the second floor of the house. Leon was only sixteen, Frida was thirteen and I was three and a half.
When an orphanage for Jewish children was set up, Leon sent me to live there, while he and Frida with the help of “Irgun” left for Palestine. It was a long and uneasy way: Poland, orphanage in Italy, Cyprus and unsuccessful attempt to reach Palestine in 1947: their ship was turned back by British authorities. They reached Israel only in 1948.
Our parents had previously bought land in Haifa, as they had been planning to move there from Lithuania, but were unable to set off in time.
Leon had managed to preserve papers regarding the land purchase, which he took with him to Palestine and was thus able to establish his right of ownership to the land in question. Leon travelled from Israel to Lithuania with all his extended family in 2006. We visited our parents abandoned house and a manor where Leon was hidden. Owner of the manor emigrated from Lithuania before it was released by Russians, The house went on fire several years ago and nobody came to claim ownership on the manor. Thus, Leon knows nothing about his rescuer's fate.
Frida died in Israel when she was only thirty four years old, her children and grandchildren live in Israel.
Ida returned back to Kaunas in 1945. She with her husband Benya Zemaitis immigrated to Israel in 1969.
I lived in the Jewish orphanage it had been closed down. I was sent to the Lithuanian orphanage in Marijampole and then to the Russian one near Vilnius. After completing my school studies in 1958, I was offered the chance to go and live on a Soviet collective farm, 'kolhoz', but I turned it down.
I was then given a travel voucher to a small town to earn my living there as a simple construction worker. I did various kinds of manual work there, before gaining a place to study in the Polytechnic Institute in Kaunas. I did not enter the Institute immediately after I graduated from the high school. My mistress told me after graduation exams, that there is no sense for me to go on studding. 'The government had spent enough money for your education', she said. 'It is a time now to pay your debts to the country by productive work'. I am sure now it was because of my nationality.
Once, Yakov Zilberg asked me if I felt anti-Semitism. Certainly I did. This is why I had forgotten Yiddish, although I spent three years in the Yiddish school. Now probably I could recall this language only under hypnosis. I learned to pronounce properly RRR, not in a Jewish way. Deliberately I did not make friends, since I was always expecting some of them could in a quarrel to shout me: "bloody Jew" and tell me what a cowards we Jews are and how we add babies' blood to matza. Only in the Institute, where lot of my classmates appeared to be Jewish, I made friends, heard positive things about Jews and stopped to be ashamed of being Jewish.
After graduating, at work in the Institute for Town Planning in Vilnius I did quite well and was put in charge of a team of construction engineers. I retired couple of years ago.
I live alone in a small apartment. I set great store by this place of my own after all those years spent living in orphanages and hostels. This is probably why I did not immigrate to Israel, where my friends and close relatives live.
Liuba (Lyusya) Borstaite
From: Solomon Abramovich and Yakov Zilberg “Smuggled in Potato Sacks”, 2011
In 1924 my father Friеdrich Borst, a German by birth, adopted the Jewish faith and marriied Lea Nemanuncaite, born in a small town of Sesikiai. In 1930 my parents built a big house in Shanchiai neighbourhood, Kaunas, where they kept a bakery.
There were four children in our family: Ida (b. 1925); Leon (b. 1927), now known as Arie Borst; Frida (b. 1931) and me, Lyusya, born on. 01.06. 1941.
In 1940 the Germans had ordered all their citizens to come back to Germany. Knowing what was expecting Jews in Germany, my parents applied for and received the Lithuanian citizenship.
None of my mother's relatives survived the war. In one of the first rounds up my aunt Chaya Rachoviciene and her two daughters Rachel and Riva were shot in the Ninth Fort. Mother's two nephews, sons of her brother, who died before the war, served in the Soviet Army and were killed in battles.
After Kaunas had been occupied by the Germans, my parents were forced to move to the Ghetto.
My uncles from the father’s side heard about it, arrived from Germany and obtained permission for the whole family to live outside the Ghetto, on condition that there would not be any complaints from the neighbours. First of all my father was allowed to leave and then the whole family.
When rumours started spreading through Kaunas that families with even one Jewish parent were beginning to disappear, my parents decided to send us, the children, into hiding.
Ida was a blonde, so she was hidden in Kaunas. Frida on name of Grazina Baniavichiute was entrusted to a Karaim family in Shauliai. The real Grazina's mother Ona Baniaviciene had provided my mother with her daughter's papers.
Leon was sent to parents' acquaintance a peasant Mr. Kavaliauskas, where Leon worked as a shepherd. I was transferred to a family in Panemune. Nobody visited me there by anybody until the liberation. Unfortunately I have never met my rescuers after the war and I do not know their names.
Father died in 1943 from a stroke (according to Leon) or after an operation to remove a brain tumor (according to Ida). Mother was taken back to the Ghetto, probably because someone had informed on her. She met her end there.
In 1944 somehow Ida was issued a document to the effect that she was a Lithuanian and she left for Austria since it was too dangerous to stay in Lithuania with false papers.
After the War we all were returned to our family house in Kaunas. However, the house was nationalized by the Soviets, so we lived on our own in one room on the second floor of the house. Leon was only sixteen, Frida was thirteen and I was three and a half.
When an orphanage for Jewish children was set up, Leon sent me to live there, while he and Frida with the help of “Irgun” left for Palestine. It was a long and uneasy way: Poland, orphanage in Italy, Cyprus and unsuccessful attempt to reach Palestine in 1947: their ship was turned back by British authorities. They reached Israel only in 1948.
Our parents had previously bought land in Haifa, as they had been planning to move there from Lithuania, but were unable to set off in time.
Leon had managed to preserve papers regarding the land purchase, which he took with him to Palestine and was thus able to establish his right of ownership to the land in question. Leon travelled from Israel to Lithuania with all his extended family in 2006. We visited our parents abandoned house and a manor where Leon was hidden. Owner of the manor emigrated from Lithuania before it was released by Russians, The house went on fire several years ago and nobody came to claim ownership on the manor. Thus, Leon knows nothing about his rescuer's fate.
Frida died in Israel when she was only thirty four years old, her children and grandchildren live in Israel.
Ida returned back to Kaunas in 1945. She with her husband Benya Zemaitis immigrated to Israel in 1969.
I lived in the Jewish orphanage it had been closed down. I was sent to the Lithuanian orphanage in Marijampole and then to the Russian one near Vilnius. After completing my school studies in 1958, I was offered the chance to go and live on a Soviet collective farm, 'kolhoz', but I turned it down.
I was then given a travel voucher to a small town to earn my living there as a simple construction worker. I did various kinds of manual work there, before gaining a place to study in the Polytechnic Institute in Kaunas. I did not enter the Institute immediately after I graduated from the high school. My mistress told me after graduation exams, that there is no sense for me to go on studding. 'The government had spent enough money for your education', she said. 'It is a time now to pay your debts to the country by productive work'. I am sure now it was because of my nationality.
Once, Yakov Zilberg asked me if I felt anti-Semitism. Certainly I did. This is why I had forgotten Yiddish, although I spent three years in the Yiddish school. Now probably I could recall this language only under hypnosis. I learned to pronounce properly RRR, not in a Jewish way. Deliberately I did not make friends, since I was always expecting some of them could in a quarrel to shout me: "bloody Jew" and tell me what a cowards we Jews are and how we add babies' blood to matza. Only in the Institute, where lot of my classmates appeared to be Jewish, I made friends, heard positive things about Jews and stopped to be ashamed of being Jewish.
After graduating, at work in the Institute for Town Planning in Vilnius I did quite well and was put in charge of a team of construction engineers. I retired couple of years ago.
I live alone in a small apartment. I set great store by this place of my own after all those years spent living in orphanages and hostels. This is probably why I did not immigrate to Israel, where my friends and close relatives live.