Rescued Jewish Children

Author’s Word How did this diary come to being? In the first days of the war, my Father – a famous Lithuanian psychologist and psychiatrist, docent of the Vytautas Magnus University – said to my brother Viktoras: “Start a diary. We are living in historical times”. And my brother started writing a diary. I was two years younger than him and tried to keep up with him in everything he did. At first, I had a slim notebook, sewn of individual pages, but I lost it. Where would I get a thicker notebook in the ghetto? The Rumšiskis family who were friends of our family wanted to escape the ghetto. They obtained documents proving that they were Karaites. Unfortunately, they did not succeed, were caught by the Gestapo and did not survive. When we found out about the disaster, we went to their apartment. Everything was upside down after the search. I saw a thick notebook lying on the ground. Those were aircraft modelling notes of the Rumšiškis’ son Cezaris. Whereas there were many empty pages in the notebook, I took it. Thus, the notebook began its second life and became my diary. When we decided to escape from the ghetto, me and my brother put our notes in a metal box and buried it under the windows of our house. After the war, we had trouble finding that place, because the house and the windows were gone – only a pile of rubble was left. But my brother managed to find our box completely intact. The first part of my notes describing the period from the moving into the ghetto to September 1942 had been lost earlier and thus, only the second part of the diary was left – from 13 September 1942 to 7 April 1944. I continued to write the diary and it travelled with me wherever I went. Once, it was in a great danger – in 1945, when NKVD came to arrest one of our saviours and hostesses Bronė Pajėdaitė. The search carried out in the apartment reminded me the scenes from the ghetto. There was a Jew among the NKVD men. He found the diary and started thumbing through it. When he saw notes in Jewish, he wanted to confiscate the diary. I barely managed to convince him that I was Jewish and that the diary belonged to me. In 1971, I got a permission to leave for Israel and started thinking how I could take the diary out of the country. I knew that no texts could cross the border. My friends advised me to address the Dutch embassy in Moscow, where all affairs of emigrants to Israel were being managed. I was very nervous when I was going to the embassy. I was afraid that Soviet officers might take away my visa if they found the diary, because you could never know what might get into their heads. Fortunately, I was not searched at the embassy and only asked what I was carrying. I told them I was not carrying anything, whereas the diary was well hidden on me. In the embassy, I showed them my visa and asked them to let me in. The officers listened to my request and discussed it for some time. Then they opened three locks and let me in. I was so excited I could not say a sentence in German, so we had to talk with the help of an interpreter. To my disappointment, the ambassador was away and I was interviewed by one of the secretaries. After hearing my request, he said that he could not make decisions on this issue and told me to come back in the afternoon and speak to the ambassador himself. He did not know that the citizens of the USSR were not allowed to visit the embassies whenever they pleased. I told him that there might be no other chance and explained to him that those were war-time notes written in Lithuanian in Kaunas. Unfortunately, the secretary did not know the location of Kaunas and had not heard of Lithuania or of Lithuanian language whatsoever. Nevertheless, he allowed me to leave the diary and said he would take it to the Lithuanian embassy in Moscow for them to take a look. He said he would send it to the address specified by me if there was no material discrediting Soviet government. I don’t know what would have happened had I not succeeded in getting past the watchful national security officers. Most probably I would have travelled to the land of permafrost instead of the subtropics. But I took a risk and fortune smiled upon me – my diary was sent to Tel Aviv in via diplomatic mail. Now, 25 years later, my diary returns to Lithuania. I wrote it in Lithuanian because in my childhood I was surrounded by Lithuanian culture, I went to a Lithuanian school and I loved the wonderful Lithuanian nature and its magnificent poets – Maironis, Salomėja Nėris, Bernardas Brazdžionis. In 1944, when I was hiding at Petronėlė Lastienė, I used to repeat Brazdžionis’ lines: Commune will perish in the whole world, As if in the night, I see it fall – The ascent of injustice is prompt and fast is its fall...

The poet appeared to be a prophet. My diary contains bitter truth and not a drop of invention. The most vivid imagination cannot create the scenario we have experienced. I wrote this diary for myself, to ease my heart. It is the scream of the soul of a teenage girl, who suffered so many unfair and severe blows of fortune... Who knows, I might have walked on the edge of insanity in some periods of my life if it was not for this diary. The diary was my loyal friend. When I would open its pages, it would become unrecognisable: it would rejoice and weep, pray and curse... It would console me in the hours of the darkest desperation by reminding of better times. No man’s fingers have touched these pages for thirty years. It might have laid there for another decade and finally got lost, but its fate was determined by the sensitive heart of the writer and researcher Sarah Schner-Neshamit. Together with Lea Barak she translated the diary into Hebrew. Sarah’s thorough work of many days breathed new life into the diary – it spoke in the oldest language of the world, the native tongue of my nation. The book was published for the first time in Israel in 1975. Now my diary has also reached the readers in its original – Lithuanian – language. I dedicate this book to the memory of my parents Vladimiras and Regina Lazersonas and my brother Rudolfas. I also dedicate it to those, who have risked their lives saving me, my brother Viktoras and many other Jewish children during the years of Nazi terror. Their names will not be forgotten. These Righteous Among the Nations saved the world, because it has been written in the Talmud: “He who saves a single life, saves the entire world”. From Tamara Lazersonaitė’s diary, published by “Vaga” publishing house in Vilnius, 1997