rescuers of jews

What can I say about them – my true parents Abraomas Mileris and Freida Merė Rozenbergaitė-Milerienė? I can not remember them and I cannot feel them. It’s not even like that. There is something deep inside my soul, but I can not quite reach it; it just stays in the subconscious as a feeling of something dark and blurred into solid black essence. Perhaps it is fear given to me by the elders? I was born in Kaunas on 20 July 1940, in the family of Abraomas Mileris and Freida Merė Rozenbergaitė-Milerienė. My parents and all of my relatives lived in a house in Vilijampolė neighbourhood – the territory of the future Kaunas Ghetto. My father had a store in Panerių Street. I was the only child in the family. In Spring 1944, my father found out that the ghetto was about to be liquidated, so he secretly took me out of the ghetto and gave me to the family of Stefanija and Antanas Bukauskas. I never saw my parents again, as my family was burned in the ghetto: my parents, grandparents as well as the four brothers of my father with their families. Only my mother’s sister managed to escape with her 6 years old daughter. They both moved to Israel in 1953. In 1946, the Bukauskas family adopted me and I, Liuba Milerytė, became Rūta Bukauskaitė. I lived with my second family for more than a quarter of a century. They supported me, allowed me to get my secondary education and later the higher education. They had no children of their own – perhaps this is why they tried to protected me from everything that much. Before I went to school, I used to live behind a two-metre high fence of the Bukauskas house. They used to take me to school and come for me after the classes. This would continue even when the rest of the kids started going to the school on their own. Later, when I was studying in the institute, I was required to come back home in time too. When did I find out about our true family connection? Very early, when I started going to school – the world is full of mean people... In 1980, my cousin Ela Diamanstein found me. In 1990, we met in Tel Aviv. Ela told me a lot about the fate of my family and all our relatives.