Celia was six years old on that summer day 83 years ago when her childhood ended. On June 22, 1941, German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union. Long before they set foot on Russian soil, they ploughed through the Baltic states, Belarus and Ukraine, bringing violence and suffering to the local Jewish population. June 22 is still a day of remembrance there, associated with painful memories. C4I’s Anemone Rüger recently visited Celia in Vinnitsa.
Celia is not sure whether she wants to have a visitor this weekend, especially a German visitor. We haven’t met yet, but our Ukraine team has come to see her several times. “Don’t worry, Anemone is just like one of us,” my colleague Alina reassures her. It works – I’m allowed to come. I arrived with a flower basket, fresh strawberries, and original Israeli clementines from the market.
Celia looks much more fragile than I remember her from the photo Alina took when she brought her a hot water bottle in a hand-knitted cover with a greeting from us for Hanukkah. But she is an excellent storyteller, and the flowers quickly break the ice.
Growing up in the Tulchin shtetl
Celia grew up in Tulchin, a former Jewish shtetl about an hour’s drive from Vinnitsa, where more than 5600 Jews lived before the war. Tulchin is very familiar to our team – we would spend a day there on every working trip to hear the survival stories right where they happened.
“In the beginning, nobody believed that such a cultured people as the Germans could pose any danger,” Celia begins her biographical report. “That’s why my parents, Aron and Leya, didn’t go anywhere with us two girls until the very last moment. They finally hired a horse-drawn cart and set off with us eastwards to the nearest train station.”
Too late
But their family of four did not get far. In the next village, they ran into the arms of the Wehrmacht. Their escape ended right there – they had to go back. The first bombs were already falling.
“I was six at the time and I remember a lot,” says Celia. “I can still see the fighter planes flying low, getting closer and closer to drop their bombs. Where were we supposed to go? The only thing we could do was to run into the field. Mom threw herself over me and my little sister. I remember saying to my mom: ‘But Mom, there’s so much space here in the field, why do you have to lie on top of us? I didn’t understand it until later.”
Thrown out of their own home
Celia and her family returned to where they had come from – at great risk. “Dad had to hide straight away because the men were deported first,” Celia continues. “Mom ran with us girls to the village. It was already night when we arrived at our house. But it wasn’t empty – someone had occupied it in the meantime. Little did we know that it was someone from the local auxiliary police. We knocked and Mom explained that we actually lived there. She didn’t even ask if we could stay for the night. “She just asked if she could quickly take some of our supplies so that she had something for us to eat. But the policeman treated her like a piece of dirt. He shouted at her to get away. Then he kicked her in the stomach with his boot so hard that Mom fell off the porch. She suffered from this her whole life. Mom started crying, and so did we. We went somewhere and spent the night. My parents had lots of friends in the city.”
“Useful Jew”
Most of the Jews from Tulchin and the surrounding area were deported to the Pechora death camp in the fall of 1941 under German occupation. This fate was also looming over Celia’s family – unless they could somehow make themselves useful.
“Dad was running the shoe factory. They still needed him, so they let him live,” says Celia. “Mom also worked very hard. We were all sent to the Tulchin ghetto together. We were cramped together in a very small space. There was hardly anything to eat.
“One day, back in 1943, they took Dad away. I don’t know why. Maybe someone made a complaint. In any case, they took him to the Gestapo cellar. They beat him up so badly that he only lived for a few more hours the next day. Then he died.”
In addition to the terrible shock, Celia’s mother now had to worry that her family had lost their status as “useful Jews” after her husband’s death and would also be deported.
A true friend in need
“Mom had a friend in the village who secretly came to the ghetto every week and brought us something to eat,” Celia continues. “Somehow she and Mom worked out that she would take us with her. Her name was Maria. ‘I can’t promise you that I can save you,’ she said to Mom. ‘But I’ll take the girls with me’.
“Then the time had come. One night she came to take us to safety. Somehow she bribed the guards; I don’t know how she managed it. I tried to pull myself together. I was the big sister. But my little sister cried terribly. Mom was crying too. Then Maria took us to the village and hid us.”
Saved
“I remember her saying to me: ‘From now on, your name is no longer Celia, but Lilia. Do you want to live? Then you have to memorize it!’ Then she put a necklace with a cross around our necks. I said to her: ‘Aunt Maria, that’s not how you wear a cross! You have to wear it under your blouse, very close to your heart!’ But she explained to me why we had to wear the cross so that everyone could see it. It was our protection.”
Once again, Maria, an unknown righteous woman in the darkest time in history, put everything on the line. This time it was even more dangerous, but she risked a second attempt to free her friend too. The escape was successful.
“She first hid Mama with a friend at a horse farm in another town,” says Celia. “Mom sat there in the straw for two days. Every time someone came to fetch straw for the horses with a big pitchfork, she held her breath.”
Then came the moment when Celia and her little sister Inna saw their mother again. “It’s hard to describe our feelings, how happy we were to have Mom back. All I remember is that we ate something incredibly delicious on the occasion.”
Maria managed to get her Jewish friend Leya and the girls safely through the turmoil and danger of the last months of German occupation in the region. The entire family of Celia’s father Aron – at least 14 people – perished in the Pechora death camp.
A memorial for Mom
“I am so grateful to you for looking after us!” says Celia, her eyes radiating great kindness despite all the pain. “I’m always happy when someone comes to visit me.”
Growing up, Celia dreamed of becoming a journalist. “I graduated with honours in all my subjects,” she remembers. “But when I wanted to enrol at university, they wouldn’t let me. Those were the early 50s, the last years under Stalin when things got particularly bad again. They probably didn’t like my nationality.”
But many years later, Celia did get into writing. Her sister had made aliyah and moved to Israel. A competition was announced there in the mid-1990s. They were looking for stories about mothers who had saved their children during the war.
“There has been a lot of talk about the victims who perished in the Holocaust – and rightly so,” says Celia. “But what it must have cost my mother to keep us both alive! She gave everything for us. These stories need to be told too! I wrote about Mom back then. I’m so glad that I’ve created this memorial to her.”
Celia picks up a notebook to write down my number. I can see that it is a special notebook – she has written down the telephone numbers of all the Holocaust survivors from Vinnitsa and the surrounding area. Many names have already been crossed out, including those of Rita and her friend Raya, who always told our groups in Tulchin their dramatic stories of survival. But there are still around 20 people like Celia in Vinnitsa who survived the Holocaust in dramatic ways, and we arranged to meet again.
You are welcome to support our work with Holocaust survivors and needy Jewish post-war children with a donation at myaccount.c4israel.com.au/adopt
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