Emanuel was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, in about
1938. His parents were Sender and Chaja Mines. Emanuel’s sister, Miriam, was
five when he was born. Sender was a shoemaker, and Chaja stayed at home and
looked after her husband and children. About a year after Emanuel’s birth, his
parents took him to have his picture taken. They didn’t have much money, and
studio photos were expensive, but Emanuel’s father was proud of his first-born
son, and wanted to show him off to his family in far-off America. He sent one
photo to his brother Ben in Birmingham, Alabama.
Emanuel spent the first few years of his short life
in peace. Then, on June 23, 1941, when he was three years old, German troops
invaded Lithuania. Beatings and murders of Jewish citizens began immediately.
By July 10, the Jewish citizens of Kaunas, Emanuel and his family among them,
were forced into the ghetto, a slum area of poor wooden houses without running
water. Around this area a fence was built, and no one was allowed in or out
without permission from the Nazi authorities, on pain of death. The ghetto was
horribly overcrowded, food was scarce, and the first winter was one of the
coldest on record, made even worse by a severe shortage of firewood. Emanuel
and his sister Miriam were cold, hungry, and dirty. Even worse, that winter
Sender and a group of others was deported for forced labor in Latvia. The
children never saw their father again.
The children and their mother lived in the ghetto
for almost three years. Despite the constant hunger, fear, and misery, the
Jewish citizens of the Kaunas Ghetto managed to maintain a social and cultural
life, including clandestine schools. In one of these schools, Emanuel may have
learned his first letters. His mother, like the other adults, was pressed into
forced labor, and Emanuel would have been cared for by Miriam and possibly his
grandmother, Rode.
Then, in a two-day period, March 27-28 1944, while
the adults were at their places of forced labor, the Gestapo entered the ghetto
and rounded up everyone remaining – mostly children under 12 and adults too old
to work. The people were dragged from their homes and hiding places, and taken
to the nearby Ninth Fort in Kaunas, where they were shot. Emanuel, Miriam, and
Rode were among them.
No one alive now remembers these three people. They
have disappeared from history. The only trace remaining is – maybe – one studio
portrait of one child, probably my brother Emanuel, taken in about 1939, in
Kaunas, Lithuania. Emanuel is dressed in a fancy gown and sits on a Taylor-Tot
look-alike. The camera has captured him in one of the proudest and happiest
moments he and his parents will ever know.
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