Rescued Jewish Children
Moshe Rosenblum
The Story of my Family Rescue during the German Occupation
Moshe Rosenblium
From the 4th book Hands Bringing Life and Bread
I’ve spent the first year of my life in pre-war Kaunas.
We were three: my parents Anatolijus Rozenbliumas and Raja Rozenbliumienė and me – Moisiejus (Moshe Rosenblum). My father was a building engineer. He has designed more than hundred buildings, including the Kaunas and Šiauliai central post offices, the Kaunas Officers’ Club, Veterinary Academy, military aircraft hangars being among the largest ones in Lithuania, residential houses, gymnasiums, higher educational establishments, industrial buildings, the Kaunas sports hall, the largest bridge in Lithuania over the river Nemunas (near Alytus). My mother did not work.
I will tell the story of our rescue during the war. This story is based on my parents’ recollections, my father’s letter addressed to our relatives exiled to Yakutia written right after our rescuing and various stories that I’ve heard in my family.
My own recollections are rather vague: by the end of the war I was only four years of age...
During the second day of the war we tried to escape but soon it became clear that it was too late. My parents turned back either due to the fact that the Germans had already overtaken us or because of the danger of being attacked by various robbers and riffraff on the roads. I do not know how far away we managed to move from home. The trip back was deathly dangerous, with rampant violence and impunity ruling, as well as the baltaraiščiai (wearing white armbands) on the rampage, yet we reached our flat in Kaunas successfully.
During the first days of the war, robbers in Kaunas would walk from one house into another. They would search and rob Jewish flats and take people to the Seventh Fort, where executions were provided in early July: thousands of people, almost exclusively men, not women and children yet, were shot. Many people our family had known or been close to were killed there. My father got also caught on the street. They tried to take him to the Seventh Fort together with a group of other Jews a total of three times but he was not accepted because the fort was already “full”. They kept them locked in the underground cellar of the Security Department for two days and for three days in the open-air courtyard of a prison. They did not feed them at all. One day my father and a group of other people were taken to the courtyard of the Lithuanian “partisan” staff on Miško street. Here they forced them to line facing the brick wall, and a convoy was standing behind with their guns ready. The command “Ready!” was heard and then “Cancel!” Many years later when my farther showed me the place where it had happened I asked him what he had felt at the time. He said he felt nothing, because he simply could not believe it. He thought they were not shot because the shooters did not want to bother about the corpses. On 10 July, they let everybody go. My father came back home. He learned that two men had robbed our apartment.
I’d like to mention that the building of the Security Department where they kept my father, had been designed by him.
Later Lithuanian hoodlums did not touch our apartment, probably because the house was occupied by the German Ortkommandantur. A German was also living in one of our rooms. Here I’d like to mention that my parents knew the German language quite well. My father studied at the Berlin Academy of Music, has received his engineering education in Germany and worked there for a while. My mother studied in the German gymnasium in Kaunas. The German before the war was our home language also.
In July 1941 there was issued the order, introducing various limitations for Jews and instructing them to move to Vilijampolė untill August 15. The paper documenting the meeting with the Lithuanian officials in charge and giving legal status to the transfer to the ghetto, was also signed by my father Anatolijus Rozenbliumas on 22 July 1941. This document is cited in Avraham Tory’s book The Kovno Ghetto and my farther was mentioned there as a representative of the Kaunas Jews.
During the first days of the ghetto existence, more than 500 educated Jews were taken “for work”. They included a number of my parents’ good friends and acquaintances. All of them were shot.
In the Kaunas Ghetto, we experienced the Great Action of 28 October 1941: a massacre of one third of the ghetto residents. The German major Rauche has distributed people right-left. We have been directed to “the bad side”. However, the Kaunas Ghetto police commander Michailas Kopelmanas has managed to persuade the Germans to have our entire family (including grandparents Kenigsbergas – my mother’s parents) go because my father could be useful as a good professional.
In the ghetto, my father worked in the construction of the airfield and other places, and at some point, he was engaged in designing. He told us a real case when after finishing a design he asked a German official for a reward. The latter offered, rather benevolently, to have him shot, probably having no doubt that such a destiny was inevitable.
When in late 1943, my parents learned about the Children Action of 5 November in the Šiauliai Ghetto, they decided that I should not stay in the ghetto any longer. Agronomist Antanas Midvigis, whom my mother met under the circumstances unknown to me, agreed to help. He took my mother and myself to Vincas Vobolevičius who owned a grange in Saliai village near Vandžiogala. I still see that view: the night, dark streets of Kaunas, me in a harnessed carriage. I think that before we reached Saliai we’ve stopped at the place of the Zubovas-Čiurlionis family. It had happened before that my father or my mother would stop at their place for a while when leaving ghetto. The Zubovas family could not hide us at their place for any longer period: German raids in the town centre were the routine practice.
During the war, Sofija Čiurlionienė, Danutė Zubovienė and Vladimiras (Vladys) Zubovas have saved many Jews. All the three of them were awarded the Yad Vashem Medal of the Righteous Among the Nations. They are also in our hearts.
It became clear that the Vobolevičius family could not accept a Jewish child because the place was rather busy and dangerous. Moreover, they had two little children of their own, including a newborn baby. We had to go back to the ghetto.
Yet the Vobolevičius couple, Helia Vobolevičienė and Vincas Vobolevičius, did not remain unconcerned about the fate of another child. They started looking for another shelter for me. One day Vincas came to the meeting place with my mother with some good news. Monika Lukoševičienė (her maiden name Valionytė), Helia’s sister, who lived in Maironiškės village, near the Kaunas Ninth Fort, agreed to take me.
I remember when my mother and me left the ghetto. It was at night. We had to sneak through the gates in the fence with barbed wire. There was a booth out of planks, a wagon at the gates. The place was under a bright spotlight. I was warned that “bad people” were sitting in the booth. I had to be quiet so that they would not hear us. The guards at the gates had been probably bribed so we could pass through. We were walking in total darkness, avoiding any roads. Sometimes we would see the lights of cars passing by. Some moment my mother and me fell into a pit but I did not utter a sound. That is how we reached the place of Monika Lukoševičienė and Bronius Lukoševičius.
I was put to bed. My mother lay next to me. She told me later that she gave me some sleeping pills, luminal. When I woke up, my mother was gone. I still remember the tragic despair I felt. For a long time I’ve kept my mother’s handkerchief remained in my hands and used to close it to my face.
During Christmas night 1943, a big group of Jewish prisoners escaped from the nearby Ninth Fort. One of them stopped by the Lukoševičius’ farmstead. One night, a group of Lithuanian policemen burst into the house, and carried out a raid. Everybody was already in bed. I remember the shadows behind the window, the flashlights, a terrible bang at the door, the havoc in the room. Nobody would open the door for a long while. It was clear what would happen to the family if they found me. Monika, whom I called Aunt Nika, grabbed me, laid me in her bed and lied down on top of me so that my head would come out through her armpit. I could see everything in the room. The lights somehow were off. I could see the flashlights running under the bed and in the wardrobe and men in black. After they left, Aunt Nika collapsed unconscious.
When my mother learned about the incident she supposed that the Lukoševičius family would be afraid to keep the child but they did not refuse me. I stayed with them for a total of eight months until the liberation.
I was told that if Germans were to notice me accidentally I had to pretend being ill. Germans were known for being scared of getting infected. One day I was in a courtyard when suddenly a mounted officer rode in. I fell on the ground and tried to hide behind the flowerbed. I still remember those flowers. When I realised that he saw me from above I started shouting like I was told. But this was needless already. That was a Russian soldier: the first one appeared after the black three-year-long night.
My parents stayed in the ghetto until 29 March 1944. It was very difficult to escape at this time but they found the solution: they joined a brigade of Jewish workers taken in a boat over the River Neris. They spent one day at the place of the Zubovas family and then reached the Vobolevičius’ grange where a hiding place had been built for them. My grandparents Kenigsbergas, most probably, have moved there before – Germans conducted the Children Action in the ghetto exterminating all the children, as well as elder people just a day before my parents’ escape. Helia Vobolevičienė and Vincas Vobolevičius were taking care of my family for four months until the Red Army came. There is no need of explanation how much peace these noble people have lost and what they’ve risked, seeking no benefit for themselves whatsoever.
After the war my parents kept warm, heartfelt and truly close relations with their saviours until the very last days. Neither my parents nor these people are alive. They left children. Vincas Vobolevičius and Helia Vobolevičienė had two sons, Bogdanas and Jonušas, the Lukoševičius couple had three daughters, Alina, Tenia and Nelė. These are the people who saved us from the terrible fate of almost all Lithuanian Jews. I also have a family, two sons and granddaughters. They are saved too.
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, 2009
Moshe Rosenblium
From the 4th book Hands Bringing Life and Bread
I’ve spent the first year of my life in pre-war Kaunas.
We were three: my parents Anatolijus Rozenbliumas and Raja Rozenbliumienė and me – Moisiejus (Moshe Rosenblum). My father was a building engineer. He has designed more than hundred buildings, including the Kaunas and Šiauliai central post offices, the Kaunas Officers’ Club, Veterinary Academy, military aircraft hangars being among the largest ones in Lithuania, residential houses, gymnasiums, higher educational establishments, industrial buildings, the Kaunas sports hall, the largest bridge in Lithuania over the river Nemunas (near Alytus). My mother did not work.
I will tell the story of our rescue during the war. This story is based on my parents’ recollections, my father’s letter addressed to our relatives exiled to Yakutia written right after our rescuing and various stories that I’ve heard in my family.
My own recollections are rather vague: by the end of the war I was only four years of age...
During the second day of the war we tried to escape but soon it became clear that it was too late. My parents turned back either due to the fact that the Germans had already overtaken us or because of the danger of being attacked by various robbers and riffraff on the roads. I do not know how far away we managed to move from home. The trip back was deathly dangerous, with rampant violence and impunity ruling, as well as the baltaraiščiai (wearing white armbands) on the rampage, yet we reached our flat in Kaunas successfully.
During the first days of the war, robbers in Kaunas would walk from one house into another. They would search and rob Jewish flats and take people to the Seventh Fort, where executions were provided in early July: thousands of people, almost exclusively men, not women and children yet, were shot. Many people our family had known or been close to were killed there. My father got also caught on the street. They tried to take him to the Seventh Fort together with a group of other Jews a total of three times but he was not accepted because the fort was already “full”. They kept them locked in the underground cellar of the Security Department for two days and for three days in the open-air courtyard of a prison. They did not feed them at all. One day my father and a group of other people were taken to the courtyard of the Lithuanian “partisan” staff on Miško street. Here they forced them to line facing the brick wall, and a convoy was standing behind with their guns ready. The command “Ready!” was heard and then “Cancel!” Many years later when my farther showed me the place where it had happened I asked him what he had felt at the time. He said he felt nothing, because he simply could not believe it. He thought they were not shot because the shooters did not want to bother about the corpses. On 10 July, they let everybody go. My father came back home. He learned that two men had robbed our apartment.
I’d like to mention that the building of the Security Department where they kept my father, had been designed by him.
Later Lithuanian hoodlums did not touch our apartment, probably because the house was occupied by the German Ortkommandantur. A German was also living in one of our rooms. Here I’d like to mention that my parents knew the German language quite well. My father studied at the Berlin Academy of Music, has received his engineering education in Germany and worked there for a while. My mother studied in the German gymnasium in Kaunas. The German before the war was our home language also.
In July 1941 there was issued the order, introducing various limitations for Jews and instructing them to move to Vilijampolė untill August 15. The paper documenting the meeting with the Lithuanian officials in charge and giving legal status to the transfer to the ghetto, was also signed by my father Anatolijus Rozenbliumas on 22 July 1941. This document is cited in Avraham Tory’s book The Kovno Ghetto and my farther was mentioned there as a representative of the Kaunas Jews.
During the first days of the ghetto existence, more than 500 educated Jews were taken “for work”. They included a number of my parents’ good friends and acquaintances. All of them were shot.
In the Kaunas Ghetto, we experienced the Great Action of 28 October 1941: a massacre of one third of the ghetto residents. The German major Rauche has distributed people right-left. We have been directed to “the bad side”. However, the Kaunas Ghetto police commander Michailas Kopelmanas has managed to persuade the Germans to have our entire family (including grandparents Kenigsbergas – my mother’s parents) go because my father could be useful as a good professional.
In the ghetto, my father worked in the construction of the airfield and other places, and at some point, he was engaged in designing. He told us a real case when after finishing a design he asked a German official for a reward. The latter offered, rather benevolently, to have him shot, probably having no doubt that such a destiny was inevitable.
When in late 1943, my parents learned about the Children Action of 5 November in the Šiauliai Ghetto, they decided that I should not stay in the ghetto any longer. Agronomist Antanas Midvigis, whom my mother met under the circumstances unknown to me, agreed to help. He took my mother and myself to Vincas Vobolevičius who owned a grange in Saliai village near Vandžiogala. I still see that view: the night, dark streets of Kaunas, me in a harnessed carriage. I think that before we reached Saliai we’ve stopped at the place of the Zubovas-Čiurlionis family. It had happened before that my father or my mother would stop at their place for a while when leaving ghetto. The Zubovas family could not hide us at their place for any longer period: German raids in the town centre were the routine practice.
During the war, Sofija Čiurlionienė, Danutė Zubovienė and Vladimiras (Vladys) Zubovas have saved many Jews. All the three of them were awarded the Yad Vashem Medal of the Righteous Among the Nations. They are also in our hearts.
It became clear that the Vobolevičius family could not accept a Jewish child because the place was rather busy and dangerous. Moreover, they had two little children of their own, including a newborn baby. We had to go back to the ghetto.
Yet the Vobolevičius couple, Helia Vobolevičienė and Vincas Vobolevičius, did not remain unconcerned about the fate of another child. They started looking for another shelter for me. One day Vincas came to the meeting place with my mother with some good news. Monika Lukoševičienė (her maiden name Valionytė), Helia’s sister, who lived in Maironiškės village, near the Kaunas Ninth Fort, agreed to take me.
I remember when my mother and me left the ghetto. It was at night. We had to sneak through the gates in the fence with barbed wire. There was a booth out of planks, a wagon at the gates. The place was under a bright spotlight. I was warned that “bad people” were sitting in the booth. I had to be quiet so that they would not hear us. The guards at the gates had been probably bribed so we could pass through. We were walking in total darkness, avoiding any roads. Sometimes we would see the lights of cars passing by. Some moment my mother and me fell into a pit but I did not utter a sound. That is how we reached the place of Monika Lukoševičienė and Bronius Lukoševičius.
I was put to bed. My mother lay next to me. She told me later that she gave me some sleeping pills, luminal. When I woke up, my mother was gone. I still remember the tragic despair I felt. For a long time I’ve kept my mother’s handkerchief remained in my hands and used to close it to my face.
During Christmas night 1943, a big group of Jewish prisoners escaped from the nearby Ninth Fort. One of them stopped by the Lukoševičius’ farmstead. One night, a group of Lithuanian policemen burst into the house, and carried out a raid. Everybody was already in bed. I remember the shadows behind the window, the flashlights, a terrible bang at the door, the havoc in the room. Nobody would open the door for a long while. It was clear what would happen to the family if they found me. Monika, whom I called Aunt Nika, grabbed me, laid me in her bed and lied down on top of me so that my head would come out through her armpit. I could see everything in the room. The lights somehow were off. I could see the flashlights running under the bed and in the wardrobe and men in black. After they left, Aunt Nika collapsed unconscious.
When my mother learned about the incident she supposed that the Lukoševičius family would be afraid to keep the child but they did not refuse me. I stayed with them for a total of eight months until the liberation.
I was told that if Germans were to notice me accidentally I had to pretend being ill. Germans were known for being scared of getting infected. One day I was in a courtyard when suddenly a mounted officer rode in. I fell on the ground and tried to hide behind the flowerbed. I still remember those flowers. When I realised that he saw me from above I started shouting like I was told. But this was needless already. That was a Russian soldier: the first one appeared after the black three-year-long night.
My parents stayed in the ghetto until 29 March 1944. It was very difficult to escape at this time but they found the solution: they joined a brigade of Jewish workers taken in a boat over the River Neris. They spent one day at the place of the Zubovas family and then reached the Vobolevičius’ grange where a hiding place had been built for them. My grandparents Kenigsbergas, most probably, have moved there before – Germans conducted the Children Action in the ghetto exterminating all the children, as well as elder people just a day before my parents’ escape. Helia Vobolevičienė and Vincas Vobolevičius were taking care of my family for four months until the Red Army came. There is no need of explanation how much peace these noble people have lost and what they’ve risked, seeking no benefit for themselves whatsoever.
After the war my parents kept warm, heartfelt and truly close relations with their saviours until the very last days. Neither my parents nor these people are alive. They left children. Vincas Vobolevičius and Helia Vobolevičienė had two sons, Bogdanas and Jonušas, the Lukoševičius couple had three daughters, Alina, Tenia and Nelė. These are the people who saved us from the terrible fate of almost all Lithuanian Jews. I also have a family, two sons and granddaughters. They are saved too.
The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, 2009