Rescuers of Jews

Jelena GRIGORJEVA and her daughter Irina OSTJANKO Before the war Reiches family – Israel, his wife Ida and daughter Ira lived in Vilnius. When the war broke out and Germans occupied Vilnius, the family moved to Ida’s parents not far from Vilnius. Altogether they were 10 people in the house. One night all the Jews were driven to the ghetto in Vilnius. Israel and Ida managed to run away and hide with the Polish family, whom they got acquainted with before the war. Grandmother took small Ira, who was only several months old then, to the ghetto. The Polish family, who was hiding Ida and Israel, was asking for money. Soon the police came to the house and Israel and Ida were taken to the ghetto. On the way Israel persuaded Ida to run away, policemen started shooting, but Ida hid in a pit and managed to escape. Nothing is known about her husband Israel’s fate. Later Ida came back to the ghetto. At that time she managed to establish a contact with a local Russian woman, called Jelena Grigorjeva. Jelena agreed to hide Ida’s small daughter Ira and her cousin Tamara who was approximately of the same age. Jelena was a widow and she had two daughters of her own: Irina, who was 16 years old and Lusia, who was married, but whose husband was driven to Siberia by the Soviet power even before the war. Germans drove Lusia to Germany to a labour camp; nothing is known about her destiny. Jelena managed to get forged documents on the names of Ira and Tamara Burak and distributed some rumours among the neighbours that both girls were Lusia’s daughters. Jelena and her daughter Irina treated the girls as their own and were taking care of the children despite all the danger. Ida Reiches, Ira’s mother, and Lida Chonovitz, Ida’s sister and Tamara’s mother, managed to run away from the ghetto. They went to Belarus to the farmers whom they were acquainted with. Ira does not know the names of those farmers, but she knows that both women were hiding there during 3 years. At the end of the war the farmer took Ida to the forest, to partisans, with whom she stayed until the liberation. Lida Chonovitz found her daughter at Jelena Grigorjeva’s house and took her with her, but Ira stayed with the family. Jelena continued to bring Ira up as her own daughter and small Ira was sure that Jelena was her mother. After the war Ira’s mother, Ida, married again. She moved to Poland and from there to Germany and in 1948 – to Israel. After some time Ida starting thinking about taking her daughter from the Soviet Union, but there was no such a possibility. Ira remembers that when she was approximately 10 years old, she and Jelena were summoned to the KGB, where they were informed that Ira’s true mother was looking for her and was asking for the permission for Ira to leave the country. Ira started crying and saying that Jelena was her mother and she did not want to go anywhere. Then Jelena told the girl all the truth and Ira started to receive letters from her true mother from Israel. In 1957 Ida got the permission to visit her daughter in Vilnius and in 1961 Ira was allowed to leave Lithuania and join her true mother in Israel. During the years spent in the Grigorjeva’s family Ira finished secondary school, pedagogical institute and entered the polytechnical institute.