The German troops who invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, advanced swiftly. There was no time for an orderly evacuation of civilians. Some of the Lithuanian Jews tried to escape deep into the Soviet Union without official help – most of those were on foot, others left by trains, cars, and horse carts. People scattered in panic and fear. Not everyone survived. Many Jews were stopped by anti-Semitic local residents and then were robbed and executed. The Germans moved faster and blocked their escape. It is a well-known fact that a few hundred escaping Lithuanian Jews were caught by attacking Germans on Latvian soil. And on July 4, 1941, those Jews and some of the local Latvian Jews were tortured and burned alive by the Nazis and their Latvian allies in the Riga Choral Synagogue.
There were times when the Red Army soldiers helped those who escaped with food, transport, and provided them with protection, showing them an escape route.
Ida Mutnik (nee Taynovich) told me that she and her mother Roza and brother Sam escaped from the city of Siauliai (Lithuania) on the first day of the war, and joined a group of the retreating Red Army soldiers. Those soldiers protected them, shared their food, and helped to carry their modest personal luggage and belongings. However, sometimes they were fooled by the hostile Lithuanians who showed them the wrong way to follow, pointing them in the opposite direction to where they needed to go, and they wasted time searching for a path which led to safety.
Finally, they reached Russian territory where someone took pity on them and escorted them to a hospital train. The doctors, nurses, wounded officers and soldiers treated them well by sharing dry rations and hot meals, and giving them good advice. In return, Roza and Ida helped the medical staff care for some of the more seriously wounded soldiers. When the train reached Saratov, the family got off the train to clean up and shower. The local authorities there sent them to a kolkhoz (collective farm) where they lived and worked until World War II ended.
After the evacuation, they returned to Lithuania in October 1945, and settled in Vilnius, where Ida married Khaim Mutnik, a Jew from Ukmerge (Vilkomir). Ida and Khaim have two children, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. They came to Israel in 1972 and now live in Herzliya.
Some children of the summer camps in Palanga, Druskeninkai and other resorts in Lithuania made their escape eastward from the Nazis and survived as well.
Here is the story that I heard from the tireless Reizl Yusefson (nee Gafanovich) whom I met in Tel Aviv at my relatives’ home.
The children of the summer camp in Palanga (where Reizl and her younger brother were staying) were awakened by a horrible roar on June 22, 1941, at 4 a.m. When they ran out of the buildings, they saw dense smoke, houses on fire, and exploding bombs. The German planes flew directly over their heads. The children did not understand right away what was happening. A roar grew shortly thereafter. The children heard gunfire and breaking glass.
Many camp counselors were gone, some of them already had fled, some hid, and those who stayed did not know what they could do to save the children.
When Reizl understood what was happening, she ran to her room yelling, "Girls, let’s run! This is a war!"
Then she asked her 11- and 12-year-old friends to help wake-up the youngest children so that they could all run together. Most of the small children continued to sleep, despite the din and roar around them. The elder children tore the blankets off and pulled the little ones off the beds. It was hard to wake them up; they could not understand what was happening and what was being asked of them. The children were crying and calling their mothers for help and speaking different languages. Meanwhile, Reizl rushed to find her little brother and when she found him, she would not let him out of her sight.
Reizl, with her brother, friends, and other children, decided to run to the bus station to try boarding the bus leaving Palanga. However, not everybody agreed to go towards the smoke and burning houses. Reizl’s friends from Panevezys, Masha Magid, Tzipa Reznik, and others went toward the sea instead. Nobody has seen them since.
When Reizl and the small children went to the bus station, there was only one bus that was already vastly overcrowded. Reizl could squeeze her brother and a few other boys and girls into that bus, but there was no room for her. The driver could not close the door and ordered children who were blocking it to get off the bus. They started crying and begging the driver to take them away from that burning hell with the hail of bullets whistling around them. Reizl desperately asked the children to squeeze in a little more, so that she could board the bus and close the door. They did their best, and Reizl got into the bus with difficulty. At last, the door was closed and the bus made a move and left burning Palanga. After some time, an officer of the Red Army met the children and escorted them and other escapees along the way. When the bus reached the Lithuanian administrative border, the driver refused to go any further and the officer had to organize a transport of fleeing children with the retreating military units of the Red Army. Later, the children were loaded onto trains.
Many boys and girls went on foot into the hinterland on their own without adult help. The children endeavored to escape by fleeing as far away as possible from the frontline. During their time running from the Nazis they starved; they risked their lives; they were ready to drop from exhaustion and rested beside the road. When the children had left Lithuania, many people attended to them with great care. Some fed them and allowed them to stay overnight; others gave them something to eat on the way. And still others helped them board trains which carried the children deep into the countryside, far from their homes.
The government of Lithuanian SSR was evacuated to Moscow during the first days of the war. The Lithuanian officials who were located in Moscow helped the refugees-children from their Republic to settle into four special Children's Homes – in Konstantinovka (Kirov Province), Insar (Mordoviya), Debesi (Udmurtiya), and Tashkent (Uzbekistan). A few hundred children, the majority of them Jews, were saved in those Children's Homes where they stayed and studied for more than three years and were cared for by the teachers.
After Lithuania was liberated by the Red Army from the Nazi yoke in 1944, many children were able to return home. However, when they got home, they found everything in ruins. Their parents, families, and friends were killed by the Nazis and their Lithuanian allies. There were two Jewish Children’s Homes (one in Vilnius, and another in Kaunas) established in Lithuania for orphaned children who returned from the other republics of the Soviet Union. Yelena Khatzkeles, who had returned from an evacuation, was a director of the Kaunas Jewish Children’s Home. She was a wonderful and talented writer and teacher.
I, the author of this book, met her in Kaunas at the home of my parents’ friends in 1946, when we, without permission, returned to Lithuania from the Siberian exile. I was touched by the great kindness, sympathy, and care that Yelena Khatzkeles showed me. She helped me to improve my Yiddish, and introduced me to Jewish literature. That wonderful woman was interested in my life and fate of special settlers during the Siberian exile.
For the boys and girls who survived the onslaught of the war, the teachers of the Jewish Children’s Homes in Lithuania radiated loving kindness and care. Unfortunately those Children’s Homes were dismantled and closed during Stalin’s campaign to liquidate Jewish culture in the Soviet Union.
The orphans who survived did not forget their past, and were always dreaming about a meeting with their childhood friends who were as close as a family. That reunion took place in Tel Aviv in May 1995. The meeting was organized by the activist Reizl Yusefson. The feelings of all participants of that event, former residents of the Lithuanian Children's Homes in the Soviet Union, were unspeakable. Tears were streaming from the eyes of the retired people who rushed into each other’s open arms with the Yiddish exclamations "Hannale," "Sheindale," "Yitzhakl," "Berale," "Mendele," "Braininke," "Mulinke," "Motele" "Rokhale," "Sorele," "Shloimele," and other names. Their smiling faces were bright with happiness and joy, but their eyes could not mask the sadness. They remembered their horrible escape to the East from the Nazis; their poor, deprived orphan childhoods; their sincere friendships with each other; the times they shared their last piece of bread, or small carrot, or beetroot among all; the times when they waited for the reunion with their parents which never came about; and their dreams for a normal postwar life.
