Left on the Porch

Yakov Zilberg

From Smuggled in Potato Sacks
Fifty Stories of the Hidden Children of the Kaunas Ghetto

Editors
Solomon Abramovich
and Yakov Zilberg

My mother Sonia Zilberg, nee' Elitzur came from an established and educated family who originated in Panevezis. There were eight siblings in her family. Mother graduated from the Russian Gymnasium in Panevezis and from the Economics faculty in Liege. She worked in Brussels for a few years. About five years before the war she returned to Lithuania.
My father Abram (Abrasha) Zilberg, was the only son of Orthodox Jews who owned a small shop in a village called Vabalninkas. Father studied in the Jewish Gymnasium in Panevezis and graduated from the Kaunas Medical School. My parents became acquainted exchanging language tuition. He exchanged Hebrew tuition in return for her teaching him French.
At the onset of the Spanish Civil War, my father and two of his friends, Mitzelmaher and Sheinberg, who were also doctors volunteered to the International Brigade. In Spain my father became a member of the Communist party. He was injured in one of the Brigade’s activities. After the defeat of the Republicans he spent a couple of months in a special camp organized in France for the members of the International brigade. Upon his return to Lithuania, he married my mother. They settled in Vabalninkas, where my father practiced medicine. Just before the war, they had a daughter called Mina.
After the occupation of Lithuania by the USSR, communists were promoted to managerial positions. Father was appointed as a physician in charge of the Kalvaria psychiatric hospital. Although he had never been a psychiatrist, he quickly earned the respect of the patients and the senior college specialists in this field of medicine. According to my mother and father's friends, he was an exceptional man: happy, intelligent and courageous. He loved singing and was able to sing in all languages. Father could speak ten languages fluently. After the war, when I was introduced to people as the son of Abrasha, people would nod with recognition.
A few days before the war, my father went from Kalvaria to Kaunas to find out if it was advisable to depart immediately. He was assured that there was no danger and ordered ‘not to panic.’
On the night of 21st of June the bombardment of Kalvaria woke my parents. They left absolutely everything and fled with Mina towards Kaunas from where they had intended to transfer to Russia. Exhausted after walking the whole night, they knocked at the door of a farmhouse. Mina cried; she was hungry. An old Lithuanian woman let them in and gave them some milk and food. Meanwhile her son came in with a rifle. They could see the cruelty and hatred in his eyes. Then he turned and gazed at Mina. She was a beautiful child with huge green eyes. My parents fled from the farm but this young man followed them. Mother was sure he was going to kill them. 'Walk on and don’t look back,' said my father. They heard the man behind them, 'If it was not for your daughter, I would kill you like mad dogs'.
When they arrived in Kaunas, the Germans were already there. In the early days of the occupation, my father’s parents were killed by Lithuanians. My maternal grandfather Solomon, my aunt Aniuta, her husband and their two daughters (one of them five-year-old Mirale) were murdered in Panevezis. I regret I did not ask my mother more about the events during the war, feeling that the memories were too painful for her. This is why I do not even know their surnames in order to commemorate them in the the Yad va Shem Holocaust Museum. Mother’s four other sisters immigrated to Palestine several years before the war.
My parents and Mina found themselves crowded into the Kaunas Ghetto. Father immediately joined the anti-fascistic underground organization in the Ghetto. I learnt that my father had worked in the hospital in the Ghetto and later in Aleksotas.
When my mother discovered she was pregnant, she arranged to abort this unplanned pregnancy in the Jewish hospital in the ghetto. However, a day before the procedure, she changed her mind. The day she had been due in the hospital the Germans set it alight with all the patients and part of personnel inside.
I was born on the 5th May 1942. Dr Pertzikovich, who went on to become a prominent gynecologist in Israel, attended at my birth. I was a premature and feeble baby with a huge swelling on my head. On top of that I developed a serious case of childhood asthma. I would almost suffocate at night causing much anxiety to my mother who herself suffered from Mastitis and was not able to produce milk. Behind her back people wished me dead so that my mother could finally have some rest. My parents, however, resolved to nurse me back to health. Mother used to go to the fence of the ghetto everyday to exchange her food voucher for goat milk. To everyone’s surprise I gained strength and grew up in the Ghetto for over a year.
I was a year old when my parents decided to take desperate measures to save me. The plan was executed with the help of Yulia Yoffe, a friend of my parents. Yulia was a Jewish lady with Aryan looks and could walk more freely out of the Ghetto. By then she had already managed to evacuate her own daughter Lyda and had placed her with a Lithuanian family. Yulia heard of a Polish family whose two sons were missing. They decided to send me there. I was sedated and put in a sack and in the morning among the crowds of people going to work, Yulia and my mother smuggled me out of the Ghetto. During the day, they hid somewhere, and when night fell they arrived at the home of the Polish family and left me at the steps of the house. They knocked at the door and fled to the sound of vicious guard dogs. My mother and Yulia spent the following night and day in ravines, hiding in shrubs. Towards the evening, they attached themselves to crowds of returning labourers and re-entered the Ghetto.
Following a number of anxious days my father embarked on another dangerous mission. He gathered some of my belongings, left the Ghetto with the intention of selling these to the people with whom I had been left. The mistress of the house purchased these objects all the time suspiciously eyeing the Jewish-looking gentleman before her. Father returned to the Ghetto alive. He told my mother that my belongings had been bought which meant that I must be safely in the home. Mother could now be assured that I had been taken in and not abandoned.
Fortunately I was not circumcised. Although I already spoke some Yiddish, I didn’t say a word and I did not cry. I was Christianized and renamed Richard. I became a Polish child. My parents continued to live in the Ghetto. Mother told me several times that my father was already very much disillusioned with the communist ideology. They decided that if they survived they would head for Palestine at the end of the war.
I do not know and will now never know how my five year old sister Mina was taken away. She disappeared most probably in the 'Children’s Action', as did countless other Jewish children.
During the liquidation of the Ghetto, my parents and some others hid in a bunker 'malina' which had been dug up over the months under the house. All the houses were systematically exploded and burnt by the Germans. When, because of the heavy smoke, the people in the bunker could not breathe and clambered out, the Germans had already left the ghetto. Some priest lead them to a hiding place in the town. I believe they were hidden in the cellars of the War Museum. He led part of the people from this group, including my mother, first. The rest of the group, who had a more Jewish appearance were supposed to come later under the cover of darkness. Father stayed with the second group; he was supposed to lead them to the hiding place. Mother felt uneasy about my father's staying behind and tried to persuade him to go with her but it was in vain… The second group never reached the shelter. The Red Army was already approaching and the defeat of the Germans was near. Despite this, on the evening of my father's disappearance, Lithuanians were still picking up Jews. Some of these captured Jews were killed on the spot, others at the Ninth Fort.
After the liberation my mother went to collect me from the Polish family. She was aware of hostile looks and could hear people whispering behind her back, 'This is Richard's mother'. I was playing in the yard but I immediately approached her, took a hold of her and would not let her go. My foster parents greeted my mother coldly and demanded that she leave. Mother left to the sound of my tears only to return the following day with a militiaman after Yulia had testified as to my identity. I was reunited with my mother for good. I am entirely unable to remember my foster father, and barely remember my foster mother. She visited us several times and I still called her mama while for some time I called my real mother 'tiotia mama', what means Mrs Mama. After the war she sold ice-cream on Laisves Avenue and would always give me a treat when I passed by alone. They never forgave my mother for having survived. Their resentment subsided when their sons returned. Eventually, our contact with them was completely severed.
After the war, my mother moved in with Naum Shafransky without ever having officially married him. It was the union of two survivors who helped each other to overcome the nightmare they had both endured. He had been a neighbour of ours in the ghetto. Naum and my father had then made an agreement: if one of them was killed, the other would take care of both families. He was a good, simple and warm man. He had lost his entire family in the Ghetto, including his wife Genia and his only son Rouven (Ruvik). Naum had been a member of the resistance as well. He knew many Lithuanians in the countryside and moved to and from the Ghetto on missions for the underground. He helped several Ghetto inhabitants to escape and was sure he would be able to save his family. Naum never spoke about the Ghetto and his family.
In 1946 my sister Salomea (Saly) was born and we moved to Vilnius. Yet another shock awaited my mother. Naum was arrested in 1948 and sentenced to ten years in a labour camp in Siberia. He returned after five years and was by then in poor health. He had been an active Zionist since youth and always dreamt of Israel. He died in Vilnius in 1971, six months before our departure to Israel. In 1972 my mother, Saly with her son and I with my wife and our eldest daughter Dina landed in Israel.
Despite all she had endured, my mother remained an optimist. She didn't lose her love of life and knew how to derive joy from the simplest pleasures: from a drive in the countryside, from good food, from wine and even a cigarette. She prided herself on my achievements and adored her grandchildren. My mother died suddenly in my arms at the age of eighty from a heart attack. She had been lucid till her last day. Despite her first husband and son having been physicians, she did not like to visit doctors or take medication, claiming both ‘gave her headaches’. Even though she rarely spoke of the past, she carried much pain with her.
Several years after my mother’s death, Yulia Yoffe who had helped my parents rescue me all those years ago, also suddenly passed away aged 80. Recently, Yulia's daughter Lyda Yoffe told me that after the war she’d asked her father why the skin on my mother Sonia’s face was patchy in places. Her father explained that during the war, when the Germans (or Ukrainians) were trying to snatch her daughter Mina away from her, Sonia struggled and refused to let her go. Dogs were set on her and ravaged her.
Mother had never shared this with us but I remember her telling me how strong is the human instinct to survive. She said she had known a woman in the Ghetto whose daughter had been brutally torn from her arms and killed. The woman, though hysterical, had then mingled with the crowd and fled. Maybe this was her own story. We managed very well in Israel and from our first steps there we felt at home. My wife worked as an engineer and later as a maths teacher. For more than seventeen years we lived in kibbutz Sde Nachum in the Beit Shean Valley where I practiced medicine. From 1976 I held several high managerial positions in the Israeli Health care system. Now we both retired and enjoy our life and family: three daughters (two: Dalia and Yael, born in Israel) and five grandchildren.

Israel, Kfar Sava, 2009

First published in 2011 by Vallentine Mitchell
London, Portland, OR