Unthinkable Loss

Sick Mother by Solomon Yudovin, 1934. Courtesy of CJA.

During the interwar period, the average longevity of Lithuanian residents was fifty years. This profoundly touched the lives of their children -- they had to bear the death of their parents at a tender age.

Bat-Tsion from Dieveniškės was 11 when her father's life-force began to wane. She used to find him in the house when she came back from Jewish school. He was pale and thin, lying in bed without energy. The house wasn't maintained, her father was unable to work and couldn't provide food or firewood for warmth. The girl's heart burned when she saw tears pooling in his eyes.

"I could never envision in my mind that someday I would be without a father. I knew that people die, but for my father to die: that is an impossible thing," she wrote in her diary.

One day, she was suddenly summoned from school. In fact, she was mostly worried about her father's health that day -- he had begun to ask friends and relatives not to let him die. She had the premonition that something horrible was coming. She ran home and found him lying on the floor, surrounded by candles.

"It bothers me until today that I left for school," she admitted many years later.