MY STORY: VAL GINSBURG

My name is Val Ginsburg, I was born and raised in Lithuania. I’ve always described it as a small country ‘trapped on a political fault line’ between two superpowers: fascist Germany to the left and Communist Soviet Russia to the right. I grew up in a free-thinking Jewish family who didn’t believe in organised religion, so I had a very understand community to grow up in. Ever since I was a boy, I dreamt of becoming a pilot and often spent afternoon building model aeroplanes. Once I became old enough, I decided to enrol in a university to study architecture, but this was quickly interrupted as war approached. During the summer of 1940, the Soviet red army marched into Lithuania. Our family was classified as a capitalist enemy and anyone else who owned land, or a business like us, was quickly on the radar of the communists. We had our property confiscated and was put on a list to be deported. Luckily, my family were saved by the invasion of Nazi Germany. My family and I needed to make an extremely hard decision – either flee into Russia or try and survive under the rule of the Nazi’s. Due to me being one of the younger family members, I wasn’t included in the overall vote as to what we should do. Fourteen members of my family came together to work out a solution, they all ended up deciding to stay in Lithuania. I’m not going to lie. I was extremely nervous about staying at home, I had heard about all the horrible things the Nazi’s were starting to do some horrible things. I decided to brush off these feelings and try to focus on getting our lives back to normal. The Jewish population was almost immediately persecuted and numerous anti-Jewish laws of Nazi Germany were implemented. These laws prevented us from walking on the pavement, using public transport, owning pets and many other things. All of these laws came very frequently with no warning. I found this extremely terrifying. The Jewish population of 35,000 reduced to 30,000 within two months. On the 15th August 1941 the entire remaining population of Kaunas was enforced into a ghetto. Many of my dear friends sadly died of starvation as there was little food for everyone living there. While I was there, I witnessed two large massacres, which left a lifelong impact on me. We realised that these types atrocities weren’t committed but psychopaths or misfits but by ordinary people just like the rest of us. I lost my faith in humanity as many of the murderers were once simple Lithuanian civilians whom had once been our neighbours. After spending over 3 years in the Ghetto, me and the rest of the Jews were forced onto very overcrowded cattle wagons and then taken to concentration camps in Germany. I arrived at the Dachau concentration camp after a 3-day journey. I was stripped of my identity, given a prisoner uniform and had to stand there and watch whilst a guard tore up my last photograph of my mother. Whilst at the camp, I was forced to do work in extreme conditions on starvation rations. This was the lowest part of my entire journey. Each day I was becoming skinnier and skinnier until I slowly became a ‘walking skeleton’. On the 1st of May 1945 I was finally liberated by the American army. I was extremely euphoric because I was finally free, but at the same time I was deeply depressed after realising my entire family, community and culture was destroyed. I spent over six months hospitalised trying to move forward from this traumatic experience. I finally began to heal when I met Ibi. We both lost everything, but together we built everything up again from scratch. I won’t ever forget what I went through, the hardships, the loss and the grief but it shows how strong I am to make it through to the other end.