Gold watch that Haim Smolianski gave to Righteous Among the Nations Janis Lipke

Horrified by the roundups of Jews that were taking place in Riga, Janis Lipke decided to help Jews as much as he was able. Throughout the three years of the occupation of Latvia, Lipke used different methods and ruses to extricate Jews from the ghetto and hide them in his home or on a village farm that he purchased for this purpose. At times he enlisted the services of Latvian Karlis Jankovski, who would transport the Jews hidden under a pile of scrap metal in his truck. Lipke collected the jewelry and money entrusted to him by Jews that he hid, and passed it on to prisoners in the ghetto so that they would be able to bribe their Latvian guards. He exchanged Jews that he took from the ghetto for "work" with Latvian acquaintances who disguised themselves as Jews by affixing yellow stars to their clothing and later removing the identifying badges in order to exit the ghetto. At the end of 1941, Lipke smuggled a group of Jews out of the ghetto and hid them in assorted hiding places. He hid seven of them in his own home, among them Haim (Arke) Smolianski. It was dangerous to keep us all in his home so we decided to build a bunker under the barn in the courtyard. We worked at night in the freezing cold, melting the frozen ground with torches to break the ice […] In the end we managed to survive in the bunker in Lipke's courtyard." (From the testimony of Haim Smolianski) Haim Smolianski survived, but his wife and two children were murdered. After the war he remarried and had a son. Of the thousands of Jews confined in the Riga ghetto, only 200 survived, among them over 40 Jews who were saved thanks to the efforts of Janus Lipke and his wife Johanna. The rescued Jews kept in contact with Lipke and his wife, and the Lipke home became a place of pilgrimage for the families of the survivors and for young Jews who wanted to pay tribute to Lipke for his extraordinary actions. Preserved in the Artifacts Collection at Yad Vashem are a Christian icon that had been hanging in the Lipke home and the watch that Haim Smolianski gave Janis Lipke in thanks for saving his life. The dedication, "To a brave man – Jan Lipke" is engraved in Latvian on the back of the watch. On June 28, 1966, Yad Vashem recognized Janis and Johanna Lipke as Righteous Among the Nations.