rescued jewish children

On 15 December 1943 just before my birthday I discovered that a girl of my age escaped from the ghetto, and I wrote in my diary: “Chavka got out of the ghetto into the city. It’s a pity. Mum, I also want to! I want to live!” I worked in rubber factory, on the assembly line, as it should be for a girl of 15. When you work on the assembly line, you have to be fast, not to miss anything, and move your fingers quickly when putting the part together. If you start looking around and miss something, that’s it, you will not get your thin, clear soup, zuppe. Suddenly I was asked to go to the office. And now I remember my trials: how I looked like there, so dirty, shabby, and unhappy. There was an unknown woman in the office. She asked me whether I remember my teacher Petronėlė Lastienė and if I wanted to go and see her. Of course, I wanted, very much! This unknown woman was Bronė Pajėdaitė. We did not see each other during the war; however, after the liberation she played a major role in my future life. My father, together with Dr. Kisina organised a detailed plan for my escape from the ghetto, and I was fortunate. 7 April 1944. I escaped from the ghetto. So, I went to the teacher of history who used to teach me at Kaunas 5th Gymnasium, Petronėlė Lastienė. She promised to take me in. I walked through the entire city and finally I reached Donelaičio street. The street turns and ends up being a dead end. Like on this map that I remembered from Dr. Kisina. She had been here a few times and drew a detailed map for me. It’s an early morning, with a rooster cawing somewhere. Music is playing. I am standing at the gates. It is bit too early to knock on the door, not convenient. But I can‘t be here for long, I am outside the law, I have no right to be here... I am walking up the stairs quietly. On the third floor I knock on the door that is open just a cracka and at once embrace my teacher. It seems, she was waiting for me here! Petronėlė starts immediately calling and telling that Elenutė has come. So, I am Elenutė? Strange... Petronėlė gives me a birth certificate and I‘ve never seen such documents before. There I clearly see that I am Elenutė Savickaitė, Aldona’s daughter. Above the line is my father’s last name and a thick dash: Aldona’s daughter. I am modestly asking: “Shouldn’t the last name of the father be written?” Petronėlė is laughing: “No need for a father, it’s better like this...” She can laugh, but what about for me? They gave me a strange first and last name, what’s more, they took my father from me. My beloved father, I did not know then that this was my last good-bye to you... I was so proud of you. You treated people and helped to those who were suffering from mental disorders, you treated alcoholics with hypnosis. You wrote articles to the magazine “Šeima ir mokykla” (“Family and School”) about the education of children and teenagers, gave lectures on psychiatry, sharing so many examples from your extensive experience. Being a Lithuanian Army doctor you swore allegiance to Lithuania. And you kept your oath. However, Lithuania did nothing to help its citizen like Finland, Bulgaria or some other countries did. Petronėlė Lastienė was a beautiful middle-aged woman. There was something grand about her, she was very respectable in her behaviour, as if knowing her worth. She was courageous and determined, charming and educated. She knew Russian well. I remember how frightened she was when she read my letter to my parents, there were more mistakes than words... Petronėlė also had medical background and worked as a medical nurse for awhile. She had quite a good Russian library, which helped me spend long days in her apartment which I did not leave. Petronėlė gave me one of her rooms and said that the daughter of Lithuanian President Stulginskis lived here not too long ago. I did not ask for more details and was not surprised because I was used to not being surprised at anything and I was used to not asking any questions. Apart from me, Petronėlė rescued the son of Dr. Nemenčikienė, two daughters of Dr. Kisina and others, that I can‘t tell anything about exactly. When I started living there after the ghetto, Petronėlė lived in a private house on Donelaičio street No. 14 a, in the dead end. This was a three storey building which had belonged to her relative, gynaecologist Bliudžiūtė. Her sister Dr. Mikužienė with her family lived on the first floor, on the second was Dr. Bliudžiūtė, and on the third Petronėlė Lastienė. The garden path went to the house of Professor Mažylis, his wife was the aunt of Petronėlė Lastienė. I was taken along this path to the house of Professor Mažylis a few times, when Petronėlė Lastienė had too many “residents”... This is how my unpredictable journey started: from one good family I would move to another, changing my place of residence... These people were heroes. I wanted to scream: “Do not open the doors, I am marked with a sign bearing death!” But more than anything I wanted to live... Veronika Žvironaitė was single and lived together with the family of her brother Kazimieras in Kaunas, in the Žaliakalnis neighbourhood, on Tulpių street. In this house, Veronika had a big room that she shared with me. She was my teacher of biology and inspector of Kaunas 5th gymnasium. She was especially sensitive to the pain of the others, and radiated warmth and love. I felt a special attachment to her, she would understand after uttering just a few words. It was with her that I experienced two unpleasant events, The first one was related to Dostoevsky. Yes, the same, Fiodor Mikhailovich. I was sitting in a room and reading a book, when a colleague of Veronika’s came to visit her. The guest was very curious and asked which book the girl was reading, and the girl was reading “Crime and the Punishment”. What a clever girl. However, the next day the colleague said to Veronika: “You are hiding a Jew. Think, would a Lithuanian girl read Dostoevsky in the original, in Russian?“ I was lucky, she did not tell anyone. The other case was worse. One night we had German soldiers who searched our house. They looked everywhere: under the bed, opened the closets, ran around the apartment. When they were asked: “What are you looking for?” They answered that they were looking for a lost child. Of course, I thought they were looking for me. Veronika thought the same and got really scared. Her three nephews lived in the same apartment, little boys, she had no right to take such a risk. Therefore, after the meeting of the “security council” it was decided to send me to the village. That is how I said good-bye to Veronika Žvironaitė... And the ball started rolling up to the Latvian border... It was there on a beautiful estate very good people lived, Vera and Petras Effertas. Petras Effertas was the manager of this estate. Vera was a sister of Petronėlė Lastienė. There was a swift narrow river going through the big garden, the Kamatė. The forest blew in the breeze nearby. This was a very calm and picturesque place which became my house till the Red Army marched into the city. I lived here and I tried hard to help with all the necessary housework... My first task was to scare the starlings. Yes, yes, I was like a big scarecrow in a very tasty garden of cherries. The starlings liked these cherries very much and they would come in huge flocks. I was given two wooden rattles and walked around in the garden trying to scare them away. At the very beginning the birds were very scared, but later on they got used to this. But I would eat a lot of cherries doing this job, put them behind my cheeks and thank God I did not need to sing... I was weeding the vegetable garden, picking berries, I even tried milking a cow though my attempt were not very successful. The cow kicked me and the most precious thing, the milk, spilt over. I liked churning butter very much. I would pour sour-cream into a wooden bowl, then I was given a plunger that needed to be pushed up and down until the butter was made. I often remember Petronėlė’s story about two frogs in the cream. One gave up and died immediately and the other one, who was determined to get out, would go up and down and this is how the butter was made and the frog got out. Petronėlė told us the story during a lesson. This is how I passed my days, doing simple jobs among good people, surrounded by beautiful nature. Sometimes there were some unpleasant events, but compared to the city it was a calm sanctuary. The front would sometimes approach our estate, and move away. Ingenius Petras put a two-sided portrait on our wall: from one side there was the hated and terrible tyrant Hitler and on the other side Stalin the dictator. Depending on which army approached us, Petras would turn the portrait to the appropriate side. However, one beautiful day Vera and Petras set off for a journey. They were terribly scared of the Bolsheviks and knew that they would not evade Siberia. All the more so, since Vera’s brother was exiled back in 1940. To fast-forward the events, I will tell that Petronėlė was convicted and spent 10 years in a camp. Vera offered me to go to Germany together. And then I confessed that I was a Jew (her husband Petras already knew this but did not tell his wife and did not want to scare her) and I was afraid of the Germans more than the Russians. Then it turned that they wanted to adopt me thinking that I was an orphan as they had no children of their own. Before leaving Vera said: “You are being left as the little keeper of a big estate. Keep it well”. This is how I became the “keeper” of an estate. I was fifteen then... When I had nothing to do in Pakamačiai, I came back to Kaunas. I moved in with Bronė Pajėdaitė, there I found my friend Onutė Keilsonaitė. Bronė sheltered two orphans, shared the bread that she earned with her sweat. I lived at her place up until she was arrested by the KGB on 18 August 1945. She saw a tragic death in the facilities of KGB in Kaunas. I lived for some time at the best friend of Bronė Veronika Žvironaitė, who helped me as much as she could. In the autumn of 1945 Veronika was arrested by the KGB and sent to the camps. She came back many years after, ill and weak. She built a house with her nephews and nieces in Užpaliai, where she lived till her death (1982). I was reported about this loss by Sigutė Žvironaitė, the daughter of Prof. Antanas Žvironas. All this time, till Veronika Žvironaitė’s death, we wrote letters to each other. Petronėlė Lastienė was arrested by the KGB on 4 October 1945. She was deported to Siberia where she spent almost ten years. I wrote to the KGB that she was rescuing Jews but my address unfortunately did not help. When she came back I asked her whether she knew anything about my letter. It appeared that the investigator told Petronėlė about this and asked why she would do this. My teacher replied: “Have you ever heard about humanity?” Those people were like that... Petronėlė Lastienė died on 30 November 1981 in Kaunas. Veronika Žvironaitė wrote me about this. While living in Israel I was quite active in corresponding with my saviours Petronėlė Lastienė and Veronika Žvironaitė. When I read their letters, I break into tears... I am not ashamed of these tears. My life took my real mother from me but gave me three other mothers, who embraced me with warmth and love, took care of me like their own daughter. Unfortunately, the terrible red plague killed my mothers too. I‘ve become and orphan for the second time. (In September-October of 1945 the authors and the editors of the Memorandum on the reestablishment of Lithuanian independence were detained and interrogated by the KGB: Professor of Law Tadas Petkevičius, Docent of Kaunas University Petronėlė Lastienė, former Lithuanian Envoy Extraordinary in France Petras Klimas, Canon Petras Rauda, Director of the publishing house “Varpas” J. Česnavičius, dentist Bronė Pajedaitė. Jadvyga Žakevičiūtė-Jablonskienė, who was arrested, printed this Memorandum. This Memorandum which was planned to be handed over to the representations of England and the USA aimed at explaining that the so-called free elections in Lithuania and annexation to the USSR are illegal since the elections were launched after the USSR army occupied Lithuania. Therefore, the governments of England and USA were asked to follow the decisions of the Yalta Conference and help Lithuania to organise free elections. The fate of the convicts was tragic: saviour of Tamara Bronė Pajėdaitė was found dead in the KGB facilities in Kaunas in September 1945; Jadvyga Žakevičiūtė-Jablonskienė, who rescued a little girl named Dalia Jackbo (Vilenčiuk) during the war, died in 1948 at Pravieniškės prison; Petronėlė Lastienė, Petras Klimas and Canon Petras Rauda came back from the camps ill. He saved a Jewish child in Utena during the war (”Petro Klimo istoriko ir diplomato likimas” (“The Fate of Historian and Diplomat Petras Klimas”) // Gimtasis kraštas. – 1989, No.45). The rescuer of Tamara Veronika Žvironaitė was deported to Siberia. This is how, according to Tamara, the red plague killed the people with noble heart.) Не говорите мне,что вымысел Шоа. Вас покарает Бог за ложь такую – Рыдает в небесах невинная душа, А тело здесь лишь только существует. Не говорите мне... ( Do not tell me that Shoa is made-up. / God will punish you for such a lie – / An innocent soul is crying in heaven, / Whereas the body is still on the ground. / Do not tell me...) Tamara Lazersonaitė-Rostovskaja “Three Mothers”
From the 4th book Hands Bringing Life and Bread The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum