rescuers of jews
About Liliana Levintoff
One evening, late in the autumn of 1943, a little girl, 7–8 years old, appeared in our home. I never got to know who brought her. Few days before that, my mother had told me that a girl by the name of Aldona Urbonavičiūtė would come to live with us. This name was written in her birth certificate, which, as I found out later, was counterfeit and given to her by Petronėlė Lastienė, who in turn had obtained it from Vincentas Melieška, the dean of the Kaunas Saint Cross church. I believe he had issued more of such birth certificates of dead children.
The girl’s real name was Liliana Levintoff. Before the war, her grandfather Ilja Levintoff lived in our house in Kęstučio St 52/ S. Daukanto St 8, apartment number 12 or 13, and had a textile shop somewhere near the corner of Laisvės Avenue and Maironio Street, I believe. It is interesting to note that at the same time teacher Petronėlė Lastienė lived in the same house. So my parents and Levintoff family knew each other from before.
When little Aldutė got to our home, she couldn’t speak Lithuanian – only Russian and Jewish, and that was dangerous at that time.
She was very thin, pale, her eyes were red and eye-lids were scabbed and swollen. It appeared to be the consequences of the lack of vitamins. I remember that her eyes were cured by doctor Jurgis Žukauskas, who worked at our hospital.
First, my mother gave Aldutė a bath and washed her clothes. Her beautiful curly hair needed to be cured as well. My mother sewed her new clothes which was not that simple during the war. My mother taught Aldutė Lithuanian language, reading and writing, arithmetic.
The little girl soon recovered and learned Lithuanian. We used to hear her childish laughter quite often. But she never talked about her parents, relatives or living in ghetto. She said that the place she had been to is not to be talked about. And we did not ask.
My brother and I became friends with her, and got along like with a real younger sister. My brother Jonas was a medicine student. In spring, we all worked in the hospital’s yard: we had to grow our own vegetables during the war. We used to go for a walk in Freda, the Botanical Garden. I remember a picnic with my friends; I also have some pictures with Aldutė.
Akvilė Anisimenko was a girl who used to come and help us with the housework. She was from a Russian orthodox family from the suburbs of Kaunas. Akvilė and Aldutė soon became good friends and Akvilė would teach her Lithuanian too. I think Akvilė was aware of who the little girl was, though we lied it was our relative.
Around June 1944, my father’s sister Antanina Bliūdžiuvienė (1896–1975) came to visit us. Her husband doctor Petras Bliūdžius (1887–1946), my mother’s brother, worked in a hospital in Marijampolė. They lived in a considerable farm near Marijampolė. My aunt invited Aldutė to spend some time on their farm, she said the girl would get some fresh milk, spend some time in the nature. She certainly knew the background of Aldutė, as did my uncle. They were raising two boys of similar age – Rimgaudas and Jonas-Algirdas – and an elder daughter Gražina. My brother Jonas hid there from the German mobilisation as well.
So in the end of June 1944 Aldutė and I went to Bliūdžiai farm near Marijampolė in a “Pienocentras” company truck (my friend who worked in that company told me about the truck). Everything went well in the beginning, children played and had no worries. But after 2 or 3 days, German soldiers came to our yard. The farm was near the Marijampolė–Vilkaviškis road. Soldiers stayed in our hayshed, while two military officers stayed in one of our rooms. We were worried about Aldutė. She said she understood German language well, but we told her not to give herself away. Fortunately neither soldiers nor military officers paid any attention to us.
Soon I had to go back to Kaunas, because I studied in the Accoucheur School and worked in the hospital. As soon as I came back we found out that Germans were leaving. All the roads were full of their echelons and there was no chance to go to Marijampolė or come back from there. We kept in touch with Bliūdžiai and my brother by phone for some time, but later the connection broke.
Before retreating from Kaunas, the Germans liquidated the Vilijampolė Ghetto. I can not remember the exact date when the doorbell rang – a very anxious dark haired man came in with a jacket in his hands. Then I saw a yellow star on it. He asked for Aldutė. I at once realised that he was Jewish. He was Levintoff, father of Aldutė-Liliana. We quickly hid him in the basement and gave him some food. We hoped no one had seen him.
He told us he had managed to escape when soldiers put them into wagons in the Kaunas Train Station. As we later found out, his wife, Aldutė’s mother died there: Jews were driven from the wagons to the ships and then drowned in the sea.
Levintoff came to the place where his daughter was hiding in the middle of the day, which was thoughtless and very dangerous. As Mackevičienė, the hospital doorkeeper who was on duty that day, later said, she knew exactly who he was, but she kept silent.
Levintoff lived in our basement amidst old furniture, until the front line passed and the Red Army entered Kaunas on 1 August 1944. He went with the Russian soldiers to Marijampolė where he found his daughter on Bliūdžiai farm.
They came back to Kaunas and brought us news about my brother and uncle’s family. It appeared that German soldiers drove them all from the farm saying there were going to be bad fights there. So they took everything they could carry and put everything in a two-horse cart, took a cow and went to their relatives, Bliūdžiai as well, to Skardupiai village, Kalvarija district. They stayed there until the front line passed. Then they came back to their robbed and partly burned farm, where Aldutė’s father found them.
After the front line passed, P. Lastienė helped Levintoff and his daughter to settle in Kaunas. She let them live in her sister Aldona Mikužienė’s, who was a doctor and had emigrated west, apartment. Unfortunately, Levintoff soon died from a heart disease, about a year after all the trials. Liliana was taken with her aunts, the sisters of her mother, to Leningrad. We got one letter from her, she wrote that she was studying and preparing to work in a deaf-mute school. Sadly, the correspondence stopped.
One evening, late in the autumn of 1943, a little girl, 7–8 years old, appeared in our home. I never got to know who brought her. Few days before that, my mother had told me that a girl by the name of Aldona Urbonavičiūtė would come to live with us. This name was written in her birth certificate, which, as I found out later, was counterfeit and given to her by Petronėlė Lastienė, who in turn had obtained it from Vincentas Melieška, the dean of the Kaunas Saint Cross church. I believe he had issued more of such birth certificates of dead children.
The girl’s real name was Liliana Levintoff. Before the war, her grandfather Ilja Levintoff lived in our house in Kęstučio St 52/ S. Daukanto St 8, apartment number 12 or 13, and had a textile shop somewhere near the corner of Laisvės Avenue and Maironio Street, I believe. It is interesting to note that at the same time teacher Petronėlė Lastienė lived in the same house. So my parents and Levintoff family knew each other from before.
When little Aldutė got to our home, she couldn’t speak Lithuanian – only Russian and Jewish, and that was dangerous at that time.
She was very thin, pale, her eyes were red and eye-lids were scabbed and swollen. It appeared to be the consequences of the lack of vitamins. I remember that her eyes were cured by doctor Jurgis Žukauskas, who worked at our hospital.
First, my mother gave Aldutė a bath and washed her clothes. Her beautiful curly hair needed to be cured as well. My mother sewed her new clothes which was not that simple during the war. My mother taught Aldutė Lithuanian language, reading and writing, arithmetic.
The little girl soon recovered and learned Lithuanian. We used to hear her childish laughter quite often. But she never talked about her parents, relatives or living in ghetto. She said that the place she had been to is not to be talked about. And we did not ask.
My brother and I became friends with her, and got along like with a real younger sister. My brother Jonas was a medicine student. In spring, we all worked in the hospital’s yard: we had to grow our own vegetables during the war. We used to go for a walk in Freda, the Botanical Garden. I remember a picnic with my friends; I also have some pictures with Aldutė.
Akvilė Anisimenko was a girl who used to come and help us with the housework. She was from a Russian orthodox family from the suburbs of Kaunas. Akvilė and Aldutė soon became good friends and Akvilė would teach her Lithuanian too. I think Akvilė was aware of who the little girl was, though we lied it was our relative.
Around June 1944, my father’s sister Antanina Bliūdžiuvienė (1896–1975) came to visit us. Her husband doctor Petras Bliūdžius (1887–1946), my mother’s brother, worked in a hospital in Marijampolė. They lived in a considerable farm near Marijampolė. My aunt invited Aldutė to spend some time on their farm, she said the girl would get some fresh milk, spend some time in the nature. She certainly knew the background of Aldutė, as did my uncle. They were raising two boys of similar age – Rimgaudas and Jonas-Algirdas – and an elder daughter Gražina. My brother Jonas hid there from the German mobilisation as well.
So in the end of June 1944 Aldutė and I went to Bliūdžiai farm near Marijampolė in a “Pienocentras” company truck (my friend who worked in that company told me about the truck). Everything went well in the beginning, children played and had no worries. But after 2 or 3 days, German soldiers came to our yard. The farm was near the Marijampolė–Vilkaviškis road. Soldiers stayed in our hayshed, while two military officers stayed in one of our rooms. We were worried about Aldutė. She said she understood German language well, but we told her not to give herself away. Fortunately neither soldiers nor military officers paid any attention to us.
Soon I had to go back to Kaunas, because I studied in the Accoucheur School and worked in the hospital. As soon as I came back we found out that Germans were leaving. All the roads were full of their echelons and there was no chance to go to Marijampolė or come back from there. We kept in touch with Bliūdžiai and my brother by phone for some time, but later the connection broke.
Before retreating from Kaunas, the Germans liquidated the Vilijampolė Ghetto. I can not remember the exact date when the doorbell rang – a very anxious dark haired man came in with a jacket in his hands. Then I saw a yellow star on it. He asked for Aldutė. I at once realised that he was Jewish. He was Levintoff, father of Aldutė-Liliana. We quickly hid him in the basement and gave him some food. We hoped no one had seen him.
He told us he had managed to escape when soldiers put them into wagons in the Kaunas Train Station. As we later found out, his wife, Aldutė’s mother died there: Jews were driven from the wagons to the ships and then drowned in the sea.
Levintoff came to the place where his daughter was hiding in the middle of the day, which was thoughtless and very dangerous. As Mackevičienė, the hospital doorkeeper who was on duty that day, later said, she knew exactly who he was, but she kept silent.
Levintoff lived in our basement amidst old furniture, until the front line passed and the Red Army entered Kaunas on 1 August 1944. He went with the Russian soldiers to Marijampolė where he found his daughter on Bliūdžiai farm.
They came back to Kaunas and brought us news about my brother and uncle’s family. It appeared that German soldiers drove them all from the farm saying there were going to be bad fights there. So they took everything they could carry and put everything in a two-horse cart, took a cow and went to their relatives, Bliūdžiai as well, to Skardupiai village, Kalvarija district. They stayed there until the front line passed. Then they came back to their robbed and partly burned farm, where Aldutė’s father found them.
After the front line passed, P. Lastienė helped Levintoff and his daughter to settle in Kaunas. She let them live in her sister Aldona Mikužienė’s, who was a doctor and had emigrated west, apartment. Unfortunately, Levintoff soon died from a heart disease, about a year after all the trials. Liliana was taken with her aunts, the sisters of her mother, to Leningrad. We got one letter from her, she wrote that she was studying and preparing to work in a deaf-mute school. Sadly, the correspondence stopped.