Tag #116665 - Interview #78774 (Fania Brantsovskaya)

We didn't observe Jewish traditions. We spoke Yiddish to one another. Shortly after the war the synagogue opened in Vilnius. We attended it, but not to pray. There was a sort of Jewish center there where Jewish survivors searched for information about their families. I found my friend through the synagogue. She lives in Israel, in Haifa. Almost right after Vilnius was liberated I received a letter from aunt Niusia, my uncle Meishke's wife. I was very happy to learn she had survived. I visited her in Moscow several times. Once I met a few girls from Taurag at a Komsomol gathering. I mentioned that my uncle Shimon had lived there before the war, the only one of my mother's brothers who managed to evacuate, and it turned out that Shimon had survived. He visited us with Shulamit, his daughter, the only one of his daughters who also survived. He and his daughter visited us in Vilnius to bid us farewell. Shimon couldn't bear to stay in the town after losing his wife and four daughters and they moved to Israel.