Evelyn Koch honors her father’s sisters Rivka Lichtenstein Fisher, Esther Lichtenstein Lubocki, and Miriam Lichtenstein Lomas, all of whom were born in Kovno, Lithuania. Kovno was a large city with a thriving Jewish community. The family had a large clothing store for men; a photograph of it had been on display in a traveling exhibit about the Kovno Ghetto at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Esther Lubocki died on March 17, 1945, shortly after she had been liberated. She was walking to the Displaced Person’s camp after leaving the Kovno Ghetto, but she was ill and died. Her husband, Mielach Lubocki, survived; his diary about this event is translated and available at the JCC. The other two sisters died in the Kovno Ghetto, along with their husbands and children. The mother of Rivka, Esther, and Miriam was plagued with terrible guilt after the war. Evelyn explains, “My grandmother never spoke about them because she had terrible guilt. She was to leave on a certain train, but wanted to wait for her daughters. The authorities told her that her daughters would be on the next train, that she had to leave on this train or she wouldn’t be able to go. Needless to say, there never was a next train for them.”
The Nashville Holocaust Memorial