rescued jewish children
Simon Wolbe
SIMON WOLBE
From Smuggled in Potato Sacks
Fifty Stories of the Hidden Children of the Kaunas Ghetto
Editors
Solomon Abramovich
and Yakov Zilberg
Frida Epstein and Haim Wolbe fell in love and married sometime around 1928, and I was born in 1933. My father was a metalworker in Kaunas. In 1941, my parents, with my 10-year-old brother Moshe, 13-year-old sister Haya and myself were ordered into the ghetto. I remember quite a few episodes from our life there. We used to play in the cellar of our house with the neighbour’s children. We kept dogs and rabbits in the cellar, left behind when all the ghetto inhabitants perished. I will never forget how, one day, the neighbour’s daughter killed a rabbit, skinned and cooked it for us. She was under 10 years old.
There was an attempt to organize a school in the ghetto. I remember I attended the first class for only one day. The next day we were sent home, teachers were afraid we would be rounded up all together and killed.
Mother was the first to perish. She was sick, and hospitalized in the ghetto hospital, where she was burnt alive with all the patients and staff.
I remember clearly the day of the ‘Children’s Action’. I was outside with my brother. We saw lorries gathering near the ghetto fence and we understood immediately that something bad was going to happen. We ran to the attic of the house, which was full of garbage. There were many other children. We hid behind old broken furniture, empty boxes and other garbage. A couple of German soldiers came to search the attic. They did not find us (or did not want to find anybody) and left.
From the broken roof of the attic I saw how the Polizei led an old man and woman carrying a child out of our house. The Polizei tried to take the child from the mother’s arms. She resisted and the Polizei hit her, dragged the child from her and threw him into the lorry. The lorry drove away and the woman and the old man were left standing helpless on the street.
A day before the liquidation of the ghetto my father decided to escape with all of us from the ghetto. We left with the column of workers. We walked down Ponaru Street towards the house of a Lithuanian farmer who had agreed to hide a Jewish family. Suddenly a German soldier on a motorbike appeared and noticed Moshe, who was lagging behind us. The soldier stopped him, asked for documents and eventually arrested him. Despite Moshe’s pleas for release, the German soldier took him away.
In terrible despair we reached the farm in Vilijampole. The owner of the farm, Petras Andriuskevichius, had agreed to hide us. My father promised this farmer his house as payment. His wife Joana and daughter, Eudenia Andriuskevichiute-Zemaitene, helped him in providing for our needs. After the war he visited us; my father wanted to keep his word and offered him money, but the farmer refused to take it. He was recognized after his death by the independent Lithuanian government and awarded the Life Saviour Cross.
We were hidden in the cellar of a barn covered by stacks of wood for two days. To our misfortune, the Germans arrived and ordered the farmer to leave, since they needed the house for an artillery defence unit. The farmer removed some planks from the fence to enable us to escape in the darkness. We ran to the fields. My father dug a pit, covered it with the old rusty lid of a pan and we hid there for another four days. Father went out in search of food and managed to find a peasant who supplied us with water and food. The next time my father crawled out of the pit, he was stopped by a soldier, who to our relief, spoke Russian.
Immediately after the liberation of Kaunas we went to the ghetto in the faint hope of finding Moshe there. We were among the first to see the burnt ruins and corpses. The defaced corpse of a boy was laid on the street near the place which was once our home in the ghetto. German POWs were ordered to pick up the bodies and to bury them. Father thought this was Moshe’s body. But later, people who returned from the camps told us they had seen Moshe in the American hospital, wrapped in a blanket; he was very sick. We never saw or heard about him again.
My father resettled in Kaunas, he married Zlate, née Mashkantz, who lost her husband and two children, Riva and Israel, in the ghetto. They had a son, my youngest brother, Itzchak. My father died at the age of 90 in Israel.
For four years I attended the Jewish school, then the Lithuanian gymnasium, and went to the Soviet Army to serve in the Black Sea Navy. After my release I married Rina Zupovich in 1960. Like my father, all my life I worked as a metalworker.
We emigrated to Israel in 1972 with our two children. We have five grandchildren here in Israel.
Kfar Sava, Israel, February 2009
First published in 2011 by Vallentine Mitchell
London, Portland, OR
From Smuggled in Potato Sacks
Fifty Stories of the Hidden Children of the Kaunas Ghetto
Editors
Solomon Abramovich
and Yakov Zilberg
Frida Epstein and Haim Wolbe fell in love and married sometime around 1928, and I was born in 1933. My father was a metalworker in Kaunas. In 1941, my parents, with my 10-year-old brother Moshe, 13-year-old sister Haya and myself were ordered into the ghetto. I remember quite a few episodes from our life there. We used to play in the cellar of our house with the neighbour’s children. We kept dogs and rabbits in the cellar, left behind when all the ghetto inhabitants perished. I will never forget how, one day, the neighbour’s daughter killed a rabbit, skinned and cooked it for us. She was under 10 years old.
There was an attempt to organize a school in the ghetto. I remember I attended the first class for only one day. The next day we were sent home, teachers were afraid we would be rounded up all together and killed.
Mother was the first to perish. She was sick, and hospitalized in the ghetto hospital, where she was burnt alive with all the patients and staff.
I remember clearly the day of the ‘Children’s Action’. I was outside with my brother. We saw lorries gathering near the ghetto fence and we understood immediately that something bad was going to happen. We ran to the attic of the house, which was full of garbage. There were many other children. We hid behind old broken furniture, empty boxes and other garbage. A couple of German soldiers came to search the attic. They did not find us (or did not want to find anybody) and left.
From the broken roof of the attic I saw how the Polizei led an old man and woman carrying a child out of our house. The Polizei tried to take the child from the mother’s arms. She resisted and the Polizei hit her, dragged the child from her and threw him into the lorry. The lorry drove away and the woman and the old man were left standing helpless on the street.
A day before the liquidation of the ghetto my father decided to escape with all of us from the ghetto. We left with the column of workers. We walked down Ponaru Street towards the house of a Lithuanian farmer who had agreed to hide a Jewish family. Suddenly a German soldier on a motorbike appeared and noticed Moshe, who was lagging behind us. The soldier stopped him, asked for documents and eventually arrested him. Despite Moshe’s pleas for release, the German soldier took him away.
In terrible despair we reached the farm in Vilijampole. The owner of the farm, Petras Andriuskevichius, had agreed to hide us. My father promised this farmer his house as payment. His wife Joana and daughter, Eudenia Andriuskevichiute-Zemaitene, helped him in providing for our needs. After the war he visited us; my father wanted to keep his word and offered him money, but the farmer refused to take it. He was recognized after his death by the independent Lithuanian government and awarded the Life Saviour Cross.
We were hidden in the cellar of a barn covered by stacks of wood for two days. To our misfortune, the Germans arrived and ordered the farmer to leave, since they needed the house for an artillery defence unit. The farmer removed some planks from the fence to enable us to escape in the darkness. We ran to the fields. My father dug a pit, covered it with the old rusty lid of a pan and we hid there for another four days. Father went out in search of food and managed to find a peasant who supplied us with water and food. The next time my father crawled out of the pit, he was stopped by a soldier, who to our relief, spoke Russian.
Immediately after the liberation of Kaunas we went to the ghetto in the faint hope of finding Moshe there. We were among the first to see the burnt ruins and corpses. The defaced corpse of a boy was laid on the street near the place which was once our home in the ghetto. German POWs were ordered to pick up the bodies and to bury them. Father thought this was Moshe’s body. But later, people who returned from the camps told us they had seen Moshe in the American hospital, wrapped in a blanket; he was very sick. We never saw or heard about him again.
My father resettled in Kaunas, he married Zlate, née Mashkantz, who lost her husband and two children, Riva and Israel, in the ghetto. They had a son, my youngest brother, Itzchak. My father died at the age of 90 in Israel.
For four years I attended the Jewish school, then the Lithuanian gymnasium, and went to the Soviet Army to serve in the Black Sea Navy. After my release I married Rina Zupovich in 1960. Like my father, all my life I worked as a metalworker.
We emigrated to Israel in 1972 with our two children. We have five grandchildren here in Israel.
Kfar Sava, Israel, February 2009
First published in 2011 by Vallentine Mitchell
London, Portland, OR