Many Jews were killed in the horrible Kaunas ghetto. In a single day, October 28, 1941, around ten thousand people were shot. And on another day, the fascists and Polizei collaborators killed all the children.
They were lured out of their houses with music. The ones whose mothers would not let out were killed on the spot, in front of their mothers. After that, there was a lull. In 1943, the ghetto came under the administration of the SS. And the executions began again.
A young Jew, 30 years old, naked on the edge of the ravine, fell into it with the first round of bullets. Falling bodies buried him. He started climbing out in horror. Trying to get out, he grabbed the earthwork parapet. A Polizei laughed as he drove a bayonet through his hands. He fell back in. He lay in the ravine until dark. The ravine beneath him breathed, moaned, and moved.
He climbed out at night, stood up, and headed in the direction of distant lights. He came upon a farm. He somehow got over the fence and found a sheet on a line near the porch. He wrapped himself in it, climbed the steps, and scratched cautiously at the door with his pierced hands. A young woman opened the door. He stepped over the threshold, leaned back against the frame, and whispered, “Save me…” She compressed her lips and said, “Get out of here! If they find you here, they will kill me and my children! Go back where you came from!” He looked at her and said, “Don’t chase me away.”
He stood before her, exhausted, pierced hands, dressed in white, his tangled bloody hair sticking to his forehead. He was silent. She was silent. She shook her head. “Go!” Suddenly a little blonde girl ran out from behind a curtain, hugged her mother’s leg, looked up and said, “Mama, don’t chase him away! It is our Lord Jesus Christ!”
They hid him and tended to him. Then he left to join the partisans. He fought. Took part in the most daring operations. Everyone was amazed by his total lack of fear. He died at the very end of the war.
I spoke with that little girl in 1988, in Kaunas. She was fifty. Younger than I am now. I listened to her and I felt chills. I said, “Well, of course, an exhausted man, blood on his forehead, holes in his hands, wrapped in white. … You were little then, it was just an impression.” She looked up at me, gave me a calm and attentive look, shook her head, and said, “You don’t understand. It really was Jesus Christ.”
