side of the border, a border that was so open that traders from Yurburg would take their goods to the markets in Germany for the day. This relationship lulled the people of Yurburg, including the Jewish population, into a false sense of calm, considering the frightening closeness of the border. What followed was a terrifying shock to them.
Yurburg with German soldiers during WW1 1915
We arrived in Yurburg on Friday, 20 June 1941, coming from Vishey. My mother carried a gift of honey, most likely from beehives tended by my grandfather Chaim. We stayed with Uncle Yosef and Sara in the Glazer family home where I met Azriel and Lolek for the first time. It was natural for boys to immediately bond, and within hours we were inseparable. Fortunately, we all spoke Yiddish. My sister, being twelve, was closer to my mother and had no interest in us boys.
My mother and we children had come from Vishey to meet the family. Daniel, who lived nearby, and Rivka had also come to see us for the first time. The fact that we were in Yurburg rather than Vishey for our family reunion that weekend is the key that unlocks the rest of this story.
I doubt if the honey was ever tasted.
9
I know the exact date we visited Yurburg because two days later, early on Sunday morning, 22 June 1941, the Germans broke their alliance with Russia and invaded without notice. The Nazis attacked not only Russia, but those territories under Russian occupation, which included Lithuania. We had been in Yurburg for less than forty-eight hours when we were under attack.
‘Operation Barbarossa’, as they called it, saw German troops invade the parts of Poland previously occupied by their allies, the Russians, including Bielsk Podlaski. It was during the invasion when the Germans had first decided to eliminate all Jews in their path. There was no pretence of creating work camps as they had in the early days in Poland; the ghettos they now made were not to isolate the Jews, but as temporary holding pens for the extermination camps being created. For the Jews of Poland, it was as if the angel of death had them trapped in its wings. This included my father, Yitzchak, and his extended family. If we had not left those few weeks earlier for Lithuania, my mother, my sister and I would have been in Poland with my father and our story would have ended there.
Being so close to German East Prussia, Yurburg was one of the first towns in Lithuania to be taken by the Germans on that Sunday morning. It was not an invasion, for the Lithuanian people saw this as a liberation force freeing them from the Russian rule imposed on them for the past year. They saw the Germans as their saviours. The only resistance would have come from the Russian forces in the area caught by surprise and unready to defend. They ran. Within hours, the local Lithuanians wound white ribbons around their sleeves as they formed a para-military force to assist the Germans. The Germans started the round-up of the Jews, but the Lithuanians completed it.
We managed to escape in a most extraordinary way.
Yosef Lazovski
My uncle, Yosef, a mechanic, was working at the time for the Russian-controlled Lithuanian military. He was employed at the nearby border building tunnels, bunkers, barricades and fortifications in case of such an invasion. Defences were little bother to the German invaders, whose tactic of blitzkrieg stormed or went around such defences in most cases, but with a sympathetic Lithuanian populace there was little resistance.
Uncle Daniel, my mother’s oldest brother, was working as a mechanic in the fire station and sleeping there that Saturday night. The firemen were alerted to the news of the invasion at 3 am that morning and this saved our lives, for when Daniel heard the Germans had crossed the border, he drove a fire truck to our house and was soon shouting at all of us to get out of bed, for the adults to take the children, and telling us that we needed to get to Kovno as fast as we could.
Kovno, 80 kilometres away, was further from the border and the capital of Lithuania. Daniel and Yosef agreed on a hasty plan – get to Aunt Sara’s older sister’s home in Kovno as quickly as possible. Her house was located near a steel factory. Azriel remembers it as being in Yavener Street in Kovno. From there we would try to make our way east, away from the invading Germans.
There was no time to get organised. It was chaos. There was shouting and screaming, with people rushing in all directions as the town woke to the immediate threat of invasion. I clung to Azriel’s hand for security. Yosef packed a few things into cases, items he would later sell for food. Sara was late in her pregnancy and probably wasn’t too worried about carrying more goods.
How we travelled from Yurburg that morning I don’t recall. It was said we took an early morning bus, but this bus has not made the history books and it is unlikely that such a bus would have been leaving at pre-dawn in Yurburg on a Sunday morning. It is recorded that in the early morning a steamboat on the river left the town for Kovno with some who were fleeing on board. Those who disembarked met the fate of the town. There were very few who escaped, some on bicycles, before the Germans arrived. The panicking Jews may have failed to organise themselves at such short notice, but most would not have owned a vehicle that could outrun the German invasion. Daniel had stolen the fire truck and Yosef, also being a mechanic, would have had access to a vehicle. They had the means to get away fast, which is what we did.
We must have left at about 5 am, for by 6 am the German aircraft were dropping bombs, mostly landing in the Neiman River and damaging only a few buildings. By 8 am the German soldiers had marched in and the entire Jewish population of Yurburg of some 2000 was trapped. Few escaped what was to follow.
I recall no troops, bombs or aircraft as we left Yurburg early that morning, just the panic and rushing. It would have been a trip of no more than two or three hours to get to Kovno. Yosef had loaded his pregnant wife and his two sons into the vehicle and had sped off through the chaos. As I was clinging on to Azriel, I was swept along as well and found myself with my cousins being driven away from my mother. I doubt Yosef even hesitated when he saw his extra passenger, for going back and trying to find my mother would have imperilled them all.
It was said that my mother and Chaya were too slow in reacting and missed going with Yosef. However, I suspect the plan was for my mother, Chaya and me to go with Daniel and Rivka, and for Yosef and Sara and their children to go separately. Why did the men decide to divide the family? Most likely the fire truck Daniel had stolen only had a front cabin and so couldn’t have carried us all.
My going with the wrong family and my disappearance in the chaos and confusion can be explained, but my mother, of course, panicked, assuming I was somehow lost. A seven-and-a-half-year-old child … not only did I not have a father with me, but the mother who doted on me suddenly wasn’t with us. I know I was crying as we drove away for I remember the sensation of having lost my mother. I wasn’t to know it then, but the tears were justified because it would be many months before I saw my mother and sister again.
When the German soldiers reached Kovno (Kaunas), the nominal capital of Lithuania, in the days that followed, the so-called invading troops marched down the streets cheered by the people. The Lithuanians had detested their short period under Russian rule and believed the Germans would allow an independent Lithuanian State to be re-created. They were mistaken and Lithuania was soon under the German rule.
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