Ester Berznitskaya

This is my sister Ester Berznitskaya. The picture was taken in Veisiejai in the 1930s, before she got married.

My parents got married in 1900. A year later my mother gave birth to a daughter and named her after my father's sister. In 1903 Yankel was born and in 1906 Sheina followed. In 1910 mother gave birth to a son, Isroel. I was born in 1913. The youngest child of the family, my brother Iosif, was born in 1918, when my mother was forty.

Ester went to the Lithuanian lyceum. Ester didn't marry young. When she was single, she helped mother about the house. Ester got married in 1936. Her husband, Alter Aronovich, was a butcher in Veisiejai. Ester and her husband moved into the house of Grandmother Mihle. She gave birth to a daughter.

Ester's husband, Alter Aronovich, escaped from Veisieja at the very outset of war, having left Ester and the children with Grandmother Mihle. Ester couldn't leave Granny as she was bedridden and would have died of hunger. Ester, her children and Grandmother Mihle were murdered during one of the actions in Veisiejai. They said Grandmother was taken to the execution in the blanket.