She was born the last child of Sarah and Dov Shapiro in Vilna, on the first of January 1924, a stormy, snowy night. Her sister Yehudit and her brother Yitzhak were older than she, and she enjoyed a spoiled and calm childhood as the pet child of the family, mischievous, smart, a rebel, not liking frameworks – and so she remained until the end of her life.
Her mother, Sarah nee Rodominer, was from a family that came to Vilna from the village of Rodomino in Lithuania. Her two brothers and her mother, Grandmother Liebe (Ahuva) lived close by. She was a beautiful and musical woman who used to sing to her children, and she regretted that they did not inherit her talent for music. She was a housewife, but was a sewer of leather gloves by profession, a vocation which later saved her and her family in the ghetto.
The family of father Dov-Berl-Boris came from Kremanchuk in the Ukraine. His father Yitzhak was amongst the Jewish children who were kidnapped for service in the Russian army and participated in the Russian-Japanese war as a combat medic. The family legend tells that a member of the Czar’s family once came to visit the front when suddenly there was a Japanese artillery attack. Grandfather Yitzhak pushed the prince into a ditch and saved his life, for which he received a gold medal with a picture of the rising sun. After the war he came to Lithuania, where he married Grandmother Badana and they had 10 children – 7 boys and 3 girls. Three of the boys and one of the girls immigrated to Argentina in the 20’s, put down roots and started families, and were thereby saved from the Holocaust. The parents and the rest of the siblings and their families perished.
The father Dov, born in 1897, was a handsome and very tall man. He worked as a bookkeeper in a tobacco selling business, which belonged to a Polish captain who had a franchise to trade in tobacco, a right which was reserved only for former military personnel. Over the course of time the Polish captain transferred the management of the business to Dov, who proved himself to be a successful businessman. For a few years the family enjoyed economic prosperity, but the Gentile neighbors were jealous, and they complained to the authorities and reported on the Polish captain who let a Jew run the business. The captain fought with all his might to cancel the ruling, but to no avail – in 1937 the business was closed and the father Dov became unemployed. The family moved to a more modest apartment on Kolyova Street, near the railway station. Despite his not being a Zionist, Dov started thinking of emigration to Palestine. Chaya remembers discussions and arguments about this at home. The father wanted to go first by himself and see if he could manage in the new country, and only then to bring his wife and children. The mother Sarah refused to remain behind alone and delivered an ultimatum – either we all go together or we stay. The rest is known – the family remained in Vilna and the parents perished.
Childhood memories told by Chaya were connected with summer vacations in a dacha on the coast of the Baltic Sea, walks in the surrounding forests and in the town, enjoying holidays and Shabbat at Grandmother’s, whose house had a large courtyard with trees, which Chaya used to climb and ravenously enjoy their fruits. During the summer they went bathing in the Villia River, and in the winter they played in the snow which accumulated on the summit of the Gedimino – a mountain on which was an ancient castle built by the Lithuanian Prince Gedimin, still standing today in the heart of Vilna.
Even though they were not particularly religious or Zionist, Chaya studied – as did many of the children of Vilna – at a Hebrew school and at the “Tarbut” Gymnasia, which educated its pupils on Jewish tradition and love of Eretz Israel. A pupil who was heard during breaks speaking Yiddish and not Hebrew was fined 5 grush. “They never fined me,” Chaya stated. “Not that I didn’t speak Yiddish, but they never caught me.” So, Yiddish remained her mother tongue and the language of daily conversation, but she spoke a rich and correct Hebrew which remained with her until the end of her life, along with Polish and Russian and later on English, in all of which she was remarkably fluent. The father also spoke Hebrew, unlike the mother Sarah, who spoke Yiddish, Polish and Russian. Upon the outbreak of the World War in 1939 Vilna went from side to side – first conquered by the Red Army, which returned it to be an independent Lithuania, along with a Communist regime. There was happiness in the streets with the soldiers of the Red Army; the future seemed rosy and beautiful, Chaya said. The Hebrew school was closed and she transferred to the Yiddishist gymnasia which was run in the spirit of Communism and autonomy for the pupils. Wide-ranging cultural activity, literature clubs and evenings of poetry reading were the norm. It was a period in which they dreamed of changing the world, despite the war already raging in Europe.
This happy youth was cut short all at once by the German conquest of Vilna. The graduation party was scheduled for June 21, 1941 and her mother had sewed a festive outfit for Chaya for the party. The last examination was on June 20th and that same evening all the members of the class gathered on the bank of the river. About that evening Chaya told her grandson, who interviewed her to write his “Roots” paper a few years ago:
“On Saturday evening we felt so free, we gathered on the bank of the river and we were supposed to be very happy and boisterous. Suddenly we began singing sad songs, because we were sad and we felt that our hearts weren’t in the party. So we sat until late at night, and since I lived outside the Jewish section everyone escorted me home. On the way we saw many soldiers, which was an abnormal situation. We said goodbye, and the following morning I awoke to a tremendous boom. I jumped from the bed and saw that I was alone in the house. This was the anniversary of my grandmother’s death and everyone had gone to the cemetery, and they left me alone because they didn’t want to wake me. I turned on the radio and heard the voice of the famous Soviet announcer Yuri Levitan announcing that the fascist German conqueror had attacked Soviet land, and he called on the entire nation to mobilize against the fascists. A tremendous bombing began and first I ran to school, since we loved it so much. So, instead of a senior prom we gathered, some of the students and the school principal who was a Communist, and she said – we didn’t have time to prepare your matriculation certificates, but we did prepare your certificates of completion of 12th grade. In the middle of the bombing she came up to me and said: Comrade Shapiro, I am surprised at you, how could you have a certificate of excellence in every subject and in Lithuanian you have a failing grade? Suddenly boom, and we crouched down. After she finished distributing the certificates she said we must fight and liberate the Soviet homeland. We dispersed to see our parents and we were determined to go East with the Soviet army, but the city was already surrounded by the German army and only a few managed to reach Russia, among them my brother Yitzhak, who was 18 years old at the time.”
On August 6th the Lithuanian police came to the Shapiro’s home and ordered them to take their personal belongings and march towards the ghetto, a short distance from their home. Lines of Jews burdened with packages marched in the same direction, walking in the middle of the road, since Jews were forbidden to walk on the sidewalk. A picture which remained clearly in her memory was the figure of her father, who was tall and towered above everyone, with his back bent under the enormous package of bed linens he carried. Life in the ghetto broke him, and the burden of survival fell mainly on the mother.
Chaya passed the first years of the war in the ghetto together with her family. She became close to the circles of the underground, but due to her young age she was a regular member of the F.P.O. Her mother, who was a seamstress of leather items, received a “shein,” permission to work in one of the German factories, due to which the whole family succeeded in receiving passes to remain and survive in the ghetto. During these two years the family crammed into a small apartment which they shared with other families, and later in a storeroom under the staircase. Life went on between aktzia to aktzia, after each of which the father went out to see what had happened to his family. Rumors began about what was going on in Ponar, the large ravine of slaughter of the Jews of Vilna, but they did not yet believe that those going out were indeed being led to destruction. A woman who succeeded in returning from Ponar told what she had seen with her own eyes, and people treated her as if she had gone mad and did not believe her.
Chaya worked in a kitchen at 2 Strashona Street, and thereby received a serving of hot soup during the day and leftovers which she could bring home. The underground was born in this place. In the evenings she used to go to the youth club, which she described years later as a sort of “greenhouse, a small island where we would forget our troubles.” Her sister Yehudit was already living with her husband Nissan Reznick and the main worry was the fate of her brother Yitzhak, who had disappeared without a trace. The mother Sarah spoke of him all the time and all efforts to find out where he was were unsuccessful. One night, Chaya said, the mother awoke with a shout from a dream, woke them all and said excitedly: Yitzkak’ele is alive and he is in Eretz Israel. In retrospect it became clear that this was indeed so – Yitzhak wandered around Russia, reached Afghanistan, was jailed there and liberated by the Jewish community which paid a ransom for him. He reached Israel and joined the Jewish Brigade. Chaya saw him again only after the war in Italy, and all her days comforted herself by saying that her mother went to her death knowing that Yitzhak was alive.
About the day of the liquidation of the ghetto, September 1, 1943, Chaya spoke and wrote much, as well as the days following which were significant in her life – the anticipation of the outbreak of the rebellion, the disappointment, the refusal to allow her to escape through the sewers, the escape with her friends, and afterwards the arduous journey alone to the partisans in the forest. Until her final days her conscience tormented her that she did not say goodbye to her parents, that she did not worry about their fate, that in fact she never knew what happened to them in those same days.
A new period began upon her joining the partisans and her mobilization to active participation against the Germans. Chaya drilled in using weapons, in laying mines and explosives and participated in activity outside the forest. Amongst these she remembered the return to Vilna, a short time after she left it, in order to blow up the transformers and interrupt the electricity and water supply, as well as to get out some tens of Jews who were still in hiding places. Of this she was very proud.
In the forest she met a young man, who later became husband for over fifty years – Chaim Lazar. Chaim was ten years older than she and held a senior position in the partisans. He wooed her and managed to transfer her to his unit; after that they were never separated, until his death in August 1997.
In August 1944 they left the forest and returned to Vilna upon its liberation by the Red Army. The return to the city of her birth which was empty of Jews, with not a single member of her family left, was traumatic and difficult. That summer Chaim traveled to Moscow for treatment of his hand which had been amputated during one of the partisan actions. Chaya remained with her sister and brother-in-law in Vilna, worked in a dairy products factory and thereby managed to obtain food. That was when the discussions on immigrating to Eretz Israel began.
Their period of wandering around Europe began in January 1945. Chaya and Chaim advanced together with their friends, from one liberated city to another in Poland. At the beginning of May they crossed the border to Czechoslovakia and on the 9th of the month reached a small Czech village and saw the villagers coming out cheering, singing and dancing in the streets – which is how they learned of the end of the war.
From Czechoslovakia they went on the Bucharest, where they met emissaries from Israel and were able to obtain certificates for immigration. But Chaim said that in Italy there was wide-ranging activity of the organization for immigration to Israel and he wanted to take part in it. They crossed the border to Austria and from there to Treviso on the Italian border, where they participated in the famous meeting of the survivors with the soldiers of the Brigade and the emissaries from Eretz Israel, during which Chaim delivered a long and emotional speech.
The next two years were among the best of her life – free and liberated in Italy, partner in rescue activity and sending Jews to Israel, first in Milan and later in Rome, where Chaim served as the Beitar representative. They were married in Rome, in 1946 in the Great Synagogue, by the Chief Rabbi of Italy, Rabbi Pratto.
When Chaya realized she was pregnant, she decided at any cost that her baby would be born on the land of Eretz Israel, and not on the land of Europe soaked in the blood of her family and her people. In various ways she got herself from Italy to Marseilles, where she boarded one of the “illegal” boats which brought her to Haifa. When Mount Carmel could be seen on the shore she went into labor and was taken directly to the hospital. After a long day of pain and suffering her eldest daughter, whom she named Sarah after her mother, saw the light of day. Their first home in Israel was at Chaim’s eldest brother, Arye Ben-Eli, who immigrated to Palestine befor the war. From there they went to Tel Aviv, to the home of Chaim’s other brother David and his wife Rivka. Afterwards Haim and Chaya established their home in the Yad Eliahu neighborhood, in an area built for demobilized Brigade soldiers.
Family life in Israel was always overshadowed by the major events of World War II, but they were carried out in normalcy, with much love and constant joy of life. In 1954 her son Edy was born, named for his grandfathers from both sides – Eli and Dov. After some ten years of life in Yad Eliahu, the family moved to Dafna Street in Tel Aviv. Chaya lived in this house for some forty-five years, and that is also where she died.
From the beginning of her time in Israel Chaya earned her living as a writer – she worked at Maariv and then for many years at Herut newspaper, alongside the late Isaac Remba. At first she was the editorial secretary and afterwards wrote on various subjects, but always returned to the period of the war and the Holocaust. When the Eichmann trial opened it was only natural that the paper would send her to cover it.
The closing of the paper in 1966 was a hard blow. Chaya loved her work, the people, the daily tension accompanying the production of a newspaper, the smell of the printing press and the tempo of the news. She worked for a few years as an editor of publications at the Jewish Agency in Tel Aviv, and later in the Commemoration Unit of the Ministry of Defense editing “Gvillei Esh,” a collection of works by fallen soldiers, and editing and producing additional publications such as “Derech Eretz” and The Book of Memorial Sites. For this purpose she traveled all around Israel, located special places, photographed panoramic and memorial sites and went literally everywhere. She especially loved the desert and the Dead Sea. She always went back there, and told us that upon her death she would like us to scatter her ashes over the desert. We didn’t do so, but Edy did fulfill a dream for her, when he took her a few years ago on a helicopter tour over the Judean Desert together with her two grandchildren Ran and Assi, the high point of which was the landing on the top of Massada.
Two additional grandchildren were born to her from her daughter Sarah – Snunit, the eldest of the grandchildren, and Baz after her. Chaya and Chaim were privileged to bring all of their grandchildren to mitzvot one after another, and Chaya also accompanied each of them upon mobilization into the army, even though she did not live long enough to see them all be released from the army and begin an independent life. But she did take care of all of them, and made sure their higher education is secure.
Chaya worked all her life at Chaim’s side in collecting materials and testimonies about the Holocaust period, and especially the role of Beitar members in the rebellions, the briha (escape), the immigration and the War of Independence. A subject which occupied both of them for some forty years was the role of the Jewish Military Organization, (ZZW), established by the Beitar Movement, in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Already in 1960 Chaya traveled to Communist Poland in order to meet with members of the Polish Underground who assisted this organization in the uprising. Together with them she uncovered documents and testimonies, as well as the opening to the tunnel which served the Jews of the ghetto and the members of the underground before and during the uprising. In the last years of her life she again devoted herself to this subject and went back to Warsaw twice after the fall of the Communist regime in order to search the archives and find new documentation. On the day of her death documents in Polish and in Yiddish which she had translated for the purposes of continued research on the subject were spread on her desk. She was invited to go to Warsaw again for the 60th anniversary of the uprising in the plane of the President of Israel but did not live to do so.
Together with Chaim she established the Museum of the Fighters and Partisans in the basement of Metzudat Zeev, where the large amount of material they collected, including exhibits and pictures which tell the story of Jewish fighters in the allied armies, in the camps, in the ghettos and in the partisan units, is concentrated.
For many years she struggled with Chaim’s heart disease and from the middle of the 1980’s also with her own illness. Neither of them allowed the weakness of the heart to influence the power of the spirit. Despite physical limitations they continued with unending diligence and devotion to work, to write, to travel the world and of course Israel. Even after Chaim’s death, the love of her youth and her companion for so many years, she continued with the energy so typical of her. In the first year she devoted herself completely to editing a memorial booklet to him, producing a memorial evening and continuing the research project on the Warsaw Ghetto. Afterwards she was available to renew the activity of the museum and to wide-ranging correspondence with people all over the world connected with the subject of the Warsaw Ghetto.
In recent years Chaya lost many of her friends, members of a dwindling generation of those who lost their youth and their families in Europe, immigrated to Israel and established new families with tremendous powers of body and mind, that we, their sons and daughters, found it difficult to appreciate at the time. About two months before her death two of her closest friends passed away one after the other and then she said – now it’s my turn. When we skipped her 79th birthday and we said – next year we’ll celebrate in a big way, she said – next year you’ll hold a memorial service for me. Apparently, her heart told her.
For us, her children and grandchildren, she is the great mother, the source of our love, our happiness and our strength. Every day we talk about her and remember her, and she lives with us in every act, small and large.