Biography
Helen Yermus (born Helen Verblunsky) is the daughter of Yitchak and Tova Verblunsky. She was born on September 15, 1932 in Kovno, Lithuania, where her father had a ceramic furnace company. Helen had a younger brother Avraham (b.1937). During the German occupation of Kovno the Verblunsky family was forced into the ghetto. Helen looked after her younger brother while her parents worked on forced labor brigades. Tova was assigned to a work detail at the Kovno airport. Occasionally she was able to smuggle milk into the ghetto, which she obtained from Lithuanians in exchange for articles of clothing. During the Children's Action of March 27, 1944, Avraham was forcibly taken away from Helen. In July 1944 Helen and her parents were deported to Stutthof. Upon their arrival, Yitzhak (along with the other men) was transferred to Dachau. Helen and her mother never saw him again. Red Cross records indicate that he died in March 1945. From Stutthof, Helen and her mother were sent first to Baumgart and then to Strasburg (Poland). On January 19, 1945 Strasburg was evacuated and its inmates put on a death march. Helen's mother suggested that they return to the barracks to get straw for warmth. By the time they returned to the assembly point, the march had already begun, and they were ordered to return to the camp. There, along with fifty other women, they were ordered to lie down, and the SS commander injected each woman with a syringe in her left thigh. Approximately half of the women died, but Helen and her mother survived. A week later, on January 24, 1945 a lone Russian scout liberated the camp. Eventually, Helen and her mother made their way to the Admont displaced persons camp in Austria. There, Helen met her future husband, Aaron Yermus while attending a Betar Zionist youth seminar. Later, Helen, her mother and Aaron immigrated to Canada, where Helen and Aaron were married on July 6, 1952.
