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In June 1941, the Nazis invaded Lithuania. Already in the first "Akzia" , 22.6.1941, Hanna's
husband and her brother were shot . Shortly after, Hanna , her daughter and her mother, had
to leave their house in Schanz and move into Ghetto Slawodke , Kovno. In the Ghetto, they stayed
in one appartment, and next stayed Abrasha's parents, Nechome and Pinchos, with their daughters
Tsila, Myurke and Malka (who was married and had a child, Sara). Hanna managed to get a job with the Germans outside the Ghetto, and received a special permit to leave the Ghetto each day. When the "Kinder Akzien" (sending the children to the death camps) began, Hanna smuggled her daughter Zazik and later on also Sara out of the Ghetto, through thefences, in a big rucksack, and left them with a Polish family. She sold some valuables she had , and used the money to pay these gentiles , to hide the children in their homes. Zazik had to move and switch hiding places from time to time. At one time, she was hid by a young Polish woman, who was the lover of an SS officer. Later, she hid in a museum building, but after that building had been bombed, she was taken to a house in the village. A Polish gentile, named Pranas, agreed to hide her at his relatives farm, telling them that Zazik was his illegitimate daughter. All that time, Hanna stayed in the Ghetto, but after her mother was sent to Schtutthof, a death camp in Germany, she decided to escape too.She managed to do so just before the final extermination of the Ghetto. Hanna hid in a shelter that Pranas had found for her, separated from her daughter , until the end of the war. After the liberation of Lithuania in 1945, Hanna came to the village where Zazik was hiding, and took her and also Sara with her. Hanna and Zazik moved on to Vilna , and then crossed the border to Poland and from there to Austria. In Austria , Hanna met her second husband Arie, and got married in 1948. In 1952, Hanna , Arie and Zazik immigrated to Israel. |