Bagriansky-Zerner family collection

Rosian Bagriansky was born on October 23, 1935, in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania, to Paulius and Gerta Chason Bagriansky. Paulius was an attorney and an international textile merchant. He was born on January 24, 1906, to Zalman and Amalia Meyer Bagriansky near Vilna, in Prienai, Lithuania. He had a brother Wolf and a sister Lyda who married the composer Edwin Geist (1902-1942) in 1936. Gerta was born on August 8, 1908, in Koenigsberg, Germany, to Julius and Anna Blumenthal Chason, but was raised in Danzig. Gerta had two sisters, Bella, the eldest, and Heniruth (Henia), the youngest, and a brother Fredy. Bella lived in Germany and was married to General Buehler. She was a member of the Mary Wigman Dance Company, a pioneering modern dance troupe. Gerta was a Berlin and Paris trained concert pianist and music teacher. Gerta met Paulius during a trip to Lithuania and they married on January 24, 1934. The day after Rosian was born, her maternal grandparents, Julius and Anna Chason, with Bella, Henia, and Fredy, immigrated to Palestine to join Anna's sister and her husband who resided there. Kaunas had a vibrant, Jewish community that was about one quarter of the city’s population. The family lived in a centrally located apartment owned by Rosian's paternal grandfather, who built one of the first electric flour-processing factory mills in Lithuania. Paulius's business was very successful and the family was prosperous, with a 1935 American Ford, a chauffeur, and servants. Paulius purchased land in Canada with plans to move there with his family. However, before that occurred, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, and the outbreak of World War II made immigration impossible. In June 1940, the Soviets occupied and annexed Lithuania. Jewish organizations were closed and property was appropriated by the state. In June 1941, Germany launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union. The invasion was accompanied by pogroms carried out by the local population, often assisting German mobile killing squads, in which thousands of Jews were murdered. Kaunas was occupied on July 24. Rosian's paternal grandfather Zalman was arrested and jailed in the 7th Fort, where he was allegedly tortured and murdered. Her paternal grandmother Amalie was also killed during the early weeks of the invasion. She was denounced by a neighbor for forgetting to wear her yellow star badge in a bread line, arrested, and not seen again. The Jewish population was forced into a ghetto which was sealed in August. Rosian's family had to share one room. Food was extremely scarce and disease was widespread. Gerta's best friend Rifka Shmukler lived with them. Paulius was in a work brigade that did electrical work outside the ghetto. There were periodic massacres of thousands of Jews in a fort on the city outskirts. Within six months, half the Jewish population had been murdered by the Germans and their Lithuanian collaborators. At one point, Gerta made the family signs identifying them as work brigade laborers and they were not taken. Rosian’s parents dug a hole under the barbed wire fence around the ghetto, big enough for 6 year old Rosian to use to escape. They studied the searchlight timing, and dog and guard rotations and, on January 16, 1942, during a pause between lights and patrols, pushed Rosian through the hole to safety. She was met on the other side by Bronia Budrekaite, her father's former secretary, and sister-in-law of Jacob Gens, Jewish head of Vilna ghetto. Rosian cried a great deal and Bronia was afraid to keep her. Rosian was baptized by Pastor Vaitkus, and later taken to the home of Natalija (Natashok) Fugaleviciute, an artist, and Natalija (Paviasha) Jegorova, a journalist, in Zaliakalnis. The women were devout Christian Scientists, a group also persecuted by the Germans. Soon after Rosian left, Gerta helped Paulius escape and then escaped herself, with the help of Rifka Shmukler, a journalist and longtime friend of the two Natalijas. Gerta met Paulius in Vilna. Paulius was arrested and after his release, he left to join the partisans in the nearby Rudniki forests. Gerta left to find Rosian and mother and daughter were reunited at Natalija's. After a few weeks, Rosian was taken to the Kulautuva farm of Lidija Goluboviene, Natashok’s older sister. She took care of Rosian until the end of the war, along with several other children. Gerta went into hiding separately under an assumed identity as a Christian. Both Gerta and Rosian had blue eyes and fair complexion, which helped to sustain their assumed identities. Gerta was able to visit Rosian only twice, once bringing her a doll made from scraps of wood, her only toy, and the second time, a candy that Rosian had not had since they were in the ghetto. In late July 1944, two young girls arrived at Lidija's from her sister's. There was intense fighting in the area between advancing Soviet and retreating German forces. Lidija, and those living in hiding with her, fled briefly to the forest until August 3, when the fighting subsided and the area was back under Soviet control. The war in Europe ended with Germany’s surrender in early May 1945. Rosian and Gerta returned to Kaunas and were reunited with Paulius. Thirty-seven relatives were known to have been killed. Paulius's sister and her husband, Lyda and Edwin Geist, were interned in Vilna ghetto. In fall 1941, Edwin was released from the ghetto because a friend was the mistress of Helmut Razka, a Nazi officer in charge of the killing operations. Lyda was allowed to join him in fall 1942. Shortly after this, Edwin was arrested, imprisoned in 9th Fort, and killed by the Gestapo. Lyda then committed suicide. Paulius's brother Wolf has escaped to the Soviet Union where he survived the war. He eventually went to Israel, where he later passed away. Rosian and her parents remained for a while in Lithuania. Gerta became concertmaster of the Lithuanian Opera, while Paulius went to Vilnius to try to start a business. The USSR's repatriation program gave refugees permission to return to previous places of residence, and the family acquired repatriation papers for Danzig, now part of Poland. They left for Poland in June 1945, but Gerta got them false passports and they continued on, illegally travelling through Czechoslovakia and Hungary to Ursulinenkloster displaced persons camp in Graz, Austria. Hoping to emigrate to Palestine, they continued to Italy. Since her parents were destitute and there was never enough food, they placed Rosian in Scesiopoli children's home in Selvino. She later went to a hachshara kibbutz in Avigliano which prepared refugees to emigrate to Palestine, and also served as a Haganah training camp. Gerta and Paulius settled in Milan. Paulius used his prewar business contacts to reestablish himself and became financially secure. Rosian rejoined them in Milan, where she attended the ballet school at La Scala. On May 3, 1947, Gerta had a son Joachim. With assistance from the International Refugee Organization and the sponsorship of a relative, Louis Segal, the family obtained US visas. In October 1951, the family sailed on the Independence to the United States. They settled in Newton, Massachusetts, where Gerta's cousins had immigrated in the 19th century. Rosian attended Barnard College and Columbia University, married, and had two sons. Six of the women who rescued Rosian and her mother, and aided other family members: Lidija Goluboviene (1896-1989), Natalija Fugaleviciute (1905-1985), Natalija Egorova (1899-1989), Helene Holzman (1891-1968), Bronja Budreikaite, and Vitautas Kauniestskas were honored in 2005 by Yad Vashem as Righteous among Nations. Rosian Bagriansky Zerner has been a dedicated advocate for Holocaust survivors. Paul, 90, died in November 1996. Gerta, 100, passed away in December 2008, in Newton.

Paul Bagriansky (1906-1996): Born Paulius Bagriansky on 24 January 1906 in Vilnius, the son of Salomon Bagriansky and Amalia (née Mayer) Bagriansky. Married to Gerta Chason on 4 September 1934 in Kaunas, and daughter, Rosian, was born on 23 October 1935 in Kaunas. A son, Gioacchino (Jack), was born on 3 May 1947 in Milan. Prior to the war, Paul Bagriansky was a businessman in the textile industry in Kaunas, and after the occupation was interned with his family in the Jewish ghetto in that city. He escaped the ghetto in January 1942, initially living under a false identity in Kaunas until he decided to go to Vilnius, where he was subsequently recognized, arrested, and imprisoned at Lukishki prison. After the intervention of Jacob Gens, the head of the Jewish Council of the Vilnius ghetto, Bagriansky was released the prison and transferred to the ghetto. In September 1943, Bagriansky escaped the ghetto with the help of Abba Kovner, and joined a partisan unit in the Rudnicki forest outside of Vilnius, where he spent the next five months, until the liberation of Lithuania, fighting the Germans and trying to avoid the Polish Armija Krajowa, who also targeted Jews in the region. Following liberation, Bagriansky worked in Moscow representing Lithuanian textile interests, but in June 1945 he, his wife, and daughter, left Lithuania for Poland, and then to Italy via Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The Bagriansky family lived as refugees in Italy for several years, until they immigrated to the United States in 1951, and Paul became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1957. The family settled in the Boston area, where Paul founded the Webstone Corporation. He died on 30 November 1996 at his home in West Newton, Massachusetts.

Gerta Chason Bagriansky (1908-2008): Born in Königsberg, Germany (although on some documents, her birthplace is listed as Danzig) on 8 August 1908. Daughter of Julius Chason and Anna (née Blumenthal) Chason, both of whom immigrated to Palestine in 1935, along with Gerta’s sister, Bella Chason, who became a dancer and performed with the Mary Wigman dance company. Gerta studied piano in Paris and Berlin as a young woman, but it was during a trip to Lithuania that she met Paul Bagriansky, and the two were married in 1934. During the occupation of Lithuania, she lived in Kaunas, in the ghetto there, but when she and Paul decided it was necessary to escape the Kaunas ghetto, she helped plan first the smuggling out of her daughter Rosian, and then that of Paul. Eventually she too escaped Kaunas and reunited with Paul in the Vilnius ghetto, before they escaped from there, hiding in the nearby forests while Paul fought as a partisan. Following the war, she served as concert master with an orchestra in Kaunas. Eventually they travelled through Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Austria, before arriving at a displaced persons camp in Italy, where they lived for six years prior to immigrating to the United States in 1951. Gerta Bagriansky became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1957, and died in West Newton, Massachusetts a few months after her 100th birthday in 2008.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Rosian Bagriansky Zerner

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Rosian Bagriansky Zerner

Rosian Bagriansky Zerner donated this collection to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2013. An accretion was donated in 2017. This collection incorporates the donations previously cataloged under the accession numbers 2013.503.1.1 and 2017.622.1.