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| Evy in East Prussia |
In her own words...
The three of us--my mother, father, and I, Evy Goldstein,
aged
4-1/2--went underground in Berlin the last day of February, 1943. We lived
first with another Jewish couple, named Lewent, who took us into their attic in the building that they owned at one time.
After we were found out there, we went our separate ways into hiding, through the efforts of German rescuers. They had
to keep us separated--my mother and father together, I somewhere else--and that went on for a good time until my father was
grabbed on the streets of Berlin; he was subsequently taken to Auschwitz, where he was gassed.
I was sent to East Prussia, Bloeslau, which eventually became part of Russia.
I was hidden in a small villa by some people who didn't know anything about me, but Pastor Niemuller's church supported us,
which we learned after the war. My mother eventually came there.
When that area was evacuated with the approach of the Russian army, we found another
hiding place with the help of an old woman in the village. This became our last hiding place.
Finally, the Russians came. My mother tried to make clear to these soldiers,
who were supposed to be our liberators and friends, that we were Jews. They said that Hitler killed all the Jews--there
are no Jews--you're just saying you're a Jew to save yourself. The soldiers marched us to an empty house, where we slept
on the floor.
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| Evy today with her mother, Herta Long |
The Russians began to separate people. We wound
up in some collective camps with other German civilians and Italian military. We escaped from some of these camps because
typhus epidemics broke out in every one of them. We also escaped because the NKVD, later called the KGB, immediately
latched onto Mom. If you had brains and schooling, they would try to force you into service for the NKVD as a spy.
If you refused, Siberia awaited you.
We finally arrived in Koenigsberg, in an effort to find
a way back to Berlin. Somehow, fate and walking took us to Vilna, the capital of Lithuania. There my mother encountered
some helpful Russian Jews. They spoke some German and understood us. My mother put me into the Jewish orphanage
in Vilna, while she found work as a housekeeper for Russian Jewish families of means. She finally kidnapped me from
the orphanage, saying we had to go back to Germany--the opportunity was at hand. That trek ultimately led us, over several
years, back to Berlin and, lastly, to the United States.
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