Every Single Man has a Name

Remember28 August 1941

KEIDAN

A Family Story

The text was told by RonderPhoto source & the whole text: http://www.centropa.org/photo/leya-ronders-id-card

THREE GENERATIONS OF A FAMILY

My mother, Leya Bobtelskaya, was born in 1879. Her birth record, which I found in the rabbinate’s archive, shows the name Sarah Leya, but she was always called Leya. Mother went to elementary school.

She could speak and write Russian, but spoke Lithuanian poorly. She said that when she came to Kėdainiai, most of the gentiles were Polish, so she rarely heard Lithuanian.

Mother said that when Wolf Ronder, a Jew from Keidan, was courting her, he gave her a ball of tangled thread. It was a local Jewish tradition for a bride to unravel the thread, to show she was patient and hard-working.

Mother accomplished this and indeed was a good, hard-working wife. She raised and educated eight kids, alone, without a husband.

I do not know for sure how my parents met, but I think they had an arranged marriage in 1898. Mother was 18 at that time. My eldest brother, Abel, was born in 1899, followed by David in 1902, Mordechai in 1904, Leibl in 1906, Menachem in 1910, Benjamin in 1912, and my only sister, Beile, in 1914.

My only sister, Beila, was beautiful. She received a good education, graduating from the Lithuanian lyceum. She was well educated and erudite. Beile married a rich Jew, the grain trader Feivel Shishansky. They had a house close to ours.

I loved their little daughter, Iona, very much. I often came to play with her, carried her on my hands. She called me Yuka.

They also remained in Kėdainiai, and were shot at the airfield.

Date – 28 August, 1941. Number who perished - 2076 men, women and children.

Kėdainiai Atžalynas gymnasium

WE REMEMBER