James tells the story of his father who is a survivor from Vilnius, Lithuania. He was fifteen when the Soviets occupied his hometown and seventeen when the Germans came. What saved James’ father was the combination of his art and language skills. At the outbreak of war, he was preparing to attend an art academy after high school and was fluent in Polish, Russian, and German, and he later learned Lithuanian. With this knowledge he taught himself how to forge documents for which the Jewish resistance recruited him into their organization for his forgery skills. The Jewish resistance fighters merged with the Soviets partisans once the ghetto was liquidated, and he spent one year fighting the Germans while hiding in underground bunkers in the forests. He participated in the street to street fighting with the Soviet army to recapture Vilnius for the Germans. One subject that James discusses is his father’s refusal to follow Soviet military orders to execute a German SS officer that he guarded overnight. After the liberation of his hometown he continued his forgery with the Bericha Movement helping other survivors to escape to allied occupied territories. He also briefly joined Abba Kover’s Nakim group but did not take part in any of their activities. He was also a court artist at the Majdanek trials. He studied in Italy after the war and immigrated to America in 1949 with his family. He graduated from Harvard Architecture school and worked as an architect in NYC until his death in 2003. He married James’ mother Joanna in 1962.
James tells the story of his father who is a survivor from Vilnius, Lithuania. He was fifteen when the Soviets occupied his hometown and seventeen when the Germans came. What saved James’ father was the combination of his art and language skills. At the outbreak of war, he was preparing to attend an art academy after high school and was fluent in Polish, Russian, and German, and he later learned Lithuanian. With this knowledge he taught himself how to forge documents for which the Jewish resistance recruited him into their organization for his forgery skills. The Jewish resistance fighters merged with the Soviets partisans once the ghetto was liquidated, and he spent one year fighting the Germans while hiding in underground bunkers in the forests. He participated in the street to street fighting with the Soviet army to recapture Vilnius for the Germans. One subject that James discusses is his father’s refusal to follow Soviet military orders to execute a German SS officer that he guarded overnight. After the liberation of his hometown he continued his forgery with the Bericha Movement helping other survivors to escape to allied occupied territories. He also briefly joined Abba Kover’s Nakim group but did not take part in any of their activities. He was also a court artist at the Majdanek trials. He studied in Italy after the war and immigrated to America in 1949 with his family. He graduated from Harvard Architecture school and worked as an architect in NYC until his death in 2003. He married James’ mother Joanna in 1962.
James is the son of two holocaust survivors. He grew up in New York City and came to Birmingham in 1998 to finish his medical training. He is a pediatrician with extra training in primary care sports medicine and pediatric rheumatology. He has two sons that are 21 and 19 years old, and he has a 10-year-old Havanese named Stormy.
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