Some of the Russian-speaking media of San Francisco printed my Yiddish translations of the fairy tales, legends, and children’s stories of my uncle Moishe Zeldov. They also printed excerpts from the memoirs of my other uncle, Sidney Sarkin, “In The Old Country” – about the life of Jews in Lithuania in the first quarter of the 20th century, including the years of World War I.
Former Lithuanian resident, Rachmiel Coltun, got interested in my translations, called an editorial board of the newspaper “Vzglyad” to find out my telephone number, and got in touch with me.
Rachmiel Coltun is a very interesting person who has lived a hard life. He was born in 1928 in the city of Kaunas, Lithuania. He lost his mother very early and was raised in the Jewish orphanage in Kaunas. Rachmiel was among the children who were in the Nazi-occupied border city of Palanga at the Baltic Sea shoreline during the first hours of the war between Germany and the USSR, and he witnessed the first crimes of the Nazis and their allies on Lithuanian soil. He is one of “survivor remnants” of Lithuanian Jews (the name for miraculously survived Jews in Lithuania, former inmates of ghettos and Nazi concentration camps). Rachmiel has first-hand knowledge about the Holocaust, and the atrocities of German fascists and their Lithuanian allies. He has a fantastic memory and speaks and writes in beautiful Yiddish. He cares about all that is happening in Israel and is very interested in the life of the Diaspora Jews. He continues to search for information about the life of his relatives, pre-war friends and acquaintances, and to obtain any facts and details about the horrible events during the years of German occupation. Rachmiel Coltun is a great storyteller.
I became very interested in his story about the children from the summer camp (the “pioneer camp”) in Palanga. The fact of the matter is that my older brother Isaac [‘aiz?k] Rykliansky was in that same summer camp. After the war I learned much about my brother’s death but I was unable to find out anything about his life after our separation. My efforts were also futile in locating of those who, when they were children, were in that Palanga summer camp. Apparently, most are deceased.
Suddenly – a phone call from my countryman! From his story and from the materials he sent me, I have learned much more about the fate of my brother, his friends and his peers.
My older brother Isaac Rykliansky was born in 1926 and, in spite of a substantial age difference (I was seven years younger than he), we were good friends and I often played with him and his friends.
Isaac was a very handsome and friendly boy. He was an exceptional student, and that is why he was invited to travel to Palanga to the first summer camp for children on the Baltic Sea shoreline in the summer of 1941. Therefore, on June 8 of 1941, he went to Palanga along with other boys from the town of Ukmerge.
That summer about 2,500 children from different cities and villages of Lithuania came to that summer camp – Lithuanians, Jews, Russians, Poles, Byelorussians… Palanga was every child’s dream: wonderful weather, fresh sea air, new houses, games at the beautiful beaches, various competitions, swimming, searches for pieces of rough amber on the sea shore, making new friends…
On June 14, 1941, a week before the Nazis’ attack of the Soviet Union, associates of well-known NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) showed up unexpectedly on our doorstep early in the morning, searched the house, ordered us to get our things and informed us that we were being deported from Lithuania because we were labeled as “socially dangerous” population by the government. Since Isaac was gone to Palanga, we had to depart without him.
We were taken without Isaac to the railroad station and loaded onto trains that were transformed from cattle cars. These trains were guarded by soldiers. My mother and I were in a train that was leaving for the Altai District, and my father was in an echelon which transported inmates to the camps of Stalin’s GULAG (the Soviet concentration labor camp system) in the Krasnoyarsk District.
Now it is known that on that day, 34,000 people were deported from Lithuania without any proper legal procedures; most of them were former business owners and former owners of homes and stores that were nationalized by the Soviet government, people with relatives overseas, intelligentsia, and Jewish activists. According to statistics, every fourth person among people who were deported that day was a Jew.
Getting ahead of myself, I would like to say that only in 1943 the “Special Conference” of the NKVD USSR (so-called “Troika”) started to “sue” people from Lithuania who were subject to repression. My father was given a 5 year sentence for being a “socially dangerous element” (quote from a verdict) because, before the establishment of Soviets in Lithuania, he owned a store, was a Jewish activist and had many relatives overseas. He was rehabilitated only in 1963, by the Superior Court of Lithuania in the absence of any crime. No one apologized for the pain and suffering despite my mother’s death in 1943 of excessive work and horrible emotional suffering. I, a child, was left totally alone.
But, let us return to Lithuania. After our deportation, we were concerned that Isaac could be sent to Siberia after he returned from the camp. That is why my father’s sister, aunt Ganna, went to Palanga after we left, picked Isaac up and took him to our relatives Shlimovich in Kaunas. She was positive that he would be safer there.
On June 22, 1941, at 4:00 AM, the children in Palanga were awakened by an awful thunder. They ran out of their houses and saw bombs and shells exploding, houses on fire, and thick smoke. Nazi planes were flying right above their heads. The children did not immediately understand what was happening but many of them remembered seeing a navy ship far away at sea the day before; apparently a German ship. In the meantime, the thunder was becoming louder and louder. Glass began to break in the windows. Frightened children began crying, calling for their mothers in all of their different languages. Camp counselors were confused, many of them hid, and some of them ran with children to the bus station from which only a few overloaded buses left for the nearest cities.
Then, the German Army entered. They were forging forward on motor vehicles and motorcycles and were firing their weapons from time to time. Many children ran to the forest and some ran to the sea shore. Nobody saw those who ran to the sea. Rachmiel was among those children who hid in the forest.
The Nazis forged ahead. In Palanga, bombs and shells stopped exploding and gunfire died down. It became calm. Camp counselors, who hid before, appeared and took the children who ran to the forest back to the camp, although many of the children were afraid to return. On the way back, local fisherman gave them smoked and dried fish to eat. After a while, the children became very thirsty. When they came back to Palanga, they saw white flags on many buildings.
Back at camp, the children were given tea and something to eat. Rachmiel, because of his great thirst and nervous exertion, drank 18 cups of hot tea one after another. He remembers this until today.
Food supplies were soon exhausted in the camp, and those children who had money from home tried to purchase food in local stores. But the Lithuanians stopped selling food to Jewish children.
Then, armed Lithuanians with white bands on their arms, came to camp. Rachmiel remembers that one of them had his arm missing. They separated the Jewish children from the rest and made them work, sweeping the streets, collecting Russian and Jewish books and portraits of Soviet leaders and putting all of this in one big pile. Then, modeling the Nazis in Germany, they began burning that pile. During work, Lithuanian volunteer security guards made fun of the children and even beat them.
Later, all Jewish children were taken to a synagogue; local Jews were there already. Soon Nazi soldiers appeared and ordered everyone out. They formed a double line by facing one another and each soldier held a bamboo stick. Jews were made to run through this line and each victim was savagely beaten. First an old Jew with a long white beard was beaten, possibly a local Rabbi; then the rest of adults and one boy from the camp. When Rachmiel’s turn came, the German officer kicked him and said that he did not need such “dirt” as these children and ordered to stop an execution. Afterwards, Rachmiel found out that local Jews were shot on the Baltic Sea shoreline. Jewish children from the camp were locked in a shed and guarded by the same Lithuanians with white bands on their arms.
On one of these days, the security guards started searching the children. They found certain objects with Soviet symbols on four of the children of the Kaunas Jewish Orphanage: Aaron Gurvich, Berl Patursky, Sender Vildikan, and Shlomo Galdovsky. The children were beaten, then taken away and shot. Then two boys were given shovels and ordered to dig a grave.
Soon, by petition of the Lithuanian chapter of the Red Cross, all children, including Jewish ones, were taken from Palanga to the cities from which they had arrived. Rachmiel and his friends came back to Kaunas and by August 15 of 1941, they were isolated, along with other Jews, in the Kaunas Ghetto. The vast majority of inmates of that horrible ghetto, including children, were killed by the Nazis and their Lithuanian allies in the Ninth Fort and other places in the city and its vicinities. In 1943, Rachmiel and other surviving inmates were taken to concentration camps located on the Lithuanian soil. Before the liberation of Lithuania, inmates were taken to railroad station in order to send them to Germany - to the Dachau concentration camp. Rachmiel managed to escape and miraculously he survived.
But, let us come back to my brother Isaac. After the occupation of Kaunas where he was hiding from NKVD agents Isaac beg his relatives Shlimoviches to send him to the town of Ukmerge. There his grandparents and other relatives lived. The Shlimoviches got in touch with our grandfather who convinced his Lithuanian friend to bring his grandson from Kaunas. Before the Jews from Kaunas and Ukmerge were moved to the Ghetto, that peasant brought Isaac to Ukmerge in a peasant wagon.
After some time, all Jews were hoarded into the Ukmerge Ghetto and then shot in Povonye forest. The biggest “action” of eliminating Jews of the city took place on September 5, 1941. 4,700 people were killed that day in Povonye forest, 1,700 Jewish children among them. The fire of the Holocaust killed my older brother Isaac, my grandparents, and all our relatives who remained in Lithuania.
It is difficult to remember it all, but impossible to forget. Our emotions, minds, and our obligation to the future will not let us forget. We must remember the Holocaust and the crimes of Stalin’s killers and do all in our power so that future generations will know about this terrible tragedy. This must never happen again.