|
October 1941. The Jews of Lida were forced into the three
neighborhoods that made up the ghetto. We arrived from Lipnishuk
together with my mother’s young sister Tsirl and her husband and their
three children Sarah, Rachel and little Shulamit. Tsirl’s husband
Naftali claimed that thanks to us they would be protected from the great
harm that was about to befall. My Uncle Naftali always said that of all
the family, the Jews who would not be harmed were our small family, and
thanks to us, also his own. From the first day of the war, Naftali
became more and more religious, to the point where he would pray three
times a day and fast on Mondays and Thursdays. They came to find a place
to live with my mother’s cousin, Chayele Herman. Two of our houses were
destroyed by a bomb on the first day of the war. Herman Noyman, her
husband, was a kind, pleasant man, we felt very close to his family, and
of course when they came into the ghetto we shared a room with them. A
small wooden house where once lived three Polish families, now housed 40
people. It was very crowded but in spite of that we lived in hope that
we could manage in those difficult times until our salvation arrived. We
lived with the Noymans in harmony; that is, we shared everything. In one
room were the five members of the Basist family and the Noymans with
their children, the youngest only four years old.
The Germans ordered every Jew over the age
of twelve, man and woman, to work. Since my father was a well-known
artist, the task of establishing a metalworks factory was imposed on
him; it was to be in a two story building that had been a school and
which was fenced off and guarded by German policemen.
I was at the time a student, and with no
other choice my father employed me as an assistant welder. The place was
relatively protected from the taskmasters, and we also got soup once a
day and a few slices of bread. After a while, my father also brought in
my Aunt Tzvia Boyreski’s son David, and so we passed our time working,
processing and manufacturing various items for the Germans. That work
saved us during the time of mass killings, and also helped us to prepare
things that later on we could take into the forests and use to fight in
the partisan units and to take our revenge on the Germans.
In October of 1941, we
were forced to affix a yellow patch to our clothing and ordered to move
into defined neighborhoods or quarters. Before the war, there lived in Lida about fifteen thousand Jews; now about ten thousand were
concentrated together in three quarters: Piaski, Koshrova, and the third
and largest of them, Postovska-Kholodna.
In the Ghetto
Our family, together with the family of my
Aunt Sheina-Riva, moved to the Postovska-Kholodna quarter. We settled
into the house at number 15 Kholodna Street, a small wooden house on the
corner of the street, which was divided into four apartments comprised
of one room and a kitchen. The bathroom was outdoors. On one side the
house was bordered by the workshops of the Regional Commissar (Gebietskommissar),
which were erected by the initiative of the Judenrat in order to help
the Jews survive; a fact which allowed us to infiltrate them
occasionally. On the facade of the house we were forced to erect a sign
with the names of the tenants. We lived in one room, together with the
younger daughter of our aunt, Chayele, her husband Herman and their
small daughter. In another room lived the older daughter of our aunt,
Yocheved, with her husband Menachem, their two children and two young
men who were refugees from the city of Łódź in Poland whose names were
Egnatz and Avraham Pladon. In another room lived a refugee named Felix
from Hamburg, Germany, with his wife and their children. In the room at
the rear lived Moshe, the oldest son of my Aunt Sheina-Riva (called der
strasinik) with his wife and niece, a young girl of about 13.
Altogether, there were forty people listed on the sign affixed to our
house.
Every Jew, from age 12 or 13 had to work.
The Germans waged a psychological war against us. They would tell our
representatives that everyone who worked, or, as they put it, every
“productive Jew,” would remain alive. Most of the work was very
difficult. For the most part, the work involved tearing down the walls
of the houses which had been destroyed during the bombing of the
city…apparently they feared that an underground would be created. As it
turned out, most Jews worked on demolishing their own homes;
undergarments were organized into piles for use by the Germans. “There
must be order” was their famous expression. The Jews worked cleaning the
city, and in the winter clearing the roads of snow and ice. Others
worked loading and unloading trains, and various other types of jobs.
The Jewish council tried in many ways to convince the Germans that there
was a need for Jews to keep the system running, since they would be
essential for establishing a center of workshops in one place to serve
the army as well as the civilian system. Thus the idea was born for
crafts workshops, which went by the German name Handverkshtaten. At the
head of the factory stood a German inspector, who worked on behalf of
the regional commissar, and at his side was a Jewish engineer named
Altman, the son-in-law of Tsukranik, one of the wealthy men of the city.
Altman, an assimilated Jew who spoke only German and Polish, believed
until the end that the Germans would not annihilate all of the Jews. At
his side was Alperstein, a Jew who believed, like him, in the promises
of the Germans.
With the creation of the workshops, they
searched for craftsmen of all kinds. My father, of blessed memory, who
was the only certified master welder in the region, and was very well
known professionally, was chosen to be the manager of the metal-works
factory. Moshe, the son of Aunt Sheina-Riva, was selected as the manager
of the wooden furniture factory. The manager of the garage was a
mechanic named Velvel (Zev) Kropsky. There were also factories for the
manufacture of clothing, shoes, and more. I joined my father in his work
shop, in spite of the fact that I had no knowledge at all of the
profession. Thus our life in the ghetto began.
The ghetto was fenced with barbed wire, and
there were two entrances. The first entrance was on Suvalska and
Postovska Streets. Another gate, on the eastern side near the village of
Ruslaky, allowed the Germans an easy entrance and exit from the ghetto
from the villages. The ghetto was bordered to the east by the Lidzeike
River and to the north by the railroad tracks leading to Minsk and a
bridge guarded by Germans and Ukrainians. On the western side were the
workshops and Suvalska Street. That was the main ghetto, made up of
small wooden houses which at one time were populated by Christian
families, altogether two streets and a few lanes. The Koshrova and
Piaski quarters of the ghetto were smaller, and as it later turned out,
temporary. They were relatively far away from the main ghetto, on the
other side of the city. The offices of the Judenrat were at the main
entrance on the western side, on the Suvalska Street side. On the
Kholodna Street side was the entrance for those who toiled in the
workshops of the Handverkarshtaten. We entered the ghetto in the
sub-zero cold of winter, living in houses that had no heat. For lack of
space, we slept three or four to a bed. There was a severe shortage of
food, medicine, and other essentials.
At work, the Germans allotted each of us a
500 gram piece of bread, and once a day a bowl of soup from the kitchen
of the regional commissar. The food was brought to us by David-Lipa
Berkovitch, a large ruddy-faced man with a good heart. Only those who
worked received food. At that time, rumors began to reach us from Vilna
and other cities, that the Germans were going about killing Jews. Also
in Lida the Germans killed Jews, though not in large groups, just to
confuse and frighten us. At the start of 1942 they imprisoned about
eighty Jews who had worked in the old army camps, and among them was
Shimon, the father of David. After a short time, they killed them all,
for the Germans claimed that they had tried to steal weapons. We knew
this to be a lie, but at that time we had no connection with the
underground or the partisans. Also for their other murders, they had
explanations. They would say that the Jews who had been killed were not
productive. It created disquiet, and we could feel the danger.
At this time, Jews began to arrive by
circuitous means from Vilna. The tidings that they brought were even
worse. In that city, there had begun a period of “Aktions,” or mass
killings. At that time, Lida was relatively quiet, and so began the
flight of Jews to our city. It was necessary to quickly supply all of
those who arrived from Vilna, Grodno and other places with documents
stating that they were long-established residents of Lida, otherwise
they would be put to death. Yocheved, the oldest daughter of Aunt
Sheina-Riva, and her husband Menachem Resnick, were friendly even before
the war with the mayor appointed by the Germans. Menachem appealed to
him for help, and he provided, in return for payment, blank forms for
documentation with the seal of the municipal government. Thus began the
chapter in which we provided the refugees with documentation produced by
Menachem Resnick.
In the meantime, the Germans continued with
their selective killings in Lida. Among others, they murdered Sima
Tereshinski (from the panbokim), our neighbor before the war, who had
traveled to a nearby town without documentation. Sometimes we would hear
from the goyim of other towns, or from Christian visitors, about the
killing of Jews from other places. One day we were ordered to hand over
all of our furs, money, gold and other valuables; those who refused
would be killed. All of us worked from morning until night; we passed
the long winter nights in the light of home-made oil lamps, with
stories, songs and card games, arguments over our situation, hope that
the Germans would soon be defeated and discussions about the war and
what might be done. We didn’t have any answers.
Tragic Events - the Tale of the Vilna
Refugees
In January or early February 1942 an event
took place that had tragic consequences. In Lida there was a family of
thieves by the name Zimleich, Jews whose business it was to steal horses
from the goyim and sell them. They decided to break into the Orthodox
Church on Suvalska Street close to the ghetto. They broke in and were
surprised there by the priest, who was there at the time. In the midst
of the ensuing struggle, the priest was stabbed and rushed to the
hospital. The matter was turned over to the Germans, and in the course
of their investigation they discovered that the crime had been committed
by Jews. They ordered the Jewish council to turn the burglars over
without delay, but the three criminals had escaped from Lida.
In the ghetto there were a number of
refugees from Poland who were acquainted with the criminals, and the
Judenrat had no choice but to turn them over to the Germans. The two
(one of whom was named Virobek) were arrested and handed over. In an
effort to try and save themselves, they revealed to the Germans that the
Jews were tricking them, stating as proof that in the ghetto false
documents were being prepared for Jewish refugees. In addition, they
pointed the finger at Menachem Resnick as the one who prepared the
documents.
That same night, a Polish policeman who
worked for the Germans came as an emissary from the mayor and warned
Menachem and Yocheved, advising them to run away. Menachem, Yocheved and
their oldest son, Noah (who was about 13) left the ghetto for Vilna,
leaving behind their five year old son with his aunt Chayele. Later on
all of the members of the Judenrat were arrested.
On the second or third of March 1942, we
awoke early in the morning to the sound of shouts and shooting. Alarmed,
we ran out to the street. Whoever was not fast enough, or who was sick
and remained in their houses, was shot to death; thus I saw our neighbor
Mrs. Shapilkovsky, a nurse by profession, dead in the snow outside our
house. The rest of us they stood in groups of four and led us to a huge
field near the central post office. At the entrance stood two of the
criminals, who pointed out all of the refugees who had received
falsified papers stating they were residents of Lida. Those people left
their rows, and were led outside the city and murdered. Thus were
murdered several hundred Jews, most of them from Vilna. For the Germans,
it was a kind of rehearsal for an Aktion which would take place the
coming May, in Lida and the surrounding area.
After this sad event we came to realize that
it was a kind of code for what the future held for us. The news from the
front and the battle for Moscow warmed our hearts; in spite of the
pretense by the Germans that the fall of Moscow was imminent there was
clear proof that the war waged on. Every day trains full of wounded
German soldiers passed by the ghetto from the direction of the front.
I remember well the arguments with the
German Jew, Felix, who would say over and over that if we worked
faithfully our lives would be spared. There were many in the ghetto who
shared his belief. We moved into the apartment abandoned by Menachem and
Yocheved, together with Egnatz and Avraham Paldon, two brothers who were
refugees from the city of Łódź in Poland. Egnaz, the elder, was a
handsome blond man with excellent manners, who radiated nobility and was
extremely quick-witted. His brother Avraham was dark-skinned, tall and
athletic, a former Polish boxing champion in the youth division, with a
fiery temperament. Egnatz, who was quite fluent in German, was able to
establish a relationship at his workplace with two Germans in the
gendarmerie (military police). Through them he was able to obtain food
and many other daily necessities. For our part, we contacted a family
friend, Jan Doilitko, from the village of Stigni, about 20 kilometers
from Lida, and also with a Polish friend who had been born in Lida named
Boltus. Both of them helped us obtain food. It should be remembered that
by helping us they endangered their own lives and those of their family.
Among the many who escaped from Vilna there
were two young people, a brother and sister. The former was a lad of
thirteen named Leonek; his sister was twenty, blond and quite beautiful.
Leonek’s sister somehow obtained a polix-deutsche document (a document
stating that she belonged to the German race) and she was able to get
work in the central post office. Leonek remained with us in the ghetto,
and was wont to wander amongst the Christians in the villages and
occasionally come to see us in the ghetto. From him we were able to
learn of events taking place outside the ghetto.
Meanwhile, more tragic events took place
inside the ghetto. Following the incident of the refugees from Vilna and
other places, the six heads of the Judenrat were arrested and beaten to
death most cruelly. Those who were responsible for disposing of the
bodies told of how it was impossible to identify any of them. A short
time later, the Germans ordered that a new Judenrat be established.
Surviving
In the apartment in which we lived with
Egnatz and Avraham stood a large baking oven. Since we were getting food
from the two Christians, from Egnatz and from Zerach Arlock, my mother
decided to go into the business of baking and selling bread and challah,
and later to preparing meals; as a result a sort of small
restaurant/bakery was created. All kinds of people came to buy bread. I
remember one family from Vilna, respected thieves by the name di-halbah
challah (half of a challah). Their son-in-law, a nice young man, used to
ask my mother to sell him a half of a challah. When my mother asked him,
“Why half a challah?” he replied, “Because I’m the second half.” Later
on, he would join the partisans with us, and was later executed by his
commanding officer for no good reason.
Sometimes people would come to us, sent by
the Judenrat, who forced us to feed them. Among others, I remember one
solitary Jew from a city near Lida, who once a day would come in and sit
at the table and my mother would serve him a loaf of bread, soup and a
pot of tea. The man was ravenous; he grabbed everything. Apparently, it
was his only meal of the day.
In the Postovska-Kholodna quarter of the
ghetto lived some of my closest friends. Lazer Yizraski lived on
Postovska Street next to the old Jewish cemetery; down a lane near him
lived Chaim Cantor, the son of Dr. Cantor. Next to Kholodna, down the
lane, lived my former classmate with whom I had shared a bench, Beyla
Strodborski; sometimes we would meet and reminisce about old times in
school. We often heard rumors about killings in Vilna and the
annihilation of the Jews of Grodno. A few refugees arrived who related
horrific stories to us. One of them, a man from Grodno, told us he ran
away from a train that was transporting people to be exterminated in a
place called Małkinia (Treblinka). He explained how they were brought to
the railroad cars, and how he had stabbed a German guard and after many
nights’ walking came to Lida. We also heard of mass killings happening
in various places; it was difficult to believe, indeed it seems that
subconsciously, we refused to believe.
Here I must mention my mother’s aunt, Sheina-Riva,
who was a tall, robust woman, sister to my grandfather Yoel-Moshe. My
grandfather had another sister (Chaya-Leah) in Lida, who died before the
war. Sheina-Riva was about eighty years old. Her house stood opposite
the old prison. Pessah, my mother’s younger brother, had been arrested
and was under investigation in the prison. On the day the war broke out,
the prison was bombed and caught on fire. The prisoners were able to
break out of their cells, but when they reached the outside gate, which
was made entirely of steel, they found they were trapped within the
fire. It was impossible to break open the gate because the jailors, when
they fled the fire, had locked it from the outside. Sheina-Riva could
hear the cries of the trapped prisoners, and knew that her brother’s son
was among them. She equipped herself with an ax and broke open the lock
from the outside. She told us that she saw many people break free from
the prison; some knocked her down to the ground in their haste, and she
was unable to see if her nephew was among those who escaped. Sheina-Riva
was indeed a woman of valor.
Not far from us, on one of the lanes, lived
another son of Sheina-Riva, Yeshiyahu (Isaiah), with his wife Nechama
and their three children. He was younger than his brother Moshe, and
worked in the stables of the regional commissar, Hanveg. Yeshiyahu had
initiative, and had gotten along well with the Poles since before the
war. Through them, he was able to get a hold of two rifles, and to
arrange with the Christians for his daughters to be placed with them.
The elder, Esther, was about ten, and her sister Rochele was about one
and a half years old. The middle daughter did not want to leave her
parents. In the end, Nechama refused to join the partisans, and all
three perished in Majdanek. When we returned to Lida from the partisans,
we found Esther (who today lives in Israel) and tiny Rochele, who now
lives in Argentina.
Life Goes On
Generally, Jews in our part of the world
lived together in extended family groups. On my father’s Basist side, we
were close to the “Zigalnitchky clan,” and on my mother’s Plotnick side,
to the Moshovitzs and the Levinkovsky families; in other words, hundreds
of residents of the city. During these difficult times, we were
especially close, helping one another. Some of our family was in other
ghettos in towns next to Lida. My grandfather and grandmother, together
with my mother’s older sister Golda and her husband Yosef and their
three children Alter, Shmuel and Moshe, who were my age and my sister’s
age, and my uncle Pessah and his wife Yaffa and their two young
children, were in the ghetto in the city of Ivye. Our connection to them
was tenuous, through messengers who would occasionally come to Lida.
I remember a muscular Jew, about eighty
years old, who was a strong man in spite of his advanced age, an expert
locksmith who made his creations by hand; each one was a work of art. To
be able to open his locks, you had to know how many times to turn the
dial to the left or the right. This Jew was one of the kantonistim; when
he was but a lad of twelve, he was kidnapped by the Russians and forced
to serve in the army for twenty-five years. He used to tell us story
after story about the war against the Japanese in 1905, in the days of
Trumpeldor, and we young people would listen with our mouths hanging
open. One story I remember very well: once he was sent to get a
“tongue”, that is, to capture a Japanese soldier. It was a nearly
impossible mission, but not for him. He crawled to the Japanese
position, stunned one of them with a blow from his bare hand, and
carried the Japanese soldier across his shoulders behind the Russian
lines.
There was among us another Jew, a skilled
woodcarver, whose name was Hanoch (his nickname was “the Red”). He truly
had red hair, and golden hands. Hanoch believed that through his art,
his life and the lives of his family members would be spared. Next to us
also worked four blacksmiths, each one an artist in his profession.
There was also Velvel (Zev) Kropsky’s garage. About twenty people worked
in the garage, among them Baruch Levin from Zheludok, a town close to
Lida. The regional commissar particularly admired the garage. I remember
a man named Zvi Hazan, who worked in the factory my father ran. Hazan
was a soldier at the start of the war, but he was captured by the
Germans near Smolensk, about 600 kilometers from Lida. He ran away, and
by a circuitous route was able to rejoin his family, his wife and
children. Every now and again he would tell us tales of his travels.
Archik Gerbovsky, a watchmaker by
profession, also worked with us; he was well-known among us as a
safecracker. When they occupied the town, the Germans confiscated many
safes, some as large as a wardrobe. The safes could withstand fire and
were sealed and keyless. We were ordered by the German supervisor to
find a way to open the safes, one way or another. Archik was a true
artist at cracking safes, and a very pleasant person. Someone else who
also worked with us in the workshop was a Jewish refugee from Poland by
the name of Lasky, who was an expert engraver. I learned the trade from
him, as did my cousin David, even though neither of us had had any prior
knowledge of the craft. We worked and lived in fear, and in the hope
that the Soviet troops would be able to push back the Germans while we
were still alive.
In the ghetto there was a fixed order to the
days; the Jewish council worked as much as it was able to ensure that we
had as normal a communal life as possible. The Judenrat worked under
extremely difficult conditions and under a great deal of pressure. On
the one hand, they made every effort to meet the demands made on them by
the Germans, while on the other hand they labored diligently to protect
the lives and health of the Jews. As far as is known, there were no
cases of death from hunger or disease in our ghetto.
As I have said, the needy were helped by the
stronger families, as was instructed by the council. The Judenrat in
Lida did not give unconditional cooperation to the Germans, a fact which
was made unequivocally clear later. In the ghetto, as has been said,
there were refugees from many places. Several of them are especially
engraved upon my memory. Before the German occupation, during the time
when the Soviets ruled, among others who came to our house, there was a
Jew from Lublin; fifty years old, a childless war refugee, very polite
and noble. As time passed, it became clear to us that he was from a very
famous Polish family. He and his brother had owned the famous Zilber
Brother’s distillery. They were particularly famous for, among other
things, their kosher-for-Passover liquor (paykhovska). I also remember
Professor Amerant and his wife, who arrived from Vilna. Zilber’s
situation, and that of others like him, was especially difficult. With a
great deal of effort, my mother was able to convince Zilber to eat with
us.
Among the Germans in Lida, there were two
who were particularly awful: the first was Vindisch, a short man with
pursed lips, quiet, who didn’t yell or beat people. To select victims,
he would come to the workshops and go through the departments, looking
without a word passing his lips; he was checking to see if we were being
as useful as was expressed to him by the regional commissar, Henvag. We
later learned that Vindisch had already prepared his plan for the
annihilation of the Jews of the region; he was the person in charge of
the “final solution” in our area. The second, Werner, was tall and
robust, and was always accompanied by a German shepherd by the name of
Donner. If the Jews saw Werner and his dog Donner approaching, they
would run for their lives. He would catch them and beat them near to
death, and then he would give the order, “Mencsh (man) – catch the Jew!”
The Jew would be forced to stand still while the dog bit him over and
over, until Werner had had enough. Those two were the ones who planned
and executed the Aktions against (the annihilation of) the Jews in the
entire region.
The regional commissar Henvag wanted, for
several reasons, to keep the Jews alive, and from time to time he would
come into the workshop with groups of people in order to show them the
place, in the hope that the workshop would continue to operate. I
remember that one time Kobe arrived; he was the supervisor (“governor
general”) of all of Byelorussia, of which Lida was a part. Kobe was the
“arch-killer” who was later killed by the partisans with a powerful bomb
in his home in Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia.
The Germans recruited all kind of bad
elements from among the local population. Entire units the size of a
military company and below, filled with Lithuanian and Latvian
murderers, who were noted for their great cruelty. In particular, two
Polish policemen remain in my memory, one by the name of Brode (dirt)
and the second named Podheini who had a deep scar on his face. Their
cruelty knew no bounds; they each murdered dozens of Jews.
And so life in the ghetto went on. We were
largely unaware of events occurring outside the ghetto. But things
happened inside the ghetto, as well. There was the incident of the two
young people, Leonek and his sister, and the refugees from Vilna. The
sister, who as it was said worked in the post office, was a very
beautiful girl. Many of the Germans thought she was a German as well;
they fell in love with her, but she rejected them. One of them reported
to the S.S. that she was a Jew impersonating a German, and she was
arrested. At the workplace of Egnatz and Avraham the bosses were
sergeants in the military police named Prost and Dombeck. Prost was in
love with the girl, and he traveled to his birthplace in Germany in
order to bring documents stating that she was born in the same town. He
then returned with the documents in order to free her from prison. But
he was too late. In the meantime, the girl had confessed that she was a
Jew and was put to death. Sergeant Prost, who had tried to save the
girl, was sent as punishment to the Russian front. Leonek, the girl’s
brother, was left with no one.
Egnatz, a man of many accomplishments, brave
and cool-headed had, as was told before, made contact with various
Germans through his place of work. One incident that happened was that a
German soldier from the unit in which Egnatz and Avraham worked came to
say goodbye before he left for the Russian front. He entered the ghetto,
even though it was forbidden. Egnatz fixed him a hot meal and gave him
vodka; a discussion ensued in which the soldier said that according to
his commanding officer the war would be ending in a few weeks in a
victory for the Germans. Avraham said to him, “Yes, but first you must
conquer an important stronghold, ‘mita meshunah’ (a strange death).” The
German answered, “If we haven’t yet, certainly we shall conquer it very
soon and then the war will end.”
In the evenings, friends of Egnatz and
Avraham would gather at our place, among them Leibel Orzchovski, whose
nickname was “ketzef”, Meir-Yosse Itzkovitch, whose nickname was
Tel-Chai, Avraham Luit, Chaim Kalmanovitch and his sister Reshka, who
was Avraham’s girlfriend, a friend of Egnatz’s named Moshke Shaborvitch,
a refugee Teiger, young people from the ghetto police, and others.
To pass the time, we used to play cards, and
I remember one popular game was “The Ninth Wall.” We also played poker,
sometimes for large amounts. I remember once, when Orzchovski lost all
of his money, he turned to the dealer and asked, “Can I play for my
pants and boots?” He had new pants and boots. He played, and lost, and
went home in a pair of old pants and old boots in place of his own.
As mentioned before, my cousin Menachem, his
wife Yocheved and their son Noah tried to run away from Lida after the
incident of the falsified documents. They left the city for Vilna, and
stopped near the city of Voronovo, about 40 kilometers from Lida. It was
difficult to get to Vilna, and even in Voronovo it was risky for them to
stay. By chance they discovered a group of Jews who worked for the
Germans clearing trees from the forest, and joined them. At night, they
would sleep in the home of a farmer who lived nearby in an isolated
house. On Sundays, the farmer would go to visit in the town of Voronovo.
One time in a pub he met up with a Polish policeman of his acquaintance
who collaborated with the Germans. In drunken camaraderie, he confided
that he had two Jewish refugees from Lida and their son living with him.
The next day, the policeman arrived. The son, who was the first to
realize that the man approaching them was a policeman, tried to run away
and was shot to death. His mother Yocheved saw this happen and was
unable to save him. That same day, Menachem and Yocheved decided to
leave for Vilna, in spite of the many dangers. They were very brave
people. They arrived in Vilna and were absorbed into the ghetto.
We did not know of their fate. We were
involved with our own day-to-day problems. There were rumors going
around; something was going to happen. There were different feelings as
to what it would be, but something warned us that something terrible was
about to happen. We continued to work. When people talked about
annihilation, our acquaintances would say, “What are you talking about?
If one Jew remains in Lida, the regional commissar will allow you to
stay; you will remain alive.” My father would say, “The Germans will not
allow a single Jew to remain alive; we are all going to die.” He said
this in front of me, in spite of my youth.
In the middle of April, 1942, my Aunt Tsirl,
her husband Naftali, and their daughter Sharele came from the Piaski
Quarter. My Uncle Naftali told my parents, “We want Sharele to stay with
you: you will stay alive even if the rest of the Jews are exterminated.
We want her to stay with you.” After about two weeks, the girl (who was
about 10 years old) began to miss her parents and my mother took her
back to Piaski.
|
