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Oral history interview with Tania Rozmaryn

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1997.A.0418 | RG Number: RG-50.106.0067

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    Oral history interview with Tania Rozmaryn
    Transcript
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Tania Rozmaryn conducted
    by Gail Schwartz on February 23, 1997
    in Silver Spring, Maryland.
    This is tape number one, side a.
    What is your full name?
    Tania Rozmaryn.
    And what is the name you were born with?
    Marcus, Tania Marcus.
    And where were you born?
    I was born in Poland in a little town called Smorgon.
    Actually, I was born in Vilna, but my parents
    lived in Smorgon, so that's where I lived.
    And when were you born?
    June 16, 1928.
    How far is Smorgon from Vilna?
    I would say 40 miles approximately.
    I really wouldn't know exactly because, as a child,
    I didn't know how to measure distance.
    Let's talk about the members of your family.
    Who made up your immediate family?
    My father, Yaakov Marcus; my mother, Cyla Marcus,
    who, God bless her, is still alive,
    she is in the Hebrew Home; and my older sister,
    Rivka; myself; and my younger brother, Nathan.
    And how long had your family been in that area?
    For many generations?
    How far back did they go?
    Yes, they had lived there for many generations.
    I think there was an interruption during World War
    I. They went to Russia.
    But then they came back, and they had rebuilt their homes.
    Did you have a lot of extended family in the general area?
    Yes.
    Would you like me to be specific?
    Absolutely.
    Yes.
    In Smorgon, I had two aunts and uncles, my father's two
    sisters.
    The older one was Fruma, the younger one was Manya.
    She was married to Mayor Goldberg,
    and they had three daughters--
    Bella, Sarah, and Esther.
    In Vilna, we had the rest of our family.
    There was my mother's sister, Pola Fil, and Benjamin,
    and they had four children--
    Ida, Mira, Richa, and Dovidl.
    We also had relatives in Vilna on my grandfather's side,
    two sisters.
    And they are extended family.
    So most of our family lived in Vilna,
    and they all perished in Ponar.
    There were over 80 people.
    What kind of business did your father have?
    Actually, my father had two kinds of businesses.
    One business was a hardware store, where he used to sell--
    he was with two partners, with Mayor Goldberg,
    his brother-in-law, and a friend,
    Motel Majerski who both perished.
    He had a hardware.
    And he was selling gear, farming equipment, to the farmers
    in the area, because Smorgon was a small town surrounded
    by farmers.
    And he did very well.
    He also had another business, which was a--
    a place where the farmers used to bring their flax, which,
    of course, is made into linen.
    And that was a very large place with several hundred people
    working there, cleaning the flax,
    sorting them, and then pressing.
    And there was, I remember, in the back of the plant
    was a rail coming from the railroad station.
    And freight cars were there, and they would fill them up
    and ship the flax abroad.
    Did your mother work?
    No, my mother did not work.
    We had a big, beautiful house.
    It's still standing there.
    The Russians took it over.
    And my mother was busy with her children and charity work.
    And she had a housekeeper and life
    was very good before the war.
    How long did you stay in Vilna before you moved?
    You said you were born in Vilna, and then--
    but you grew up in Smorgon.
    How long did you stay in Vilna before you moved to Smorgon?
    You.
    Yes, no, actually, we lived all the time in Smorgon.
    But my mother just went to Vilna to give birth
    to me in a proper hospital.
    That's how-- I was just born there, and then back
    to Smorgon.
    You were talking about your home there,
    which you said was a lovely home.
    What kind of a neighborhood was it in?
    Was it in a mixed neighborhood of Jews and non-Jews?
    Yes, the neighborhood was really mixed.
    Across the street from us was the house of my uncle and aunt,
    my father's partner.
    But then I remember, to the left,
    it was a non-Jewish family who we got along very
    well with them until when the war broke out, and we left.
    And when we came back, they had cleaned out our house
    and wouldn't give us anything back.
    So it was a mixed neighborhood, yes.
    But this was a neighborhood of upper-middle class
    or upper class?
    Yes, upper-- upper-middle class, I would say.
    But actually, in this small town,
    there was no such a thing as a middle class
    or upper-middle class.
    You had a very large big, beautiful house.
    And next to it, there was a hovel or a--
    a small house, where poor people lived with the wooden floors
    and no plumbing.
    So the city was not divided specifically
    Jewish and non-Jewish neighborhoods,
    or wealthy or less wealthy.
    It was sort of the whole town was mixed.
    People lived just wherever they happened to be comfortable.
    So you lived right in the center of town?
    Yes, in the center of town.
    How religious was your family?
    Well, interesting-- very traditional.
    Because I know, of course, Shabbat and Kashrut
    was always observed.
    My father would learn when he had the chance.
    But he never wore a yarmulke except mealtime.
    And I remember after we had our meals and we said the prayer,
    he would take off his yarmulke and put it aside.
    Nobody at that point-- especially in Lithuania.
    And we considered ourselves more of Lithuanians than Polish,
    because Smorgon and Vilna were occupied by Poland since World
    War I. And basically, it was going from Lithuania
    to White Russia to Poland.
    So it was really--
    it was considered the culture.
    And the Jewish way of life was in Lithuania--
    very Zionistic, Jewish-oriented, a private Jewish school,
    which was called Tarbut.
    But we did not have Hasidim in town,
    or people that we call now Hasidim,
    with a beard and payots or shtreimel.
    There weren't any at all.
    Did you have any religious training as a young girl?
    The only religious training in school
    was that we had one hour of Bible.
    Most of the subjects were taught in Hebrew, even
    secular subjects.
    But no specific religious training, except what
    we absorbed in the house.
    So the school that you went to was a Jewish school.
    It was not a public school.
    No, it was a private Jewish school called a Tarbut.
    And these type of schools were very prevalent
    all over Lithuania.
    And my father was very instrumental of building
    that burgeoning school.
    Your family was very Zionistic?
    Very much.
    My father was very, very dedicated to Zionists.
    I remember people would come to our home,
    and there were all kinds of meetings about Palestine.
    And he wanted very much, before the war,
    to emigrate to Palestine.
    But at that time, you needed a special--
    a special-- they called it a certificate.
    But it was probably some kind of a visa or special permit, which
    he couldn't get unless the authorities in Israel
    would grant it.
    And it never came.
    Did you have any other interests as a child?
    Music or reading?
    Anything that you liked to do outside of school?
    Oh, well, I was in the fourth grade
    when the war broke out in 1939.
    So it was just that--
    I used to.
    I would read.
    And as far as musicals, my father had a mandolin,
    I remember.
    And he would play for us, especially,
    every time, the Jewish national anthem.
    And every summer, we used to go on vacation to a little village
    near the Viliya.
    That was a river that passed through not far from us.
    And it was rather very, very pleasant.
    Most of the Jews who could afford
    would go there in the summer.
    And there was a lot of swimming and boating
    and volleyball playing and lots of walks.
    My father would take me-- even though I
    remember-- as a little kid, he would take me to the forest.
    We used to go to gather wild strawberries or rare hazelnuts.
    And he would talk to me a lot.
    He used to tell me stories that, at this point I realize--
    and I said to myself, I was a little girl.
    And those are really philosophical questions
    and ideas.
    He probably had a premonition that he
    wouldn't be with me too long and conducted
    very serious and mature discussions with me.
    What kind of topics did he talk about?
    Well, he would talk about Israel and Jewish history
    and Jewish legacy and family relations and relatives.
    And it was rather--
    where I considered myself at that time
    mature, that he would share with me all kinds.
    But mostly, he always, when he came from his business,
    no matter how tired he was, he would always
    sit down with my sister and myself
    and ask us what we learned.
    Take us on his knee, what we learned, and review it with us.
    And when he had time, he would take us to the--
    to the stadium where they used to play soccer.
    But during the week, when they didn't, then he
    would teach us how to ride a bicycle or just--
    in the wintertime, he did beautiful things for us.
    First of all, we were going skiing and skating.
    And he bought me a pair of skates and skis,
    so we went cross-country skiing.
    And then since he knew many farmers,
    he would ask the farmers to come with a sleigh and horses
    during the wintertime.
    And we would all get into the sleigh
    and with the bells jingling, and we
    would go all over through the villages around town.
    It was just great, yes.
    How would you describe yourself at that time?
    Were you a very quiet child?
    Or more outgoing?
    Yeah, I was very quiet and very shy.
    And I think that it did haunt me.
    I did suffer, for many, many years,
    for an insecurity and inferiority complex.
    And I always thought--
    my mother was ready to give her life for me--
    for me, for my sister, for every-- she
    was a wonderful, wonderful mother as far as helping us
    with knowledge, with homework, and to make sure
    we are dressed and proper manners.
    But never, ever would she hug us or kiss us.
    And I feel now, when I come to visit her
    and I kiss her and I hug her and she kisses me back,
    I feel that she lets go.
    But I feel she was not the only one.
    I think that at that time, the Jewish parents
    felt that praise of showing love to children would spoil them.
    And they wanted the children to grow up wholesome.
    But what they didn't realize, what we
    know now, that by not doing so, by keeping a distance,
    the children grew up very insecure.
    But she was the most wonderful, selfless person in the world
    that I knew, even in comparison to other mothers.
    [CHUCKLES]
    You said that you did have some friends who were not
    Jewish in the neighborhood?
    Is that true?
    Did you play with any children?
    I'm talking about before the war, of course.
    Yes, of course.
    Actually, not friends, they were neighbors.
    But they always let us know that we were Jews.
    Like, for instance, in the summer, when we went down--
    our house was on a corner on the top of a hill.
    And down the hill, a block down, was a little brook, a river.
    And we liked to go swimming there
    in the summertime in-between going away
    to the big river for our summer vacation.
    So the non-Jewish kids, they always came.
    And they were throwing mud at us and chased us out of the water,
    and we would run.
    In the wintertime, the brook would freeze over,
    and we tried to go skating there.
    And they did the same thing.
    They would come and cause us trouble.
    And even in the house, I remember we had a metal roof.
    And every time they would pass by, they would throw rocks.
    And of course, the sound was--
    was horrific.
    Because when the rock hitting the metal, it was like--
    like, amplified terribly.
    And it was very frightened.
    We've never stayed home alone at night.
    We were always afraid to be there alone.
    When these type of things happened,
    did you talk it over with your parents or your sister?
    How did you handle this as a child?
    Oh, we talked about it.
    But it wasn't a surprise, because it was known.
    This is what the shkotzim used to do to the Jewish children.
    So we knew that there is nothing our parents could have done
    about it, because the kids would pass by and throw rocks
    on the roof.
    So there was nothing a Jew could do about it.
    What was the first big change that you noticed in your life?
    Of course, you were young.
    Was it September 1939 when the Russians came in?
    Yes, exactly.
    Well, the first change came in September in 1939
    when Germany divided Eastern Poland, and our--
    our town became under the occupation of the Soviet Union.
    Actually, the war broke out on Sunday.
    And somebody had told my father, because what the--
    what-- no, no, I am-- no, I'm jumping ahead--
    that happened in June 22, 1941, before the Germans
    occupied that.
    But when the Russians came, they took over the town,
    and they took away my father's businesses.
    And they made my father go to work in the forest.
    And I remember he used to come home
    with calluses on his hands.
    And immediately, they converted our school,
    that was the private Tarbut school,
    into a Russian public school.
    And they opened a non-kosher coffee shop there,
    which was shocking to me, even though we weren't so--
    we weren't so "very religious," quote, unquote,
    as you would perceive now.
    But the house was kosher and holidays
    were observed without question.
    And of course, the preparation for Passover and other holidays
    was tremendous.
    And there it was, a non-kosher coffee shop and the school.
    And we felt it.
    We still had food and clothes to wear,
    but everything else was taken away.
    My father and my grandfather had cars which was taken away.
    My grandfather was the first one, that he bought--
    I think it must have been in '36 or '37--
    a truck.
    It was a shining blue Chevrolet.
    And nobody knew how to drive.
    And there wasn't even a gasoline station.
    So he brought a chauffeur with his wife from Germany.
    Rex was his name.
    He gave him a house.
    And his job was to take care of that truck.
    And he was the chauffeur.
    And I remember my experience the first time,
    when he took me and my mother to Vilna to visit our relatives.
    I was in total shock to be in that car.
    So they, of course, they took everything.
    The Russians took everything away from us.
    How did your father explain this to you?
    You're 11 years old now.
    How did he-- what did he say to you
    when these terrible things began to happen?
    Actually, I really do not recall.
    The love, of course, at home was the same, and we had food.
    But I remember seeing my father very down, sometimes depressed.
    But there were no--
    I don't recall any discussions about the situation,
    none whatsoever.
    What kind of work was he forced to do?
    To go to the nearby forests with other people that were wealthy
    and to chop down trees.
    And to sort them up into certain logs
    or whatever it was required.
    He would come home on his bicycle, very tired,
    exhausted, and depressed.
    And what kind of contact did you have with your relatives
    in Vilna then?
    With the relatives in Vilna, very little contact.
    We didn't go there.
    When somebody used to come to visit,
    they would usually bring us regards
    from the other relatives.
    Otherwise, there was really not much of a contact.
    Did you talk about the changes with your other Jewish friends?
    I really don't recall.
    We sort of took the changes for granted.
    Because the Russians really did not torture us.
    As a matter of fact, because we had a big and beautiful house,
    the Russian Army had confiscated one of the rooms
    for a Russian lieutenant.
    He was a tank commander.
    And that was before they started the war with Finland.
    And he was in our--
    he was in our house.
    His name was [? Kutchov. ?] And he was a very, very nice man.
    He would sit with my parents and talk a lot.
    And he would bring us food from the army.
    And I recall, even in the morning,
    sometimes he would wake us up to go to school.
    He was really very nice.
    And we felt that, in a way, it was safer,
    because we did not suffer from the non-Jewish boys and girls'
    anti-Semitic outbreaks.
    So seeing people in Red Army uniforms
    was not frightening for you?
    No, not at all.
    As a matter of fact, they came to our school,
    and they organized--
    they organized the younger people into the Pioneers.
    This was the organization for the young Communist Party.
    And the older ones in Komsomol.
    And they didn't accept me, because I
    was a daughter of a bourgeois.
    And I was very upset.
    I was very jealous that all my friends were walking around
    in navy skirts, white blouses, and red scarfs
    and go to meetings and go to parades.
    And I was very jealous.
    And then my father found a relative
    who they used to be very poor.
    And of course, they were acceptable.
    So she became a leader in the Komsomols.
    I remember, he talked to her, and she persuaded somebody
    to take me into the Pioneers.
    And I was in seventh heaven at that time.
    So what kind of activities did you then do with them?
    Well, it was interesting.
    We used to have meetings.
    And of course, on special days, there were parades.
    They brainwashed us so immensely that we felt all of a sudden
    that we were proud of the Communist regime.
    We used to sing our praises to Stalin.
    And we were very happy to do that.
    And of course, at home, we never--
    my parents never discussed it with us.
    I imagine now, thinking back, they probably
    did not want to contradict, because there was nothing
    that could have been done.
    And they saw that we were happy, my sister and I,
    having been liberated from the anti-Semitic outbreak.
    So they just let it go, I suppose.
    So you did not experience any anti-Semitism
    in this Communist youth movement?
    Oh, no, no, no.
    In the Communist youth movement, on the contrary,
    everybody considered each other a brother and a loving sister.
    What languages did you speak at that time?
    The basic language at home was Yiddish.
    However, in the first year-- my father spoke Hebrew at home.
    Like I mentioned, he was a very dedicated Zionist.
    When the time of the [NON-ENGLISH] came,
    he was always very, very active.
    And so in school, in the Tarbut school,
    we were required to speak Hebrew,
    even outside in the street.
    And we were afraid if a teacher would
    catch us speak any other language,
    we would have been penalized.
    So at that time, I spoke Yiddish, and I spoke Hebrew.
    And interesting, even today--
    I am a teacher now, of course, I've been for so many years--
    and people think, even Israelis, they
    think that I was born and lived in Israel.
    Because even though my vocabulary
    was maybe 50 or 80 words, but my accent
    was absolutely typical of an Israeli, a sabra,
    which it remained with me.
    So we spoke Hebrew with the limited vocabulary, Yiddish,
    and Russian.
    In the two years that the Russians were in our town,
    we only spoke, in school, Russian.
    At home, still Yiddish.
    But Russian was spoken all over the place.
    Did you know Polish?
    Interesting, we were under the Polish regime.
    However, we only learned Polish one hour a week.
    And we had a Polish teacher.
    And only in the municipal offices, if one had to go,
    had to speak Polish.
    But for me, Polish was a foreign language.
    Now I speak Polish well, because two of my sister-in-laws
    are from Poland, and they always spoke Polish,
    and I learned Polish from them.
    [CHUCKLES] But at that time, no, I couldn't speak Polish at all.
    No.
    Did you have a favorite holiday?
    Favorite religious holiday?
    Well, the most favorite religious holiday was Passover.
    I remember, as it was a little town when
    my mother started preparing.
    First of all, it was--
    the preparations started in the winter.
    In the beginning of the winter, my mother started stuffing
    geese to have [them fat ?] for Passover.
    So on Hanukkah time, the geese were slaughtered.
    And in the house, they were plucking them
    and koshering them, and then rendering the fat for Passover.
    And that was a special--
    a special occasion.
    And then, like, six weeks before Passover, my mother
    would buy tons of raisins and start to make wine.
    Because everything was so difficult, when I think of it.
    Like, in the fall, everything had
    to be bought, like, all kinds of vegetables and fruit into the--
    put into the cellar for the winter.
    And then my mother would put up cabbage, sauerkraut,
    and pickled pickles for the winter.
    And in the fall, she would--
    we had a big garden with strawberries,
    and then and she would make all kinds of jams
    from strawberries and raspberries.
    And everything went to the cellar in big, big jugs
    in preparation for the winter.
    And then, of course, for every Thursday,
    my mother would send me to the shochet, my sister and I,
    with the chicken or a goose to slaughter for Shabbat.
    And then, of course, it was brought home,
    and it was plucked, and it was--
    it was cut opened and koshered.
    And every little thing was so complicated.
    The only things that my parents used to buy
    was, of course, butter, eggs, for everyday use.
    Otherwise, everything was bought in bulks--
    cheeses, [? heads ?], salamis.
    Lots and lots of long salamis were hanging in the--
    in the cellar.
    And so Passover was my most favorite holiday
    because, of course, the cleaning and the house and everything.
    But then we didn't have, at that time, even the wealthy people,
    special Passover dishes.
    Everything was being koshered.
    And I remember the big things my mother would--
    had a very big pot and a special--
    special oven outside, where she would
    boil the pots and everything.
    But with the silverware, we used to go, there was a public bath.
    And in the back of that bath, they had a big fire,
    and they had a big--
    a big cauldron, I would say, with boiling water and rocks.
    And everybody would bring their silverware or their dishes
    to kosher.
    But we had-- everything was meat.
    There was no dairy whatsoever for Passover.
    On the fingers of one hand, you could count the dishes
    that people would prepare.
    But then before Passover, my mother--
    we would get dressed and had new patent leather
    shoes and white socks and new dresses.
    And all the girls in the neighborhood,
    we used to go to the rabbi's house
    to wish him a happy Passover.
    And everyone had a little dish.
    And the rabbi would give us charosets
    that he prepared for the whole town.
    And that was just fantastic, yes.
    Did this continue after the Russians came into town?
    There were no restrictions?
    No, no, no, all this stopped.
    Everybody would make Pesach as best
    as they could in their own home and nothing
    was done on the outside.
    We still had the Seder, and my grandparents
    lived in the same town--
    my Zayde Berel and Bubbeh Chaya Basya.
    And they used to come.
    And then my grandfather used to sing nicely,
    and non-Jews would gather around the windows
    to listen to my grandfather sing all the songs for Passover.
    Which I carried on and transferred it to my children.
    We sing the same melodies at our Pesach Seder.
    Well, now it's, your father's working,
    and you and your sister are members of the Communist Youth
    group.
    And you're going to a regular school now, you said.
    So were there any other changes, restrictions,
    in your life at that point after September '39?
    Really no restrictions whatsoever, except, of course,
    there were less material things in the house.
    Which it really did not diminish from the enthusiasm,
    because we felt that to be a member of the Communist party,
    it's an honor, and we have to do without many things.
    And we just accepted it.
    And then the next change?
    Yes, the next change was the 22nd of June, 1941.
    Well, let's talk a little bit about--
    so your father continued to work in the forest all
    the way through the next year, year and a half,
    and life went on.
    OK, and now you said--
    And then the change was my grandmother
    was very sick in 1940.
    And she was taken to Vilna, because her other daughter,
    my mother's sister, Pola, was there, an older relative.
    But she had passed away.
    And my grandfather came back.
    And he had a big house.
    He didn't stay with the children.
    He was always a very successful businessman.
    And he was tremendous.
    When we grew up, I must--
    I must mention this.
    His name was Berel Danishevski.
    And he had a big business.
    He had a business of--
    in those days, they didn't have the plastic tubes
    for sausages or for salami.
    So he was contracted from the slaughterhouse
    that everything--
    whatever was slaughtered there, he
    had people that they would take over and clean
    all their intestines of their animals,
    and then salt it or blow it and dry it.
    But it was so much that he exported it to Germany.
    And this is actually why he bought the truck.
    And many times, he was away on business.
    And when he was away on business, one of us
    was asked to stay with my-- sleep with my grandmother.
    And I remember, I was always petrified,
    because their house was a big, beautiful, comfortable house,
    but it was near a Jewish cemetery.
    And I was always petrified.
    I couldn't sleep there, even though my grandmother
    would close the shutters.
    I was very frightened.
    But whenever he came, he always brought us
    all kinds of goodies and toys.
    And he would do it in an interesting way.
    Like, when we were home, all of a sudden
    we would hear a violin outside.
    And we would look out, oh, there is zayde, Zayde Berel,
    playing the violin.
    He brought us violin and all kinds of special toys.
    Let's talk a little bit about just some more
    changes before the summer of '41.
    You had to go to regular school.
    Did you experience any anti-Semitism
    from any of the teachers or any of the other children
    in your school?
    No, we didn't.
    Actually, they were now--
    there were no non-Jewish students.
    What they did was they took this Tarbut school
    which was going up to the eighth grade,
    and they converted it as it was to a Russian school.
    So essentially the same students were there.
    There were no outsiders.
    And the teachers were-- there were other teachers.
    Most of them Jewish, who were communists.
    And they were our teachers, of course.
    And I remember, we had a teacher,
    [? Zukerman, ?] in algebra and in Russian language.
    Interestingly enough, we were--
    we had one hour a week, we had a German teacher,
    and we had to learn German.
    Then she became an interpreter, of course, when the Nazis came.
    And there was one other thing that was very, very nice there.
    This Dr. [? Zukerman, ?] his wife had training in drama
    and in music.
    And she had organized and directed
    many plays and skits with us, and the choir.
    And it was just wonderful.
    I loved singing in the choir.
    I loved to participate in the plays and in the skits.
    Were there any restrictions on Jewish history or the Hebrew
    language at that point?
    Well, Hebrew language, it was finished.
    Jewish history and Hebrew language was finished.
    And they started teaching us Yiddish more.
    And even the plays and the skits were all in Yiddish.
    Because at that time in the Soviet Union,
    they were pushing their idea of Birobidzhan.
    And therefore, actually what they did
    was that our school was converted to a Yiddish school
    more than it was a public school.
    This is tape one, side b.
    And you were talking about the musical shows
    that you took part in in school.
    Anything else you wanted to say?
    You also had said that you couldn't study Hebrew anymore
    and Bible.
    We couldn't study Hebrew or Bible or Zionism,
    for that matter.
    It was all Yiddish or Russian.
    Did that upset you, those restrictions?
    I don't think it did, because I loved the school so much.
    I loved, especially, the teacher that would direct and conduct
    all the plays.
    And I was so happy, because she had a concertina.
    And many times, she would let me look at it
    and try it, and even let me carry it to her house, which
    was a tremendous honor.
    [CHUCKLES]
    No, I don't think so.
    It's sort of-- I don't know.
    I look at children at this point, at my age at their time,
    and they are so sophisticated, and they're so knowledgeable.
    And I think of myself of being so naive or stupid.
    But I think it's because we were not
    exposed to all the knowledge and bombarded with all media
    that the children have now, that it--
    I guess every child my age was that gullible, naive,
    and perhaps stupid in comparison to children
    this age in our time.
    Now, you're 13 years old.
    And it is June 1941.
    June 1941, it was a Sunday.
    And I remember that on a day before, on Saturday
    and a Friday, my mother--
    somebody came and told my father that we
    are on the list to being transported to Siberia,
    because my father was a wealthy man.
    And that's what they did, the rations.
    Little by little, they cleared out the town of the bourgeois,
    of the rich people, the business people,
    and they would ship them with their families to Siberia.
    So somebody told my father.
    And they said, be prepared because this
    was-- on Sunday morning, they are
    going to take you to the train.
    And there are freight cars there,
    and they'll ship you to Siberia with the family.
    So my mother prepared, first of all,
    whatever valuable things we had--
    gold pieces and jewelry.
    And she sewed it into the lining of our coats.
    And then she prepared a knapsack for everybody.
    She dried bread into, like, [INAUDIBLE]..
    And whatever could be prepared to take along as food,
    she had it all prepared in bags for each and every one,
    according to age, how much we could carry in our bags.
    So when the Russians will come Sunday morning
    to take us to the train and ship us to Siberia,
    we'd be prepared.
    But that never happened.
    Because 4 o'clock in the morning,
    the Germans started shooting and bombarding our town.
    And that was the end of the Russian regime.
    Had you, before that, heard of a man
    named Hitler, as a young girl?
    We did hear between '39 and '41.
    On the radio, we had a radio in our house.
    And sometimes my parents would sit and listen
    to the speeches of Hitler.
    And they would tell us that this is a dictator in Germany.
    But it never occurred to us that it might
    concern us, me, or my family.
    We really lived in such seclusion at that time,
    that all we were concerned was the daily existence
    in our town and our family.
    Your parents understood German?
    They understood German.
    I know that my parents were--
    they would discuss politics a lot.
    I even remember that at one point when I was there--
    I don't remember what time, but historically, I
    could pinpoint it, because my father read
    the Jewish newspaper every day.
    And then he was discussing politics with my mother.
    And his friends would come.
    And at one point, I remember we were on vacation, and he read--
    he read the paper.
    And he was talking about Franco and Addis Ababa.
    And I-- I just--
    the names sounded so peculiar to me that I--
    I knew they were somewhere in the world.
    But to give you a perception of the timidity and naivete, that
    when somebody would describe a place, that as--
    actually, if you say now to go to Mars or go to Venus,
    it's credible.
    But in those days, when somebody would
    say, so where are you going?
    Where do you think I'm going, to Honolulu?
    Honolulu was farther than any galaxy
    that we could perceive at this point.
    We didn't even know that a place like Honolulu
    existed, because it was sort of a paradox--
    oh, you're going to Honolulu.
    Although, I must recall, when I was in school
    when the Russians came, they did teach us
    a great deal of geography.
    And I loved geography and history.
    I loved it very much.
    And I remember that at one point I had to give,
    as a test, an oral test, a comparison
    between the Japanese islands and the British Isles.
    I don't know how well I did, but I had to do it.
    [CHUCKLES]
    So here it came.
    And the Germans came, and they started bombarding the town.
    And my father immediately said, let's run.
    Let's run towards the Russian border.
    Maybe we'll make it into Russia.
    And this is where we ran to the East.
    And my father still had his bicycle.
    He put most of the things on the bicycle.
    And we had our knapsacks ready for being shipped to Siberia.
    So we took it all with us, and we walked.
    And thousands of people were on the roads.
    When you say we, who are you including?
    My father, my mother, my sister, my brother, and myself.
    And everybody was going towards East,
    hoping that we could make it into Russia, to the Soviet
    Union.
    And as we were walking, and the roads were so
    filled with people, every now and then,
    a German plane would come down very low over the people
    and machine gun.
    And when we saw the planes coming,
    we would run into the high--
    to the fields.
    The wheat was already quite tall.
    And we would run in and hide until the plane passed.
    And then we would come out again.
    And we marched maybe 15 miles to that little town, Lebedev.
    What was it like for you to leave your house?
    It was very difficult. We looked around.
    We left the house.
    But we knew that there is a purpose,
    that we have to save our lives.
    And as a child, it really--
    because I never ever really had suffered hunger or loneliness
    or cold or not having a comfortable room, my own room,
    or beautiful clothes.
    So that it never dawned on me that it could be different.
    So I felt, well, let's go.
    We'll have it-- wherever we will go, we'll have it again.
    But, of course, it wasn't so.
    Did you take anything special as a 13-year-old girl?
    Anything personal?
    I think I took a little--
    a little book with photos in a scrapbook.
    Yes, I took that with me.
    Definitely.
    Anything else I can't recall.
    Probably maybe a favorite doll or something.
    But even that, it's just amazing.
    Now going back, before the war, my parents were so wealthy.
    But I remember having a few dolls,
    but nothing in particular.
    And there was one girl in my class
    that had relatives in the United States.
    And they had sent her a doll that when you--
    putting her down horizontally would close her eyes.
    And everybody was so fascinated.
    And everybody wanted to be friends with her.
    And when she invited me or other girls
    to our house to play with that doll, it was a special holiday.
    It's just amazing how things were
    and perceptions in those days.
    Do you want me to go on now?
    We're going to-- so we came to Lebedev.
    And in Lebedev, we had relatives.
    They were a sister of my grandmother.
    Her name was Golda.
    Her husband's name was Reuven.
    And they were very, very poor.
    I remember once when I was younger,
    my mother took me to visit them.
    And I just couldn't understand why
    they didn't have a nice home.
    And the floor was a wooden floor and no rugs.
    And he made magazines.
    And he would sell them in the market.
    Very pious people.
    And they had three children--
    Moshe Aaron, who was married; Michal, a young man;
    and Rivka, a young girl.
    I remember their names distinctly
    because I make it a point, whenever
    it's their Yizkor, the memorial service,
    I make it a point to mention each
    and every one of these relatives by name
    so that I remember their names.
    We came to their home, and they were very happy to see us.
    And they made us so comfortable.
    But by the time we got there, the German tanks
    were rambling already on the streets of this little village.
    And they took over the town in no time.
    The following day, we were still there.
    And then my mother and father were discussing what to do.
    And they said, look, we are here,
    strangers with relatives who are poor.
    They could hardly sustain themselves.
    And the Germans occupied us anyway.
    So that makes no difference whether we're
    here or in our town in Smorgon.
    Let's go back to Smorgon.
    So my parents discuss the matter,
    and then they decided that it wouldn't be safe for my father
    to walk with us, to go with us.
    Because mostly we would go by foot,
    unless a farmer would pass by with their cart
    and would take us.
    So they decided-- my father, they said, look,
    it's peaceful here, my father should stay there.
    And my brother-- who was very, very--
    he was born in 1935, so he was six years old--
    should stay there.
    And my mother, my sister, and myself
    should go back to our town.
    And my parents made up that when my mother will
    come home and see what the situation is,
    she would go back and bring my father and my brother home.
    So we started out.
    My mother, my sister, and I, walking.
    Just in the opposite directions where
    the German tanks were coming.
    They were moving East, and we were going West to Smorgon.
    We came back to our town.
    We walked into the house.
    And the house was empty.
    My grandfather was there in our house,
    because his house was burned down during a bombing raid.
    And in the meantime, he had remarried.
    He married my grandmother's sister
    who had two small children.
    And they were there on the floor.
    There was a table and chairs.
    And everything was gone.
    And he said that the next door neighbor, the Christian,
    took it all.
    My mother walked in to talk to him.
    And mercifully, he gave us back a bed with a mattress.
    This is the neighbor you're talking about.
    This is the neighbor, right.
    And I think we still found some food in the cellar,
    but it was--
    it was very scarce.
    But all my mother was concerned is about the situation in town,
    what was happening.
    And she looked around.
    She spoke with friends and with neighbors and relatives.
    And they said that, so far, the Jews are afraid,
    but everybody's sitting in their homes.
    The Germans have made decrees posted
    that every Jew should give up their furs and jewels and art
    and whatever valuables they have.
    They should bring in to a certain place.
    If not, they would be--
    if it would be found, they would be killed.
    So my mother decided that it was no different from what--
    from what it was there in Lebedev.
    And she went back to Lebedev to bring my father and my brother.
    Did you and your sister go back with her?
    No, my sister and myself stayed with my grandfather
    and his wife in our house.
    And then my mother came there to Lebedev,
    and she found that everything was finished.
    After we left, they gathered all able-bodied men--
    the Germans-- and they took them away.
    And we never saw our father since.
    There was some rumors somebody came,
    and they were telling us that they tried to--
    he tried to escape.
    And they didn't tell us exactly--
    I knew that they knew exactly what happened to him,
    but they didn't tell us.
    But they didn't touch my brother.
    So my mother took my brother, and she came home.
    And of course, I remember crying.
    I remember tearing my hair and my skin.
    I just could never--
    could not imagine that my father was gone.
    But it was the fact.
    And then they started asking all the Jews to come out to work.
    And it was mostly at that time, in the beginning,
    to humiliate, because there was really nothing
    to do except to sweep the streets.
    So whoever was in town, a rabbi or businessmen or--
    Balabatishe people would come out
    and had to sweep the streets.
    And something else, which was very humiliating.
    They didn't have-- it was a small town,
    and it wasn't paved.
    It was still like it was during World War I.
    And they had the cobblestones.
    And in between the cobblestones on the side street,
    there was weed growing.
    So they would make the people, men and women, sit on the road
    and, with knives, cut out the weeds from the cracks
    of their cobblestones.
    Then one night, Germans came to the house.
    And they started knocking at the door.
    And my mother was petrified.
    We had a German shepherd outside.
    And we had the fruit garden, a vegetable garden, a flower
    garden, and there was a dog house.
    And the dog started barking.
    And they came in.
    The first thing they did is they shot the dog.
    And then they started banging.
    So we quickly-- somehow, my grandfather
    managed to hide my mother.
    And they came into the house, and they looked around.
    And whatever they found that they-- that was still there
    that they liked, they just took it, and they walked out.
    I think there was still a fur coat of my mother
    that they took, and they walked out.
    And we were there for several months.
    Were you in hiding also when they came in?
    Or did you see these Germans?
    No, we saw that there were two Germans that came in,
    and they looked around.
    They didn't pay attention to me.
    And we was tiny little girls, my sister and I.
    I look now at a 13-year-old girl--
    tall, developed.
    I looked like an 8-year-old, 9-year-old girl.
    What did a German soldier look like to you?
    Well, very tall, impressive uniform,
    blond, strong, but didn't do anything to us.
    He didn't hit us or anything.
    Just looked all over to see what he can find to take with him.
    And that was it.
    And then they started--
    they announced that everybody has to-- they had fenced
    off a certain area, which was predominantly Jewish,
    it was the shul there.
    There were two shuls there.
    And most of the Jewish--
    the poorest Jews lived around there.
    They fenced it off, and they created the ghetto.
    And all the Jews from the town had to go in.
    Although, they had another ghetto.
    North of Smorgon was, after World War I, they tried--
    the Jewish people tried to organize a farm community.
    And they called it the Karka'i.
    Karka'i in Hebrew is land.
    And there were maybe 20 or 25 families who lived there.
    As a matter of fact, I had some friends
    who used to come to my school from that area in there,
    from that village.
    So they created one little ghetto
    there for those villagers and another one
    for the people in Smorgon.
    So we came to the ghetto with whatever possessions
    we could carry.
    And they assigned us in a house, in one room, that were, like,
    four families to one room.
    So it was my mother, my sister, my brother, myself,
    my grandfather, and there were three other families
    in the same room.
    My grandfather was very, very industrious.
    He knew how to--
    he was a survivor.
    So he decided he could do anything he wanted
    to-- very, very capable man.
    He decided to become--
    he figured, well, people would have to fix shoes.
    He decided he knows how to fix shoes.
    He announced to everybody he's a shoemaker.
    And I remember he was sitting there
    in the corner at a small table and fixing shoes.
    And people would bring a piece of bread or some vegetables.
    And this is how he sustained us.
    And then they started taking people to work,
    to work outside the ghetto with permission.
    And they took my mother and my sister.
    Every day, they had to go out to work.
    And what they did was, there was a high school in town.
    And they converted the high school into a lodging place.
    So the German soldiers, when they came--
    when they came from the West, pushing
    towards the Russian front to the East,
    they would stay there overnight.
    And they would have food there, and they had the Jewish girls
    there to wash their clothes and to darn their socks.
    And some of them were very nice.
    They didn't rape the girls or anything.
    There were boys working there, too, I remember.
    There was one boy.
    His name was Kapyl.
    And he came back, and he didn't understand.
    He said, a German soldier came over to him,
    and he took off-- nobody saw-- he took off his jacket,
    his uniform, and he put it on him.
    And he said, listen, Kapul, I know
    he says the war will be over and we'll lose.
    And he said, if you will survive,
    don't take your revenge on the soldiers,
    just kill the German officers.
    This is what he told the boy.
    And day after day, they went to work there.
    And then my mother was assigned another job.
    They had a soup kitchen in their synagogue.
    And my mother was assigned to cook there.
    And then people, of course, who were starving,
    came to the soup kitchen and she--
    we didn't have to.
    At that time, we still had food.
    And we still had food, and we still
    had the jewelry and the golden coins
    that my mother had sewed in.
    She was so brave.
    And we had to wear the yellow stars in front and in the back.
    She was so brave.
    Because my father used to deal with farmers,
    so she knew some of the farmers in the neighboring villages.
    So at night-- and there wasn't barbed wire around the ghetto.
    It was just a wooden fence.
    So at night, she would cover her yellow stars,
    and she would take a gold piece of something,
    and run out, and run to the neighboring villages,
    and she would exchange it.
    Then she would come still in the middle
    of the night with some flour or even some ham or whatever.
    At that time, Kashrut was forgotten.
    With ham or whatever they would give her, she would come back.
    And so we still, more or less, had food.
    We still had some things to exchange until 1943.
    So and then I was sent to work.
    Let's back up a little bit.
    What did you do in the beginning when your mother and sister
    first went out to work?
    I remember I would sit on my bed all day,
    or go out with friends in the ghetto to talk.
    But mostly, I had some books that I found in that house.
    And I would sit and read those books.
    It's interesting.
    I recall, it was worn, heavy anatomy book that I found.
    And I just sat there, day after day, on my bed,
    and I would read that book.
    Because I'd never-- we were never
    taught anatomy until then, so I was very fascinated by it.
    And I remember I would sit on the bed and read the book.
    What was the sleeping arrangement like?
    You said there were so many families in this one room.
    The sleeping arrangement was my mother, my sister,
    and I were sleeping in one bed.
    And then my grandfather and his wife in another.
    And my brother would curl up on the floor on some kind
    of a straw mattress.
    What were the sanitary facilities like?
    It was an outhouse.
    And there was usually, in those houses,
    they had a water pump outside.
    So we used to go outside to the pump
    and take water for washing or cooking
    or whatever we'd need it.
    Taking a shower, of course, was out of the question.
    We would just wash ourselves in the basin.
    Sometimes we had a curtain and closed it off
    so we could wash in privacy.
    Had you gotten your period by then?
    No, no, not until--
    not until I was 16 or 17 years old.
    You said you had to wear a star.
    What was that like for you?
    What did it mean to you?
    Well, everybody wore a star.
    And since I didn't go out of the ghetto, it sort of--
    it bothered me immensely that I was singled out.
    But still, I did not feel tremendous suffering.
    I don't know, again, maybe because I was optimistic.
    I was always optimistic by nature, and strong.
    Or I was stupid.
    But because I did not comprehend the immensity of the tragedy
    at that time.
    And it's interesting.
    Here I am speaking to children who are 11, 12, or high school
    kids, telling them my story.
    I do it, of course, on their level.
    And I say, look at these childrens' reactions.
    They understand.
    They cry with me.
    They know what I'm talking about.
    And I said, when I was their age,
    I really didn't know what was going on.
    Maybe because they were exposed to television and movies
    and all, so they have-- they have seen these kind of stories
    and movies.
    Anyway--
    Did you sew on your own star?
    Yes.
    Yes, we knew how.
    We had to cut out a yellow star and sew it on.
    What did you cut it out of?
    Oh, we had some cloth, or it was provided.
    And there was a Judenrat in the ghetto.
    And the Judenrat were very--
    former business people.
    They're aristocratic-- aristocracy,
    the rabbi of the town.
    And my uncle, the one that was my father's partner, he
    was also in the Judenrat
    And but it was interesting.
    Maybe, in many cases of the Judenrat,
    they were doing things for themselves
    first to save their own skin.
    Not in this Judenrat.
    When something came, when the Germans would come and ask
    for 500 people or 200 people, they would-- at least--
    and they would never, ever give a list.
    They said, because this is what the Bible--
    according to the Bible, that when
    in any kind of a catastrophic situation,
    when an enemy comes and asks you to give people to be hanged
    or to be punished, according to Jewish law,
    you're not allowed to.
    You can tell them, if you have to, you go out by yourself
    and take whoever you want, but we are not
    going to give you a list.
    Because the Bible felt that this is a personal matter of destiny
    and couldn't be helped.
    But for another Jew, to put somebody--
    another Jew on the list, that was absolutely
    against the Bible, and they never did it.
    And then one day, I was called to go to work.
    And I found myself in a very beautiful house
    that belonged to a landowner before the war, probably
    a Polish landowner.
    And I was brought there.
    And another boy my age from ghetto, [? Swierski ?]
    was his name.
    And there, we came in, and they--
    I remember, it smelled so delicious in that house.
    And there was a cook, a Polish woman.
    They took us into the kitchen.
    And the Polish woman told us that we are going to help her--
    that the boy was going to chop wood for the kitchen,
    and I would help her with the vegetables
    to peel and cut and wash dishes.
    And there, I felt comfortable, because it was warm.
    I don't remember them giving us any food,
    but this is where we worked.
    And then, of course, there was the living room
    and the bedrooms.
    And then in the evening, I saw a German officer came in.
    And he lived there.
    I had absolutely no comprehension who the man was.
    He was tall, dark hair, smoked a pipe, had a pleasant face,
    wore glasses.
    And I knew-- when I dusted the house,
    I noticed a letter on the table.
    Somehow, I looked at the letter.
    And it was a letter--
    his name was Heinrich [? Funke. ?]
    I looked at the letter, and I saw it was a letter probably
    from his wife.
    And I looked at the return address, and I remembered it.
    The name was Heinrich [? Funke, ?] Berlin,
    SO 36, Dresdener Strasse 18.
    And I memorized it--
    always had a good memory.
    And he was very nice to me.
    And when I looked at--
    there were letters and mail and envelopes come--
    came-- and I saw that he was a very important official.
    And only after the war, I realized how important.
    He was an Obersturmbannführer.
    Of course, he wore the black uniform of the SS
    with the swastika and all.
    And he was always very nice to me.
    He talked to me very gently.
    One day, he called me in.
    And he says, listen, Tania, I'm going to tell you something.
    I am over the whole--
    the [INAUDIBLE] of all-- he was all of White Russia.
    You know a Obersturmbannführer.
    He was a very, very important Nazi.
    He said to me, I want to tell you something,
    all the Jews in this region are going to be killed.
    However, he said, if you will have a chance,
    when they'll take people to a labor camp,
    he said, go, because that might save you.
    And that's all he said to me.
    And I remembered.
    And life went on in ghetto as it was.
    And I used to go to work there.
    Did you go home to go to sleep?
    Oh, yes.
    Yes, I used to walk home.
    I had a special pass that I could walk the streets.
    They used to give out--
    people that came from-- went from the ghetto
    to work had a pass.
    And I came home, and everything was just as usual.
    Then one day we got up, and my uncle that
    was in the Judenrat, Mayor Goldberg--
    as a matter of fact, I have a picture of him
    here, I'll show you later.
    And he spoke with my mother, and he said, the Nazis,
    they want us to give them 300 men and women to a labor camp.
    And they don't want to go and pick.
    They want us to give a list.
    So he told my mother.
    He said, look, we had no choice.
    We had to give a list.
    But what we did, we put our own family members--
    each and every member of the Judenrat
    had to put a member of his family on the list.
    And this uncle of mine had a daughter.
    She was, at that time, maybe 20 or 21, Bailey Goldberg.
    And he put her on the list.
    And he also put my grandfather's wife on the list.
    And my mother, you know, we started discussing and talking,
    and they said, now, what's going to be?
    How could she?
    She has a little girl with her?
    How could she go?
    And then I got up, and I said, I'll go in her place.
    Apparently, you know what he told me, to go to a labor camp.
    I said, I'll go in her place.
    And they hesitated.
    But then my mother said, Bailey is going, too?
    My cousin who was already past 20.
    She said, she'll take care of me.
    And I remember, I still had, from before the war,
    a pair of beautiful red leather boots.
    I had a shearling coat, gray that was embroidered.
    And my mother-- it was winter-- she gave it to me,
    and she gave me food.
    And she got permission to walk with us to the train station.
    And she was walking next to me and crying
    and walking and crying.
    But I saw her, that she walked over--
    the people that came to take us were not SS.
    They were called T.O.D. They were the German soldiers
    in construction that was a--
    they had special groups, special brigades for construction.
    And I saw she was walking next to that-- the officer that
    was leading us.
    And I noticed that she pushed something in his hand,
    then she walked to the station with us.
    And we cried and we kissed and we hugged.
    And they pushed us into freight cars,
    like the one you have at the Holocaust museum.
    And my mother left.
    And I was there with Bailey and another--
    there were 300 people.
    And the train started out.
    They closed the cars.
    Train started out.
    And we didn't know where we were going.
    It was dark.
    There was only a little window for air on top, two windows.
    And then the next morning we came to a place.
    And the cars were opened.
    And we saw that there were SS people talking
    with the people from the construction,
    talking with each other.
    And they kept us there maybe for two hours, three hours,
    and we didn't know what was happening.
    At the end of the three hours, they closed the cars again,
    and we proceeded.
    What we found out later was that the [INAUDIBLE] Commissar
    of White Russia didn't want us to go anywhere.
    He told them to pull up to Ponary,
    where all the people, the Jews from Vilna,
    were killed in that forest.
    And this is when they opened the cars.
    And this is when the head of the construction company
    negotiated with the [INAUDIBLE] Commissar
    that he needs these people badly to build
    a road from Kovno to Vilna.
    And this is when he closed the cars,
    and he took us into Lithuania.
    We came to Lithuania in the morning.
    They opened the cars.
    We got out.
    And there were trucks, open trucks.
    And they told us to get in the trucks.
    Let's back up a little bit.
    Who also went on the train with you besides your cousin?
    My cousin, myself, and 300--
    298 other people from Smorgon.
    Which we knew each other, it was a small town-- men and women.
    So you knew the other people in your car?
    Yes, we knew.
    I knew most of them.
    Most of them I knew, yes.
    What was the atmosphere like in that car?
    Well, there was no atmosphere.
    Everybody was sitting in a corner crying, depressed,
    not talking, or talking what is going to happen
    and what will be.
    But it's interesting.
    We knew that we are going to work,
    but nobody ever heard or discussed
    liquidations, Jews being shot and killed,
    or concentration camps, or crematoriums.
    It was absolutely-- it was not known at all.
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Tania Rozmaryn, conducted
    by Gail Schwartz on February 23, 1997
    in Silver Spring, Maryland.
    This is tape number two, side A. And we
    were talking about your journey in their train car,
    end of December, 1941, early January 1942.
    And I was asking about who else was in the car,
    and what the atmosphere was like.
    Yeah, they were-- the rest of the people
    were from my hometown.
    I knew most of them.
    And the atmosphere was very glum.
    Although we didn't know about crematoriums or concentration
    camps or a final solution, but we know we are going to work,
    and maybe that will save us until the end of the war.
    We came to a town in Lithuania called Žiežmariai.
    And they opened the cars, and we all stepped out,
    and there were trucks waiting for us.
    We got into the trucks, and they started
    moving through the streets.
    As we move through the streets, we knew that before the war
    it must have been an 80% Jewish town.
    Because wherever we passed the houses, we saw there--
    we saw the remnants.
    We saw the area where a mezuzahs used to be,
    and it was ripped off.
    So of course we surmised that those houses
    belonged to the Jewish people.
    After 15, 20 minutes, we got to the shul.
    It was the synagogue of the town.
    It was surrounded with barbed wire.
    And they took us in, into the synagogue.
    And already it was totally emptied
    from whatever it was before.
    And they had constructed three tier bunk beds.
    But not individual ones.
    It's like the one that I saw at the Holocaust Museum,
    where like 20, 30 people were next
    to each other like sardines.
    And they were three tiers.
    And there since I was very young as is my cousin,
    we went on the third tier of the bunk bed,
    and that's where we slept.
    And there was another house in the yard, also constructed
    inside with bunk beds for men.
    They gave us some food.
    And the next morning, they told us to line up.
    We lined up in the courtyard.
    And then the head of the camp came over,
    told us we are here in Žiežmariai,
    and we are going to build a road from Žiežmariai,
    which is going to run from Kovno to Vilna.
    And they are starting on both sides.
    We'll meet someplace in the middle.
    And then he said very nonchalantly,
    if anybody feels that they are too weak to work,
    or they want to go back home, by all MEANS we
    have more than enough people.
    So like 25 people stepped forward,
    and the rest went back to the shul
    or to the other building that was there.
    And they took them away.
    And then we found out the next day
    that they just took them like three miles away,
    and they killed them all and buried them there.
    And then we started going to work every morning.
    What was the age range of these 300 people?
    Oh, the age range, I would say, I
    must have been the youngest there,
    but they were from 16, 17, I would say, through 28, 30.
    Definitely not older.
    So you're 13 and 1/2 at this point.
    Yeah.
    And you said, were you very small physically?
    Right.
    I was very small physically.
    And I really think I was the only one, that I was small.
    Because later on, as I will mention to you, that because I
    was so tiny and small, I caught the eye
    of the head of the construction.
    And he was going to do me a special favor,
    but I will get to this later.
    Were you staying close by your cousin?
    Oh, we slept together, and we worked together.
    At night, we would cuddle up like sardines to stay warm.
    But still we did not feel that our life was threatened.
    Were you wearing that special coat
    that your mother gave you and the boots?
    Yes, I was wearing the red boots and that shearling,
    gray shearling coat.
    Yes.
    And I was very comfortable and very, very warm.
    And of course, my mother gave us some food in the beginning.
    I don't know even where she got it, some chicken
    and other things that we had to add to whatever we got there.
    What else did you bring with you?
    Nothing, really.
    Just what I wore, and maybe one more dress.
    That's it.
    Nothing else.
    You were wearing a dress?
    A dress and gloves.
    Yes, no-- nobody wore pants at that time.
    No women.
    No woman wore pants in those days.
    So the next day, they sent us to work.
    And he took us with the trucks again to an area where
    the highway was being built. And we got out,
    and there was like a Choo Choo train.
    And then we would get on that little train
    to get to the workplace as we progressed.
    And then they divided the jobs for what should be done.
    Now, there was one group where they were bringing-- of course,
    after it was all prepared and measured,
    they would put sand on their whole area of the highway.
    And it wasn't like with a highway that we know now.
    It must have been like a two-lane highway at most.
    And then rounded stones were brought in,
    and they were placed, one next to the other with the tips up.
    And we would have little shovels,
    put the stones in, and then fasten it in place.
    And this was-- the younger ones were doing that.
    And then the older people, the men
    were sitting on the roadside.
    And they would hammer-- special hammers,
    they were chopping up stones to make them into smaller ones,
    like not gravel but smaller stones.
    And then they would take those smaller stones
    with wheelbarrows, and they go on the freshly put stones,
    and sort of throw them off the wheelbarrow
    to fill in the holes in between the stones.
    After that was done, and of course
    let's say after 50 yards or 100 yards,
    then the next step was they were boiling tar.
    And they would cover it with tar,
    and then they had their steam roller.
    And that was the last--
    that was the last thing that they did.
    And every day, we used to go to work and go on
    to proceed further and further.
    And we were being watched, but not by SS,
    but by soldiers from the construction kommandos.
    But of course, we couldn't run away or go anywhere.
    We didn't even speak Lithuanian, so we were stuck there.
    What did they give you to eat in the morning before you left?
    In the morning, it was a bowl, sort of
    like black coffee, sort of imitation,
    with a slice of bread.
    It was like a small bread that was to be divided into four.
    And I remember we used to take-- and one person was in charge,
    so we would take a straw to measure that tiny bread.
    It was this size.
    How many inches?
    I don't know.
    6, 7 inches.
    And we would measure with the straw,
    and to divide it equally.
    And that was the bread for the whole day.
    And then when we came back, there was some kind--
    some kind of soup.
    What they did was, we used to take the peel
    from the potatoes from the German kitchens, and some grass
    that they would pick that wasn't poisonous to eat, and cook it
    together, and add some flour to it to thicken it.
    And that was the dinner when we came from work.
    Did they give you anything during the day?
    No, nothing.
    We had to save from the bread that they gave us
    in the morning for the day.
    Did they count you before you left?
    Naturally, they counted.
    But there was one other thing, what they did.
    And because really they were not--
    the Nazi commanders, the head of the-- a few weeks after we were
    there, the head of the construction,
    we didn't even know his name, but he was hoarse.
    So we called him the [INAUDIBLE] chef.
    And he told us that on and off he would take a truck,
    and take the head of the camp, which was a Jewish man.
    His name was [? Ring. ?] And he would
    take him and two other people, and he said,
    we'll go back to the ghetto, and ask your relative
    to send food for you.
    And we'll bring you the food, and you
    can write letters to them.
    So we did.
    Somebody who had a piece of paper or a pencil,
    they would share.
    And that's what he did, like once a month.
    He would take a truck and go there to the relatives,
    and bring food for us from the relatives.
    At that time, my mother wasn't any more in Smorgonie ghetto.
    At that time, they liquidated the Smorgonie ghetto,
    and they transferred my mother, my brother, my grandfather,
    and my sister.
    My oldest sister was--
    my oldest sister was in meantime, a few months
    after I came, he went back and he brought more people.
    But my sister wasn't staying with us.
    My sister was working in the office
    with 10 or 15 other girls near the workplace.
    And they had the special barrack there.
    So I really never saw my sister, but I knew she was there.
    Was that a help to you?
    No.
    No, not at all.
    Because she was in the labor camp just as I was,
    except that she had a better job.
    She was working in the office.
    Were you still wearing your yellow star?
    No, we didn't have to wear the yellow star there.
    We were just wearing what we did, but no yellow star.
    And then-- but they transferred all
    from Smorgonie and a few other ghettos
    into Oshmyany, which was a larger ghetto.
    So my father, my mother, my grandfather, his wife,
    and his daughter, and my brother,
    they all went to Oshmyany.
    Something interesting happened that my mother told me.
    When they came to the ghetto of Oshmyany,
    before they took them into the ghetto,
    they made a selection to get rid of the old people
    and the children.
    And it was someplace near where there was a synagogue.
    So they made a selection, and whoever was old,
    feeble, or children, they would send into the synagogue.
    And from the synagogue, they would take them immediately
    to the forest and kill them.
    So my mother, my brother, somehow I don't know why,
    and my grandfather's wife and his daughter,
    they let them go to the Oshmyany ghetto.
    They grabbed my grandfather and said, you're an old man.
    We have no use for you, and they put him into the synagogue.
    As he was in the synagogue, they were
    pushing people in, invalids and the sick people,
    and old people.
    And my grandfather was a healthy man.
    So he went to the door, because they would throw them in,
    and then everybody would step over the sick and the invalids.
    So he was standing by the door and picking up
    the invalids and the sick to put them in the corner,
    that nobody should trample them.
    The Nazis there at the door noticed it, and they said hey,
    you're still strong.
    We need you.
    And they took him out and sent him back to where my mother was
    and his wife.
    And they all went to the Oshhmyany ghetto.
    Now, going back to Žiežmariai, every day we would go to work,
    and then from--
    we were already farther away, we would get on those choo choo
    trains until we got to where the trucks were
    to get back to camp.
    One day I was on that choo choo train,
    wearing my red boots and my shearling,
    and the chef, the [INAUDIBLE] chef, he came over to me,
    sat down next to me, and he said,
    I know who are little girl.
    I met your mother on the way here.
    She walked to the train with you, right?
    I said yes.
    He said, you know-- and it was very cold.
    It must have been February, beginning of March.
    He said to me, next week, we'll be going with the truck
    to Oshmynany, to ghetto.
    And I know your mother is there.
    For food-- Because all the people from Smorgonie
    were in Oshmyany.
    And if you want, he said, you can come with me
    to see your mother.
    And apparently, he saw that I was frightened.
    And he said to me, don't be afraid,
    nothing will happen to you.
    Because the head of the camp is coming,
    and he was there with me before.
    And a few other people are coming.
    So I assure you that we are not going to kill you.
    You can come.
    I said OK.
    The morning, you know, the truck came.
    I got in the truck.
    I was so cold.
    It was freezing, and it took several hours.
    In the evening, we came to the Oshmyany ghetto.
    And we came in straight to the police station,
    to the Jewish police station.
    And he came in, and he told the policeman
    to go look for my mother and tell her to come,
    that I am here.
    My mother came, and of course we started kissing and hugging.
    And then she took me to the room where
    she had at that time a room.
    My mother, my grandfather, his wife, his daughter,
    and my brother, they had a room in somebody's house.
    And you hadn't seen her for about two months.
    I hadn't seen her, right, for two months.
    And I came.
    I came in, and we were there for two days.
    And then the following day, I got up.
    I was always suffering from probably strep throat a million
    times, because every time I had a sore throat,
    it was absolutely horrendous.
    I couldn't swallow.
    I couldn't speak.
    And I got up, and I had a high fever, and I was very sick.
    So my mother said--
    she said, I don't know what to do.
    How can I let you go?
    So she went to meet that chef, the head of the construction.
    And she told him that I'm very sick and I can't go back.
    And he said, but I cannot go back.
    I have to have the same amount of people.
    And then somebody said to my mother,
    you know, there is a girl, an orphan girl here in ghetto,
    from Smorgonie.
    And she has a sister that is in Žiežmariai,
    and she is starving here.
    You could do her a favor and yourself.
    Let her go instead of your daughter.
    And give her food, and give her whatever you can.
    And my mother, of course, was in seventh heaven.
    She went to meet the girl, and she gave her food.
    She gave her a few of my dresses.
    And she said, go and my first cousin will take care of her.
    And my mother said whenever they'll come for food,
    she'll send food for her, and maybe
    even my sister could help out.
    And the girl went.
    And I was there.
    And I got well, and I made some friends.
    And in the spring--
    What was that ghetto like?
    In the ghetto, really, there was no starvation.
    People looked well-fed, because somehow they
    would sneak out of the ghetto and barter things.
    And there was a soup kitchen always there.
    And it was a rather pleasant atmosphere.
    People weren't killed.
    People weren't dying.
    There was enough food.
    But it was a ghetto, and people were hoping that maybe we'll
    survive.
    The war will soon be over, and we'll manage to survive.
    Was it a walled-in ghetto?
    It was a walled-in ghetto, barbed wire.
    And I was in the ghetto.
    My mother, I don't think she worked.
    And I was in the ghetto.
    It was springtime already, like April, May.
    And I met some girls my age, and we were walking the streets.
    And it was rather-- we were teaching each other,
    and we were reading books together.
    And then one day, I was walking with my friends
    in the street near the entrance of the ghetto.
    And I saw the chef, the [INAUDIBLE] chef
    is there in a car.
    And he came over to me.
    And he says, "Kleine."
    Means in German "little girl."
    He said, who are you with?
    Where's your mother?
    I said, my mother is here.
    My grandfather, his wife, my brother.
    He says, listen closely what I'm telling you.
    Tell your mother-- go home, tell your mother
    to pack everything up.
    Tomorrow morning, I'm taking you all to where--
    to Žiežmariai, to where you were.
    He said, don't ask questions.
    Just do as I say.
    I went home to my mother.
    I said, mama, I saw the [INAUDIBLE] chef,
    and that's what he told me.
    He told me to tell you to pack up and come
    to the entrance of the ghetto in the morning.
    There will be horses with wagons,
    and he's taking us to Žiežmariai.
    My mother said, well, so far he was nice to us.
    We're going to do it.
    The next morning, my mother all packed up,
    and there were maybe another 20, 30 families.
    And in the entrance of the ghetto,
    there were farmers with horses and those large wagons
    that the farmers had.
    And they put the things on the wagons,
    and they said there is a train, which I saw is town here in--
    I forgot.
    I forgot the name of the little town.
    We go to that little town, and there is a train.
    And you will put all your stuff, your things
    into the freight cars.
    And you'll go to sleep over in the ghetto.
    And the next following morning, you'll come to the cars,
    and we will go to Žiežmariai.
    And we put-- my mother put everything.
    She had so many things in the wagon.
    And we got on top of it.
    My grandfather, his wife, her daughter, and my mother and I,
    my brother, we're all sitting and we're going.
    And on the way--
    maybe it was 15 miles.
    On the way, we passed by a village.
    Župrany.
    In Župrany, we saw the farmer let everybody go,
    all the wagon trains, and he pulled up to a side street.
    And all of a sudden, he pulled us up to his farm.
    And there it was his family came out with pitchforks
    and with neighbors, his neighbors.
    And they were ready to kill us and take everything we had.
    As I said, my mother, God bless her-- maybe
    that's why she lives a long life.
    Next March the 5th, she'll be 95.
    She jumped off the wagon.
    She ran to the street, and she saw two German officers.
    And with the Germans, if they had an order to kill,
    they didn't hesitate.
    But if they didn't have an order to kill,
    they behaved like civilized people.
    And they didn't like the white Russians much more
    because they were primitive in the eyes of the Germans.
    So my mother walked over to the Germans,
    and she said that we are about to go
    into a labor camp from Oshmyany to the other town.
    And the farmer, they took us, pulled us off to his farm,
    and he is about to kill us and take everything we had.
    They asked my mother where is it.
    And she takes them there, was in the next street.
    And they come in, and they saw what was happening.
    They took out their guns, and they told the farmers,
    you'd better get back into the house.
    And the person that the wagon belongs to,
    you get on the wagon, and take them to where they have to go,
    or we're going to kill you all right now.
    They all disappeared.
    He got back on his wagon, and he took us to the train station.
    We got to the train station, and we put everything
    in the freight cars.
    And he told us from there, it was not
    far to walk to the ghetto.
    And my father had relatives in that little town,
    so we figured they will probably be in the ghetto.
    What were you doing when the farmers started
    approaching with pitchforks?
    Well, we were sitting and crying,
    and then knew that that was the end of us,
    but there was nothing we can do about it.
    We couldn't fight back, and we couldn't do anything.
    What did you think when your mother walked away from you?
    I know that she was going to get help and to save us.
    That I knew.
    I knew my mother wasn't running from us.
    How did you know?
    No way.
    Not my mother.
    When she risked her life in the Smorgonie ghetto,
    in the Oshmyany ghetto to barter things
    and to bring food for us, and she wouldn't
    eat before everybody ate.
    I knew my mother wasn't going to run away from us.
    And in the later years, of course, even when she was 75,
    it was still her concern to take care
    of her children and her grandchildren.
    All her life, it was her concern.
    So we came to the ghetto, and we asked where the relatives
    lived, if they were there.
    And we were told yes, and they were quite wealthy people.
    And they were in the ghetto.
    Their house was in the ghetto, so they were essentially
    in their own home.
    What is the name of this town you're talking--
    If you will stop for a minute, I'll look up on the map
    if you want me to.
    It slipped my mind.
    Anyway, we found our relatives, my father's relatives.
    And they told us, well, come in.
    In the room we'll give you two beds.
    They said we have another room, but we
    can't give you the other room, because the chef is
    coming to sleep over.
    This was the nicest house in the ghetto.
    And he came to sleep over in that room.
    So I remember we were like four people on a bed, and we rested.
    And then I walked out into the hall.
    And I saw the chef.
    Again, he called me.
    He said, "Kleine, come with me."
    Takes me into his room, and he said,
    listen what I'll tell you.
    And tell it to your mother.
    He said, I found out that within two weeks,
    they are going to liquidate all the small ghettos
    and take them into Ponary and kill them.
    So I decided to save as many people as I can.
    So I went to the Gebietskommissar,
    and I told him that I need more workers
    to speed up the highway, and he should give me
    permission to go to the Oshmyany ghetto and bring more people.
    He said when I came to the Oshmyany ghetto,
    he said I felt that the first people that I need to save
    should be the relatives of those that are in Žiežmariai.
    And that's why, he said, I told your mother
    not to hesitate and not to ask questions and to come.
    And he said-- he opened his wallet,
    and he showed me a gold coin.
    And he said, some of the people there were trying to bribe me,
    that I should take other families.
    But he said, well, I took this one gold coin,
    because I'm taking people out of the ghetto,
    but my priority was their relatives from the people
    in Žiežmariai.
    And then he looked at me and said,
    if you have somebody here in ghetto that you
    want he should come with us, bring that person.
    Because in two weeks, that's what
    he showed me, that they were all going to be slaughtered.
    And in that ghetto, it so happened
    that I found the daughter--
    if you recall, when we first ran to Lebedev, to my Aunt Golda,
    that he was a shoemaker, and they had three children.
    So the daughter was there.
    Somehow she had a boyfriend, and they wind up in that ghetto.
    When she came, she told me that she's--
    I asked, what happened to your relatives, to your parents,
    to your brothers?
    She told me that a few months after we left,
    they gathered all the Jews into a barn,
    and they sprinkled the barn with gasoline,
    and they burned them all alive.
    And she was someplace at work, and she survived.
    And then she found a boyfriend, and that's
    why she was in that ghetto.
    Her name was Rivka.
    And I said, Rivka, come with us.
    Come with us, because we know for a fact
    that this ghetto will be liquidated.
    She said, no way.
    She says, I'm not going with you.
    I have a boyfriend here.
    I don't believe what you're saying.
    She didn't come.
    The next morning, we got up.
    We all went to the cars.
    And we got in.
    They closed the freight train, and they took us straight
    to Žiežmariai.
    And we came to Žiežmariai.
    And of course, all the relatives then found each other,
    and my sister was there, too.
    And we were also in seventh heaven,
    that we found each other.
    Why do you think this chief singled you out and talked
    to you and helped you?
    I think that first of all my mother
    had bribed him well on the way to the train, because he did it
    to us, especially, as you will hear later
    how he saved us again.
    And maybe by nature he was--
    he wasn't a young man.
    He was sort of in his 50s.
    Maybe he was a good person, and he
    wanted to do something decent for people.
    Did you feel singled out?
    Yes, because when he came and he asked
    me-- and I was the only one.
    He asked me if I want to go back to Oshmyany to see my mother,
    I knew he singled me out from everybody else.
    Because nobody else went except the head of the camp.
    Did you feel especially lucky?
    I felt lucky.
    I thought that because I looked clean and neat and my boots
    and my shearling, and I always had my hair,
    I felt that that made a difference, that that's why--
    I didn't let myself go and shlumpy and all this.
    I felt that made a difference.
    Here he brought us back to Žiežmariai,
    and he had the places prepared for my mother,
    and my grandfather, and his wife, and the little girl,
    and my brother.
    He all gave us, and he took my mother to work in the bakery,
    so we were sure that we would have bread enough to eat.
    And the rest of us went again to work.
    And we worked there until the spring of '43.
    What was your state of mind?
    You said you always were a very optimistic person.
    You are now 14, 15?
    My state of mind at that time was, it was one day at a time.
    I was composing songs and singing with my friends.
    We were talking about the events,
    but I remember something distinctly.
    On a Sunday, when we didn't work,
    and I was on top of that bunk bed,
    and I looked out the window, and I saw Christians
    all dressed up, with their children,
    the children wearing patent leather shoes, and white socks,
    and nice dresses, and hats going to church.
    And I looked out the window.
    And I would sit there all day and cry, why?
    Why is this happening to me?
    And I poured everything out in the songs that I had composed,
    all the misery and all the suffering.
    And then we would sit at night and sing the songs.
    There was one other thing that kept us occupied.
    We would sit in groups, and we would
    make believe it's Friday in our home.
    And we come home from school, and all the delicious aromas
    of fish, and challah, and chicken soup, and chicken
    is there in the kitchen.
    And the mother is there, and the white table cloth,
    and the candles, and we would sort of--
    everybody would add how their home looked on a Friday night,
    on a Shabbat.
    But of course, we woke up to reality,
    and it was very, very, very bad.
    Would you sing one of the songs that you wrote?
    [SIGHS]
    In Yiddish?
    Mm-hmm.
    I don't know if I--
    For just a little bit.
    Maybe a line.
    OK.
    [SINGING IN YIDDISH]
    I forgot.
    But the end is that I hope that this storm will stop,
    and just like the river is flowing peacefully by,
    maybe my life will start peacefully flowing again.
    Thank you for doing that.
    Thank you.
    This is a song that you composed?
    Yes.
    Thank you.
    Yes.
    Thank you.
    Then spring came, 1943.
    And there were rumors that the Russians are pushing back
    the Germans from the Ukraine, and there were
    heavy, heavy battles going on.
    And we were hoping maybe, maybe it will happen to us.
    But all that happened one day, we saw trucks come in.
    And people come out of the trucks, setting up stations,
    and called everybody to come out and to sign up.
    We didn't know what to do.
    We're standing there.
    And all of a sudden, the chef came to my mother.
    He said, go back.
    These people, this camp is going to be liquidated,
    because the war is getting-- the front is getting nearby.
    And this people came.
    I made arrangements, instead of you being sent
    to Ponary all to be killed.
    I found places near the Russian border,
    where they need to dig trenches and obstacles for tanks.
    So they took my advice, and they came
    to sign up the people to go there
    to [? Pleskow ?] was the name.
    But he said, don't go because there is something else coming.
    Let other people sign up.
    Go into the room, and stay back, and wait
    until I'll tell you when.
    So my mother took me, and my sister.
    We all went back, the whole family.
    We didn't sign up.
    They signed up most of the people, put them in trucks,
    and they went away.
    The next day, another group of trucks, a caravan came in,
    and they opened the trucks.
    And we saw men with armbands, blue and white on their arms.
    We walked out to look.
    We asked, who are you?
    Where do you come from?
    They said, we are Jewish policemen
    from the Kovno ghetto.
    And we came out, and then the chef came running to my mother.
    And he says, now I want you to sign up and go.
    So we signed up.
    We were all put on trucks, but not my sister.
    Because my sister was working in the office.
    And he said, don't worry.
    There are like 15 girls working in the office.
    One day I know where you are, I'll
    bring her to the Kovno ghetto.
    We got on the trucks, and he brought us to the Kovno ghetto.
    And with us, of course, was my Uncle [? Meyer, ?]
    that was in the Judenrat, that his daughter, my cousin,
    was with me.
    He and his wife, and the other two children,
    they were already--
    they came with us from Oshmyany and to Žiežmariai and then
    to the Kovno ghetto.
    This is tape two, side B. And you
    were talking about going to the Kovno ghetto.
    We came to the Kovno ghetto, and the Jews in the covenant ghetto
    looked very well dressed, very well-fed.
    And they were very nice to us.
    They divided us into two groups.
    This is June '43, we're talking.
    And so you are now 16-years-old.
    Did you ever have any marking of your birthdays up to this time,
    once the war started?
    None whatsoever.
    And I was just still as small as when I was 11 or 12-years-old.
    They divided us into two groups.
    One group they took into a synagogue, which
    they converted for lodging.
    And this is where they put us.
    We walked into the synagogue.
    There were mattresses wall-to-wall
    in the men's synagogue.
    And in the ladies section up there, there
    were also mattresses, and they put people there.
    And every family, we got one mattress.
    My mother, my brother, and myself.
    My sister still didn't come.
    And the rest of them they took to another building
    nearby, which used to be a movie house.
    And they had the same arrangements.
    They had mattresses there.
    And that's where my uncle, and my aunt, and their family
    went to that movie house.
    And when we had nothing to do there,
    we would go out of the synagogue and look around.
    And one day, two girls came over to me,
    one whose name was [? Sisa ?] Trotsky, and the other one
    was Batsheva.
    And they came over to me.
    And they looked much older, and they were dressed beautifully.
    And they asked me my name.
    And then they said to me, we lived all our life in Kovno.
    Now we're in the ghetto.
    And why don't you come with us and come visit our families?
    And I went with them, and they really
    lived in a beautiful house.
    One of them that I became very friendly, [? Sisa ?] a Trotsky,
    she lives now in New York.
    She's the one that I mentioned before.
    She would know much more about the Kovno ghetto.
    And they would give us food.
    And then they introduced us to other--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    What happened?
    I took the phone off--
    So they introduced me to many more boys than girls.
    And these boys and girls, they were much older than I am.
    And they had already an organization.
    They had an organization.
    They were in contact with partisans,
    and they knew exactly what was going on outside.
    And we used to have meetings and discuss
    even talk about Zionism.
    And it was really--
    the evenings we would spend there together
    with these young people from the Kovno ghetto.
    Did this group have a special name?
    No.
    No, they didn't have a--
    not that I know of, but we would all meet.
    And it was-- for me, it was for the first time in my life
    that I belonged to a group, because I was already
    a teenager, and to a group of teenagers.
    But it was only intellectual.
    Of course, people had sympathy, this boy likes that girl.
    You know how it is under normal circumstances.
    But there were no dating or anything.
    We are all concerned about the political situation
    and about Israel and Zionism.
    Was this the first time that you had heard
    about any form of resistance?
    Yes.
    This was actually the first time that we
    heard that there are partisans, they are resisting,
    and they are in the forests.
    But of course, it was so far away from us
    that we wouldn't even contemplate to run away
    or to look for them.
    It was an abstract thing that was happening at a time.
    And all of a sudden, I was aware of it.
    But in the other places that you had been up to that point,
    you had not heard of talk of resistance?
    Not at all.
    And we lived in small towns with forests all over,
    but there were no partisans in our area.
    In the Ukraine there were, but not in our area.
    And so we were in shul.
    And then my sister came.
    This [INAUDIBLE] chef brought my sister.
    And of course when we saw her, it
    was like she came from the other world.
    My mother had gotten a job, also in a soup kitchen.
    And of course, so we always had some soup
    with potatoes or whatever.
    Now somebody found out.
    Somebody came back from Žiežmariai after they found out
    that the chef took the girls to the Kovno together.
    They came to look for the girls.
    They wanted them back, somebody else.
    And we were afraid that they would come and immediately find
    my sister, they would take her back.
    One of the friends that we made, interesting, she was--
    she was-- all my other friends were very educated
    and sophisticated.
    Like this [? Sisa's ?] mother was a nurse.
    Her father was a doctor, and her uncles were all in medicine.
    Before the WAR they would travel to Paris, and Amsterdam,
    and to London.
    So they were all worldly people.
    But there was one girl that she came from a very plain family.
    Her brothers even I think they were like--
    they were like truckers or something.
    But once in a while, we would go to spend a few hours with her.
    And then I told the girls, I said, look what's happening.
    They want to grab my sister, maybe me, and take us back.
    So this girl of all people, she said,
    I have three strong brothers.
    And don't you worry.
    You come to us, we'll hide you.
    And they won't find you.
    And my sister and I stayed with them for several weeks
    until we knew that they probably had left.
    And then we went back to the synagogue to be with my mother.
    One day, as we were sitting in the synagogue--
    this is one of the miracles that I can't explain.
    We were sitting on that mattress,
    and everybody was sitting there on the mattresses.
    And to the west, there was still--
    the Holy Ark was there.
    There were no scrolls, but the Ark was there.
    And we were sitting there.
    And outside whoever had some potatoes or flour
    would make a little fire and cook something.
    And then they started--
    we didn't go to work yet.
    All of a sudden, a Jewish policeman
    comes into the synagogue, and he has a certain piece
    of paper in his hand.
    And he says, is there a family Marcus and Jablanovič here?
    My mother gets up.
    She says, yes, I'm Cyla Marcus.
    He says, and Jablanovič There were two sisters,
    and they got up.
    They said, we're Jablanovic.
    He said, come with me.
    I have a room for you in the ghetto, instead of being here.
    We were shocked.
    We didn't apply.
    We weren't pushy.
    We're just sitting wherever we were sent.
    We didn't go out of our way, because we didn't
    know what to do to save ourselves or what's bad
    or what's worse.
    Did you believe him?
    Yeah, a Jewish policeman?
    Certainly.
    He says come.
    And I said, but how did you know?
    We didn't apply for a room?
    How did you pick us out?
    He says, come with me.
    I have a room for you.
    There is an old lady with a son, and she
    has two rooms in the ghetto.
    And one room will be for you and the Jablanovičes.
    He took us there to that room, to that lady.
    We met her-- I can still see her face--
    with her son.
    And the second room, he gave to us and the two sisters
    Jablanovic.
    And we stayed there.
    And then they started sending us all to Žiežmariai.
    We had to go to work.
    First, it was very, very hard work.
    We had to go where they had the airport.
    But what they did was, in order to save--
    to protect the plains, they had built bunkers around it,
    like a double wall around the planes--
    around the hangars.
    And in between was filled with sand.
    So we had to stand there.
    They brought-- sand was brought.
    And then we had to--
    and then there was like a platform.
    And we would have to throw the sand on the platform.
    Then another group would take the sand from the platform
    and put it into the hollow in between the two walls
    to fill up as a protection for the hanger.
    Sand is heavy.
    How did you have the strength to do this?
    You had to do it.
    You took as much as you could, and you did.
    You said you were small, and obviously you
    weren't eating that.
    Right, right.
    So we did the utmost.
    But I don't remember anybody being hit
    or anybody being punished.
    So we did what we could.
    Did you do any work previous to that in the Kovno ghetto?
    No, no.
    This was really a short time after I we came, maybe
    three weeks or so.
    And then-- and we-- really, we worked very hard there.
    Then all of a sudden--
    and we had to line up at the entrance of the ghetto
    every morning.
    One day, they looked at us, the Jewish policemen,
    those that were assigning the work.
    And they said, oh, don't go there.
    We're sending you to a new place, a new job.
    My mother, my sister, myself, and my brother
    was at home always.
    If we had any food, he would prepare it for us.
    So we got in the truck, and they brought us to a place
    where they made galoshes and rubber boots.
    And it was warm, and it was clean, and it was nice.
    And we sat at a conveyor belt. And I remember my job,
    the galoshes would come on the wooden form.
    And I all I had to do is-- and I had a whole tray with soles.
    And all I had to do is put the sole over the galoshes
    and go over with the roller and put it back,
    and then it went another few operations,
    and then it went to a vulcanizing
    oven, where it was hardened.
    And that was beautiful sitting.
    And what they did, the people from the Kovno ghetto
    made arrangements for us that every day lunchtime,
    they made--
    they prepared a meal for us there at work.
    I don't know whether everybody had it.
    I think just for us, for the people who came from
    Žiežmariai.
    And we worked there, and it was really--
    it was just wonderful.
    And this is how-- so we went every day to work, my brother--
    Is this men and women?
    Men, yes.
    Men and women.
    Did you notice at this point any difference
    between men and women, or boys and girls in responding
    to what was happening?
    Really not.
    I think people kept to themselves,
    unless it was like a group of friends or relatives that came.
    Otherwise, people were so absorbed
    with survival and to have some food for today
    or for tomorrow, that nobody really discussed anything else.
    When you are hungry and your life hangs on a thread,
    you don't discuss philosophies, or histories,
    or any other topic that normal human beings would discuss.
    It was all "today I survive, and let's see
    what will be tomorrow."
    But I must say, the people in the Kovno ghetto
    were wonderful.
    I remember when we used to come to the gate,
    there were two Jewish policemen that they were in charge
    of the gate, the entrance gate.
    And people knew already.
    You know, people used to sew pockets into their coats,
    in the lining.
    And at work, Gentiles would come,
    and they would barter potatoes and carrots or bread
    or whatever, and they would stuff it in.
    When we came back to the ghetto in the gate, there was this--
    [? Lora ?] [? Aronofsky ?] was his name.
    And then there was the Lithuanian policemen.
    And they would start to frisk people.
    If they would find something, they
    would take everything away.
    Somehow this policeman-- and there was Yankel
    [? Leveblovski. ?] This Yankel [? Leveblovski ?] was even more
    than [? Lora ?] Aronofsky.
    Yankel [? Leveblovski ?] somehow had probably bribed
    the Lithuanians.
    So when the gate was opened, he would walk over
    to one side of the gate, sort of facing
    the Lithuanian with his back to us, and speaking to him,
    and with his hand, he would motion [HEBREW]..
    Which means in Hebrew like, "go, go, go, move on, move on."
    And this is how people would bring in food into the ghetto
    and survived.
    And this is how we went to work and we managed to survive.
    Did non-family members come to the aid of other people?
    Obviously, family members helped each other,
    but did you notice help between two different families?
    The people, the Jews in the Kovno ghetto were tremendous.
    They also had in the Kovno ghetto,
    they called it Werkstätten.
    It was like workshops that they produced shoes and clothing,
    all kinds of--
    I really don't know exactly, and many were employed there.
    And they managed to get food.
    It was really-- when I read about what
    happened in Lodz and in Warsaw, incredible.
    In the Kovno ghetto--
    And one other thing, the head of the ghetto, his name
    was Dr. Elkes.
    He was a very dedicated Jew.
    I remember him.
    He had a horse and a driver and a chariot.
    He would sit on his chariot and be
    driven all around the ghetto, and everything
    was under his control.
    He must have had some connections
    that made life in the ghetto easier for all the Jews.
    He was a tremendous man, respected by everybody.
    Were you thinking at all about your father all along,
    or at this time?
    All the time.
    All the time I was thinking, if my father was alive,
    he would have found a way to save us.
    He knew so many farmers.
    He knew so many peasants.
    If he was alive, he would have taken care of us,
    because we had so much trust in my father's ability
    to provide and to take care of us.
    Did your mother talk about your father?
    No, she did not.
    Did not talk.
    No, no.
    It was sort of a wound that didn't
    heal in everybody's hearts.
    One day, one morning we got up, and the ghetto was surrounded.
    And we heard rumors in the street
    that they came-- the Nazis came to take 6,000 people
    from the ghetto to labor camps.
    And again, they did not--
    they did not-- in the Kovno ghetto,
    they did not give out lists.
    So the first thing they did, they went to the synagogue,
    and they cleaned out all the Žiežmariai.
    they went to the movie house and take out all the Žiežmariai.
    Took them to the trains, took away all my younger cousins
    immediately to the concentration camp.
    Later we found out they took them to a labor camp in Riga.
    But before that, they took away the old people
    and the children.
    And then they spread out all through the streets
    of the Kovno ghetto to grab as many as they needed.
    And my mother prepared for us already
    a bag, a sack to take along.
    But the woman in the house says to us,
    she says, you know, we have a cellar here, and we can hide.
    And I'll describe to you that place.
    I'm sure you saw Schindler's List.
    Do you remember that the little girl with her family,
    they opened a door into a cellar,
    and they got into the cellar, closed the door
    and covered it with a rug.
    That's exactly what we did.
    We all got into the cellar, and there
    was a rug attached to the door.
    And once we got into the cellar, this lady pulled down the door,
    and she locked it.
    And as soon as you pulled down the door, it looked like a rug
    on top of it.
    And we were there in the basement,
    in the cellar sitting Quietly and then
    we heard the Germans coming into the room, looking for us.
    Where are the people?
    They saw bags, packed bags but no people.
    Where are the people?
    They looked around, but they didn't find us, and they left.
    A few hours later, when everything--
    we were told the coast was clear,
    so we came out of hiding, and then we found out that they
    took away all the people from Žiežmariai.
    The only two families that survived were us, the Marcuses,
    and the Jablanovičes that were in this house.
    Nobody else.
    Nobody else remained in the Kovno ghetto.
    How does a 15 and 1/2 year old young girl
    handle that kind of knowledge that you just said?
    Interesting.
    I-- I was sad.
    I was-- I was terrified.
    But I don't know.
    On one hand, I was resolved.
    Whatever will happen to me, will happen.
    My father was gone.
    All the relatives are dead.
    So dying?
    So we have to die, I'll die.
    On the other hand, I was very optimistic, like I said.
    And I always believed in dreams, even now.
    That if I have to make a certain decision,
    I know I will dream about it, and I will get
    an answer what to do, always.
    Sometimes my dreams frighten me, because once when
    I was already in the United States,
    I had a dream that a relative came, to an aunt from Israel.
    And it was maybe two months before Yom Kippur.
    And I dreamed that night that it was after the fast,
    and her brother came to our door and he knocked at the door.
    And I asked him, Moshe, what do you want?
    He said, you know, my sister doesn't cook much.
    I know you have a lot of food.
    Could you spare some food for us to break the fast?
    And I said, of course.
    I called him in.
    It was a few months before Yom Kippur.
    On the month of Yom Kippur, somebody knocks at the door.
    And I walk over, and I see this man is there.
    And he asks me, do you have enough food?
    I was petrified.
    For something, you know, to--
    but I always--
    I always believe in dreams, and my dreams give me messages.
    I know how to interpret them.
    When I went to school, I have a master's
    in counsel of education.
    I have a master's in marriage and family counseling,
    which I practice.
    So when I went to college for my master's
    in marriage and family counseling,
    there was many courses, of course, in psychology.
    And were discussed dreams and interpretation of dreams.
    And we always discussed my dreams.
    It was-- I am afraid, you know, to interpret
    the dream, because I always want it to be good.
    Let's go back to when you're in hiding in the cellar.
    In a minute.
    I just want to finish why I mentioned the dreams.
    That night, one night, I had a dream that I was on a lake,
    and it was a very stormy lake, and it was dark,
    and the water was black.
    And I was there with my mother, with my sister, and myself.
    My brother wasn't there.
    And I felt that I saw we are drowning.
    And we were drowning, and crying, and screaming.
    And then all of a sudden, I saw--
    I saw a log on the water.
    And I grabbed that log.
    And I made my mother hold onto it, my sister,
    and we swam to the shore.
    And I got up in the morning and I said, mama,
    we'll survive the war.
    I know it, we will.
    Because my dream told me that we will.
    You had asked me?
    Yeah, what did you do when you were in hiding in the cellar
    with the top covered over by the rug?
    Were you able to talk?
    Did your mother console you?
    What did you do?
    Just sitting.
    Everybody was petrified, shivering, and listening,
    and hoping that that door will never be pried open.
    We didn't talk, because of out of fear
    that we might be discovered.
    No, not at all.
    It was total silence there.
    Yes.
    So here we are, they took away all the people from Žiežmariai,
    and we continued.
    And we went on with life, and if we had enough food.
    Nobody-- I didn't see any dead people in the ghetto.
    Nobody died of starvation.
    And then it was in March 1944.
    The ghetto was surrounded.
    We got up in the morning, and we saw the Mercedeses
    and the top echelon Nazis with those leather coats,
    German shepherds, dobermans.
    And the ghetto was surrounded.
    And we got up, and we were told we should go
    to the entrance of the ghetto.
    And we have to go to work.
    Those that are going to work have to go to work.
    I had a terrible dream that night before we got up.
    I had a dream that we were in a big kitchen,
    and there were big pots of water boiling on the stove.
    And somebody grabbed my brother and threw him
    into a boiling pot.
    I got up, and I didn't--
    I didn't even want to--
    I didn't want to think about it.
    We went to work as usual, but we knew that something
    was going to happen.
    And we went there.
    We started working on the galoshes.
    And around midday, somebody came and told us
    that there was an Aktion, that the Germans went
    into the ghetto, and they took out the old people
    and the children.
    They took them to the Fortress #9, and they were all killed.
    We came in to our room.
    My brother wasn't there.
    We started crying and screaming and tearing our clothes.
    And the neighbors, they told us how
    he was begging for his life.
    And they took him away.
    The next day, we didn't go to work.
    At that time, we did not live anymore
    in that house with the woman.
    We lived-- they had two-story buildings there, brick
    buildings.
    We lived in a room with other two families
    in the Kovno ghetto.
    But this is-- at that time, I don't
    remember when we switched, but this is where we lived.
    And the next day, they told us not to go to work.
    We all gathered in one of the rooms that
    had the window to the front.
    My mother, my sister, and many of the neighbors that survived.
    What was your mother like after that?
    Oh, my mother was--
    my mother was very strong.
    We all cried.
    We all tore our clothes.
    But she knew that she has to be strong for us,
    for my sister and myself.
    And we sat there, and my mother immediately, she
    stuffed up, up my breasts.
    She took-- she found some red paper
    and made my lips red and my cheeks, and puffed up my hair,
    that I should look mature.
    And we sat there.
    And they were going from house to house
    to check, to double check if any children were left.
    In the next two doors down, they went in,
    and some children were hidden there in a bunker.
    And probably somebody-- the children cried.
    And they opened up, and they found several children there.
    And the children were screaming, and the mothers
    were following them.
    They grabbed the children by their legs,
    and they dragged them downstairs with their brains spilling
    all over the staircase.
    And they came down, and we looked out.
    There were trucks.
    And they were standing there with their bayonets
    and sticking into the babies and throwing them inside the truck,
    like you do with a fork with a piece of meat.
    And the mothers that cried and objected,
    they immediately shot them and threw them
    into the truck with them.
    And we sat there.
    We looked out the window, and we saw it all.
    The next day, they ordered us to go back to work.
    And we went back to work as usual.
    And we did the same work.
    We came home, and we continued until it was the month of July.
    In July, the ghetto was surrounded again.
    And they told us that the ghetto is going to be liquidated.
    And everybody should line up, and everybody
    should take whatever they want, and out of the ghetto.
    We walked out of the ghetto.
    And we walked to the river, to the Nemen.
    This is the river that crossed the city of Kovno.
    We came to the Nemen.
    There were barges, like coal barges or freight barges.
    And they pushed us all into the barges, again like sardines.
    And--
    After seeing what you just described,
    how did you have the will to go on after?
    Somehow I think it's the instinct in us,
    the instinct of survival.
    That as long as you live, you push on to survive.
    Because as we have noticed, especially later on, people
    that were in the same situation that we were, but they gave up
    and they said what's the point?
    As a matter of fact, one sister of the Jablanovič sisters said,
    what's the point?
    We are going to be killed.
    And she gave up.
    And she wouldn't eat, and she wouldn't wash,
    and then she died.
    So the instinct of survival as we all know in a human being is
    very strong of self-preservation, as long--
    and in any animal--
    of survival of self preservation.
    And this is how we functioned from day to day,
    on animal instinct of self-preservation,
    without thinking or discussing the current situation
    that we were in.
    None whatsoever.
    Only the animal instinct prevailed.
    If I can get some food, if we will survive.
    Well, we weren't even afraid of death.
    Just like animals.
    This is what they did.
    This is what they turned us into.
    Became like animals without any human reaction
    to what surrounded us, or what was,
    or what happened to our loved ones.
    We were absolutely stunned or petrified
    into like a four-legged animal, nothing else.
    And then it was in July they put us into the barges,
    on the river Nemen.
    And the barges were going West.
    For a few days, the sun was boiling,
    and our lips were parched, and we didn't have water.
    And then as I looked out of the barge,
    the water was so beautiful on both sides and both banks.
    And there were flowers, and grass, and trees,
    and everything was so beautiful.
    And here we where, being decimated in those barges
    under those conditions.