Unfortunately it did not work out very well. I had a few lessons, but it was taking my life in my own hands. While I worked at that last job, I used to take off my stars, and run to Mr. Vaniuunas to take a lesson. I used to run on the sidewalk, forget myself and run down the middle of the road, where Jews were supposed to go. I was so nervous, that I had to stop. It was no use, what was the point? How long could I carry on like this? And with all the dangers and death situations that we encountered, it made no sense. Here I am playing the piano suddenly?.... But Mr. Vaniuunas was a wonderful human being. He surely meant well.

Another good job that I had during my ghetto years, was working for a large garage that employed many mechanics, who fixed trucks for the German army. I was supposed to be the interpreter that had to translate the work sheet from German into Lithuanian. What did I know about car or truck parts, gears, tail pipes, steering wheels, etc.? But as we say in Yiddish: "A Jew manages somehow." A Jew always finds counsel, always gives himself advice. And so did I as well. I made friends among the workers, who helped themselves to understand my "translations." The head of the garage was a German from the Wehrmacht and not from the S.S. He was very kind to the few Jewish workers, and helped them many times with food and warm clothing. After the war, I tried to get in touch with him. He was from Aachen and during the war his house was bombed; and even the City Hall could never help me find him. He should’ve been paid for his good deeds. There were not many like him. There were other times during my stay in the ghetto, that I worked on terrible jobs. One of them was Bacunai, a small village not far from our city where we were sent to dig for brickets (heating blocks). In the winter this job was unbearable. Our bodies were frozen, one could not feel one’s skin when touched. Our hands were like two sticks, and they hurt beyond description. I also worked on the Siauliai airfield digging trenches with a group of girls. This job was also during the coldest weather.

Beside having to dig the hard frozen ground the guards were so vicious, they hit and punched us whenever we stopped for a breather. Our bodies were black and blue and our hands were dripping blood. But as bad as the beatings were, the humiliations were even harder to take. They had names for us, that we didn’t know existed anywhere.

In the ghetto our family was divided in two different locations. Many people were housed in one room and so, where my mother and Sonia (our little sister) lived, there was no room for us, because another woman with a small son shared that room as well. And so Dora and I slept with another family, who put us up for the night. But of course we saw our mother every day.

Every morning, as I have already mentioned, the adults used to line up at the gate for their work-jobs outside the ghetto. The people that had children left them to their own resources. There were clandestine classes for different ages, an illegal school, of course, and other social organized groups. The children more or less looked after themselves, and went to their appointed groups.

Life in the ghetto was very hard. It was a situation hard to describe. Not a day passed without a horrible happening. I mentioned earlier about people smuggling in food from their work places. Everybody tried to help themselves in order to keep alive. I also talked about "good" and "bad" guards. One had to really be lucky not to be caught. One Jewish man named Mr. Mazavetsky was hanged in the ghetto, for bringing in only a few packs of cigarettes. I will never forget the scene, how everyone in the ghetto was made to come out and watch the "spectacle" of a man being hanged for a few packs of smuggled cigarettes. This scene I will never forget as long as I live!

Some selections started in the ghetto. Elderly and sick were split from their families. Many were taken out from the Ghetto and they just disappeared, only a few days later their graves were discovered in the outskirts of Siauliai. Every day life in the ghetto was hanging in the air. No one knew what will happen next.

On Nov. 3rd, 1943 there was a Kinderaktion (a round-up of Jewish children). The commandant of our ghetto then was Foerster, a real murderer. That morning mother left for work (she was still working in the shoe factory) before the "kinderaction" started. Dora was on duty that morning at the gate. Before she left we both decided to take our little sister and try to push her out with the group of people that left the ghetto that morning, hoping it will work. I put on a large coat, squeezed my little sister under it partly, moved into the middle of the crowd and just went through the gate. Just luck! It worked! Many happenings that occurred to me were just unbelievable! Unexplainable! Mazal! In those hard times certain things could not be explained. It worked for some people sometimes, and some were not that lucky. Every day that passed was like a scale, up or down, life or death. We were lucky, we smuggled Sonia out. Ukrainian collaborators started to check every house in the ghetto and grab the children. The little boy who shared the room with our mother was taken away. His mother had a nervous breakdown.

Our own mother came back from the factory. The rumour about the Kinderaktion reached her working place. By the time my sister ran to see her she looked as though instant insanity gripped her. She did not know that Sonia was saved. I did not come back home with her until much later. Dora’s pleading with my mother, trying to assure her, to convince her that her baby is well and alive, did not help. She sat in the room like a glass sculpture, staring into oblivion, as though she contracted instant amnesia. When I finally arrived home with Sonia, my mother looked at us and still did not believe that we are there, she acted as though in a dream.... it took a while until she accepted the truth. This story makes me think very often how did people survive? Where did they get the strength to live through such trying moments? I think that the only thing that helped them to go on--was hope, hope for better days to come.

Our family (what was left of it) stayed in the ghetto until the last transport--the liquidation of the ghetto, July 22nd, 1944. We left by foot, walking to Pavenciai, a small town, about 200 km from Siauliai. We left the ghetto in a hurry, because the Russian army closed in on Siauliai and bombed it every day. It is interesting that most of the bombs fell close to the ghetto. Maybe because the jail and the shoe factory were strategic points for them. What else was there in the small Lithuanian town? One bomb that fell in the Traku Ghetto killed our head of the Jewish Community, a wonderful man and important businessman in Lithuania, Mr. Mendel Leibovitch (whose sister-in-law lives in Montreal).

On the way to Pavenciai, after all that bombing, people were disoriented, and security was very lax. When I think back now, I ask myself the question, why didn’t we try to run away? At least a few of us?... But where could we run to? Surrounded by so many anti-Semitic Lithuanians? That would really be death without any hope left. Our ghetto was run by a group of well-known people in the community. We also had a police force. But contrary to many other ghettos and horror stories that history of the ghettos tell us, our leaders were friendly and helpful human beings, and no negative stories about Siauliai Ghetto exist. Just shortly before Siauliai was occupied, a German Jewish family showed up in our city. They tried to get close to the prominent Jews in Siauliai and even in the ghetto tried to "help" the Jewish community. Mr. Georg F. had connections to the German Gebietskommissariat and the Jewish community thought that he could be a great help to them. How trustworthy he was, nobody knew. There was something about that family that was not "kosher." Before the last transport left the ghetto, Mr. Georg F. tried to persuade and convince the Jews that they will be treated better than any other group arriving to Stutthof (that was our destination after Pavenciai). He said, he had promises from top S.S. sources, and not to worry about the future. People gave him money, gold, precious jewels, whatever they had saved and hoped to meet him again after all the horrible ordeals and thank him for saving their fortunes.

When our group left Pavenciai on open tiny wagonettes towards Stutthof (near Danzig), we found out later that the wagonette that Georg F. and his family occupied, was unhooked one stop before Stutthof, and it was known later on, that they lived through the rest of the war in Danzig as free citizens. After the war Danzig was captured by the Red Army and many Jews that survived came to the army offices for help. One of our townswomen recognized Mrs. Georg F. standing in line with the other survivors asking for help. She was reported to the Russian authorities and we found out later that the Russians dealt with them. Mr. Georg F. was put on trial, found guilty for collaborating with the Germans and got the death penalty. His son was arrested and put in jail. "Thieves end on the gallows."

When we arrived in Pavenciai after a long, hard journey, we were put in a large hall of a defunct sugar factory. We stayed there for a few days until the Germans acquired transportation to take us to Stutthof. Stutthof was a death camp where Jews from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were brought and went through hell. Many were selected as soon as they came and were sent to be gassed. The night we arrived in Stutthof, we were lined up and divided, one group of strong young prisoners to the right, mothers with children up to thirteen years old to the left. Our family was cut in two, Dora and myself to the right, mother and Sonia--left. I took on courage, walked up to the S.S. guard and tried to tell him that my sister is fifteen years old, would he please let my mother come with us. He would not even listen to me. The group of mothers and children were taken the same night to Auschwitz and were gassed. Those were the rumours, but after 50 years I got proof. I found out through a friend of mine that there is a mu
seum in Stutthof and one can find information in the archives about some of the inmates. I wrote to them and got my answers. The rumours were affirmed.

Another thought that comes to me during my sleepless nights: Life--what an irony! I could see the happiness when we saved Sonia from the kinderaktion, but then my thought goes to Stutthof and I ponder, if Sonia would’ve been taken away with the kinderaktion our mother might have lived through the rest of the war with Dora and myself. She was only 44 years old, strong, tiny, smart, vivacious... who knows? One can deliberate in those thoughts... and it hurts, it does not let one rest... It will be there till the rest of our days. The first night in Stutthof, we were pushed into a large room, all naked. We were examined internally by some German gynecologists in case we hid some jewels in our vaginas. What a degrading feeling, how humiliating to young people, they reduced us to dirt. Next we were shoved into a large shower room. We were told to wash up and as we exited the showers they threw clothes at us, dress, shoes, coat. There were no questions to be asked, does it fit?... If one of us mentioned that the shoes are too tight, we were all barraged with hits and punches, one didn’t anticipate where they came from.

The next morning we started to learn about on goings in Stutthof. One has to be an artist with very special imagination to be able to describe the situation there; to make people understand, or just have an idea--but this is impossible. One cannot understand it, if one has not lived through it. Dora and I decided that we will not make it through one week in Stutthof and we tried to find out how to get into a working group. We heard that some girls were taken out to do all kinds of jobs outside the camp and this is what we aimed for. A few days later we heard that some girls are wanted to work on farms during the harvest-time. Dora and I became one of the lucky ones chosen. Life on the farm was heaven. First of all there was enough food, and the security was run by British prisoners of war. All we could wish for was for the war to end as soon as possible. But unfortunately all good things come to an end. Harvest time was over, and we were sent back to Stutthof.

While we were away Dora and I missed two "events": the tattooing numbers on the arms, and the shaving of the girls’ heads. When we came back, Dora and I looked like two "sore thumbs." My dress was very long, and so we decided to cut it off and make two head-scarves. We wore those all the time, so that not a hair showed. Again a little luck--we saved our hair. Just a few days after we returned to Stutthof they were choosing five hundred women to work in an ammunition factory in Ochsenzohl near Hamburg. Dora and I looked real strong, after the summer on the farm, and so we had no trouble to be chosen. Ochsenzohl was a fairly small camp. It contained two barracks of 250 women each. We worked in a factory, making ammunition in two shifts. There were civilian Italian workers, who overlooked the production and many of them helped us out with an extra piece of bread or other food items.

Our first Lager Kommandant at Ochsenzohl was a real murderer. When we arrived back from work, he kept us for hours on the Appel-platz, counting us over and over again. We were lined up in rows of five, and while he was counting, the front person in each row of fives was hit on the head with a thin stick, that looked like a conductor’s stick. Of course nobody wanted to stand in the front, and so appel time was a disaster, people shoving, pushing, falling... and that was what our commandant was waiting for. Then he really got outraged and he started throwing punches, hitting people, like a lunatic. One of our friends was made to stand all night on a pile of brickets for "misbehaving." It was bitter cold that evening, a big miracle that she came out alive of this ordeal. We were really fortunate that he lasted only a few months at Ochsenzohl and we got a wonderful human being as commandant of our camp. Life became bearable at camp. It was also only a few months before liberation, which helped. Every Sunday our commandant chose a few women to dig potatoes for the kitchen. Most of us loved the job, because there was a chance to steal a few for the inmates. I had a small bag sewn up that I wore hanging from a belt, and while I was digging up potatoes in the field, I also filled my bag. My coat was big and I wore a belt on my waist, and put some potatoes around my waist, as well as in my large pockets. One day when we returned from the potato field, we were stopped, asked to open our coats and leave all the stolen potatoes on the ground. My sister and the other girls watched through the bunk windows, shivered and wondered what is going to happen to us.

I walked into the bunk, opened my coat and yelled out: "May you all go to hell!" I still had my little bag full of potatoes hanging from my belt under my coat. When the commandant told us to empty our pockets and the rest of our clothes, I did so, but left the little bag in my back full of potatoes; I took a chance. Dora wanted to kill me. How does one take a chance like that, in this situation? But we all cut up the potatoes, stuck them to the stove and enjoyed the special feast. We said after the liberation that we were the inventors of potato chips. We were the first, making them in Ochsenzohl on our bunk oven.

We stayed in Ochsenzohl until about ten days before our liberation. Hamburg was bombed constantly. They packed us up on a train one morning and shipped us to Bergen-Belsen. The trains stopped in the village of Bergen and when we looked out, we saw a large field full of men sitting next to each other, legs crossed, in tailor fashion. We decided that there were no Jews in that group. It is interesting, that when I met Paul after the liberation and we talked about our arrival to Bergen-Belsen, we found out that Paul was one of the men sitting in that large field. It was true there were no Jews, but Paul was there, because he went through the concentration camps as a non-Jew.

When we came to the Bergen-Belsen camp gate, the girls in our group started saying: "This is the end, we’ll never survive that." But Dora said: "It won’t be so easy, they will make us suffer, torture us before they will be ready to let us die." And this was true.

Bergen-Belsen in the last days before liberation was a camp that committed mass murder by plainly neglecting the inmates. By the time we came to Belsen the gas-chamber ceased to work. Dead bodies were lying around one on top of the other like garbage piles. When we came to Belsen there was diarrhea and typhus going around. Corpses were found all over the place, rotting in the barracks and outside. It is absolutely impossible to describe this horrible situation. It was beyond anybody’s imagination. They absolutely dehumanized us. People from different countries, different backgrounds, were brought together, confined in the dirty, cramped bunks, deprived of all necessities, living in the most degrading conditions. All human weaknesses and passions are let loose in such situations and people’s selfishness and mean behaviour was unimaginable. The dirt, mud, lice made it impossible to keep clean. Our daily evening activity was to kill the lice. Our underwear, the elastic band of our panties was full of them. The more you killed, the more came back the next day. It was a lost battle.

All day long people were shuffling about, carrying little cans (just in case they’ll find some food), arguing constantly, swearing and making life intolerable. Meal time was a disaster. When the Capos turned up with the soup cans (that was more like dishwater) the inmates pushed each other as though they were ready to grab a treasure. The weak and sick ones got pushed and stepped on and could not even get near the soup. The Nazis turned us into animals, they drove us out of our minds. The sores of malnutrition, ulcers, boils was an everyday occurrence in Bergen-Belsen. Epidemics were spreading. One day the water was cut off. In the communal wash place, all of us stand close together, the wind blowing in from outside, the filth, refuse, and excrement all over the place. Some cold water dribbling out of the taps and everyone fighting for a drop.

Our food the last few days--turnips and water--one bowl, if you were lucky. The systematic starvation in Belsen was atrocious. Auschwitz was a camp of mechanized genocide, Belsen killed the inmates by starvation, violence, terror and the spreading of infectious diseases. The lice, the vermin, dysentery was wide-spread. The yards, washrooms, and latrines (open holes) were penetrated with dirt. The guards watching on top in their booths were laughing. They must’ve thought to themselves, "Look at those Jews, how dirty they are, they stink, they are worse than any scum of the earth." I tell myself now that I couldn’t even blame them. To stand up there and look down on that horrible sight... what could anybody say or think about it?

I got typhus a few days after my arrival in Bergen-Belsen. This is a horrible disease. Your hunger disappears, the headaches are intolerable, one becomes delirious, diarrhea appears. You feel near death. My place in the bunk was a top third bed. When I got sick and tried to step down in order to go outside--the diarrhea was intolerable. It was impossible for me then to keep the bowels and the diarrhea took over. The people around me made my life miserable. They were so mean, called me piece of shit and cursed me. I kept saying for Dora to let me die, leave me alone but she kept repeating: "You mustn’t die, you have to hold on. What will Mama say after the war? She will look for us, and if she will not find us, she’ll die. You have to keep fighting! Keep fighting! We must live to tell the story!" It took me fifty years to be ready to tell the story.

The last few days in camp, one could feel the end coming, it seemed close, but who could even imagine what it will look or feel like? Rotting bodies everywhere; less and less Nazis appear. Where are they hiding? And as unbelievable as it sounds, one morning Dora came into the bunk running and shouting. We are free! We are free! Come let’s meet our liberators. I was dragged down from my bunk, pulled outside and closer to the gate. And there they were near the beautiful tank. I raised my arms and then dropped down to the ground and fainted. Dora was always near me, tried to help, but she got typhus as well. Lucky we were liberated. A hospital was immediately organized and all the sick were cleaned and taken to the hospital. It took weeks for us to get better and strong enough to stand on our feet. When one gets better after typhus, one gets very hungry, and I used to drive Dora crazy, she should go to the hospital kitchen to ask for more food. It is interesting that in camp people could kill each other for a bite of bread, but as soon as life became normalized, Dora was too shy to ask for food. She said: "Are you crazy? I’m not going to beg for food." The truth was that the hospital kitchen was very careful not to make us overeat. We had to get used to food very slowly. Over 25,000 people died in Belsen after the liberation because of overeating.

When we got well and started a more or less normal life, the reality after liberation set in. Who is left of our family? Only Dora and I and the part of the family that emigrated to the U.S.A. before the war. Hundreds of family members, aunts, uncles, cousins, great uncles, great aunts, Mama, Sonia, Daddy-- nobody is alive. You feel so tiny and alone in this big, big world.... And so as soon as we could stand on our feet and got our strength back Dora and I tried to do something to get involved in the Bergen-Belsen cultural life. Soon a Central Committee was established, different organizations evolved and even a theatre was set up -- the Bergen-Belsen K. Z. Theatre, and Dora and I joined. Our director was Sami Feder, a Polish Jew, who was involved in Jewish theatre in Lodz before the war. Dora became an "actress and dancer" and I worked as accompanist and did all the musical backgrounds. I played the piano and accordion and wrote my own musical notations, because there was no Jewish music available at the beginning. We, the group, even published an Anthology of Songs and Poems from the Ghettos and Concentration Camps. We collected those songs from people who remembered them. The anthology was edited by D. Rozental and P. Trepman who were by then editors of the first Jewish newspaper on the British zone of Germany and published by the Central Committee in Bergen-Belsen. Once the theatre group worked up a decent repertoire, we went on a tour to Belgium and France, arranged by the "Joint." In Paris we performed in the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre. Where did we get the strength to start life all over again after such a disaster, after this genocide? Maybe loneliness helped? Because we were so alone, we tried to build a new world for ourselves. New families, children, grandchildren.

I was very lucky to meet such a wonderful young man like Paul. When I met him, he was already one of the editors of the first Jewish newspaper published on the British zone in Germany, Unzer Shtyme. How did I meet Paul? As a correspondent for the newspaper Paul was sent to the Nüremberg trials. There he met a young newspaper man, J. Meskauskas, who lived through the war in London, England, but who was originally from Siauliai, Lithuania. When he heard Trepman came from Belsen, he inquired whether there are in Belsen liberated people from Lithuania. Paul told him that he happened to know about two sisters, that perform in the K. Z. Theatre and they come from Siauliai, their name is Widutschinsky. Mr. Meskauskas happened to know our family and asked Trepman to please give us regards and he also tried to find out whether we knew something about his own family. Paul Trepman brought us regards from Mr. Meskauskas and this is how I met him. We were married the 28th of March 1946, almost a year after liberation.

When our K. Z. Theatre was ready to go on tour, Paul came along as well as a correspondent of the paper and this was how he had a chance to get reunited with some members of his family, who lived through the war in Belgium and France. Through the newspaper Paul was in touch with the Canadian Jewish Eagle and many prominent Jewish writers. As a matter of fact, the Eagle sent us the needed papers to immigrate to Canada. We arrived in Montreal in July 1948 and a few weeks later were hired by the Jewish People’s Schools to teach the Yiddish and Hebrew studies. I taught only two years at the J.P.P.S. evening school and in 1950 our daughter Charlotte was born. I returned to teach after a year of absence at the Shaare Zion day school, which later changed the name to Solomon Schecter Academy. I taught there for 40 years. In 1956 our son Elly was born. Paul taught for many years at J.P.P.S. and in the summer he became director of Unzer Camp in the Laurentians. Paul led a full, busy life, contributing to the Jewish community in Montreal, Canada. His last 13 years he worked as director of the Jewish Public Library. He also wrote and published extensively and was involved in many aspects of Jewish life. Paul left an important imprint on our Montreal community. Our two children, Charlotte and Elly are both married. Charlotte is married to Dr. Howard Yudin and they have four children. She is still teaching English as a second language in the French American School in N.Y. Elly is an orthopedic surgeon, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, married to Dr. Pamela Becker and they have two girls.

When I think of my own life, always running, always pushing, trying to live every minute of the day, I am sure this also has to do something with my life in the concentration camps. I was always trying to make up for the lost time, always trying to catch up. For forty years I was teaching, going to school myself and graduated cum laude from Concordia University. Always belonged to the YMHA, jogging, folk dancing, playing the piano, involved in different organizations. And I ask myself often: "What made Babey run?" I think you’ll find the answer in this paragraph.