rescued jewish children

Scalded by Borscht
Yaakov Taft

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

Editors
Solomon Abramovich
and Yakov Zilberg

My father Leib was a paediatrician in Kaunas, and most of his patients were Lithuanian children. My mother, Hanna Taft, was originally from the small town of Shakliai. She was a dentist. I was born in 1940. The family, although not religious, observed some Jewish traditions. The spoken language in our family was Yiddish, and my parents strongly supported the Zionist movement. I was the only child in this happy family and we lived in a very comfortable, spacious apartment. Many years later I found out that my parents owned a supermarket and a bakery, as well as my father’s big private clinic.
My father had many brothers and sisters, who all perished during the occupation. Some were killed by the Germans but most of them were murdered by the Lithuanian collaborators. My mother’s relatives were exiled to Siberia just before the war, so the Soviets, ironically, had saved them from the fascists.
In the ghetto our family found itself in a small flat which we shared with more than thirty other people. There was one advantage to this situation: together it was easier to ensure there was a food supply. My very first memory is of a huge pot, where borscht, a soup made from beetroot, was being cooked. I liked it so much that once I fell down into this pot full of hot soup: I suffered burns over 50 per cent of my body. I remember this vividly; I was treated with bandages soaked in fish oil, but my general condition was very poor, and I very nearly died. I can remember the painful procedure of changing my dressing and how my parents pleaded with me, ‘Please do not cry, Yakov. If you cry, Germans will come and kill you.’ And I would not cry, suffering in a silence.
My grandparents were burned alive before the ‘Great Action’, while my parents watched their death helplessly. During this ‘action’ our family was sent to the ‘bad’ line: my parents knew this meant they were going to be killed. In despair my mother pleaded with the SS officer in her fluent German, ‘My son is dying, let me take care of him and let him die in my arms.’ Probably something in my mother’s voice touched the officer who shouted, ‘Raus! Get out of my sight!’ and pushed her to the other line. Mother pointed out my father, ‘This is my husband, he is a children’s doctor and he treats the child. We cannot manage without him.’ It is beyond belief, but this officer let my father pass to the ‘good’ line as well. How fate plays with people: my condition saved our family from being killed. A scar from these burns will remind me forever of what had happened to me.
Every morning my father with a team of others was led to Aleksotas. On his way to work and back he took every opportunity to barter food in exchange for clothes and other utilities. My parents realized that miracles could not be counted on forever, so they began to look for a place to hide me. One day my father slipped away from the work brigade and went to see a priest named Bronius Paukshtys whom he had met before the war.

‘Kind Sir’, he appealed to Paukshtys, ‘all my life I treated and saved Lithuanian children, please help me this time to save my own son.’ The priest, who was a very tall man, looked down at my father and warned, ‘But your son would become a Christian’. ‘He can become anything, even a Chinaman, as long as he remains alive’, was Father’s reaction.
I remember my arrival at the priest’s house because, strangely enough, there was a fox tied to his porch. Mr Juozas Timoshaitis, the priest’s servant, took me to the monastery located in Kaunas, where I stayed until the liberation. There I was kept in a barn together with pigs, hens and other animals. I spent most of the time eating and sleeping with my new ‘neighbours’. There was not enough food, I felt constant hunger and I remember taking some food from the animals. Ever since then I have been fond of pets, especially dogs. I later bred them in my house and was even awarded some prizes.
I do not remember if I was fed, washed and cleaned by somebody. I never cried and would stretch my arm and beg for food when adult people occasionally appeared in the barn. Since that time I cannot throw away food, especially bread, and we never waste it.
I learned to pray and sometimes helped the priest during mass. I had no contact with my parents at all throughout the time I spent in the monastery. Later on, the German authorities recognized that I was forced at the age of 3 or 4 to perform labour (a Jew serving in the church!). However, by German law only persons who were engaged in labour from the age of 5 and upwards were entitled to receive compensation, so I got nothing.
During my stay in the monastery I also learned to be afraid of people. Some came to the monastery, probably looking for their children; I remember when one Jew appeared, I ran away, I did not know if I was allowed to speak or even to be seen at all. I did not know, or I had forgotten, that I was a Jewish child. I was like a small animal, some kind of Mowgli.
My parents managed to escape from the ghetto and found shelter with a Lithuanian family in a village, where they carried out all kinds of agricultural work and survived. When they came, I did not run away but was hiding behind a corner, peeking at what was going on. Mother saw me immediately and started to cry, but I refused to approach her. My father took out a pocketknife and with this trick he succeeded to persuade me to come. Since this episode I am very fond of all kinds of pocketknives: maybe I even chose my profession as a physician in the field of surgery because of scalpels.
After the war my parents started to work and our life settled down. In 1946 my younger brother was born. Paukshtys, the priest who saved me, was involved in the rescue of many other Jews, five of whom I know personally; among them are my two cousins, Matias (Matetiahu) and Riva Tafts. They were actually my cousins twice over: our fathers were brothers and our mothers were sisters.
Matias was born in 1938 and Riva in 1934. Father Paukshtys organized a hiding place for them with a Lithuanian family, but the neighbours of this family betrayed them. The children were caught and transported to the Ninth Fort. They told us how Lithuanian policemen were mocking and teasing them, singing a song about how the poor children would be killed. By some miracle, I do not know the details, Matias and Riva survived. Their parents were killed and they came to live with us as our brother and sister.

Paukshtys was arrested by the Soviets and sent to Siberia. It appeared that besides the Jews, after the war he had hidden Lithuanian partisans known as ‘Zaliukai’ (‘forest brothers’). My parents sent money and parcels to Paukshtys till 1956. Before the war my mother had studied in high school with A. Snechkus, the secretary general of the Communist Party of the Lithuanian SSR. She went to see him, and asked that Paukshtys should be allowed to return to Lithuania. She succeeded in her mission and Paukshtys was released and came home. Paukshtys was a very talented and educated person and, according to the ‘Voice of America’, he could have become archbishop of Lithuania, but he returned from Siberia in very poor health.
After the war I attended the Jewish kindergarten, the Jewish school and later a Lithuanian school. It was not customary to talk about the occupation and the ghetto in our family, although a sense of the Holocaust was always in the air.
In 1967 I graduated from Vilnius University Medical School, where I often heard, ‘It is a pity to spend state money on your education. You all (Jews) will eventually go to Palestine.’ Matias became an electrical technician and Riva graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry in Vilnius University. Matias came to Israel and was successful there; Riva with her family went to Canada. Unfortunately both of them died comparatively young from cancer.
I married in 1961 and my wife Shulamith is a physician as well. During one of the priest Paukshtys’ spells in hospital he was in a state of clinical death and my wife resuscitated him successfully. So the circle was closed in some way: Paukshtys organized my rescue, and my wife saved his life. Unfortunately very soon after this event, Paukshtys passed away.
Our family had always thought about moving to Israel and as soon as it became possible we applied for permission. In 1972 we landed in Tel Aviv with our two sons. Almost immediately we started to work as doctors. I served in the Yom Kippur war as a physician and my division reached the Suez Canal. Our youngest daughter was born in Israel. All our children fulfilled their regular service in the Army and are officers; our daughter Orit served as a paramedic. During the first Lebanon war she was wounded, but did not leave the battlefield and went on helping other wounded soldiers. She was awarded the Medal of Bravery for her actions.
Here in Israel we, a group of people who were saved by Paukshtys, applied to Yad Vashem and consequently Paukshtys was honoured with the title ‘Righteous among the Nations’, and a tree in his memory was planted in the garden in Jerusalem.
The cause of the Holocaust is very emotive for me. I will never go to Germany and do not spend my small German pension, leaving the money for my grandchildren’s education.

Jerusalem, Israel, 2008

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