Lipke Jānis & Johanna

Lipke, Jānis (Žanis) Lipke, Johanna Žanis Lipke, a port worker, lived with his wife, Johanna, and their three children, Aina, Alfreds and Zigfrids, on Balasta Dambis Street in Rīga. At the outbreak of the German-Soviet war Aina, the Komsomol member, enlisted in the Red Army. After Rīga was occupied, on July 1, 1941, Lipke found a job as a porter in the Luftwaffe warehouses. One of his daily duties was to collect a group of Jewish workers in the ghetto and bring them to the warehouses. After the large-scale Aktionen that took place in the Rīga ghetto on November 30 and December 8, Lipke started looking for hiding places outside the ghetto, and for people who would knowingly risk their lives to help the persecuted Jews. Among the non-Jews working for the Luftwaffe were Karlis Jankovskis and Jānis Briedis, truck drivers, and with their help the first Jews were brought out of the ghetto and dispersed among trustworthy people. One of the Jews, Chaim Smolianski, Lipke’s old friend, was the first to be hidden in the Lipkes’ house. Soon, another six Jews joined Smolianski and a hideout was dug under the barn. The care for them fell on Johanna’s shoulders and throughout the occupation there were always Jews hiding at the Lipkes’ for longer or shorter periods. In summer 1942, Lipke started working on a plan to smuggle the Jews on a yacht to neutral Sweden, but it was not carried out: after the yacht was purchased and equipped for the journey, one of Lipke’s Jewish friends, Aleksander (Sasha) Perl, was caught on board and later executed. Perl knew the whereabouts of several hiding places and could have named them, under torture. Lipke did not conceal that from his wards and some of them chose to return to the ghetto. At the beginning of 1943, Lipke became acquainted with the brothers Jānis and Fridrihs Rozentāls*, who agreed to prepare hiding places for the Jews on their farms near the town of Dobele. On May 10, 1943 the first three Jews were brought to FridrihsRozentāls – Chaim Smolianski, Abram Libchen and Mr. Ulman, hidden in the truck of Jānis Briedis, and in October the same year another four found their way to Fridrihs’s farm: Zalman and Isaak Drizin, Boris Brant and Simon Sheinigson. Soon, another hideout was prepared in the Dobele area – on the Mežamaki khutor owned by the Miller family. The first Jews brought there, in late fall 1943, were an engineer, Mikhail Rage and a young doctor, Willi Frish. Lipke did not reveal to the Millers that those two, as well as Sofia Stern and her young daughter Chana, who came to Mežamaki later that year, were Jewish. In time, Lipke found the Rešni khutor in the vicinity and rented it from its owners. Officially the khutor was operated by Aleksandra Dagarova* and Marija Keller*, while Zalman Drizin, who did not look Jewish, played the role of a worker. They lived openly and came in touch with the neighbors, while a group of Jews were hidden under the floor of house. Several hiding places also existed in Rīga: one was in Karlis Jankovskis’s garage, another one at the house of Anna Pole* (see supplementary volume). Not all of Lipke’s Jews survived until the liberation: the hiding place at Pole’s was discovered and the apartment owner and her wards were executed; Israel Juter, Ber Schneider, Abram Hirshman and Dr. Shmulian were caught by a group of nationalists in the vicinity of the Mežamaki khutor right after the liberation of the area, on August 4, 1944, and murdered on the spot. But 44 Jews, helped by Lipke and his group, survived, among them: David Fishkin, Salomon Slovin, Lidia Dolgitser (later Bube) and her daughter, Grigori Arensburg, Willi Nugler, David Epshtein, Herman Noim, Boris Cesvan, Lev Wagenheim, Semyon Ostrovski, and many others. On June 28, 1966, Yad Vashem recognized Žanis and Johanna Lipke as Righteous Among the Nations.