Golda Wainberg Tatz
Daughter of Holocaust Survivors Recalls Heroic Priest

by Simi Horwitz

When the recent conflict over the Carmelite convent at the Auschwitz concentration camp site was resolved by the Pope, pianist Golda Wainberg Tatz was greatly relieved. Yet the whole event brought ambivalent memories to the surface.

Tatz is a Lithuanian Jew and the daughter of holocaust survivors ”but my grandfather is a priest,” she says matter-of-factly. ”Not my biological grandfather, but my spiritual grandfather.” She is referring to the extraordinarily courageous priest Antanas Gobis, 84, who 48 years ago saved her mother from the gas ovens.

For Tatz, now living on the West Side, the story has become almost routine, the texture of autobiography, like anyone else's. Only her history is not like anyone else's. And the controversy at Auschwitz added a new dimension to those recollections. In the spirit of ecumenism, the petite, dark-haired Tatz offered to tell TV Shopper her mother Judith's story.

It was the summer of 1941 and my mother was 12 at the time. Like so many other kids—Jews and Christians—she was at summer camp. But it was not like every other summer. That was the summer the Nazis invaded Lithuania. My mother used to describe the sounds of the bombs exploding and the children in the camp—not far from the Baltic Sea—running, screaming, desperately looking for cover.

”The Nazis rounded up all the children and segregated them into two groups: Jews and Christians; They did this largely on the basis of what the kids looked like. In Lithuania, the Christian kids were for the most part blond and blue-eyed, the Jews dark-haired and dark-eyed...so it was assumed she was Christian and sent off to a Christian orphanage in the small Lithuanian town of Panelizes. The Jewish kids were sent to the ghetto Palling, where ultimately they were lined up and shot. They didn't even bother to send them to concentration camps. They just killed them in the streets. After the war my mother discovered that this is exactly what had happened to her parents and siblings, too. They were piled into a ditch and shot.”

What's striking is the off-hand way in which Tatz recounts the story. Like many survivors—and children of survivors—her voice in describing these atrocities suggests events that are almost commonplace.

“At the Christian orphanage one of the teachers realized that my mother was Jewish,” Tatz continues. "It was her name, Judith. That was the giveaway. The teacher who did not want to see the child killed took her to Father Gobis, a priest at a small Catholic church in the village. He was willing to take her in. My mother used to repeat the first words he said to her, 'Don't be afraid. I'll be mother and father to you.’”

Here Tatz pauses, ”What he did was at great personal risk. There were only too many Lithuanians who would have been eager to point out a Jewish child and her protector to the Nazis. And the Nazis would have shot the priest on the spot.”

To prevent the local townspeople from raising questions—such as “why is a child living with a priest, unless she's a Jew and he's protecting her?”—Father Gobis arranged for Judith to live underground with several families in the area. These were also astonishingly moral and courageous people, Tatz points out.

Over the war-torn years (1941-1945) Judith lived with local Catholic families, moving from house to house to avoid detection. And throughout, the priest watched over her. He became her teacher, her companion, her father.

Father Gobis was a complex, far-sighted figure in many ways, Tatz explains. ”During the war, my mother talked to him about converting to Catholicism—it was her way of expressing gratitude—and he advised against it, saying in the eyes of the world she would never be Christian and it would not save her from the Nazis.”

But he was saying something even more profound: that Judith had a moral obligation to acknowledge who she was. ”And later when the war was over and my mother started dating a local Catholic boy, the priest said, ‘Don't. You must marry a Jew. Enough of your people have been destroyed. You have to start rebuilding your nation.’” Father Gobis' name is inscribed in the books at Yadvashim, an Israeli organization in Jerusalem dedicated to honoring heroic Christians who helped Jews during the holocaust.

In the late 40's Judith fell in love with a Jewish tailor from Vilna who had served in the Russian army. They married and in 1952 had a son, Ilan; in 1960 Golda was born. Throughout her childhood in Vilnius (Vilna before the war), Tatz recalls Father Gobis being part of their lives.

”He was short, bald, with happy blue eyes —always joking. He was like a grandfather. We spent all our holidays together, Christian holidays and Jewish holidays; and whenever I gave a piano concert, he was there.”

At an early age Tatz was a child prodigy, performing throughout Lithuania and other Baltic countries. Since that time she has gone on to win numerous awards and scholarships. Among these are: The Claermont Awards, The America-Israel Culture Foundation Award, and The Manhattan School of Music Scholarship, where she is currently a doctoral candidate. She has also scored on the competition scene winning the Young Keyboard Association International Competition (Ann Arbor, Mich.), and earning a silver medal—second place—in the highly prestigious American Music Scholarship Association International Competition (Cincinnati, Ohio).

She has played solo recitals across the globe, from Haifa to Chicago to Salzburg. Currently she is preparing for concerts in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, both of which will broadcast live. In April she will be performing at Merkin Hall (W. 67 St.). ”I love all classical music,” she says, "but I guess my favorite is Schumann."

Tatz emphasizes Father Gobis played a role in her musical career as well. ”In his own right he was an accomplished musician and organist. When my mother was living under his protection, he saw that she had singing talent and arranged for her to have voice lessons. And when my brother was Bar-Mitzvahed, he bought him a violin. Music was always part of my home life and Father Gobis contributed to that.”

In fact, as Tatz describes it, her childhood was almost pastoral— there were the occasional references to the war—but mostly it was a period of optimism and hope and her mother's repeated refrain which to this day echoes in Tatz's memory, ”Some day we will make it to Israel.”

But tragedy struck in 1969 when Tatz's mother developed inoperable stomach cancer She was 39 years old, and throughout the ordeal, from the time of the diagnosis to her death several months later, Father Gobis was there to comfort the whole family, once again a source of strength.

Yet he could not cure Judith and in a strange way felt he had almost betrayed her, Tatz reflects. ”At the end, he wept ’I could save her from the Nazis, but not from cancer.’”

Eighteen years have passed since the Wainberg family moved from Lithuania. In 1972, they fulfilled the late Judith's dream and emigrated to Israel. Despite the passage of time, Tatz never lost touch with Father Gobis, although she has not seen him. This Christmas she will journey to

Lithuania for their first reunion with Father Gobis. ‘It's a new era,” she points out. ”A glasnost has opened the doors.”

But Tatz stresses, she has always been conscious of Father Gobis' spiritual presence during the sad as well as happy times. He was there during the Yom Kippur war when Tatz's brother served in the army. He was there when Tatz earned her Master's degree in music from the Rubin Academy (Tel Aviv University) and later when she received a postgraduate diploma from Juilliard. He was there when she married Shmuel Tatz, a physical therapist. He was there when she earned second prize in the Frinna Awerbuch International Competition in New York. And he was there when Tatz played in Merkin Hall and in Tel Aviv University to cheering audiences .

”I'll always be grateful,” Tatz points proudly to a bronze teas relief of Father Gobis' profile, hanging on her apartment wall. ”And when I have my formal debut—I don't know exactly when that'll be,” she laughs—”the biggest thrill would be for me to have Father Gobis sitting in the first row. That would be a dream come true for both of us.”