RUTA'S CLOSET
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BY KEITH MORGAN
WITH RUTH KRON SIGAL
© KEITH MORGAN/RUTH KRON SIGAL 2008 –
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRAISE FOR RUTA'S CLOSET
‘In spite of being one of hundreds of Holocaust memoirs published in recent years, it is completely unique, painstakingly poignant and impossible to forget.’
Sharon Chisvin, Winnipeg Free Press.
‘Heartbreaking but inspiring . . . courage, love and triumph over Nazi evils.’
Tracy Sherlock, Vancouver Sun.
'A terrifying, yet inspiring story of courage and conviction.’
Andy James, EZ ROCK 101.5, Kelowna.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Keith Morgan was born in January 1954, in Blackpool, England. He began his career as a reporter for his hometown newspaper in Blackpool in 1975, moving to Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1980, where he is currently the Driving Editor for The Province and Vancouver Sun newspapers.
Ruth Kron Sigal was born in Lithuania in July 1936. After the Second World War, she moved to Canada with her family, where she died in December 2008, shortly after the completion of Ruta's Closet. A fuller account of her life in Canada can be found at the end of this book.
Morgan, Keith, 1954-
Ruta's closet / Keith R. Morgan.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-9698710-2-6
1. Kron Sigal, Ruth. 2. World War, 1939-1945--Jews--Lithuania--Biography.
3. Holocaust survivors--Lithuania--Biography. 4. Jews--Lithuania--Biography.
5. Jews--Persecutions--Lithuania. 6. Jewish ghettos--Lithuania--˘Siauliai.
I. Title.
DS135.L53K76 2011 940.53'18092 C2011-902010-6
Design and illustration: Frank Myrskog
www.designfirstaid.ca
Ruta's Closet is also available in book form from booksellers. ISBN 978-0-969-87101-9
Distribution by Sandhill Books, Kelowna, B.C. Canada. Literary Agent: Craig Scott, Toronto.
Published by Shavl Publishing at Smashwords.
Copyright Keith Morgan
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Dedicated to Tamara Kron
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Much was hidden in the darkest corners of Ruta’s Closet – her own mind.
After decades of silence, Ruth Kron Sigal emerged from its mental confines to shine a light on the horrors locked within.
The Holocaust survivor recalled her most painful memories, hoping the lessons they teach will ensure no child will feel the need to hide in such a dark place again.
CONTENTS
Foreword by the Right Honourable Sir Martin Gilbert
Significant people in Ruta’s Closet
CHAPTER 1: Barbarians at the gate
CHAPTER 6: Putting bread on the table
CHAPTER 8: Matters of life and death
CHAPTER 9: The doctor and the Kommando
CHAPTER 10: Messengers of fate
CHAPTER 11: Taking of the innocents
CHAPTER 12: And the band played on
CHAPTER 13: A ride in a big truck
CHAPTER 14: The little schoolhouse
CHAPTER 16: No safe hiding place
CHAPTER 17: History repeats itself
CHAPTER 20: The liquidation of the ghetto
CHAPTER 25: After the Holocaust
Bibliography & Sources used for Ruta’s Closet
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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Ruta`s Closet would not have been possible without the assistance of many people around the world, who generously gave of their time, offering valuable information and support for the project.
Deep gratitude is extended to Ruta`s rescuer Ona Ragauskas, now deceased; the Right Honourable Sir Martin Gilbert, the noted Holocaust historian and Winston Churchill’s official biographer; Saul Issroff, a Jewish genealogist; the late Leiba Lipshitz, Shavl ghetto`s unofficial historian; and Regina Kopilevich, who went well beyond her role as guide and interpreter in Lithuania.
The following people also contributed significantly: Sheila Barkusky, Christer Bergström, Giedre Beconyte, Aaron Breitbart, Simcha Brudno*, Ellen Cassidy, Coby Chorin, Rose Lerer Cohen, Mike Constandy, Michael Cooke, Bernhard Göepfrich, Ben Gotz, Masha Greenbaum, Curt & Inga Haase, Art Hister, Don Hunter, Riva Kahn-Kibaasky, Nathan Katz*, Rachel Kostanian, Dr. Robert Krell, Rachel Lapidus, formerly Peisachowitz, née Rauzuk *, William Levin*, Gene Luntz, Mike Miller, Shaya Moser*, Bella Pace, née Peisachowitz, Jack Perlov, Jacob Reuveny, Anne Segall, Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, David Schaffer, Craig Scott, Dov Shilanski, Cecil Sigal, Gerry Staley, Knut Stang, Saulius Suziedelis, Polina Toker, Yankl* & Ester Ton, formerly Ziv, Dominicus Valiunas, Paula Verbalinsky*, Fioretta Wilinofsky, Father Bill Wolkovich*, Sonia Zilberman-Wasserman, Markas Zingeris.
A special thank you is also extended to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, for research assistance, support and encouragement. A special limited first edition was published in cooperation with VHEC. This was done so with the generous financial support of Leon (Of Blessed Memory), Evelyn, Mark, Hodie, Saul and Sheryl Kahn; Lorne, Mélita, Chanelle and Matthew Segal; Zev, Elaine, Hanna and Alexandra Shafran and Ken Wosk. This group of supporters also enabled the creation of the book’s associated web-based youth education project.
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Shortly after this manuscript was completed, co-author Ruth (Ruta) Kron Sigal died after a long fight with cancer. Her enthusiasm for the project was boundless and she passed away, thrilled to know that her important story would be told.
* Deceased
FOREWORD
I have watched the evolution of this book with considerable fascination. Keith Morgan’s work over several years has created one of the finest Holocaust memoirs.
It has not been an easy task: memories of so long ago can be fragile and uncertain. But Ruth Kron Sigal – Ruta – was determined that the story should be told, and Keith Morgan worked exceptionally hard to ensure that it was told – to the highest possible standards of readability and accuracy.
We are familiar with many of the great Jewish communities of the pre-war years and of their fate when they were turned into ghettos and became the scenes of mass murder and deportation. One such place that is less familiar is the Lithuanian town of Siauliai, known in Yiddish as Shavl. The few survivors of that once vibrant Jewish community have often expressed to me their sadness that it does not figure as prominently as it ought in most accounts of the Holocaust. This book redresses that balance.
There is another strength to this book that gives it particular importance today. On a recent visit to Lithuania, I was shocked by the unpleasant resurgence of anti-Semitism that belittled the Jewish suffering and denials of the direct participation of Lithuanians in the mass murder have become quite rampant. Yet this Lithuanian participation during the Holocaust was fully documented by a Lithuanian Commission set up ten years ago when Lithuania was seeking entry into the European Union. Lithuanians today need to know the story that is told so movingly and so powerfully in these pages. They also need to give honour – as Ruta and Keith Morgan do – to those Lithuanians who, facing the hostility and enmity of their neighbours, risked their own lives to save Jews. Among the rescuers whose stories are told in this book was a Catholic priest, Father Adolfas Kleiba, ‘rescuer of Jews’.
These Righteous Among the Nations, of whom more than 760 Lithuanians have been recognised by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, redeem the grim reality of Lithuanian participation in Nazi crimes, while at the same time enabling us to recognize Lithuanian Christian courage and life-saving achievements at a time when Christian values were being so terribly subverted.
Even as this book tells a harrowing story, shafts of light – of Jewish courage and Christian righteousness – shine through its pages, instructing and inspiring.
The Rt. Hon. Sir Martin Gilbert
19 July 2009
PREFACE
Ruta’s Closet is the true story of how a Lithuanian Jewish family sought to escape the deadly clutches of Hitler’s Final Solution.
Meyer and Gita Kron’s determination to survive grew stronger and they became more resourceful as family members and good friends perished at the hands of the Nazis and marauding armed collaborators.
A series of narrow escapes in their hometown of Shavl - Siauliai in the Lithuanian language – and threats of betrayal by formerly friendly non-Jewish neighbours failed to extinguish the family’s spirit.
This story takes place in a tiny Baltic country that even today wrestles with its collective conscience. It does so not because so many of its population stood by and watched their Jewish neighbours perish but because too many among them played a significant role in the annihilation of more than 200,000 Jews – 96 percent of the pre-war Jewish population.
Today’s Lithuanians are constantly reminded of the complicity of many of their forebears. Virtually every community is stained by the blood of murdered Jews, who lie in shallow mass graves on the edge of town identified only by simple memorial stones, revealing the approximate numbers of Jews buried there.
To date, the telling of the story of mass murders and collaboration in Lithuania has been largely confined to academic publications and limited distribution Holocaust survivor memoirs, rarely read outside of the Jewish community at large.
Ruta’s Closet explores that dark side of recent history but it also celebrates the few who risked their lives to save their Jewish brethren. Outside the high barbed wire fence of each ghetto there were Catholic priests, who practiced what they preached. They ignored the entreaties of the church hierarchy not to become involved in rescuing Jews. They also decried brother priests who played an active role in the wholesale murder of the Jews.
The righteous clergy members were aided by members of their mainly rural flocks, whose faith moved them to save Jewish lives. It’s the selflessness of such ordinary folks that makes it possible today to share the Krons’ inspirational story of the triumph of good over the jackbooted evil that rampaged through the Baltic lands in the 1940s.
Many rescuers of Jews remain unheralded today because their surviving kin still fear retribution even in the 21st century, more than 65 years after the last shot was fired. Years under the Russians, following the departure of the Nazis, has left many unsure of their newfound freedom in the now independent and democratic Lithuania.
Nevertheless, in Ruta’s Closet you will encounter some of those saintly folks, whom the Jews call Righteous Gentiles, and read of their bravery. It is the authors’ hope that the telling of this story will lead to the recognition of more heroes.
This book is not fiction but written in a fictional style to make it more accessible to all. The late Meyer Kron left behind a substantive unpublished memoir entitled “Through the Eye of the Needle” from which the basic story outline was drawn. Similarly, members of the Peisachowitz, Gotz-Ton, Luntz and Perlov families graciously provided unfettered access to unpublished memoirs and personal documents, enabling a better description of events and even the inclusion of near contemporaneously recorded conversations.
While the story focuses on the Krons and their extended family, it also tells of others who touched the lives of the family. Descriptions of important events in the ghetto are based on material gleaned from traditional academic sources such as books authored by learned and respected historians, documentary film, archived contemporaneously written material and survivor memoirs, extensive interviews with survivors and review of their personal diaries and papers. A bibliography cites the published books used in research and recommends further reading.
The conversations and event reconstructions derive largely from memoirs and survivor interviews. Where no accounts of conversations exist, the authors created them in keeping with the nature of the occasion and in line with how the subjects typically spoke at the time.
As Saul Issroff, a London-based genealogist, said, “They did not necessarily have calendars in the ghetto.” Dates and times have been hard to nail down in some cases, especially those concerning the experiences of individual ghetto residents recalled many years after the fact.
Contemporaneous records of meetings and ghetto events kept for the Shavl Judenrat – Jewish Council – greatly assisted but they are not foolproof. However, we are confident the dates and times are close enough. A great deal of the material used to describe the debate and activities of the Judenrat was gleaned from a volume published in Hebrew only, called Pinkas Shavli: A diary from a Lithuanian ghetto (1941-1944), written by the council scribe Eliezer Yerushalmi.
The Lithuanian language poses a challenge for English readers and writers in that surnames are gender specific. There is a common stem but the ending changes depending on the gender and relationship of the person within the family unit. For ease of understanding, we have used only the male adult form of surnames for all family members.
Lithuanian given names retain their original form. German names and army ranks used reflect the records of the day. The authors attempted to obtain all chosen names but documentation is lacking in some instances. In the case of the latter, a surname alone is used. Individual Jews are identified by their Jewish names rather than Lithuanian versions found in documentation.
Throughout the book, some people describe non-Jews as ‘Lithuanians’ to denote their ethnicity rather than identify their citizenship as would be the case today. Its use also distinguishes them from the Jews, who were, of course, also Lithuanian citizens. Often, Soviets are referred to as ‘Russians’ which, while technically not always accurate, is in more common usage among Western readers.
Communities within Lithuania take Yiddish names with some minor exceptions, generally in quoted conversations involving Lithuanians or Germans.
In conclusion, Ruta’s Closet is not an academic paper or strict documentary but it is an honest attempt to share the experiences of one family and tell the broader story of the Shavl ghetto and the tragedy of the Holocaust in Lithuania.
Keith Morgan, April 2011.
Website: http://www.rutascloset.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/RutasCloset
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rutascloset
Contact: rutascloset@hotmail.com
SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE IN RUTA’S CLOSET
The Krons and Family
Meyer and Gita Kron, and their daughters Ruta and Tamara.
Shana Kron – Meyer’s mother.
Mendel and Joseph Leibovich — Gita’s cousins (chairman and member of the Judenrat, respectively).
Dr. Wulf Peisachowitz – Gita’s cousin and head of ghetto medical affairs.
Chaim and Rachel Peisachowitz, née Rauzuk – Gita’s cousin and wife.
Abraham and Tzilia Schatz, and their children Betty and Nathan (Meyer’s sister and husband).
Moshe and Lina Shifman – Gita’s parents.
Iudite and Bluma Shifman – Gita’s sisters.
Aharon ‘Ore’ and Hoda Shifman, and their son Yosef (Gita’s uncle)
Friends and Neighbours
Berta and Simcha Brudno – mother and son (close friends of the Krons).
Zava and Riva Gotz – Ghetto police official and his wife - whose son Ben was born secretly in the ghetto.
Aaron Katz – Judenrat secretary
Nathan Katz – assigned to the German administration, smuggled in medications (no relation to Judenrat secretary Aaron).
Dr. Joseph Luntz and Berta (Barbara) Nurok Luntz – ghetto gynaecologist and his wife.
Dr Juozas Pasvaleckis – medical doctor hidden by Father Adolfas Kleiba.
Polina Toker – dentist
Yankl Ton and Ester Ziv – Brother of Riva Gotz and companion.
Eliezer Yerushalmi – Judenrat scribe.
Joseph and Felya Zilberman – work colleagues of Meyer Kron.
The Rescuers and the Righteous
Pranas and Barbora Jakubaitis – pre-war neighbours of the Shifmans.
Dr. Domas Jasaitis and Sofija – medical doctor and his wife.
Jonas Jocius – black marketeer.
Father Vincas Byla – Shavl priest.
Father Adolfas Kleiba – friend of the Ragauskas family.
Father Justinus Lapis – the Ragauskas family priest.
Antanas and Ona Ragauskas – school teacher and his wife.
The Germans and their Lithuanian cohorts
Ewald Bub – senior regional administration official.
SS Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Forster –
Einsatzkommando and senior SS officer.
Gebietskommissar Hans Gewecke – head of regional administration.
Albinas Grebliunas – Siauliai (Shavl) deputy police chief
Petras Linkevicius – German appointed Mayor of Siauliai (Shavl)
SS Oberscharführer Hermann Schlöf –
Kommandant of Shavl concentration camp.
Antanas Stankus –
Head of Jewish Affairs for the Siauliai (Shavl) city government
CHAPTER 1: Barbarians at the gate
A rural road, northern Lithuania – Monday, June 23, 1941.
The Krons were remarkably calm considering they were fleeing a hellhound in the shape of a massive Nazi invasion, bent on taking the ultimate prize for Hitler – Soviet Russia.
The Jewish family was trying to outrun the 3.5 million-strong force, which crossed the border at precisely 3:15 a.m. the previous day on foot, by bike, inside 3,350 tanks, riding in 600,000 motor vehicles and astride 750,000 horses, along a 1,080-mile frontier. Its aim was to subjugate Moscow quickly, create Lebensraum – living space for the expanding German peoples – and draw upon its vast natural resources to finish off the Allies.
If Meyer and Gita Kron had known of the overwhelming numbers involved in what was dubbed Operation Barbarossa, perhaps they would have taken their chances and stayed at home in Shavl, especially as their only choice of transportation was a horse and cart. This was a desperate attempt to steal a march on Hitler’s henchmen, many of which would have a strong appetite for eliminating members of the Krons’ ancient faith. Latvia would provide a temporary haven. However, it was Russia beyond that offered the most hope for their continued security, undesirable though its communist regime might be and despite its leader’s anti-Semitic tendencies.
Meyer and his wife Gita walked, while their children, four-year-old Ruta, her two-year-old sister Tamara, and his widowed mother Shana clung uncomfortably to their spots on the rickety wagon. It was over laden with household goods and far too many personal belongings for there to be any speedier progress along the rural highway north to the Latvian border.
They were not alone on the road, which also made anything more than a snail’s pace impossible. Hundreds of other Jews from their hometown and farther afield were making the same trek alongside, ahead and behind them as far as the eye could see. Fragments of the retreating Red Army, who moved somewhat more quickly, were also heading in the same direction to regroup and plan a counterattack against the tank-driven invasion.
Less than 50 miles away, there was frantic activity, the cacophony of the battlefront deafening all within earshot. Shells soared skyward, their eardrum piercing whistles providing an auditory account of their progress, soon swiftly silenced by earth shaking explosions and the screams of human beings torn apart by the fiery munitions.
In contrast, the Krons’ journey so far had been quiet and uneventful, disturbed only by the barely audible murmur of anxious conversation from others on the road and the low hum of military vehicles, passing by.
Few words had passed between them, as they picked their way past the potholes on the poorly paved highway to the land of their Baltic neighbours. By the late afternoon, they were so lost in their own private thoughts that they let the bickering between their oldest daughter Ruta and her younger sister Tamara to continue longer than normally would be tolerated in the Kron household.
As the girls’ shrill voices rose to a crescendo from the back of the cart, provided by their maternal grandfather Moshe Shifman, both parents snapped out of their individual dazes. Shana looked on as her son admonished the children.
In the quiet that followed the last of his sharp words, the couple simultaneously noticed the absence of Soviet soldiers. Their heads swivelled in opposite directions, turning back to face each other with questioning stares that conveyed their meaning without words.
Fleetingly, Meyer wondered why he had not noticed sooner. Surely they had not vanished in the short time that the girls had distracted him. They stopped in their tracks and each surveyed the scene again, methodically panning like movie cameras producing mental pictures of what was around them. Their uniformed escorts had abandoned their vehicles and disappeared. The first signs of anxiety began to show in the Krons’ faces as they turned their heads more quickly and cast searching glances towards the ditches. As their focus sharpened, they saw the occasional helmet bobbing about.
Meyer reckoned comrades elsewhere had radioed the soldiers to tell them that danger from above was approaching fast. It was intelligence not shared with their fellow travellers. Meyer’s thoughts were interrupted by the muffled sound of what quickly he figured were artillery shells or bombs exploding in the distance.
People scattered in all directions, bumping into each other, tripping and falling headlong into the ditches. Startled horses whinnied noisily and kicked for their flared nostrils also smelled the danger. Carts overturned as the beasts attempted to take off to safety, their contents falling with a clatter to the road below. The old horse pulling the Kron cart remained remarkably calm. It was too old to follow the example of its younger brethren.
Meyer remained calm and steered his entourage off the main road, negotiating the cart’s passage between artillery strewn across the road, abandoned by half a dozen soldiers, now hidden in a nearby ditch. Their young, fear-filled eyes met Meyer’s steely, determined stare as he passed; he doubted any of them had lived much more than half of his 36 years, few of their fresh faces showed any sign of whiskers.
The Krons parked the cart by a barn a short distance away from the soldiers. No sooner had the cart’s rubber wheels made an impression on the spiky grass than the Krons and all about them got their first sight of the dreaded Junkers 87 dive-bomber – Sturzkampfflugzeug – better known as the Stuka. A formation of three of the distinctive planes, with the inverted gull-wings and fixed-undercarriage, was hurtling in their direction at high speed.
Meyer pushed Gita and their daughters, with uncharacteristic roughness, beneath the cart alongside his mother, who had already taken up her place there without need of encouragement. His rough handling scared the girls, who began to sob. They could not comprehend what danger specifically threatened but they sensed it must be bad for their normally gentle father to act in such a way. He barked orders to those in his care to lie flat and keep their heads down. He too sank to the ground without the cover of the cart’s underside but he ignored his own advice and could not resist raising his head to follow the progress of the fast approaching planes.
The Stuka fixed in Meyer’s stare was the last to roll into an almost vertical dive towards him. The eerie wailing of the so-called Jericho-Trompeten sirens affixed to the landing gear drowned the sounds of distant shelling.
Meyer whipped his head back to the point where he was staring directly up at the nose of the screaming Stuka. His brain failed to register the sharp pain in his neck caused by this sudden move. Meyer’s youthful heart did not know whether to stop or continue pounding. He did not blink, for he could not afford to close his eyes for an instant. They both watered and his eyelids twitched. Through the blur, he saw the bombs released above him.
Now it was the turn of his ears to register pain as they rang with the high-pitched piercing sound emitted by the whistles fitted to the fins of the descending bombs, which grew louder and shriller as they closed in on their target.
“These will be the last moments of my life,” a whisper, matter-of-factly, announced in his head. He silently prayed for his life but begged that if the bomb should take him it spare the nearby cart that hid his loved ones.
Meyer, an engineer specializing in leather production, would later joke that if he had been an aviation engineer he would have known his end was not near and not have wasted a prayer, as though there were finite limit on such calls to God. Even though the bombardier had released the bombs directly above him, the dive-bomber was pulling out of its rapid descent by then and the bombs flew by design, not vertically, but at a steep angle towards its intended target some distance from Meyer. They hit the discarded artillery on the road as desired by the pilot.
The barn nearby was in flames as was a cart on the road the family had left just minutes before. When the smoke from the nearby explosions cleared they revealed the bodies of the young soldiers, who had sought protection in the ditch. Shattered and mangled bodies covered the road. The screaming of the wounded all around was as chilling to listen to as the deafening sirens that heralded the fateful attack.
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As Meyer surveyed the scene of death and destruction, he considered his family fortunate to be still drawing breath. He wondered if he should push their luck any more. Would it be long, he asked himself, before he and his family would lay dead or dying at the roadside, maybe just a few miles farther along the road.
It seemed the only alternative was to return to Shavl and await the arrival of the German invading forces. Gita, always a voice of calm and reason, squeezed the hand of the man she affectionately called Mara and spoke reassuringly.
“Mara, we don’t have a choice but to return. Surely, we will be killed if we continue along this road,” she said, her last remarks echoing those that had occupied his mind only moments before.
She continued, releasing her grip and shaking her free hand to emphasize her point: “At least back in Shavl you have the factory and whoever is in charge will need you.”
Meyer was not so certain of that. He coaxed the shell-shocked horse into action. Gita brushed off the dirt and grass from the children, as mothers habitually do, and they both lifted their most precious cargo back onto the cart.
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After a further brief exchange, in which the shocked Shana remained quiet, the family and most of the remaining stunned human caravan gave up their escape attempt and headed homewards. What none realized was those that reached the border would be turned away by the Soviets unless they could produce a communist party membership card. Not one of the Krons held such a piece of paper and they would have cause to celebrate that in the months ahead.
The weary travellers scanned the skies constantly for signs of more danger from aloft. A couple of hours later a welcoming darkness enveloped them. There would be no more visitations by the Luftwaffe that day. Gradually the numbers of those continuing their journeys decreased as one by one families sought places to rest their heads for the night.
When the Krons arrived in the small town of Ligum, it was already teeming with refugees. The gregarious Meyer soon struck up a conversation with a Jewish farmer, who was standing by the roadside as he had done for most of the day observing the flight and return. The older man invited the young family to spend the night in his barn. He had extended the same hospitality to a dozen or so others, the Krons soon discovered. Nevertheless, they were grateful for the opportunity to rest and perhaps even sleep when their minds ceased racing.
Exhausted though they were, Meyer and Gita talked for hours about what had befallen them. Only a week ago, they had a good life. He was highly placed at Frenkel’s leather factory. The Soviets had nationalized it shortly after they had marched in to ‘protect’ the Lithuanians but his job had not really changed. It was not long after this peaceful entry that the new, questionably elected communist government had asked Moscow to make Lithuania a full Soviet republic.
Gita, ten years his junior, who was fluent in Russian, worked as a translator at the court. She was extremely bright. If she had finished the legal training that she had begun, she would have been a lawyer by now. However, these were unsettled times; maybe in a few years she would realize her ambition, she had rationalized to herself many times.
All of the family doted upon their daughters. Ruta was a bright, inquisitive child. Tamara might have added ‘bossy’ to that description, if she had known the word, to describe her big sister’s attentiveness. Tamara was still very much the baby of the family. She was cute and put a sparkle in the eyes of all, except Ruta who was perturbed by the loss of her position as the only child and thus the centre of attention. Their family life was almost idyllic.
The decision to make a run for it was no spur of the moment decision. Meyer and Gita had witnessed how the Nazis treated Jews in 1935, while honeymooning in Germany. They were visiting the places where Meyer had trained as a chemical engineer, spending a particularly disturbing two weeks in Frankfurt.
In between touring galleries and attending concerts, the couple walked the streets and witnessed the early outrages of the Nazi regime. They were stunned to see bearded religious Jews roughly jostled in broad daylight, their assailants showering them with venomous insults. Occasionally they caught a glimpse of the hate-filled attackers pushing their victims into alleys, barely out of public sight, where they would no doubt suffer a vicious beating.
At any sign of trouble, the Krons would retreat into a store, often a quiet bookstore where they made themselves inconspicuous, thumbing through the pages of their favourite authors’ contributions to literary history. Sadly, Frankfurt’s bookstore shelves no longer heaved with the masterworks of past and present civilizations. Exactly two years earlier the first of what became commonplace public book burnings had taken place. Any work that represented what the Nazis perceived as promoting decadent western, liberal values was kindling for those with the gasoline and matches.
The Krons choice of restaurants was also severely limited, as patronage by ‘their kind’ was frequently unwelcome. Owners posted notices to that effect in their windows.
The Krons had not suffered any overt personal discrimination, though truthfully they never tested their luck by trying to go anywhere where it was clear they were not welcome. Maybe Gita’s blonde hair saved them, a feature that certainly would help in the years to come.
Meyer was not sure the nature of the conversation was helping either of them. It reaffirmed the wisdom of their choice to leave but now they were going back to face uncertainty.
Eventually, Gita drifted off to sleep but Meyer lay awake worrying about what fate held for them. Seeking the protection of Joseph Stalin was the right one. Yes, his own family had suffered at the hands of Tsarist and Soviet Russia in the recent and distant past but it still seemed the lesser of two evils.
If only they had heeded the advice of family and friends, thought Meyer, he would not be tossing and turning now fearing what tomorrow might bring, but observing from the safety of the West. Meyer recalled how horrified they were to hear on the radio about the events of November 9, 1938 – Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. In one night, 91 Jews were murdered, 200 German synagogues destroyed and thousands of Jewish businesses were ransacked in a pogrom coordinated by the Nazis. Subsequent news of the advance of Hitler and his bloodless takeover of Austria raised more than an eyebrow but still it seemed so far away.
Later in the summer, his cousin Milton Shufro visited the family from Chicago, before heading home via Prague where he witnessed the German takeover of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. After he had returned to the States, the astute young man wrote pleading with them to flee to North America. The Krons had even begun the immigration process but then decided to stay put when Gita discovered she was pregnant with Tamara.
There were so many other warnings the couple had ignored. The rise of nationalism in Lithuania in the early 1930s was also a sign of things to come. Ruta’s birth in July 1936 had pushed those threats to the back of their minds.
The meek surrender in 1939 of the German ethnic region on the Baltic coast known as Memelland – Klaipeda in Lithuanian – to the Reich should have been the final straw. That was just a couple of hours’ drive away.
“How could we have been so blind?” Meyer tortured himself. He dozed off with that unfathomable question echoing in his mind.
Ligum, Tuesday, June 24, 1941.
The sun rose again on the Tuesday and shone brightly on the rural village of Ligum, just as it had the previous day. Somehow, that did not seem right given the dark events of the day before.
The Krons rose with the sun also, if somewhat gingerly. They gently awakened their offspring and Gita tapped her still slumbering mother-in-law on the shoulder. Shana awoke with a start and then surveyed the depressing scene before greeting her protectors. Meyer broke up some stale bread and passed it around. Ruta grimaced as she took her first mouthful but knew better than to complain. Tamara was less astute and spat it out. Ruta was surprised, and perhaps a little disappointed, that this act did not bring admonishment. The fact is both parents were too tired and worried about what lay ahead to take umbrage.
They were ready to continue their journey back to territory that was familiar but to a future that was unknown. They began to retrace their steps along the 20 miles of road between Ligum and Shavl. They had no protection this time, not that the Russian soldiers had offered much in the end. Their calmness of exactly 24 hours ago when they set out was replaced by high anxiety. In their minds, every rumble from the not so distant fighting heralded the imminent arrival of another aerial assault.
Some passers-by, heading in the opposite direction, heightened their anxiety with stories about partisans with white armbands, who were reportedly seizing and shooting every Jew and suspected communist they encountered. How bizarre, Meyer thought, that these fanatical anti-Semitic partisans could call him a communist, especially after what had befallen other family members a week earlier.
CHAPTER 2: The enemy within
One week earlier, Shavl Railway Station – Saturday, June 14, 1941.
Gita’s uncle Aharon Shifman and his young wife Hoda shivered as they shuffled with the crowd towards the cattle wagons waiting in the blackness ahead of them.
The chill of the hour and the inadequacy of the clothing they had hastily donned before leaving home could have caused the tremors that shook them. More likely, it was a combination of the cool air of the late spring night and the fear that took a firm grip of them from the moment Russian soldiers roused them a few hours earlier.
They had both been deep asleep when the loud banging on their front door began, but they stirred quickly as the rapid rat-a-tat ripped through their dreams. Minutes later, the soldiers ordered them to dress swiftly and fill a bag with clothes. Obediently, they grabbed what they thought they might need; not that they had any idea where they were going. They did so meekly and without question for they intuitively knew that querying the instruction would result in them being assaulted or even killed.
While hundreds screamed and shouted around them in the station, the couple just glanced at each other, trying to make sense of what was happening to them. They wanted to say so much but they kept their exchanges to a minimum to avoid drawing attention. Their youngest son Yosef was quiet. He had asked them what was happening but, despite the absence of a definitive answer, he did not ask again.
They were Jews and therefore no strangers to the outrages committed by their Soviet masters. The Russians were not the only ones who abused the Jews. During his 60-plus years on earth, Ore, as Aharon was better known, had also witnessed much suffering at the hands of his more nationalistic neighbours, who periodically sought to blame the ills of this Baltic state on the Jews. In fact, from the mid-1920s to the arrival of the Soviets, Lithuania was becoming much less of a desirable place for Jews to live. Government authorities introduced anti-Semitic measures that made it harder for them to go about their daily business.
Hoda was only in her 30s but she too had learned to keep her own counsel and avoid the authorities, be they Lithuanian or Soviet. Ore tried to reassure his young wife but she was wise beyond her years and though she smiled bravely, she was not reassured. She turned away to attend to their son. Ore was lost in thought. It did not seem so many years ago that he had bounced this sweet young woman on his knee when she was a baby.
She was the granddaughter of his older sister Pearl and though they were second cousins, she had always called him Uncle. When they fell in love and married there were many raised eyebrows. That was soon forgotten, though, when the first of their four children came along. Peretz, their first son was safe in South Africa and, as far as they knew, their daughters Sarah and Hadassa were beyond the reach of the Nazis. What now would become of Yosef? – Ore did not want to ponder that any further so he turned his attention to the swelling numbers on the platform.
Ore noted with no surprise that Jews were well represented on the passenger list. The former mill owner had no doubt his capitalistic tendencies had earned him his ticket. However, he was surprised to see such a significant number of ethnic Lithuanians manhandled into the wagons parked in the rail yards. This action was not some manifestation of anti-Semitism because he was sharing the platform with some homegrown persecutors of his fellow Jews.
No, the common thread was that all those arrested were potential troublemakers, according to the Soviet regime. However, they offered no public explanations or justifications and none were expected.
The mass arrests and deportations were happening simultaneously in Lithuania and neighbouring Estonia and Latvia. The Shifmans’ story had a similar ending as others forced to make the same journey. An early death for some in Siberia met by means unknown, likely starvation or diseases contracted while enduring the arduous demands of slave labour. Others survived – barely - and lived out their lives in the most inhospitable parts of the vast country that professed to treat all as equals.
~~~~
Across town; hours after the late night arrests, Meyer Kron rose early to go to work. He was hovering by the door as Gita was finishing her morning makeup ritual. The phone rang.
“Let it ring. We are going to be late,” he demanded impatiently, his hand already having gripped and turned the door handle.
She ignored him. The darkening of Gita’s facial expression persuaded him not to press her to hang up. The rapid-fire chatter he could hear on the other end of the line suggested they were not going anywhere soon. He loosened his grip and dropped his arm slowly to his side.
Gita was white when she dropped the handset into the cradle.
“Mara, it was Uncle Ore’s neighbour. They came in the night and took them,” Gita’s voice tailed off as the shock of what she had just heard penetrated.
“Who is ‘they’?” queried Meyer, although it was more of a nervous response than a real question as he knew there could be only one answer.
Her brow furrowed as she began to explain: “The secret police did the door knocking and the soldiers dragged them off in a truck. The rumour is they went to the train station but nobody knows why.”
For a few moments, they stared at each other in the same way as Ore and his wife had hours earlier as they tried to make sense of their arrest. What would the secret police want with Uncle Ore?
The early morning call stirred Meyer’s mother, Shana, who had lived with them since the passing of his father Leibe, back in 1937.
“They don’t need a reason,” she responded. “Well, at least not one that makes sense to the rest of us.”
Shana had seen it all before in her long life. This was not the first time the Soviet authorities had arrived on the doorsteps of family and friends in the dead of night. In the past, they had periodically carried out pogroms against their resident Jewry. She prayed that rather than face execution, the Shifmans would be taken to a labour camp. Father Joe, Stalin’s nickname in some quarters, answered her prayers. They all perished in Siberia on dates unknown.
Meyer opened the door for his wife and she brushed by saying not a further word. Gita must tell her father, Moshe, of his brother’s fate, if he did not already know. When the youngest of his three daughters arrived on his doorstep at the family home on Basanaviciaus Street, one look at the senior Shifman told her he knew already.
When Moshe had heard about the arrests, he called his brother Ore to see if he had any insight into the reasons for the action. With each unanswered ring of the phone, his fear increased. He made his way quickly on foot to his brother’s home. Before he was able to knock on the door a neighbour was at his side, breaking the bad news. He had only returned home minutes before Gita arrived. Once she stepped through the door, he returned to consoling his wife Lina.
~~~~
As Meyer walked through town he passed many tearful people, some sobbing quietly outside the homes of loved ones who had disappeared in the night. Others talked excitedly, asking anybody and everybody if they could shed any light on what had happened.
During frequent stops to chat to friends and acquaintances, Meyer learned the Russians had awakened hundreds from their sleep – later estimates put the total at 700 in Shavl alone, including 200 Jews.
The captives apparently came from all occupations: there were rich men, working people, doctors, engineers and even prostitutes. Generally, there seemed neither rhyme nor reason to most of the arrests. Meyer’s childhood friend Chaim Hirshovitz and his family were among those taken. Fortunately, the Building Trust, where Chaim worked, decided it simply could not function without him and successfully secured his release. It would not be the last time that a job would save the life of a Jew.
The consensus of the gossip on the street was that the Russians wanted to eliminate subversive elements from the population, fearing the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact might not hold much longer, which would mean war. People questioned the Soviet choices as to who they considered subversive, though not too loudly.
The pact had held since its signing on August 23, 1939, when the Soviets and the Nazis had agreed not to invade each other’s territory. A series of secret protocols carved up Poland and the Baltic states between the two powers. On June 15, 1940, Red Army soldiers arrived in Lithuania at government invitation and subsequently a dubiously elected communist government asked to become a part of the USSR.
Meyer felt helpless. Rather fatalistically, he decided they might as well have their suitcases ready. Maybe his job would save him; he thought more optimistically.
The insecurity and anxiety in the Kron household grew a few days later. The phone rang. This time it was Meyer’s turn to answer. In recent days, there was much apprehension about performing that simple act. During a short call, he learned a man he was supposed to meet in Vilna had also been deported. Meyer sighed and drew a line through that appointment in his work calendar.
Meyer later confided to his diary: “There’s a feeling in the air that war is imminent, but no one has any idea when it will start. The Russian radio and newspapers are very quiet about it but the whole world around us is heating up under the pressure of the aggressive policies of the Nazis.”
It was a fear often expressed in writing but spoken about only in whispers. There was no point in unsettling Ruta and Tamara. They would not understand the words spoken but they would notice the tone of their delivery, especially Ruta.
The number of Russian troops in the area had grown steadily in the year since the signing of the pact. Tanks and artillery under camouflage were all around and it seemed catastrophe was bearing down upon the community.
Each night, after the girls were soundly asleep, the Krons would listen to the war news from the BBC in London. Just a week after the deportations began they heard the news they dreaded. The Germans were building up their troop strength just beyond Russian controlled territory, which included Lithuania. Tanks, artillery and armoured vehicles were within sight of the borders.
Still, the Krons thought, rather optimistically, that nothing would happen, at least for a while longer. On Sunday, June 22, Meyer slept in as usual but Gita got up to get ready for an afternoon picnic she had planned with her colleagues from the courthouse, where she worked as a translator.
Meyer came round slowly as his wife shook him vigorously. It was only ten; he wondered what was so important to warrant such a rude awakening. He reached for his glasses.
“The radio,” said Gita, who was not her normal calm self and seemed to be fighting for the right words.
“Mara, they say the war has started. The Germans have attacked.” The words were barely out of her mouth before she left the room. Meyer fell asleep again, doubting this short announcement was more than a bad dream.
He slept soundly until a bomb exploded a couple of blocks away. Never mind bad dreams, he was about to share a nightmare from which six million Jews would never awaken.
Meyer thought it remarkable that none of the build-up to the war was even in the Russian newspapers or on the radio, not something that would surprise Russian watchers in future years.
The first bombs had dropped on Shavl before the Russians deigned to acknowledge events. It was not a big bombardment – only two or three bombs – but enough to make everybody realize this was for real. Belatedly, at noon, Molotov himself, the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, broadcast his message that the Germans had invaded at 3:15 a.m. that day. There were already some refugees from Taurage, which is about 65 miles south-west of the border with the Kenigsberg region (now Kalingrad).
In Shavl’s streets, people were running about like headless chickens. Some people tried to buy medications while others were lining up at the bakeries. Meyer passed the bread line-up and instead took his place in the queue at the drugstore. The dapper man bought an old-style cutthroat razor figuring there would be a shortage of blades for his safety razor, which never transpired. However, the second item on his short shopping list was not in the least superficial: diphtheria serum for the girls.
He recalled the earlier ‘peaceful’ arrival of the Russians when there were similar scenes. That day he ran into a man called Heller who was the director of the Bank of Commerce. While discussing the events of the day, Meyer mentioned he had two safety deposit boxes in his bank. It was late in the evening but the two men decided to go to the bank immediately and empty the boxes. It was a lucky stroke because by the next morning, the Germans had already taken the banks, seizing all the cash and negotiable financial instruments. The valuables and cash helped the Krons survive the rigours of the Moscow imposed regime and have the spare cash to buy such things as the serum now safely tucked in the pocket of Meyer’s light jacket.
~~~~
“I don’t think we should stay here tonight,” announced Meyer before he had even taken off the jacket and removed the medical contents from one of its pockets.
“The bombardment of the city is only going to get worse.”
He got no argument from his wife. She suggested, “We should stay at Violka, Mara” referring to her parents’ rural farm, which was only a couple of miles outside of the city. The idea of staying with grandpa was very appealing to young Ruta, who was soon packing a little bag.
“No, Ruta, we’re only staying the night so you don’t need to worry about packing a bag.”
The youngster complained but one look from her father persuaded her not to pursue the matter any further.
It was a very warm and beautiful night with no signs of war. The family slept in an open field staring at the night sky for any evidence of the expected aerial bombardment, which never came. Maybe the advancing Germans figured they had softened up the Russians enough. Maybe they had other more worthwhile targets on which to dump their munitions.
Meyer used the opportunity to teach Ruta about the stars above. For hours, he pointed out the different constellations to her. Ruta loved the attention.
The Krons returned home Monday morning to go to work. It was a strange time. Were they at war or not? Most chose to look on the brighter side of life.
By the time the clock struck ten, no optimism remained; neither did any of the Communist Party officials stationed at the factory. They were conspicuous by their absence. Above the deafening din of the clattering machinery, workers shouted the latest rumour. A delivery boy or somebody else with business outside of the walls had returned with news that the communists were evacuating the city centre headquarters. For most ears, it did not matter what the source of this rumour was but for Meyer it did. He made an excuse to leave and walked at a fast pace towards the headquarters where he encountered prominent officials walking at a similar pace in opposite directions.
“They seemed very nervous,” he told Gita, who was already home when he arrived minutes after witnessing the exodus.
“It’s obvious the brass is moving out very quickly. They’re abandoning Shavl.”
Gita likely heard the news first, as the courthouse was closer to the action and the communist judiciary had ended their day’s proceedings before they had barely commenced.
“I don’t think many people, and especially our people, are ready to leave. After the events of this past week and the last year I’m sure many Lithuanians would even prefer a German occupation.”
Many politically active Lithuanians saw the possibility of a return to their own government with the arrival of the ‘liberating’ Nazis. Fanatical nationalist groups had also put great effort into distributing propaganda that accused the Jewish Community as being communist and Soviet collaborators. The fact that a disproportionate number of Jews were deported in the Siberian transport seemed to escape them.
From the safety of Berlin, the exiled members of the Lithuanian Activists’ Front (LAF) fanned the flames of existing resentment and prejudice by turning out propaganda designed to incite and heighten the level of hatred. The LAF was virulently anti-Semitic, urging likeminded Lithuanians to take violent retribution and warning Jews their day of reckoning was nigh.
Meyer was not encouraged either to hear on a radio broadcast that Archbishop Juozas Skvireckas and Kaunas Bishop Vincentas Brizgys had wired messages to Hitler welcoming the Nazis for driving out the Russians. Brizgys would later appear on radio to encourage young Lithuanians to volunteer their labour for German-led construction battalions.
The Jews of Lithuania now faced the same fate as their kin in neighbouring Poland and all points west. So began the Krons’ voluntary departure for Russia, short lived though it was. A little more than 24 hours later they were back, shaken from their near death experience with a Stuka but otherwise physically unscathed.
~~~~
On Tuesday, June 24, when the Krons arrived home the town was dead and there was no movement at all. Police patrols stationed at the intersections would not let anybody through. Fortunately, Meyer still had his papers and when the police officers realized he was the head of the tannery no less, the way cleared.
The Krons expected the Germans to march in within hours of their return but Russian tanks held the advancing Panzer division at bay about seven miles south of Shavl. Some optimistically figured the Red Army success would push the Germans into full retreat.
On Wednesday, Meyer went to the headquarters of the Building Trust hoping to see Chaim. When he arrived, his childhood friend was loading his family, as well as other workers who wanted to move, onto a truck.
Meyer was offered passage but the rest of the entourage wasn’t prepared to wait until he had gathered together his family. Where would they go anyway?
The two men shook hands and wished each other well. Meyer went home to consider their next move. The cannonade seemed louder and to Meyer it was evident that it was dangerous not only to be outside, but also to stay in the house.
On the Thursday afternoon, the Krons made their way to the house occupied by Gita’s cousins, where they took refuge with the Peisachowitz family in their cellar. Joining them were Chaim Peisachowitz, his wife–to-be Rachel Rauzuk and an assortment of neighbours and family friends. In an act of bravado, Mama Taube Peisachowitz stayed above ground, baking as though there was nothing unusual unfolding beyond the four walls of the family home.
The Germans outmanoeuvred the stubborn Russian resistance and were now within shelling distance of Shavl. All around the explosions sounded and through the walls, they could hear the screams of wounded soldiers, some burning while trapped in their tanks. Their moans would haunt Meyer for the rest of his life. The tension in the cellar was palpable. Nervous chatter alternated with absolute silence within, shattered by the explosions without.
“How can you go to the bathroom with all this going on outside,” asked one neighbour, perturbed by a signal from her own nervous bladder.
“It’s easy, I’ve been three times already, without moving from this spot,” Gita retorted, breaking the tension and even prompting a little laughter around the room.
~~~~
The entry of the all-conquering Wehrmacht to Shavl was less than awe-inspiring. Gita’s favourite cousin Dr. Wulf Peisachowitz watched the arrival of Hitler’s mighty land army in the early evening from the safety of the city hospital. There were some tanks and trucks but many of the conquerors pedalled bicycles. The sight of a breathless red-faced soldier, puffing away as his legs powered his two-wheel mount was certainly the more abiding image.
Wulf decided to chance returning home once he was certain he had done all he could to make his patients comfortable. He made his way ducking down the alleys to avoid coming face to face with the enemy.
At home, he was not surprised to see his cousin Gita and family among those holed up in the cellar. Before descending the stairs, he checked on his recently widowed mother Taube, to make sure she did not join her late husband Benzion prematurely. The plucky woman was still baking and complaining how difficult the cows were that day during “all that pandemonium.”
Noticeably absent were the Shifmans, who decided to remain on their farm across town during the hostilities. Gita had heard nothing from her stubborn parents, not that she was expecting to until matters had settled down. Nevertheless, Gita desperately hoped for some news to reassure her that they were out of harm’s reach.
CHAPTER 3: First blood
Violka Farm, near Shavl – Late afternoon, Thursday, June 26, 1941.
The Shifmans could hear the crackling sound of gunfire all around the Shifman farm but it did not deter Lina from going about her chores.
It was during one of those ill-advised brief forays into the yard that she found herself caught in a rapid exchange of fire between the advancing German forces and the Russians trying to make a last stand. She screeched as the bullet pierced her skin and she fell beneath a sapling birch tree in the corner of the yard. Instinctively, Lina pulled her hands to her chest, though the warm pain that spread across her upper body masked the exact location of the bullet wound.
She passed out but began to stir when she heard what sounded like a hammer banging against wood. It was a neighbour banging loudly on the back door, calling to Moshe to come quickly. “It’s your wife, it’s your wife . . . see, by the tree,” were the only words he heard as he stepped out.
Moshe was so transfixed by the sight of Lina collapsed in a heap he brushed silently by the messenger. At first, he worried that his sickly wife had suffered a heart attack or stroke. Despite the aural evidence of the battle raging close by, it did not occur to him that she had fallen victim to a stray bullet. The blood that trickled from beneath her prostrate frame clarified quickly his understanding of what had occurred.
Moshe knelt down, his knee sinking into the soft earth shaded by the leafy tree. She whimpered. He whispered some words of comfort. He decided he must try to get her into the house away from further harm. His mind was awhirl as he tried to assess the extent of her wound. He dashed back into the kitchen and grabbed a damp towel to help make his amateur diagnosis easier. As he gently dabbed away the blood, she yelped as the coarse edge of the fabric brushed the bullet entry point. The wound seemed quite small and closer to her shoulder than her heart. There was just an awful lot of blood.
Moshe crouched motionless for an eternal moment, contemplating what to do next. Suddenly, a man’s yell in a foreign tongue shattered his concentration. In an instant, a sweaty, dirty uniformed man was at his side and Moshe was looking up the barrel of his gun. His nose twitched and he jerked his head away as the acrid aroma of the still smoking barrel filled his nostrils. As he did so, the angry officer raised the weapon to fire it again, this time at the crouched figure of Moshe. The sight of the bleeding woman had convinced him they were both fair game.
He had the old man’s head in his gun’s sight but before his twitchy finger could do its worst, a second officer arrived at his side. Moshe’s heart was pounding as he watched helplessly. His fate and that of his wife seemed sealed until the second soldier’s arrival. The older German, clearly the first soldier’s superior, let go with a rapid fire order:
“He’s no threat. Don’t shoot him. Save your bullets for a Russian.”
The order did not find a receptive pair of ears. Its issuer sought to cool the situation with a rationale he figured the young hot head would accept and provide him with a chance to save face.
“Let him go to take care of his wife. He is just an old Jew. He’ll die soon enough.”