The Family KAZURO

The family KAZURO lived in Zareze, prov. of Vilna, at the time under German occupation. It consisted of 6 persons: the parents Karol and Maria, the maternal grandmother and their three children aged 10, 15 and 20 years old. For a three year period from about 1941, the family Kazuro hid four members of the Gordon family: Wolf, Rachel and their two children, 5 and 9 years old. They had barely managed to escape the Dunilowicze ghetto from under German fire. In another part of the same house, lived the Karol's brother who was unaware of the four hidden Jews. Karol’s and Maria's windows faced a house 100 yards distant that was occupied by a Pole, who worked as a policeman in the ghetto. He visited them often to take a bath in their “Turkish� bathhouse and so was a constant threat to them. The Kazuros hid the fugitives under a stack of straw in a corner of the barn. The Germans, informed about the fugitives, came several times to search the barn. Each time they lined up the Kazuro family against the wall ready to shoot them. When they came the third time the Jews were just then taking a bath in the bathhouse. Karol invited the Germans including their sentry to have some vodka and then asked their permission to send his son to the bathhouse, supposedly to look after some meat being smoked there. The Jews alerted in time, escaped in the snow and hid in the brush. They became ill and Maria nursed them as best she could. Obtaining sufficient food for ten persons was a major difficulty. Aside from unexpected German inspections, partisans, or armed robbers, who pretended to be partisans, visited the Kazuros. They frequently confiscated anything they could find: food, clothes, blankets, even hens and geese. At one moment the partisans wanted to set fire to the neighbors house, but Karol beseeched their commandant to desist as the barn in which the Gordon family was hidden was very close to it. After three years of that nerve-wracking situation, when the Gordons took leave of them, everybody wept. Wolf and Rachel Gordon are no longer alive, but their children live in Toronto and from time to time send some money to the only surviving member of the Kazuro family - the youngest daughter - Romualda now married as Soroko, who lives with her husband in Poland. Romualda’s only wish however is for the Kazuro family to be recognized as “Righteous�. Despite many letters and telephone calls since 1990 from this researcher and from other persons to the Gordon children and to Yad Vashem, no statement at the Israeli Consulate in Toronto, indispensable for such recognition, as far as we know, was deposited there. Joseph Riwash on the p. 144 of his book: "Resistance and Revenge 1939-1949" [Town of Mount Royal, Quebec, 1981] mentions the saving of the Gordon family by the Kazuros.
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