Finding Fyodor

By Kenneth Waltzer

In his fascinating memoir, "Balaam's Prophecy" (1998), Naftali Lau-Lavie recounts how – after the Nazi destruction of the Piotrkow ghetto in Poland in October 1942, when Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau was sent to the gas in Treblinka, and after two years of slave labor in the Hortensja glass factory in Piotrkow and two months in the Hasag Werke in Czestochowa – he and his younger brother, Israel Meir Lau (Lulek), the sons of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, were brought to Buchenwald concentration camp on January 20, 1945.  

Lulek, then seven years old, born in 1937, had carried water to men at the blast furnace in Hortensja and had continued to be in constant danger in the Nazi camps. His life was ransomed with other children in Czestochowa. Now, in Buchenwald, Naftali smuggled him inside in a sack and was assured by a German Communist political prisoner that if the boy would get to Block 8, a children’s block in the main camp, he would be all right. 

Lau-Lavie tells how, after being formally registered as prisoner #17030 and placed initially in Block 52, Lulek was given non-Jewish Polish markings and moved with the help from Gustav Schiller ("Gustav the Red"), to Block 8 within several days. Other prisoners on their transport were being sent out of Buchenwald to Schlieben, an outlying comando where prisoners made the Panzerfaust. Conditions were better in Block 8 than in other blocks in Buchenwald and conditions were better inside Buchenwald than in the outer commandos.

Moreover, Lulek was placed under the protection of block elder Wilhelm Hammann, a former German Communist teacher and legislator from Hesse who would later be recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. Lulek was given over to care by a man named Fyodor, a Russian from Rostow, whom Naftali reported as a former Russian officer, who liked the boy and found a fur hat with earmuffs to warm him. Later, after liberation, Naftali worried that Lulek might be drawn to accompany Fyodor to Russia rather than go with his older brother to Palestine.

In his recent memoir, "Do Not Raise Your Hand Against the Boy" (2005), Israel Meir Lau, who went to Palestine and later became the chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel, recalls the shift to Block 8 (and the separation from his brother) and the role played by the angel Fyodor who saved him:  "He would steal potatoes to cook me hot soup" ... he "knitted me ear warmers"... "Fyodor the Russian looked after me in the daily life like a father would for a son. His concern and feeling of responsibility gave me a sense of security …" On the day the U.S. army liberated the camp, the day of his rebirth, Israel Meir Lau recalls that "Fyodor held me close to him and sheltered me with his body." The two of them ran to the camp gate together.

Israel Meir Lau never saw Fyodor again after Buchenwald, although 44 years later, on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1989 at the beginning of glasnost, he told the story to the secretary of the Supreme Soviet, Tangiz Mentshashvili, highlighting the role of a Russian prisoner, Fyodor from Rostow, in saving his life.  Apparently, the news went out in "Izvestia," with an announcement that if anyone knew a man named Fyodor from Rostow liberated at Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, they should contact the Kremlin. 

However, no one made contact – and apparently, Lau remained in the dark about the man’s last name, although he knew that in the terrible days of Buchenwald, a "Fyodor" was his savior.

Thus, when I was at the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen in June 2008 with a group of scholars sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to assess the newly opened archive for future research possibilities, I was drawn, among other things, to try and find out who Fyodor was. I am writing a book on "The Rescue of Children and Youths in Buchenwald," I knew the story of the Laus, and I arrived in Bad Arolsen equipped with lists of prisoners who were clustered in Block 8 in the main camp and in Block 66 (with Gustav the Red) in the little camp.

There were actually several Fyodors on the list in Block 8: Fyodor Lewtschenko, Fyodor Poschtowik, Fyodor Schapowal, and others. Led in my thinking to expect a Russian officer, a man in his early- or mid-20s, I worked my way down the list of Fyodors. Each prisoner had a personal card envelope with his Personalkarte and relevant biographical information. I looked for Fyodor from Rostow.

The first few Fyodors, men in their early 20s, were not from Rostow. Then I found Fyodor from Rostow, and he was not a Russian officer or a man in his 20s! Fyodor Michajlitschenko was 18 years old, born in 1927, prisoner #35692, and was a Russian civil worker and student who had been arrested for robbery by the Gestapo in Dortmund in November 1943. He was blond, blue-eyed, and in good health. This teenager hardly older than many other boys harbored in this children’s barrack by members of the international camp resistance was the Russian who had watched over little Lulek.

This find, reported by the Associated Press, reached Israel Meir Lau in Israel, who said in The Jerusalem Post that he had never known Fyodor's last name and had been looking for him for 63 years. Lau said that if Michajlitschenko were still alive and would come to Israel, he would wait for him at Ben Gurion Airport and seek to have him named a Righteous Among the Nations.  

My hope is that there is at least a relative of Fyodor Michajlitschenko who might participate in honoring this caring and humane man.

 

FYODOR MICHAJLITSCENKO LOCATED!

ADDENDUM from Kenneth Waltzer, September 28, 2008

Not long after newspapers in Israel announced that I had identified the young Russian man, Fyodor Michajlitscenko from Rostov, as the person who had watched over Israel Meir Lau in Buchenwald’s Block 8 during the final days of the war, Irene Steinfeldt, director of Yad Vashem’s Department of the Righteous, contacted me to confirm the evidence. Yad Vashem then made contact with the Michajlitschenko family in Rostov to try to find Fyodor and obtain more information.

Fyodor Michajlitschenko was indeed the young man who had shielded the eight-year-old boy in the final days of the camp. Unfortunately, Fyodor had died in 2006, but his daughter had a videotape of an interview he had made about his experience at Buchenwald during a trip to the Buchenwald Memorial in Germany during the 1990s. View "Russia Today" video here.

This past week, Haaretz reported (September 24, 2008) that Lau had watched the video.  Apparently, Jewish contacts in Rostov sent a copy to the former chief rabbi of Israel. With tears in his eyes, Lau told Israeli and Russian reporters that Michajlitschenko had shielded him from gunfire in the last days of the camp and that he had been looking for Fyodor for many years.  Fyodor’s video was a wonderful Rosh Hashanah present, Lau said, and finally closed the Buchenwald chapter in his life.

Irene Steinhardt has confirmed that Yad Vashem is awaiting a copy of the tape and further information and will then submit Fyodor’s name to the Commission on the Righteous.

 

 

 

 

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