Tag #120593 - Interview #89576 (Tobijas Jafetas)

Mama was home. She hadn’t left the house since the first day of the occupation, when Jewish pogroms began. She was crying and kissing me. Then she heated some water, washed me and burned my clothes. I wasn’t only dirty and exhausted, but also had flees. So our life in occupied Kaunas began. Mama and I stayed in the house. Frania, my cousin brother’s governess, brought us food and told us about what was going on in the town. Soon the order for Jews to move into the ghetto in the suburb of Kaunas, a small village on the Volia River, was issued. They were to move there within one month: from 15th July to 15th August. The non-Jewish residents of this area were to exchange apartments with the Jews living in the town. So, this relocation to the ghetto in Kaunas was well prepared and organized, which was different from other towns. The Jews who had nice houses in Kaunas managed to find nicer apartments in Viliampole. We didn’t take the effort of looking for a nicer apartment, and only received one room in Viliampole. We took everything we could carry, and Mama had money and jewelry, whatever was left from what Frania had traded for food.