Rachel Kostanian
“Being Jewish to me means to fight for the right to be Jewish, for dignity…”
Rachel is the deputy director of the Green House Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum. She lost 48 members of her family to the Holocaust. When the war began, her father sent her mother and her on first and returned to Siauliai to help other families escape. He was killed. Her mother sent her to a Russian orphanage so that she may survive. She was reunited with her mother at the end of the war and they made their home in Vilnius. “I am so Jewish, right from the very beginning. I have never had the possibility to not be Jewish. It is inscribed in my genes, in everywhere, it is in me…”
“Being Jewish to me means to fight for the right to be Jewish, for dignity…”
Rachel is the deputy director of the Green House Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum. She lost 48 members of her family to the Holocaust. When the war began, her father sent her mother and her on first and returned to Siauliai to help other families escape. He was killed. Her mother sent her to a Russian orphanage so that she may survive. She was reunited with her mother at the end of the war and they made their home in Vilnius. “I am so Jewish, right from the very beginning. I have never had the possibility to not be Jewish. It is inscribed in my genes, in everywhere, it is in me…”
