JULIJANA ZARCHI
My father, Mausha Zarchi, was born in Lithuania, in the town of Ukmergė. He obtained a university education in Germany, was a graduate of Basel University, and worked in Dusseldorf, Germany, where he met my mother, Gerta Zarchi. Her maiden name was Urchs. My mother was German, my father was Jewish. Back in 1934 they could not get married in Germany, and therefore their marriage was registered in the Kaunas rabbinate. This is how my mother became a Jew and a citizen of Lithuania. After getting married, they returned to Germany, where they lived until 1937, when they were ordered to leave the country. My father found a job in Kaunas. I, Julijana Zarchi, was born in 1938.
The day WWII broke out, my father, together with the editorial board of the newspaper he worked for, retreated to the East. On the way he must have visited his hometownof Ukmergė, where the extended Zarchi family lived, including his father and brothers with their families and aunts and uncles. My father was killed during the first months of war. A report written by SS Einsatzkommando leader Karl Jaeger shows that the extermination of Jews in Ukmergė started on 1 August 1941. Later actions were organised on 8 and 19 August and on 5 September. There was no mention of Ukmergė in Jaeger’s later reports. Most likely the entire Jewish community of the town had been exterminated by that time. My whole family from my father’s sidehad perished with them.
Pogroms and murders of Jews began on the first days of WWII. These things happened even before the arrival of the Wehrmacht. Later a decree ordering all Jews and half-Jews to report to the ghetto by 15 August followed. My mother and my grandmother from Germany who was visiting us at that time saw the ghetto as an escape from the lawlessness of the white stripes. They gathered their belongings and took me by the hand, and together we were about to go to the ghetto. However, our neighbour Francas (Pranas) Vocelka, one of the few acquaintances that my mother had, said, “If we all go to the ghetto, who will save and hide us?” Vocelka’s wife was a Jew. They had three children. Vocelka himself was a Czech of Austrian origin. He suggested that my mother should send me to the ghetto together with his wife and children and that they themselves should then start looking for ways to get us out of the ghetto illegally as soon as possible. They did exactly what they said they would. I was at the ghetto together with Vocelka’s family. His plan happened to work perfectly well. I was lucky to leave the ghetto first. It was all organised by Francas Vocelka. I even remember one moment myself, although I was only three then. Someone pushed me through the barbed wire and ordered me to run. Then I caught a glimpse of my mother standing in an open door on the other side of the street and ran to her. Vocelka must have bribed one of the guards. There was someone else standing there with a ball in his hands just in case someone noticed me running and they could say that I was running after the ball. I remember my clothes being changed and that my mum looked different.
From that moment on I hid at home. I never went outside alone, I spent most of my time with my grandmother in the kitchen, and I slept in a small room close to the kitchen. We all lived in constant fear.
It was later that Francas Vocelka managed to help his family out of the ghetto. He rented a dark and damp flat overlooking a tall, blind wall in one of the backyards in the old town. At first they needed to cross a courtyard and go down a dark staircase and a long passageway to get to a kind of kitchen that was used as a place to store firewood. Further down there were two interconnectedrooms. Vocelka’s family hid in the back room. If strangers paid a visit to them, they would hide behind a cleverly constructed wall imitating a stack of firewood. One couldonly stand in the hideout.
Vocelka’s younger daughter Marit fell ill with diphtheria, but her father did not call for a doctor in fear of putting the whole family at risk. When Marit, their sunshine and light, ended up in hospital, it was already too late to help her. The girl died.
Francas Vocelka procured almost all of the fake passports for those who managed to escape the ghetto (he worked at a printing house). He saved many Jewish lives.
The Soviets entered Lithuania in 1944. My grandmother died half a year later.
In April 1945 my mother and I were deported to Tajikistan, to the Pamir Mountains, for being German. I still remember that month we spent in a locked cattle wagon taking us to the destination.
The Vakhsh Valley, where a hot and damp climate prevails and cotton plantations thrive, became our new homeland. Back then it was a swampy place, and malaria, typhus, dysentery, smallpox, and other serious diseases were widespread there.
At first we lived on a collective farm and later we moved to a small village in the region where mostly cotton was grown. It was too difficult for my mother to work in the cotton fields since she was not used to that kind of job, but she was lucky enough to accidentally find a janitor’s job in a hospital.
At first my mother could not speak any other language but German. She was so good at everything she did, however, that she was trained to work as a nurse and was allowed to do that job. It was there that she learned Russian, which became my second mother tongue.
In 1953 Stalin died and we became free again. Until that moment, we had been under constant surveillance. Every month we had to register with the superintendent and we were not allowed to leave the area, the village, or the collective farm. And suddenly we were free, but we could not return to the country from which we had been deported. Thus we stayed in Tajikistan, where my mother had a job and I was about to begin my studies.
In 1962 we were exonerated and could go back to Kaunas, and we were even entitled to a flat.
My mother wanted to go back to Germany, her homeland, because she felt the constant pain of loss since the time she had left her homeland. We applied for permission to leave again and again, but the Soviets never allowed us to leave for Germany.
In 1957 I began my studies at the pedagogical university in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. I graduated in 1962 and returned to Kaunas.
In 1963 my mother came to Kaunas, too. For several more months we both stayed with our friends until we were given a flat. Those same friends helped me find a job in a general school and later in a university.
My mother died in 1991. Since then I have been completely on my own.
Julijana Zarchi
