Tikva Means Hope

By Sheldon Jeral

On July 21, 1941, Tikva Cholomovitch was born in Kovno, Lithuania, to Yosef and Asya Cholomovitch, her birth against the direct orders of the Nazis, who had occupied Kovno just one month prior, forbidding the birth of Jewish children. Rescued by her parents and relatives from Hitlers action against children, during which all children under twelve years of age were taken away from their parents and murdered, Tikva began an odyssey that saw her
hidden in a bunker for weeks to avoid detection by Nazi soldiers, her health so deteriorated that death, for the not-yet-three-year-old Tikva, was imminent;
rescued by a Catholic Lithuanian family, who risked their lives and the lives of their two young daughters to save Tikva in a late-night exchange at the barbed wire fence, bribing a Nazi guard to secure her safety;
uniting with an aunt and uncle who would take her to Palestine (which, eventually, becomes Israel) and to life on a kibbutz;
making a voyage across the sea to America to be adopted by Izz and Edna Polsky of Philadelphia.
Told in a straightforward narrative, unadorned and plainly conceived, Tikva Means Hope connects in a fundamental manner, hitting emotional chords straight on, with no manipulation or preconception. Meant as a tribute, it is far more a story that strikes a universal chord of survival, community, and love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Nov 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781466961791

Sheldon Jeral

Sheldon Jeral is a retired social worker who was asked by Tikva’s family to write this book about his wife Tikva’s early childhood experiences during the Holocaust. His work was primarily in the Jewish family service field from which he retired in 1997. He went on to become a child and family therapist for the remainder of his career. He lives in Maryland with his wife, Tikva. Dr. Joseph Jeral, Tikva and Sheldon’s son, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has a private practice in Washington, DC. He lives in Maryland with his wife and son. He has added a moving play, The Story, to the body of the book.

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TIKVA

MEANS

HOPE

Sheldon Jeral

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©

Copyright 2013 Sheldon Jeral.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-6180-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-6179-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012918822

Trafford rev. 11/15/2013

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Notes

Chapter I   Kovno Before Hitler’s War

Chapter II   Tikva’s Birth: July 21, 1941

Chapter III   As If They Saved the World Entire

Chapter IV   A Great Miracle Occurred Here

Chapter V   All for a Child Called Tikva

Chapter VI   A New World for Tikva

Chapter VII   Tikva Awakens

Chapter VIII   Twists of Fate

Chapter IX   Tikva’s Family Discovers Where She Is

Chapter X   Return To Kovno

Chapter XI   Finding Their Way to the Apartment of Brone and Adomas

Chapter XII   The Displaced Person Camp in Rosenheim, Germany

Chapter XIII   The Exodus Flotilla: 1947

Chapter XIV   To Givat Brenner: Life On A Kibbutz

Chapter XV   Ramat Amidar

Chapter XVI   Another Monumental Change Takes Place

Chapter XVII   Leaving Israel

Chapter XVIII   A Stop-Over in Rome

Chapter XIX   Then, New York

Chapter XX   Starting Out… Again

Chapter XXI   How to Greet The New Kid on the Block

Chapter XXII   Connections to Israel

Chapter XXIII   The Adoption Misunderstanding

Chapter XXIV   Moving On

Chapter XXV   Choosing Social Work

Chapter XXVI   Shel

Epilogue

Chapter IV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII   Water

Chapter XVIII   Shopping

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII   The Last Scene

FOREWORD

I AM WRITING this book about my wife, the love of my life. I must, at first, acknowledge my limitations to take on this task as I did not experience what she has experienced. But I know much of the story from the forty four years we have spent together. It is a story which takes place during World War II and, within that, the Holocaust. This war of Hitler’s stretches the imagination and the compassion for those who suffered as well as for their families. It is a story of my people’s suffering from Hitler’s war, of one child’s escape from his grasp and the healing within her life, lived thereafter, surrounded by loving family and friends.

This book is a long time in coming. We, in the family, have spoken about it many times and excerpts were written here and there but it took brother/cousin, Yair Tauman’s determination to get it off the ground. First, there is the documentary, now completed. Then Yair has discussed the making of a full-length movie in the future and, for now, he is aiming at a book to be written about Tikva’s (and her family’s) experiences during World War II.

He entrusted me with the writing of this book and I am privileged to try my hand at it but I must first note that this is my first attempt at serious writing. It is a story to be read and viewed (the documentary) to be fully believed. Yair was five years old, when his beloved sister(cousin), Tikva, was sent to America from Israel. This loss and separation affected him deeply as it did Tikva and Nechama, his mother, and Bezalel, his father. Since I do not have all of the facts about this story, I have taken an author’s license to fill in, as best I can, with what I do know. This story may, at moments, seem scrambled to the reader but, with patience, it will start to come together.

It is so important to recognize that every survivor of imprisonment in concentration camps, and every hidden child, has horrible, painful and impossible stories to tell. This story is just one among the millions who survived and the millions who did not. It is a story of survival and of some lives, which were lived thereafter.

What is, perhaps, most unique, in this story, is that Tikva’s wartime experiences started from day one when her parents, Yosef and Ossia Chlamovitch, took her from the Jewish Hospital in Kovno and, three days later, were forced into the Kovno Ghetto with many of the area’s Jews. She was the last Jewish baby that was allowed to be born in that hospital. The doctors and nurses, although under the threat of death from the Nazis, yielded to Ossia’s screams and pleas and helped her give birth.

Yosef and Ossia named their daughter Tikva (hope). Her name is one of the few things that remained with her through the years. TIKVA MEANS HOPE is written with the wish that all who read it will be reminded that hope may be ever-present.

NOTES

*    *    *

I CAN, AT least , savor my imagination about the last moments of Hitler’s life. I can imagine him and Eva Braun, in his bunker, with gun in hand and cyanide in their mouths, ending their cowardly lives. The Third Reich was gone.

And this is a final note to Adolph Hitler’s spirit. I want him to give us back Yosef and Asya, Tikva’s parents, who were murdered in a different kind of bunker. And I want to have back all of the victims of the Holocaust and Hitler’s war. Until that is done I believe that the roasting will continue. What roasting? Read on.

Now for a few additional thoughts about Adolph Hitler which respond to my never-ending rage and contempt for that monster. His evil was beyond banal; it was an infinity of evil. If the great religions are right, the soul, the spirit remains in the other world long after the body decomposes. He now must reside in the deepest part of Hell. It is unbearably hot there. He is perpetually roasted, over and over, with no way of shutting off the fires. The pain and agony are never-ending. My assigning him there is my only way of trying to get even. Endless suffering; that will do it!

I cannot turn back the clock and bring back his victims. I was only three years old when he marched his army into Poland. The world was impotent until it defeated him in war. The German people of that era allowed themselves to be seduced by his rabble-rousing diatribes. They were suffering from the Treaty of Versailles and they (i.e. most of them) looked for a savior and bought into the scape-goating of the Jew. By the time they figured out what was going on, he was in complete control and they could not change things even if they tried. They allowed themselves to be mesmerized and, within their collective and communal shame, they have to take responsibility for the Holocaust.

I believe that Germany, for the most part, recognizes its responsibility for what happened. They wish they could turn back the clock. They wish they could chastise and punish their grandparents and great-grandparents for the historic shame put upon their country. It is true that the sins of the father should not be put upon the children and grandchildren. The collective shame of that period of history has to be placed upon those who gave Hitler power and who set off a genocide which caused Tikva, and so many others, to suffer.

CHAPTER I

Kovno Before Hitler’s War

I T WAS JULY 21, 1941 when Tikva came into this world. The German Army had entered Lithuania. Ghettoes were being formed in Kaunas and Vilnius. The Jews were already being arrested, forced into ghettoes, sent to concentration camps or were being murdered. In June and July alone, the Nazis, with the help of some Lithuanian, Estonian and Latvian citizens, murdered over 10,000 Kovno Jews of the 40,000 who resided there. Lithuanian soil was drenched with blood. But the heroic acts of Lithuanians and Poles and Frenchmen and other Europeans helped and saved many Jews. The Allies gave everything to defeat Hitler and Tikva owes so much to so many. Our family exists because of that bravery and goodness.

Kovno (Kaunas to the Lithuanians but Kovno to the Jews) was, before 1939, a great place of Jewish learning, theatre, newspapers and Jewish institutions. In fact, it was the center of Jewish learning for all Eastern Europe. It had become a flourishing Jewish community of 40,000 which lived, peacefully, amongst the general population, for generations. After World War II there were only 5000 Jews remaining from the Nazi genocide and the community was, basically, gone.

In 1940 Lithuania was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Between Soviet rule in 1940 and the German invasion in 1941, all Jewish institutions were closed. Of Kovno’s five Jewish dailies only one remained and it became an organ of the Communist Party.

Kovno was occupied three days after the invasion of June 24, 1941.

If the Kovno Jews (and Jews elsewhere in Europe) had envisioned 1% of what was about to happen to them, they would have fled, hidden and armed themselves (WilliamMishelski in Kaddish for)Kovno). However, genocide against them was beyond imagining. With few exceptions, they could not conceptualize the horror that Adolph Hitler would bring to them. There were no historical precedents of that magnitude. They knew of pogroms and anti-semitism in their world but total genocide was beyond their thinking, as it would have been for any other group of people living in a, generally, civilized environment. They could not escape but they could defy as Yosef and Asya demonstrated. And those non-urban Jews who could reach forests were more able to resist—and did. (See the 2009 movie,