RelatioNet GO YO 41 JI PO
Interviewer:
Full Name/s Yonatan Guttman & Maayan Bortz
Email: m_bortz@walla.co.il
Survivor:
Code: RelatioNet GO YO 41 JI PO
Family Name: Gershowitz- Golobok
Birth Date: 1/01/1925
Town In Holocaust: Jivia and Lida
תקציר קורות חיים [בעברית]: .
This is my story, as told by my mother. I was very young then, so I hardly remember anything.
I was born in December 1940 in the town named Jivia, which is now in Belarus. Previously it was a part of Poland ("Great Poland"). The town was mostly Jewish and most residents were educated. Jivia is a short distance from the main town of the province, Lida, the biggest town in the area. There was a good relationship between the Jews and other people.
At that time, when I was born, the war had not yet reached our area. There was quiet, everything was as usual. The war reached those areas in 1942, in the spring. I was only one and a half years old. When the Nazi forces got there, they gathered many of the healthy men and took them. No one knew where they were taken. In retrospect we know that most of them were sent to the death camps. Mainly women, children and elderly people were left in the village. The Nazis had committed death acts: all the Jews were concentrated in the town square, and were told "you to the right, you to the left". Whoever was sent to the left stayed alive, whoever was sent to the right was executed in killing pits. The people who were sent to the pits were striped from their clothes and shot while the other town's people had had to watch.
Those who stayed alive were used as labor force in Jivia. At the time my mom lived in hiding- the Germans didn't need the women. My mom always said that the hardest thing during those months was to hide with a baby.
After several months all the people were taken to the ghetto of Lida, the closest ghetto in the area. My mom told me the people in the ghetto started to hear about the terrible things that were happening to the Jews that were taken from there. No one wanted to believe these stories- it was easier for them to hide from the truth. The Germans said that they were taking people to work camps and people preferred to believe them. My mom, being a very strong woman, decided that under no circumstances would she go with everyone as lambs to the slaughter.
Since I was two years old my mom looked for a hiding place for me. My mom had a polish friend, a woman who used to be a regular costumer at her parents' shop before the war. The friend promised to help her find a place to hide me. She found a former nun who had a big farm. The nun agreed to take me. In order to meet her friend my mom needed to pass the ghetto's wall. Thank to the snow she threw me over to the other side of the fence and I landed harmlessly, and she came through a hole in the fence. The friend led us to the nun, whose name was Kaja.
The nun lived in a town called Lasdon, we never understood why she agreed to take me. In those days, if were caught with Jews in your house you and your family were executed. Until today I'm not sure why she helped me. She was paid a small fee, but she took me probably because of religious purposes.
I stayed at her until the end of the war in 1944. keeping me caused the nun problems, since people started asking where a little girl, with a non- Polish look, had shown up from. The nun told every one that I was a relative of her house keeper, who also had a non- Polish look. She gave me a new name, Irena, taught me all the Christian prayers and made sure that I spoke only Polish. No Yiddish. Despite all that, there were still suspicions.
My mom managed to come and visit me occasionally, and when she came, the nun told her to wait from far, in order that I wouldn't start to call her and shout. Her visits stopped eventually, mainly because the area was a war zone. One day a German came to Kaja's house and tried to make me confess that I'm a Jew. He stayed a whole day and questioned me. Finally he left.
After my mom gave me to the nun she returned to the ghetto. In the ghetto my biological father, Yitzchak Gershowich, died from Typhus, In the middle of 1943. After his death my mom became friendly with Shalom Golobok, who later became my step- father. One day the SS and the SA troops came to the ghetto and told everyone to go to the ghetto's square in order to take them to work camps. My parents, with friends, had made themselves a hiding place in advance, and when everyone were ordered to go to the square- they went to their hiding place. Actually that was the purpose of giving me to the nun- if they were to hide with me, a little girl, I would start crying and we would be found.
My mother was the one who pushed them to make a hiding place and not believe that all the rumors about the death camps were true. Thanks to their activity in youth movements they succeeded in organizing the hiding place. They asked another friend to close their hiding place's door. The friend didn't want to hide with them. After everyone was taken they heard gun shots from the hiding place for three days- probably the Nazis were looking for people who were hiding.
After three days the shots stopped and my parents came out of their hiding place. They decided they wanted to join the Partisans, and for a few nights the walked towards the forests, were the Partisans hid. Eventually they got to a troop of Russian Partisans, who agreed to let them join, since my father knew how to make leather for boots.
At the end of 1944 the Russians started to defeat the Germans, and the German army began to withdraw from the areas where I was, and my mom came to take me. In order to get to the town of Kaja my mom hitch- hiked a ride on a truck full of Russian soldiers. She promised them that the ex- nun would give them food. At that time there was a great famine in that area. When I mother got to me I didn't recognize her. The nun prepared me to the meeting with my mom, and after a few visits she took me.
After the war we moved to Lida, and after living at a town called "Hoffgaysmar- By- Kasel", We boarded a ship to Israel.
Town details- Lida
The Jews in Lida
The origins of Jewish settlement in Lida are unclear. In 1579, King Stefan Batory permitted the Jews of Lida to build a synagogue. In 1630, King Ladislaus IV permitted them to repair that synagogue, and to build a new one. The Jewish community in Lida is mentioned in 1623. In terms of population, Lida was considered a medium- sized community.
Lida had some famous Rabbi’s, such as Rabbi Binyamin from Lida who was known as a zaddik in the 19th century. In 1878, the Kuidanov Hassidim, who were based in Lida, asked Rabbi Schlomke from the Kuidanov family to be their spiritual leader.
Lida had the yeshiva of Rabbi Reines, the main religious education in the city, and in addition there was the traditional "Heder" and a Talmod Tora school for the poor. Thanks to financing by the Shokdei Malacha organization, founded in 1887, children from poor families were able to study crafts. The boys were obliged to study Hebrew and Russian every evening. Two boys were obliged to study Hebrew and Russian every evening. In addition, there was a Jewish hospital and a Jewish home for the aged. In the early twentieth century, a government elementary school operated in the town and in 1912, a municipal high school was opened. Quite a few Jewish pupils attended both institutions.
Lida had Zionist activity since the end of the nineteenth century, with the appearance of the Hibbat Zion (Love of Zion) movement. More Zionist activity groups also worked in Lida later on. The members of all these movements would meet secretly in the nearby woods, and would organize propaganda in the synagogues and strikes in factories in order to get better working conditions and higher salaries. In 1905, hundreds of members of different parties organized a joint demonstration in Lida.
Many of Lida’s people took part in the First World War. On September 20, 1915, the German army captured Lida and established a military government, and all residents were inducted into forced labor. Despite the bad conditions, the Jewish cultural life wasn't harmed much. The German occupation lasted until the end of 1917, when Russian forces entered Lida. On Passover eve in 1919, the Polish army entered Lida and the soldiers of General Haller performed a pogrom in which thirty-nine Jews were murdered.
Until mid-September 1939, Lida had large numbers of refugees. On September 18, the Red Army entered the town, and Lida became part of the Soviet Union. The Soviets turned over Vilna and areas to the south- east to the Lithuanians, and until June 1949, the border between Independent Lithuania and the Soviet Union ran near Lida. Thus, Lida became a favored destination for the many who wanted to cross the border to Vilna.
Lida during the war
On June 25 the German forces neared Lida, and in a battle that took the lives of 2,000 residents, including about 500 Jews, Lida was captured by the Germans.
The German unit that captured the town assembled all the professional Jews, took 96 of them and executed them outside of town.
The Jewish community leaders were ordered to form a Judenrat .The Judenrat's job was to decide which Jews would be sent work camps and which Jews would stay in Lida doing forced labor such as cleaning the streets. The Jews were given a very small amount of bread and potatoes and were forbidden to eat anything else such as eggs or meat.
Notices in German, Polish, and Russian were frequently posted giving the Jews of the town Anti-Semitism orders that separated them completely from the non- Jewish residents of lida.
In December 1941, all the Jews of Lida were ordered to move to the town ghetto. The ghetto area consisted of small houses and many families were forced to cram into one room. During that time the Jews in the Vilna area were already being sent to death camps. The Judenrat tried to help those that came to Vilna, and for a time they helped them and got them citizenship permits. In the end the Germans discovered what the Judenrat were doing and executed them all.
The Jews' valuable items were taken from them and workshops were established in the ghetto for the German army's use.
On the evening of May 7th 1942, the ghetto was sealed and surrounded by German, Belarusian and Polish forces. On May 8th Most of the Jews from the ghetto, including the Jews of Bielice, were taken to the military firing range not far from the town. They were murdered in groups and put into pits which had been prepared before. 5,670 people were murdered in the pits. After that 1,500 Jews remained; those who had been selected to be kept alive. Refugees from the surrounding towns in the Vilna area (including Ivie, Yocheved's birthplace) started to come to Lida. The refugees increased the number of people in the ghetto to 4,000.
On September the 18th 1943 Nazi forces surrounded the ghetto again. They assembled all the Jews and put them on trains telling them they were being sent to work camps when they were actually being sent to Majdanek- a death camp. Some people managed to run away and join the partisans including Yocheved's mother.
A small underground organization was established in the ghetto. It brought food into the ghetto until the ghetto was evacuated. From the autumn of 1942, until the final evacuation of the ghetto on September 18 1943, at least twenty groups of Jews reached the forests from Lida. Some of those who fled Lida reached the Iskra partisans' battalion.
