Jay Ipson: The Original Survivor 

by Charles McGuigan 12.2004

As everyone knows (or should know), in 1933, a failed artist and non-smoking vegetarian and tea-totaler, who subscribed to a whacky quasi-religion, came to power in Germany. He was a pale-faced man with a weak moustache, a bad comb-over and no sense of humor whatsoever. He was Germany’s new chancellor, and within a year would become that country’s president. Within 30 days of taking office, the Nazis enacted, at the swift stroke of his pen, 2,200 laws restricting Jews. Nazi students clawed through universities, libraries and bookstores throughout the Third Reich and started bonfires fed by the written word. It was the beginning of the end, andt must have made some Germans recall the words of Heinrich Heine, one of their own poets of the previous century, who wrote, so prophetically, as it turns out, “Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people.” A shadow crept over the land, eclipsing what is humanly good, and that darkness seeped across all of continental Europe. It was the twilight of a nightfall that would last for the eternity of 12 years: It made the Dark Ages seem sunlit. 

Jay Ipson, one of only 48 Lithuanian Jewish children to survive the Holocaust, wasn’t even born yet, but already his father and mother were feeling the tightening of a noose that would all but eliminate European Jewery.

I meet him outside the Holocaust Museum of Virginia, his vision that he nurtured into reality. He’s a dapper man with a Stetson hat, a deep remnant of an eastern European accent, and a quick wit. He is a born raconteur and immediately, I feel at ease with him, even as he begins to recount one of the most horrifying and harrowing narratives I’ve ever heard.

By the early 1940s, Jay’s homeland of Lithuania was under Nazi occupation. His father, Israel, a lawyer by training with a gift for anticipating world affairs before they occurred, knew that it would only be a matter of time before the Jews of their hometown would soon come under assault.

Like other Jews living in Kovno, the Ipp family decided to flee to Russia. Israel and Edna along with their son Jay and his infant sister Masha boarded a one-horse surrey and headed east. Not 30 miles from their hometown, they were cut off by German paratroopers. “The Germans told us to return to our town,” says Jay. “Our opportunity to escape was lost.”

When they returned to Kovno just two or three days later they saw evidence of the mayhem that occurred in the short period from when the Russians left and the Germans arrived. “It was during the vacuum,” Jay says. “The Lithuanians took control and they started killing Jews. People we knew, our neighbors, started dragging Jews out into the street and beating them to death and dousing them with gasoline and lighting them on fire.”

Not long after their return to Kovno the Nazis created ghetto. In no time at all German soldiers erected barbed wire fences around a few square blocks of the city. The entire Jewish population—about 44,000 people—would be confined to this area. 

In short order, Nazi soldiers rounded up 534 of the most intelligent young Jews in the ghetto. These young men and women were told they were going to work in the archives. In fact, they were taken to Ninth Fort, one of a series of old defenses surrounding Kovno. They were executed on the spot. “That was just the beginning,” Jay tells me. “It was twilight.”

And then one evening, a German sergeant asked Israel Ipp, “What is your profession, you damned Jew?”

Thinking quickly, Jay’s father announced, “Car mechanic.” And this rapid-fire thinking saved his entire family. 

“All the lawyers were taken off and killed that night,” says Jay. The Germans rounded up 10,500 Jews living in the Kovno Ghetto. Four thousand of these individuals were children. Every man, woman and child was executed. By the time the war ended four years later, only 2,500 of the 220,000 Jews living in Lithuania were still alive.

The following morning, Israel was summoned to fix a car. Now, he had no idea how to go about fixing an automobile, let alone what tools to use. But he was quick-witted and when he arrived at the tool room he asked for a screwdriver and adjustable wrench. And somehow or other he managed to fix a broken universal joint. He was, after all, a quick study. 

Late one night, Jay’s father cut through the barbed wire and one at a time all three members of the family left the ghetto. Once in the city at large they met up with a Polish Catholic farmer. Jay climbed into the wagon and hid in a pile of straw, while his mother sat beside the farmer, impersonating his wife, as Israel walked the team of horses. They left the city quietly and by dawn had reached the countryside.

Another Polish Catholic farmer had agreed to give the family refuge, an act of bravery, according to Jay. “If we had been caught, the farmer would have been executed right beside us,” he says.

The Paskovskis, who grew potatoes, lived in a one-room house that had a dirt floor, a straw mattress and a table and bench. The Ipps hid for a time in a storage facility built behind the bed. But Israel knew that eventually they would be discovered, so they needed to devise a more secret harbor.

Now, Israel was not an engineer, but he was a clever man. In the dead of night, he would sneak into the fields and make his way to a potato shaft, a stone-lined hole in the ground, ten feet deep and five feet in diameter—a sort of underground silo. At the bottom he began to dig a tunnel through the wall, a tunnel you could barely crawl through, the opening of which could easily be hidden from view with the stored potatoes.

Off this tunnel he dug a separate chamber that was four feet high and measured nine by twelve. But Israel, who knew nothing about mining or tunnel boring, hadn’t bothered to shore up the walls and ceilings of his chamber. One night, the earth began to crumble and fall in on him. He was quickly covered. But the farmer’s dog, Rexy, who had become attached to Israel, knew something was up. He began to bark and circle the area where the collapsed earthen chamber was. 

It so happened that the Paskovski’s stepson was out that night and he heard the dog barking and ran to see what was the matter. As Stanislavas approached, he saw a human hand creeping out of the dirt. He dug frantically, until Israel’s face was exposed to the night air. Israel breathed deeply, as Stanislavas ran back to the house to solicit his parents’ help.

Within a month, Israel had completed the hiding place. It was all shored up and in no time at all the Ipps moved into their new subterranean home.

Along with the immediate family, other members of the clan joined them—a great-aunt and uncle, assorted cousins and others. In all there were 13 people who lived underground, and there they stayed 24-hours a day for the next six months. 

Eventually Lithuania was liberated by the Russians and the Ipps returned to Kovno. But the war wasn’t over, and the Ipps were far from achieving real freedom. Almost immediately after the Russians took control of Lithuania, Jay’s father, because of his multilingual abilities, was given a good job, managing a candy cooperative.

Because his father’s candy cooperative had become so productive, the Soviet government honored him as a hero, presenting him with their national flag. But in short order Russia would declare Israel Ipp an enemy of the Soviet Republic. Israel gave each factory worker a half-pound of sugar to commend them for their hard work. Unfortunately, some them sold their share on the black market. “For giving away a few pounds of sugar he became an enemy of the people,” says Jay.

The Ipps escaped again, this time from the Soviets. They caught a ride in a KGB truck, making their way toward Poland. The driver took them as far as he could and they spent the night in a safe house. 

Their destination was Berlin and ironically their transportation was a cattle car, but when they reached the Czechoslovakian border they were told they could go no further. But the Ipps proceeded. They walked for hours through dark woods, through waist-high snow, without compass, without flashlight. They just kept moving forward to the west. After a few hours the young Jay gave up.

“I’ve had it’,” he said. “I don’t care if they kill me, I cannot take another step.” His mother grabbed his backpack and his father picked up his son. Two hours later, they broke through the woods and in the clearing saw a light. As you might expect, they moved toward the light.

The light shone from a small house and the three huddled on the stoop as Israel rapped on the door. A tall German answered and then excused himself, returning moments later in a German guard uniform. He informed them that they were not in West Berlin, the American Zone, but in East Berlin, the Russian Zone. Their hopes sank. Jay’s father turned to his son and whispered, “We’ll just do the best we can.” They followed the soldier as they had been told and he led them to a guard tower and told the guard on duty to lift the gate. He pointed into the distance, beyond the gate, “That is the American Zone.” And the trio crossed over into freedom. From Berlin they made their way to Munich, then Bremerhaven where they secured passage on a vessel bound for New York City. They arrived in the shadow of Lady Liberty on June 12, 1947. The following day they came to Richmond. And out of this survivor’s story our Holocaust Museum was born.