Krūmiņš Pauls

Krūmiņš, Pauls Professor Pauls Krūmiņš (b. 1892) lived with his wife and son in Daugavpils, Latgale. Krūmiņš was the director of a music conservatory, and Cecilia Gradis, a gifted young woman, was among his students. Several years before the outbreak of the war, Gradis, who was an accomplished violinist, had been accepted to the Academy of Music in Rīga. She continued to stay in touch with Krūmiņš and visited him whenever she visited her parents who lived in Daugavpils. Shortly after the Germans occupied Daugavpils, on June 26, 1941, Krūmiņš opened his home to Cecilia and her older sister Nadya. The two sisters had fled from the local jail where they were kept with dozens of other Jews, after their parents were executed. Although it was very risky to help Jews, Krūmiņš hid the Jewish women in a room in his apartment and made sure they were safe. For six weeks, the Gradis sisters hid in the professor’s home, while his family life was seemingly going on as usual. He received students in his home, guests and representatives of the authorities, and any one of these visitors could easily have encountered the two women hiding in the apartment. In late August, the sisters decided to move into the ghetto. For a short time, they stayed there with Jewish friends, but since the living conditions there were unbearable, Krūmiņš came to their aid again. He went into the ghetto himself, took the Gradis sisters to his home and later obtained papers in Latvian names for them. Toward the summer of 1942, when the time came to replace the papers with new ones, Krūmiņš accompanied the sisters to the police station. Unfortunately, a former classmate recognized Nadya, and she and her sister were arrested, and remained in prison for several weeks until they were released thanks to Krūmiņš’s intervention. In the papers issued them, they were identified as Krūmiņš’s nieces, and remained in his home until August 1942, when they managed to leave Daugavpils and reach Wilno (later Vilnius,Lithuania), where they stayed for some time in the local ghetto. Shortly after their departure, the Gestapo arrested Krūmiņš and accused him of helping Jews. He was held in prison for eight months, without admitting to the charges against him, and finally released. In the meantime the Gradis sisters became acquainted with Juozas Rutkauskas* (see Lithuania), a resident of Wilno, who helped them obtain identity cards in Latvian names. As Latvians, they were sent to Vienna, Austria, as forced laborers and worked at one of the factories until the liberation. After the war, the sisters went their separate ways: Nadya to the United States, Cecilia (later Boruchowitz) to South Africa. They both established families. Krūmiņš continued to live in Daugavpils and taught young violinists until his death in 1965. On May 1, 1990, Yad Vashem recognized Paul Krūmiņš as Righteous Among the Nations.