rescued jewish children
Rivka Shlapobersky-Strichman
From Darkness to Light
Rivka Shlapobersky-Strichman
From Smuggled in Potato Sacks
Fifty Stories of the Hidden Children of the Kaunas Ghetto
Editors
Solomon Abramovich
and Yakov Zilberg
In 1996 representatives of the Spielberg Fund, who initiated the archiving of Holocaust survivor’s stories, asked to interview me. I wondered what I could share about my childhood, and to my amazement found I could gather only a few blurred recollections. Actually, there was nothing to tell. The publishing of testimonies by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, enabled me to read other accounts and I decided to start investigating my past. What had happened to me? What had I been through? How had I survived? What became of my parents and who had they been?
First I opened the Keidan Memorial Book. This book was given to me by my relatives and had been in my home for many years; the same relatives gave me pictures of my parents. I was so moved when I found a whole chapter describing events in my life and the people who had helped me to survive. After reading the book I went in search for more. I became acquainted with Sara Weis, who introduced me to the Society of Lithuanian Jews in Israel and to a group of people who survived the Kaunas Ghetto in their childhood. Everybody I spoke to helped me get more and more information.
In the story about my rescue, written by my aunt Rachel in the Keidan Memorial Book. I learnt that as a child I had spent some time in the Brides of Jesus Convent. From the Lithuanian Embassy I learned that there are three monasteries with the same name. I called one of them. A nun named Klara answered the phone; her Russian was good. Klara had been deported to Siberia by Russians, where she spent ten years. I told her I would like to visit Ponevez (Panevezhys), the town where I grew up and to find out about my past. She was happy to meet me and promised that the convent would help me in my search.
On my visits to Lithuania, I found a lot of material in the archives in Kaunas, such as confirmation that I had been born in a private maternity hospital, my parents’ wedding certificate, the official registration of my father’s company and the income-tax dossier and even a rental contract and the plans of the apartment in 12 Palangos Street, where my parents lived before the war.
During our first visit, my husband and I spent several days in the monastery; the authorities provided us with a car and a nun acted as our driver so that we could visit many places where I had been in my childhood. We visited the orphanage where I most probably grew up.
We met Yehuda Ronder, whose brother Chaim Ronder helped Aunt Rachel to find me after the war. Yehuda had dedicated his life to hunting and bringing to justice the Lithuanian fascists who took part in the genocide of the Jews. Together with Yehuda we travelled to Kaunas and visited the places my parents had lived in. We went to Kedainiai (Keidan in Yiddish) as well and Yehuda, familiar with the town, showed us all the places related to Keidan Jewry, including the houses where my grandparents, father and Uncle Tzodek Shlapobersky lived.
In 1941 in Kedainiai behind the Catholic cemetery at Dotnuva Road, a mass grave had been dug. The young and strong were rounded up in batches of sixty and forced to undress, while machine guns were aimed at them. The dead, the wounded and men still alive were buried in the pit.
There were attempts at fighting back. Among the second batch was my uncle, Tzodek Shlapobersky, a man of about 40. He had been an officer in the Lithuanian army and had taken part in the fight for Lithuania’s liberation. He had also been in charge of the fire brigade and was a city councillor for many years, and was friendly with the Lithuanians. A German officer was behind the massacre. According to the testimony of Mr Silvestravichius, one old Jewish man refused to take off his clothes. A Lithuanian named Raudonis tried to force him to get undressed. Tzodek Shlapobersky pulled the Lithuanian into the pit and began strangling him and sank his teeth in the Lithuanian’s throat. Then he grabbed the Lithuanian’s pistol and tried to shoot the German officer, but missed. Shlapobersky was pierced by the bayonets of other Lithuanians and his body was cut to shreds; his sister Anna, his wife and two children were killed in the same incident.
Raudonis was taken to hospital where he died, and the Lithuanians accorded him an imposing funeral. A number of addresses were held in which the Lithuanian bandit was described as ‘the last victim of Jewish power’.
During my visit to Lithuania, some vague episodes from my early childhood started to emerge: I am in a lorry at night and endless electricity wires . . . Sleeping on two chairs instead of bed . . . The noise of planes and flashes of light in the sky, while we are hiding under the bed . . .
Another picture repeatedly comes back to me from my life: I am holding on to the wooden boards of the floor, when all of my body is suspended in the hole of the toilet, which was in the yard of the monastery. I started to shout as loud as I could. Anun who passed by pulled me out and washed my legs in a puddle. The nun told me I should not tell anybody I went to the toilet alone, otherwise I would be punished. During my visit to Panevezhys I found this toilet in the orphanage, but now it is a brick building instead of the wooden one.
In addition I recalled coloured eggs, and the nightly ceremony of kneeling in front of a cross and mumbling some strange words I could not understand.
I interviewed a lot of people and travelled to Lithuania three times. The story of my past started to emerge and thus I was able to build the following picture in which, I am sure, there are still many gaps I will never be able to fill.
Rivka Shlapobersky-Strichman
From Smuggled in Potato Sacks
Fifty Stories of the Hidden Children of the Kaunas Ghetto
Editors
Solomon Abramovich
and Yakov Zilberg
In 1996 representatives of the Spielberg Fund, who initiated the archiving of Holocaust survivor’s stories, asked to interview me. I wondered what I could share about my childhood, and to my amazement found I could gather only a few blurred recollections. Actually, there was nothing to tell. The publishing of testimonies by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, enabled me to read other accounts and I decided to start investigating my past. What had happened to me? What had I been through? How had I survived? What became of my parents and who had they been?
First I opened the Keidan Memorial Book. This book was given to me by my relatives and had been in my home for many years; the same relatives gave me pictures of my parents. I was so moved when I found a whole chapter describing events in my life and the people who had helped me to survive. After reading the book I went in search for more. I became acquainted with Sara Weis, who introduced me to the Society of Lithuanian Jews in Israel and to a group of people who survived the Kaunas Ghetto in their childhood. Everybody I spoke to helped me get more and more information.
In the story about my rescue, written by my aunt Rachel in the Keidan Memorial Book. I learnt that as a child I had spent some time in the Brides of Jesus Convent. From the Lithuanian Embassy I learned that there are three monasteries with the same name. I called one of them. A nun named Klara answered the phone; her Russian was good. Klara had been deported to Siberia by Russians, where she spent ten years. I told her I would like to visit Ponevez (Panevezhys), the town where I grew up and to find out about my past. She was happy to meet me and promised that the convent would help me in my search.
On my visits to Lithuania, I found a lot of material in the archives in Kaunas, such as confirmation that I had been born in a private maternity hospital, my parents’ wedding certificate, the official registration of my father’s company and the income-tax dossier and even a rental contract and the plans of the apartment in 12 Palangos Street, where my parents lived before the war.
During our first visit, my husband and I spent several days in the monastery; the authorities provided us with a car and a nun acted as our driver so that we could visit many places where I had been in my childhood. We visited the orphanage where I most probably grew up.
We met Yehuda Ronder, whose brother Chaim Ronder helped Aunt Rachel to find me after the war. Yehuda had dedicated his life to hunting and bringing to justice the Lithuanian fascists who took part in the genocide of the Jews. Together with Yehuda we travelled to Kaunas and visited the places my parents had lived in. We went to Kedainiai (Keidan in Yiddish) as well and Yehuda, familiar with the town, showed us all the places related to Keidan Jewry, including the houses where my grandparents, father and Uncle Tzodek Shlapobersky lived.
In 1941 in Kedainiai behind the Catholic cemetery at Dotnuva Road, a mass grave had been dug. The young and strong were rounded up in batches of sixty and forced to undress, while machine guns were aimed at them. The dead, the wounded and men still alive were buried in the pit.
There were attempts at fighting back. Among the second batch was my uncle, Tzodek Shlapobersky, a man of about 40. He had been an officer in the Lithuanian army and had taken part in the fight for Lithuania’s liberation. He had also been in charge of the fire brigade and was a city councillor for many years, and was friendly with the Lithuanians. A German officer was behind the massacre. According to the testimony of Mr Silvestravichius, one old Jewish man refused to take off his clothes. A Lithuanian named Raudonis tried to force him to get undressed. Tzodek Shlapobersky pulled the Lithuanian into the pit and began strangling him and sank his teeth in the Lithuanian’s throat. Then he grabbed the Lithuanian’s pistol and tried to shoot the German officer, but missed. Shlapobersky was pierced by the bayonets of other Lithuanians and his body was cut to shreds; his sister Anna, his wife and two children were killed in the same incident.
Raudonis was taken to hospital where he died, and the Lithuanians accorded him an imposing funeral. A number of addresses were held in which the Lithuanian bandit was described as ‘the last victim of Jewish power’.
During my visit to Lithuania, some vague episodes from my early childhood started to emerge: I am in a lorry at night and endless electricity wires . . . Sleeping on two chairs instead of bed . . . The noise of planes and flashes of light in the sky, while we are hiding under the bed . . .
Another picture repeatedly comes back to me from my life: I am holding on to the wooden boards of the floor, when all of my body is suspended in the hole of the toilet, which was in the yard of the monastery. I started to shout as loud as I could. Anun who passed by pulled me out and washed my legs in a puddle. The nun told me I should not tell anybody I went to the toilet alone, otherwise I would be punished. During my visit to Panevezhys I found this toilet in the orphanage, but now it is a brick building instead of the wooden one.
In addition I recalled coloured eggs, and the nightly ceremony of kneeling in front of a cross and mumbling some strange words I could not understand.
I interviewed a lot of people and travelled to Lithuania three times. The story of my past started to emerge and thus I was able to build the following picture in which, I am sure, there are still many gaps I will never be able to fill.
I was born in 1940 to Feige, née Feivelson and Eliyahu Shlapobersky. My mother was the daughter of Eliyahu Meir Feivelson, the rabbi from Kupishkis. He published a lot of articles and a number of books. From records, I discovered that he was among the founders of Agudat Israel (Society of Israel), a clericalist political party of ultra-Orthodox Jews, founded in 1912, as well as of the ‘Yavne’, a chain of religious Zionist schools in Lithuania. Mother graduated from the Yavne Teachers’ College and became a headmistress in a school in Panemune.
My father Eliyahu Shlapobersky was born in Kedainiai, one of eleven children in the family. Father’s family owned a windmill. They were non-observant. After completing his studies and having obtained his professional qualification as a chemist, my father opened a private business. I still cannot understand how my grandfather, the famous conservative rabbi, could agree to the marriage of his daughter with a secular man who played the mandolin. (Mother’s sister married a rabbi).
I was smuggled out of the ghetto either at the end of 1942 or at the beginning of 1943. My parents handed me over to a Lithuanian policeman (possibly for payment) whose wife was my parents’ neighbour before the war. They gave him my birth certificate and the address of my uncle, Harry Shlapobersky, in South Africa and asked him, promising a generous award, to send me there, if they did not survive.
The Lithuanian policeman transferred me to his family in the village. I was kept in the kitchen in the company of a stout lady and a large stove; there was a nice sitting room in the house with lot of lights, but I was not allowed to leave the kitchen. I remember I felt deeply insulted by this treatment, as if I was an inferior creature compared to the other inhabitants of the house. Much later I understood I was a hidden child and the people who rescued me were afraid that their neighbours would see and report me.
When the Germans retreated, Shmuel Peipert, a young Jewish fellow and an officer in the Soviet Army, who was wounded and released from battle, returned to Lithuania and sought out the Jewish children hidden in the villages. He reclaimed them with money and transferred them to orphanages. One day the stout woman led me out of the kitchen to the sitting room; a man in uniform was standing there. She told me that my father had come to take me back. For one simple reason I agreed immediately to go with him. I just wanted to escape this kitchen were I had been imprisoned for so long.
Peipert placed me in an orphanage in Panevezis that belonged to the Brides of Jesus Convent. Naturally we were given a Christian education; we learnt all the Christian rituals, and I was named Eva. From time to time Peipert used to visit me and bring me candy; I referred to him as ‘tevelis’ (Daddy). Once he came with a photographer, took me on his lap and told me, ‘Look there, a bird will come out of the camera.’ A photographer covered his head with a black sheet and I sat tense with expectation. But no bird appeared. I saw only a blitz of light. Unfortunately this photo of Peipert with me on his lap was lost in one our movements from one place to another. During one of Peipert’s attempts to reclaim a child, Lithuanian nationalists murdered him.
My parents perished in the liquidation of the ghetto; I could not track down people who could tell me about their last days. I became acquainted with my parents at the later stages of my life only through photographs. I was not fortunate enough to know the love of a mother or a father’s embrace.
In 1945, my aunt Rachel Shlapobersky-Levin was liberated from Stutthof and returned to Kaunas. By chance, she was informed by Chaim Ronder that her niece had survived and was being kept at the Brides of Jesus Convent in Panevezis. She went to the convent to collect me. With all my might I resisted the attempts of this lady whom I did not know to take me away from my home and my friends. Eventually I was obliged to go with her and soon we moved to Vilnius.
My aunt married Jermiyahu Ratner, a man who had survived the Klooga concentration camp. We were a complicated family: a small girl and two adult people who had just returned from the horror and suffering of the ghetto and the concentration camps. I grew up in a home full of tears and the terrible stories of my foster-parents about what they had gone through. I avoided being at home when my parents were there, looking for refuge outside in the school, with my friends and in activities of the Young Communist Movement, Komsomol.
One rainy day in 1959 my aunt told me that there was a good opportunity for us to leave Lithuania. Since Jermiyahu Ratner had been a Polish citizen before the war, we were entitled to move to Poland, his homeland. My aunt was happy and told me with excitement that from Poland we could move easily to Israel. I was shocked, for me this news came like a thunder bolt; I strongly opposed us leaving the USSR. I attended the Russian school, all my friends were Russian and I was educated in the ideals of Communism. Stalin, the ‘sunshine of the nations’ was our father, and Russia was our Motherland! What did I have to do with Israel!? Eventually I had no choice and we emigrated to Poland. There I studied Civil Engineering at the polytechnic in Wroclaw. It was difficult since I could not speak the language. We stayed in Poland about a year, till our relatives organized our visa to Israel. In 1960 I emigrated to Israel with my aunt Rachel and her husband.
Despite the warmth and attention of distant relatives, early settlers in Israel, who cared for all my needs and even helped me enrol in the Polytechnic Institute, the Technion in Haifa, I felt like a stranger in Israel. I did not understand the language, different to any languages I knew before, and did not like the Israeli ways and manners. It was difficult to bear the heat and the behaviour of the local people. I will never forget my first journey by bus to the Technion. All the seats in the bus were occupied by male students; they stared at me but no one gave up his seat. I stood alone in the middle of the bus, embarrassed. Never in Lithuania and Poland had I encountered such rude behaviour. I thought: ‘What am I doing here? I do not belong to this place and to these people.’ I wanted to leave, but I had no means and no place to go.
During my first days in Israel, when I was still living with my relatives, I was ‘advised’ not to speak of my past. This advice suited me very well, I did not want people to pity me. I blocked out my whole past and took no interest in my roots. Throughout my student years I was extremely busy with my studies and overloaded both physically and mentally. It was not at all easy to study without knowing the language and without friends. However, then my life happily changed when I met Yakov Strichman, who became my husband. I graduated from the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Yakov graduated as an industrial and management engineer.
We started a new life together relying on ourselves alone, with no substantial help from anybody. We worked very hard to bring up our two children and to build our life; we did well in our professional careers. Eventually my children left home and I retired. The atmosphere in Israel had changed. There was more openness about the Holocaust and those who had survived it were speaking out. I suddenly found myself exposed to the period of my life that till now I had repressed. Unfortunately my aunt Rachel and her husband Jermiyahu passed away and a lot of information was lost with them. Our daughter gained a PhD in Molecular Biology and our son is a lawyer. Our legacy is our two grandsons and two granddaughters.
Haifa, Israel, 2009
First published in 2011 by Vallentine Mitchell
London, Portland, OR
My father Eliyahu Shlapobersky was born in Kedainiai, one of eleven children in the family. Father’s family owned a windmill. They were non-observant. After completing his studies and having obtained his professional qualification as a chemist, my father opened a private business. I still cannot understand how my grandfather, the famous conservative rabbi, could agree to the marriage of his daughter with a secular man who played the mandolin. (Mother’s sister married a rabbi).
I was smuggled out of the ghetto either at the end of 1942 or at the beginning of 1943. My parents handed me over to a Lithuanian policeman (possibly for payment) whose wife was my parents’ neighbour before the war. They gave him my birth certificate and the address of my uncle, Harry Shlapobersky, in South Africa and asked him, promising a generous award, to send me there, if they did not survive.
The Lithuanian policeman transferred me to his family in the village. I was kept in the kitchen in the company of a stout lady and a large stove; there was a nice sitting room in the house with lot of lights, but I was not allowed to leave the kitchen. I remember I felt deeply insulted by this treatment, as if I was an inferior creature compared to the other inhabitants of the house. Much later I understood I was a hidden child and the people who rescued me were afraid that their neighbours would see and report me.
When the Germans retreated, Shmuel Peipert, a young Jewish fellow and an officer in the Soviet Army, who was wounded and released from battle, returned to Lithuania and sought out the Jewish children hidden in the villages. He reclaimed them with money and transferred them to orphanages. One day the stout woman led me out of the kitchen to the sitting room; a man in uniform was standing there. She told me that my father had come to take me back. For one simple reason I agreed immediately to go with him. I just wanted to escape this kitchen were I had been imprisoned for so long.
Peipert placed me in an orphanage in Panevezis that belonged to the Brides of Jesus Convent. Naturally we were given a Christian education; we learnt all the Christian rituals, and I was named Eva. From time to time Peipert used to visit me and bring me candy; I referred to him as ‘tevelis’ (Daddy). Once he came with a photographer, took me on his lap and told me, ‘Look there, a bird will come out of the camera.’ A photographer covered his head with a black sheet and I sat tense with expectation. But no bird appeared. I saw only a blitz of light. Unfortunately this photo of Peipert with me on his lap was lost in one our movements from one place to another. During one of Peipert’s attempts to reclaim a child, Lithuanian nationalists murdered him.
My parents perished in the liquidation of the ghetto; I could not track down people who could tell me about their last days. I became acquainted with my parents at the later stages of my life only through photographs. I was not fortunate enough to know the love of a mother or a father’s embrace.
In 1945, my aunt Rachel Shlapobersky-Levin was liberated from Stutthof and returned to Kaunas. By chance, she was informed by Chaim Ronder that her niece had survived and was being kept at the Brides of Jesus Convent in Panevezis. She went to the convent to collect me. With all my might I resisted the attempts of this lady whom I did not know to take me away from my home and my friends. Eventually I was obliged to go with her and soon we moved to Vilnius.
My aunt married Jermiyahu Ratner, a man who had survived the Klooga concentration camp. We were a complicated family: a small girl and two adult people who had just returned from the horror and suffering of the ghetto and the concentration camps. I grew up in a home full of tears and the terrible stories of my foster-parents about what they had gone through. I avoided being at home when my parents were there, looking for refuge outside in the school, with my friends and in activities of the Young Communist Movement, Komsomol.
One rainy day in 1959 my aunt told me that there was a good opportunity for us to leave Lithuania. Since Jermiyahu Ratner had been a Polish citizen before the war, we were entitled to move to Poland, his homeland. My aunt was happy and told me with excitement that from Poland we could move easily to Israel. I was shocked, for me this news came like a thunder bolt; I strongly opposed us leaving the USSR. I attended the Russian school, all my friends were Russian and I was educated in the ideals of Communism. Stalin, the ‘sunshine of the nations’ was our father, and Russia was our Motherland! What did I have to do with Israel!? Eventually I had no choice and we emigrated to Poland. There I studied Civil Engineering at the polytechnic in Wroclaw. It was difficult since I could not speak the language. We stayed in Poland about a year, till our relatives organized our visa to Israel. In 1960 I emigrated to Israel with my aunt Rachel and her husband.
Despite the warmth and attention of distant relatives, early settlers in Israel, who cared for all my needs and even helped me enrol in the Polytechnic Institute, the Technion in Haifa, I felt like a stranger in Israel. I did not understand the language, different to any languages I knew before, and did not like the Israeli ways and manners. It was difficult to bear the heat and the behaviour of the local people. I will never forget my first journey by bus to the Technion. All the seats in the bus were occupied by male students; they stared at me but no one gave up his seat. I stood alone in the middle of the bus, embarrassed. Never in Lithuania and Poland had I encountered such rude behaviour. I thought: ‘What am I doing here? I do not belong to this place and to these people.’ I wanted to leave, but I had no means and no place to go.
During my first days in Israel, when I was still living with my relatives, I was ‘advised’ not to speak of my past. This advice suited me very well, I did not want people to pity me. I blocked out my whole past and took no interest in my roots. Throughout my student years I was extremely busy with my studies and overloaded both physically and mentally. It was not at all easy to study without knowing the language and without friends. However, then my life happily changed when I met Yakov Strichman, who became my husband. I graduated from the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Yakov graduated as an industrial and management engineer.
We started a new life together relying on ourselves alone, with no substantial help from anybody. We worked very hard to bring up our two children and to build our life; we did well in our professional careers. Eventually my children left home and I retired. The atmosphere in Israel had changed. There was more openness about the Holocaust and those who had survived it were speaking out. I suddenly found myself exposed to the period of my life that till now I had repressed. Unfortunately my aunt Rachel and her husband Jermiyahu passed away and a lot of information was lost with them. Our daughter gained a PhD in Molecular Biology and our son is a lawyer. Our legacy is our two grandsons and two granddaughters.
Haifa, Israel, 2009
First published in 2011 by Vallentine Mitchell
London, Portland, OR