rescuers of jews
Korablikova Fetinija
He Was Born in the Ghetto
Lilija Kopač, Sergej Korablikov-Kovarskij
From the 4th book Hands Bringing Life and Bread
Those who do not want to reconcile, cannot forget, No matter how many days have passed...
He was born in the ghetto in December 1942. His father was a Russian named Makar Korablikov, and his mother a Jew named Basia Kovarskaja. Sergej told the complicated and tragic story of his birth.
Before the war, his father married a young Jew named Bliuma Trockaja. They gave birth to a son named Ilja. Makar Korablikov with his wife and child lived on Tyzenhauzų Street in Vilnius until the war. When the war broke out, Bliuma stayed in her home, and did not go to the ghetto. But once she saw a column of people being driven out, and in the column were her parents. Bliuma ran out, and hugged her mother and father. She wasn’t allowed to leave the column. They drove everyone to Paneriai and shot them.
Makar’s sister, Fetinja Korablikova, took the orphan Iljuša in. In the ghetto, Makar found Bliuma’s friend Basia Kovarskaja and told her about his wife’s death. Soon the two young people felt something towards one another, and in December 1942 the fruits of their love, Sergej, saw the world. Leaving the baby in the ghetto was dangerous.
S.K. My second mother Fetinja Korablikova took me from the ghetto and registered me as her son.
Planted in a basket, the little boy was let down from a block of flats through the window to the street on the other side of the ghetto, where Fetinija Korablikova was waiting for him.
S.K. During the war danger threatened the entire time, that someone would say something, and there were moments, when it was said that that is the child of Jews. That was like a kiss of death.
That was how a Russian Orthodox family – Makar’ sister Fetinija Korablikova and Fetinija and Makar’ mother Jevdokija started raising two boys, Ilja and Seriozha.
Sergej’ mother awaited a tragic fate.
S.K. Afterwards, when they managed to give me over to the Russian Korablikov family, my mother Basia along with a group of people escaped from the ghetto and went to the partisans and was killed there.
Basia Kovarkaja was killed as a group of partisans was withdrawing from being encircled. The exact place of her death is not known. It is thought, that it occurred close to lake Narutis.
Sergej’ father Makar Korablikov was arrested in 1943 and shot by the Gestapo. (Makar Korablikov was one of the leaders of the Vilnius underground. He was in contact with an anti-Fascist organization from the ghetto, and commanded fighting groups in the city and Rūdninkai Forest. He was arrested and killed by the Gestapo in November 1943.
S.K. Grandma would tell us about my father in the evening. He was, in her words, a very tender person. If any arguments arose, he would say: “How long do we have to live, it is not worth wasting time for that”. He was killed when he was 27, so he spoke as if he knew, that he really didn’t have long to live.
Good people helped Fetinija and her mother Jevdokija to raise the boys. Sergej didn’t forget that. And he is thankful to everyone.
S.K. Maybe that gave me a stimulus, to write about it. A few years ago there was a meeting with Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus, and I received the Life Saviour’s Cross for my rescuers Fetinija and Jevdokija Korablikova. The appreciation helped me to understand that my personal recollections, the tragedy of my close ones, is not my personal thing, that it is important for my children, and maybe for many people who know about it, maybe feel the same. And then this poem was born.
Пишу и плачу – плачу и пишу.
Стыжусь и все же не могу иначе!
Я детству тяжкий долг вернуть спешу –
В воспоминаниях, стихах и... плаче.
Мне слезы незнакомы с детских лет –
И в этом тоже составная чуда.
Когда в погром ищейки брали след –
Молчание меня спасало всюду.
А позже – память детства, как река,
Унесшая обломки по теченью!
И вот теперь – стихов моих строка
И слезы, что приносят облегченье.
I write and weep – I weep and write/ I am ashamed and yet I can’t feel otherwise!/ I hurry to pay back the heavy debt to my childhood/ In my memory, in poems and... with cries. // During childhood I did not weep/ That is in part a miracle./ When bloodhounds searched for footprints during a pogrom/ being silent saved me everywhere. // Later the memory of childhood was like a river,/ The current carrying off the debris!/ And now it‘s a line in my poems/ With tears giving me relief.
After the war the brothers of Sergej’ mother Basia, Vulf and Josif Kovarskij, came back from the front to Vilnius. They asked Fetinija to give them their nephew, but the woman didn’t agree to do it. Sergej considered her his mother. He didn’t know the truth. It was just after Fetinija’s death that he found out, that his aunt had raised him.
S.K. When I was 10, I found out, that the Korablikov family – Fetinija and Jevdokija – had saved me during the war and for 10 years in difficult conditions raised me. When I found that out, I had to rewrite my whole life story. There were difficult meetings and stories about my mother, about my father Makar Korablikov, the circumstances of their deaths. I started to feel that I really was a Jew...
Sergej Korablikov added his mother’s last name Kovarskaja to his own name. He chose to study medicine and still works today as a doctor.
S.K. I finished my studies at the Faculty of Medicine at Vilnius University. I became a doctor here. I worked as a cardiologist at the Antakalnio Clinic Hospital, and later as the deputy to the hospital’s senior physician. Then I went to South Yemen, and worked as a doctor for 3 years at Aden Central Hospital. And for another 2 years in India.
At the end of 1980, Sergej left for Israel. A moving meeting awaited him there.
S.K.With my uncles, with my mother’s brothers, who were living in Netanya then. Until that tourist visit I was an atheist – that was my worldview. But next to the Wailing Wall I felt some transcendental, I felt, that I want to stay here with this dust, with these problems that exist. And I made a decision.
In 1991 Sergej Korablikov left with his wife for Israel, and they live in Tiberia, and he works as a doctor. But the beginning of his life still doesn’t let him be at peace. Which is why Sergej writes poems.
Есть надежда, которую трудно убить
Даже выстрелом в сердце, в упор,
Это знают лишь те, кто умеет любить,
Кто не хочет смириться, не может забыть,
Сколько б лет не промчалось с тех пор.
There is hope, and it is hard to destroy,/ Even with a shot to the heart, up close./ This is known by those, who love,/ Those who do not want to reconcile, cannot forget, No matter how many days have passed.
Material prepared by Lilija Kopač for a January 2006 episode of the TV show Menora, during which Sergej Korablikov-Kovarskij told the story of his rescue, was used for this text.
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, 2009
Lilija Kopač, Sergej Korablikov-Kovarskij
From the 4th book Hands Bringing Life and Bread
Those who do not want to reconcile, cannot forget, No matter how many days have passed...
He was born in the ghetto in December 1942. His father was a Russian named Makar Korablikov, and his mother a Jew named Basia Kovarskaja. Sergej told the complicated and tragic story of his birth.
Before the war, his father married a young Jew named Bliuma Trockaja. They gave birth to a son named Ilja. Makar Korablikov with his wife and child lived on Tyzenhauzų Street in Vilnius until the war. When the war broke out, Bliuma stayed in her home, and did not go to the ghetto. But once she saw a column of people being driven out, and in the column were her parents. Bliuma ran out, and hugged her mother and father. She wasn’t allowed to leave the column. They drove everyone to Paneriai and shot them.
Makar’s sister, Fetinja Korablikova, took the orphan Iljuša in. In the ghetto, Makar found Bliuma’s friend Basia Kovarskaja and told her about his wife’s death. Soon the two young people felt something towards one another, and in December 1942 the fruits of their love, Sergej, saw the world. Leaving the baby in the ghetto was dangerous.
S.K. My second mother Fetinja Korablikova took me from the ghetto and registered me as her son.
Planted in a basket, the little boy was let down from a block of flats through the window to the street on the other side of the ghetto, where Fetinija Korablikova was waiting for him.
S.K. During the war danger threatened the entire time, that someone would say something, and there were moments, when it was said that that is the child of Jews. That was like a kiss of death.
That was how a Russian Orthodox family – Makar’ sister Fetinija Korablikova and Fetinija and Makar’ mother Jevdokija started raising two boys, Ilja and Seriozha.
Sergej’ mother awaited a tragic fate.
S.K. Afterwards, when they managed to give me over to the Russian Korablikov family, my mother Basia along with a group of people escaped from the ghetto and went to the partisans and was killed there.
Basia Kovarkaja was killed as a group of partisans was withdrawing from being encircled. The exact place of her death is not known. It is thought, that it occurred close to lake Narutis.
Sergej’ father Makar Korablikov was arrested in 1943 and shot by the Gestapo. (Makar Korablikov was one of the leaders of the Vilnius underground. He was in contact with an anti-Fascist organization from the ghetto, and commanded fighting groups in the city and Rūdninkai Forest. He was arrested and killed by the Gestapo in November 1943.
S.K. Grandma would tell us about my father in the evening. He was, in her words, a very tender person. If any arguments arose, he would say: “How long do we have to live, it is not worth wasting time for that”. He was killed when he was 27, so he spoke as if he knew, that he really didn’t have long to live.
Good people helped Fetinija and her mother Jevdokija to raise the boys. Sergej didn’t forget that. And he is thankful to everyone.
S.K. Maybe that gave me a stimulus, to write about it. A few years ago there was a meeting with Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus, and I received the Life Saviour’s Cross for my rescuers Fetinija and Jevdokija Korablikova. The appreciation helped me to understand that my personal recollections, the tragedy of my close ones, is not my personal thing, that it is important for my children, and maybe for many people who know about it, maybe feel the same. And then this poem was born.
Пишу и плачу – плачу и пишу.
Стыжусь и все же не могу иначе!
Я детству тяжкий долг вернуть спешу –
В воспоминаниях, стихах и... плаче.
Мне слезы незнакомы с детских лет –
И в этом тоже составная чуда.
Когда в погром ищейки брали след –
Молчание меня спасало всюду.
А позже – память детства, как река,
Унесшая обломки по теченью!
И вот теперь – стихов моих строка
И слезы, что приносят облегченье.
I write and weep – I weep and write/ I am ashamed and yet I can’t feel otherwise!/ I hurry to pay back the heavy debt to my childhood/ In my memory, in poems and... with cries. // During childhood I did not weep/ That is in part a miracle./ When bloodhounds searched for footprints during a pogrom/ being silent saved me everywhere. // Later the memory of childhood was like a river,/ The current carrying off the debris!/ And now it‘s a line in my poems/ With tears giving me relief.
After the war the brothers of Sergej’ mother Basia, Vulf and Josif Kovarskij, came back from the front to Vilnius. They asked Fetinija to give them their nephew, but the woman didn’t agree to do it. Sergej considered her his mother. He didn’t know the truth. It was just after Fetinija’s death that he found out, that his aunt had raised him.
S.K. When I was 10, I found out, that the Korablikov family – Fetinija and Jevdokija – had saved me during the war and for 10 years in difficult conditions raised me. When I found that out, I had to rewrite my whole life story. There were difficult meetings and stories about my mother, about my father Makar Korablikov, the circumstances of their deaths. I started to feel that I really was a Jew...
Sergej Korablikov added his mother’s last name Kovarskaja to his own name. He chose to study medicine and still works today as a doctor.
S.K. I finished my studies at the Faculty of Medicine at Vilnius University. I became a doctor here. I worked as a cardiologist at the Antakalnio Clinic Hospital, and later as the deputy to the hospital’s senior physician. Then I went to South Yemen, and worked as a doctor for 3 years at Aden Central Hospital. And for another 2 years in India.
At the end of 1980, Sergej left for Israel. A moving meeting awaited him there.
S.K.With my uncles, with my mother’s brothers, who were living in Netanya then. Until that tourist visit I was an atheist – that was my worldview. But next to the Wailing Wall I felt some transcendental, I felt, that I want to stay here with this dust, with these problems that exist. And I made a decision.
In 1991 Sergej Korablikov left with his wife for Israel, and they live in Tiberia, and he works as a doctor. But the beginning of his life still doesn’t let him be at peace. Which is why Sergej writes poems.
Есть надежда, которую трудно убить
Даже выстрелом в сердце, в упор,
Это знают лишь те, кто умеет любить,
Кто не хочет смириться, не может забыть,
Сколько б лет не промчалось с тех пор.
There is hope, and it is hard to destroy,/ Even with a shot to the heart, up close./ This is known by those, who love,/ Those who do not want to reconcile, cannot forget, No matter how many days have passed.
Material prepared by Lilija Kopač for a January 2006 episode of the TV show Menora, during which Sergej Korablikov-Kovarskij told the story of his rescue, was used for this text.
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, 2009