I worked as a teacher before 1959, when I entered the Faculty of Cybernetics for those who had higher education of Moscow Polytechnic College. After getting my degree in cybernetics I went to work at a computer company, which had opened in Lithuania. I went successfully in this company for almost 32 years till 1992. I wrote a candidate degree [Soviet/Russian doctorate degrees] [24] thesis, but I didn’t want to defend it. I thought its subject had become outdated while I was working on it, and I decided against defending it for the sake of an increase of my salary and obtaining the candidate’s degree.
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Tobijas Jafetas
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I got a [mandatory] job assignment [23] to Taurage [Lithuania, 200 km from Vilnius], where I worked for two years. I taught physics, astronomy and mathematic in a secondary school. In Taurage I made friends with a girl. She had finished the same college and was an English teacher in my school. I had never looked at her, when we were at college, but at that school, far from home, we became friends and I proposed to her. Yelena Zagorstene, whom I chose, was two years younger than me. She was born in Alytus [Lithuania, 100 km from Vilnius]. During the war Yelena was in the occupation, and after the war she moved to Vilnius with her parents. Her parents and Masha were against our marriage due to the national issue. We were given six months for the probation period. Both sides hoped that we would find different attachments within this time. However, Yelena and I remained faithful to one another. On 20th June 1955, when the academic year was over, we registered our marriage in the district registration office in Taurage. My wife went to take an advanced training course in Vilnius almost immediately after this event, and I followed her after my assignment term was over.
I successfully passed my entrance exams to the Chemical Faculty. However, Buchas, the rector of Vilnius University, who came from Kaunas and knew my father very well, said that sons from bourgeois families were not to study at the university, and I was not admitted there. Anna’s friend helped me. She was married to the pro-rector of the Teachers’ Training College, and I was admitted to the Faculty of Physics and Mathematic. I studied well. I was well-loved at home. Masha’s family treated me like their son. I wasn’t an active Komsomol member, but I liked amateur performance clubs. I was involved in the amateur theater performances and sang in the folk choir. This choir toured all over Lithuania on plain trucks. I had many Lithuanian friends and never felt an outcast like I did in the ghetto. When in the early 1950s all newspapers trumpeted about cosmopolitan Jews [see campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’] [22], this anti-Semitic campaign also affected me. I was excluded from the Komsomol, not for being Jewish, but for having a bourgeois origin. I was a success with my studies and finished the college with the highest grades. I wanted to attend post-graduate studies, but I wasn’t admitted there, without any explanation. I was told I was to work off whatever money the state had spent on my education.
In fall I went to the 2nd grade of gymnasium. After the war Lithuania maintained its prewar educational system: a four-year elementary school and eight-year gymnasium course. I didn’t feel quite comfortable, being overage. In summer I studied individually and passed exams for the 3rd grade, and then I could go to the 4th grade. I also took the course for the 7th and 8th grade at university. I was good at studying. I also joined the Komsomol, and in 1949 I finished school and obtained a very good certificate.
In the summer of 1947 I went on vacation to Grandmother Genia Shustoff in Perm. This was the first and the last time I saw her. Grandmother was a traditional patriarchal Jewish woman. She wore a kerchief, followed the kashrut and celebrated Sabbath. She always invited poor women who couldn’t afford to celebrate Sabbath to her meal. This was the first time in my life that I celebrated Sabbath according to the rules. I never saw Grandmother again. She died in 1953.
Aunt Masha and Uncle Iosif treated me as if I was their own son. They were willing to adopt me, but I didn’t support this idea. My mother’s death caused me a lot of pain. I wanted to keep the name I was born with, and besides, I was hoping that my father would find me. My dear ones understood my feelings and remained my closest people till their very last days; they died in the late 1980s. My cousin Anna has also passed away. I saw Frania, my rescuer, just a few times after the war. She lived in Kaunas and died in 1993. Yad Vashem [20] awarded Frania the title of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ [21].
We also left home and were hiding in St. Jacob Cathedral. Many other residents found shelter behind its thick walls. On 13th July the cannonade grew quieter. We came out of the cathedral. There was a tank and a dead Soviet soldier on it across the street from the cathedral. There was a glow in the square where wooden storages were located. There was a field kitchen installed here, and people were given soldier’s boiled cereal. We ate our ration and the dish tasted delicious. We went home. The windows were broken, and there was ash from the fireplace all around the place. We cleaned the room and placed carton sheets in the window frames. The sense of freedom and that I could walk in the streets without restrictions were new to me. Aunt Masha told me off saying it was too soon to walk in the streets. Gradually Jews from ghettos and camps started returning to Vilnius. I went to the railway station every day, hoping to meet Mama there. Some people returned from Kaunas. Mama was not there. Some time later one man told me that Mama gave her jewelry to a guard at the gate for letting her out, but when she went through the gate, this rascal shot her. I was alone and knew nothing about my father. When Kaunas was liberated, my aunt and I went there. Our house was robbed, and I was scared to be there. Besides, the house was nationalized, and I had no right to stay there. I found the bust of Mercury among the dust and dirt. It was in my father’s room watching the chaos and devastation inertly. I took the bust and it has always been with me ever since.
In Vilnius we went to Aunt Masha’s apartment on 2, Kashtonu Street. Uncle Iosif was not in Vilnius. He was working on a farm. Anna went to the province where she was a Lithuanian teacher. Being half-Jewish, it was easier for her to keep her origin a secret. Katrina lived with my aunt Masha. I stayed with them and had to be very quiet and careful. This was a shared [communal] apartment [19], and another room was occupied by two young men. One was a student, and the other one was a policeman. Aunt Katrina told me that this policeman drank a lot one night and sitting in the kitchen told her that once he took part in a terrible thing, which was shooting of Jews. He confessed and felt very sorry. He told Aunt Katrina that this was a terrible thing to see. Aunt Katrina was scared of him. She never left her room and told me to stay inside. In June this policeman had a wedding party, and there were policemen and Gestapo officers in the apartment. Masha and I stayed in our room and felt more dead than alive. Fortunately, nothing happened to us. In late June one could tell that the front was nearing Vilnius. There were severe bombings. Some time around 10th July we saw fascists running away. Their dormitory was near our house. The policeman and the student, our neighbors, also disappeared.
Two women were waiting for me. One was my cousin sister Anna Katinskaite, Aunt Masha’s daughter, and Katrina Katinskaite, Masha’s husband Iosif’s sister. Katrina was Lithuanian and Anna was semi-Lithuanian. They were dressed like Christian women, wore crosses around their necks and the German authorities had no suspicions about them. They came to Vilnius from Kaunas to help me. They had documents for me issued by a pastor they knew. The documents were issued for Yonas Vaitkavichus. Only now I understand how thorough my beloved Mama’s preparations were. Katrina, Anna and I went to Frania’s place where we stayed overnight. They washed me, shaved my dark curly hair and told me to pretend I was mute and answer no questions. In the morning we took a train to Vilnius. On our way a policemen addressed me, but I pretended I couldn’t hear anything. I had no fear. Quite on the opposite, I found it an interesting adventure. It was the first time in three years I was out of the ghetto. I tried to have no concerns about Mama, hoping that she would be out of the ghetto soon.
In late April 1944 I went to work as usual. All of a sudden I felt something was wrong. I could hear screams and shooting from the outside. I rushed to my rabbits and took shelter in their cage in the attic. This happened to be the so-called ‘children’s action.’ They exterminated children of the ghetto that day. I stayed in the cage. On that day a tragedy happened in our house. The fascists captured Ghettele, a two-year-old girl, our favorite. Her mother was out of her mind and the fascists killed her in the yard. When Mama returned from work, she told me that I had to leave the ghetto since one could no longer stay in the ghetto. She had discussed this with some people and had everything prepared for my escape. In the evening Mama washed my clothes. In the morning she took my clothes to work with her. About two days later Mama told me to be at her factory at 12. She explained how I was to find her since I had never left the ghetto before and didn’t know the neighborhood where she worked. My first challenge was to get over the fence. I managed it all right. The policemen were used to my presence at the gate, but I didn’t use the gate. When there was nobody around, I pulled the lower wire using my leg, and then did the same with the upper wire with my hand, and got to the other side of the fence. Then it took me almost no time to find the factory. Two Jewish workers were waiting for me at the entrance to the factory. They hid me in the boiler room. This was where I saw Mama for the last time. She came to say goodbye to me. She promised that she would also leave the ghetto soon and we would reunite. I said goodbye to her and it never occurred to me that this would be the last time I saw her. Some time later the same workers helped me out of the factory. I still cannot understand, and there is nobody I can ask about it, why my cousin brother Lev Frenkel was not with me. He, his father Lazar Frenkel, my mother and the rest of the Yatkunskiy family perished during the elimination of the ghetto. I was the only survivor in the family.
In 1943 we started being aware of the underground organization. I don’t know whether my mother knew any underground activists, she never mentioned it. There were flyers describing the victorious advance of the Soviet army at all fronts and appealing to fight against fascists. We were waiting for the news about the situation at the front, hoping to be liberated soon.
I started talking Yiddish here in the ghetto. I only talked Hebrew and German before, but we thought it bad to speak German in the ghetto. In 1943 I turned 13. A few weeks before the date, Mama found an old Jewish man to prepare me for my bar mitzvah. He taught me how to put on the tefillin, and a few prayers. Mama also had her preparations, saved food and even arranged a dinner in honor of my coming of age. My friends, Uncle Lazar and Lev came to this dinner. There was our distant relative Yatkunskiy, the editor of the Kaunas Jewish newspaper, his wife and two sons in the ghetto. We didn’t see them often. We worked during the day, and there was a curfew in the evening. We always feared actions. Fascists undertook them spontaneously, slightly changing their requirements. They either wanted to capture 500 men or 200 women. They pretended to be taking people to work, but then they killed them. Though I knew Jewish prayers, I didn’t pray according to the rules. I always prayed in my own words. I had God in my heart and needed no minyan to pray.
I had friends and played with them. We made a ball from cloth and played football. We also organized amateur theatrical performances and the characters were fascists, policemen, inmates of the ghetto surrounding us. Our favorite game was with buttons. We threw them in a special way against the wall and then we watched where they fell – our gain depended on that. I practiced throwing buttons pointedly and won the prize in a game. The prize was a nice gray rabbit. We made a cage under the roof in our house. Later somebody brought a female rabbit and soon we had several rabbits. Picking grass and giving the rabbits food and water was a lot of fun. Rabbits multiply rapidly, and they made a big addition to our food ration. My friend or I never slaughtered rabbits or even looked at how adults picked a rabbit to kill. We loved them well, but we didn’t turn down rabbit meat.
So at that time I took that life for granted, being the ten-year-old boy that I was. I had to do some work and I became a courier. I did various errands for the policemen on guard at the gate. I was a courier, a messenger and a carrier. The gate was near our house, and I spent almost all of my time in our yard. Our main care was to get some food. Mama received 700 grams and I received 70 grams of sodden sawdust bread. We also received some cereal, peas and rosefinch by cards. The rations were so small that it was hard to put together daily rations, and so we received these food portions once a week or even once in a few weeks. However, we were not to choose, and we were very happy to have what we were given. Mama always tried to bring some food from the town, however dangerous it was. The policemen at the gate could either take away the food or even beat those who violated the rules. Anyway, Mama never got caught, maybe because she never had much food with her. Frania kept almost all of our best belongings and valuable things. She brought food to Mama’s work place and supported us well in this manner. She also brought food to her favorite Lev and Uncle Lazar. We didn’t see them often. We had our hands full in the ghetto. I made a vegetable garden in our yard. I took care of the vegetables growing and enjoyed this work. The vegetables were a valuable addition to our ration.
During my three lives in ghettos I saw many deaths, and death was a mandatory element of our life, and we didn’t think there was something special about it. When you don’t know a different life, and in the ghetto I soon forgot my happy prewar life, then you think there can be no other life and take what happens for granted. At least, this was what many other guys and I thought. We actually knew no other life and it wasn’t until many years later that we could evaluate our life and realize the horror of our existence.
Our life in the ghetto was regulated by a number of orders. There was a German commandatura in the ghetto. It was a fenced tiny and tidy house with 10-15 people in it. Jewish policemen watched the order and formed the guard service. The Judenrat [18], with many honorable Jews and Jewish policemen elected as its members, was responsible for compliance with orders. Actually, the Judenrat took responsibility of many parts of life in the ghetto. There was an employment department, which was to provide certain numbers of employees at the German commandment request. It also had an accommodation unit, responsible for accommodations and also the health and sanitary department. There was also a hospital in the ghetto, but nobody wanted to go there. The fascists sent those who had severe health problems to be shot. In late 1941 there were rumors spread that there were many contagious patients in the hospital. The fascists encircled it and burnt everybody inside: doctors, patients and visitors. I don’t remember whether they opened another hospital afterward. There was also a funeral crew in the ghetto. There was a wagon pulled by a miserable horse, riding along the street and picking all deceased or killed inmates. They were buried in the Jewish cemetery in the ghetto. If they knew the name of the deceased, the Judenrat even installed a gravestone with the name of this person. Often, when there were many dead people, particularly those killed during an action, they were buried in a common grave.
After this action many apartments and houses became vacant, and we moved into the third house from the gate to the ghetto, on Glinius Street. It was a two-storied wooden house with two apartments on the first floor and two apartments on the second floor. We shared our apartment with two other families. One of the families, the family of a Jewish policeman, had a girl, born illegally in late fall. She was given the name of Ghettele, after the place where she was born. She was born illegally, since childbirth was forbidden in the ghetto.
In fall the first mass action took place. During such actions fascists killed those, who were of no use to the Reich. In early fall all inmates were ordered to gather outside for sorting out. In the following few days the fascists killed ten thousand inmates. All doomed inmates were taken to the old fortress where they were killed. The room where we lived was near Linkovos Street that led to the fortress. Jews were marching along this street and I’ll always remember this doomsday. We were lucky to escape this action.
At first there were two ghettos in Kaunas, separated by a street. There was a passage bridge across the street. The street didn’t belong to the ghetto, and the inmates weren’t allowed to walk on the street. The ghetto was fenced with two rows of barbed wire. We had our room in the larger ghetto. All inmates who could go to work had to work. Mama worked at the stocking factory in the town. She went to work there every day and came back in the evening. Children of my age also were to go to work. Fascists had everything planned. Every person had to make his or her own contribution into the Reich, or had to be exterminated. There were no general education schools in the ghetto, but there was a vocational school where I studied the vocation of a mechanic for some time. However, I never got a chance to practice what I had learned.
Mama was home. She hadn’t left the house since the first day of the occupation, when Jewish pogroms began. She was crying and kissing me. Then she heated some water, washed me and burned my clothes. I wasn’t only dirty and exhausted, but also had flees. So our life in occupied Kaunas began. Mama and I stayed in the house. Frania, my cousin brother’s governess, brought us food and told us about what was going on in the town. Soon the order for Jews to move into the ghetto in the suburb of Kaunas, a small village on the Volia River, was issued. They were to move there within one month: from 15th July to 15th August. The non-Jewish residents of this area were to exchange apartments with the Jews living in the town. So, this relocation to the ghetto in Kaunas was well prepared and organized, which was different from other towns. The Jews who had nice houses in Kaunas managed to find nicer apartments in Viliampole. We didn’t take the effort of looking for a nicer apartment, and only received one room in Viliampole. We took everything we could carry, and Mama had money and jewelry, whatever was left from what Frania had traded for food.
Ten days passed like this, and I almost lost hope to see Mama. On the 11th day my Lithuanian friends who were in the pioneer camp with me, came to the building where we were working. They said Lithuanian children were to go to Kaunas on the following day and suggested that I went with them. I knew this was the only hope for me to get home. I left work with them and slept in their quarters. On the following day I boarded the bus with them. Nobody asked me about my typical Jewish appearance or my name. I arrived in Kaunas on that same day.
The Jewish children were separated from the others and taken to the synagogue, a small red brick house. There were already local Jews in the synagogue. They were old men, old women and children. I didn’t see any young man. Perhaps, they were no longer in the town, or they had been separated during the first action. Fascists used to kill younger men immediately to demonstrate their beastly character and make people fear them. The synagogue was guarded, and nobody was allowed to go outside. We were given no food or water. On the following day all inmates were directed to a camp located in a mansion. There were two buildings: a kitchen and housekeeping facilities. We were taken to one structure where we had to sit on the floor. In the morning we were given some potatoes and sauerkraut and had to go to work. We were to clean up the building that formerly belonged to the Soviet military. We could find pressed cereals in packages, and we ate them as they were. In the evening we were given some miserable dinner. We slept on the floor so close to one another that when one wanted to turn, the whole row had to turn simultaneously. There was no toilet or sink, and we went to the toilet in the yard.
,
1941
See text in interview
Before one o’clock in the afternoon we’d covered 16 kilometers along the coastline. At that point younger children boarded buses and moved to Russia. Fortunately, they managed to rescue these young children. They probably didn’t have more buses. Older children had some dried fish and sauerkraut. I was hungry, and this food, to which I was unaccustomed, seemed to taste delicious. We didn’t walk long – some time later a motorcycle with three fascists, two on the seats and one in a sidecar, caught up with us. They were the first Germans I saw. They just told our leader to turn the column backwards. We turned and headed back to Palanga. We never saw these officers again. We were taken to a house. The Lithuanians, who had agreed to serve the Germans, took command. I managed to step aside into the bushes where I took off my precious pioneer necktie and threw it into the bushes. However, I couldn’t part with my clip. I put it into my pocket.
,
1941
See text in interview
When the school year was over I went to the first pioneer camp in my life, in Palanga, a few kilometers from the border. How happy I was! I had a pioneer necktie clasped together with a nice metal clip, and we had pioneer meetings and lined up near the pioneer fire. We swam in the sea and played volleyball. Our life in the camp lasted just one week. At 4am on 22nd June 1941 we woke up from the explosion of bombs. At first we decided these were trainings, which were quite frequent at the time, but this happened to be a bombing and one cannon shell hit our camp. The fire started, and we formed a column and it headed to the sea. We moved in the direction of Latvia, and fear and bombs were pushing us forward. We even saw a sea battle. Fascist planes flew over the column dropping bombs several times.
,
1941
See text in interview
I spent the summer of 1940 in Kaunas, and in the fall I went to the Soviet school, which was a former Jewish religious school. Our gymnasium was closed and its students went to different schools. Deportations of wealthier people began. They didn’t care whether they were Jewish or non-Jewish. Zionist and Jewish activists suffered from repressions a lot. Mama often told us how good it was that Papa wasn’t in Lithuania, or he would have been deported for sure. We, children, didn’t know Russian, and had our school classes in Yiddish. We had a pioneer [see All-Union pioneer organization] [16] and Komsomol [17] organization, meetings and formations. I liked this new way of life. There was some time to go before I could become a pioneer, but I was eager to join this organization. In May 1941 Uncle Alexandr and his wife were deported. Mama was crying and said that this was a stupid mistake. He was neither wealthy, nor a Zionist. Most likely, they were hunting for my father, and Uncle Alexandr suffered from this.
We arrived in Kaunas in late August 1939, and on 1st September fascists occupied Poland [see Invasion of Poland] [15]: World War II began. Jews from the occupied areas were invading Lithuania. They were telling horrible things about fascist atrocities, but nobody thought that mass murder would come onto stage. I can’t understand why Mama stayed behind rather than leaving with us. She was still hoping to sell the house profitably. I went to my former gymnasium, met with my friends and everything went well for me. Mama kept saying that after the academic year was over we would go to my father in London. This was not to be. In June 1940, when the academic year was over, the Soviet forces invaded Lithuania, and Lithuania was annexed to the new Soviet Russia. We failed to move to the West. Most likely, Mama didn’t even try to obtain the permission fearing the Soviet authorities. Many years later, when I grew up, I tried to recall and analyze Mama’s feelings, when she realized she was not going to see her husband and older son for quite a while. It never occurred to anyone that this was for good. Maybe, she was hoping that everything would go well and one day we would all be together. At least, this was what she kept telling me. She had to get a job and went to work as an accountant assistant in an office. Her fluent Russian helped her to get a job.
,
1940
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We left in a car and later we took a train to Berlin. My cousin sister Anna Kapiskene, Aunt Masha’s daughter, went with us. Anna, born in 1920, was a quite a grown-up young lady by then. In England my father took my brother and me to the college in Brighton on the southern coast, near the English Channel between England and Europe. Then he went to a resort in France. He suffered from stomach ulcer. Mama and Anna decided to travel in England and then join my father in France. My brother and I spent six weeks in college. It was a Jewish educational institution. There were many Jews living in Brighton. We lived in bedrooms, had meals in the canteen and read books in the library. We were bored, I was missing my parents and my brother was trying to entertain me. On holidays we visited Esther, my father’s distant relative. She had a traditional Jewish home, and there was gefilte fish, tsimes and other dishes on the Saturday table. This food was very much like my mother would have made it. The international situation in Europe was aggravating. Mama decided she had to take her niece to her parents in Lithuania. Besides, she had more extensive plans to sell the houses in Kaunas and ultimately move to the West. I don’t know whether Mama discussed this with Father or she took this decision by herself, but I really don’t know why she decided to leave my older brother in England. One way or another, six weeks after we came to this college Mama came to pick me from there. Mama, Anna and I left.
I remember the last celebration in Kaunas. It was my brother Azriel’s bar mitzvah. An old Jew visited our house to teach my brother the prayers and how to put on the tefillin. On the day of his coming of age our relatives and close friends gathered in our house. There was a big ball. They already knew about my father’s decision to leave Lithuania and this was a kind of a farewell party with the rest of the family. When the academic year came to an end – my brother finished the gymnasium and I finished the fourth grade – we moved to London.
My parents’ friends were wealthy merchants, lawyers and doctors. They were the Jewish elite of Kaunas. My parents often arranged receptions and went to see their friends. My father had Lithuanian, Polish and Russian business partners. My father taught me to respect other nations. His secretary Unger was German. In 1939, when Hitler appealed to all Germans to repatriate, he bid farewell to my father and left. I don’t know if this was the last drop in my father’s cup of patience, or if he already knew how Hitler treated Jews, but he insisted that our family moved to England where Mania’s family lived. Many Lithuanians had big hopes for the Soviet regime and looked forward to its establishment, but my parents were well aware of the Soviet Russia in the early 1920s and expected no good from them.
There were many Jewish organizations in Kaunas. I liked performances of the Jewish theater where we went with my class. I liked music and liked listening to the records my father played on the record player. I started learning to play the piano, when I was about five years old. We had a piano delivered from Germany. I didn’t like playing it but preferred playing with my friends and Lev. I played table tennis for some time. There were Jewish organizations in Lithuania and in Kaunas. I didn’t like Betar [12] members, who I thought were too aggressive. Maccabi [13] and Hashomer Hatzair [14] were closer to me. There was another organization in Kaunas, which collected money to purchase land in Palestine, and for the construction of kibbutz communities and establishment of the Jewish state. There was a nice money box, where Mama and Papa always dropped change, in our living room. Every week a representative of this organization visited us. We opened the ‘cannon’ and he collected the money.