Rescued Jewish Children
Maya Shochataite-Davidov
The Only Little Black Mouse
Maya Shochataite-Davidov
From: Smuggled in Potato Sacks
Fifty Stories of the Hidden Children of the Kaunas Ghetto
Editors
Solomon Abramovich and Yakov Zilberg
Before the war my father, Nachum (Naum) Shohat, had been working as an engineer at the rubber factory and my mother, Masha, née Balin, as a secretary. I was born in Kaunas in May 1939. I grew up in a prosperous family surrounded by the love of parents, grandmothers and grandfathers. On a single day all that was shattered. Our whole family failed to be evacuated in time and landed up in the Kaunas Ghetto, where my parents, my aunt Rachel and my uncle Faivele all lived in one room.
During the ‘Great Action’ our whole family found itself in the column which was being sent to the Ninth Fort; it was raining and people had to walk an interminable distance. Mother was carrying me all the time. I refused to get down. Despite the fact that my mother was almost collapsing from tiredness, I was not prepared to go to anybody else. It seemed the road would never end. Then suddenly a miracle happened. At some stage the Germans realized that they were losing manpower. The Germans began drawing up a list of the workers they needed and those people were taken out of the column with their wives and children. That was how my parents, Mother’s 15-year-old brother Faivele and 16-year-old sister Rachel, who were quick enough off the mark to say that they too were my parents’ children, succeeded in returning to the ghetto.
All the remaining members of our family, my grandfathers Eliahu Balin and Moshe Shohat, my grandmother Golda Shohat and uncle Yitzhak Shohat, were killed. Despite the fact that I was too little to understand the whole tragedy, I was gripped by fear all the time. I was frightened to sleep and used to ask my mother not to shut her eyes and to keep looking at me all the time.
Papa was sent to work at the construction site for the new airfield at Alexotas. When news reached the ghetto that all the children in the Shauliai Ghetto had been taken off and killed, my father realized that the same thing could happen in Kaunas as well. He began to look for people who would be ready to take in a Jewish girl. He was ready to hand me over to anyone who would agree to take me, because it was the only chance for me to survive.
Father shared his thoughts with an engineer by the name of Mil, who was working alongside him. One day a Lithuanian couple were walking past the men engaged in building the airfield. They stopped and started talking to Mil. They told him that they were going from Jurbarkas to the Kaunas station in order to buy a little girl. Their priest had told his congregation that the Germans transported women with their children from Russia to work in Germany. Trains used to stop in Kaunas and many of women used to throw their children out of the wagons in a hope that someone would pick them up. For a certain sum of money guards at the station were prepared to sell those children. The couple had sold their cow and they were planning to spend the money on buying specifically a little girl, since they already had three boys of their own.
Mil told them that he was working with someone who would be ready to hand them his 4-year-old daughter, as long as they did not mind that she was Jewish. The couple met my father and said that they were ready to take a Jewish girl, as long as she did not look very Jewish. It was agreed that they should come to the ghetto fence and he would show me to them. They saw me and agreed there and then to take me; they took me in with a single aim in view, which was to save me, without asking for anything in return.
By then my parents did not have anything left either. It was 1943 and everyone was hungry. Everything that could be exchanged for food already had been. All that my father gave them was a couple of letters. One was addressed to his sister in Palestine and the second to his uncle in New York. He asked the Lithuanian couple to send off those letters, if he and my mother did not survive.
Father arranged with the couple when and where he would hand me over. I was put to sleep and placed in a sack; my aunt bribed the guards at the gate and I was carried out of the ghetto. Mother fainted when her only child was taken away from her. All that happened on 20 November 1943. Neither my parents nor my aunt knew anything about the couple: who they were or what they were. They only knew that it was my only chance of survival.
We went from Kaunas to Jurbarkas by boat. I was still under the influence of the sleeping pill I had been given and the couple did not wake me, because they were worried that I might start crying and asking for my parents. In the village to which they brought me, they kept me at home for a long time, because I could only speak Yiddish. They explained to the neighbours that a German had given them this little girl at the station, who in his turn had gathered her up somewhere, which was why I sometimes used German words when I spoke. They knew that by rescuing me they were putting their whole family in danger.
The woman who became my ‘Mama’ was called Elena and her husband was Petras Lileikas. Their oldest son was the same age as myself. They all called me Marite, and I became one of the family. I was given everything that their children were given and I was punished for being naughty, just like their children were. I remember that on one occasion I had been up to some mischief and ‘Papa’ was about to unbuckle his belt to beat me. It had gone missing though. I crawled under the beds, under the table, eventually found the belt under a cupboard and brought it to him. After all that Petras said that he would forgive me that time, because I had found his belt and brought it to him.
Then came 1944, when life grew even more difficult. There was not enough food. One day Petras went into town while Elena was digging in the vegetable garden. Next door to them lived her cousin. All of a sudden that cousin came running over to Elena, shouting that Elena was digging up her potatoes and she would go to the local commandant’s office and tell them that they were hiding a Jewish child.
Elena was alone with her four children when she saw her cousin coming back with a German. Her three sons were all fairhaired and I was the only little black mouse. The German pointed his gun at the cousin and asked her to show him which of the children was Jewish. She pointed at me and the German said, ‘You’re lying. She looks like her mother and I’ll kill you for that lie.’ This happened at a time when the Red Army was already not far from Kaunas; perhaps the soldier was someone who had some human feelings, or perhaps I was just destined to survive. He came to the Lileikas family a number of times, bringing cans of food, milk powder and other produce.
At the end of 1944, the Germans were driven out of the area and the Red Army entered Lithuania. That very same cousin went this time to the office of the Soviet commandant and reported that a little Jewish girl was living with the Lileikas family, who were treating her badly, despite the fact that they had been given plenty of money by her parents. After that Russian soldiers came to the house one night, told everyone to get up and dressed and took Petras into Jurbarkas to the commandant’s office. Petras had the two letters from my father with him, in which it was stated that he had handed over his only daughter to these strangers in the hope that they would rescue her and that he had nothing left to give them. During the interrogation a woman officer had been present, who turned out to be Jewish. She started crying and gave instructions for Petras to be returned to his home.
Despite the fact that I was convinced that Petras and Elena were my real parents, it would seem that somewhere deep down I felt that there were things I needed to beware of. When Petras’ brother completed his studies at the seminary, a party was held in his honour in the village. During the celebrations one of the guests unexpectedly died and the police were called in. Everyone had been scared. At some stage of the proceedings the guests realized that for several hours it had been impossible to get into the toilet, which was outdoors; they started knocking at the door and pulling at it, but it would not open. Then they opened it by force and saw me in the corner with a sack over my head. The Lileikas had explained to me earlier, that I should always hide away from people in uniform so as not to be seen. I had not yet grasped that I did not need to be frightened of the Soviet militia.
When the Lileikas family learnt that a Jewish orphanage had been opened in Kaunas, they decided to take me there, in the hope that perhaps someone from my family was still alive and could take me back from there. They arrived with me in Kaunas and first of all went with me to see Petras’ mother. She persuaded them not to give me up; she thought it a shame to hand a little girl to the orphanage after they had saved me from certain death over a period of two years. She decided that I should stay with her in Kaunas, while Petras and Elena went back to the village.
We lived on what we managed to obtain through begging outside Kaunas Cathedral. I was small and thin, so people used to take pity on us and gave us money. We used to live on that money and ‘Granny’ also used it to put together parcels for her other son. Once a month we would go to the prison to visit him; he had been a member of the Lithuanian police who worked alongside the Germans. One of ‘Granny’s’ sons had saved a little Jewish girl, while the other had been working as a policeman.
People who had survived in the camps began returning home. Petras began making enquiries about my relatives, but failed to find anybody. Then he sent off the letters which my father had given him, and he informed my father’s relatives that during the war he had rescued this little Jewish girl, but that her parents had not appeared. The letter reached my father’s uncle in New York via the Red Cross, who then contacted my aunt in Tel Aviv, who sent parcels to Lithuania and started making plans to enable me to come and live with him.
At Kaunas station Jews used to gather to meet those returning from the camps; each one tried to find about the fate of his rela- tives. Someone told our relative, Raya Levin, that they had seen Naum and Masha’s daughter in Kestuchio Street. Raya found me and started coming to visit ‘Granny’ but I would always cower away from her. Raya tried to win the hungry little girl over with ice cream, but I refused to respond. When I caught sight of Raya in the yard, I would run to ‘Granny’ and say that the Jewish woman with the painted lips had come again and I would ask ‘Granny’ to say that I was not at home.
I remember the day when I was sitting at the kitchen table with ‘Granny’ and the door suddenly opened and there were three terrible women standing in the doorway. They had shaven heads and were wrapped in blankets. When they saw me they began to shout and cry. ‘Granny’ realized at once that they were my relatives. She asked me, ‘Marite, who’s come to see you?’ Like a frightened cat I jumped over the table, clung to ‘Granny’ and began to call out, ‘It’s not my Mama, my Mama was young and beautiful. Make those women go away.’ My mother had only just returned from Stutthof. She was with Rachel, who also survived Stutthof, and another woman. Mama and Rachel stayed for six weeks in ‘Granny’s’ house but I refused to go up to them. In the end my mother managed to find photographs of my father and the family, and she tried to explain to me who the people were. Some two months later my father returned from Dachau; it did not take so long for me to accept him. Mother must have been able to get me used to the idea that he was my real father. My parents decided to move from Kaunas to Vilnius, because in Kaunas there were too many things that reminded me of their tragic past.
My uncle Faivale, after liberation from a concentration camp, went directly to Israel. Here he was killed during the War of Independence. Rachel tried to escape from the USSR by plane, but was arrested and put in a prison. She was pregnant and, fortunately enough, she was soon released. Rachel emigrated to Israel only in 1971 with her daughter and husband David Rubenstein.
I eventually graduated from the Kaunas Medical Institute, married Kalman Davidov and left for Israel. We have two children and four grandchildren. I worked for many years as a doctor and was a highly respected GP in Haifa.
First published in 2011 by Vallentine Mitchell
London, Portland, OR
Maya Shochataite-Davidov
From: Smuggled in Potato Sacks
Fifty Stories of the Hidden Children of the Kaunas Ghetto
Editors
Solomon Abramovich and Yakov Zilberg
Before the war my father, Nachum (Naum) Shohat, had been working as an engineer at the rubber factory and my mother, Masha, née Balin, as a secretary. I was born in Kaunas in May 1939. I grew up in a prosperous family surrounded by the love of parents, grandmothers and grandfathers. On a single day all that was shattered. Our whole family failed to be evacuated in time and landed up in the Kaunas Ghetto, where my parents, my aunt Rachel and my uncle Faivele all lived in one room.
During the ‘Great Action’ our whole family found itself in the column which was being sent to the Ninth Fort; it was raining and people had to walk an interminable distance. Mother was carrying me all the time. I refused to get down. Despite the fact that my mother was almost collapsing from tiredness, I was not prepared to go to anybody else. It seemed the road would never end. Then suddenly a miracle happened. At some stage the Germans realized that they were losing manpower. The Germans began drawing up a list of the workers they needed and those people were taken out of the column with their wives and children. That was how my parents, Mother’s 15-year-old brother Faivele and 16-year-old sister Rachel, who were quick enough off the mark to say that they too were my parents’ children, succeeded in returning to the ghetto.
All the remaining members of our family, my grandfathers Eliahu Balin and Moshe Shohat, my grandmother Golda Shohat and uncle Yitzhak Shohat, were killed. Despite the fact that I was too little to understand the whole tragedy, I was gripped by fear all the time. I was frightened to sleep and used to ask my mother not to shut her eyes and to keep looking at me all the time.
Papa was sent to work at the construction site for the new airfield at Alexotas. When news reached the ghetto that all the children in the Shauliai Ghetto had been taken off and killed, my father realized that the same thing could happen in Kaunas as well. He began to look for people who would be ready to take in a Jewish girl. He was ready to hand me over to anyone who would agree to take me, because it was the only chance for me to survive.
Father shared his thoughts with an engineer by the name of Mil, who was working alongside him. One day a Lithuanian couple were walking past the men engaged in building the airfield. They stopped and started talking to Mil. They told him that they were going from Jurbarkas to the Kaunas station in order to buy a little girl. Their priest had told his congregation that the Germans transported women with their children from Russia to work in Germany. Trains used to stop in Kaunas and many of women used to throw their children out of the wagons in a hope that someone would pick them up. For a certain sum of money guards at the station were prepared to sell those children. The couple had sold their cow and they were planning to spend the money on buying specifically a little girl, since they already had three boys of their own.
Mil told them that he was working with someone who would be ready to hand them his 4-year-old daughter, as long as they did not mind that she was Jewish. The couple met my father and said that they were ready to take a Jewish girl, as long as she did not look very Jewish. It was agreed that they should come to the ghetto fence and he would show me to them. They saw me and agreed there and then to take me; they took me in with a single aim in view, which was to save me, without asking for anything in return.
By then my parents did not have anything left either. It was 1943 and everyone was hungry. Everything that could be exchanged for food already had been. All that my father gave them was a couple of letters. One was addressed to his sister in Palestine and the second to his uncle in New York. He asked the Lithuanian couple to send off those letters, if he and my mother did not survive.
Father arranged with the couple when and where he would hand me over. I was put to sleep and placed in a sack; my aunt bribed the guards at the gate and I was carried out of the ghetto. Mother fainted when her only child was taken away from her. All that happened on 20 November 1943. Neither my parents nor my aunt knew anything about the couple: who they were or what they were. They only knew that it was my only chance of survival.
We went from Kaunas to Jurbarkas by boat. I was still under the influence of the sleeping pill I had been given and the couple did not wake me, because they were worried that I might start crying and asking for my parents. In the village to which they brought me, they kept me at home for a long time, because I could only speak Yiddish. They explained to the neighbours that a German had given them this little girl at the station, who in his turn had gathered her up somewhere, which was why I sometimes used German words when I spoke. They knew that by rescuing me they were putting their whole family in danger.
The woman who became my ‘Mama’ was called Elena and her husband was Petras Lileikas. Their oldest son was the same age as myself. They all called me Marite, and I became one of the family. I was given everything that their children were given and I was punished for being naughty, just like their children were. I remember that on one occasion I had been up to some mischief and ‘Papa’ was about to unbuckle his belt to beat me. It had gone missing though. I crawled under the beds, under the table, eventually found the belt under a cupboard and brought it to him. After all that Petras said that he would forgive me that time, because I had found his belt and brought it to him.
Then came 1944, when life grew even more difficult. There was not enough food. One day Petras went into town while Elena was digging in the vegetable garden. Next door to them lived her cousin. All of a sudden that cousin came running over to Elena, shouting that Elena was digging up her potatoes and she would go to the local commandant’s office and tell them that they were hiding a Jewish child.
Elena was alone with her four children when she saw her cousin coming back with a German. Her three sons were all fairhaired and I was the only little black mouse. The German pointed his gun at the cousin and asked her to show him which of the children was Jewish. She pointed at me and the German said, ‘You’re lying. She looks like her mother and I’ll kill you for that lie.’ This happened at a time when the Red Army was already not far from Kaunas; perhaps the soldier was someone who had some human feelings, or perhaps I was just destined to survive. He came to the Lileikas family a number of times, bringing cans of food, milk powder and other produce.
At the end of 1944, the Germans were driven out of the area and the Red Army entered Lithuania. That very same cousin went this time to the office of the Soviet commandant and reported that a little Jewish girl was living with the Lileikas family, who were treating her badly, despite the fact that they had been given plenty of money by her parents. After that Russian soldiers came to the house one night, told everyone to get up and dressed and took Petras into Jurbarkas to the commandant’s office. Petras had the two letters from my father with him, in which it was stated that he had handed over his only daughter to these strangers in the hope that they would rescue her and that he had nothing left to give them. During the interrogation a woman officer had been present, who turned out to be Jewish. She started crying and gave instructions for Petras to be returned to his home.
Despite the fact that I was convinced that Petras and Elena were my real parents, it would seem that somewhere deep down I felt that there were things I needed to beware of. When Petras’ brother completed his studies at the seminary, a party was held in his honour in the village. During the celebrations one of the guests unexpectedly died and the police were called in. Everyone had been scared. At some stage of the proceedings the guests realized that for several hours it had been impossible to get into the toilet, which was outdoors; they started knocking at the door and pulling at it, but it would not open. Then they opened it by force and saw me in the corner with a sack over my head. The Lileikas had explained to me earlier, that I should always hide away from people in uniform so as not to be seen. I had not yet grasped that I did not need to be frightened of the Soviet militia.
When the Lileikas family learnt that a Jewish orphanage had been opened in Kaunas, they decided to take me there, in the hope that perhaps someone from my family was still alive and could take me back from there. They arrived with me in Kaunas and first of all went with me to see Petras’ mother. She persuaded them not to give me up; she thought it a shame to hand a little girl to the orphanage after they had saved me from certain death over a period of two years. She decided that I should stay with her in Kaunas, while Petras and Elena went back to the village.
We lived on what we managed to obtain through begging outside Kaunas Cathedral. I was small and thin, so people used to take pity on us and gave us money. We used to live on that money and ‘Granny’ also used it to put together parcels for her other son. Once a month we would go to the prison to visit him; he had been a member of the Lithuanian police who worked alongside the Germans. One of ‘Granny’s’ sons had saved a little Jewish girl, while the other had been working as a policeman.
People who had survived in the camps began returning home. Petras began making enquiries about my relatives, but failed to find anybody. Then he sent off the letters which my father had given him, and he informed my father’s relatives that during the war he had rescued this little Jewish girl, but that her parents had not appeared. The letter reached my father’s uncle in New York via the Red Cross, who then contacted my aunt in Tel Aviv, who sent parcels to Lithuania and started making plans to enable me to come and live with him.
At Kaunas station Jews used to gather to meet those returning from the camps; each one tried to find about the fate of his rela- tives. Someone told our relative, Raya Levin, that they had seen Naum and Masha’s daughter in Kestuchio Street. Raya found me and started coming to visit ‘Granny’ but I would always cower away from her. Raya tried to win the hungry little girl over with ice cream, but I refused to respond. When I caught sight of Raya in the yard, I would run to ‘Granny’ and say that the Jewish woman with the painted lips had come again and I would ask ‘Granny’ to say that I was not at home.
I remember the day when I was sitting at the kitchen table with ‘Granny’ and the door suddenly opened and there were three terrible women standing in the doorway. They had shaven heads and were wrapped in blankets. When they saw me they began to shout and cry. ‘Granny’ realized at once that they were my relatives. She asked me, ‘Marite, who’s come to see you?’ Like a frightened cat I jumped over the table, clung to ‘Granny’ and began to call out, ‘It’s not my Mama, my Mama was young and beautiful. Make those women go away.’ My mother had only just returned from Stutthof. She was with Rachel, who also survived Stutthof, and another woman. Mama and Rachel stayed for six weeks in ‘Granny’s’ house but I refused to go up to them. In the end my mother managed to find photographs of my father and the family, and she tried to explain to me who the people were. Some two months later my father returned from Dachau; it did not take so long for me to accept him. Mother must have been able to get me used to the idea that he was my real father. My parents decided to move from Kaunas to Vilnius, because in Kaunas there were too many things that reminded me of their tragic past.
My uncle Faivale, after liberation from a concentration camp, went directly to Israel. Here he was killed during the War of Independence. Rachel tried to escape from the USSR by plane, but was arrested and put in a prison. She was pregnant and, fortunately enough, she was soon released. Rachel emigrated to Israel only in 1971 with her daughter and husband David Rubenstein.
I eventually graduated from the Kaunas Medical Institute, married Kalman Davidov and left for Israel. We have two children and four grandchildren. I worked for many years as a doctor and was a highly respected GP in Haifa.
First published in 2011 by Vallentine Mitchell
London, Portland, OR