Helene Holzman — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Helene Holzman, a painter of German extraction in her forties, was married to the Jewish artist Max Holzman. From the 1930s, the couple and their two daughters, Marie and Margarete, were living in Kaunas. Max Holzman managed a printing house and a bookshop specializing in foreign language publications. In the first days of the German occupation, Max and his daughter, Marie, were arrested and murdered. This heavy blow did not break Helene’s spirit: through the whole occupation period, she did not stop caring for the persecuted, especially Jews, known and not known to her from before the war. Helene gave private lessons and the large part of her humble income, as well as Margarete’s small salary, went to buying food for Kaunas ghetto inhabitants. Their first concern was for Edwin Geist, a composer, and his young wife Lyda (née Bagrianski). Risking her life, Helene used every opportunity to supply them and Lyda’s parents with food and other necessities. Meantime, Edwin Geist was temporarily released from the ghetto on behalf of Helmut Rauka’s lover, as mentioned in Holzman’s diary. Rauka was the Nazi commandant of the mass murder operation against the Kaunas ghetto’s Jews on October 28, 1941, in the Ninth Fort. Edwin stayed with the Holzmans for some time until a room could be rented for him. In fall 1942, Lyda joined her husband outside the ghetto but soon Edwin Geist was arrested by the Gestapo and murdered. After loosing her husband, Lyda committed suicide.

In late fall of 1943, Helene and her daughter welcomed to their home a 10-year-old girl, Fruma Vitkin (later, Kučinskienė), whose parents and older brother were still in the ghetto. Fruma stayed with the Holzmans for several weeks, until another rescuer, Olga Dauguvietenė, took her in turn. Among other Jews who found temporary shelter with Helene and her daughter were Ilze Kaufmann, Rosa Stender and her little daughter Margita, Gerta Bagrianski and others. After the war, when it turned out that Fruma’s relatives had not survived, Helene adopted and raised her. In 1965, Helene and Margerete Holzman left Lithuania and settled in Germany. A year later, Helene visited Israel where she was warmly received by her numerous Jewish friends and acquaintances. In 1968, Helene Holzman died in a car accident. On February 2, 2005, Yad Vashem recognized Helene Holzman as Righteous Among the Nations.

From: Yad Vashem

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