Once in winter 1946 I invited Vladimir for lunch. He brought canned products and firewood. In that period of time it was hard to find supplies. When Father found out that Vladimir made all those presents, he put everything in the garbage can. I told my fiancé the way it was. He reacted calmly to that and invited me to a restaurant. Here he ordered all kinds of delicacies: caviar and ham. Since that time Father started turning out Vladimir, when he came over. Father went on a trip and I decided to have a talk with Mother, woman to woman, and told her about our love. Mother said that I would marry him only ‘over her dead body.’ Then I took my nightie and left home without anything. In spite of the fact that it was my apartment I left everything there, even my food cards, for my mother.
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Liza Lukinskaya
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There was a Soviet military unit not far from our house. My brother met three officers and invited them to come over to us. One of them, Colonel Vladimir Lukinskiy, a tall handsome man started courting me. I didn’t mind his courtship as I liked Vladimir very much. It wasn’t that I forgot about my husband whom I loved, just being young… Vladimir Lukinskiy was much younger than me. He was Russian, born in Leningrad in 1924. Vladimir came from a rich family. His mother Katerina was from a noble family. She raised her son in a wonderful way. Vladimir was well-read, educated, loved opera and classical music. I found him very interesting. While we were mere friends, my parents treated him very well. Gradually our relationship changed. We fell in love with each other and Vladimir proposed to me. All of a sudden Father opposed to that. He was flatly against my marriage to a non-Jew. He remembered Eduardas and was sorry for not letting me marry him, and again I was dating a non-Jew.
Soon after my parents arrived I went to my hometown, Siauliai, in order to get some documents in the archive as I didn’t have a birth certificate and school certificate. The first person I saw when getting off the bus was Eduardas Kudritskas – my friend from childhood and my calf love. He was happy to see me alive. We had a long talk. Eduardas saw me off and came to Vilnius a couple of times hoping that I would be with him. But it turned out to be quite different.
I kept friendly relations with Abbess Prontishke at first, after the war. The convent was threatened with closure due to the politics of the Soviet regime, in accordance with the struggle against religion [20]. As per request of the abbess I arranged for her an appointment with the plenipotentiary of the Council of Ministers for Religion. She came to Vilnius, stopped by at our place and met with that person. He treated the abbess with respect, but nothing could be changed. Soon the convent was broken up and closed down. The abbess left for her motherland and I never saw her again. I also saw Kutorgene. She worked as a doctor for a couple of years in Kaunas. She died in the mid-1950s.
I started looking for a job. My sister-in-law’s cousin Hana was a famous underground member and partisan, a member of the Communist Party. She recommended me to the secret department at the Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian SSR. The job was very serious. We received top-secret letters and orders and distributed them to different ministries and authorities. I wanted to go on with my education, at Vilnius University, but I didn’t manage to study as I was very busy at work. Being employed at a governmental institution I got good product cards – the best products available, even delicacies – while by common food cards [19] only insufficient products were given. In the postwar period life was hard and people starved. Soon I was given an apartment – a wonderful two-room apartment in the heart of Vilnius. I moved there with my brother and his wife. I sent an invitation to my parents as they wouldn’t have been able to return to Vilnius without that document. Soon they came and moved into my apartment. Shortly after that, Father found a job in the office of subsistence production.
My brother Abram had married his friend from Vilnius during the war and now he was living there. My brother’s wife was the daughter of the most famous tailor in Vilnius. My brother was seeing her before the war, but it happened so that they met again and got married in evacuation. My brother was drafted into the army and served in the 16th Lithuanian division [18]. Since he was an excellent accordion player, he joined the military orchestra right away. Right after the liberation of Vilnius a Lithuanian band was founded, where my brother played the grand piano. His wife was a singer and she worked with him. I went to see my brother in Vilnius. At that time they lived on the premises of the philharmonic society. At first, I stayed with them. We slept on the floor.
My parents and brother were in evacuation in Ural, in the settlement of Kosa, Komi-Permyak oblast [1500 km from Moscow]. In 1944 they came to Kharkov, where after the evacuation Grandmother Anna was living. I sent a letter to their Kharkov address – in Russian but with Lithuanian letters as I didn’t know the Russian alphabet. Having received my letter, Father was crying and laughing at the same time, walking to and fro in the room. He called Mother from work. She was working in a pharmacy. My parents wrote me a letter, to the address of the municipal council. There was no place for me to live in Kaunas and I stayed with my acquaintances. I found out that all of them were alive and healthy.
I decided to look for my kin. Those, who were seeking their relatives, sent letters to the municipal council of Kaunas. There I found a letter written by my father. He was hoping to find his brothers and thought that they would know something about me. My loved ones had no idea that I happened to be in Kaunas at the beginning of the war. They were looking for me in Siauliai and Vilnius, sending inquiries there. My name was Olkina at that time, but they were looking for a Liza Abramson.
During the liquidation of the ghetto all my relatives perished: my father’s siblings. The members of the underground organization told me that my husband, Ilia Olkin, perished in spring 1944. He died by accident. A partisan squad, where he served, was dislocated to a Belarusian village. At night, on the way back from the task, my husband said the password. The sentinel shot Ilia either because he didn’t hear the password, or because it had been changed. He was severely wounded and passed away by the morning… My premonition was true. I became a widow without a chance of knowing the happiness of married life in peaceful times. My mood was terrible and I thought that I wouldn’t get married again and keep the last name of Olkin.
It was the end of August 1944. The abbess kissed me and gave me some food and money for the road. I walked through the forest to the train station. On the way some cart caught up with me. I was lucky again – the cart was driven by my school teacher from Siauliai. He recognized me and took my things on the cart. I couldn’t get on it as it was full. Thus, we reached the train. There were no tickets. Only militaries could get on the train. Then some military said that I was his wife and I was let on the train. Thus, I got to Kaunas. There at once I found the underground members, who helped me leave the ghetto.
When the Fascists came to the farmstead, they were sympathetic when they heard my story and ranted about the Bolsheviks. One of them knocked on my window and offered me to run away with them, when the Soviet troops were approaching. I replied that I couldn’t leave with the army and would have to go my own way. In the morning the Soviet army entered the farmstead. I was the first to come up to them. I was overwhelmed with joy. I couldn’t believe myself: three years in the ghetto were behind me. I told the soldiers that I was a Jew from Kaunas and they broke joyful news to me: Kaunas had already been liberated. On that very day I went back to the convent. I wanted to say good-bye to the girls and the abbess, who saved me. I stayed there for a couple of days, and decided to go back home. I was looking forward to seeing Kaunas, finding out something about my parents and husband.
May and June had passed. It was early July 1944. The German army was retreating. A Fascist unit was positioned in the convent garden. I had been staying in my cell for several days. When the Soviet troops were approaching, the abbess had the girls go home as she feared repressions from Bolsheviks. I also was to go. I was dressed like a true Lithuanian peasant. Looking at me, the girls were crying and laughing at the same time, so unusual I looked. They came to love me during that period of time. We were given a cow. Thus, the three of us – a girl, me and a cow – went to her farmstead. The girl told her parents and neighbors that I was a Lithuanian teacher from Vilnius, escaping the Bolsheviks. However, one of her neighbors told her mother that I was most likely a Jew, but luckily he didn’t betray me.
In a while another Jewish woman was brought to the convent. I don’t remember her name, though I would like to find her now. Her parents and little brother were shot. That woman was baptized in the convent and took the veil. I always wondered at how desperately she was praying. It wasn’t clear to me how one could become an apostate. Nobody compelled me to pray in the convent; moreover nobody forced baptism on me.
I stayed in the convent until the arrival of the Soviet troops. I rarely left my cell. I started knitting to kill time. The girls brought me threads. Of course, it was sad to stay in almost all the time and I took walks in the convent garden. It was the season when the berries ripened: currant, strawberries. I enjoyed eating them straight from the bushes. Sometimes I went to the cathedral by the convent. I sat in the last pew so that the parishioners wouldn’t see me – people from local villages came to the cathedral – and I listened to the Catholic mass.
In the evening, when the girls came back from work, I was asleep. Early in the morning, the bell rang calling for prayer. One of the girls came up to me, kissed me on the cheek and calmly invited me for a prayer. I explained to her that the abbess allowed me not to pray today. After that nobody addressed the issue of praying. The abbess gathered all novices and told them that I was a Jew and would be in hiding there. The food would be brought into my cell and she strictly forbade everybody to say anything about me, even to their closest relatives.
They were waiting for me at the convent. The abbess, Mother Prontishke, was very affable with me and invited me to sit at the table at once. There were well-forgotten products on the table – I had even forgotten of their existence – bananas, oranges, apples, fried chicken and fish. The abbess and the priest were sitting at the table. They started asking me about life in the ghetto. I felt really drowsy as a result of fatigue and tension since my escape from the ghetto. I begged them pardon and said that I was really sleepy. The abbess took me to a room with three bunks. She tucked me into bed and said that I shouldn’t get up in the morning when the girls would be going to pray as I should rest as much as I wanted.
I got off in the town of Dotnuva [about 100 km from Vilnius], the place in the closest vicinity to the convent of Saint Katrina, where I was expected. I calmly went up to the policeman at the station and asked where I could call the convent from. He took me to the director of the train station and I called the convent. I was told to wait at the station and they sent a cart to pick me up. When it arrived, it turned out that they were supposed to go to another place before the convent. I was afraid to go with them as in that place the crew from the ghetto was working and I didn’t want to be recognized. I went to the convent on foot.
I saw a lady from my lyceum at the train station and tried to hide away, for her not to recognize me. I asked the man to buy me a train ticket. I didn’t want to attract attention by the booking office. I wasn’t frightened, on the contrary, for the first time in so many years I felt free. However, I was to be very disciplined and attentive. When I tried to get on the train, a Lithuanian guy started chatting me up. I was flirting with him, having decided that if I was of a somewhat suspicious appearance, he was beyond suspicion and it would be easier for me. I talked the guy into going in the freight car, not in the passenger car. There were fewer people and it was dark in the freight car, so it would be difficult to distinguish me. We had been talking for a long time and I fell asleep. Suddenly I woke up from words spoken in Yiddish. I was speaking Yiddish in my dream. The guy was looking at me agape and I burst into laughter and said that I was learning German and spoke it in my dream.
I saw the crew on their way back from work to the ghetto, and I hid for nobody to recognize me and call me. I managed to cross the bridge and came to the center of the city, where Kutorgene lived, near the Opera and Ballet theater. I went to her office, where the patients were received, and made an appointment. When it was my turn, I entered the office. Kutorgene recognized me immediately and took me to the living-room. Soon her consulting hours were over and she came to me. Kutorgene told me to sit at the table and we had lunch. Her son came and she introduced me to him, saying openly that I was a Jew from the ghetto. I understood that her son was aware of her anti-Fascist activity and thought that I shouldn’t be afraid of him. But Kutorgene didn’t tell her relative, who was seeing me off to the station and buying me the train ticket to the convent, that I was a Jew. She just told him to see me off, saying that I made up my mind to become a nun. On my way, the man was talking me into not going to the convent and staying in this world as I was so young! I kept silent.
Before leaving the ghetto I went to see my relatives –Uncle Abram and his wife, Aunt Liza and the rest. I said nothing of my intentions as it was dangerous. It was problematic to leave the ghetto at that time: police guards had been replaced by SS-security who couldn’t be bribed. I couldn’t leave with the team as the number of those who entered the ghetto had to be the same as those who left, otherwise the whole team would be shot. My escape was prepared beforehand. First of all, I was well dressed. The cobbler made me a good pair of shoes. I looked like a true Lithuanian, not like a harrassed ghetto woman. There were secret places in the fence made by the underground members, where barbed wire was cut and connected by pegs. It was done in an area far from the main gate, out of sight of the guards. That manhole wasn’t checked by the Fascists who thought that it was impossible to get through there as it was coming onto a street so overgrown with weeds that it was difficult to walk through. I buried my documents in a convenient place. One of the underground members, my husband’s friend, helped me walk through, he distracted the SS-guard, took him aside, while I parted the wire and crept though the hole and dashed to the impassable street. This happened one evening in late May 1944.
I was haunted by premonitions. No news was coming from Ilia. Besides, his friends from the underground paid more and more attention to me. At that time they knew that my husband had perished. I also felt it, but nobody told me about that. The underground members told me about the place on the free side, where I could go into hiding. They acted fast. They met a Lithuanian woman. Her last name was Kutorgene. She was a rather elderly lady, a doctor –ophthalmologist, who had her own practice in Kaunas. Kutorgene had already saved one Jewish girl. One of her patients was a Catholic priest, who helped her save people. That priest made arrangements in the convent to hide a Jewish lady. The only condition was for that woman to speak very good Lithuanian and not to look typically Jewish. I met all those requirements and underground members suggested that I should leave the ghetto. I met Kutorgene at a house, where I was supposed to come after my escape. At that time I wasn’t in the ghetto and I could come into the city while performing work in the service team.
The underground organization also reinforced its activity. Now people were taken out of the ghetto en masse. Security guards by the gate were bribed and many people were taken via the gate. The whole network was organized. Women were taken from the ghetto in a truck as if for work and they weren’t coming back. Of course, all that cost a lot of money as both Germans and policemen were to be bribed. Unfortunately, I should admit that Jewish policemen made a fortune on the sorrow of their fellow Jews. It was important to take people from the ghetto, but it wasn’t the most important thing. People, having left the ghetto, were to be provided with shelter. Underground members also took care of that.
Life was hard for me when my husband left, but I thought that he broke through the ghetto, would help me leave it so that we would meet in a partisan squad and never part again. The spring of 1944 was very hard. There were constant actions in ghetto. People were taken to executions more often. In April the Fascists carried out the most horrible actions against children. Within an hour they walked from house to house and took all the ghetto children, including infants. Everybody, who couldn’t find a shelter, perished.
In November 1943 my husband Ilia Olkin left the ghetto in a group of five people. The group had connections with Lithuanians. They were met and taken to Belarusian forests. My husband said good-bye to me and both of us hoped to see each other again. My husband asked his friends from the underground to make arrangements for me to leave the ghetto at the earliest convenience and take me to the place where I could wait for the Soviet Army. In a while the intermediary gave me a letter from Ilia. That man took people to Belarus. He came back for another group.
One of the tasks of the underground was to save young people and children. The latter were stealthily taken from the ghetto to an orphanage, to Estonians, who presented them as their own children. It was so to say a global task, viz. not to let the fascists fulfill Hitler’s order on the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish question’ [17] that is the extermination of Jews as a people. It was obvious that the underground members decided not to fight within the ghetto as it led to irrevocable losses and deaths of innocent ghetto dwellers, who had nothing to do with the underground organization. It was decided to arrange escapes for as many people from the ghetto as possible.
By the end of 1942 my husband had become an active member of an underground organization, acting in the Kaunas ghetto. It was a strong and large organization, which had infiltrated all the authorities of the ghetto, including the Jewish police. They warned people of the coming actions so that as many Jews as possible could be saved. My husband also was on assignments of the underground. He got weapons and brought them into the ghetto. I don’t know whether the people from the underground were involved in the organization of the insurrection in our ghetto, but they had been provided with weapons by 1944.
I vaguely remember the fall holidays. When we were living in the old apartment by the synagogue, there was a sukkah made by the neighbors in our yard and we also went there. I remember the holiday of Simchat Torah when Jews would joyfully carry the Torah scroll. My brother and I were able to watch those holidays, when we were living by the synagogue, but those holidays weren’t celebrated at our place.
For Purim my mother always baked very tasty hamantashen with curds. On those days Jews brought presents to each other – shelakhmones. Trays with desserts were brought to us from Mother’s friends and she sent presents in her turn. A chanukkiyah was lit at home on Chanukkah. It was put in the window in accordance with the traditions. Potato fritters were also made. There was a feast in the evening.
There were all traditional products on the table: eggs, potatoes, some bitter herbs etc. Of course the table was lavishly laid with festive dishes, cooked by my mother. She cooked delicious kneydlakh made of onion, fried with chicken and goose fat, eggs, matzah flour and chicken broth, boiled in chicken broth. There was always gefilte fish, chicken stew and all kinds of tsimes [10]. Mother cooked great imberlakh – a Jewish dish, made of carrots and ginger, boiled with sugar before thickening, put in layers on the board and cut in different shapes. Mother also baked cake from beet with nuts, a scrumptious sponge cake from matzah flour. Well in advance Father made wine from hops, honey and raisins. Mother also made teyglakh – honey and sugar boiled in syrup with ginger and a pinch of lemon acid, made in different shapes: rolls and spirals.
We celebrated Jewish holidays at home. I remember Pesach best of all. The house was prepared for the occasion well in advance: cleaning, dusting, polishing, dressing the windows with beautiful curtains, putting a beautiful table-cloth on the table. The dishes were well taken care of. There was a special set of Pascal dishes, stored in a certain cupboard. The rest of the dishes were given to some Jews to make them kosher: they soaked them in some tub and then deterged them with sand. Matzah was brought from the synagogue in a large hamper covered with a cloth. No special rites in connection with the banishment of chametz were conducted in our house. I asked Father the four traditional questions, as I was the youngest in the family, during the first seder.