Saturday, July 8^th, 1944--Day of Miracles

Saturday, July 8, was a critical day. I noticed in mid-morning, through a window of my lab which overlooked the gates of the ghetto, some hurrying messengers going back and forth. I went down to inquire what it was about and found out there were rumours that this was the last day of the ghetto. In minutes the news spread throughout the factory where about one thousand Jews were working and in no time the excitement was great. It was feared that the Jews would be taken into the forest ten kilometers away and that all of them would be shot. It was a very hot summer day so I took off my jacket, which contained some money and some valuable documents, including a false passport under a Lithuanian name, and left it hanging in the lab. I put on my working coat with the two big yellow stars - one on the back and one on the front. I passed through different departments and headed in the direction of the main gate. Everybody was confused and didn't know what to do. By the time I came to the front gate, which was quite a distance, I had made my decision. This was the time to go. Gita was working in the front area on the third floor and I headed there. When I arrived I did not have to say a thing. Gita understood immediately what the situation was. She put on her girdle with the valuables and left with me without saying a word.

When I had passed close to the main gates on my way in I had seen that Siegel was already there with a gun in his hand so we crossed a passage through the building to another area which bordered the orchard surrounding what had previously been Frankel's private villa. At that time it was used as a German military hospital. Generally there was no connection between the factory and the garden. There was, however, a small door that nobody used and I had prepared a key for this door; so had a couple of our friends in case we had to escape. There was already shooting in the compound as people tried to get away.

Gita and I made our way to the door. There was a minute's hesitation as we considered whether we should first go to the lab at the other end of the complex and pick up my jacket with the valuables. But we decided there was no time to lose. When we opened the door there were, close by, two friends of ours, Bertha Pochmil and Naum Gold, and we told them they could go with us. They refused because they, "Had to pick up something in the ghetto." Both of them ended up in a concentration camp.

I had many loose keys in my pocket but when I put my hand in I drew out, by some miracle, just the key which opened this door. We passed through and entered the garden where we discarded our top (working) clothes that had the Star of David on them. To get out we had to pass by a sentry at the hospital gates. As we neared the gates a little boy came from the yard and threw a ball to the soldier standing guard. He turned to throw it back to the boy and in this moment we passed through the narrow gates. We crossed the street and there we saw one of the German directors, Kaiser. (He was one of two that were in charge of our factory but he was a good man, not like the other one, Reinert.) He was riding to the factory but when he noticed us he turned his head so that his driver would not know he had seen us.

After that we crossed the street and came to a part of the city which was on a hill. Down that hill was the house where Jocas lived. When Jocas had heard the shooting he had gone outside. It was a miracle that he was home as he was seldom there. He saw us coming in his direction and by the time we came up to him he was ready--he had the horse out and harnessed. Gita and I had no jackets so Jocas gave us each peasant's coats. He also gave me a gun. He himself had another one. He said, "Let's go," then said, "Everyone will be running out of the city. Let's turn into the city." He drove straight in that direction and proceeded to the other side of town. We were stopped twice but these were routine checks because nobody suspected that anyone travelling into the city was running away.

We had decided, in case we were able to get away, to go where Gita's father was already hiding. Jocas drove us into the country. The 8^th of July, 1944, was a beautiful summer day. The wheat was high in the fields. Jocas let us out by one of these wheat fields and went to notify Barbara that we were coming while Gita and I crept beneath the wheat until we reached the house where Barbara lived. Barbara was to be given the property that Gita's father owned if we were all saved. For this reason she wanted to keep us alive. After Jocas got there she told her brother Pranas to go out and find us and bring us in. We heard him coming but thought it was someone working in the fields. As Gita did not look Jewish she stood up to see who it was. "What are you doing here?" he asked, "Waiting for my boyfriend, a German officer," Gita replied. Gita had never met Pranas and did not know he was Barbara's brother. Pranas returned home and told his sister, "That isn't Gita. That's a prostitute."

Gita and I sat there and no one came. Finally we stood up, put our arms around each other and started singing and walking. We walked through the little village, passing the woman's home, and she motioned to us to come in. She had recognized us.

After that, Jocas was in steady contact with us, checking to make sure we were okay.

When we came in at Barbara's it turned out that, besides papa, there was another family hiding there--a father, a mother and their son--people by the name of Reis. There was also Barbara's brother, Pranas. It was a little house. On each side of the entrance there was a small peasant's room of rough lumber. In the center was a large oven for baking and a stove. There was no ceiling in the central part but, with a ladder, we were able to climb up above the two peasant's rooms where there was a floor covered with straw.

There were no strangers in the house but if anybody appeared we had to keep very quiet so that absolutely no sound could be heard that would give us away. Had we been discovered it would have been the end of us and of Barbara. It was extremely difficult to keep still like this because the Reises were constantly quarrelling and there were many fights with their unruly boy. It was also hard to conceal my father-in-law's coughing which at that time seemed worse than ever. He was a heavy smoker and had always had a dry rasping cough. That became much more pronounced because of the poor tobacco. He smoked, as we all did, Mahorka, which was the broken-up stems of the tobacco plant tamped into a piece of newspaper in the form of a little pipe. With all the tension each cough made us jump. We had to remain nearly motionless most of the day and night. The tension mounted steadily and if it had erupted--as it easily could have--the results would have been tragic.

In the yard there was a well which was used by a German military unit stationed not far away and we always had to be on the lookout to make sure that no strangers were coming. A German soldier used to come several times a day with a horse and a barrel and fill up the barrel by dropping a pail down and slowly winding it up full of water. The days were hot and the soldier used to take his time so that it seemed to take eons before he had the barrel full. The well was at a distance of twenty-five or thirty feet from where we lay, frozen, in the attic, watching each of his movements breathlessly through the cracks in the wall. Every time he came it drained us completely. Only in the evenings were we able to go out for a couple of minutes to get a little fresh air. This lasted an endless nineteen days.

There was no radio, nor any newspapers. Pranas, from time to time, used to come and bring us news about the situation at the front. But this news was always controversial and unreliable. The food we got was poor. A couple of times a day Barbara used to give us a piece of bread and some milk. That was good enough for us. The problem was the toilet facilities. There was an outhouse in the yard but we couldn't use it the whole day. However, in our space were some flower pots made of clay which were helpful. They didn't seem too helpful, though, in the case when Gita sat down on one of them in the darkness and cut herself badly, thus adding injury to insult. Downstairs Barbara made a hiding place under the oven. It was just a hole in the ground to be used if we felt it was getting too dangerous to stay upstairs.

The house was not far from the highway and several days after our arrival Barbara showed us, through a window, a crowd moving on the road. It was all the remaining Ghetto people. The ghetto had been emptied rather than its occupants being shot as we thought they would be. They were driven to a railways station not far away where they were put into cars and taken to a concentration camp further inside the German front. We couldn't recognize anyone from that distance but Ruth's place was closer to the road and she told us later that she had recognized many friends and relatives, like Wulf, walking along the road.

That happened a couple of days after Shavli was bombed by the Russians. It seems that the bombing was concentrated on the ghetto. The better parts of the city weren't touched but the ghetto was almost completely destroyed. The ghetto leader, Mendel Leibovitch, Gita's cousin, was killed at that time. After this bombardment the people in the city felt they could expect more bombings in the coming days and nights and therefore a big part of the population used to leave the city at dusk and stay the night in the fields. Consequently, many Lithuanians were roaming around in our area and we felt very uncomfortable in our hiding place.

On July 26, Pranas came home with what he considered the "good news" that the Russians were again beaten and they had been driven from the area. However, in the evening we heard bombing again. We went out of the house to hide in a trench which was dug in the form of a zigzag. Actually, the bombs were being dropped a couple of kilometers away but it looked to us as if they were falling right on our heads and we all crowded into the little trench. In the center were we six refugees and some other people from town who had probably noticed the trench and climbed into it. Amongst them were people we did not want to see.

The bombing continued the whole night. There was one young lad sitting on the edge of the trench. He must have felt uncomfortable and he jumped out of the trench. It was early morning, just at dawn. Suddenly we heard a burst of firing from an automatic rifle and the cry, "Stoy!" and somebody shouting in Russian, "Everybody out of the trench!" We had had no idea that the Russian soldiers were already close by.