rescued jewish children
Ahuva (Liuba) Peres Gold
I Asked If It Was "Safe" to Know Her
Ahuva (Liuba) Peres-Gold
From: Solomon Abramovich and Yakov Zilberg “Smuggled in Potato Sacks”, 2011
All I know about my family during the war and about my rescue is what my mother told me. Father never spoke about his experiences during the time of occupation or about the fate of his parents. It was too difficult for him to recount.
For years I never shared my story. Only recently I wrote some of it down at the request of my grandchildren.
During the 'Great Action' our family was sent to the doomed line, the 'fast track' to death. One Lithuanian policeman grabbed and dragged my mother and me from this column and pushed us to another; people in this one could live a little longer. We discovered later, that this policeman had been our neighbour before the war.
Mother slipped out of the ghetto on several occasions in search of trustworthy people willing to provide us with shelter from the Germans, the Lithuanian police and collaborators. Shalom believes it was Aunt Nesia (Nehmod) Budnik who heard from someone that the priest Bronius Paukshtys helped save Jewish children. So Mother went to see him. Not believing her to be Jewish, he gave her some Old Testament text to read in Hebrew. Mother had attended the Hebrew Gymnasium in Panevezis, so she read the text fluently and thus could convince him of her authenticity.
I was the first to be smuggled out. I was left with Paukshtys, who had arranged my transfer to Dr Baublys' orphanage.
Some months later my mother had a nightmare. In her dream, she saw me bald and my naked body full of purulent ulcers. She woke up with an urgent feeling that she must go to the orphan- age. Although she might endanger both of us, nobody could dissuade her from visiting me. The priest Paukshtys arranged that she could see me from a distance through the fence of the orphanage. As it happened, I was recovering from measles. I was very thin and my hair had been shaved. Mother told me that I noticed her, pointed with a finger in her direction and said, 'There is my mother!' and ran to the edge of the garden.
After our mother had smuggled us out, she started to look for a shelter for her sister, our father and herself. Father could not wander on the streets of Kaunas because of his obvious Semitic appearance. A German or Lithuanian policeman would immediately have arrested him. Mother wandered in the Kaunas suburbs looking for a hiding place and could feel comparatively safe. After a quite desperate search it seemed she had found an adequate location in some village. She made an agreement with the house owner: she would rent a basement in exchange for some belongings as payment. Mother brought the 'payment' and it was agreed that our mother and father would arrive the next day. During the earlier visits in that village my mother was presented to the neighbours as the owner's cousin living in Kaunas, and who planned to move in with her in the village.
After she brought the 'payment' Mother slept there since she planned to return home by boat the next afternoon. Early in the morning her 'cousin' left the house for some errands. A couple of hours later a passing neighbour asked my mother, how serious was the argument with 'her cousin'? Realizing that this was something important, Mother admitted to a non-existing small argument and managed to 'fish' out some crucial information, namely, that her 'cousin' had gone to the village head and told him that my mother was Jewish. He promised to inform the Germans about it, but left it for later in the day, since he didn't believe her story. In the meantime he told this 'funny crazy invented story' to his wife, who repeated it to the neighbour who spoke to my mother. My mother laughed at it, but obviously left the house soon after the neighbour departed. She was so shocked by this situation that for a while she didn't know what to do. Finally she did take a boat to Kaunas. And during an inspection of documents, thanks to my mother's 'typical Lithuanian' looks, she was not even asked to show her papers.
Eventually mother found shelter for my father and herself. Father spent all his days in a small suffocating basement and only at nights could he breathe fresh air. Mother worked as a tailor in Gentiles' homes, mostly receiving food instead of money. She started to feel that it was too dangerous to keep me in the Baublys orphanage, so she brought me to their hiding place in the village. In order to somehow feed me better, Mother used to take me with her, and I would play in these houses while she worked, sewing clothes. The visits were stopped after I uttered several words in Yiddish out loud. Till then I had not spoken at all.
Several days after the liberation, my mother managed to get an apartment in the central part of Kaunas where we lived till our emigration to Israel. My first clear memory from childhood is of Mother carrying me to a new flat and putting me on the sofa in a dark room. All the members of our core family were saved, but still there was a lot of sorrow in the house; grandparents, brothers, sisters and many other relatives and friends had perished.
After the war I went to a Jewish school, which was very soon shut down. A new wave of anti-Semitism began. In the Russian school I was quite unhappy until I started to speak Russian fluently. Later I flourished: I was young, strong and pretty, so I became a leader and the queen of the class. I was very good at different kinds of sports: skiing, ice-skating, cycling and especially at volleyball.
The years 1957-59 were a period of repatriation of former Polish citizens from the USSR to Poland. Many Lithuanian Jews took this opportunity to emigrate to Israel, fictitiously marrying these formerly Polish citizens, since the Polish leader, Gomulka, allowed them to leave Poland. Persons entitled to Polish citizenship arranged fictitious marriages with Jews for money. Shalom married in this way but fell in love with his so-called 'wife', and their fictitious marriage became a genuine one. Thanks to Shalom's marriage, our family received permission to leave the USSR.
After eight months in Poland we moved to Israel. I remember how shocked I was by my first impression of Israel: sand and stones instead of the trees and grass of a Lithuanian landscape. I wanted to become Israeli as soon as possible, but I felt Israeli only when I did my Army service. After my compulsory service, I was employed by the Army until my retirement.
In 1962 I married Shmuel Gold, who was among the refugees who made Aliya to Israel on the famous Exodus, and we had three children. In 1985 my parents and my husband died. Several years later I met a widower with four children. Together we built a new warm and friendly family made of our seven children and four- teen grandchildren. The last blow of fate was when my handsome and gifted son, Ziv, was killed in a car crash, leaving behind a wife and a child. In 2004 my daughter gave birth to our youngest granddaughter, by this restoring some joy to my world.
Haifa, Israel, 2009
Ahuva (Liuba) Peres-Gold
From: Solomon Abramovich and Yakov Zilberg “Smuggled in Potato Sacks”, 2011
All I know about my family during the war and about my rescue is what my mother told me. Father never spoke about his experiences during the time of occupation or about the fate of his parents. It was too difficult for him to recount.
For years I never shared my story. Only recently I wrote some of it down at the request of my grandchildren.
During the 'Great Action' our family was sent to the doomed line, the 'fast track' to death. One Lithuanian policeman grabbed and dragged my mother and me from this column and pushed us to another; people in this one could live a little longer. We discovered later, that this policeman had been our neighbour before the war.
Mother slipped out of the ghetto on several occasions in search of trustworthy people willing to provide us with shelter from the Germans, the Lithuanian police and collaborators. Shalom believes it was Aunt Nesia (Nehmod) Budnik who heard from someone that the priest Bronius Paukshtys helped save Jewish children. So Mother went to see him. Not believing her to be Jewish, he gave her some Old Testament text to read in Hebrew. Mother had attended the Hebrew Gymnasium in Panevezis, so she read the text fluently and thus could convince him of her authenticity.
I was the first to be smuggled out. I was left with Paukshtys, who had arranged my transfer to Dr Baublys' orphanage.
Some months later my mother had a nightmare. In her dream, she saw me bald and my naked body full of purulent ulcers. She woke up with an urgent feeling that she must go to the orphan- age. Although she might endanger both of us, nobody could dissuade her from visiting me. The priest Paukshtys arranged that she could see me from a distance through the fence of the orphanage. As it happened, I was recovering from measles. I was very thin and my hair had been shaved. Mother told me that I noticed her, pointed with a finger in her direction and said, 'There is my mother!' and ran to the edge of the garden.
After our mother had smuggled us out, she started to look for a shelter for her sister, our father and herself. Father could not wander on the streets of Kaunas because of his obvious Semitic appearance. A German or Lithuanian policeman would immediately have arrested him. Mother wandered in the Kaunas suburbs looking for a hiding place and could feel comparatively safe. After a quite desperate search it seemed she had found an adequate location in some village. She made an agreement with the house owner: she would rent a basement in exchange for some belongings as payment. Mother brought the 'payment' and it was agreed that our mother and father would arrive the next day. During the earlier visits in that village my mother was presented to the neighbours as the owner's cousin living in Kaunas, and who planned to move in with her in the village.
After she brought the 'payment' Mother slept there since she planned to return home by boat the next afternoon. Early in the morning her 'cousin' left the house for some errands. A couple of hours later a passing neighbour asked my mother, how serious was the argument with 'her cousin'? Realizing that this was something important, Mother admitted to a non-existing small argument and managed to 'fish' out some crucial information, namely, that her 'cousin' had gone to the village head and told him that my mother was Jewish. He promised to inform the Germans about it, but left it for later in the day, since he didn't believe her story. In the meantime he told this 'funny crazy invented story' to his wife, who repeated it to the neighbour who spoke to my mother. My mother laughed at it, but obviously left the house soon after the neighbour departed. She was so shocked by this situation that for a while she didn't know what to do. Finally she did take a boat to Kaunas. And during an inspection of documents, thanks to my mother's 'typical Lithuanian' looks, she was not even asked to show her papers.
Eventually mother found shelter for my father and herself. Father spent all his days in a small suffocating basement and only at nights could he breathe fresh air. Mother worked as a tailor in Gentiles' homes, mostly receiving food instead of money. She started to feel that it was too dangerous to keep me in the Baublys orphanage, so she brought me to their hiding place in the village. In order to somehow feed me better, Mother used to take me with her, and I would play in these houses while she worked, sewing clothes. The visits were stopped after I uttered several words in Yiddish out loud. Till then I had not spoken at all.
Several days after the liberation, my mother managed to get an apartment in the central part of Kaunas where we lived till our emigration to Israel. My first clear memory from childhood is of Mother carrying me to a new flat and putting me on the sofa in a dark room. All the members of our core family were saved, but still there was a lot of sorrow in the house; grandparents, brothers, sisters and many other relatives and friends had perished.
After the war I went to a Jewish school, which was very soon shut down. A new wave of anti-Semitism began. In the Russian school I was quite unhappy until I started to speak Russian fluently. Later I flourished: I was young, strong and pretty, so I became a leader and the queen of the class. I was very good at different kinds of sports: skiing, ice-skating, cycling and especially at volleyball.
The years 1957-59 were a period of repatriation of former Polish citizens from the USSR to Poland. Many Lithuanian Jews took this opportunity to emigrate to Israel, fictitiously marrying these formerly Polish citizens, since the Polish leader, Gomulka, allowed them to leave Poland. Persons entitled to Polish citizenship arranged fictitious marriages with Jews for money. Shalom married in this way but fell in love with his so-called 'wife', and their fictitious marriage became a genuine one. Thanks to Shalom's marriage, our family received permission to leave the USSR.
After eight months in Poland we moved to Israel. I remember how shocked I was by my first impression of Israel: sand and stones instead of the trees and grass of a Lithuanian landscape. I wanted to become Israeli as soon as possible, but I felt Israeli only when I did my Army service. After my compulsory service, I was employed by the Army until my retirement.
In 1962 I married Shmuel Gold, who was among the refugees who made Aliya to Israel on the famous Exodus, and we had three children. In 1985 my parents and my husband died. Several years later I met a widower with four children. Together we built a new warm and friendly family made of our seven children and four- teen grandchildren. The last blow of fate was when my handsome and gifted son, Ziv, was killed in a car crash, leaving behind a wife and a child. In 2004 my daughter gave birth to our youngest granddaughter, by this restoring some joy to my world.
Haifa, Israel, 2009