Abukauskas
Before the war my parents lived in a small town, Semelishki near Kaunas. When the Germans entered Semelishki, where the majority of the population was Jewish, they and their Lithuanian collaborates killed every Jew they could find. My father, Shlomo Glazman, saw his parents and eldest brother Meir being shot. Later on, the whole town was set alight by the Lithuanians.
My parents, together with my maternal grandparents, fled to the forest. My mother, Katia (Kune) Glazman, née Kranik, was pregnant. I was born in a bunker in the winter of 1941/42; I actually don’t know the exact data of my birth.
A childless Polish-Lithuanian couple, Urshulya and Juozas Abukauskas, agreed to take care of me. Abukauskas baptized me and I received a false birth certificate in the name of Lalia Abukauskaite. After my grandparents died in hiding, my parents joined the detachment and fought from February 1942 till the liberation.
In 1945 my parents collected me from my adoptive mother and father, whom I loved deeply. I was scared in my biological parents’ house. These ‘strangers’ had separated me from my beloved Urshulya and Juozas and forced me to live in a house where people talked a strange language. I could not eat and cried all the time, until Urshulya came to spend some time with our family, and eventually I became used to my biological parents.
In 1959 I entered the Kaunas Polytechnic Institute; I studied in the civil engineering faculty together with Ilana Kamber, Mika Karnovskaya, Sara Levin, Lyusya Borstaite and Aaron Frank. Only now do I know that all of them were also hidden children of the Kaunas Ghetto; we have never discussed this issue, neither with my schoolmates nor with my husband.
In 1972 after a long struggle against the Soviet authorities, which involved Alik’s travelling to Moscow to demand visas, we immigrated to Israel. I maintained contact with Urshulya’s family until our immigration in 1972; I always felt Urshulya was my mother and called her ‘Mochute’ – Mummy.
In Israel I worked as a civil engineer in the Ministry of Transport. I was actively involved in almost all the bridge and road construction projects in Israel for the last three decades. Alik was an extraordinary person: talented, with an excellent memory and broad knowledge – really a walking encyclopaedia. He was a natural leader, always surrounded by a lot of friends. But some self-destructive power caused difficulties and led him to failures in his professional and family life. In 1976 we divorced.
Our son served in the Israeli Air Force. Now he works in Israel in a high-tech firm. Alik married for a second time, but died from cancer when he was only 50 years old. Mariesh’s family supports his wife and twin children.
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