The Soviets occupied Lithuania in June 1940 and annexed it two months later. Immediately, Soviet troops confiscated the store from Sonia’s family and reduced them to the status of unpaid employees. Sonia’s father turned gray—overnight—from shock and fear. In the summer of 1941 German forces occupied Lithuania following the invasion of the Soviet Union. Soon after, they formed a ghetto south of Kovno, in a run-down and primitive area that lacked running water. Sonia went to live there with her brother, his wife, and their infant daughter. Early on, Sonia’s brother was taken to one of the forts near Kovno that had been built in the nineteenth century to defend the city. There, German mobile killing units and their Lithuanian auxiliaries shot thousands of Jews.
After Sonia’s brother was murdered, it fell to her to protect her sister-in-law, who was still recovering from childbirth. Sonia worked double shifts in the nearby airfield and occasionally managed to smuggle milk into the ghetto for the infant, once receiving such a brutal beating that she nearly died. When she recovered from the beating, Sonia and her sister-in-law managed to send the child to live with a gentile family. Soon after, they were deported from the ghetto to the camp of Stutthof. Sonia recalls that the inmates there were packed so tightly into their bunks that they could barely move: “Many nights you used to get up and you would say, come on, get up. Don’t lie with your head on me. Nobody would answer you. Why don’t they answer you? They were dead already.”
When Soviet troops liberated them, Sonia’s sister-in-law hovered near death. After nursing her back to health, Sonia sneaked from the Soviet occupied zone to Munich, where she learned that an aunt in South Africa was eager for her to join her. As one of the first survivors to arrive in Johannesburg after the Holocaust, Sonia was a novelty, and people received her warmly. In 1950, Sonia married Dov Propis, a cantor. “Then everything became peaches and cream,” she says of life with her husband, who filled the void left by the loss of her family. They had two daughters in Johannesburg, Yonina (who died in July 2003), and Yosifa. Dov’s career took the family to Canada, where their son David was born, then to Atlantic City, Philadelphia, and Whitestone, New York. Dov died in November 1990. In 2004, Sonia moved to Houston to be near her children and grandchildren.
Parents:
Joseph Berk, d. Ponary, Lithuania, 1941
Toba Kotzen Berk, d. Ponary, Lithuania, 1941
Siblings:
Beryl, d. Ninth Fort, Kovno, Lithuania, 1941
Frieda, d. Ponary, Lithuania, 1941
Dvora, d. Ponary, Lithuania, 1941
Zalman, d. Ponary, Lithuania, 1941