rescued jewish children
Michael Langevich
Driven by Longing
Michael (Misha) Langevich
From: Smuggled in Potato Sacks
Fifty Stories of the Hidden Children of the Kaunas Ghetto
Editors
Solomon Abramovich
and Yakov Zilberg
My father, Misha Langevich, was born in the small town of Vilkavishkis, and he moved to Kaunas in the hope of making his fortune. There he met Haviva (Hinda), daughter of Fivel Korabelnik, and they married shortly before the war began. I know close to nothing about their work and life before the war.
In A. Faitelson’s book Not Defeated, there is an account by Faitelson’s wife Sima, which mentions my father’s death. She says,
Before the war, in a building on Laisves Avenue, the central street in Kaunas, Lithuanian and Jewish families lived in relative harmony. Their children played together, speaking a mixture of Yiddish and Lithuanian between them. A lame Lithuanian caretaker lived in a flat on the lower floor. On Jewish holy days he always received money and gifts from the other tenants.
On the morning of 25 June somebody knocked on our door. It was the caretaker accompanied by several armed Lithuanians. They dragged my father and brother out of our apartment. At that moment, a German officer appeared and ordered the Lithuanians to release them. Later from another apartment the same Lithuanians led a man with his teenaged son and another young man, Moishe Langevich, to the cellar and shot them.
When my widowed mother entered the ghetto, she was four months pregnant. Shmuel and Hava Shilkiner gave her shelter; my mother spent all the terrible years of the ghetto with this kind family. I was born in November 1941 and named Moshe in memory of my father.
The situation in the ghetto was becoming highly dangerous, and many families were looking to find an escape, at least for their children. Mother succeeded through Dr Kudrika in finding a Lithuanian woman who agreed to take care of me. I was given sleeping pills, or a shot of Luminal, nobody can now tell me which, and was smuggled by Shilkiner’s daughter Keile out of the ghetto. Keile brought me to Viktoria and Petras Lemberis. On the liquidation of the ghetto, my mother was sent to Stutthof.
In January 1945, when the Russian Army was approaching the concentration camp, all the surviving women were led away on foot to another camp. Hungry, cold and ill, they were close to death when the Soviet Army liberated them from Germans. Although terribly weak, my mother refused to wait to get stronger. She wanted to reach Kaunas as soon as possible to find out what had happened to me, and she went straight to Lithuania alone. She never reached Kaunas. One day she stopped a cart carrying Russian soldiers. The following day the upturned cart was found with my mother lying dead beside it.
My uncle, Shijus Langevich, served in the 16th Division of the Red Army during the war as the guard for A. Snechkus, the future Lithuanian Communist Party leader. After he was demobilized he came to Kaunas and collected me from the Lamberis family. He and his wife Sarra adopted me.
My adoptive parents never told me that I was not their biological son. I called Shijus and Sarra ‘Daddy’ and ‘Mama’. I do not remember exactly when I was told the truth by our housekeeper, but I never raised this issue and played along.
Naturally, I knew nothing about the people who saved me; there was no contact between our and the Lemberis family. Many years later my close friend Alik Abramovich introduced me to a girl named Dana, who was approximately my own age. It appeared that Dana either lived with the Lemberis family or had been their neighbour, and she remembered that we had played together when we were kids. We became quite good friends. Dana organized a meeting between myself and Victoria Lemberiene, the lady who had looked after me. On another occasion she took me to a hotel on Laisves Avenue, where a man welcomed me and introduced himself as Petras Lemberis. He was a receptionist or guard in this hotel and had seen me many times passing through but for some reason had never talked to me. We chatted a little bit, about nothing special; we never met again.
I graduated from Kaunas Polytechnic Institute in 1965 as a mechanical engineer and married Polina, a student in Kaunas Medical School. In 1972 we emigrated to Israel with our daughter. In Israel Polina and I immediately found work in our professions, and in time we made quite good progress. In 1976 our son Arnon was born. In 2008 I retired; my wife, a professor in rheumatology, continues her clinical and scientific activities.
Kiriat Ono, Israel, 2008
First published in 2011 by Vallentine Mitchell
London, Portland, OR
Michael (Misha) Langevich
From: Smuggled in Potato Sacks
Fifty Stories of the Hidden Children of the Kaunas Ghetto
Editors
Solomon Abramovich
and Yakov Zilberg
My father, Misha Langevich, was born in the small town of Vilkavishkis, and he moved to Kaunas in the hope of making his fortune. There he met Haviva (Hinda), daughter of Fivel Korabelnik, and they married shortly before the war began. I know close to nothing about their work and life before the war.
In A. Faitelson’s book Not Defeated, there is an account by Faitelson’s wife Sima, which mentions my father’s death. She says,
Before the war, in a building on Laisves Avenue, the central street in Kaunas, Lithuanian and Jewish families lived in relative harmony. Their children played together, speaking a mixture of Yiddish and Lithuanian between them. A lame Lithuanian caretaker lived in a flat on the lower floor. On Jewish holy days he always received money and gifts from the other tenants.
On the morning of 25 June somebody knocked on our door. It was the caretaker accompanied by several armed Lithuanians. They dragged my father and brother out of our apartment. At that moment, a German officer appeared and ordered the Lithuanians to release them. Later from another apartment the same Lithuanians led a man with his teenaged son and another young man, Moishe Langevich, to the cellar and shot them.
When my widowed mother entered the ghetto, she was four months pregnant. Shmuel and Hava Shilkiner gave her shelter; my mother spent all the terrible years of the ghetto with this kind family. I was born in November 1941 and named Moshe in memory of my father.
The situation in the ghetto was becoming highly dangerous, and many families were looking to find an escape, at least for their children. Mother succeeded through Dr Kudrika in finding a Lithuanian woman who agreed to take care of me. I was given sleeping pills, or a shot of Luminal, nobody can now tell me which, and was smuggled by Shilkiner’s daughter Keile out of the ghetto. Keile brought me to Viktoria and Petras Lemberis. On the liquidation of the ghetto, my mother was sent to Stutthof.
In January 1945, when the Russian Army was approaching the concentration camp, all the surviving women were led away on foot to another camp. Hungry, cold and ill, they were close to death when the Soviet Army liberated them from Germans. Although terribly weak, my mother refused to wait to get stronger. She wanted to reach Kaunas as soon as possible to find out what had happened to me, and she went straight to Lithuania alone. She never reached Kaunas. One day she stopped a cart carrying Russian soldiers. The following day the upturned cart was found with my mother lying dead beside it.
My uncle, Shijus Langevich, served in the 16th Division of the Red Army during the war as the guard for A. Snechkus, the future Lithuanian Communist Party leader. After he was demobilized he came to Kaunas and collected me from the Lamberis family. He and his wife Sarra adopted me.
My adoptive parents never told me that I was not their biological son. I called Shijus and Sarra ‘Daddy’ and ‘Mama’. I do not remember exactly when I was told the truth by our housekeeper, but I never raised this issue and played along.
Naturally, I knew nothing about the people who saved me; there was no contact between our and the Lemberis family. Many years later my close friend Alik Abramovich introduced me to a girl named Dana, who was approximately my own age. It appeared that Dana either lived with the Lemberis family or had been their neighbour, and she remembered that we had played together when we were kids. We became quite good friends. Dana organized a meeting between myself and Victoria Lemberiene, the lady who had looked after me. On another occasion she took me to a hotel on Laisves Avenue, where a man welcomed me and introduced himself as Petras Lemberis. He was a receptionist or guard in this hotel and had seen me many times passing through but for some reason had never talked to me. We chatted a little bit, about nothing special; we never met again.
I graduated from Kaunas Polytechnic Institute in 1965 as a mechanical engineer and married Polina, a student in Kaunas Medical School. In 1972 we emigrated to Israel with our daughter. In Israel Polina and I immediately found work in our professions, and in time we made quite good progress. In 1976 our son Arnon was born. In 2008 I retired; my wife, a professor in rheumatology, continues her clinical and scientific activities.
Kiriat Ono, Israel, 2008
First published in 2011 by Vallentine Mitchell
London, Portland, OR