Burkevics Herta (Kārkliņs)

Zīverts, Sofija Emīlija Burkevics (Kārkliņs), Herta Sofija Emīlija Ziverts (b. 1878) and Herta Kārkliņs (b. 1907) lived in the city of Liepāja. In 1939, Kārkliņs met Erika Alperovich, a Jewish woman in her 40s, who had two teenage sons, Eduard (later professor Edward Anders) and George. In the first weeks of the German occupation, Erika applied to the authorities and declared that she was not Jewish but had been adopted by a Jewish family as a child. At Erika’s request, Zīverts and Kārkliņs confirmed the story in their statements, in writing and orally before the city authorities. In her statement, Zīverte wrote that she had known Erika since her infancy, and had learned for the first time 40 years ago that she was adopted. Kārkliņs, who was younger than Zīverts, stated that Erika “had divulged the secret of her origin to her” 20 years earlier. In actual fact, Kārkliņs had only met Erika two years earlier, at the tennis club they both belonged to, and Zīverts had never met her at all, but had given a false statement at the request of her daughter, who was Erika’s friend. Thanks to the courage of these two women, Erika and her sons received permission to remain outside the ghetto, and after it was liquidated, in October 1943, they managed to blend in with the local population and to survive the war. In 1943, Kārkliņs married, changing her name to Burkevics, and two years later she immigrated to the United States. Erica and her sons also found their way to the USA. In their family archives, they have preserved the sworn statements made by the two Latvian women who saved their lives. On February 17, 1999, Yad Vashem recognized Sofija Emīlija Zīverts and Herta Burkevics as Righteous Among the Nations.