Rescued Jewish Children
Rūta Lopianskaitė (Pomerancaitė)-Gorinienė
I, Rūta Lopianskaitė, was born in Kaunas on 28 March 1938. In 1946, I was adopted by my mother’s sister Riva Pomerancienė and became Ms. Pomerancaitė.
My father was Abraomas Lopianskis. I do not know his exact date of birth, but I believe it was around 1907-08. I do not know his place of birth either. He studied in Kaunas Vytautas Magnus University and graduated from the economy-law faculty. My father was a member of the Jewish students’ corporation Vetaria and became the member of the board in 1930. Later, he went for traineeship in Austria.
My mother was Rocha Lopianskienė (maiden name Zolkaitė). She was born around 1913-14 in Kretinga town. She had finished a nurse school and was working in a dentist clinic before the war. Our quiet life was short, as Germany declared war on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and entered the territory of Lithuania. In July 1941, our family was imprisoned in the Kaunas Ghetto.
18 August 1941, an order of the SA-Hauptsturmführer Jordan was issued to the Jewish Council to pick 500 educated Jewish men to work in the Kaunas city archives. 534 men including my father gathered at the ghetto gate. However, none of them came back home at night as all of them were massacred.
My mother’s sister Riva Pomerancienė, her husband Danielius Pomerancas, famous violinist of the pre-war Kaunas, and their one and a half years old daughter lived with us in the ghetto.
Like the rest of the ghetto prisoners, my mother was doing forced labour in the city. Each night upon returning to the ghetto she would be searched by the guards at the gates as the prisoners were not even allowed to bring bread for their families. The searches caused great suffering to her and her health declined because of constant stress.
Then, the ghetto prisoners found out about the upcoming roundup of children. Worried parents tried to save their children. Hideouts were built in basements and attics. My family decided to hide the three children – me and my mother’s cousin’s twins who were a bit older than me – in an oven. The interior of the oven was dismantled and all bricks were removed to make enough space for three children. On that horrible day, we were hidden in that oven.
The Germans came into the apartment and started throwing and breaking things with their batons. One of the twins sneezed and the Germans heard him. They opened the oven and pulled us out. I was very small but it must have been an important event for me as I remember everything very clearly. One of the Germans took the twins and their mother to the car and drove away. We later found out that the children were shot down. My mother picked me up and looked at me for a long time as if anticipating a disaster. Then she sat me on a polished brown table and started dressing me up very slowly. Later, a German soldier put me and my mother in a car and took us to some open field. He got out of the car and hinted us to run. My mother picked me up, got out of the car as fast as she could and this is how we escaped.
This was a very good sign to use this opportunity and save me and the rest of the children. People who had friends and acquaintances tried to smuggle the children out of the ghetto and hide them.
My mother had such an acquaintance too. Mr. Balys Simanavičius was the director of the Kaunas fur factory “Lapė”. My mother knew him before the war. One day, they agreed to get me out of the ghetto. Shortly I was drugged, put in a potato sack and smuggled out of the ghetto under an agreement with the gate guard.
Balys Simanavičius took me to the farmers living in a village near Kaunas. My mother managed to hide in Kaunas. Balys Simanavičius helped her find a hideout in the attic of one of the houses in Kaunas suburbs. She would spend long days and nights all by herself in that hideout.
When the Russians came back, Balys Simanavičiaus was exiled to Siberia despite all his good deeds. In 1953-54, he returned and we met multiple times. He told me a lot about my parents, the ghetto and my escape.
In a similar fashion, Danutė, daughter of my aunt Riva Pomerancienė, was also smuggled out of the ghetto with the help of Balys Simanavičius and taken to the family of the famous opera singer Kipras Petrauskas. The Petrauskas family knew Danielius Pomerancas, the famous violinist, and his family very well. Danielius Pomerancas himself was taken to the Dachau concentration camp by the Germans. The Petrauskas family risked their lives and the lives of their three children and took the year-and-a-half old Jewish girl, who was also brought to them drugged. The Petrauskas family was known to everybody in the city and obviously everyone knew that they had no little babies.
Mrs. Petrauskienė said she was waiting with fear for the girl to awake as she did not know what language she would speak. The name Danutė was given to her upon arrival in the new family.
Thus, me and my cousin found ourselves in new families while my mother Rocha Lopianskienė and my aunt Riva Pomerancienė were hiding.
What can I say about my life with strangers? I do not remember much as was just a kid then, but there a few fragments I recall. People were scared and knew the extent of the risk they were undertaking, therefore I was told to run and hide under the bed whenever anyone came to the house. There was a bell hanging above the door to warn me if someone was coming through the door.
Thus my hardships started: there was nobody to look after me, to comb my hair, feed me or play with me. I remember I had long hair when I was brought to the village, but later it had to be cut so it won’t require washing or combing.
Under the request of my mother, Mr. Balys Simanavičius visited me as my mother wanted to know how I was getting along and if I had got used to the new place. Mr. Simanavičius later told me about his visit. Upon hearing the bell, I rushed under the bed. I wouldn‘t get out of there despite his pleas and assurance that he was a friend of my mother and just wanted to talk. Later, we understood why I was reacting like that. He was wearing a long leather coat, which resembled those of German officers, therefore I took him for a German and did not want to get out of under the bed. Of course, he did not tell my mother that I had been lurking under the bed the whole time and did not even speak to him, but he reassured her that I was fine and looked great. However, everything was not that fine. My mother felt there was something wrong and had sown me a lot of clothes, but the times were hard and she had to sell everything.
There was an old woman in the farmer family where I lived. She would take care of me and caress me as much as she could. When bread was baked in the oven, she would bake a special small loaf for me and tell me that she had baked it for me and the bread would be very tasty indeed. When she would peel potatoes, I would ask her to give me a raw potato to eat. During cold autumn and winter days, I would mostly stay at home as I had no warm clothes and in spring and summer I had to go outside and herd the geese and later cows instead of walking around or playing. Sometimes during hot summer days, cows would wander away and I would chase them across the forest and get lost. Then I would wait for the evening to come when the cows would go home on their own and show me the way. Things weren’t easy.
In spring and summer of 1944, when the front line was approaching, the retreating Germans sought to wreak as much havoc as they could. My mother died one of those days.
An unfamiliar woman was running down the street by the house, where my mother lived. She was crying for help and my mother ran out from her hideout into the street and took the woman and her child with her. The hideout was too tiny for the three of them, so my mother left. This was the last time anybody saw her.
Balys Simanavičius told me that when he came home from work and found out about this, he searched all houses and made inquiries with all his acquaintances as he thought my mother might have hidden in some other place. But she was nowhere to be found. I still don’t know how my mother died and where her ashes rest.
Thus, the war was over. My aunt Riva Pomerancienė and my mother had an agreement to take care of each other’s children, i.e. me and Danutė – if they survive the war. On beautiful day of 1945 or 1946, Mrs. Pomerancienė came to the village and took me with her. Of course, I did not recognise her – she was a total stranger to me. Despite the fact that the living conditions were hard in the village, I cried a lot when they started dressing me up, wrapping me in a blanket and putting me in a sledge. I was about to loose my loved ones for the second time and did not know where those people were taking me.
In Kaunas, we lived in Kęstučio Street. Aunt Riva did not know the fate of her husband nor her daughter. She only knew that both of my parents were gone. Time passed and a doorbell of our apartment rang one day. A short miserable man came in wearing a long military coat. This appeared to be her husband Danielius Pomerancas who had walked all the way from Germany on foot! He did not know that not far from the Dachau concentration camp, where he was imprisoned, lived Kipras Petrauskas’ wife Elena Žalinkevičaitė-Petrauskienė with her children and his daughter Danutė. When the Dachau prisoners were liberated, Mrs. Petrauskienė tried to contact Danielius Pomerancas but to no success.
Therefore, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Pomerancas knew anything about their daughter. In August 1946, they decided to adopt me and thus I became Rūta Pomerancaitė.
In summer of 1948, Kipras Petrauskas knocked on our door with a joyful look on his face and said that his wife had showed up with the Pomerancas’ daughter Danutė and that they were coming back from Germany. How did Elena Petrauskienė turn up in Germany? She did it to hide Danutė. Elena Petrauskienė took her both of daughters Guoda and Aušra, her son Leonas, her sister and her mother, and moved to the Rainiai estate. Then they all went to Palanga for holiday. With the approaching front line they took off to the west across the Curonian Spit together with other refugees. The first message of their whereabouts was received only in 1948. The same year, Elena Petrauskienė with her daughter Aušra and Danutė Pomerancaitė returned to Lithuania. The remaining family had moved to Australia.
Thus, Danielius and Riva Pomerancas’ daughter Danutė was returned to her true parents by Elena Žalinkevičaitė-Petrauskienė. Both families – the Petrauskas and the Pomerancas – were famous, therefore the entire Kaunas was excited about this event. On this occasion, even a film was made and a special meeting was arranged on the walkway of the Kaunas Theatre: Mrs. and Mr. Pomerancas were walking from one end and Mrs. and Mr. Petrauskas from the other. Danutė was told that the Pomerancas were her real parents and instructed her to go meet them. Danutė ran halfway, looked at her real parents, said that her father was taller and handsomer and came back to the Petrauskas couple. She needed time to get used to her new parents. At first she was told that these were her godparents and Mrs. Petrauskienė her real mother. But she couldn’t cope with all of this and often at night she had to be taken from Kęstučio Street to Žaliakalnis district where the Petrauskas family lived, and then when she felt sorry for her ‘godmother’ she had to be taken back to Kęstučio Street.
I was about 11 years old when all this accustoming process was happening. Petrauskienė’s daughter Aušra Petrauskaitė was a year older than me. When Danutė would stay for a longer period with the Pomerancas family, Aušra would get bored as she was not used to being alone. We made very good friends with Aušra at that time. Thus, I happened to acquire yet another home and kind of replaced Danutė in the Petrauskas family. Kipras Petrauskas’ home became my home and Mrs. Elena Žalinkevičaitė-Petrauskienė became my third mother.
It was the beginning of perhaps the happiest period of my life. This extraordinary woman had so much kindness and love and knew how to give it for us, children, and everybody around her, so we just absorbed everything that we had missed so much during and after the horrible war. Mrs. Petrauskienė was and will always be the symbol of humanism. She did a heroic thing, she risked her life and the lives of her loved ones, saved a Jewish girl, who had never felt that she was living without her real parents and was loved and protected by everyone. Even after the war, Mrs. Petrauskienė continued to take care of me and other children who were having a hard time and all of our friends. She would never forget the birthdays and the needs of every and each of us – whose shoes were bare and who needed a new headscarf. In my memory, Elena Petrauskienė is a Human with a capital H.
I went to school in Kaunas. In 1948, the Opera Theatre moved to Vilnius and we moved there too. We exchanged apartments and started living in Vilnius. At first I went to a seven-year school, later I was transferred to Salomėja Neris School, from which I graduated in 1958. During this entire period, I had two homes. Everyone was taking care of me. Sometimes, I did not know where to go after classes: the Petrauskas apartment, or the Pomerancas. After school, I entered the Pedagogical Institute. In 1958, I got married and started living on my own. In 1960, my son Artūras was born. Whereas I couldn’t continue studying while raising a child, I entered the extramural department of the Vilnius University. I changed many jobs and worked as a teacher. From 1970 to my retirement, I worked in the Restoration Centre of the Lithuanian Art Museum.
Vilnius, 2009
My father was Abraomas Lopianskis. I do not know his exact date of birth, but I believe it was around 1907-08. I do not know his place of birth either. He studied in Kaunas Vytautas Magnus University and graduated from the economy-law faculty. My father was a member of the Jewish students’ corporation Vetaria and became the member of the board in 1930. Later, he went for traineeship in Austria.
My mother was Rocha Lopianskienė (maiden name Zolkaitė). She was born around 1913-14 in Kretinga town. She had finished a nurse school and was working in a dentist clinic before the war. Our quiet life was short, as Germany declared war on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 and entered the territory of Lithuania. In July 1941, our family was imprisoned in the Kaunas Ghetto.
18 August 1941, an order of the SA-Hauptsturmführer Jordan was issued to the Jewish Council to pick 500 educated Jewish men to work in the Kaunas city archives. 534 men including my father gathered at the ghetto gate. However, none of them came back home at night as all of them were massacred.
My mother’s sister Riva Pomerancienė, her husband Danielius Pomerancas, famous violinist of the pre-war Kaunas, and their one and a half years old daughter lived with us in the ghetto.
Like the rest of the ghetto prisoners, my mother was doing forced labour in the city. Each night upon returning to the ghetto she would be searched by the guards at the gates as the prisoners were not even allowed to bring bread for their families. The searches caused great suffering to her and her health declined because of constant stress.
Then, the ghetto prisoners found out about the upcoming roundup of children. Worried parents tried to save their children. Hideouts were built in basements and attics. My family decided to hide the three children – me and my mother’s cousin’s twins who were a bit older than me – in an oven. The interior of the oven was dismantled and all bricks were removed to make enough space for three children. On that horrible day, we were hidden in that oven.
The Germans came into the apartment and started throwing and breaking things with their batons. One of the twins sneezed and the Germans heard him. They opened the oven and pulled us out. I was very small but it must have been an important event for me as I remember everything very clearly. One of the Germans took the twins and their mother to the car and drove away. We later found out that the children were shot down. My mother picked me up and looked at me for a long time as if anticipating a disaster. Then she sat me on a polished brown table and started dressing me up very slowly. Later, a German soldier put me and my mother in a car and took us to some open field. He got out of the car and hinted us to run. My mother picked me up, got out of the car as fast as she could and this is how we escaped.
This was a very good sign to use this opportunity and save me and the rest of the children. People who had friends and acquaintances tried to smuggle the children out of the ghetto and hide them.
My mother had such an acquaintance too. Mr. Balys Simanavičius was the director of the Kaunas fur factory “Lapė”. My mother knew him before the war. One day, they agreed to get me out of the ghetto. Shortly I was drugged, put in a potato sack and smuggled out of the ghetto under an agreement with the gate guard.
Balys Simanavičius took me to the farmers living in a village near Kaunas. My mother managed to hide in Kaunas. Balys Simanavičius helped her find a hideout in the attic of one of the houses in Kaunas suburbs. She would spend long days and nights all by herself in that hideout.
When the Russians came back, Balys Simanavičiaus was exiled to Siberia despite all his good deeds. In 1953-54, he returned and we met multiple times. He told me a lot about my parents, the ghetto and my escape.
In a similar fashion, Danutė, daughter of my aunt Riva Pomerancienė, was also smuggled out of the ghetto with the help of Balys Simanavičius and taken to the family of the famous opera singer Kipras Petrauskas. The Petrauskas family knew Danielius Pomerancas, the famous violinist, and his family very well. Danielius Pomerancas himself was taken to the Dachau concentration camp by the Germans. The Petrauskas family risked their lives and the lives of their three children and took the year-and-a-half old Jewish girl, who was also brought to them drugged. The Petrauskas family was known to everybody in the city and obviously everyone knew that they had no little babies.
Mrs. Petrauskienė said she was waiting with fear for the girl to awake as she did not know what language she would speak. The name Danutė was given to her upon arrival in the new family.
Thus, me and my cousin found ourselves in new families while my mother Rocha Lopianskienė and my aunt Riva Pomerancienė were hiding.
What can I say about my life with strangers? I do not remember much as was just a kid then, but there a few fragments I recall. People were scared and knew the extent of the risk they were undertaking, therefore I was told to run and hide under the bed whenever anyone came to the house. There was a bell hanging above the door to warn me if someone was coming through the door.
Thus my hardships started: there was nobody to look after me, to comb my hair, feed me or play with me. I remember I had long hair when I was brought to the village, but later it had to be cut so it won’t require washing or combing.
Under the request of my mother, Mr. Balys Simanavičius visited me as my mother wanted to know how I was getting along and if I had got used to the new place. Mr. Simanavičius later told me about his visit. Upon hearing the bell, I rushed under the bed. I wouldn‘t get out of there despite his pleas and assurance that he was a friend of my mother and just wanted to talk. Later, we understood why I was reacting like that. He was wearing a long leather coat, which resembled those of German officers, therefore I took him for a German and did not want to get out of under the bed. Of course, he did not tell my mother that I had been lurking under the bed the whole time and did not even speak to him, but he reassured her that I was fine and looked great. However, everything was not that fine. My mother felt there was something wrong and had sown me a lot of clothes, but the times were hard and she had to sell everything.
There was an old woman in the farmer family where I lived. She would take care of me and caress me as much as she could. When bread was baked in the oven, she would bake a special small loaf for me and tell me that she had baked it for me and the bread would be very tasty indeed. When she would peel potatoes, I would ask her to give me a raw potato to eat. During cold autumn and winter days, I would mostly stay at home as I had no warm clothes and in spring and summer I had to go outside and herd the geese and later cows instead of walking around or playing. Sometimes during hot summer days, cows would wander away and I would chase them across the forest and get lost. Then I would wait for the evening to come when the cows would go home on their own and show me the way. Things weren’t easy.
In spring and summer of 1944, when the front line was approaching, the retreating Germans sought to wreak as much havoc as they could. My mother died one of those days.
An unfamiliar woman was running down the street by the house, where my mother lived. She was crying for help and my mother ran out from her hideout into the street and took the woman and her child with her. The hideout was too tiny for the three of them, so my mother left. This was the last time anybody saw her.
Balys Simanavičius told me that when he came home from work and found out about this, he searched all houses and made inquiries with all his acquaintances as he thought my mother might have hidden in some other place. But she was nowhere to be found. I still don’t know how my mother died and where her ashes rest.
Thus, the war was over. My aunt Riva Pomerancienė and my mother had an agreement to take care of each other’s children, i.e. me and Danutė – if they survive the war. On beautiful day of 1945 or 1946, Mrs. Pomerancienė came to the village and took me with her. Of course, I did not recognise her – she was a total stranger to me. Despite the fact that the living conditions were hard in the village, I cried a lot when they started dressing me up, wrapping me in a blanket and putting me in a sledge. I was about to loose my loved ones for the second time and did not know where those people were taking me.
In Kaunas, we lived in Kęstučio Street. Aunt Riva did not know the fate of her husband nor her daughter. She only knew that both of my parents were gone. Time passed and a doorbell of our apartment rang one day. A short miserable man came in wearing a long military coat. This appeared to be her husband Danielius Pomerancas who had walked all the way from Germany on foot! He did not know that not far from the Dachau concentration camp, where he was imprisoned, lived Kipras Petrauskas’ wife Elena Žalinkevičaitė-Petrauskienė with her children and his daughter Danutė. When the Dachau prisoners were liberated, Mrs. Petrauskienė tried to contact Danielius Pomerancas but to no success.
Therefore, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Pomerancas knew anything about their daughter. In August 1946, they decided to adopt me and thus I became Rūta Pomerancaitė.
In summer of 1948, Kipras Petrauskas knocked on our door with a joyful look on his face and said that his wife had showed up with the Pomerancas’ daughter Danutė and that they were coming back from Germany. How did Elena Petrauskienė turn up in Germany? She did it to hide Danutė. Elena Petrauskienė took her both of daughters Guoda and Aušra, her son Leonas, her sister and her mother, and moved to the Rainiai estate. Then they all went to Palanga for holiday. With the approaching front line they took off to the west across the Curonian Spit together with other refugees. The first message of their whereabouts was received only in 1948. The same year, Elena Petrauskienė with her daughter Aušra and Danutė Pomerancaitė returned to Lithuania. The remaining family had moved to Australia.
Thus, Danielius and Riva Pomerancas’ daughter Danutė was returned to her true parents by Elena Žalinkevičaitė-Petrauskienė. Both families – the Petrauskas and the Pomerancas – were famous, therefore the entire Kaunas was excited about this event. On this occasion, even a film was made and a special meeting was arranged on the walkway of the Kaunas Theatre: Mrs. and Mr. Pomerancas were walking from one end and Mrs. and Mr. Petrauskas from the other. Danutė was told that the Pomerancas were her real parents and instructed her to go meet them. Danutė ran halfway, looked at her real parents, said that her father was taller and handsomer and came back to the Petrauskas couple. She needed time to get used to her new parents. At first she was told that these were her godparents and Mrs. Petrauskienė her real mother. But she couldn’t cope with all of this and often at night she had to be taken from Kęstučio Street to Žaliakalnis district where the Petrauskas family lived, and then when she felt sorry for her ‘godmother’ she had to be taken back to Kęstučio Street.
I was about 11 years old when all this accustoming process was happening. Petrauskienė’s daughter Aušra Petrauskaitė was a year older than me. When Danutė would stay for a longer period with the Pomerancas family, Aušra would get bored as she was not used to being alone. We made very good friends with Aušra at that time. Thus, I happened to acquire yet another home and kind of replaced Danutė in the Petrauskas family. Kipras Petrauskas’ home became my home and Mrs. Elena Žalinkevičaitė-Petrauskienė became my third mother.
It was the beginning of perhaps the happiest period of my life. This extraordinary woman had so much kindness and love and knew how to give it for us, children, and everybody around her, so we just absorbed everything that we had missed so much during and after the horrible war. Mrs. Petrauskienė was and will always be the symbol of humanism. She did a heroic thing, she risked her life and the lives of her loved ones, saved a Jewish girl, who had never felt that she was living without her real parents and was loved and protected by everyone. Even after the war, Mrs. Petrauskienė continued to take care of me and other children who were having a hard time and all of our friends. She would never forget the birthdays and the needs of every and each of us – whose shoes were bare and who needed a new headscarf. In my memory, Elena Petrauskienė is a Human with a capital H.
I went to school in Kaunas. In 1948, the Opera Theatre moved to Vilnius and we moved there too. We exchanged apartments and started living in Vilnius. At first I went to a seven-year school, later I was transferred to Salomėja Neris School, from which I graduated in 1958. During this entire period, I had two homes. Everyone was taking care of me. Sometimes, I did not know where to go after classes: the Petrauskas apartment, or the Pomerancas. After school, I entered the Pedagogical Institute. In 1958, I got married and started living on my own. In 1960, my son Artūras was born. Whereas I couldn’t continue studying while raising a child, I entered the extramural department of the Vilnius University. I changed many jobs and worked as a teacher. From 1970 to my retirement, I worked in the Restoration Centre of the Lithuanian Art Museum.
Vilnius, 2009