Rescued Jewish Children

In 1935, my mother Sorė Gilinskaitė went from Ukmergė to Kaunas to live with her mother Lifshe Ganelina-Rabinovich and her stepfather Eliyas Meilach Rabinovich and to learn the trade of a hairdresser. Soon she got married to Hirsh Sholomovich, a tailor from Russia. I don’t know much about my father’s family and their fate. When I was a child, I knew that that my father had many sisters and brothers and that my grandparents were tailors and were living in Kaunas downtown. My brother Icik (born 6 August 1937) was killed in an accident when he was six months old. I was the second child in the family. My real date of birth is 1 July 1939. At that time, my parents were living Vokiečių St 50 in Šančiai. In 1939 my father was drafted into the army. He did not return home after the war and nobody saw him again. On the first day of the war my grandmother took my mother and her children to her house. The family decided to flee Kaunas. We set out for the railway station and arrived at the Green Bridge. I was lying in a pram with scarlet fever. My mother was weeping. A Russian officer came up to us and when he learned why my mother was crying, he said that a car would arrive soon to evacuate the officers’ families to the rear. My mother and I remained behind to wait for the car, and my grandmother, her husband and their ten-year old son Shmerel went to the station. There was a train there which took them to the town of Dzhizak in Uzbekistan. They returned to Lithuania in 1945. My grandmother’s eldest son, uncle Mordechai, went to the front at the age of seventeen and survived. He and his family emigrated to Israel in 1966. He died of a stroke in 1976. My mother and I were taken to Ukmergė. We saw groups of refugees moving along the road, planes were flying over our heads. We reached the town of Ukmergė in which my mother was born, and where she, almost an orphan, had spent her childhood and where she later met her cruel death. In the car which was evacuating the officer’s families, we travelled from Kaunas through Ukmergė. There, the vehicle was bombed, the driver fled and were forced to stay in Ukmergė. Whereas I was sick with scarlet fever, I was taken to a hospital and my mother stayed in the uncle Naumas Ganelinas’ apartment. The uncle’s family had already left the country. However, my mother was informed against and arrested by the Gestapo. Later, one of the Gestapo officers took my mother and several other girls on a road and told them that the ones who outran his bicycle would live. My mother managed to outrun the German, but then he dismounted the bike and shot her. This was evidenced by local people who had seen the incident. The doctor of the Ukmergė hospital helped me survive. When my mother was gone, he gave me over to a Lithuanian nurse of the hospital, Antanina Žemeckienė. She agreed to take me under her care and I stayed with her till the end of the war. Antanina Žemeckienė’s husband had died. She had two children of her own and was living very poorly after the war. Therefore, in 1948 she gave me over to her neighbours Juozas and Zofija Mackela. Mr. Mackela was disabled. He was a shoemaker and worked at home. There were three children in his family. Some time in 1949, a dark-haired stranger came to our little house. He was my uncle Mordechay. He talked to the mistress of the house and the latter said to me: “Your uncle has come to see you and he wants to take you with him.” Upon hearing that, I jumped on the stove immediately, hid under the fur coat, and would not get down until he had left. He came for the second time on 24 December 1949. I was badly ill and had a high fever. My uncle wrapped me up in a large woollen scarf and took me away. My grandmother and my mother’s cousins Bela, Leah and Civa Ganelina, met us on the platform of the railway station in Vilnius. My aunt Bela had fled the Kaunas Ghetto to a partisan squad and survived. Aunts Leah and Civa and their parents had evacuated Ukmergė on time. I could not understand the language they spoke, but they cried, stroked me, and I calmed down very soon. Thus, my new life started. In the winter of 1949 I went to the fourth grade of the Lithuanian school. I took the name of my grandmother’s second husband – Rabinovich. Later my personal documents were issued in this name, and my birth date – 1 May 1940 – was determined by a medical commission under the Vilnius civil registry office. My new life was full of difficulties too. Insecurity, lack of confidence, vulnerability and mistrustfulness were constant attendants in my life. I cannot get rid of them because it is impossible to forget what I have gone through. The story of my life was told to me by my uncle Shmerel Rabinovich many years ago. Rozeta Ramonienė