Rescued Jewish Children
Gita German-Gordon-Frances
A Little Girl with Three Mothers
Gita German-Gordon-Frances
From: Smuggled in Potato Sacks
Fifty Stories of the Hidden Children of the Kaunas Ghetto
Editors
Solomon Abramovich
and Yakov Zilberg
It is the early morning of 28 October 1941. Today is my birthday. Gita’le is 2 years old. It was a rainy and foggy day. My parents woke me up early, and all the other family members were dressed up and ready to go. Somehow I felt festive being surrounded by my two grandmas, my parents, my uncles, Aunt Rivka Gordon and my cousin Sheinale. My father was in a wheelchair and I was sitting on his lap. My mother was pushing us. We were heading towards Democracy Square in the Kaunas Ghetto. What is awaiting us? What were the thoughts that crossed the mind of a 2-year old girl? What were her impressions? Did she feel the horror in the air?
From bits and pieces of early memories, and mainly through stories of the few who survived the ‘Great Action’ in the ghetto and through reading testimonies, I succeeded in reconstructing some of my feelings on my second birthday. The square was overcrowded with around 30,000 people. At first I probably felt secure being surrounded by all the members of our family. Hardly could I have imagined the scale of the tragedy that day when Gestapo master sergeant Helmut Rauca presided over the massive, day-long selection in Kaunas Ghetto, at the end of which 9,200 women, men and children were sent ‘to the right’ to be shot by the next day at the Ninth Fort. I had never been told that such horrible events can take place, not even in children’s tales with their evil heroes.
I learned much later in my adulthood that my father, Yona German, was sitting in a wheelchair because he was mobilized by the Soviets to dig ditches before the German invasion, and he had become very sick. My mother, Fruma Lonshtein, moved with my father and her mother to the apartment of Aunt Rivka (Father’s sister), in Slobodka, where all Kaunas Jews were ordered to move. My aunt’s husband, Pesach Gordon, was a deputy of Chaim Yelin, the anti-fascist organization’s leader of the ghetto resistance movement against the Germans. In cellar of their house, which was situated on Ariogolas 36, partisans were trained to use weapons and planned various activities against the German forces.
Back to Democracy Square on 28 October. Suddenly my family was split into two parts. My grandmothers, my parents and my uncles were sent to the right, and only Aunt Rivka and her 4-year-old daughter Sheinele, who was sitting on her mother’s shoulders, were sent to the left. Pesah was out of the ghetto that day, purchasing ammunition with a German passport. I found myself running towards my aunt who caught me in her arms. Never will I know why I ran to her, and who told me to do so. I probably wondered where my parents had disappeared, since they had never ever left me before. Wasn’t this a terrible shock for a tiny and vulnerable little girl?
Those who were sent to the right were gathered for the night in the ‘Small Ghetto’, and marched the next day to Ninth Fort, forced to undress and brutally shot. The terrible scenes which took place there, about which I learned much later, persist in my mind and do not leave me. Human lives did not count in those days. I visited the Ninth Fort only in 2004, accompanied by my family, and a terrible chill went through my body as soon as I entered the gate. Only a second separated me from being a part of that massacre.
After the ‘Great Action’, Aunt Rivka became the centre of my world. I was told that the shock of loosing my parents so suddenly turned me silent. I stopped talking. I have a photo of Sheinele and I participating in a Purim celebration in the ghetto kindergarten but my natural childhood cheerfulness had left me forever.
'Each man has a name that his parents gave him and God gave him’, states Zelda’s poem. This is not my case. I was born as Gita German on 28 October 1939. Only in 2004 did I obtain a copy of my original birth certificate from the Vilnius Archive. My aunt Rivka had changed my family name and my birth date to 17 August 1941, and this is my official birthday to this date in my ID. The Germans closed the ghetto on 15 August 1941, and after this day no birth certificates were issued in the ghetto. I was proclaimed as Rivka’s daughter. Since I was very tiny, it was no problem to claim that I was born in 1941. It was also easier to find an adoptive family for a younger child. So, it was as though I was reborn on 17 August 1941. Aunt Rivka became my official mother.
After the ‘Children’s Action’, it was decided to hide me and my cousin/sister with Lithuanian families outside the ghetto. Thanks to the connections of the partisans with the outer world, two families were located. Sheinele together with some other grown-up children was taken to one family, and I was adopted by a childless Lithuanian family, who hoped to keep me forever, if my mother Rivka did not return from the forest, where she had joined the partisans.
I was hidden in a potato sack and taken out of the ghetto by the partisans: I have a sense that to this day I can smell the odour of that potato sack. The adopting family was told that I was just 2 years old, and that I did not speak. I remember that I was taken out of the sack and placed on a kitchen table; the feeling was of being in a warm and secure environment. Suddenly I started to count in Yiddish: Eins, Zwei, Drei. I believe that my adopting parents were in shock, but had to overcome it. I was reborn again with new parents, and my name was now Genuta, after Saint Genuta. I remember when I was baptized in the church and the feeling of cold water touching my forehead. I learned very fast to chat in Lithuanian. I had a new mother who loved me, and I loved her.
I remember her washing my hair with rainwater and chamomile to lighten its colour and make it look healthier. Every Sunday I was dressed up with festive clothes, with a large ribbon in my hair, and I went with my new parents to the church. I learned all the prayers, and seem to remember that I liked the ceremony.
Since my adoptive parents lived across the road from the Gestapo headquarters, German soldiers and officers used to visit the house and drink tea with strawberry jam. During these visits I wandered freely around the house, trying to attract the attention of the new visitors. I have a photo in which I am sitting on the lap of a Gestapo soldier, taken with my Lithuanian mother and some neighbours. When times became more risky and the Germans began to raid houses looking for Jewish children, I was sent to relatives in a nearby village. My cousin, Sheinele, was discovered in one of these raids and shot.
Aunt Rivka survived the war. Her husband was killed in January 1944 in a confrontation with German soldiers. I learned later that according to the agreement with the couple that adopted me, if only the father survived (they were told that my aunt’s husband was my father), they would have me forever, but if my mother survived, then they would return me to her.
One day, Rivka appeared at the door and presented herself as my mother. By then she was a total stranger to me, and also found it hard to communicate with me in Lithuanian. My adoptive family refused to give me away. For Rivka, I was the only family member to survive the war. She had lost her mother, daughter, husband and brothers: she was utterly determined to take me and raise me as her daughter. She returned with a cousin who was a high-ranking officer in the Soviet Army. They took me out of the house. It was a real drama. I did not want to go, and cried and screamed. So too did my Lithuanian mother who called her husband to return from work. They ran after the car in which I had been placed, and I remember them waving their hands and crying.
Again, Rivka became my mother, and she was to remain so until 2001, when she died at the age of 89. She separated me from the Lithuanian family and moved to Vilnius. From one perspective, I can understand her fear that I would be taken from her, but at the same time, I feel to this day a great frustration that I do not know the names of the Lithuanian couple who adopted me. Nor do I know what their destiny became, and I have not had the chance to thank them and reward them for their love and devotion, which they deserve. I only remember that they came to Vilnius once to visit me and told me that they were going far away. Most likely, they were deported to Siberia, or this was their way of telling me that we would never meet again.
The officer who helped Rivka to reclaim me from the Lithuanian family was named Kurecky. His wife, Tatiana Kurecky, was a famous singer. Once, when I was ill, they took me to recover in the countryside and I stayed with them for about three months; I loved being with them, and they were very fond of me. They did not have children of their own and decided not to give me back to Rivka. Only after a trial and with the birth certificate as proof that I was registered as Rivka’s daughter was I returned to her.
Rivka remarried in 1947, to Judel Gerbajevsky, and he became my father. During the war he had lost all his family while he himself was serving in the Soviet Army. The maiden name in my ID appears as ‘Gita Gerbajevsky’. He was a most loving father, reading me children’s fairy tales, taking me to the cinema, writing songs for me, and putting toys and other surprises under my pillow. My sister, Sarah, was born in 1950, and we grew up as sisters.
In 1957 we moved to Poland, from where it was possible to migrate to Israel. We stayed in Poland eighteen months, and there I received my graduation certificate. We made our Aliyah (migration) to Israel in 1958. I joined the Israeli Army, but since my father had died and my mother was sick and there was no income, I had to start working. I became a laboratory technician and, after my studies, I started teaching at the ORT school. I became involved in the management of the school, and by the time I retired I was administrative director.
For many years it was a secret in the family that Rivka was not my biological mother. I knew the truth, but Rivka and I pretended I knew nothing. It was only when I was 19 years old that Rivka told me the whole story. Then, when my sister Sarah was in the Israeli Army, a mutual friend told her that I was actually her cousin: Sarah was desperately upset with our mother for lying to her. Sarah and I currently live very close to each other, we meet often and we are now a close-knit family.
Ramat Gan, Israel, 2008
First published in 2011 by Vallentine Mitchell
London, Portland, OR
Gita German-Gordon-Frances
From: Smuggled in Potato Sacks
Fifty Stories of the Hidden Children of the Kaunas Ghetto
Editors
Solomon Abramovich
and Yakov Zilberg
It is the early morning of 28 October 1941. Today is my birthday. Gita’le is 2 years old. It was a rainy and foggy day. My parents woke me up early, and all the other family members were dressed up and ready to go. Somehow I felt festive being surrounded by my two grandmas, my parents, my uncles, Aunt Rivka Gordon and my cousin Sheinale. My father was in a wheelchair and I was sitting on his lap. My mother was pushing us. We were heading towards Democracy Square in the Kaunas Ghetto. What is awaiting us? What were the thoughts that crossed the mind of a 2-year old girl? What were her impressions? Did she feel the horror in the air?
From bits and pieces of early memories, and mainly through stories of the few who survived the ‘Great Action’ in the ghetto and through reading testimonies, I succeeded in reconstructing some of my feelings on my second birthday. The square was overcrowded with around 30,000 people. At first I probably felt secure being surrounded by all the members of our family. Hardly could I have imagined the scale of the tragedy that day when Gestapo master sergeant Helmut Rauca presided over the massive, day-long selection in Kaunas Ghetto, at the end of which 9,200 women, men and children were sent ‘to the right’ to be shot by the next day at the Ninth Fort. I had never been told that such horrible events can take place, not even in children’s tales with their evil heroes.
I learned much later in my adulthood that my father, Yona German, was sitting in a wheelchair because he was mobilized by the Soviets to dig ditches before the German invasion, and he had become very sick. My mother, Fruma Lonshtein, moved with my father and her mother to the apartment of Aunt Rivka (Father’s sister), in Slobodka, where all Kaunas Jews were ordered to move. My aunt’s husband, Pesach Gordon, was a deputy of Chaim Yelin, the anti-fascist organization’s leader of the ghetto resistance movement against the Germans. In cellar of their house, which was situated on Ariogolas 36, partisans were trained to use weapons and planned various activities against the German forces.
Back to Democracy Square on 28 October. Suddenly my family was split into two parts. My grandmothers, my parents and my uncles were sent to the right, and only Aunt Rivka and her 4-year-old daughter Sheinele, who was sitting on her mother’s shoulders, were sent to the left. Pesah was out of the ghetto that day, purchasing ammunition with a German passport. I found myself running towards my aunt who caught me in her arms. Never will I know why I ran to her, and who told me to do so. I probably wondered where my parents had disappeared, since they had never ever left me before. Wasn’t this a terrible shock for a tiny and vulnerable little girl?
Those who were sent to the right were gathered for the night in the ‘Small Ghetto’, and marched the next day to Ninth Fort, forced to undress and brutally shot. The terrible scenes which took place there, about which I learned much later, persist in my mind and do not leave me. Human lives did not count in those days. I visited the Ninth Fort only in 2004, accompanied by my family, and a terrible chill went through my body as soon as I entered the gate. Only a second separated me from being a part of that massacre.
After the ‘Great Action’, Aunt Rivka became the centre of my world. I was told that the shock of loosing my parents so suddenly turned me silent. I stopped talking. I have a photo of Sheinele and I participating in a Purim celebration in the ghetto kindergarten but my natural childhood cheerfulness had left me forever.
'Each man has a name that his parents gave him and God gave him’, states Zelda’s poem. This is not my case. I was born as Gita German on 28 October 1939. Only in 2004 did I obtain a copy of my original birth certificate from the Vilnius Archive. My aunt Rivka had changed my family name and my birth date to 17 August 1941, and this is my official birthday to this date in my ID. The Germans closed the ghetto on 15 August 1941, and after this day no birth certificates were issued in the ghetto. I was proclaimed as Rivka’s daughter. Since I was very tiny, it was no problem to claim that I was born in 1941. It was also easier to find an adoptive family for a younger child. So, it was as though I was reborn on 17 August 1941. Aunt Rivka became my official mother.
After the ‘Children’s Action’, it was decided to hide me and my cousin/sister with Lithuanian families outside the ghetto. Thanks to the connections of the partisans with the outer world, two families were located. Sheinele together with some other grown-up children was taken to one family, and I was adopted by a childless Lithuanian family, who hoped to keep me forever, if my mother Rivka did not return from the forest, where she had joined the partisans.
I was hidden in a potato sack and taken out of the ghetto by the partisans: I have a sense that to this day I can smell the odour of that potato sack. The adopting family was told that I was just 2 years old, and that I did not speak. I remember that I was taken out of the sack and placed on a kitchen table; the feeling was of being in a warm and secure environment. Suddenly I started to count in Yiddish: Eins, Zwei, Drei. I believe that my adopting parents were in shock, but had to overcome it. I was reborn again with new parents, and my name was now Genuta, after Saint Genuta. I remember when I was baptized in the church and the feeling of cold water touching my forehead. I learned very fast to chat in Lithuanian. I had a new mother who loved me, and I loved her.
I remember her washing my hair with rainwater and chamomile to lighten its colour and make it look healthier. Every Sunday I was dressed up with festive clothes, with a large ribbon in my hair, and I went with my new parents to the church. I learned all the prayers, and seem to remember that I liked the ceremony.
Since my adoptive parents lived across the road from the Gestapo headquarters, German soldiers and officers used to visit the house and drink tea with strawberry jam. During these visits I wandered freely around the house, trying to attract the attention of the new visitors. I have a photo in which I am sitting on the lap of a Gestapo soldier, taken with my Lithuanian mother and some neighbours. When times became more risky and the Germans began to raid houses looking for Jewish children, I was sent to relatives in a nearby village. My cousin, Sheinele, was discovered in one of these raids and shot.
Aunt Rivka survived the war. Her husband was killed in January 1944 in a confrontation with German soldiers. I learned later that according to the agreement with the couple that adopted me, if only the father survived (they were told that my aunt’s husband was my father), they would have me forever, but if my mother survived, then they would return me to her.
One day, Rivka appeared at the door and presented herself as my mother. By then she was a total stranger to me, and also found it hard to communicate with me in Lithuanian. My adoptive family refused to give me away. For Rivka, I was the only family member to survive the war. She had lost her mother, daughter, husband and brothers: she was utterly determined to take me and raise me as her daughter. She returned with a cousin who was a high-ranking officer in the Soviet Army. They took me out of the house. It was a real drama. I did not want to go, and cried and screamed. So too did my Lithuanian mother who called her husband to return from work. They ran after the car in which I had been placed, and I remember them waving their hands and crying.
Again, Rivka became my mother, and she was to remain so until 2001, when she died at the age of 89. She separated me from the Lithuanian family and moved to Vilnius. From one perspective, I can understand her fear that I would be taken from her, but at the same time, I feel to this day a great frustration that I do not know the names of the Lithuanian couple who adopted me. Nor do I know what their destiny became, and I have not had the chance to thank them and reward them for their love and devotion, which they deserve. I only remember that they came to Vilnius once to visit me and told me that they were going far away. Most likely, they were deported to Siberia, or this was their way of telling me that we would never meet again.
The officer who helped Rivka to reclaim me from the Lithuanian family was named Kurecky. His wife, Tatiana Kurecky, was a famous singer. Once, when I was ill, they took me to recover in the countryside and I stayed with them for about three months; I loved being with them, and they were very fond of me. They did not have children of their own and decided not to give me back to Rivka. Only after a trial and with the birth certificate as proof that I was registered as Rivka’s daughter was I returned to her.
Rivka remarried in 1947, to Judel Gerbajevsky, and he became my father. During the war he had lost all his family while he himself was serving in the Soviet Army. The maiden name in my ID appears as ‘Gita Gerbajevsky’. He was a most loving father, reading me children’s fairy tales, taking me to the cinema, writing songs for me, and putting toys and other surprises under my pillow. My sister, Sarah, was born in 1950, and we grew up as sisters.
In 1957 we moved to Poland, from where it was possible to migrate to Israel. We stayed in Poland eighteen months, and there I received my graduation certificate. We made our Aliyah (migration) to Israel in 1958. I joined the Israeli Army, but since my father had died and my mother was sick and there was no income, I had to start working. I became a laboratory technician and, after my studies, I started teaching at the ORT school. I became involved in the management of the school, and by the time I retired I was administrative director.
For many years it was a secret in the family that Rivka was not my biological mother. I knew the truth, but Rivka and I pretended I knew nothing. It was only when I was 19 years old that Rivka told me the whole story. Then, when my sister Sarah was in the Israeli Army, a mutual friend told her that I was actually her cousin: Sarah was desperately upset with our mother for lying to her. Sarah and I currently live very close to each other, we meet often and we are now a close-knit family.
Ramat Gan, Israel, 2008
First published in 2011 by Vallentine Mitchell
London, Portland, OR