Elena Grigorievna Chlopina — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

 

I was born on 6 December 1934. My father, David Volpert, was a well-known lawyer. My mother, Ida Gurvich-Volpert, was a famous pianist; they were both very busy people. Father spent most of his time in the courts or in his prosperous private practice and my mother in the conservatorium or at concerts. I remember my father used to eat his lunch hastily, causing my mother much discontent. On the rare occasions when he was free, he would take me for a walk, which I liked very much. Mother was a lovely woman: warm, happy and intelligent, always surrounded by many friends.
I spent most of my time with my nanny, Elena Grigorievna Chlopina (Chlopinaite). She had graduated from the ‘Institute for Respectable Young Ladies’ in St Petersburg, where highly qualified governesses were trained. She came when I was 2 months old and stayed with me for years.
When I grew up, a French lady from Paris was invited to live with us. Since then I speak French fluently. In our family my parents usually spoke in German; Father’s brothers and sisters lived in Germany and my mother graduated from the Berlin Conservatorium. We all spoke Russian and Lithuanian fluently as well. At the age of 5 I started to take piano classes and was very successful in them.

`I did not attend regular school, I was educated at home. I was quite a pampered child, and got everything one can imagine. We lived on Laisves Avenue in a large beautiful apartment. We were a secular Jewish family, but we did celebrate Passover, and we also marked Yom Kippur.
I remember playing in the garden and suddenly there was a lot of noise from Laisves Avenue. We ran to look. There was an enormous commotion. Tanks rolled into the avenue with Russian soldiers smiling atop of them. People in the crowd, among them numerous Lithuanians, on both sides of the avenue were cheering, applauding and throwing flowers.
Soon supplies were running out in the shops and the Soviets started the deportation of the ‘bourgeois’ to Siberia. I remember one evening a van stopped outside the entrance to our building and all our neighbour’s family were led away one by one. My parents were very much afraid that we would be sent to exile as well.
I remember how the war started and the first sounds of bombardment, and how anxious my parents were when the telephone connection was cut. Our good friend, Dr Dugovsky, tried to reach us in order to take our family and run away, but he could not get in touch. So we stayed in occupied Kaunas.
The first days of the war, when the Russians had left and the Germans had not yet come, were the most terrifying. The Lithuanians robbed, raped and pillaged the Jews in great numbers. Father’s friend, Professor Tumenas, took our family to his house in order to save us from the rage of these wild mobs; we spent a couple of weeks there. Later when the Germans had restored some order, we returned for a short stay in our apartment.

I remember how we went to the ghetto. My parents put a few things on a carriage and we moved to a nice house in Slobodka in the area called the ‘Large Ghetto’. At the beginning we lived alone, three of us in a very big room. I liked this house and the room and thought we had moved, as we usually did during the summer time, to a dacha. Moreover, this time we were all together, not as in previous years when it had only been my nanny and me. Later my uncle Misha Volpert with his wife Mira and their 6-year-old twins, Lionia and Zenia, came to live in our room.
Life in the ghetto was really quite a shock for my parents, who had lived in luxury just several months before. My parents joined the work brigades and used to bring back some food. I stayed at home alone and was happy to play freely with lots of other children on the streets of the ghetto; I even used to smuggle some food from our family and share it with other poor children.
One night my father was arrested by a Lithuanian policeman. He disappeared for a few days; when he returned he was dirty, skinny and unshaven. He had been caught up in the so-called ‘Intellectuals’ Action’, when about 500 educated men were rounded up to perform ‘professional work’. In fact they were taken to the Ninth Fort and ordered to dig a huge pit. They all understood they were digging their own grave. While they were digging, a Lithuanian man approached my father, it seems he had been his client, and ordered him to run away. And my father took this chance. Apparently only my father and Dr Voshchin escaped this round-up alive.

The ghetto orchestra was organized, and my uncle Izia Rosenblum who was a most talented violinist, joined it; he used to take me to concerts. Later Izia and his 14-year-old son Liolik Rosenblum died in Dachau concentration camp.
And then I remember the horror of the ‘Great Action’. We were woken up at five in the morning. The Germans were driving on the streets announcing by megaphones, ‘Attention, attention! Everybody stay at home. Anybody who will appear on the streets will be shot!’ The Germans and the Lithuanian policemen started systematically taking people out of their homes and leading them to Democracy Square. It was so cold and so horrifying to stand there in the square. I was so afraid of the big dogs barking at us. We stood there from the early morning till evening, and eventually during the ‘selection’, we were sent to the right-hand line. Misha Kopelman, who was Mother’s former classmate, was now head of the Jewish police. When he saw us, he led our family to the left side in exchange for another family, which he moved to the right.
The people in the right-hand line spent the night in the location where the so-called ‘Small Ghetto’ had been before its liquidation. The next day they were led to the Ninth Fort and shot. Most of our relatives from Mother’s side perished in the ‘Great Action’. I remember the sorrow of my parents when they returned from Democracy Square; many people from our circle had disappeared.

My parents invited the Finkelshtein family, who did not have a place to live, to move into our flat. We now numbered eleven people in our room. A garden was allocated to all the tenants of our building; in our small plot my father grew tomatoes. This was the only source of vitamins in our meals. Since then I hate tomatoes. I noticed that the adult men surrounding me, including my father, would disappear in the evenings. I learnt later that they were digging a refuge ( ‘malina’) where we would hide at the next ‘action’.
Father’s old clients would come to see him to take legal advice. They tried to persuade my father to escape from the ghetto, but he refused to leave us. Gradually we had less and less food. I still remember how much I liked dishes made from potato peelings.
My pre-war governess Elena started to bring us food to the ghetto fence. Once she was caught by the German guards and warned that the next time she would be imprisoned. But she went on helping our family. At that time she worked as a housekeeper for two German officers; she lived in a small room in their apartment. It was agreed she would take me to live with her. The German guard was bribed. I clearly remember him turning his back on us while I slipped under the fence. A Lithuanian woman, who lived near the fence, used to lead smuggled children to their destination. It was she who took me to Elena.

From: Rescued Lithuanian Jewish Child