Valdimir and Regina Lazerson

by Jūratė Vaižgauskaitė
manoteises.lt

“We used to drink tea using the ‘look’ method: a lump of sugar was tied to a string and we’d look at it while we sipped tea. The tea wasn’t any sweeter for that, but we all had a good time,” Vladimir Lazerson’s daughter Tamara wrote in her memoirs. Lazerson was a professor and early practitioner of clinical psychology. They drank that imagined sweet tea in the Kaunas ghetto where they were imprisoned in June of 1941.

First professor Lazerson was thrown out of university. Then his house was taken away, his books burned and he was sent to Dachau. There he died. He had dozens of articles published and was the founder in Lithuania of several branches of psychology, and practiced clinical psychology as a military medic.

Army Medic, Peace Psychologist

Born in Moscow, Lazerson began his scholastic career at German and Swiss universities. He defended a dissertation thesis in psychology in 1911 and then went on to study medicine in Germany and Russia. His path to Lithuania was a winding one. Working as a military medic and associate professor in Kiev, he left when pogroms began and chose newly independent Lithuania as a destination.

Full story in Lithuanian here.