Paich Lina

Paičs (Paich), Lina Lina Paičs was in her mid 40s when the Germans occupied Latvia in June 1941. She lived in a village in the vicinity of the town of Kuldiga, Kurzeme and raised her teenage son Voldemar alone. In July 1944 her relative Lina Kristapson brought Jevdokija Feldman, a young Jewish woman, to her house. They both escaped from a concentration camp in the town of Saldus where they were imprisoned. Jevdokija Feldman was originally from Liepāja. When the German-Soviet war broke out, her husband was conscripted into the Red Army and she was left with her mother, Rosa Feldman, and a newborn daughter. After her mother was killed, at the beginning of 1942, Feldman and her baby found temporary shelter with their Russian acquaintance who arranged false papers for them in the name Svetlova. But soon someone recognized Feldman and denounced her to the authorities: she was arrested, her one-year-old daughter taken from her and put in an orphanage, and Feldman herself was sent to the Saldus camp. There she joined a group of Latvians, including Kristapson, who planned an escape, which was successfully carried out on July 15, 1944. But unlike the rest of the escapees, Feldman had no place to go, and just stuck to Kristapson who brought her to Lina Paičs. Paičs accepted the Jewish woman as if she were her own daughter: she shared her bed and her meager food and kept her presence secret from neighbors. Soon Feldman received the passport of a Latvian woman who died suddenly and whose death was not announced to the authorities. Feldman lived for nine months under Paičs’s protection and guidance. When the front line drew near, she decided to cross it and join the Soviets, but was arrested and imprisoned again. Until the capitulation of Germany on May 8, 1945, Paičs used to bring food to the prison and thus saved Feldman from hunger. After the war, Feldman found her daughter, ill and malnourished but alive. They settled in Rīga where soon were joined by Paičs whose housein the village had burned down. The rescued cared for Paičs until the latter’s death in 1973. In 1980, Jevdokija Feldman-Svetlova immigrated to Israel. On December 12, 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Lina Paičs (Paich) as Righteous Among the Nations.