Aida's story about her grandparents, the Babarskis, with whom she grew up:

My grandmother Jadvyga came from Panevėžys, and her passport listed her nationality as Polish. Her maiden name was Boževskaitė. She grew up with her grandmother, and her guardian was a priest, who gave her an education and introduced her to the family of her future husband - Babarskas. She graduated in pharmacy and used to make medicines in a pharmacy. Her uncle, a priest, gave her a dowry prepared by the nuns, which was a source of great pride at that time, because everything was handmade and embroidered.

Grandaddy Alfonsas, originally from Marijampolė. His father and his family had gone to the USA to earn money and after five years abroad, part of the family came back to their hometown and bought a school in the centre of the town, which they demolished and built a three-storey brick house. The ground floor was used for shops, the second floor was where they lived, and the third floor was for the people who served them.

All the children were educated abroad. 

Grandmother and grandaddy married in Kaunas. Both worked good jobs and lived well. Grandma used to say that she was friends with Smetona's wife. She described her as very modest and practical, and marvelled at the fact that she used to knit her own socks so as not to waste them.

She returned to live in Marijampolė when father needed help. She paid off all his debts and bought the house back from bailiffs or auctions.

Grandaddy started to run a business. He did well, got along well with everyone, and the workers loved him. And then the war... he never imagined that he would be sent to Siberia, he thought he had no enemies...

Their first daughter was born in 1940. She got 4 names, because all the grandparents and parents wanted to give their own. Those were Laisvė, Marija, Saulutė, Danutė. In 1945 Alfonsas, my dad, was born.

After the war my grandmother had a very difficult life - her husband was exiled, there was no work, there was hunger and she had three small children. Only thanks to good people she survived. As far as I know, not only did she take Rūta in, but she also took in a German teenager and a Russian boy. My grandmother felt sorry for everybody, she used to say "I cannot live without helping others".

I don't know at what time, but she got a job in a local pharmacy in Marijampolė.

The house was nationalised, leaving only one flat for them. I remember when I was little that the door didn't close, both day and night. Whoever got hurt, whoever got sick, everybody needed help, medicine.

Grandaddy was imprisoned for 10 years, then he was rehabilitated, he got a compunction and a job right away. When I was growing up with them, that's what I remember, the courtesy, the elegance, the respect for each other.

Story by Ruth Glikman-Bass

I, Ruth Glikman-Bass, was born in Kaunas, in the ghetto of Vilijampolė, in January 1942. My mother Tirca Bass-Galperin, my father Leiba Bass and my brother Eliezer Bass were with me in the ghetto. My brother was 5 years old when I was born. My birth certificate was issued in the ghetto (Ausweis No. 10313) and kept by my adoptive parents.

My parents were in the ghetto together with their friends, Dr Nabriski and Dr Voschin. One day, lucky for me, a Lithuanian woman, an acquaintance of Nabrisky's, came to their workplace and brought him food. She felt indebted to the doctor and asked what else she could do to help him. Nabrisky said that she could no longer help him, but that to this beautiful woman - he pointed to my mother - could: "She has two children: a five-year-old son and a recently born girl. Save them!"

The Lithuanian woman was Jadvyga Babarskiene, who later told me about this conversation with Nabrisky. Jadvyga replied that she would do anything to take the little girl - because my mother had agreed to give only me: my brother spoke Yiddish and it would have been difficult to hide him. I was very tiny, because there was little food in the ghetto. When I was 9 months old, I was put to sleep with medicine and taken out of the ghetto in a laundry basket - just as a crowd of Jews returning from work in the countryside were bustling at the ghetto gates. Babarskiene was already waiting at the agreed place with a trolley, and my mother handed over me and the yearbooks to her.

This is how I came to be part of a Catholic Lithuanian family. Jadvyga dyed my hair, and when people asked who I was, she said that I was the daughter of a Russian officer, who would come to pick me up later. Jadvyga's speciality was pharmacist. Her husband Alfonsas graduated from a commercial school in Switzerland. They were educated, cultured people. Their daughter Danutė was a year older than me.

Babarskis told me that he saw my father a few more times, but then everything disappeared...

We did not live in Kaunas for long. For some reason, the Germans ordered Alfonsas Babarskis to leave Kaunas within 48 hours. Babarskis's parents lived in Marijampolė, they were rich and well-known people there. They had a three-storey house in the centre of the city and a summer house with a garden in the countryside. We moved there from Kaunas. Alfonsas Babarskis was also a wealthy man, and we would have had a good life, but the Germans burnt down our summer house when they retreated from Lithuania. Alfonsas and Jadvyga saved the children and the first things they could find. So we lost everything and came to live naked and barefoot in the Babarskis' house in Marijampole.

I don't remember the first years of my life well. I remember that in 1949-50, some people came with a search warrant, frightened my stepmother and kept asking her where her husband was. When asked by Jadwiga, I was spinning around and endlessly singing songs about Stalin, that he was "our father" and "our saviour". A few days later we found out that Babarskis had been deported to Siberia. Our years of suffering began - we had nothing to eat and nothing to wear. We lived like that for about seven years, until Alfonsas returned from Siberia. I stayed with the Babarskis until 1956. At the age of 13, I went to Vilnius, to live with the Jewish family of Anna and David Markovsky: they had lost their daughter in the war and decided to take me into their family.

I graduated from the Faculty of Economics at Vilnius University. In 1971, our family - me, my husband Leo Glikman, our two-year-old son and my husband's parents - moved to Israel. Throughout those years I have maintained close ties with Danute and Alius - my sister and brother, the children of Jadwiga and Alfonsas, who are no longer with us.

From the memoirs of Ruth Glikman, written on 31-01-2006