From the testimony by Tanya Strental
/.../ ...her aim was to rescue not just individuals but the nation and its culture. Therefore, she established the Committee for Rescuing Jews (it consisted of three women). Its purpose was to make contacts for hiding Jews, preparing forged documents, raising funds from sympathisers who did not dare to join actively but were ready to give... She was one of the first to come to the ghetto, but afterwards she would go to the gates of the ghetto practically every day. She went on various errands for hundreds of Jews who were complete strangers to her. She was scolded and insulted on all sorts of occasions by non-Jews, when she insisted that they return Jewish property which had been entrusted to them.
She herself ate only potato and cabbage, and the rest that was rationed out to her, bread, oatmeal, marmelade, a knob of margarine and cheese, she took to the ghetto children and orphans. She hid books and manuscripts in her apartment in order to save the culture of the nation. She took the works of the poet Suckeveris in order to save them...
She respected and admired the Jews, who managed to survive under those awful circumstances. Smiling, she told me how Jews who hid in various derelict places in the city would bring their dirty clothes full of lice, and she washed and ironed them so that the poor people would feel better.
She harboured me and took care of me as if she were my mother, at a time when the ghetto was surrounded by a band of murderers. Several days before the liquidation of the ghetto, she took a ten-year-old girl from it, and procured documents for her swearing that she was her niece. Her endeavour was uncovered, she was arrested and sentenced to death. University professors paid an enormous ransom to the Gestapo, and the death sentence was commuted to confinement in a concentration camp. The Germans tortured her, hoping to find out the names and hideouts of Jews.
“I prayed,” she told me, “that I would not speak during the interrogations. I am not a believer, but at that time I prayed from the bottom of my heart.”
She did not disclose anything.
“Rescue attempts during the Holocaust”, Jerusalem, 1997 (Rimantas Stankevičius Gyvenusi tautos himno dvasia, 93–94 psl.)
