Rescued Jewish Children

Jehoshua Shochot About the annihilation of Telšiai Jews and his loved ones during the Holocaust I was born and raised in Telšiai. My father died early. Our small family – mother Reizl, brother Chaimas and I – lived in a small private house on Kalno Street. My maternal grandfather Šmuelis Šifas with his wife Riva, his son Icchokas and his daughter Lea lived nearby on Žemaitės Street behind the corner. When the war between Germany and the Soviet Union broke out, I was just a little boy and had only finished the first class of the Jewish school. But I must have been mature enough to remember what was going on and to perceive the meaning of those events. We did not have to wait long for the repressions against the Jews. All Jews from Telšiai were driven from their homes and herded into barns and sheds of the Rainiai mansion. We were short on food and we had no usual accommodation. Half-starved able men had to do forced labour. One of such jobs was digging out, washing and preparing for reburial the bodies of Telšiai prison inmates murdered by the Russians before fleeing the town. My mother’s brother Icchokas and her cousin Mošė were forced to work in Duseikiai brickyard. But this was only a prelude to the execution of the planned programme of extermination of all Jews. The programme was carried out rapidly. By mid-June, all Jewish men imprisoned in Rainiai were killed. Young men working in the Duseikiai brickyard were shot in the forest near the Geruliai mansion. We lost our grandfather, my mother’s father Šmuelis Šifas, my mother’s brother Icchokas and her cousin Mošė. Women and children were transfered from the Rainiai mansion to the Geruliai camp where they joined women and children from surrounding towns. Living conditions in the Geruliai camp were even worse as compared to Rainiai. The six of us – my grandfather's wife Riva, her sister Šeinė, my mother’s sister Lea, my brother, my mother and me – escaped from the Geruliai camp and fled to a farmer living in Burniai village with whom my mother and Lea had made an agreement. In the end of August, 500 young women were picked and taken to the ghetto established in the town of Telšiai. All women and children left in the Geruliai camp were shot dead. Shorty, two ‘white armbands’ came to the farm where we were hiding. All the Jews were arrested and taken to Telšiai prison. There, we were kept for a week, our clothes were searched thoroughly for hidden jewellery, and then we were transfered to the Telšiai Ghetto. Farmers were allowed to take Jews from the Telšiai Ghetto to work on their farms, but were required to return them to the ghetto immediately once the works were done. The prisoners of the ghetto realised that once the autumn works were over, the ghetto would be liquidated. Many tried to make agreements with the farmers: asked them to let them stay and hide. My mother was lucky to find such farmers – Juozapas Butvydas and sisters Veronika and Kazimiera Rupeikaitė, who were managing a big farm in Kalnėnai village. Beside us six, four more Jewish women hid in that farm. When Butvydas received a note that all the Jews from his farm were to be returned to the ghetto, only two elderly women – my grandfather’s wife Riva and her sister Šeinė – returned to the ghetto. Riva and Šeinė were shot dead at the end of December 1941, when the Telšiai Ghetto was liquidated. Four out of 10 ‘workers’ from Butvydas farm survived – my mother, my mother’s sister Lea, my brother and me. Four Jewish women were later captured by the ‘white armbands’ and shot dead. I did not have to stand by the pit and wait for a murder’s bullet to take my consciousness and stop my heartbeat. But I heard the gunshots in Rainiai clearly when Jewish men were being shot dead and I saw a carriage full of wet clothes stripped off the dead bodies being distributed among people. I saw black faces of men who were returned from the shooting site because of the slashing rainfall that prevented the murderers to finish their work. I have heard the laments of women who had lost their husbands and of children who had lost their parents and grandparents. I heard screams and gunshots when women and children were being shot in Geruliai. I have heard heart-wrenching laments of the young women imprisoned in the Telšiai Ghetto for their murdered mothers, grandparents, brothers and sisters. All these horrible images and sounds were etched into my heart and memory for the rest of my life. Our hiding began with the liquidation of the Telšiai Ghetto and lasted until October 1944, when the region was liberated from the Germans. I had to change my hideout 15 times, my brother Chaimas a little less, and my mother counted as much as 22 places she had to hide in. My mother’s sister Lea hid in the Laurinaitis family in Telšiai during the entire war. The scope of the tragedy that had befallen us emerged only in 1944, when the German occupation was over. I was the only one to survive of all my classmates, with whom I had finished the first class of the Telšiai Jewish school. When I visit Telšiai, I always go the building where my first Jewish school was, I take a walk down the streets of the former Telšiai Ghetto, I visit Rainiai and Geruliai, and I spend some time by the pits where our relatives, classmates and neighbours were shot dead. There are four of those pits and two of them were designated for me too... Several years ago, I was interviewed by a journalist in Vilnius. She was collecting the information for the TV show “Menora”. One of her questions was: “Why did you survive?” I replied to her: “This must have been God’s will.” I could not come up with any other answer. April 2009