Rescued Jewish Children
Jakov Gurvitch
The Road of Salvation for the Condemned
Jakov Gurvitch
From the 4th book Hands Bringing Life and Bread
I was born on 5 June 1927 in Riga, even though my parents and my entire family lived in Telšiai at the time but my mother, who had health problems, decided to give birth in Riga.
I remember my childhood from three years of age. It was really very good, I was taken care of, and my parents employed governesses. My parents Chaim (Chaimas Gurvičius) and Roza Gurvitch (Roza Gurvičienė) were known and respected people in Telšiai. Together with my family, mother Roza, father Chaim, sister Ruth (Rūta Gurvičiūtė), her first husband Cemach Ginsburg (Cemachas Ginzburgas) and me, the family of my mother’s brother Gershon Volpert (Geršonas Volpertas), lived in the same house: his wife Chaja, my cousins – Gershon Volpert’s daughters Hinda and Miriam alongside with the beloved and respected grandmother Alida Volpert.
My father, together with my uncle Gershon Volpert, had a huge store in the same house. One could find everything there: textiles, clothes, and small articles for sewing.I remember when I was seven, I was sent to the Jewish school, a cheder. I managed to stay there for a year and then I escaped, I did not like the main subject, which were the readings of the Holy Book, which seemed so boring to me. My sister Ruth helped me in my studies for the gymnasium for one year and in 1936 when I was nine, I entered the recently reformed preparatory class of the Lithuanian gymnasium. I studied there till 1941.
Before the war, Telšiai was a Jewish town. The central street was full of Jewish shops. The city was famous for being very religious, and the Telšiai Yeshiva was one of the most famous and biggest in Europe. Young people from different European countries and the US would come to study here. There was also a Mechino that prepared pupils for their studies in the Yeshiva, the girls’ gymnasium Javne and the Jewish teacher seminary. Thus Jewish life in Telšiai was full of activity.The year 1939 marked the beginning of the upheavals in our lives.
In March 1939 the Germans occupied Klaipėda and came very close to where we were. We knew already about the pogroms of Kristallnacht in 1938 and anti-Semitic attacks in Germany, we had heard on the radio about the hysteric screaming of Hitler. This was already well-known.
However, many had remembered that when the Germans occupied Lithuania in 1915-1918 they treated the Jews well. Many Jews served in the German Army, a Jewish German officer lived in our house. So we did not expect anything atrocious from such a cultured nation. We knew nothing about the bad intentions of Hitler and Stalin, the partition of Lithuania and did not even have an inkling of this.
On 15 June 1940 the Russians occupied Lithuania and in a week or two they started introducing their order.
Soon we were persecuted as rich people, and our house and shop were nationalised. My father started working in a sawmill, and my uncle in retail (Voentorg).
We did not know and did not expect that repressions would start soon alongside with the deportations to Siberia. The members of our family did not take part in any political activity, we had nothing against the Soviet government. Their only fault was the fact that they were quite wealthy.
On 14 June 1941 part of our family – my mother’s brother Gershon Volpert with his wife and daughters, my cousins – were exiled to Siberia. Only later it became clear that deportation saved them and they all survived.
The rest of us were convinced that we would be exiled as well, we were waiting for this every day, however, it did not happen – on 22 June 1941 the war started.
The Germans occupied Telšiai on 25 June and on 28 June all the Jews of Telšiai, us among them, all the members of the Gurvitch family, were expelled from our flats and housed in the barns of the Rainiai estate.
Another camp was established in Viešvėnai. All the Jews of Luokė, Varniai, Laukuva and other surrounding towns were detained there.
In Rainiai there was neither a barbed or other type of wire around the camp. We could walk freely. The men were taken to work during the daytime and the women were allowed to go into the city to bring some food back. There was a small river near the camp and we, the children, used to go bathing there. The men had the hardest time: they were forced to dig out and wash the corpses of the inmates of Telšiai prison killed by the Soviets. To clean the debris, do other work, the guards humiliated the workers, and beat them up.
At the time I was convinced, that there is no possibility for us to survive. There was a feeling though that nobody cares about our fate.
That is how we lived till 14 July.
On 14 July at lunchtime ten or so German SS , and the head of the city police Juodikis, my former teacher of physical education, and a Lithuanian reserve officer who actually was on very good terms with the Jews, came to the camp. Mikuckis and Siurbalis were both from the Security Department, whereas Juodviršis was the Head of the Security Police. All the men of the camp were taken to the central square of the estate and the “dance of death” started. They were forced to run in a circle, and lie down and get up on command. The others were standing around and beating on the head with the butt of their guns those who did not manage to carry out the commands. This lasted for two or two and a half hours. I was also in this circle. I was among the adults, since as a teenager I was quite tall. When all were exhausted, 30-40 young men were selected and told to stand nearby. We did not understand why. One German said out loud: “Now go to the barracks, say farewell to your women and children as you will be gone tomorrow. Do not try to escape. If you escape, we will kill the women and children. If you keep quiet – we will spare the women and children”.
The mood was dire. Nevertheless the majority did not want to believe that tomorrow they would kill them. Everyone went to the barns and went to sleep. There was a second floor in our barn where the grain was kept. Women and children slept downstairs, and the men on the second floor. Then I do not know what helped me – the instinct of life or self-defence that protected me during all these years of the war. I woke up at midnight and like a child I wanted to go to my mother – I went downstairs, lied next to her and fell asleep.
About 4 a.m. baltaraiščiai stormed into the barn shouting and screaming and all men from the second floor were taken outside, nobody cared whether they were young or old, dressed or half-naked. I was hidden by the women, covered with what they had, they also sat on me. We did not know where they were taking the men but soon it became clear. After 20-30 minutes we heard the shooting of machine-guns, and heard the screams of our relatives.
All this lasted for the entire 15 July. On that day my father Chaim Gurvitch and the first husband of my sister Ruth, Cemach Ginsburg, were shot.
It soon became clear that these 30–40 men were selected for digging the holes. To avoid panic in advance, they were killed quietly. They were drowned in the pond, next to the estate. They were taken by legs, and immersed in the water till they drowned. The torturers did this on the night of 14-15 July. I know this well from the story of my friend Boris Vain (Borisas Vainas) who was lying among the corpses for a day and a half.
On 16 July there was a rainstorm from the early morning. During it, the execution was stopped, and when the rain stopped, the men were taken in groups from other barns and shot.
I remember very well that the campaign ended on 17 July. On that day my friend Avraham Desiatnik (Abramas Desiatnikas) came to the barn. He was dressed in short trousers and told us that the Action is over and that the children who are under 15 will not be shot. My mother quickly shortened my trousers, and shaved the hair from my chest so I looked like a child. We, the children, went to look for the place where the shooting took place. It was quite close to the estate, the earth was still swaying, the blood was seeping out of it. Among the scattered items next to the pit, I found my father’s wallet and the glasses of my sister Ruth’s husband.
After all men were shot in Rainiai, we realised that we would face the same fate, and that sooner or later we would be killed.
On 28 July we were told that we would go to a new place. All who were still in the Rainiai camp, Viešvėnai and those who were still alive in the neighbouring towns were taken to one place called Geruliai. Thousands of children and women from Telšiai County were taken there. In Geruliai, the situation was even worse than in Rainiai. People started dying of starvation and various diseases.
We, the teenage boys who remained alive, had to supply food to the entire camp. We had horses and drove through the villages asking the farmers to help us with food, and at that time we saw that there were still many good people in Lithuania.
At the end of August, there were talks that there would be another massacre. A ghetto quarter was being set up next to the lake in Telšiai. All the residents of that quarter were being moved from there. The girls who worked in the governor’s office found out that the Action was going to take place on Saturday, that 500 young women would remain alive and the rest would be shot together with the children. From my bitter experience, I knew this might be the case. Therefore, on 28 August, on Thursday, I together with Boris Vain and Liova Šavelis left the camp around 5 a.m.. Security was not so strict on that day.
We hid in the village of Juodsodė at farmer Domeika’s place, about 1.5 kilometres from the Geruliai camp. About 12 boys gathered at Domeika’s place, and all of them were hid in the sauna by Domeika.
On Saturday at about 7 or 8 a.m. we heard the shootings, the screams of women and children. This lasted for the entire day. We were sitting locked in the sauna, the boys, one could say children, of between 12-15 years of age, and heard everything. It was terrible. That day we aged twenty years. On Sunday the shootings stopped.
Domeika went to see what was happening there. He saw a long, huge pit. The peasants from the neighbouring villages had to dig this pit as there were no Jewish men left alive. When Domeika came back he said that about 500 young women were taken to the Telšiai Ghetto. I do not remember who told me but I knew that my mother and Ruth survived and had been taken to the ghetto.
After this terrible shooting, Domeika was afraid to keep us and we spent a few days in the forest. A Lithuanian named Girtas brought food to us.
Two or three days later we separated and went to the peasants to look for work. We were digging potatoes, and I grazed the cows.
In the middle of September one stranger came to the village I lived in (later on, I realised it was Stanislovas Liškus, who helped the Jews a lot during the entire war). He started asking about me. It became clear that my mother sent him and asked him to bring me into the ghetto. However, I did not go to the ghetto, as I was very afraid at the time. After some time he came again and brought a letter of my mother written in German: “Jasha, come back – you are in danger”. Then I decided to come back. He took me by bike. This is how I ended up in the Telšiai Ghetto.
The living conditions in the Telšiai Ghetto were better than in Rainiai or Geruliai. My mother had a rather orderly room there. My sister Ruth, grandmother Alida Volpert, aunt Sonia Deletickiene (Sonia Deletickienė), who came back to live with us from Kaunas before the war, and whose husband and daughter were at the Kaunas ghetto, lived there with my mother. I did not know where my grandmother was hiding those few days once she left the Geruliai camp, but she managed to get into the Telšiai Ghetto with the others. I spent a few days in the ghetto at the beginning of October. My sister Ruth found refuge at the Alka Museum in Telšiai for some time, whereas before the liquidation of the Telšiai ghetto, Ruth was taken to the house of Pranas Laucevičius, an old friend of hers.
Jakov Gurvitch
From the 4th book Hands Bringing Life and Bread
I was born on 5 June 1927 in Riga, even though my parents and my entire family lived in Telšiai at the time but my mother, who had health problems, decided to give birth in Riga.
I remember my childhood from three years of age. It was really very good, I was taken care of, and my parents employed governesses. My parents Chaim (Chaimas Gurvičius) and Roza Gurvitch (Roza Gurvičienė) were known and respected people in Telšiai. Together with my family, mother Roza, father Chaim, sister Ruth (Rūta Gurvičiūtė), her first husband Cemach Ginsburg (Cemachas Ginzburgas) and me, the family of my mother’s brother Gershon Volpert (Geršonas Volpertas), lived in the same house: his wife Chaja, my cousins – Gershon Volpert’s daughters Hinda and Miriam alongside with the beloved and respected grandmother Alida Volpert.
My father, together with my uncle Gershon Volpert, had a huge store in the same house. One could find everything there: textiles, clothes, and small articles for sewing.I remember when I was seven, I was sent to the Jewish school, a cheder. I managed to stay there for a year and then I escaped, I did not like the main subject, which were the readings of the Holy Book, which seemed so boring to me. My sister Ruth helped me in my studies for the gymnasium for one year and in 1936 when I was nine, I entered the recently reformed preparatory class of the Lithuanian gymnasium. I studied there till 1941.
Before the war, Telšiai was a Jewish town. The central street was full of Jewish shops. The city was famous for being very religious, and the Telšiai Yeshiva was one of the most famous and biggest in Europe. Young people from different European countries and the US would come to study here. There was also a Mechino that prepared pupils for their studies in the Yeshiva, the girls’ gymnasium Javne and the Jewish teacher seminary. Thus Jewish life in Telšiai was full of activity.The year 1939 marked the beginning of the upheavals in our lives.
In March 1939 the Germans occupied Klaipėda and came very close to where we were. We knew already about the pogroms of Kristallnacht in 1938 and anti-Semitic attacks in Germany, we had heard on the radio about the hysteric screaming of Hitler. This was already well-known.
However, many had remembered that when the Germans occupied Lithuania in 1915-1918 they treated the Jews well. Many Jews served in the German Army, a Jewish German officer lived in our house. So we did not expect anything atrocious from such a cultured nation. We knew nothing about the bad intentions of Hitler and Stalin, the partition of Lithuania and did not even have an inkling of this.
On 15 June 1940 the Russians occupied Lithuania and in a week or two they started introducing their order.
Soon we were persecuted as rich people, and our house and shop were nationalised. My father started working in a sawmill, and my uncle in retail (Voentorg).
We did not know and did not expect that repressions would start soon alongside with the deportations to Siberia. The members of our family did not take part in any political activity, we had nothing against the Soviet government. Their only fault was the fact that they were quite wealthy.
On 14 June 1941 part of our family – my mother’s brother Gershon Volpert with his wife and daughters, my cousins – were exiled to Siberia. Only later it became clear that deportation saved them and they all survived.
The rest of us were convinced that we would be exiled as well, we were waiting for this every day, however, it did not happen – on 22 June 1941 the war started.
The Germans occupied Telšiai on 25 June and on 28 June all the Jews of Telšiai, us among them, all the members of the Gurvitch family, were expelled from our flats and housed in the barns of the Rainiai estate.
Another camp was established in Viešvėnai. All the Jews of Luokė, Varniai, Laukuva and other surrounding towns were detained there.
In Rainiai there was neither a barbed or other type of wire around the camp. We could walk freely. The men were taken to work during the daytime and the women were allowed to go into the city to bring some food back. There was a small river near the camp and we, the children, used to go bathing there. The men had the hardest time: they were forced to dig out and wash the corpses of the inmates of Telšiai prison killed by the Soviets. To clean the debris, do other work, the guards humiliated the workers, and beat them up.
At the time I was convinced, that there is no possibility for us to survive. There was a feeling though that nobody cares about our fate.
That is how we lived till 14 July.
On 14 July at lunchtime ten or so German SS , and the head of the city police Juodikis, my former teacher of physical education, and a Lithuanian reserve officer who actually was on very good terms with the Jews, came to the camp. Mikuckis and Siurbalis were both from the Security Department, whereas Juodviršis was the Head of the Security Police. All the men of the camp were taken to the central square of the estate and the “dance of death” started. They were forced to run in a circle, and lie down and get up on command. The others were standing around and beating on the head with the butt of their guns those who did not manage to carry out the commands. This lasted for two or two and a half hours. I was also in this circle. I was among the adults, since as a teenager I was quite tall. When all were exhausted, 30-40 young men were selected and told to stand nearby. We did not understand why. One German said out loud: “Now go to the barracks, say farewell to your women and children as you will be gone tomorrow. Do not try to escape. If you escape, we will kill the women and children. If you keep quiet – we will spare the women and children”.
The mood was dire. Nevertheless the majority did not want to believe that tomorrow they would kill them. Everyone went to the barns and went to sleep. There was a second floor in our barn where the grain was kept. Women and children slept downstairs, and the men on the second floor. Then I do not know what helped me – the instinct of life or self-defence that protected me during all these years of the war. I woke up at midnight and like a child I wanted to go to my mother – I went downstairs, lied next to her and fell asleep.
About 4 a.m. baltaraiščiai stormed into the barn shouting and screaming and all men from the second floor were taken outside, nobody cared whether they were young or old, dressed or half-naked. I was hidden by the women, covered with what they had, they also sat on me. We did not know where they were taking the men but soon it became clear. After 20-30 minutes we heard the shooting of machine-guns, and heard the screams of our relatives.
All this lasted for the entire 15 July. On that day my father Chaim Gurvitch and the first husband of my sister Ruth, Cemach Ginsburg, were shot.
It soon became clear that these 30–40 men were selected for digging the holes. To avoid panic in advance, they were killed quietly. They were drowned in the pond, next to the estate. They were taken by legs, and immersed in the water till they drowned. The torturers did this on the night of 14-15 July. I know this well from the story of my friend Boris Vain (Borisas Vainas) who was lying among the corpses for a day and a half.
On 16 July there was a rainstorm from the early morning. During it, the execution was stopped, and when the rain stopped, the men were taken in groups from other barns and shot.
I remember very well that the campaign ended on 17 July. On that day my friend Avraham Desiatnik (Abramas Desiatnikas) came to the barn. He was dressed in short trousers and told us that the Action is over and that the children who are under 15 will not be shot. My mother quickly shortened my trousers, and shaved the hair from my chest so I looked like a child. We, the children, went to look for the place where the shooting took place. It was quite close to the estate, the earth was still swaying, the blood was seeping out of it. Among the scattered items next to the pit, I found my father’s wallet and the glasses of my sister Ruth’s husband.
After all men were shot in Rainiai, we realised that we would face the same fate, and that sooner or later we would be killed.
On 28 July we were told that we would go to a new place. All who were still in the Rainiai camp, Viešvėnai and those who were still alive in the neighbouring towns were taken to one place called Geruliai. Thousands of children and women from Telšiai County were taken there. In Geruliai, the situation was even worse than in Rainiai. People started dying of starvation and various diseases.
We, the teenage boys who remained alive, had to supply food to the entire camp. We had horses and drove through the villages asking the farmers to help us with food, and at that time we saw that there were still many good people in Lithuania.
At the end of August, there were talks that there would be another massacre. A ghetto quarter was being set up next to the lake in Telšiai. All the residents of that quarter were being moved from there. The girls who worked in the governor’s office found out that the Action was going to take place on Saturday, that 500 young women would remain alive and the rest would be shot together with the children. From my bitter experience, I knew this might be the case. Therefore, on 28 August, on Thursday, I together with Boris Vain and Liova Šavelis left the camp around 5 a.m.. Security was not so strict on that day.
We hid in the village of Juodsodė at farmer Domeika’s place, about 1.5 kilometres from the Geruliai camp. About 12 boys gathered at Domeika’s place, and all of them were hid in the sauna by Domeika.
On Saturday at about 7 or 8 a.m. we heard the shootings, the screams of women and children. This lasted for the entire day. We were sitting locked in the sauna, the boys, one could say children, of between 12-15 years of age, and heard everything. It was terrible. That day we aged twenty years. On Sunday the shootings stopped.
Domeika went to see what was happening there. He saw a long, huge pit. The peasants from the neighbouring villages had to dig this pit as there were no Jewish men left alive. When Domeika came back he said that about 500 young women were taken to the Telšiai Ghetto. I do not remember who told me but I knew that my mother and Ruth survived and had been taken to the ghetto.
After this terrible shooting, Domeika was afraid to keep us and we spent a few days in the forest. A Lithuanian named Girtas brought food to us.
Two or three days later we separated and went to the peasants to look for work. We were digging potatoes, and I grazed the cows.
In the middle of September one stranger came to the village I lived in (later on, I realised it was Stanislovas Liškus, who helped the Jews a lot during the entire war). He started asking about me. It became clear that my mother sent him and asked him to bring me into the ghetto. However, I did not go to the ghetto, as I was very afraid at the time. After some time he came again and brought a letter of my mother written in German: “Jasha, come back – you are in danger”. Then I decided to come back. He took me by bike. This is how I ended up in the Telšiai Ghetto.
The living conditions in the Telšiai Ghetto were better than in Rainiai or Geruliai. My mother had a rather orderly room there. My sister Ruth, grandmother Alida Volpert, aunt Sonia Deletickiene (Sonia Deletickienė), who came back to live with us from Kaunas before the war, and whose husband and daughter were at the Kaunas ghetto, lived there with my mother. I did not know where my grandmother was hiding those few days once she left the Geruliai camp, but she managed to get into the Telšiai Ghetto with the others. I spent a few days in the ghetto at the beginning of October. My sister Ruth found refuge at the Alka Museum in Telšiai for some time, whereas before the liquidation of the Telšiai ghetto, Ruth was taken to the house of Pranas Laucevičius, an old friend of hers.
The Telšiai Ghetto was liquidated on 23 December 1941.
On 17 December I took my mother from the ghetto to the village. Around 19 December I also took my grandmother from the ghetto. Together we lived at the home of a peasant called Baltmiškis in Kuodžiai village.
On 22 December the policemen came to our village (policemen were visiting the people where the Jews lived or worked at) and told us that me, my mother and my grandmother had to go get a medical “check-up”. We knew well what it all meant. My grandmother did not go anywhere as she had not been registered. The policemen, who knew us well, did not write how many of us were there from our family. The peasant, who was our host, was old. He did not understand what was happening and was just carrying out the orders of the authorities. So, he took us into the carriage to take us to the ghetto. It were 7 kilometres to Telšiai. On our way there we met one baltaraištis Mitkevičius. He recognised me and asked where we were going. I told him that we are going to the ghetto for a check up. Mitkevičius said that he is leaving Telšiai, and that he did not want to take part in the killings of women and children and warned us: “Do not go into the ghetto with your mother”. Of course, I was not even thinking to go into the ghetto. When we approached Telšiai I told the peasant: “You come back and tell them that Gurvitch threatened you with a knife and you had to let them go and that you do not know where they went”. And that is what he did.
Late at night my mother and I went to the museum, where our sister was supposed to be, however we were not let in. My mother was thinking and thinking, and finally she had an idea: “Jasha, let us go, maybe Masiulienė, our good acquaintance will take us in”. And so we knocked on her door. Masiulienė let us in and made beds for us. On the morning of the 23rd she came back running from the city and told that all those from the ghetto had been shot. Again in Rainiai, but in another place. She kept us till the evening and then told that the policemen were going from house to the house looking for the Jews and she could no longer have us at her place, so we could go where we wanted. My mother and I were in a hopeless situation but again she had a good idea: “Let us go to the bishop’s.”
My mother knew Bishop Justinas Staugaitis as he was a customer at our shop. He was a very respected person. In 1918 Bishop Justinas Staugaitis signed the Lithuanian Independence declaration. With his permission, his maid Levinskaja hid us in a dark room. After some 5-6 minutes after we got into the house we heard terrible screams on the other side of the door. The wife of Rabbi Bloch came running to the door of the bishop, chased by policemen. I heard how she begged to leave the children, asked to turn them into Christians and kill her. The bishop’s maid also begged but nothing helped. They were taken to the Telšiai prison. And we were hiding in this dark room for a week. A week later we found out that all the Jews that had stayed alive were gathered, locked in the prison, and later shot. At the time I did not know where my sister was. I just knew that my grandmother was in the village. A week later we were told that we could no longer stay at the bishop’s, and we had to leave.
The bishop’s servants decided to save me and my mother and brought us to the pigsty. There we hid under the shelves, and stayed there for two more weeks. I do not remember the last names of our rescuers but I did not forget their first names: Steponas, who was feeding the pigs, and Elena and Basia.
My mother knew one former estate owner named Šukštienė (Norkevičiūtė) very well, who lived near the diocese in the house where a drugstore had been. My mother turned to her for help, and we were heard. The family of Halina and Vaclovas Šukšta (Halina and Waclaw Szukszta) provided shelter for us.
They lived on the first floor, with the Head of the Security Department Juodviršis living on the second floor. Despite this, the Šukšta couple welcomed us, gave us a separate room. On this dark and cold night of the winter of 1942 it was our salvation. Halina Šukštienė took care of us and fed us for even six weeks. We could not have been any better. She treated the abscess on the back of my mother, she cut it herself. Nevertheless, we could not stay here for long as the policemen used to visit the head of the Security Department who lived upstairs.
While living with the Šukšta couple I had a very good idea. I asked their maid who knew that we were hiding to go to the City Municipality and ask for the birth certificate of my classmate Albinas Gudzinskas. The Gudzinskas family no longer lived in Telšiai, on 14 June they were deported to Siberia. The maid did as I had asked, and she brought me the birth certificate of my classmate Albinas-Stasys Gudzinskas and as of that day, with an official document, I became a partially legal person.
Since it was dangerous to hide with the Šukšta family, after healing our wounds and having caught our breath, we left.
I do not know where my mother went. I, on the other hand, went from one house to another, and one good person would transfer me to his or her acquaintance. And this is how changing our hiding places I got separated from my mother.
At that time my sister Ruth got married to Pranas Laucevičius, and I was happy she would be rescued.
In spring 1942 I was in Telšiai at the place of Marytė Kesminaitė, who lived on the market square. All her life Kesminaitė worked for Jews and tried to help them during the German occupation. At the time her son was in Germany, taken there for labour for the Reich. I also had to escape from her place after a raid. The policemen entered through the front door and I ran through the kitchen door into the courtyard. I stayed for a few hours in the woodshed. When I came back, the raid was over.
In May 1942 my mother and I were at the same place, which was with the Vainauskas family, in Telšiai, on Birutės street. We stayed together for two weeks. I was taken by Jonas Adomaitis, and my mother stayed with the Vainauskas family. However, somebody made a complaint that the Vainauskas family were hiding Jews, and the Telšiai police carried out a raid there. My mother was in the cellar. One policeman saw her and told quietly: “Don’t be afraid Mrs. Gurvitch, I will not turn you in...”
I do not remember well, but from the Šukšta family, my mother and I found ourselves in Gadunava at the place of the Jančiauskas family. We stayed there for two weeks. The family was big and it was difficult for them to hide two people. I was taken by Mrs. Jančiauskienė to the town of Seda, at the place of parish priest Velutis, while my mother went back to Telšiai to stay with the servants of the bishop.
I stayed for two weeks in Seda at the place of parish priest Velutis. Before Easter days of recollections began (the time from Shrove Tuesday until Easter) and we went to mass together with Father Velutis from church to church. After the recollections, he sent me to Telšiai to the place of Stanislava Dausinienė. I met my mother there.
Stanislava Dausinienė and her relatives ones – son Stanislovas Dausinas and his wife Zuzana, daughter Elena Adomaitienė (maiden name Dausinaitė) and her husband Jonas Adomaitis − rescued Jews during the war. This family were my guardian angels during the entire occupation. If not for them, I doubt that my mother and I, as well as many other Jews, would have survived.
In times of danger the members of the Dausinas family would find us a new place at the home of trustworthy rescuers. Both my mother and I stayed with Stanislava Dausinienė a number of times. I knew well that in the spring of 1943 Stanislava took in Liba, the daughter of Telšiai doctor Miriam Blat (Miriam Blatienė) and Mausha Blat (Mauša Blatas). When in August 1944 the front approached close to Telšiai, Stanislava Dausinienė was arrested together with her rescued girl and locked at Telšiai prison. It was a narrow escape from death: both ran away from prison during the turmoil as the Germans were retreating from the city.
Dausinienė was an avowed Adventist. Not only her, but also other Adventists tried to help the Jews. This was what they had believed they had to do. We stayed with my mother together with the Adventists till June.
From Dausinienė’s place I went to the home of a peasant named Astrauskas who lived in Navarėnai village. I stayed there for a month, and later Astrauskas sent me to his relative Žutautas to the village of Dadotkai close to Seda. In addition to me, Doba Heimanaite (Doba Heimanaitė) and Perla Babusiene (Perla Babusienė) were hiding there. When it became dangerous, I went to the village of Rubikiai to a peasant named Niunava and lived there till October 1942.There were some funny moments at Niunava’s place: Niunava was already an old man and I sometimes used to forget and put on his fur coat, you could say, to run around outside. The neighbours would see me and say: “What happened to old man Niuniava? He’s running around like crazy.” Sometimes people used to come to the Niunava family to help out, I used to cook dinner while people dug up potatoes and the workers later on would be very surprised how they managed to cook so quickly.
While I was at the Niunava family, I found out that quite close in Užpelkiai village there was a very good man named Buknys. I heard a number of times that he helped to hide the Jews. I do not remember exactly how I got to know his son Danius, he was the same age as me, but I remember well that in the middle of October 1942 he went to the Niunava family, found me and took me to his farmstead in Užpelkiai village.
I felt really good at the Buknys family. The farm was surrounded by a forest, and strangers rarely used to come by there. The entire Bukniai family, which included father Raimondas, mother Stasė and children Genė and Danius,was very friendly. This place was ideal for hiding. I lived there freely and helped them with the farm work, and they would introduce me as their relative. I lived there during November, December and January of 1943.
The Buknys family and some other neighbours had a hiding place in the forest where four Jewish girls were hiding. The neighbours used to bring them food. Sometimes I would bring them food as well. I used to see the hiding girls, and on Saturdays they would come to the sauna of the Buknys family.
All four girls survived and after the liberation went to Palestine.
I could have lived happily at the Buknys family if not for one accident. One afternoon I was sitting in the kitchen next to the oven and cleaning a gun. I used to carry the gun with me all the time, as I had decided not to surrender alive. I do not remember the circumstances exactly as to how I managed to get this gun, I just know that it was left by the Russians. While cleaning the gun I lifted my head and saw through the window two uniform policemen coming. I threw the half dismantled gun in the oven, which at the time had no fire, and went to another room called an alkieriukas, took off the frame of the window and ran into the forest. Then I definitely broke all the running records. After some time I noticed that nobody was chasing me, but I stayed in the forest for a few hours, as I was afraid to go back to the Buknys family. I was walking until I heard the voice of the head of the household and his son: “Where could he be? Where could he have escaped to?” They told me that the policemen came by accident and wanted to have a drink. They had not even suspected that somebody was hiding there, and when they came in, they noticed that the window was open and realised that somebody had just escaped through it. They asked Buknys who it was. The Buknys family explained that it was a poacher. They did not hunt me, but after this event I could no longer stay with the Buknys family – I did not sleep in the house, so I went to sleep in the shed. Upon my request Buknys harnessed the horse, put me into the sleigh and took me to Telšiai to the Vaičekauskai family where my mother was hiding at the time.
I started wandering again until I came to the family of Juozapas and Stanislava Byra in Vygantiškiai village, about 5 km from Telšiai.
On 17 December I took my mother from the ghetto to the village. Around 19 December I also took my grandmother from the ghetto. Together we lived at the home of a peasant called Baltmiškis in Kuodžiai village.
On 22 December the policemen came to our village (policemen were visiting the people where the Jews lived or worked at) and told us that me, my mother and my grandmother had to go get a medical “check-up”. We knew well what it all meant. My grandmother did not go anywhere as she had not been registered. The policemen, who knew us well, did not write how many of us were there from our family. The peasant, who was our host, was old. He did not understand what was happening and was just carrying out the orders of the authorities. So, he took us into the carriage to take us to the ghetto. It were 7 kilometres to Telšiai. On our way there we met one baltaraištis Mitkevičius. He recognised me and asked where we were going. I told him that we are going to the ghetto for a check up. Mitkevičius said that he is leaving Telšiai, and that he did not want to take part in the killings of women and children and warned us: “Do not go into the ghetto with your mother”. Of course, I was not even thinking to go into the ghetto. When we approached Telšiai I told the peasant: “You come back and tell them that Gurvitch threatened you with a knife and you had to let them go and that you do not know where they went”. And that is what he did.
Late at night my mother and I went to the museum, where our sister was supposed to be, however we were not let in. My mother was thinking and thinking, and finally she had an idea: “Jasha, let us go, maybe Masiulienė, our good acquaintance will take us in”. And so we knocked on her door. Masiulienė let us in and made beds for us. On the morning of the 23rd she came back running from the city and told that all those from the ghetto had been shot. Again in Rainiai, but in another place. She kept us till the evening and then told that the policemen were going from house to the house looking for the Jews and she could no longer have us at her place, so we could go where we wanted. My mother and I were in a hopeless situation but again she had a good idea: “Let us go to the bishop’s.”
My mother knew Bishop Justinas Staugaitis as he was a customer at our shop. He was a very respected person. In 1918 Bishop Justinas Staugaitis signed the Lithuanian Independence declaration. With his permission, his maid Levinskaja hid us in a dark room. After some 5-6 minutes after we got into the house we heard terrible screams on the other side of the door. The wife of Rabbi Bloch came running to the door of the bishop, chased by policemen. I heard how she begged to leave the children, asked to turn them into Christians and kill her. The bishop’s maid also begged but nothing helped. They were taken to the Telšiai prison. And we were hiding in this dark room for a week. A week later we found out that all the Jews that had stayed alive were gathered, locked in the prison, and later shot. At the time I did not know where my sister was. I just knew that my grandmother was in the village. A week later we were told that we could no longer stay at the bishop’s, and we had to leave.
The bishop’s servants decided to save me and my mother and brought us to the pigsty. There we hid under the shelves, and stayed there for two more weeks. I do not remember the last names of our rescuers but I did not forget their first names: Steponas, who was feeding the pigs, and Elena and Basia.
My mother knew one former estate owner named Šukštienė (Norkevičiūtė) very well, who lived near the diocese in the house where a drugstore had been. My mother turned to her for help, and we were heard. The family of Halina and Vaclovas Šukšta (Halina and Waclaw Szukszta) provided shelter for us.
They lived on the first floor, with the Head of the Security Department Juodviršis living on the second floor. Despite this, the Šukšta couple welcomed us, gave us a separate room. On this dark and cold night of the winter of 1942 it was our salvation. Halina Šukštienė took care of us and fed us for even six weeks. We could not have been any better. She treated the abscess on the back of my mother, she cut it herself. Nevertheless, we could not stay here for long as the policemen used to visit the head of the Security Department who lived upstairs.
While living with the Šukšta couple I had a very good idea. I asked their maid who knew that we were hiding to go to the City Municipality and ask for the birth certificate of my classmate Albinas Gudzinskas. The Gudzinskas family no longer lived in Telšiai, on 14 June they were deported to Siberia. The maid did as I had asked, and she brought me the birth certificate of my classmate Albinas-Stasys Gudzinskas and as of that day, with an official document, I became a partially legal person.
Since it was dangerous to hide with the Šukšta family, after healing our wounds and having caught our breath, we left.
I do not know where my mother went. I, on the other hand, went from one house to another, and one good person would transfer me to his or her acquaintance. And this is how changing our hiding places I got separated from my mother.
At that time my sister Ruth got married to Pranas Laucevičius, and I was happy she would be rescued.
In spring 1942 I was in Telšiai at the place of Marytė Kesminaitė, who lived on the market square. All her life Kesminaitė worked for Jews and tried to help them during the German occupation. At the time her son was in Germany, taken there for labour for the Reich. I also had to escape from her place after a raid. The policemen entered through the front door and I ran through the kitchen door into the courtyard. I stayed for a few hours in the woodshed. When I came back, the raid was over.
In May 1942 my mother and I were at the same place, which was with the Vainauskas family, in Telšiai, on Birutės street. We stayed together for two weeks. I was taken by Jonas Adomaitis, and my mother stayed with the Vainauskas family. However, somebody made a complaint that the Vainauskas family were hiding Jews, and the Telšiai police carried out a raid there. My mother was in the cellar. One policeman saw her and told quietly: “Don’t be afraid Mrs. Gurvitch, I will not turn you in...”
I do not remember well, but from the Šukšta family, my mother and I found ourselves in Gadunava at the place of the Jančiauskas family. We stayed there for two weeks. The family was big and it was difficult for them to hide two people. I was taken by Mrs. Jančiauskienė to the town of Seda, at the place of parish priest Velutis, while my mother went back to Telšiai to stay with the servants of the bishop.
I stayed for two weeks in Seda at the place of parish priest Velutis. Before Easter days of recollections began (the time from Shrove Tuesday until Easter) and we went to mass together with Father Velutis from church to church. After the recollections, he sent me to Telšiai to the place of Stanislava Dausinienė. I met my mother there.
Stanislava Dausinienė and her relatives ones – son Stanislovas Dausinas and his wife Zuzana, daughter Elena Adomaitienė (maiden name Dausinaitė) and her husband Jonas Adomaitis − rescued Jews during the war. This family were my guardian angels during the entire occupation. If not for them, I doubt that my mother and I, as well as many other Jews, would have survived.
In times of danger the members of the Dausinas family would find us a new place at the home of trustworthy rescuers. Both my mother and I stayed with Stanislava Dausinienė a number of times. I knew well that in the spring of 1943 Stanislava took in Liba, the daughter of Telšiai doctor Miriam Blat (Miriam Blatienė) and Mausha Blat (Mauša Blatas). When in August 1944 the front approached close to Telšiai, Stanislava Dausinienė was arrested together with her rescued girl and locked at Telšiai prison. It was a narrow escape from death: both ran away from prison during the turmoil as the Germans were retreating from the city.
Dausinienė was an avowed Adventist. Not only her, but also other Adventists tried to help the Jews. This was what they had believed they had to do. We stayed with my mother together with the Adventists till June.
From Dausinienė’s place I went to the home of a peasant named Astrauskas who lived in Navarėnai village. I stayed there for a month, and later Astrauskas sent me to his relative Žutautas to the village of Dadotkai close to Seda. In addition to me, Doba Heimanaite (Doba Heimanaitė) and Perla Babusiene (Perla Babusienė) were hiding there. When it became dangerous, I went to the village of Rubikiai to a peasant named Niunava and lived there till October 1942.There were some funny moments at Niunava’s place: Niunava was already an old man and I sometimes used to forget and put on his fur coat, you could say, to run around outside. The neighbours would see me and say: “What happened to old man Niuniava? He’s running around like crazy.” Sometimes people used to come to the Niunava family to help out, I used to cook dinner while people dug up potatoes and the workers later on would be very surprised how they managed to cook so quickly.
While I was at the Niunava family, I found out that quite close in Užpelkiai village there was a very good man named Buknys. I heard a number of times that he helped to hide the Jews. I do not remember exactly how I got to know his son Danius, he was the same age as me, but I remember well that in the middle of October 1942 he went to the Niunava family, found me and took me to his farmstead in Užpelkiai village.
I felt really good at the Buknys family. The farm was surrounded by a forest, and strangers rarely used to come by there. The entire Bukniai family, which included father Raimondas, mother Stasė and children Genė and Danius,was very friendly. This place was ideal for hiding. I lived there freely and helped them with the farm work, and they would introduce me as their relative. I lived there during November, December and January of 1943.
The Buknys family and some other neighbours had a hiding place in the forest where four Jewish girls were hiding. The neighbours used to bring them food. Sometimes I would bring them food as well. I used to see the hiding girls, and on Saturdays they would come to the sauna of the Buknys family.
All four girls survived and after the liberation went to Palestine.
I could have lived happily at the Buknys family if not for one accident. One afternoon I was sitting in the kitchen next to the oven and cleaning a gun. I used to carry the gun with me all the time, as I had decided not to surrender alive. I do not remember the circumstances exactly as to how I managed to get this gun, I just know that it was left by the Russians. While cleaning the gun I lifted my head and saw through the window two uniform policemen coming. I threw the half dismantled gun in the oven, which at the time had no fire, and went to another room called an alkieriukas, took off the frame of the window and ran into the forest. Then I definitely broke all the running records. After some time I noticed that nobody was chasing me, but I stayed in the forest for a few hours, as I was afraid to go back to the Buknys family. I was walking until I heard the voice of the head of the household and his son: “Where could he be? Where could he have escaped to?” They told me that the policemen came by accident and wanted to have a drink. They had not even suspected that somebody was hiding there, and when they came in, they noticed that the window was open and realised that somebody had just escaped through it. They asked Buknys who it was. The Buknys family explained that it was a poacher. They did not hunt me, but after this event I could no longer stay with the Buknys family – I did not sleep in the house, so I went to sleep in the shed. Upon my request Buknys harnessed the horse, put me into the sleigh and took me to Telšiai to the Vaičekauskai family where my mother was hiding at the time.
I started wandering again until I came to the family of Juozapas and Stanislava Byra in Vygantiškiai village, about 5 km from Telšiai.
I would like to write separately about the villages of Kalnėnai, Vygantiškiai and Buožėnai (4–5 km from Telšiai).
When I found myself there, it seemed I was in another world. I felt like a free man.
The peasants living in these villages were very friendly towards the Jews. The doors were always open for those who were hiding, and they would always find a plate of food and a bed. The residents of all three villages helped the Jews. Avraham Desiatnik, sisters Roza and Dora Zyv (Dora Zyvaitė), sisters Gita and Lėja Drukaitė, their mother, Jehoshua Shochot (Jehošua Šochotas), his mother Reizl Shochot (Reizl Šochotienė) and myself Jakov Gurvitch were hiding there.
For some time a friend of mine, Avraham Desiatnik, found me a job at the seminary’s manor house that was some 2 km from Telšiai in the village of Džiuginėnai. There were a few families that lived in this manor house, in the so-called seminary folwark: the Eidintas family, which I stayed with, and the Šimkus and Tekorius families.
I would like to emphasize that all three families helped me a lot. I lived there without fear, I worked and I was well fed. They all took care of me as if I was their child. Adelė Eidintaitė helped me in particular. She was only eleven, but had the mind of an adult. She went to Telšiai to Dr. Plechavičius to ask for clothes for me. When the Gestapo was looking for us, she again went to Telšiai to the Adomaitis family to ask them to take me to a safe place. She was an irreplaceable person to me and the first person to help in the times of trouble.
I stayed on this estate for a month and a half or two. At night I grazed the horses there. After some time the estate elder was replaced. The new elder knew who I was and helped me, however, I did not trust him and after some time I went to Vygantiškėss village and stayed there for a few weeks at the place of Leonas Austys.
Leonas Austys and his wife Petrė were wonderful people. In June when we were celebrating Leonas’ name day, there were many people. The host put me in the most honourable place and said: “In response to the anger of all murderers a Jew is partying with us”. Leonas Austys was Byra’s brother-in-law. The Byras family also lived in Vygantiškiai village. I stayed for longer in this family, during June, July and August of 1943. I became friends with all their children: Aldona, Modesta, Juozas and Eugenija. While living there I used to go berry and mushroom picking. The host would bring them to a collection point and would get what they called points. One could buy soap, oil and other deficit goods that were very necessary with these points. On Sundays I used to go through the villages and nobody touched me, this was a kind of rest for me after all that we had to go through.
Unfortunately I had to leave the Byras family as the Gestapo came and started carrying out raids there. This is how it happened.
At the end of August one Lithuanian who served in the German army came to the village. His last name was Petravičius. He went to the village dance and saw my friend Avraham Desiatnik and got very furious that a Jew came to the village dance. He went to the Telšiai police and turned him in. Mr. Dambrauskas who worked at the Telšiai police at the time hated the Communists, but were sympathetic towards the Jews. He gave a message to the village to be more cautious, as the German soldier had reported to the police. During the next dance event the guys, who were friends with me and Avraham Desiatnik (Avraham Desiatnik during the German occupation was called Adomas), beat this snitch Petravičius up and threw him into the pond. Having realised that the local police was not doing anything, Petravičius went to Šiauliai and complained to the Gestapo. A few days later a group of Gestapo agents came to the village and the raids started. Even though the villages were big, soon everybody found out that the police was looking for Desiatnik. They did not find him at home, as Adomas was digging potatoes outside. When they approached him and asked where to look for the Jews, Desiatnik said: “There are a lot of boletus, leccinum and other mushrooms, but I haven’t seen Jews”. The Gestapo agents searched for the entire day, but found no one, while nobody knew at all were I was living.
In the evening the Gestapo agents were at the Kazlauskas family and arranged a good drinking party there. At the time I was at Mr. Byras, and I was sitting quietly with Stanislovas, the head of the household, and thinking what to do next. Suddenly we heard someone knock on the door. My host was a determined man, took a pitchfork and the axe and went to open the door. And here we saw Adomas with a litre of moonshine who said: “If the Gestapo agents can drink, why can’t we”. We had barely taken a swig and heard the knock again. Another friend of ours had come, a Lithuanian named Vaclovas Gricius (a nice man, he helped me and Adomas Desiatnik a lot, and was hiding the Zyvaite sisters). That night he had come with Roza Zyvaite (Roza Zyvaitė). Vaclovas also had brought a bottle of vodka. In fact, the Gestapo agents were about a kilometre away from us drinking, while we were right nearby them also drinking and singing songs. In the morning, having woken up and sobered up, we thought everything over: it was dangerous, we have to each go our separate ways. My friend went to Alsėdžiai, Roza Zyvaite was taken somewhere by Vaclovas Gricius, whereas I went to a Lithuanian family who had connections with the Adventists. I asked them to somehow tell my mother that I needed help. At the time my mother was living as a Russian refugee on the Patveriai estate, where the owner was an Estonian named Johanson, also an Adventist, even though Johanson knew that she was a Jew. I agreed with my mother that I would go on Žarėnai Road. I was told to wait until a carriage comes with a big man and a woman with an umbrella. They would take me. And that’s how it went. They took me to the estate and I spent there three four days with my mother. I discovered the most important news, which was that my sister was alive and that she had a son. It seemed that once she was in great danger and wrote a letter to my mother that they were getting ready to kill her. Fortunately, fate was merciful for her then and she remained alive.
The Johanson family decided to send me far away from this place to their friend, an Adventist named Montvila, who lived in Paragaudžiai village, 3 km north of Kvėdarna.It was the end of October 1943. I was very well received by the Montvila family. They gave me a separate room, and I even stopped hiding. The Montvila family told everyone they knew that I am a son of their relatives, the Gudzinskas family (in reality they did not even know any Gudzinskas family). They said that the Gudzinskas family was deported to Siberia and that I escaped from a German forced labour camp. While living with the Montvila family I became friends with a civil servant named Mykolas Vitkevičius, and with his help with the birth certificate of Albinas Stasys Gudzinskas that I had, I received a passport with my real picture. In such a way in 1944 I became a legal resident of Kvėdarna. The only trouble was that I was circumcised.
While still studying in the gymnasium, the tutor of my class was a very pleasant woman, Mrs. Plechavičienė. Her husband Plechavičius worked as a surgeon at Telšiai Hospital. Her husband’s brother, General Povilas Plechavičius, was one of the most ardent enemies of the Soviet government. I think it was in 1942 I wrote a letter to my former teacher and asked her for help. She sent me some money and clothes (mine were all in tatters) and most importantly, I received a certificate which said that I had to be circumcised due to the inflammation that had developed. So I had all the documents and indeed I was not afraid anymore.
For a period I lived at the place of Pranas Jutkevičius in Grimzdai village, whose Jewish wife Amėlanaitė was shot by the Germans.
There were rumours in Kvėdarna that Jews were hiding somewhere. At the time I knew many Germans living in Kvėdarna. The Germans surrounded a farm where Jutkevičius lived. I went out on a horse. The irony of fate: the Germans asked me whether I knew any Jew in the village. I said that I lived there but that I knew no Jews. Nevertheless for the sake of caution I went out of the village on that day and when I was coming back in the evening I saw tired Germans. One of them said: “You were right, there are no Jews here”.
After this incident I rented a room at the place of other people. These people did not know I was a Jew and made dinner for me. While working in the Office of the Administrative District, I received money for each wedding and birth registration, so I could pay for my rent and food.
At the beginning of 1944 I discovered that one girl was nearby hiding from the Reich. I met Zofija, or Zoselė, and she became my wife. We have been together for 63 years.
In Kvėdarna there were rumours (maybe somebody spread them on purpose) that I was a son of Montvilienė born out of wedlock. Halina Montvilienė then was a quite young and strong woman, and her husband was some 25 years older than she was. The Montvila family knew the rumours and diplomatically kept quiet. For me it was a good cover-up, as I could go to the parties again. In 1944 at the beginning of July my new friend Mykolas Vitkevičius found out that there was a vacancy for the Head of the Registry Office in the Kvėdarna administrative district. They offered me this place. I knew Lithuanian and German quite well. Before the war I managed to complete three years at the reformed gymnasium. At the time there were 7 classes in the gymnasium in total.
The Montvila family did not welcome my decision to work in a public institution. They were afraid that I could be recognised as a Jew and end up in the hands of the murderers. However, I was young and full of courage, and in July 1944 I became the Head of Kvėdarna administrative district’s registry office. The village inhabitants used to call me the parish priest and invited to baptisms and weddings.
When in the summer of 1944 the Johanson family escaped to the West, my mother, who still lived at the Johansons’ made a decision to ask for help from Ona Laucevičienė. She knew that previously her daughter Ruth, my sister, was hiding at Ona Laucevičienė’s place, even though later Ruth and Pranas had to leave this house for safety reasons.
Pranas Laucevičius had made a hiding place behind the house and concealed it very well. At some point my sister Ruth and Dora Kaganaitė were hiding there.
My mother spent the last three weeks of the war in this hiding place without leaving. Ona Laucevičienė and her daughter Jadvyga used to bring food and everything that was necessary during the night. Even when Telšiai was liberated, my mother stayed with Ona Laucevičienė, while in 1945 I together with my wife Zofija and our newborn daughter Ruth moved from Kvėdarna to Telšiai and started living at Ona Laucevičienė’s place.
It was just after some time when I found a place for my family to live in Telšiai that I took my mother and we moved to a new place, however, we stayed friends with Ona Laucevičienė and her daughter Jadvyga for the rest of our lives.
The life of my sister Ruth and her husband Pranas was very tragic.
Before the liquidation of the Telšiai Ghetto, Ruth started working at Telšiai Alka Musem. She knew Pranas Laucevičius since gymnasium, who loved her and who at the most critical time for Ruth decided to help. He took Ruth from the museum on December 22. They secretly got married and started living next to the Latvian border in Laižuva, where Pranas was a teacher. In November 1942 they had a son, Telesforas. Pranas gave the child to the care of his mother and sister Jadvyga in Telšiai. The very same year while Ruth and Pranas were living in Laižuva, somebody recognised Ruth and she wrote a goodbye letter to her mother, but that time she was rescued in a way that is unknown to me. In 1944 Ruth moved with Pranas to Kairiškiai village near Tryškiai. Pranas worked at school there, and Ruth helped him. During the last days of the war when the Germans were retreating, she was recognised by one local German who in 1939 had studied together with Ruth at Vytautas Magnus University. Local residents knew about the atrocious tragedy well - Ruth and Pranas were shot on the last day of the German occupation near the River Virvytė and buried there.
I did not believe my sister could die. When there were no Germans at Kvėdarna, I was passing the post office and the postman shouted “Stasiukas!” (That is what I was called during the war). He said he had a letter for me. I read in the letter that my sister and her husband had been killed, and that the two-year-old boy survived. Then I cried. I did not cry when they killed my father, and murdered my entire family. Having heard this news, I cried.
Two years after the death of Ruth and Pranas, both families decided to rebury them in the Telšiai City Cemetery. With the help of Russian soldiers, I found the place at the bank of Virvytė River where they were buried. At the time Telesforas was three years old, but he understood nothing, and thought that Pranas’ sister Jadvyga is his mother. He discovered the truth later when he grew up.
When I found myself there, it seemed I was in another world. I felt like a free man.
The peasants living in these villages were very friendly towards the Jews. The doors were always open for those who were hiding, and they would always find a plate of food and a bed. The residents of all three villages helped the Jews. Avraham Desiatnik, sisters Roza and Dora Zyv (Dora Zyvaitė), sisters Gita and Lėja Drukaitė, their mother, Jehoshua Shochot (Jehošua Šochotas), his mother Reizl Shochot (Reizl Šochotienė) and myself Jakov Gurvitch were hiding there.
For some time a friend of mine, Avraham Desiatnik, found me a job at the seminary’s manor house that was some 2 km from Telšiai in the village of Džiuginėnai. There were a few families that lived in this manor house, in the so-called seminary folwark: the Eidintas family, which I stayed with, and the Šimkus and Tekorius families.
I would like to emphasize that all three families helped me a lot. I lived there without fear, I worked and I was well fed. They all took care of me as if I was their child. Adelė Eidintaitė helped me in particular. She was only eleven, but had the mind of an adult. She went to Telšiai to Dr. Plechavičius to ask for clothes for me. When the Gestapo was looking for us, she again went to Telšiai to the Adomaitis family to ask them to take me to a safe place. She was an irreplaceable person to me and the first person to help in the times of trouble.
I stayed on this estate for a month and a half or two. At night I grazed the horses there. After some time the estate elder was replaced. The new elder knew who I was and helped me, however, I did not trust him and after some time I went to Vygantiškėss village and stayed there for a few weeks at the place of Leonas Austys.
Leonas Austys and his wife Petrė were wonderful people. In June when we were celebrating Leonas’ name day, there were many people. The host put me in the most honourable place and said: “In response to the anger of all murderers a Jew is partying with us”. Leonas Austys was Byra’s brother-in-law. The Byras family also lived in Vygantiškiai village. I stayed for longer in this family, during June, July and August of 1943. I became friends with all their children: Aldona, Modesta, Juozas and Eugenija. While living there I used to go berry and mushroom picking. The host would bring them to a collection point and would get what they called points. One could buy soap, oil and other deficit goods that were very necessary with these points. On Sundays I used to go through the villages and nobody touched me, this was a kind of rest for me after all that we had to go through.
Unfortunately I had to leave the Byras family as the Gestapo came and started carrying out raids there. This is how it happened.
At the end of August one Lithuanian who served in the German army came to the village. His last name was Petravičius. He went to the village dance and saw my friend Avraham Desiatnik and got very furious that a Jew came to the village dance. He went to the Telšiai police and turned him in. Mr. Dambrauskas who worked at the Telšiai police at the time hated the Communists, but were sympathetic towards the Jews. He gave a message to the village to be more cautious, as the German soldier had reported to the police. During the next dance event the guys, who were friends with me and Avraham Desiatnik (Avraham Desiatnik during the German occupation was called Adomas), beat this snitch Petravičius up and threw him into the pond. Having realised that the local police was not doing anything, Petravičius went to Šiauliai and complained to the Gestapo. A few days later a group of Gestapo agents came to the village and the raids started. Even though the villages were big, soon everybody found out that the police was looking for Desiatnik. They did not find him at home, as Adomas was digging potatoes outside. When they approached him and asked where to look for the Jews, Desiatnik said: “There are a lot of boletus, leccinum and other mushrooms, but I haven’t seen Jews”. The Gestapo agents searched for the entire day, but found no one, while nobody knew at all were I was living.
In the evening the Gestapo agents were at the Kazlauskas family and arranged a good drinking party there. At the time I was at Mr. Byras, and I was sitting quietly with Stanislovas, the head of the household, and thinking what to do next. Suddenly we heard someone knock on the door. My host was a determined man, took a pitchfork and the axe and went to open the door. And here we saw Adomas with a litre of moonshine who said: “If the Gestapo agents can drink, why can’t we”. We had barely taken a swig and heard the knock again. Another friend of ours had come, a Lithuanian named Vaclovas Gricius (a nice man, he helped me and Adomas Desiatnik a lot, and was hiding the Zyvaite sisters). That night he had come with Roza Zyvaite (Roza Zyvaitė). Vaclovas also had brought a bottle of vodka. In fact, the Gestapo agents were about a kilometre away from us drinking, while we were right nearby them also drinking and singing songs. In the morning, having woken up and sobered up, we thought everything over: it was dangerous, we have to each go our separate ways. My friend went to Alsėdžiai, Roza Zyvaite was taken somewhere by Vaclovas Gricius, whereas I went to a Lithuanian family who had connections with the Adventists. I asked them to somehow tell my mother that I needed help. At the time my mother was living as a Russian refugee on the Patveriai estate, where the owner was an Estonian named Johanson, also an Adventist, even though Johanson knew that she was a Jew. I agreed with my mother that I would go on Žarėnai Road. I was told to wait until a carriage comes with a big man and a woman with an umbrella. They would take me. And that’s how it went. They took me to the estate and I spent there three four days with my mother. I discovered the most important news, which was that my sister was alive and that she had a son. It seemed that once she was in great danger and wrote a letter to my mother that they were getting ready to kill her. Fortunately, fate was merciful for her then and she remained alive.
The Johanson family decided to send me far away from this place to their friend, an Adventist named Montvila, who lived in Paragaudžiai village, 3 km north of Kvėdarna.It was the end of October 1943. I was very well received by the Montvila family. They gave me a separate room, and I even stopped hiding. The Montvila family told everyone they knew that I am a son of their relatives, the Gudzinskas family (in reality they did not even know any Gudzinskas family). They said that the Gudzinskas family was deported to Siberia and that I escaped from a German forced labour camp. While living with the Montvila family I became friends with a civil servant named Mykolas Vitkevičius, and with his help with the birth certificate of Albinas Stasys Gudzinskas that I had, I received a passport with my real picture. In such a way in 1944 I became a legal resident of Kvėdarna. The only trouble was that I was circumcised.
While still studying in the gymnasium, the tutor of my class was a very pleasant woman, Mrs. Plechavičienė. Her husband Plechavičius worked as a surgeon at Telšiai Hospital. Her husband’s brother, General Povilas Plechavičius, was one of the most ardent enemies of the Soviet government. I think it was in 1942 I wrote a letter to my former teacher and asked her for help. She sent me some money and clothes (mine were all in tatters) and most importantly, I received a certificate which said that I had to be circumcised due to the inflammation that had developed. So I had all the documents and indeed I was not afraid anymore.
For a period I lived at the place of Pranas Jutkevičius in Grimzdai village, whose Jewish wife Amėlanaitė was shot by the Germans.
There were rumours in Kvėdarna that Jews were hiding somewhere. At the time I knew many Germans living in Kvėdarna. The Germans surrounded a farm where Jutkevičius lived. I went out on a horse. The irony of fate: the Germans asked me whether I knew any Jew in the village. I said that I lived there but that I knew no Jews. Nevertheless for the sake of caution I went out of the village on that day and when I was coming back in the evening I saw tired Germans. One of them said: “You were right, there are no Jews here”.
After this incident I rented a room at the place of other people. These people did not know I was a Jew and made dinner for me. While working in the Office of the Administrative District, I received money for each wedding and birth registration, so I could pay for my rent and food.
At the beginning of 1944 I discovered that one girl was nearby hiding from the Reich. I met Zofija, or Zoselė, and she became my wife. We have been together for 63 years.
In Kvėdarna there were rumours (maybe somebody spread them on purpose) that I was a son of Montvilienė born out of wedlock. Halina Montvilienė then was a quite young and strong woman, and her husband was some 25 years older than she was. The Montvila family knew the rumours and diplomatically kept quiet. For me it was a good cover-up, as I could go to the parties again. In 1944 at the beginning of July my new friend Mykolas Vitkevičius found out that there was a vacancy for the Head of the Registry Office in the Kvėdarna administrative district. They offered me this place. I knew Lithuanian and German quite well. Before the war I managed to complete three years at the reformed gymnasium. At the time there were 7 classes in the gymnasium in total.
The Montvila family did not welcome my decision to work in a public institution. They were afraid that I could be recognised as a Jew and end up in the hands of the murderers. However, I was young and full of courage, and in July 1944 I became the Head of Kvėdarna administrative district’s registry office. The village inhabitants used to call me the parish priest and invited to baptisms and weddings.
When in the summer of 1944 the Johanson family escaped to the West, my mother, who still lived at the Johansons’ made a decision to ask for help from Ona Laucevičienė. She knew that previously her daughter Ruth, my sister, was hiding at Ona Laucevičienė’s place, even though later Ruth and Pranas had to leave this house for safety reasons.
Pranas Laucevičius had made a hiding place behind the house and concealed it very well. At some point my sister Ruth and Dora Kaganaitė were hiding there.
My mother spent the last three weeks of the war in this hiding place without leaving. Ona Laucevičienė and her daughter Jadvyga used to bring food and everything that was necessary during the night. Even when Telšiai was liberated, my mother stayed with Ona Laucevičienė, while in 1945 I together with my wife Zofija and our newborn daughter Ruth moved from Kvėdarna to Telšiai and started living at Ona Laucevičienė’s place.
It was just after some time when I found a place for my family to live in Telšiai that I took my mother and we moved to a new place, however, we stayed friends with Ona Laucevičienė and her daughter Jadvyga for the rest of our lives.
The life of my sister Ruth and her husband Pranas was very tragic.
Before the liquidation of the Telšiai Ghetto, Ruth started working at Telšiai Alka Musem. She knew Pranas Laucevičius since gymnasium, who loved her and who at the most critical time for Ruth decided to help. He took Ruth from the museum on December 22. They secretly got married and started living next to the Latvian border in Laižuva, where Pranas was a teacher. In November 1942 they had a son, Telesforas. Pranas gave the child to the care of his mother and sister Jadvyga in Telšiai. The very same year while Ruth and Pranas were living in Laižuva, somebody recognised Ruth and she wrote a goodbye letter to her mother, but that time she was rescued in a way that is unknown to me. In 1944 Ruth moved with Pranas to Kairiškiai village near Tryškiai. Pranas worked at school there, and Ruth helped him. During the last days of the war when the Germans were retreating, she was recognised by one local German who in 1939 had studied together with Ruth at Vytautas Magnus University. Local residents knew about the atrocious tragedy well - Ruth and Pranas were shot on the last day of the German occupation near the River Virvytė and buried there.
I did not believe my sister could die. When there were no Germans at Kvėdarna, I was passing the post office and the postman shouted “Stasiukas!” (That is what I was called during the war). He said he had a letter for me. I read in the letter that my sister and her husband had been killed, and that the two-year-old boy survived. Then I cried. I did not cry when they killed my father, and murdered my entire family. Having heard this news, I cried.
Two years after the death of Ruth and Pranas, both families decided to rebury them in the Telšiai City Cemetery. With the help of Russian soldiers, I found the place at the bank of Virvytė River where they were buried. At the time Telesforas was three years old, but he understood nothing, and thought that Pranas’ sister Jadvyga is his mother. He discovered the truth later when he grew up.
Jadvyga Laucevičiūtė-Baužienė raised Telesforas and I helped her as much as I could. Telesforas Laucevičius graduated from the Telšiai gymnasium like his mother Ruth, after that he studied at Kaunas Polytechnical University, and after graduation worked in Panevėžys, Lithuania.
He has a wife named Nijolė, three children and five grandchildren. These are the grandchildren and great grandchildren of my sister Ruth. I am happy for our strong and sincere relationship with them.
During the years of German occupation, I stayed with many families, and many people helped me. They risked their lives. Everyone knew you might be shot for hiding Jews. I could say it in this way: they were hiding us because of their good heart, a feeling of empathy. If we offered to help on the farm, they would happily agree. However, this was not the main reason they took us in. I will always remember the three villages near Telšiai, where I felt safe – Kalnėnai, Vygantiškiai and Buožėnai, and I am still amazed at the good and honest people lived there! The kindness of Montvilienė! People used to gossip: “the girl with that child”. But she still helped me. She could have chosen not to. Of course, there were such people like Norbutas, who humiliated me. One homosexual priest wanted to abuse me, and I had to run. I did all the farm-work for the Astrauskas family, but he did not support me only because I worked well. In 1942 when I was hiding at Priest Janulaitis’ place, he would bring me food from the diocese every day, but his maid would not give me this food. For a couple weeks I did not know what to eat. But this was not usual.
During the occupation, we all got baptised, as it was impossible to do otherwise. The Lithuanians were more likely to hide us then and felt honoured to become the godparents.
Unfortunately, the day came when my grandmother Alida Volpert neither wanted to get baptised nor hide anywhere. Together with us, our grandmother survived the Rainiai and Geruliai camps and the terror of the Telšiai Ghetto liquidation. Upon her request and with the help of the Telšiai diocese, she found herself in the Šiauliai Ghetto in February 1942.
She dedicated the entire time she was there to the care and support of the ghetto children.
In autumn 1943 during the Children’s Action, she was detained together with the children she was taking care of. The people who survived saw her sitting in a truck surrounded by children and calming them down. The place of her murder together with the rest of the ghetto children remains unknown.
My mother Roza Gurvitch, broken by the losses of her relatives, did not live long after the war. She died and was buried in Telšiai in 1949.I should highlight the fact that approximately 200 people of Jewish origin were hiding in the surrounding area of Telšiai. The Head of the Telšiai Ghetto, Čepauskas, helped the ghetto residents get to the villages, and before the ghetto liquidation warned everyone: “Save yourselves, everybody”.
I would like to mention a few of the last names of people who helped us in those atrocious times:
the families of cousins Napoleonas, Julijonas and Pranciškus Šaulys of the village of Kalnėnai;
Pranas Kazlauskas, Jurevičius, the Gumuliauskas family, and the Malakauskas family of the villages of Kalnėnai and Vygantiškiai;brothers Konstantinas and Leonas Austys of the villages of Kalnėnai and Vygantiškiai;
the Vaičekauskas family of Telšiai;
Janulaitis the priest of Telšiai; the Girdvainis family of the village of Barstyčiai;
Butvidas and the sisters who lived together with him, Veronika and Kazimiera Rupeikaitė, of the village of Kalnėnai.
I described the chronology of my hiding in detail when writing my memoirs in 2005 and editing material for the Life Saviour’s Cross award of the rescuers of my mother Roza Gurvičienė and myself in Lithuania, and addressing Yad Vashem to recognise our rescuers as Righteous Among the Nations.
The majority of our saviours have already received this recognition, and I hope to live to the day when the acts of bravery of all my saviours are recognised.From the end of December 1941 till the very liberation in October 1944 I found shelter with approximately 35 Lithuanian families in the city of Telšiai and different towns and villages where they hid me, fed me, and gave me shelter and warmth.
I will be grateful till the end of my life to the people who risked their lives and the lives of their close ones rescuing me, my sister Ruth and our mother Roza Gurvitch.
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, 2009
He has a wife named Nijolė, three children and five grandchildren. These are the grandchildren and great grandchildren of my sister Ruth. I am happy for our strong and sincere relationship with them.
During the years of German occupation, I stayed with many families, and many people helped me. They risked their lives. Everyone knew you might be shot for hiding Jews. I could say it in this way: they were hiding us because of their good heart, a feeling of empathy. If we offered to help on the farm, they would happily agree. However, this was not the main reason they took us in. I will always remember the three villages near Telšiai, where I felt safe – Kalnėnai, Vygantiškiai and Buožėnai, and I am still amazed at the good and honest people lived there! The kindness of Montvilienė! People used to gossip: “the girl with that child”. But she still helped me. She could have chosen not to. Of course, there were such people like Norbutas, who humiliated me. One homosexual priest wanted to abuse me, and I had to run. I did all the farm-work for the Astrauskas family, but he did not support me only because I worked well. In 1942 when I was hiding at Priest Janulaitis’ place, he would bring me food from the diocese every day, but his maid would not give me this food. For a couple weeks I did not know what to eat. But this was not usual.
During the occupation, we all got baptised, as it was impossible to do otherwise. The Lithuanians were more likely to hide us then and felt honoured to become the godparents.
Unfortunately, the day came when my grandmother Alida Volpert neither wanted to get baptised nor hide anywhere. Together with us, our grandmother survived the Rainiai and Geruliai camps and the terror of the Telšiai Ghetto liquidation. Upon her request and with the help of the Telšiai diocese, she found herself in the Šiauliai Ghetto in February 1942.
She dedicated the entire time she was there to the care and support of the ghetto children.
In autumn 1943 during the Children’s Action, she was detained together with the children she was taking care of. The people who survived saw her sitting in a truck surrounded by children and calming them down. The place of her murder together with the rest of the ghetto children remains unknown.
My mother Roza Gurvitch, broken by the losses of her relatives, did not live long after the war. She died and was buried in Telšiai in 1949.I should highlight the fact that approximately 200 people of Jewish origin were hiding in the surrounding area of Telšiai. The Head of the Telšiai Ghetto, Čepauskas, helped the ghetto residents get to the villages, and before the ghetto liquidation warned everyone: “Save yourselves, everybody”.
I would like to mention a few of the last names of people who helped us in those atrocious times:
the families of cousins Napoleonas, Julijonas and Pranciškus Šaulys of the village of Kalnėnai;
Pranas Kazlauskas, Jurevičius, the Gumuliauskas family, and the Malakauskas family of the villages of Kalnėnai and Vygantiškiai;brothers Konstantinas and Leonas Austys of the villages of Kalnėnai and Vygantiškiai;
the Vaičekauskas family of Telšiai;
Janulaitis the priest of Telšiai; the Girdvainis family of the village of Barstyčiai;
Butvidas and the sisters who lived together with him, Veronika and Kazimiera Rupeikaitė, of the village of Kalnėnai.
I described the chronology of my hiding in detail when writing my memoirs in 2005 and editing material for the Life Saviour’s Cross award of the rescuers of my mother Roza Gurvičienė and myself in Lithuania, and addressing Yad Vashem to recognise our rescuers as Righteous Among the Nations.
The majority of our saviours have already received this recognition, and I hope to live to the day when the acts of bravery of all my saviours are recognised.From the end of December 1941 till the very liberation in October 1944 I found shelter with approximately 35 Lithuanian families in the city of Telšiai and different towns and villages where they hid me, fed me, and gave me shelter and warmth.
I will be grateful till the end of my life to the people who risked their lives and the lives of their close ones rescuing me, my sister Ruth and our mother Roza Gurvitch.
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, 2009