Maja Abramowitch
Maja Abramowitch was born on May 1, 1929 in Dvinsk (now known as Daugavpils), Latvia. She was the only child of David and Rebecca Zarch.
Maja’s father was studying engineering in France when World War I broke out, at which point he returned to his native Latvia. After the country became independent in 1918, David was arrested and sentenced to death because of his leftist politics. Although he was not very observant, he spent many hours in prison praying for his freedom and was eventually released. This led him to become deeply religious and abandon his engineering career; instead, he joined the family business selling crockery. Maja’s mother, Rebecca, who had studied music at the Berlin Conservatory. was well educated and traveled frequently, often leaving Maja with her beloved Catholic nanny, Petronella. Maja had an idyllic childhood, and she dreamed of one day becoming a ballerina.
Life changed in 1939, after the Soviet Union signed a pact with Nazi Germany, paving the way for the invasion of Poland and occupation of Latvia. Maja was forced to leave her Jewish school as the education system was nationalized and joined the Pioneers, a popular Communist youth league. Her parents welcomed many Jewish refugees into their home while Latvia was still safe from the horrors they had fled. However, things took a turn for the worse on June 22, 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Sirens sounded as German planes flew over Latvia, and Dvinsk was severely bombed and largely burnt to the ground.
Although Maja and her parents survived the attack and found refuge in a nearby village, this period of safety was short-lived. On July 29, Jewish men aged 16 to 60 – including Maja’s father, David, and uncle Isac – were rounded up and taken to the Pogulyanka Forest, where they were shot to death after being forced to dig their own graves. Some 1,500 men were murdered in 12 hours. Maja – then just 12 years old – and her mother were among those forcibly moved to a ghetto in Dvinsk’s Griva Fortress. More than 20,000 people were crowded into this Latvian army base, where they suffered from hunger, disease, and torture.
Rebecca was among a group of women selected to wash and sew clothing for German soldiers. One day, Maja’s nanny came looking for them, and she managed to smuggle them out of the ghetto. Petronella hid them in her home for two months, until they became concerned about suspicious neighbors and returned to the ghetto. On May 1, 1942, Maya’s 13th birthday, the ghetto was liquidated. Only around 500 of its original inhabitants survived, among them Maja and her mother, who were placed in a few local labor factories until October 1943, when they were transferred to Kaiserwald, a concentration camp just outside of Riga.
Here, Maja became prisoner number 68888. She and her mother had their heads shaved, were given ill-fitting striped uniforms, and put to grueling work, sometimes as many as 12 to 16 hours a day. Somehow, Maja found a way to engrave in a wall at the camp, "Rebecca and Maja Zarch were still alive in the winter of 1943." In July 1944, as the Soviet army approached Kaiserwald, the Germans began evacuating the prisoners to Stutthof, another concentration camp, near Danzig, in Nazi-occupied Poland. Typhus epidemics swept through the camp and those deemed too weak to work were selected for death in the gas chambers. Doctors also killed sick prisoners in the infirmary with lethal injections.
Upon their arrival at Stutthof, the women were stripped and inspected. Maja, at this point sickly and gaunt, was separated from her mother, who received a stamp given to those selected for work. Thinking quickly, Maja hid under a bed when soldiers weren’t looking. Rebecca found Maja hiding and took the hand of a friend whose stamp was still fresh and rubbed it onto Maja’s hand. This resourcefulness saved Maja’s life, as they were transferred to Bruss-Sophienwalde, a subcamp of Stutthof, while those who didn’t receive stamps were immediately sent to their deaths.
Towards the end of January 1945, as Russian troops advanced, Maja and her mother were among several hundred prisoners forced to march over 50 miles to a camp in the town of Gotentof (now Godęetowo in Poland). On March 9, 1945, the prisoners were told to assemble in the yard. They heard planes overhead and looked at each other in bewilderment as their German captors fled. The gates of the camp swung open and they walked all night until they were liberated by Russian soldiers the next morning.
A kind German soldier warned them not to return home as they were still murdering Jews in Latvia. Maja and Rebecca were transported to Vienna and stayed at an American Army jurisdiction area Displaced Persons (DP) camp for a few weeks. Leading American rabbi, Hillel Silver, of Cleveland, Ohio, was visiting the camp at the time and he helped arrange visas for them to travel to Paris. Living in Paris restored Maja's faith in humanity. She loved the city and learned to speak French fluently. To make up for her lost years of education, she studied art, architecture and music. In August 1947, with help from her mother’s brother, Leon, who had moved to South Africa before the war, Maja and Rebecca emigrated to Johannesburg.
Following a two-week boat ride from Paris, they were warmly greeted by relatives as well as fellow Latvians and Russians who had fled to South Africa before the war. A young, Russian-speaking architect named Sydney Abramowitch was tasked by his mother to show Maja around Johannesburg, and within a few short weeks, they were married. They had two daughters, two sons, eight grandchildren, including Holocaust Commemoration Committee member Lauri Stern, and eleven great-grandchildren, including Heschel students Adam, Ari and Maya (who was named for her great-grandmother) Stern.
Maja documented her Holocaust experiences in a memoir, To Forgive...But Not Forget, Maja's Story. She strongly believed in the importance of Holocaust education and spoke about her experiences at many schools. Maja passed away in August 2015, surrounded by her husband and children. Sydney, a prominent architect whose projects included several synagogues and the Apartheid Museum in South Africa, passed away in December 2016.