Sergei Korablikov — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Segei Korablikov at a Righteous Among the Nations event 2019

My father, Makar, and my mother, Basia, met in Vilna before the war. My father was not Jewish, so my mother’s family forbade her from seeing him. He married my mother’s friend, Bluma Trosky, who was also Jewish, and they had a child. By then the war had already begun, and Bluma hid with her son, Ilya, in the home of her mother-in-law, my father’s mother (later my grandmother).

One day, the Germans began an “aktion” against Jews in the area, leading them in a convoy toward the forests to execute them. Bluma looked out of the window and saw her father and mother walking together in the convoy. She could not bear the pain, and, entrusting her son to her mother-in-law, joined her parents and never returned.

During that difficult and painful period, my father and mother fell in love, and that is how I came to be. I was born in 1942 in the Vilna Ghetto. That same year, shortly before my birth, the authorities issued an order forbidding the birth of children in the ghetto, but my mother risked her life and secretly gave birth to me in the attic of the Jewish hospital. I remained in hiding there for several months, while my mother went to work and returned every few hours to nurse me.

My father was a non-Jewish Russian and therefore did not live in the ghetto. He was a partisan in an anti-fascist movement and was wanted by the Nazi authorities; hence he remained in hiding all the time. Occasionally he would wear a yellow badge and enter the ghetto to visit us, serving as a liaison between us and the outside world. If the Nazis had discovered that my mother had given birth to me in the ghetto, they would have killed us both, so I had to be smuggled out.

When I was a few months old, I was smuggled out of the ghetto by my father and mother with the help of others. In the dead of night, I was lowered from the attic window of the hospital in a basket tied to a rope. It was very dangerous, and everyone would have been killed if caught. I was hidden by my father’s sister, my aunt Patina Korablikov Chernitsov, who registered me as her son. In order not to arouse suspicion among the neighbors, she married a friend who collaborated with us (Pavel Chernitsov) and even dressed as a pregnant woman, so they appeared as a married couple with a newborn child.

My father later smuggled my mother out of the ghetto, and she joined the partisans. They fought the Nazis for months, until my mother fell in battle near Lake Naroch in September 1943, while my father was captured by the Gestapo and executed after enduring unimaginable torture.

Meanwhile, I grew up with my aunt and grandmother, together with my half-brother, knowing nothing about my parents. It was a very dangerous time, when one had to avoid even a single wrong step. Neighbors were suspicious and sometimes sent denunciation letters to the authorities accusing us of hiding a Jew in the neighborhood. Occasionally, the Nazis or the police came looking for the hidden Jew. One of our young neighbors, a 15-year-old boy named George, would run to warn us whenever he heard the police approaching. One day, when I was about a year old, he was caught before he could reach us.

The police discovered he had a radio on him (at that time, keeping any means of communication was forbidden to prevent people from finding out what was happening) and beat him so severely that he was left crippled. My grandmother only heard the police when they were already at our door, and I was immediately thrown out of the window into the potato garden behind the house. Miraculously, we survived, and I was not found. This is how we lived — in daily danger. My aunt and grandmother were later recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, as they were not Jewish yet risked their lives to save me.

I lived with my aunt as a Russian under a false identity until the age of ten, when she died of leukemia. The war was already over, but I still knew nothing about my true origins. Over the years, Jewish uncles — relatives of my mother — came to visit us, but since we lived on the periphery, far from the city center, I did not understand what the word “Jew” meant, nor did I ask myself why their names were different from mine (at that time I bore my father’s surname — Korablikov). After “my second mother” passed away, my grandmother told me the story of my life, but I did not truly understand it in depth. Since my aunt had died and there was no one to raise me and my brother, we were enrolled in a military boarding school for sons of soldiers and celebrities (my father was a soldier — a famous partisan).

When I was 14, a friend of my mother came to visit me and gave me a picture of her. That was the first time I saw my mother’s face. At that time, I watched several films about the Holocaust, and I began to connect with and identify as Jewish. It became important to me to change my identity and become a Jew, and I did so.

At the age of 20, after finishing military boarding school, I decided not to join the army but to study medicine. I felt I had to pursue something serious, important, a life-saving profession. I studied at an academy in Leningrad, Russia, where I also met my wife and married. We returned to Lithuania, where I worked as a doctor at the General Hospital and advanced to the position of deputy director, also serving as the medical representative in the Lithuanian government.

At one point, I felt I needed a change and asked to be transferred abroad. I was sent to Yemen, where I worked for about three years. Unlike Lithuania, in winter the lowest temperature was 24°C, while in summer it reached 55°C. During my stay in Yemen, in 1982, many wounded Palestinians from Lebanon were brought to the hospital. The hospital staff did not know I was Jewish (my surname was my father’s — Korablikov). One day, a wounded Palestinian fighter suddenly grabbed my throat and shouted, “What is a Jew doing here?!” I did not know how he discovered I was Jewish — he simply felt it. The staff helped save me from him, but I had to report the incident to the embassy. There I was told that I was in great danger, so my contract in Yemen was terminated and I returned to Vilna.

In 1989, a conference of Jewish doctors was held in Lithuania, and I received an invitation to visit Israel. There I discovered many relatives. Something about the country fascinated me. At Kibbutz Ma’abarot, for example, I saw a well-known archaeologist in the dining room washing his tools in the sink together with the cutlery, as if they were just spoons. I was struck by the simplicity and the democracy of the country. When I visited the Western Wall, I knew I wanted to make aliyah.

When I returned to Vilna, I told this to my wife and children. We decided that before taking such a major step, we would pause and think it over. I applied for another foreign posting and was transferred to India. By then, my two children, Vladimir and Tammuz, had been born. Tammuz was only a few months old, so he and my wife traveled with me, while my son Vladimir remained in Lithuania to study. After a few months, Vladimir asked us to return; he no longer wanted to stay in Lithuania. I realized the time had come.

We made aliyah to Israel in 1991. Since then, I have worked as a doctor in the Jordan Valley kibbutzim and at the Italian Hospital in Nazareth. I also write poetry in Russian and have published three books of poetry. I am recognized as a writer by the Russian Writers’ Union.

About ten years ago, I applied to renew my Lithuanian citizenship. It is important to me to influence history, to preserve the connection between Lithuanians and Jews, and to ensure that young Lithuanians learn about Jews so that the Nazi mindset never returns — that such a thing will never happen again.

By Sergei Korablikov