The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

by Gilbert, Martin

  In the Latvian city of Dvinsk, only five hundred of whose thirty thousand Jewish inhabitants survived the war, Maja Zarch (later Maja Abramowitch) was offered refuge by her Gentile nanny, who had been surreptitiously getting food to her and her mother when they returned to the ghetto after the day’s forced labour. ‘One day,’ Maja Abramowitch recalled, ‘on our return to the ghetto, we found my Nanny was waiting for us, upset and agitated. She told us she had heard that graves were again being dug. Her fervent plea was that we should convert to Christianity, for she felt that because we were Jews and she a devout Christian, it would be impossible for us to meet in heaven. This deeply religious Catholic woman risked her life every time she met us but, despite this, she never failed to arrive. We agreed to be sprinkled with her holy water. The following evening she was there in the field waiting for us with a little bottle of liquid to anoint us. She baptised my mother and me, said a prayer and gave us both a medallion of the holy Mother and Child. There in the field at night, under the lonely stars, she was convinced that we had become Christians. She was relieved and happy. The next time she met us, shortly after our “conversion”, she announced that she had arranged with her uncle, with whom she shared a cottage, for me to come and live with them.’

  Maja Abramowitch went on: ‘My mother agreed and after our next meeting, all having been prepared, I was smuggled from my mother’s place of work, without my yellow star, and safely reached my Nanny’s house. She lived in a very primitive, ramshackle wooden bungalow on the outskirts of Dvinsk. The tiny property belonged to my Nanny’s aged uncle and was just large enough to have a yard that coped with our needs. The house itself consisted of the kitchen, a large, high, tiled stove on which I slept at night and hid most of the day. Two small bedrooms housed Nanny and her uncle who seldom appeared. I remember this sojourn as a very hazardous, lonely time.’

  This was not the end of the saga. ‘After two months the neighbours became suspicious, and the uncle heard people gossiping about a child being hidden by his niece. After a lot of soul-searching, Nanny decided to return me to the ghetto.’ The sight that met them when they reached the ghetto was one of carnage: pools of blood, murdered children and dead bodies, ‘mute testimony to a last useless resistance’. Surviving in the ghetto, and then surviving deportation, concentration camps, slave labour camps and death marches, Maja Abramowitch lived to tell the story of the woman who gave her at least a chance to live.50

  In neighbouring Estonia, out of a small Jewish community of four thousand, three thousand escaped to the Soviet Union before the German army arrived. Of the thousand who remained, almost all were murdered by the SS killing squads. One of those who survived, Isidor Levin, owed his life to the help of his Bible teacher, Dr Uku Masing, and his wife Eha, who hid him and kept him from the danger of arrest and deportation. They are the two Righteous Among the Nations whom Yad Vashem has honoured for Estonia.51

  IN JULY 1941, Valentina Varnavina was fleeing by train from the Russian city of Zhitomir, seeking to escape the eastward thrust of the German army. Next to her on the train was a Jewish woman, Bluma Shtraim, and her two young sons, Ilya and Fima. During the journey the train was bombed, and Bluma Shtraim was killed. ‘While other passengers tried desperately to escape the burning train,’ writes Katia Gusarov—the person responsible for the Former Soviet Union section of the Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem—‘Ilya and Fima remained rooted next to their mother’s body. Seeing the two helpless boys, Valentina grabbed them and tried to remove them from the horrifying scene. Three-year-old Fima could not run, so Valentina lifted him up and carried him. In the turmoil of the escape, ten-year-old Ilya got lost. Having failed to find the older boy, Valentina began her long journey home. As she wondered what to do with the three-year-old, little Fima clung to her even more tightly, caressing her with his tiny hands. Valentina, who did not have any children, knew at that moment she could not desert him.’

  A few days passed, Katia Gusarov related, ‘until the two somehow-managed to return to Zhitomir. On approaching her apartment building, Valentina wondered how to explain the boy’s presence to her neighbours. She decided she would initially conceal Fima, until he was able to respond to a new, less Jewish-sounding name.’ The name she chose for him was Valik. Before introducing the boy, she told her neighbours that her ‘nephew’ was due to arrive shortly from the village. A few days later she emerged with Valik in public, and thus began Valentina and Valik’s new life together. ‘Over time, the two became very attached to one another, all memories of Valik’s life prior to the war seemingly forgotten. But Valentina remembered: as well as his black, curly hair, the child was circumcised, and Valentina lived in great fear that her secret would be revealed.’

  In November 1943 the Red Army liberated Zhitomir. ‘One day, several months later, an unexpected visitor appeared on Valentina’s doorstep. To her great surprise, it was Ilya, Fima’s elder brother. Ilya had miraculously survived the war by wandering alone…’

  There was a remarkable sequel to this story of rescue. One evening in the summer of 2001, Fima Shtraim (then known as Yefim Sklarsky, having lived in Israel since the early 1990s) was watching a Russian television programme dedicated to the search for missing persons. As he watched, he was astonished to see a familiar face on the screen. ‘There before his very eyes was Svetlana Shubaliuk, the adopted daughter of his beloved rescuer, Valentina Varnavina. Her voice cracking with emotion, Svetlana was holding up a picture of a young child, imploring anyone who knew of the child’s whereabouts to notify her immediately. Through heavy tears, Yefim identified the child in the picture; it was a photo of himself as a young boy, taken while he was under the care of Valentina Varnavina.’52

  Despite the passage of time, the bond between rescuer and rescued, and between their families, is one of the strongest ties from that time of torment.

  Chapter 2

  Eastern Galicia

  IN ACCORDANCE WITH the terms of the Nazi–Soviet Pact of August 1939, Eastern Galicia became part of the Soviet Union after the German conquest of Poland. It was not until June 1941, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, that the region, with its more than a quarter of a million Jews, came under German rule. With occupation came the mass murder of Jews by the SS killing squads and the establishment of ghettos where all surviving Jews were confined, and from which they were later deported to their deaths. Most East Galician Jews who were not murdered in their towns and homes were deported to the death camp at Belzec, and murdered there.

  In Lvov, the Eastern Galician capital, those who offered to help Jews included Wladyslawa Choms, a Polish woman known as the ‘Angel of Lvov’.1 Following the establishment in Warsaw of Zegota—the Council for Assistance to the Jews—she became the head of its local branch. Later she was to describe how both the Roman Catholic Church and the underground Armia Krajowa or Home Army assisted her and Zegota in making it possible for Jews to be saved. ‘The Catholic clergy were of invaluable assistance’, she wrote, ‘in enabling us to obtain certificates of baptism, for which they provided blank forms, instructions on what to do, and ready-made certificates. How much effort and nerves went into the making of one document! With time we became more experienced. Zegota from Warsaw began to supply us with blanks of documents and the Home Army legalizing cell with beautifully made official stamps. The fury of the Gestapo at our graphic skills was correspondingly great for they realized what was going on.’2

  One of those who owed his survival to Wladyslawa Choms and to at least one other member of Zegota in Eastern Galicia was Zygmunt Chotiner. In a letter describing his survival he wrote of how, in the town of Brody, one of her representatives came to his aid: ‘During the war I, like all of us fellow Jews, had been refused human rights and was doomed to await a tragic end. At the very critical moment, however, appeared at Brody, where a small group of us was hard working but still existing, a Mr Jukalo. The before-mentioned gentleman was representing Mrs Choms, a social lady, well known for her pr
o-Jewish sympathies. He was offering us help in the form of false papers, money, etc. At the beginning it seemed too unbelievable to be true and we were rather suspicious but finally he succeeded in convincing us.’ Soon they were given the promised false papers and money, ‘which we received every month from now on as a rule. Some of us found accommodation at Mrs Choms’ friends over on the “Aryan” side and some disappeared, trying to take a chance on their own.’

  Zygmunt Chotiner’s account continued: ‘It is to my knowledge that the honourable Mrs Choms had to be careful not only of the Gestapo but even of her neighbours of whom she could never be certain. She also had to change her name and place of living quite often. They say she despatched a letter to the late President Roosevelt, asking him for help for the Jews. I personally know of many cases whereby she gave away her last food (which was so scarce in those days) to help the people. I am also glad to know that before the war Mrs Choms went for a trip to Palestine, which impressed her very much. Afterwards, she, together with the famous Professor Bartel, was editor of the democratic paper Czarne na Bialem (‘Black on White’) in which she inspired the Poles to be loyal to their friends the Jews, whose productive work she happened to admire in the Promised Land. I also know that Mrs Choms helped to hide the doomed Jews from the ghetto and the escapees from the underground water canals. Two of her Polish lady friends were tortured to death after the search and discovery of false papers for the Jewish people. My Jewish lady friend had to undergo a dangerous operation: Mrs Choms produced both the surgeon and the money to perform it. She placed a lot of Jewish children in the orphan houses too.’

  It was Zygmunt Chotiner’s ‘deep feeling and conviction’ that there were ‘no words to describe what she was trying to do (and, in consequence, suffering) to help us’. His worry, many years after the war, was that he could not help her. ‘Unfortunately, I am a hard-working, ordinary worker now, have quite a number of dependants and can hardly make ends meet. While living in Germany, I used to help Mrs Choms by despatching food parcels to her but that was not enough to cover our debt which no money in the world could ever pay off. She is a generous and noble, clean human being and we all who knew her feel very much obliged and thankful to her for all she has done for us, risking her own life to save ours.’3

  From the first hours of the German occupation of Lvov, mobs of local Ukrainian hoodlums, incited by German proclamations and pamphlets, rampaged through the streets and houses, murdering Jews wherever they found them, or taking them to the city’s prisons, where thousands were tortured and shot. In an attempt to halt the slaughter, Yechezkel Lewin, editor-in-chief of the Jewish weekly newspaper Opinja (‘Opinion’), and rabbi of the Reform Synagogue in Lvov, went, in his rabbinical robes, to see the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Metropolitan Sheptitsky. ‘You told me once, “I am a friend of Israel”,’ Lewin declared. ‘You have always emphasized your friendship to us, and we ask you now, at this time of terrible danger, to give proof of your friendship and to use your influence over the wild crowds rioting against us.’ According to one account, Sheptitsky declined the rabbi’s request to go out and ask the mobs to disperse.

  Meanwhile, in the words of Philip Friedman—then a young Jewish historian in Lvov—‘the mobs were on the rampage, the howls of the killers mingled with the screams of the victims, and the slaughter in the streets continued.’ Sheptitsky urged Lewin to remain in the security of the Metropolitan’s episcopal palace until the violence had subsided, but Lewin told him: ‘My mission is completed. I have come to make a request for the community, and shall return to the congregation, where my place is.’ He then left and walked back towards his home. On the way, several of his Christian friends urged him to return to Sheptitsky’s palace for his own safety, but he refused to do so. On reaching his own house he was seized by Ukrainian militiamen and taken to prison. There, still in his rabbinical robes, he was beaten with the rifle butts of Ukrainian soldiers before being shot down in the prison yard. Also among the thousands of Jews murdered in these prison killings was Lewin’s brother, Rabbi Aaron Lewin, a former deputy in the Polish parliament, who was the head of the rabbinical court in the Western Galician city of Rzeszow.4

  Metropolitan Sheptitsky arranged to find a hiding place for Rabbi Yechezkel Lewin’s son Kurt and his brother, as well as for several other Jewish youngsters, including Leon Chameides—whom he placed in the Studite monastery in the town of Uhniv—Leon’s brother Zwi, and a young woman, Lili Stern (later Pohlmann), who, with her mother and a Jewish couple, Jozef and Anna Podoszyn, were taken into Sheptitsky’s palace in Lvov in March 1944, and kept there in safety for several months, until liberation.

  Zwi Chameides (now Zwi Barnea) has recalled the many people who played their part in his rescue: first Metropolitan Sheptitsky himself, who took him to see his brother, Father Ihumen Sheptitsky; then Father Ihumen, who transferred him to a young seminarian called Ben; then Ben, who showed him how to make the sign of the cross correctly, and then went with him on foot to a suburb of Lvov, to a boarding school run by the Studite monastic order. The boys were hostile to him, however, and he had to move on. He was taken to yet another person willing to help, Brother Boyarskyi, a monk who gave him shelter, taught him the basics of Christianity and improved his knowledge of the Ukrainian language, which he would need to speak well if he were to pass himself off as a Ukrainian Christian. Brother Boyarskyi then took him by train to the town of Przemyslany, from where they walked for several hours to an orphanage attached to the monastery at Uhniv. ‘Late that night I fell ill. A Brother who had some medical knowledge was called and gave me a hot infusion of berries to drink. I was probably feverish and half asleep when I heard Brother Boyarskyi discuss with a priest whether I could stay in the Uhniv orphanage. The priest was explaining to Brother Boyarskyi that they could not accommodate me. First, they already had one other boy like me, and, besides, the situation was particularly dangerous because Przemyslany had just been cleared of Jews and the Germans were searching the surrounding villages for any who might have managed to escape.’

  Zwi Barnea’s account continued: ‘At first I hoped that the priest might have changed his mind about letting me stay. The Uhniv orphanage was a very pleasant place after the ghetto and boarding-school experiences. The children were very friendly, and I now found that my Ukrainian no longer drew any attention to me. I also discovered that the orphanage had a number of books. One of these was a primer of Church Slavonic which explained to me the meaning of the many strange words in the basic prayers I had memorized. I taught myself the Church Slavonic alphabet, which is very similar to modern Cyrillic. I soon guessed which little boy was Jewish. After being allowed to rest for a few days, I was nevertheless obliged to return with Brother Boyarskyi to Lvov.’

  In Lvov, Zwi was taken ‘to an elderly Ukrainian woman who lived in a flat with a maid, Sofia. The woman was a widow whose husband had been a well-to-do engineer. The couple had close connections with the church. Both the woman, whose name I have unfortunately not retained, and the maid were extremely frightened to keep me and made elaborate plans of how I was to escape through the back door if the Germans should come. I stayed with them for about a week and then Ben the seminarian came to take me to an orphanage in Brzuchowice, a small town near Lvov.’

  The orphanage in Brzuchowice accepted the young boy. On the first day, another boy asked him his name. ‘When I told him, he said: “Oh, your brother is also here.” I protested that I had no brother, only to be confronted with my brother Leon. Apparently, for the sake of good order we had both been assigned the surname Khaminskyi, and by resemblance we certainly looked like brothers. I knew it was bad for us to be associated with one another and therefore continued to maintain that my name was Khominskyi and not Khaminskyi and besides I had no brother. My brother Leon, following my lead, confirmed that he too had no brother. Fortunately, the children soon lost interest in whether we were brothers or not and the grown-ups did not even become involved in the matter.’ Although all
the children spoke Ukrainian, Zwi Barnea noticed that their command of the language varied considerably. ‘I soon guessed that there were among the children at least two Jewish girls and another little Jewish boy, Dorko (Oded Amarant), about my brother’s age.’

  One of the Jewish girls was called Romka. One morning, as Zwi Barnea later recalled, a Ukrainian woman who worked in the orphanage office started questioning her about whether she was Jewish, what her Jewish name was, and whether the lady from the office was her mother. ‘Romka denied the accusations and the woman became increasingly angry and started shrieking at her. Since the boys in my room crowded into the other room to see what was happening, I also went in just as the woman asked Romka to make the sign of the cross, which Romka, whom I had coached, demonstrated faultlessly. The woman became increasingly hysterical as little Romka, about eight years old, continued to deny everything with cool dignity.’

  Still Zwi Barnea was not out of danger. One day a doctor arrived, accompanied by a young nurse. ‘There was no advance notice and my bed being nearest the door, I was the first to be examined. The doctor looked at my chest briefly and then pulled down my pyjama trousers and then quickly pulled them up again. I could see dismay on his face and then saw him turn and scrutinize carefully the face of the accompanying nurse. The nurse’s dull expression had not changed during the examination. She had apparently not seen or recognised what the doctor saw. I saw the doctor’s face relax somewhat as he moved on to the next examination. I considered what had happened and concluded immediately that the doctor had no intention of reporting that I was circumcised. Nevertheless, I was, of course, extremely worried. At about nine that evening one of the nuns appeared and asked me whether the doctor had examined me. I nodded vigorously. The nun told me to dress and went off. She returned soon and when I came out she was waiting with my brother and Dorko.’