- Biography
- Rachel Eisenstadt (the mother of the donor, nee Bak, later Burstein) was born in 1918. Rachel was the daughter of Avraham and Batya Bak. She had a brother Hershel who was married to Henia Schwartz and a sister Leah (b. 1916). Her father had flour mills and cattle in Kovno, and his son Herschel worked with him in the meat business. Before the war she was married to Pinchus Burstein (b. July 12, 1906, Vilkomir). He was a factory owner and a Zionist. The couple had one son Eliyahu (Alex) Burstein born on July 7, 1939. In June 1940 the Soviet Union annexed Lithuania. The Soviets nationalized the Burstein's home and deported Rachel's aunt and uncle to Siberia. The following year, on June 22, 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union and occupied Lithuania. Immediately a murderous pogrom broke out, and on August 15, all Jews were required to move to the ghetto. Rachel, Pinchus and Alex were forced to move to the ghetto in Slobodka as did her parents and her two siblings. October 28, 1941 the Germans conducted a massive selection in the ghetto known as the Great Aktion and sent approximately 10,000 Jews to their deaths. Alex survived hidden in a bunker. After that relative calm returned to the ghetto. Pinchus worked in a workshop within the ghetto, and Rachel marched outside to a work brigade that collected logs for fuel. In 1943 she tried to hide Alex with a farmer near her place of work, but this did not succeed, and he had to return to the ghetto. Meanwhile, conditions in the ghetto worsened. On March 27, 1944, the Germans rounded-up the ghetto's children and sent them to their deaths at the 9th Fort. Rachel and Pinchus again successfully saved their son by hiding him in a bunker. Following that Rachel went to work for a laundry brigade in the city. She asked her boss to hide Alex, but returned the boy after two weeks. Rachel switched work sites and asked her new supervisor, a woman named Lucy to hide her son and she agreed. About the same time, Rachel's brother Hershel escaped from the ghetto. In July 1944 the Germans began the final liquidation of the Kovno ghetto in advance of liberating Soviet troops. They deported the residents to Dachau and burned down the ghetto killing those who remained. Rachel's parents and sister died in the liquidation. She and Pinchus boarded the trains to Dachau. Her sister-in-law Chana (Hershel's wife) jumped into a ditch and later rejoined her husband. From Dachau all the women, including Rachel, were sent on to the Stutthof concentration camp. The men remained in Dachau. Pinchus contracted tuberculosis as a result of exposure to dust in an ammunition factory. He passed away in Dachau shortly before liberation on March 1945. Rachel was liberated there in May, 1945. After liberation, Rachel returned to Kovno to look for Alex. After some searching, she found him together with her brother and sister-in-law who had recovered him assuming that Rachel had perished. Lucy couldn't keep Alex safe during the German's final liquidation action, so Herschel grabbed his nephew and kept him in the woods with him. Alex and Rachel moved to Vilkomir and then moved to Poland under forged papers. From there they made their way to Germany staying first in the Schlachtensee displaced persons camp in Berlin and then moving to Landsberg in Bavaria. There Rachel met and later married Boris (Berko) Ajzensztadt (later Eisenstadt), originally from Pinsk. He survived the war in the Soviet Union and had fought with the Russian Army. In 1948, Boris, a committed Zionist, moved to Israel to fight in Israel's War of Independence. After the war ended, Rachel and Alex joined him in Israel and settled in Bnai Braq. In 1951 Rachel gave birth to a daughter Betty Eisenstadt. About a year later, they moved to Winnipeg to join Boris' cousins.
