Never Erased in My Mind: My Life as a Child Survivor of the Minsk Ghetto, the Forest, and the Gulag

By Esfir Kaplan Lupyan

Esfir (Esther) Kaplan Lupyan’s normal childhood was cruelly aborted by World War II when she had barely turned five-years-old and was away at summer camp for young children. She, her family, and the rest of the Jews, forced by the Nazis into the lethal trap of Minsk Ghetto, had to survive through indescribable suffering.
In Never Erased in My Mind, she shares the story of a young Jewish girl in Belarus, encompassing sixty years of Soviet history, including the horrors of Stalinism, World War II, the Holocaust, and post-Stalin anti-Semitism. Her father was arrested by the KGB when she was only three weeks old. The family didn’t know his fate, nor did he know theirs. This memoir chronicles how she and her mother survived the Minsk Ghetto and certain death, miraculously escaping on the last day of the ghetto’s existence to the forest, where they hid for nine months. Her closest relatives all perished, including her grandparents, 13-year-old brother, and 22-year-old uncle.
After the war, Esfir and her mother reunited with her father and joined him in exile in the Vorkuta Gulag in the Far North above the Arctic Circle. Later, after studying chemical engineering in Leningrad, she and her family became “refuseniks,” denied permission to leave the Soviet Union. A story of survival, Never Erased in My Mind serves as a reminder to heed the lessons of the Holocaust, that it should never happen again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532064869

Esfir Kaplan Lupyan

Esfir (Esther) Kaplan Lupyan was born in Minsk, Belarus, in 1936. She and her mother survived the Minsk Ghetto, then the forest. After the war, they were reunited with her exiled father in the Vorkuta Gulag. Later, she and her family became “refuseniks,” before leaving the USSR for the United States in 1989.

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Copyright © 2019 Esfir (Esther) Kaplan Lupyan.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-6487-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-6486-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019901032

iUniverse rev. date:  03/14/2019

DEDICATION

In loving memory of my dear parents, grandparents, close relatives and members of our large family, and all the victims of the Holocaust and the Stalin regime, as well as all those who managed to survive the Holocaust in our nightmarish twentieth century.

"May there always be sunshine,

May there always be blue skies,

May there always be Mama,

May there always be me!"

~Soviet children’s song ¹

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction From the Heart: Silent No More

Part I Minsk – July 7, 1936 to October 21, 1943

Episode 1. The Unforeseen Happened…

My Father’s Arrest (1936)

Episode 2. My Maternal Grandparents Move to Georgia

Episode 3. Summer Camp (1941)

Episode 4. At the Train Station…

Meeting the Parents

Episode 5. Ghetto

Episode 6. The First Games of Children in the

Ghetto

Episode 7. Round-ups (Oblavas)

Episode 8. Farewell to Grandpa and Grandma

Episode 9. Typhus Fever

Episode 10. Hamburg Jews and the Zonderghetto

(November 1941) 12

Episode 11. My Brother Grisha

Episode 12. Ghetto Underground

Episode 13. Uncle Isaac

Episode 14. The Job… The Only Chance to Survive

Episode 15. The Orphanage

Episode 16. An Accident in the Yard of the Railroad Station

Episode 17. Death Reached for Me Too

Episode 18. The Last Day of Ghetto

(October 21, 1943)

Part 2 The Forest – October 1943 to July 1944

Moving Towards the Forest

A Note about the Partisan Movement in Belarus

during the Second World War

Our Savior, the FOREST

Part 3 The Liberation – July 1944

Part 4 Life in the Far North …

Vorkuta Gulag – 1945 to 1955

On the Way to Papa (January 1945)

The Meeting with Papa

Welcome (January 1945)

Stalin’s Dream … Papa’s Nightmare

The Mysterious City of Vorkuta

Sketches of My Life in the Mysterious City of

Vorkuta

Mystery #1. School #1

Mystery #2. The Old Testament and the New Testament

Mystery #3. School #7

Mystery #4. Subbotnik

Mystery #5. New Meaning of Prisoners

Mystery #6. The Death of the Great Leader

Mystery #7. Climate

Mystery #8. Multi-ethnicity

Our Everyday Life. A Family Competition

Vorkuta Theater

The Story of One Photograph

Uncle Yuri Murokh, Mama’s Older Brother

Rehabilitation

Post-War Soviet Union

Part 5 Let MY People Go – 1979 to 1989

My Family Became Refuseniks (1979)

Fighting for Our Freedom

Papa’s Last Letter to the U.S. Consulate

(January 26, 1989 )

Resettlement (1989)

Part 6 Further Reflections

Imagination: The Dialogue of Two Jewish Girls

(Esfir Lupyan and Erna Gorman)

Epilogue

Peaceful Hero of Our Time …

Father Patrick Desbois

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I feel with my heart and soul my indispensable duty to my parents, Tsalia (Bezalel) Kaplan and Bella Murokh Kaplan, who have not been with me for a long time. Isolated from each other by the power of the KGB long before the Second World War started in 1936, my parents each separately experienced incalculable suffering. They survived and found each other very far away from their native Minsk in the undeveloped Far North beyond the Arctic Circle, where my father was serving a sentence without trial and investigation.

I am deeply grateful to my daughter Miriam Lupyan, who was invaluable in writing and translating the manuscript into English. We worked together, but not simultaneously: I wrote in the Russian language, and she translated into literary English. She was not only an interpreter; her frequent conversations with her grandfather had left in her memory the essential details of life in the Far North of which I was too young to know. She spent a lot of time with my parents, who paid much attention to her, not only in everyday life but also in the formation of her Jewish culture.

I express my sincere gratitude to the editor of my manuscript, Zieva Dauber Konvisser, Ph.D. Her understanding of the essence of my not simple memories and her questions to better understand my memories inspired me with confidence and gave me the energy to study more deeply the historical moments of the events described and supplement the description with concrete facts.

I express special gratitude to my husband Naum Layer for his active help around the house, endurance, and care during my seemingly endless hours of work at the computer and at the desk with books and notebooks.

I am infinitely grateful to brothers Simeon and Jan Lupyan, who gave me the opportunity to meet with their ninety-year-old mother Tsilia Botvinnik-Lupyan, who was a friend of my parents. Tsilia Botvinnik was a famous underground member in the Minsk Ghetto and the partisan detachment in the Belorussian forests. Her memories and memoirs of her friends formed the basis of my own memories of my 13-year-old brother, Gregory (Grisha), and my young uncle, Isaac Murokh, also underground members. They both perished in the Minsk ghetto and in the forests before Belarus was liberated.

I am also grateful to everyone who contributed and helped me with advice and answers to my questions. First of all, those who supported me: Donna Sklar, Alexis Lerner, Sydney Skully, Rene Lichtman, Charlie Silow, and Miriam Brysk. I cannot ignore my friends: Erik Fastovsky, Svetlana Gebeleva, Svetlana Shklarov, Feiga Weiss, Judy Rosenzveig, Alla Bush, and many others whom I met at conferences and at Our Museum, the Holocaust Memorial Center (HMC) Zekelman Family Campus in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

The Holocaust Memorial Center was originally founded in 1984, adjacent to the modern building of the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Its founder was Rabbi Charles Halevi Rosenzveig, an energetic, single-minded man with an almost impossible dream to create an educational museum – a center commemorating the 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust. The path to the realization of this dream in its final image was quite difficult and long. Finally, after 20 years, in 2004, the doors of the new building in Farmington Hills, with the original exterior design corresponding to its inner content, were opened for the admission of the general public. Unfortunately, the founder of the unique museum passed away in 2008 at the age of 84. He was buried in Jerusalem. His name is commemorated at the entrance to the museum where many visitors take pictures with the black marble panel in the background, inscribed with Illuminating the Past. Enlightening the Future.

Our Museum became the place where more than 500 Holocaust survivors found the warm understanding, compassion, and happiness of fellowship, along with the opportunity to unburden oppressive memories, to participate in numerous events, to use the archives and library, and to consult with the professors and the specialists. It also became the only place for me to hold exceptionally sincere conversations with the staff members who understood the psychology of the traumatized people who lived through the horrors and the grief of the loss of the loved ones.

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INTRODUCTION

From the heart: silent no more

The idea of writing my memoirs has been in the back of my mind for many years. But I did not commence to write, I did not dare. The task seemed insurmountable for a simple reason: my memories were focused on my younger years, which did not allow me to recall with precision the events from 70 years ago.

My normal childhood was cruelly aborted by World War II when I barely turned 5-years-old. I, together with my family and the rest of the Jews forced by the Nazis into the lethal trap of Minsk Ghetto, had to survive through indescribable suffering. The start of the tragedy of Belarus Jewry almost coincided with my birthday while I was in summer camp for the young children.

My large family perished, and only my mother, Bella Murokh Kaplan, and I survived the last day of the destruction of Minsk Ghetto.

Human memory is short. If this memory is not supported by the all-encompassing efforts of those who lived through the Holocaust, we have a real chance of future generations forgetting these important historical events.

There is a call for each person who survived the Holocaust to write his or her memoirs. Our task is