Pnina Tory — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

At times, when my mental anguish became unbearable, I felt the need to do something to release the tension, to let off some steam. So I would start writing in an old notebook I had in my possession. I would do this sitting up in bed and wearing gloves to help me withstand the freezing cold in my room. I did this, of course, in the few minutes of spare time I had left.

At the farm in the village, which was a hiding place for Shulamit and me, I didn’t find the work too hard. I would willingly get up at five o’clock in the morning. It was cold and dark in the house. By the light of a little oil lamp, I would turn on the stove on which I would place the enormous pot to boil the fodder for the pigs. I undertook any job necessary without being asked to do so by the farm owner. I would feed the chickens, the hens, fatten the geese, bring in the sacks full of wood from the yard for heating, and in the time I had left, I would mend the ragged clothes for the family, even their underwear, hour after hour, rag after rag, until my fingers were bloody from being pricked by the needle.

The members of the family, especially the mother, whose name was Mariona and whom we called by her pet name “Mamuta” (Mummy), was very nice to me. She understood that I was not accustomed to living in a village, although I did try to show that everything was acceptable to me and that I was quite comfortable. Sometimes Mariona would say to me - young lady, you are not used to our food, make yourself something you like – here, take some eggs, butter, cheese, and others. I would thank her for her kindness and consideration for me, but I would say that I would eat like everyone else. To tell the truth, there were days when I couldn’t bear to eat the village food, especially the smoked spicy meat they would prepare during the summer to last throughout the winter, blood sausages, sour cabbage with smoked meat, and other food of that ilk. Every now and then I had a feast when a large pot of boiled potatoes and jugs full of sour cream were set on the table. Everyone around the table would poke his or her fork into the potatoes in the pot. Potato pancakes were also a pleasure on occasion…

However as far as I was concerned, the problem of food, even of washing, wasn’t so important. What was the most worrying for me psychologically was the constant fear of any stranger that happened to turn up at the farm, the awful feeling that we might be discovered never left me for one moment, because if that happened, as far as we were concerned whatever would be would be, but the family, those innocent villagers who had become so dear to us who were risking their lives only for us, what would they be found guilty of? Also, thoughts about what was going on in the ghetto disturbed me all the time. What was happening there? This question constantly stabbed my heart. When I left the ghetto the occupying regime there had already changed and it had become a concentration camp. Even the name had been altered to “The Kovno Concentration Camp” that was diminishing in size: more and more people were taken out of the ghetto in groups and sent to work camps under military control, no longer entire families, only those who were fit for hard work. From there, nobody came back to the ghetto. Very few jobs were left for the Jewish committee – the “Ältestenrat” (Council of Elders) to administer life, so to speak, in the ghetto. And it was no longer in their hands, so my brain was constantly occupied with what was happening there now…

When I left Father Paukstys’s office with Una, in spite of the strong objections to my leaving the village to go to be with Shulamit, I was terrified and my heart ached for causing distress to the priest, because he was on our side. But my overriding concern was for my little daughter. Luckily Una had no idea what danger she was letting herself in for by taking me with her, and she was fine with it as she walked in the direction of the harbor of the Neman river, chatting away merrily while I had already noticed masses of SS and SD uniforms in the distance around the harbor and my heart almost stopped beating. I whispered a prayer: Please God don’t let them ask me for my papers; the forged certificate bearing the name of Helena Apanaviciene was good enough as long as it wasn’t scrutinized. It was a rough imitation anyway and also according to the age on the certificate I was already seven years’ older. When we boarded the steamboat and started moving I felt a little easier, but that only lasted for a minute. Suddenly I felt trapped. There was no way I could run anywhere from a boat. Added to that I felt as if people on the ship were watching me until I realized that in fact they were only staring at the new boots I was wearing, the boots I had kept for my planned escape to the partisans in the woods. I silently cursed the boots and cursed myself too for having worn them. But there was nothing I could do, as my ghetto boots were already falling apart. I decided to deliberately keep my distance from Una in case I was arrested, so that at least she wouldn’t fall into the hands of the SS too. But my efforts were in vain, as the more I tried to keep away from Una, the more she kept coming back to me.

I spent many nerve-wracking hours until the boat finally stopped at the beachhead.

We started the long walk in the direction of the farm. Dusk began to fall. It was raining non-stop and the mud was deep and stuck to our boots. One or other of us would keep slipping and falling down. I would help Una get up on her feet, and then she would help me up. At one point my boot got stuck in the mud and I could hardly pull my leg out to continue… but none of this bothered me nor Una either, as she continued trudging on, talking non-stop about Mariona, the owner of the farm, whose husband had been killed instantly when a tall tree was struck by lightning causing it to collapse on top of him. Una told me about each of Mariona’s three daughters and her only son, all of whom worked on the farm, but her stories barely registered with me.

Something else was bothering me and caused my nerves to be constantly on edge and that was – what was happening with Shulamit? What would I do if she had a fever and I couldn’t call a doctor? How would the landlady react when she saw the “merchandise” Una had brought her? What if she tells me straight out that she no longer wants to endanger herself or her children, that I should take my daughter and leave her alone… these thoughts were disturbing me more and more as the hours of trudging through the mud went by, Until finally I saw a light flickering in the distance. “Can you see that light?” said Una, “That’s the house”.

My heart beating wildly, I approached the house, I went up to a window where a dim light was flickering, in the hope that I could see what was happening inside, but I couldn’t see a thing. The “light” was just a wick stuck into a little oil lamp… Una opened the front door, went inside and, in a happy voice, said to the landlady: “Marita, look who I’ve brought you – Salamuta’s mother”, and then, right in front of me, I witnessed a miracle! Marita, the landlady, was really happy to see me. Later I learned why she was so happy. Here’s what happened: yesterday, i.e. the day before I arrived at the village, when Marita could no longer bear Shulamit’s incessant crying, she told Shulamit that if she stopped crying, her mother will come. Shulamit asked her, when? And Marita answered, tomorrow! So Marita was really telling the truth, and for that she was grateful, as the landlady was a religious woman who told the truth.

I was so relieved, and now my eyes roamed around to look for the child, and Marita pointed to a bench that stood beside the large oven, on which Shulamit was sleeping with her arms thrown above her head. Her hands were black with dirt and so was her pink flannel nightdress that she had probably not taken off since she left me in Kovno. Shulamit was covered with her little duvet, her head wrapped in a big bandage. I got down on my knees beside the bench on which Shulamit was lying and started to smell her. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized that she didn’t have a fever and her breathing was steady. And then, the little girl opened her eyes and said “Mummy”, as if this wasn’t a surprise. After all, she already “knew” yesterday that I was going to come today… Shulamit looked at me in wonder: “Mummy, why have you got such an ugly haircut, you’d better fix it like you used to”. For the first time in a long time, I smiled. The heaviest load was taken off my chest and I thought to myself: maybe there is hope after all!

The following morning I began to take care of her infected ear, according to the doctor’s instructions. Fortunately the infected wound had opened without intervention. A lot of pus was draining from her ear. I had to clean her ear several times a day with hydrogen peroxide and the villagers couldn’t understand why I was constantly washing my hands. I was afraid they would think that I was repulsed by something in their house so I explained that my hands must be clean when I treat a patient’s ear. It wasn’t possible to get hold of an ultraviolet lamp so I warmed the ear with a hot water bottle. The phenol salicylate and the other medications I had brought didn’t work very well, although the child wasn’t suffering from great pain any longer, but her ear was not healing, the pus continued to ooze out of it, and infected wounds covered the little girl’s face. Her entire head was bound up with a large bandage that covered her ears as well as her dark hair.

There was a little room at the side of the kitchen. In this small, unheated bedchamber I slept with Shulamit in the same bed. The only source of heat in the house came from a stove used to bake bread which was located in the large living room where the members of the household spent the free time they had after their farm work, and where they did their weaving and knitting in the warm space. Shulamit spent all her time in the large living room together with the family. She stopped being so terribly afraid as soon as I came. She also managed to learn Lithuanian and she became more fluent in the language from day to day. She would follow the girls around the house, asking about the “saints” whose pictures decorated the walls of the house, and would listen to the stories of the wonders and miracles performed by the “saints”. It did not take long for her to learn how to pray and cross herself before the “saints” and she did so very earnestly and devotedly. Maria and Una the old woman got a lot of pleasure from her. The younger girls liked this too.

As for me, when I was not taking care of Shulamit, I was busy with all the household and farm-related jobs. I had hidden my “cursed” boots a long time back and instead wore wooden clogs (known in Yiddish as “klompfes” - wooden open-backed sandals with a strip of leather on top to hold the foot) like the villagers, only I wasn’t accustomed to them and every time I walked out to the yard along the narrow path made of planks of wood to cover the mud, with a sackful of firewood on my back, my “klompfes” would slip off my feet and I’d be standing there in my socks in the muddy snow. As a result, I suffered from a constant cold. In order to appear more villager-like I made a “deal” with one of the girls. I gave her my beautiful pinafore and in return I receive one made out of rough sacking material, in which I felt safer. But despite all these efforts to disguise myself, I would hide in my room and go back to sewing rags whenever a stranger approached the farm. Fortunately not many strangers came to the farm.

Meanwhile, the family got used to me and they didn’t even remind me that I had promised to leave within a week. Shulamit’s health wasn’t improving and it was taken for granted that I would stay.

Meanwhile, Avraham had provided me with my clothes and belongings via the priest, as I had left the ghetto carrying only one briefcase.

On Christmas Eve the house was abuzz with preparations. The eldest daughter Marita was about to get married and the wedding was planned for Christmas day. A few days beforehand Maria had said to me:  “Look, a lot of strangers will be coming to the wedding and someone might see you and become suspicious. It would be best for you not to be in the house during the wedding. So I’ve asked Father Paukstys’s sister who lives nearby - just a few kilometers from our farm - to have you both stay with her till after the wedding”. The suggestion seemed reasonable, and anyway who was I to complain?

On a cold, dark night Maria’s son Juozas harnessed the horses to the cart, I wrapped Shulamit in every piece of warm clothing I had, laid a woolen blanket over both of us, gripping it with both hands, and off we went on our way. A snowstorm was falling heavily and the howling wind was blowing wildly. The snow swirled around us and above us. The wind was so strong that suddenly the blanket blew out of my hands and it floated away behind us. Shulamit burst out with a cry,“Daddy’s blanket! Daddy’s blanket!” (it had been her father’s travel rug). She didn’t care as much about the cold as about losing her precious blanket. I didn’t expect Juozas who was driving the horses, to stop the cart to go back to look for it, but to my surprise he did; he stopped, turned around and retraced our steps to search for the blanket and amazingly and to Shulamit’s delight, it was found lying there on the white snow. It was very late by the time we arrived at our new lodgings at the home of Father Paukstys’s younger sister where she lived with her husband and little daughter. Their home was a town house elegant both in its structure and its furnishings; it was clean and spacious, but lacked the human warmth that had enveloped us in Maria’s simple village home.

I had no farm work to do here. I could only help the housewife with regular housework. The days I spent with her – a week – were passed waiting for someone to come and take us back to Maria. The landlady and her husband were polite to us, while keeping a certain distance. On at least one occasion she was insensitive to Shulamit which was strange for a woman who was herself the mother of a small child. Shulamit was an extremely beautiful child, although now, with that huge bandage over her head and ears and a large scarf on top of the bandage and the oozing wounds all over her face, she certainly didn’t look that way. And so when the landlady wanted to persuade her daughter to eat, she said to her, in front of Shulamit, “Look at Salamuta; if you don’t eat you’ll end up being ugly like her”. This was such an insult to Shulamit, and she never forgot it.

Christmas passed and the echoes of the happy wedding had fallen silent a long time ago, yet nobody had come from Maria’s place to take us back. I felt the impatience of my hosts, and I couldn’t blame them about it, after all they had done such a good deed by providing us with temporary shelter. What hurt me more for some reason was that Maria didn’t seem to want us anymore either, and had left us with Father Paukstys’s sister, just as his brother had evaded responsibility by leaving Shulamit with Maria.

Occasionally I would hear the landlord (Miller) wondering out loud why no-one from Maria’s household had come for us, and then one day he harnessed a horse and cart and took us back himself. Maria welcomed us as we entered the yard, but not very warmly. It was clear that this good woman was embarrassed, especially by the fact that we had come back without her efforts to bring us… and as for me, I felt very sad, as if I were not wanted anywhere, as someone who had no place in God’s world, having to be a burden on these good people, not many of whom existed in Lithuania in those days.

Life returned to a regular village routine. Rising before dawn to the dim light of the oil lamp, boiling the fodder for the pigs in the large vats that I found difficult to lift, mending clothes and underwear and all the other housework and farm jobs, and of course taking care of Shulamit’s infected ear and the wounds on her face, and above all this I felt a sort of black cloud hovering over me – the danger, if the Germans would suddenly decide to conduct a search, if by chance some Germans or Lithuanians happened to come by, if the evil eye decided that someone would inform on us, and that would be the end. The fear did not leave either of us for a second, even the child who was only seven years’ old. She knew what we could expect if any of these cases came to pass.

One day two men in military uniform wearing their entire combat equipment were seen approaching the area around the farm. We were terrified and immediately closed ourselves off in our room, our hearts beating wildly, and when we heard shots being fired nearby there was no doubt in my mind that they were the SS or the Lithuanian military police that would prowl around the villages looking for deserters, partisans and Jews who had escaped from the ghettos. Fortunately for us, it was a false alarm. After a while we were told that they were Lithuanian soldiers who had deserted from the German army and were just fooling around firing their weapons.

I was always looking for a way to improve my situation and then I found out they really wanted a proper lamp to brighten up the house. I wrote to Avraham in the ghetto about this, conveying the letter in the usual way via the priest, and he was able to find a lamp and have it delivered to me in the village the same way. He even managed to get my clothes cupboard out of the ghetto and to bring to me (dismantled) – it was a big five-door cupboard made out of expensive mahogany. The cupboard was brought to the churchyard, and Maria’s wagon brought it to the village. The cupboard was too big for the rooms in Maria’s house, so it was stored in a hut in the yard, the “hut” district. They were very happy with the cupboard but I was afraid it would have a boomerang effect on us and lead to danger, because a stranger might wonder how the family suddenly came to own a fancy mahogany cupboard. So I was glad that they couldn’t assemble it in the house.

We had a lot of trouble from a hired worker who was employed by Maria. He began to suspect me. They told him that I was a poor relative from town, but he didn’t seem convinced. Sometimes I heard him say: Who is she? Polish or perhaps Jewish? He followed Shulamit around and kept asking her questions when she was alone, but the seven-year old child knew our “facts of life” in the village very well and was even able to withstand a Gestapo interrogation, apart from which her Lithuanian was already perfect. The employee once asked “Salamuta”: What language do you pray in? She replied: What language should I pray in if not Lithuanian, my mother tongue? He also asked her: “In what language do you listen to the radio?” She innocently replied “What’s a radio?” and so on. As time went by his suspicions subsided mainly because of Shulamit, who knew exactly what to answer when being questioned by him, praying and crossing herself devotedly with the other girls, in front of the pictures of the saints on the wall.

When I already felt I was one of the family, I began asking Maria if she would take in my elderly mother in-law Chaya who had remained in the ghetto. But she refused adamantly. Wasn’t it enough that she had two Jewish females in her house? To take on an old lady would be much too heavy a burden.

I poured my heart out to Una and she promised to make enquiries around the area. After I had begged her a few times, she told me: “Nobody is willing, but if you want, come with me and we’ll visit a few of the village houses in the area, and maybe they will be more responsive to you”. I agreed, although I didn’t quite understand the logic behind what she said, and I was well aware of the danger involved in such a venture. So the day came when we both started out on our way.  I was not familiar with the area or the people, but I hoped that Una knew which house I could enter and which not. On the way we passed through the small town of Lukšiai, and Una, having seen a church in the distance, was automatically drawn towards it and pulled me along behind her. In the church I tried to copy whatever she did; I bowed down, I crossed myself, I kneeled beside her on the ice-cold stone floor all the while praying in my heart that Una’s supplications would end quickly, but she prayed on and on. My knees were killing me, whereas Una who was accustomed to kneeling for long periods of time was enjoying the whole solemn occasion. Finally Una finished her prayers and I could get up. I could barely straighten my legs, so very tired.

Una was in good spirits when she left the church and as for me, I was so relieved that I emerged without attracting attention. We continued going round the houses of the Lithuanians in the area, but without success. Everyone rejected me. Feeling disappointed, I returned with Una to my hiding place. I was lucky that I managed to get back safely from this escapade.

Despite this failure I began to put out feelers with Maria if she would perhaps be good enough to take Avraham in. I told her he was a young man who could hide anywhere without anyone finding him, but Maria and the girls wouldn’t hear of it. Any man would pose a danger, as he might be suspected of being a Russian partisan or a deserter. Especially a Jew who could easily be identified as being Jewish.

When the Russian front came closer to the Lithuanian border and the imminent destruction of the ghetto was inevitable, I kept trying to beg the owner of the farm “Mummy’le”, as we all called Maria, to grant refuge to Avraham, but without success. Then I had an idea; I would try and reason with Juozas, Maria’s only son, who had had to work on the farm from childhood because of the sudden death of his father, although he really wanted to study. I told him that Avraham was a lawyer who could teach him to read and write as well as all the other subjects. This appealed to him greatly, and after having considered it seriously, he spoke to his mother who was his greatest fan. Then one day Maria took me by surprise by telling me that she had decided to travel to Kovno to fetch Avraham and bring him to the farm. I immediately wrote to Avraham about it via the priest and told him that on 23^rd March a wagon would be arriving at the church yard to bring him to the village.

Meanwhile Juozas prepared a hiding place for Avraham. A gable two meters wide extended out from the rooftop of the granary, below which sheaves of flax were heaped all the way up to the top. At the back there was a wall of wooden boards that supported the roof. Using wooden poles, Juozas hoisted up the sheaves from within the heap making a space big enough for two people to sit or lie down, but not to stand. You could enter through a hole in the space between the wooden boards of the granary and the ground. He covered the entry way from inside with dry branches in such a way that no-one would guess this was a hiding place.

In spite of my expectations, the main concern now was whether Avraham would manage to escape from the ghetto and make the long and dangerous journey to the village. It was March, spring was already blossoming, the sun was shining and the world looked so beautiful. But instead of nature’s glory bringing me joy, it made me suffer so much. I stood in the yard inhaling spring’s fragrance deep into my lungs, and I wondered: what is that is hurting me so? Is it the awful dissonance between the beautiful world outside and the brutal inhumanity that was controlling it so mercilessly?

On 23^rd March, Mariona left with her wagon early in the morning, to bring Avraham from Kovno, as planned. She ought to have been back accompanied by Avraham sometime in the late afternoon that same day. Now I was doubly anxious and when evening came and then night fell and they still hadn’t arrived back at the farm, I was in such a panic I didn’t know what to do.

I had no doubt that something had happened. According to all the calculations they should have been back no later than five o’clock in the evening. But nine o’clock passed, then ten and then eleven and they still hadn’t arrived. I was absolutely desperate. In my distress I thought to myself that if we were destined to die, then so be it, but what would happen to the family? I couldn’t bear thinking about or imagining the Nazis lining up the family against a wall, and then killing the mother, the daughters and the son.

At two o’clock in the morning I heard the dogs barking. What was happening? Were they warning us the Gestapo was coming? But then I heard the creaking of cart wheels approaching and Maria’s voice and then the light of a torch outside the window. I rushed out of the house… not the Gestapo! They had arrived safely!

Ever since then I get nervous from hearing dogs barking during the night, because it reminds me of that night of panic. I took Avraham into my room where Shulamit was sleeping. We were both overwhelmed with agitation. “You have no idea what a day I had”, said Avraham, and continued with his story: Maria had apparently stopped at every single public house along the way to have a drink of the homemade schnapps. She wasn’t at all bothered by the fact that he was with her. At the end of the day she was completely drunk and took a wrong turning! He was scared when they found themselves lost in the middle of the night in unfamiliar surroundings. But as fate would have it, they arrived safely in the end. Then he said, “But before I continue, I must tell you about something unbelievable and unprecedented, something absolutely amazing that might have brought disaster on the ghetto. Last Christmas Eve, all 64 of the Jews who were imprisoned in the Ninth Fort managed to escape in the middle of the night and, led by a Jewish officer in the Red Army who had planned and organized the escape, some of them even managed to infiltrate back in the ghetto. I was called away from home and spent hours listening to Vasilenko, the Jewish officer, who described all the details of the escape to Chaim Yellin and me, holed up in your room till the break of dawn…” We talked and talked till early morning, exchanging our personal experiences over the past five months since we had been apart. Then I led Avraham to the hiding place Juozas had prepared for him, before Antanas, the hired worker, woke up.

Written by the family