and so he along with thousands of others that were in vilna, theirs cape route. theirs cape route., mind you, these are the very few that managed to get out of the horror that was to follow in the holocaust. and it was sukihara's bravery as a diplomat to deny the orders of his government because they didn't want him to issue these transit visas. everybody -- if anyone understands what a transit visa is, they've probably seen the movie casablanca, and if they haven't, i urge you to see it because you'll you said. the transit visa is the only hope you have of escaping from where you are and certain death probably anyway. and sukihara, the japanese consul-general, geaf out over 2,000 -- gave out over 2,000 visas. and those 2,000 actually represented a lot more because the visa represented the family, so to speak. so i and my mother and father had one visa, and we ended up getting out. but much harder and more difficult was the fact that you needed permission from the russian foreign office to leave. and when you applied for permission to leave russia at the time it was considered dang

now leo i know from speaking with you previously that your father escaped to the city of vilnius or vilna and lithuania and you and your mother soon followed him the three of you were among an estimated 15,000 polish jews who found safe haven there, but it was not long lived after eight months in lithuania soviet forces invaded and we are seeing a photograph of those troops coming into town. how did this affect your father a particularly in relation to his outspoken political views? well, my father who was a brilliant man was a very strong member of the boom organization who were are jewish socialists very much anti-communist very much anti-stolic and therefore he was on a list for arrest or could have been on a list. anyway, he wasn't ever sure of the nk. which is the precursor to the kgb and so once the the russians came back into capture bialistoc, he did not return from vilma for the reason that i just indicated. he was not he was not happy with the russians and he called my mother and on a telephone that our neighbor had we didn't have a telephone and told her to grab me and of some

my mother and i spent a difficult train ride from bialystok to vilna and it would stop off and everybodyould run out for fear of bombings and there would be a whistle that would blow and we would all come back on the train. anyway, we made it and lived under lithuanian rule for a bit until the nonaggression treaty between hitler and stalin was broken and at that point, poland was divided partly to the nazis and partly to the russians, and in the process, russia overtook lithuania. we found ourselves in russian rule, which was not good for my father. he used to leave and often hid in the forests nearby. he would visit us from time to time. it was a very difficult life. i, of course, was in school because that is what schoolteachers do, they put their children in school. my parents were concerned that my education was lacking. i could not go to class. they did enroll me, and i was beginning to learn lithuanian at first and when the russians came in, that changed to russian. i started to learn russian. that lasted for almost a full year with a very difficult time for both parents and myself