Luba Olenski

Title: A Life Reclaimed: a child among the partisans
Author: Luba Olenski
Publisher: Makor Jewish Community Library
Place of publication: Caulfield South, VIC
Year of Publication: 2006
Location of Book: Lamm Jewish Library, Melbourne Holocaust Museum, Monash University and other public libraries
Cities/town/camps: Lithuania: Keidania, Kaunas; Poland: Bialystok, Bransk forest; Australia: Sydney, Melbourne
Note: those cities/towns/camps underlined are those which are most central to the narrative
Genre: Memoir
Key events/experiences: Bialystok ghetto; child survivor; Jewish partisans

A Life Reclaimed is the miraculous story of Lithuanian-Jewish child Luba Olenski. Whilst visiting relatives in Bialystok in 1941, ten-year-old Luba was interned in the Bialystok ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated, Luba jumped from a moving train to the death-camps and survived alone in the Polish countryside for five weeks before being rescued by Jewish partisans, the Olenski brothers - the eldest of whom, Duvche, she would later marry and form a new family.

Pages 1-22 detail the author’s upbringing in Lithuania with photographs of her family members and early childhood. Pages 23-54 recount the onset of the war and Luba’s move to Bialystok with her father in 1941 where she was interned in the ghetto after her father was shot. Pages 55-71 describe the liquidation of the Bialystok ghetto and Luba’s survival in the Polish countryside. Pages 72-112 detail her time in the Bransk forest with the Olenski partisans, until liberation in September 1944. Pages 113-65 recount her return to Bialystok, eventual emigration to Australia and marriage to Duvche Olenski, leader of the Olenski partisans.

Luba Olenski was born in Keidania, Lithuania on 3 March 1931, the first child of Danyiel and Ita Frank. She had two younger brothers, Lazer and Yisrolek, and her father ran a tobacco business in Kaunas. She grew up in a well-to-do, religious, Yiddish-speaking household. In 1935, the family moved to Kaunas.

On 15 June 1940, the Soviet army occupied Lithuania. After Soviet officials began harassing her father in June 1941, he and Luba fled to Bialystok to stay with relatives. The following day, on 22 June, the Germany army invaded, occupying Bialystok three days later. On the morning of 5 July, Luba’s uncle and father were among the 6,000 Jewish men who were rounded up and shot, leaving ten-year-old Luba alone with her Aunt and infant cousin. Soon thereafter, the Bialystok ghetto was established, and Luba moved into an apartment with her aunt’s relatives. On 4 August, the ghetto was closed. In the ghetto, Luba took care of the younger children whilst the adults were forced to work in a pelt factory.

On 5 February 1943, the Bialystok ghetto was subject to a violent Aktion which the children survived by hiding for five days under felt piles in the factory. In the early hours of the morning, on 16 August 1943, twelve-year-old Luba and her relatives were marched to the railway station where they were loaded into packed boxcars destined for the death camps. One-by-one, Luba and her family jumped from the moving train, though only Luba survived. For more than five weeks, Luba wandered the fields and villages on the edge of the forest, surviving off food scraps and evading capture by locals who threatened to turn her over to the Germans. After she was nearly captured by three Polish teenagers, Luba lost hope and decided to surrender. On her way to the village, she was informed by two farmers that the Olenski brothers, leaders of the Jewish partisans, had heard of her plight and were searching for her. With newfound hope, Luba followed their instructions and waited for the partisans by the forest edge. After surviving over many harrowing weeks, Luba was finally rescued and taken deep in the Bransk forest to live in the family camp.

The leader of the Olenski partisans, Duvche Olenski (alongside his brothers, Abe and Shloime) fed and cared for over seventy-five Jews in the Bransk forests. There, Luba was taken under the wing of Dina Olenski, cousin to the Olenski brothers, and later Luba Wrobel Goldberg (see the entry for Luba Goldberg’s memoir). For security, the partisans lived in small, scattered groups throughout the forest, sleeping during the day, leaving only at night to avoid patrols. Members of the ‘fighting group’ engaged in sabotage of the German war-effort as well as skirmishes with Polish and Ukrainian nationalists. They survived on food provided by or stolen from Polish farmers. During winter, they lived in underground bunkers and often suffered from frostbite. They were frequently attacked by German soldiers and Polish nationalists who killed several of their group members.

In the summer of 1944, the Soviet army took control of the area and began working with the partisans. Luba participated in a mission to detonate a bridge. In September 1944, the entire area was liberated. The surviving partisans returned to the town of Bransk where Luba lived with the Olenskis and attended school. However, in late 1944, several partisans were shot by vengeful Polish nationalists and in February 1945, Luba moved with the Olenskis to Bialystok. When she was fourteen, representatives from the Aliyah Bet movement came to Bialystok to recruit orphans for emigration to Israel and Luba travelled to an international orphanage in Bielsko Biala to prepare for aliyah. However, after three months the Olenskis brought her back to Bialystok.

In early 1947, Luba received a telegram from her cousin Eva who had emigrated to Sydney. Soon after establishing contact, Eva sent Luba a permit to emigrate to Sydney. Luba arrived in Sydney, alone, on 29 September 1947, and moved in with Eva. In April 1948, Duvche emigrated to Melbourne and six months later the entire Olenski family arrived in Melbourne with permits obtained by Luba’s cousin. In December, Luba, aged seventeen, travelled to Melbourne and became engaged to Duvche. She moved to Melbourne and the couple were married on 21 March 1950. The couple had two sons and a daughter.

A Life Reclaimed is a comprehensive and eloquently written account of the author’s experiences in which everyday life with the forest partisans is recounted in rich detail. The memoir presents the author’s carefully reconstructed memories, supplemented by historical research, although references are not provided. It was written and published as part of the Makor Jewish Community Library’s “Write Your Story” program under the editorial assistance of Julie Meadows.