Portrait of a Jewish family in Memel with their cat.
Overview
- Caption
- Portrait of a Jewish family in Memel with their cat.
Pictured are Moshe, Abraham, and Golda Lewin. - Date
-
1937 - 1938
- Locale
- Memel, [autonomous region]
- Variant Locale
- Klaipeda
Klaypeda
Lithuania - Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Abraham Lewin
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Abraham Lewin
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Abraham Lewin is the son of Moshe Lewin and Golda (Olga) Goldberg Lewin. He was born in Memel, Lithuania on January 12, 1925; his father Moshe was born on October 30, 1896 in Kybartai, a small Lithuanian town on the border of Tsarist Russia and Germany. He had two brothers, Jechezkeil (Hatzkel) and Max. As a young man, Moshe attended a commercial college and operated a movie theater in Kovno called The Palace. He headed the local "Brit Hahayil," a revisionist organization consisting of former soldiers. Among his closest friends was a young lawyer named Jacob Goldberg. Goldberg later became a member of the Lithuanian parliament and chariman of The Union of Jewish Soldiers. Moshe fell in love with Jacob's sister, Golda. The young couple moved to Memel and married. Moshe found a commercial job which he lost during the 1930 financial crisis. Golda learned corset making in Paris and began her own business at home to support the family until Moshe started a new business. Abraham studied in a German High school in Memel. When it became clear that Nazi Germany was going to occupy the Memel strip, Abraham and his mother moved to Kovno (Kaunas), while his father stayed behind to close up his business. Soon afterwards he joined his family in Kovno and started to work in a transportation firm. The family never intended to remain in Kovno. They planned to stay there until they could to immigrate to Canada, where Moshe's brother Max already lived. However in order to go to Canada they needed to travel through the Soviet Union and Japan. To the family's dismay, the Soviets rejected their request for a transit visa, so they were forced to stay in Lithuania. Abraham meanwhile attended a Hebrew school until the Soviets occupied Lithuania in 1940 and ordered that the language of instruction be changed to Yiddish. Abraham, whose native language was German, considered Yiddish to be a form of distorted German, so preferred to attend the public Lithuanian school instead. On June 22, 1941 Germany invaded Lithuania. In August all of Kovno's Jews had to move into the ghetto in the neighboring own of Slobodka. Moshe was first appointed the head of the ghetto criminal police and then head of the entire ghetto police force. Golda's brother, Jacob, became a member of the Aeltestenrat (Jewish Council) and head of the labor department. In addition to his work with the police, Moshe remained active with the revisionist Zionist underground and assisted the ghetto's resistance movement. He was called affectionately De Gaulle by those in the ghetto. On March 28, 1944, the Germans arrested all members of the ghetto police and brought them to the Ninth Fort. There they interrogated them about the locations of hiding places in the ghetto and activities of the resistance. Moshe refused to disclose any information, and subsequently was among thirty-six policemen who were executed. After Moshe's death, Abraham and his mother went into hiding in the beginning of April 1944 with a Lithuanian woman in Simnas. The Soviets recaptured Lithuania in July of 1944, and Abraham joined the Red army. He served as a translator as he spoke Russian, Lithuanian, and German. Golda was very worried about her son's participation in the army. She decided to travel with the Bricha to Palestine and wrote Abraham from Romania telling him that she was in the hospital and needed him. The army knew it was a ploy and refused to allow him to be released. Abraham's mother went to Palestine via Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. She eventually arrived in Tel Aviv in 1946 but died of typhus shortly after in 1947. Abraham remained in the army until 1948. He returned to Vilna and became a proofreader for a newspaper. He subsequently went on to study journalism in Vilnius University.
- Record last modified:
- 2008-07-21 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1154665
