Tresavitz — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

"You are staying with me until the Messiah comes" – my father's rescue by a righteous among the nations / Zeev Liviatan, the son of Eliezer Liviatan z"l

Although seventy years have passed since the Vilna Ghetto was liquidated, despite the grief and pain over the terrible tragedy, I am pleased that the subject is still relevant today. We remember our parents, who survived the inferno, but cannot forget the suffering and the scenes we witnessed when we were young. There was always the sense of tragedy that hung like a heavy cloud in our homes. We absorbed the atmosphere, the sad faces and the memories of relatives who perished, brothers and sisters, parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents and all the rest…

I wanted to take this opportunity to digress from the main subject and tell the story of my father –Eliezer Liviatan z"l – who was the sole survivor of his whole family. He lived with his parents and six siblings in Ignalina, a township near Švenčionys in the vicinity of Vilna.  Most of the 8,000 Jews who lived there were exterminated at the death pits in Poligon: 8,000 men, women and children were piled into a mass grave. At the time, my father was about 30 years old.

Until the outbreak of war, he was a produce merchant. A short while after the German occupation, all the Jews were incarcerated in the Jewish ghetto by the local residents under instruction from the Germans; from there they were transferred to an abandoned army base in the Poligon forest. My father and a friend of his managed to escape from the base. As they were fleeing, guards shot at them. My father managed to escape but he never saw his friend again.

My father knew many of the local residents so he mingled with them for a week or two, looking for a hiding place .I remember him telling me that he spent a few weeks in the middle of a freezing winter in a field of beets and subsisted on dry bread that the owner of the field gave him. When he was asked to leave his place of hiding, he said that he had nowhere to go. One of the locals recommended that he go to Mr. Tresavitz, saying that he would certainly agree to hide him. My father did so and went to the address that he had been given. Mr. Tresavitz did agree to hide him and a friend in a hayloft above a pig sty.

Every fortnight, Mr. Tresavitz would ask them to leave but then would extend their "visa". Over time, a friendship developed between the savior and the survivors; during one of their conversations Mr. Tresavitz told them that they could stay with him until the Messiah comes….I am not sure what he meant – whether he was referring to the distant future or to the Russian/Allies victory over the Nazis. Regardless, he had good intentions.

The Tresavitz family had a small dairy farm where the local farmers would bring their milk. The milk was processed there and sold to the local residents and to the Germans. There was constant activity on the farm and the risk of being caught was very high. If they were caught, the whole family would be executed.

Liberation Day arrived! The Russians liberated my father and his friend. They walked around the village freely and everyone realized that someone had hidden them. Since their savior was a Pole living among Lithuanians, they decided to punish him and informed the Russian authorities that he had collaborated with the Nazis. He was exiled to Siberia for ten years. He and his wife went to Siberia; his 23-year old son returned to Poland and the farm was totally demolished.

After the exile was over, Mr. Tresavitz joined his son in Poland. In 1966, my father invited him to Israel for a visit. He stayed with us for 3 months, travelled around the country and returned to Poland. They remained in continuous contact until his savior passed away in the 70's.

A few years ago I made contact with Mr. Tresavitz's family and went to visit them. His son was already in his 80's but I received a royal welcome. Ever since then we have remained in contact and we have become "family". I have visited them twice (the second time for a great-granddaughter's wedding) and I hosted his grandson who spent Leil Seder with us. Needless to say, we are "blood" relatives and can never be disconnected. That was one shaft of light in the total darkness of the holocaust of our nation.