By Ilya Magid
2001

Many people did not like to remember a dangerous period of their lives.

RAYA'S TRAGIC PERIOD OF HER LIFE

Raya said, "I was from Kaunus, Lithuania. In 1940 the Soviet Army 'liberated' us. In 1941 the Germans came to our country. All Jews were gathered in Kaunus' ghetto. Germans killed 80,000 Jews, including my father and mother' in the 9th fort of Kaunus.

I was in the ghetto from 1941 to 1944. There were many 'Children action'. How we know now the Germans drained their blood and they perished.

Then Germans decided to liquidate the Kaunus' ghetto. The remaining Jews in the ghetto were divided into two parts: men, and women. The men were sent to the camp of Dachau for extermination. The women were sent to Stuttgart's ghetto. The sons of big Germans leaders had control there; if the ghetto would be liquidated at once those sons must be sent to the war on the front line.

We were driven to Stuttgart in an open mine's truck and our faces be came black from the locomotive's smoke. When we arrived, a German detained us at the entrance for three hours under rain. The German showed us mountain pairs of children's shoes and told us that they were killed and added, "Jews killed my father." (I think that is not the truth.)

We, in the group of 10 women, were sent to the bathroom. Our clothes we left before the entry of the bathroom and other women were asked to watch them. After the bathroom they sent us to another door, where they gave us a striped prisoner's robe.

They gave us one loaf of bread for 7 persons daily and did not give us anything else. (Maybe, they thought, "Let them die themselves and it will not be necessary to expend bullets on them.") They ordered us to the work. I used a shovel with great difficulty on that job. A guard with a whip oversaw how we worked. I pulled through only by a miracle. My neighbor had a diamond pin. We gave it to a German through his lover. He gave us an additional loaf of bread for that.

Maybe in 1944 ninety out of one hundred, including me, were ailing with camp-fever. We lay in a shed. Only some could walk. We asked them to give us water or the street's snow. Once, a walking woman found a piece of ham. I asked her to give me small bit. She gave me only a bone, cutting from it all meat, but that saved me. When the Soviet troops came to us (camp was surrounded) I weighed 27 kilograms (67 lb). In the hospital I received only tea or coffee. Doctor's explained to me, "Your bowels are the same as tissue -paper. If you eat something hard, the bowels would snap."

Only 200 women remained from many thousands of prisoners.

All Germans from the camp were killed on the square.

Now, in addition to American SSI, I receive $250 monthly from Germany.

Editors: Steven Siegal and Dan Smollens