her, and especially her husband, to save themselves. Weeping, she addressed Schmid by name and described her desperate situation and that of her husband, who had gone into hiding because of the Aktion. The couple’s name was Adler. Without hesitation, Schmid told Mrs Adler to be ready the following day, with her husband, to move into Schmid’s flat. In the confusion, she forgot to give him her address, but the following day, when Schmid entered the ghetto to make good his promise, he stirred up the whole Jewish police force, telling them that the Adler family must be found in the ghetto – dead or alive. After intensive searching, the couple were finally found. Schmid took them out of the ghetto in his car and installed them in his own place, not in the work cellar but in his private flat. Incidentally, it should be mentioned that a few more Jews were hiding in Schmid’s private flat: a Jewish woman whose husband was a genuine Lithuanian; Schmid’s secretary, a Jewish woman with Christian papers employed by the Wehrmacht; and, in addition, Max, a Jewish refugee from Germany who had military documents. Adler was a refugee from Czechoslovakia. In Poland he had joined the “Czech Legion”, which fought on the side of Poland in 1939. By military training he was an airman and had taken part in the air battles with the Germans. When his unit was defeated, he was taken prisoner, but was later released. He himself was a man of weak character, negligent and entirely dependent on his industrious and capable wife. In Czechoslovakia he had been a member of Poale Zion and retained strong feelings for the party. He was the singer’s second husband. Her first husband had been a pure-born German, one Matzenhauer, now head of the transport command post at Warsaw’s East railway station, also from Vienna and a good acquaintance of Schmid’s.
Around that time, Adler made the acquaintance of a lecturer at Vilna University, a former Lithuanian consul in Liepāja. The lecturer knew someone in Liepāja who was friends with a local family of fishermen. The fishermen would sail their cutters far out on the Baltic Sea as far as the Åland Islands and the shores of Sweden. Moreover, from time to time Schmid would drive transports of military equipment and ammunition to Liepāja. It was then that Adler conceived a plan for getting out of Lithuania. All in all, the plan was very simple: the idea was that Schmid would take Adler and his wife along in the vehicle in which he travelled to Liepāja, and from Liepāja they would sail with the fisherman all the way to the Åland Islands, where – accordingto their calculations – they would be interned.
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