Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti - 23.sējums

Josifs Ročko. No Daugavpils holokausta vēstures
the family but as soon as somebody appeared he would disappear in the forest, cellar or
cattle-shed hiding behind cows. The heroic deed of Jan Dobkevich, modest Polish man,
who did not consider his behavior as heroic, should not be forgotten.
Khaim Pokerman, a ghetto prisoner, was by profession an excellent motor-mechanic
and plumber. He used to work in the army garage, repaired cars, saw to sanitary engineering
at the Unity House (People’s House). He would often take his brother Meyer to work,
with Germans’ permission. Khaim Pokerman lost his wife and two sons in the ghetto, but
he was not killed because Germans needed his skillful hands.
German officer Walter Kirch, chief of the garage, allowed them to run away a few days
before the ghetto liquidation.
In Daugavpils the brothers hid in a crater that was formed after an aviation bomb fall.
They covered their dwelling place with a sheet of iron gradually deepening it. Somebody
helped the Jews with bread and water. According to other evidence, the Pokerman brothers
were hiding in underground communications as Khaim knew their layout well. In July 1944,
the Red Army soldiers who liberated the city found the weakened Jews in the hole. In the
hospital Khaim Pokerman was urgently asking for a meeting with a Soviet officer. Khaim
told him that the People’s House had been mined. Sappers soon found the “infernal machine”
and neutralized it. So the ghetto prisoner managed to save one of the most beautiful
buildings which is still decorating the city.
Abram Magid managed to survive not only because he was a skilful dental technician.
On 28 October 1943, the ghetto prisoners were driven to the station to be taken to Riga.
He managed to slip from the crowd, tear off yellow stars and run away. He found shelter
with the Polish family of M. Nedvedtskaya. She transported him to Arseny Kornilov.
A number of saving attempts through christening have been determined. These Jews
were christened before the war. Jewish community as a rule disapproved of the denial
of their ancestors’ belief. Sometimes the christening saved, sometimes it did not. Much
depended on particular circumstances, participants of events and their actions.
Any Jew in the ghetto or beyond it who was lucky to survive managed it not only due
to his personal courage, psychic endurance, his “skilful hands” or a number of lucky coincidences
but also thanks to their neighbours’ help – Polish, Latvian, Russian people, and
sometimes even thanks to German Army soldiers and officers. Any Jew was sentenced to
death by Nazism but savers sentenced to death themselves through saving other people.
Helping and saving Jews these people put up resistance to fascism. This is the greatness
of their heroism.
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