photo by Milda Rūkaitė

Estera Klabinaitė Grobman was born in November of 1920 in Kaunas to a well-to-do Jewish family who lived in their own home on Vaisių street. She had two brothers and there were three generations living under one roof: grandparents, parents and children. Her grandfather often said he was the Golden Miller because he had light hair and owned a mill. The place where the mill stood was called Klabiniai, so the family’s name was Klabinas. Estera says it was close to Širvintos, Lithuania. She calls herself a Kaunas native and her mother and father owned a small bakery in Kaunas. Fresh-baked bread was delivered by horse each morning in covered containers. They baked delicious bread and the business thrived. They delivered to several shops in the city. Estera remembers her grandmother, the daughter of a rabbi who wrote very neatly. She can’t forget that she was never able to equal her grandmother. According to family tradition her father should have been a rabbi as well and he studied for the rabbinate, but as a child he used to secretly read secular books, and he read much, educating himself. Estera inherited her love of books from her father and to the present reads in four languages: Yiddish, Lithuanian, Russian and German. She is interested in everything.

Estera: We lived in Kaunas next to the Saulė building and the Jewish gymnasium was next to Aleksotas bridge, very far away. The teacher used to come to the house and taught all three children. The neighbors provided transport by carriage according to parents’ orders and they used to take us to school, and then come around 3 to pick us up to take back. The state Lithuanian school wasn’t accessible to Jews, they only accepted a few, so the children went to the Jewish gymnasium which cost money. I was 12 when I became gravely ill and needed an operation. They operated on me at the hospital by the university and I couldn’t go to school for an entire year, and when I got well they opened a Jewish-Lithuanian gymnasium in Kaunas, where everything was taught in Lithuanian. I was graduated in 1938. Jews didn’t have much to do with Lithuanians. We didn’t feel anti-Semitism, but sometimes it used to manifest… My parents rented a room to a family of cultured Lithuanians. The husband was an accountant at the agricultural bank and I was good friends with their daughter Laimutė, until out of nowhere she said: “You Jews use blood…” Our friendship was over.

We didn’t experience anti-Semitism at the gymnasium because we were all Jews. But when I entered Vilnius University to study chemistry, then I learned what hatred is. Students of different disciplines used to assemble in the auditorium. There were those who didn’t like it, who asked, why are there Jews siting in the front row? They said the Jews’ place is only in the corner, and probably 10 percent were Jews. I remember we Jews met in secret in the cafeteria to discuss what to do, to give up our seats or not. Among the students we had several men out of the military, and we agreed these men would come early in the morning and occupy our usual places in the auditorium. When the Lithuanians saw the men, they didn’t dare do anything, but that was before the war. I remember Lithuanian teachers who never lost an opportunity to make fun of Jews. I won’t say their names, some of them became famous scholars after the war, in Soviet times.

Estera said that after World War II began, white armbanders ran around Kaunas asking: where are the Jews? Where are the Jews around here? A Lithuanian lived in the Klabinas home who protected the family right up till the ghetto was established. It was dangerous to go to the shop because the white armbanders would arrive and take all the Jews standing in line to the fort where they murdered them. Her father was no longer the head baker, the bakery had been nationalized by the Soviets, but her father was allowed to remain there as an employee. When the war began the family attempted to flee the first day to the east, but saw Germans on Ukmergė road shooting refugees and had to turn back. Her grandfather stayed in Kaunas and was protected by a good Lithuanian neighbor.

Estera: All of the former employees of the bakery treated us very well because we had never treated them otherwise. We came back on Sunday, it was a day off for the white armbanders who spent their days capturing Jews and taking them to the Seventh Fort. I remember I had to go to a seamstress on Ožeškienės street to pick up a dress, and there I saw a newspaper which said Jews didn’t have the right to walk on the sidewalks. I wasn’t sure if this was already a law in force or not, and how I should get home. I looked out the window and saw one Jew walking on the sidewalk, and worked up some courage. I returned home, but never went out again. We traded our apartment and moved to Vilijampolė [Slobodka], the Kaunas ghetto hadn’t been set up yet. When they did set it up in a two-square-kilometer part of the Vilijampolė neighborhood, there was a lack of space, people lived squished together.

photo: Kaunas ghetto

After the ghetto was set up, the Germans issued an order for all families to assemble in the square in Vilijampolė and to leave their doors unlocked. They sent us to dig earth at the Aleksotas aerodrome. The work was difficult and to get there you had to walk 6 kilometers, and the same distance back. There was a Council of Elders established in the ghetto led by Dr. E. Elkesas. The Nazis sent us to different places to work. Women worked in hospitals as cleaners or sorting piles of clothes. When it was still allowed to enter the ghetto, a Lithuanian shopkeeper brought us a bag of peas and 3 kilograms of butter because we didn’t eat pork fat and were used to eating kosher food. We had clothes for trading with Lithuanians for black rye flour. The prices might have been unreal, but we needed food. My mother was a very intelligent woman. She taught us not to be jealous and to help. We always helped others and I myself received help from others. I realized there are all sorts of people. Upright people remained upright in the ghetto, they didn’t steal a piece of bread from another. In the camp the intelligent people tried to stay together.

The family didn’t try to flee anymore; they decided, in common with the majority of Jews, that there was nowhere to hide and no one with whom to hide. The mass murder of thousands of Jews took place throughout Lithuania in the first months. Early one morning a Lithuanian neighbor knocked at the door. He brought the Klabinas family honey and fish, and warned them there was a plan to forbid soon the carrying of items out of the ghetto, so they should leave before that. Estera watched as people assembled for the Great Action. The biggest mass murder operation against Kaunas ghetto residents was carried out on October 29, 1941. During this Great Action around 10,000 Jews were murdered at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas, including 4,273 children.

Estera: That day I sat with my father, mother, grandmother and brother. The order said everyone had to go outside and leave a note on their door if there was someone ill inside. Everyone was supposed to assemble at 6:00 A.M., the Lithuanian soldiers were waiting for them to send people to the left or right-hand side. Soldiers in Lithuanian uniforms took those who ended up on the left side and funneled them into a different ghetto territory, where it was empty and clean. People thought it would be good and they would be able to live there, and began selecting locations. But my mother, brother and I were sent to the right, where we were met by Jewish police. They said, “Good, good.” They wrote down everyone’s name who ended up on the right side, and let them go back to their homes. When we arrived, we saw grandmother was missing, they took her out wrapped up in a blanket and all her things remained as they had been. We didn’t know where she was. After some time a policeman we knew came and said she died on the square. Fourteen people died there who couldn’t endure it… They buried all of them in one pit in the former Jewish cemetery on the other side of the street. They took the others to the Ninth Fort and murdered them there.

In 1943 Estera was removed from the Kaunas ghetto and sent with others to a the Aleksotas labor camp where they were put in old barracks. The men were housed on the first floor and the women on the third. There were bunks three high in the rooms. They took them from there to Germany. A sadistic German who guarded the prisoners hastened sending them all to Stutthof, saying the first arrivals would receive better housing. The Jews were deported west in July, 1944: the men to Dachau, the women to Stutthof.

Estera: When we arrived we exited the wagons and we saw Germans with the black SS uniform. I hadn’t seen such in Lithuania. They ordered us to line up. There was an inscription by the camp, as I remember it: “Wald Lager.” They took us all off, initially I was with my parents and brother. There we found female Polish prisoners living, who told us: “Oh how good, now they’re not killing.” We saw a large pile of children’s shoes. They cut my hair there. All of us were taken through a gauntlet of Germans standing there to the showers. They ordered us to take of all our clothes, and after we’d washed they gave us rough, long shirts and a long robe, but confiscated our clothes and shoes. Instead of shoes, some got clogs, some got other things. We didn’t know anything about gas chambers. The housing at Stutthof had a corridor with two rooms. The large room had three levels of bunks for 400 people. In the morning they gave you a piece of bread, we used to get some soup outside. There was this one cruel German, Max, who used to beat people with his hand if we were going too quickly or too slowly. We had water and a toilet at the Stutthof camp. Once I was sick, and I lost consciousness. When I opened my eyes, Max was holding me by the arms. From that time onwards we had to line up and stand, God forbid we sit. Standing only. In the month of July, it’s hot, many don’t have hair, and have to wait an hour for the superior. He used to come with a dog. I feel as if I can’t stand, Max comes up but doesn’t say anything. I was with mother for a month, then they separated us and I was left with my sister-in-law. They issued us better clothes and took us to dig anti-tank ditches. Mother stayed behind the camp, they murdered her. My brother and father were taken to Dachau, where they were murdered. I was alone. After the war I discovered my [other] brother, he served in the 16th Division.

Estera received summer sandals, but it was winter. She didn’t have socks or underwear, just an old summer dress and a jacket. The small girl was sent to work dressed like this. One day as she was walking barefoot in the snow, she thought: “it’s the end, I can’t endure any more.” She arrived at the camp and they were passing out shoes, without laces, size 43. When she walked her feet slipped inside the shoes, snow got in, she wasn’t allowed to stop and her feet became infected. She was forced to walk many kilometers.

Estera: Once, when they were marching us to work, we saw a truck from another camp full of women who couldn’t walk. And we asked them to take us in the truck, beautiful woman got in, because the more beautiful women got a break. They also got easier work. There were many who wanted to travel by truck. Once I saw the truck come back empty in the evening, they took the women off and shot them somewhere on the way. When one woman broke her leg, they put her in the truck and shot her, although many asked them not to shoot her, and the Germans had promised, but…

In January the Germans began marching prisoners from the camp so they wouldn’t fall into the hands of the Soviets. The war was coming to an end. Her feet were infected, her health weak, but still she walked. Two Germans walked behind the women and shot those who couldn’t walk anymore. Estera was completely exhausted.

Estera: They marched us into a warehouse because everywhere ahead of us there were already Russians, but the warehouse was full of lice. At the work sites we lived in tents, six of us fit inside one of them. How did people survive? My fingers were puss-filled the cold, and infected. They used to deliver an amount of food insufficient to feed everyone. The morning of March 10, I remember it well. There was not a single guard in sight, but we were afraid to go out, thinking if we went out they would shoot us. We sat there without food. One ran off and after some time led back a Red Army soldier. After liberation I was in hospital. Everyone was sick with typhus when we got to the hospital. I showed them my foot, they said it might be gangrene. They treated me for a long time and healed me.

She wanted to go home after leaving the hospital, but was forced to travel to Torun in Poland to get some sort of documents. She waited for half of a year at a camp set up by the Soviets in Torun where there were many Jews and Ukrainians. She had to undergo interrogations regarding her identity and place of origin. There were all sorts of interrogators, but Estera ended up with one who happened to be a moral person, and he was interested himself in who she was. Ghetto prisoners thought it would be enough to say they were Jews from the ghetto, but the Soviets investigated whether or not they were traitors for a half year. They received bread for breakfast and soup for lunch: water with a dried potato. One night everyone was woken up by shots fired, after that they told the people the war was over, victory. Two Russian officers arrived and recommended the prisoners walk 80 kilometers to a station and board a train. The exhausted females declined to do so and they began to laugh and make fun of the women. After some time train cars arrived at the camp. They didn’t get a bite to eat the entire trip. They traveled to Lithuania, but let them out at the Lithuanian border. Estera walked to Vilnius, found her aunt there, and found out about her brother and her fiancée who fought on the front in the 16th Division along with her brother.

Estera: Every three months security in Vilnius would check me, since the Russians didn’t issue a passport but suggested instead I get married and then put my documents in order. I was barely alive and not able to work. I lived with my brother and his wife, they worked and I did housework. In December that same year I married my fiancée Kolev Grobman who had fought at the front in the Lithuanian 16th Division. We all lived in a wooden house on Krokuvos street, water from a well, heating with coal. Horrible nightmares tortured me in the nights. For many years I jerked around during my sleep in fear, I kept seeing the Germans in my dreams. It’s difficult to even talk about it.

Estera and Kolev had a son and a daughter together. Her husband worked in the Hydro-geological Expedition and was the only Jew among Lithuanians. They waited a long time for an apartment to be assigned them and finally received a warm and comfortable two-room apartment. They raised their children and grandchildren in Vilnius. In 1991 Estera, her husband and their daughter moved to Israel. In more recent times Estera, her husband and her son’s family live in the town of Arad in Israel. Both received symbolic payments from the Goodwill Fund as Holocaust survivors. A few months ago Estera buried her husband who lived to the age of 70. She still keeps house without any help, cooking and washing clothes. Her son Aaron visits her regularly as does a social worker. Estera still loves to read books as she did in her youth.

Ilona Rūkienė interviewed, recorded and wrote down these recollections by Estera Klabinaitė Grobman.

2016