“Slova how beautiful you are with your hat. I play with Baruch-Zeev. The teacher [Malka] [8] got married to Berl Levitt. I am learning well, but Gita doesn't know anything. She only knows how to babble. Slova I love you and Tola. I want to come and visit you. This is Nechama who is writing to you.”

“The outline of the small palm of Baruch-Zeev”           Ahuva: I still have this note as an eternal memento.

Meir-Leibke Mordochowitz “der Yothem” [the orphan] Zelig Yoffe: All trace of him and of his wife and children was lost somewhere in Russia.

“A righteous and virtuous man our dear father Reb Avraham son of Reb Moshe Michl Yechiel z'l Mordochowitz. Died on (?) Shevat 5690 May his soul be tied in the knot of life” (Courtesy Sara-Weiss Slep, Dusiat 1991)

Shmuel Mishtovsky: I was born in Nemunaitis (Lithuania) to my parents Chaim-Leib and Chana Ita.

Leah Segal and I were married at the home of her parents in Dusiat and resided in Vizhun.

On June 22, 1941, Leah gave birth to a boy in the Jewish hospital in Kovno, and that morning the Nazi German armies invaded the Soviet Union. I managed to reach Kovno, and the next day I moved Leah and the baby to an apartment in Slobodka, Ariogalos 8. We named the baby Chanan. We were in the apartment when the pogrom in Slobodka took place [June 25-26, 1941]. I was sent with others to gather up corpses, and in one of the houses - I think it was in Masininku Gatve [street] I found the corpse of a woman lying on the bed, and on the wall was an inscription written in blood: Revenge [Nekama – in Hebrew].

Rachel Basevi: I had the opportunity to talk to Shmuel and to hear some details from him about the events and about my uncles.

Shmuel told me about the pogrom. He knew my uncles Adv. Avraham and Benjamin Mishelsky (the brothers of my mother Golda), who lived in Slobodka, Masininku Str .10, in two-story house. Shmuel told me that in the first floor he found Avraham and his wife, each of them was holding a child in their arm, and that they were murdered.

Recently, my mother told me that she'd heard from some people (with whom I am not familiar) she met at the memorial service for Lithuanian Jewry that it was her brother Avraham who had written “Revenge” on the wall.

When the Kovno ghetto became a concentration camp, we were in the Aleksotas camp, and there, in the Children's Aktion on March 27-28, 1944 we lost our child Chanan. From then on Leah lost the will to live.

We were transferred to work in a camp near Ponivezh [Panavesys], and when the prisoners were evacuated from there in trucks – with the men separated from the women – I arranged with Leah that each one of us would jump from the truck when it slowed down at the turn, and we would flee together. I jumped off and survived. I never saw Leah again.

I hid in a pile of trash in Similkai, and there I found a German's trousers. This garment enabled me to hide until the arrival of the Russians on July 26, 1944.

I returned to Kovno on the day that the Red Army entered the city, August 1, 1944.

Of my whole family I am the only survivor.

After a time I started a new family.

I recalled the address of Slova (Leah's sister) in Tel-Aviv, and after the war I contacted her and with great sorrow told her what had happened to the family and its bitter fate.

We made aliya to Israel in 1966, and here we were received warmly by Slova and her family.

Shmuel Mishtovsky Died October 9, 2006 in Tel Aviv

Anya Sherzer (Mishtovsky): My father Shmuel told me that my name perpetuate the name of his mother Chana. I believe that this name also perpetuates the name of his child Chanan. The names of Leah and Chanan are memorialized on my father's gravestone.

My father was a graduate of the Academy of Art in Moscow.

In Vilna he specialized in toy design combined with sound and in Israel he worked in his profession in the ''Toysland” factory, until his retirement.

In 1985 he began to sculpt in wood.

In 1990/1991 his wood sculpture “Understanding and Peace” was awarded the first prize at a ZOA House exhibition in Tel Aviv.

“Understanding and Peace”[9]

7. Yitzchak Mordochowitz was the son of Chaim-Baruch, and brother of Feige Kagan. His son Meir-Leib was from his first wife Rochl-Leah (daughter of Chaim-Leib Adelman and Chana-Geile nee Slep). Meir-Leib survived the war, but all trace of him and of his wife and children was lost somewhere in Russia. Return
8. Malka Lajowski / Rosowski? No one survived to tell the right spelling. Return

9. Wood sculpture, height 130 cm. Art 2000, Israel Arists, Painters and Sculptors, p. 173. Return

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