When the German Wehrmacht occupied Latvia in 1941, Cecilia Gradis was living in Riga, where she was a violin student. She returned to her family in Daugavpils shortly after. Her parents were murdered in the fall of 1941. Cecilia Gradis and her sister Nadia were interned in the local prison but managed to escape. Cecilia’s former violin teacher Pauls Krūmiņš hid the two young women in his home. He obtained forged papers for them and hiding places in the countryside. When the documents had to be exchanged at the Daugavpils police station at the end of 1941, the sisters were recognized as Jews and arrested. Krūmiņš stated that they were related to him, securing their release. For safety reasons, the sisters then fled to Lithuania.
Unable to find a long-term hiding place, they moved into the ghetto in Wilna (Vilnius). While working outside the ghetto, Cecilia Gradis met Jozuas Rutkauskas. He arranged forged papers for the sisters. Posing as Latvian forced laborers, they made their way to Vienna at the end of 1943. Cecilia Gradis had to work in a factory there but was able to play the violin on the radio and in the opera. She was liberated in April 1945.
Pauls Krūmiņš (front row, seated, 3rd from left) with his students, on his right Cecilia Gradis, Daugavpils, 1926. Source: Latvijas Okupācijas Muzejs, Riga
Cecilia Boruchowitz with Andrejs Krūmiņš at the posthumous ceremony honoring his father Pauls Krūmiņš as Righteous Among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center, Jerusalem, 1990. Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, M.31.2/4174
