Rescuers of Jews

Julija BERNOTAITĖ When two sisters Pagirskaitės – Bliuma Epšteinienė and Taubė Judelevičienė – returned to liberated Kaunas in the summer of 1944, they discovered that out of the numerous members of the Pagirskai family only two younger daughters of their brother Dovydas had survived... ...Having left to “tidy up the archives” with other young men, Dovydas failed to come back; although grandmother Sore Pagirskienė was picked for the “good” section during the selection, she voluntarily joined the column of the doomed and left in the direction of the Ninth Fort. As a result, Dovydas' wife, Maja Kamberytė, started desperately searching for a shelter for her children. In town, Hiršas Levinas, a member of “the ghetto council of elders”, found Julija, the former maid of the Kamberiai, who consented to help. The blond-haired blue-eyed three-year-old Dalytė was brought from the ghetto and, after a baptism in a Carmelite church, was accommodated in the Gelgaudiškis orphanage. The situation was somewhat more complicated for the black-eyed, dark-haired Ilana who was smuggled from the ghetto in a potato sack. However, Julija Bemotaitė was quick in making decisions. Her relatives in a distant village in the Radviliškis region knew that she had a daughter, Regina, so Julija dyed Ilana's hair and eyebrows and pretended it was her daughter. Her daughter Regina was meanwhile staying with the family of Strumilai from Kaunas. Julija would have sheltered Maja, but the latter could not leave her old and sick mother in the ghetto. ...We found Julija at the address given to us by Hiršas, and Ilana, together with her rescuer, settled into uncle J. Epšteinas' flat. Regina, having bade farewell to the Strumilai, and llana started attending a Jewish school. We did not find little Dalia in the orphanage – she had been adopted by an elderly couple of farmers. For a long time the childless old people were unwilling to part with “Marytė”, but finally they were convinced that there was an obligation to the dead. From time to time the former guardians would visit the girl. All four of us girls were dressed in identical shirts, and that meant that we were equal and would live like sisters. We used to do everything together; however, each of us had to overcome our short but oppressive past – the experience of the war. When my father J. Epšteinas was appointed to work in Vilnius, Ilana left with his family (Dalytė stayed with the Judelevičiai whom she already considered to be her parents). Julija and Regina also moved to Vilnius. On Sundays we frequently went to see them in Žvėrynas. Her head over her needlework, Julija would entertain her guests with not exactly a children's song: Am I not a girl, am I not wearing a wreath, Is not my hair nicely combed! Julija had her own secrets, which she did not trust to anyone. What was she thinking about on the fatal January 21, on her way to a public office to obtain papers for her new flat? Was she sad about the condemned old house where she had lived for 35 years while working in the Red Cross hospital, or was she happy that she would no longer have to stoke furnaces or heat the water? Maybe she was thinking of the intricate turns of her fate – she was born in Petersburg, came to live in Lithuania, served people, completed a course for nurses... She was deep in thought, so deep that she did not notice a Number 11 bus driving towards the green light at full speed... At the beginning of the German occupation the orders discriminating Jews had been published. On June 12, 1941, it was announced that all Jews were supposed to move to the ghetto, which was formed in Vilijampolė – the suburb of Kaunas. Among others, there were Maya and Dovydas Pagirskis, their daughters Ilana and Dalia, and the girls’ grandmother – Kamberienė. Out of all family members Dovydas was the first to perish. He gave in to the provocation of the autorities, who announced enrollment of experts for work in the archives. Many people believed in this appeal – lawyers, engineers, teachers, journalists – 534 people, among whom was also Dovydas Pagirskis. All of them on 18 08 1941 were taken away from the ghetto and never returned back. This murder was known in the history of Kaunas Ghetto as an Action against Intelligentsia. Few other actions followed and Maya Pagirskienė started looking for ways to save her daughters. Member of the ghetto council – Hirsh Levin – managed to find Julija Bernotaitė, who used to work for grandmother Kamber before the war. Julija agreed to hide the girls. She offered help also to Maya, but the latter could not leave her mother alone in the ghetto. Ilana was given some pills and taken away from the ghetto in a sack of potatoes. Julija Bernotaitė took the girl to the village in Radviliškis region and presented Ilana as her daughter. Her own daughter Regina – Julija Bernotaitė gave to the Strumilas family who adopted her. Even nowadays Regina bears their surname. Julija dyed Ilana’s hair and eyebrows into blonde colour and nobody even suspected that the girl was Jewish. Ilana’s sister Dalia was sent to the orphanage in Gelgaudiškiai. A Lithuanian couple who had no children of their own adopted her and brought her up as their heiress. The girls’ mother Maya Pagirskienė and their grandmother Kamberienė perished when the ghetto of Kaunas was liquidated. After the war the girls’ aunts – Bliuma and Tauba adopted the girls. At first Yakov and Bliuma Epshtein adopted Ilana and her sister Dalia, after lengthy persuasion (the Lithuanian couple was not willing to part with her) was taken by Tauba Yudelevitch and her husband who returned from evacuation together with their own sons. Dalia graduated from the Polytechnical Institute of Kaunas and worked in a factory in Vilnius. Dalia Pagirskaitė (later Kutasov) emigrated to Israel in 1974 and died in Tel Aviv in 2004. After the war all the families lived in one apartment for some time, but then separated. Julija Bernotaitė had been working as a nurse in the Red Cross hospital in Vilnius. She perished in a car accident in 1983. The girl saved by Julija Bernotaitė – Ilana Pagirskaitė, later Rozentalienė graduated from the Medical Institute and continues to live and work as a doctor in Vilnius.

From Hands Bringing Life and Bread, Volume 2,
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. Vilnius, 1999