It is 1941 and the summer in the Lithuanian town Kybartai, when Michael Rachlins father and grandparents without explanation are deported from their homes.
They are like many other families at the time sent to Siberia, and although of course it is terrible to be deported and not know why, then saved it, paradoxically, their lives.
For a mere 14 days later, the Soviet union invaded by the German army, and all jewish families in the Rachlin family's home town were victims of the German antijødiske policy.
- You total simply all of the city's jews, and who lived a great many jews in the area, took them out to a barn outside the city, dug a large hole, and shot them all together, says Michael Rachlin.
on the occasion of this Monday is international holocaust day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the prisoners in Auschwitz, he has posted a picture on Facebook showing his father's nursery, ca. half a year before the invasion.
Only three of the children in the picture survived.
Michael Rachlins grandparents were Rachel and Israel Rachlin, who many probably know as forfatterparret behind the bestselling '16 years in Siberia'. Even Michael Rachlin journalist and today editor and head of communications at The Jewish Community.
He tells, to the family during the war lived in the dark about what had happened in their hometown.
- There were pending, of course, a lot of buzz, and they got a lot of things to know, but it was not something, one knew the extent of or understood, he says.
First, when the war was over, went in truth up for the grandparents. All of them, they knew from his hometown, was dead.
Michael Rachlin is like many other jews grew up with the story of what happened back then, but it is only for a couple of years ago, to his father, Schneur Rachlin, showed him the picture, which symbolizes how close they were to extinction.
I knew how it behaved. I was ten years ago on a trip back to Lithuania with my father, where we heard many stories and talked with the locals, if the parents had seen what had happened.
- It is something that takes a long time. Most of the families, who have had it here up on life, know that it takes generations to process. And in my family we have not even had it as close as in other families, he says.
He knows that it succeeded in one of the other survivors on the picture to escape with his family to Canada, but otherwise, does he not know the other children's fates in detail.
For Michael Rachlin is the family's history is not something that fills our everyday lives. But on a day as the 75-anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, he thinks a little extra on everything that happened at the time, he says.
- For me it's about that we all can be warned about what can happen when we stop talking about each other as people and instead talking about other things as symptoms of something we do not like. It is not only an important day for the jews, it is an important day for all of us together, he says.
He hopes that his family's story can get people to use a short while to think about it.
- It is important that we use it as a warning of what racism, ignorance and intolerance can lead to, but for me it is not so important, what are the parallels drawn to things that are happening today, and I also didn't really want to talk about on a day like today, he says.
Michael Rachlin is the brother of radio host Dan Rachlin, and the father Schneur is the brother of journalist Samuel Rachlin.
the Grandparents of Rachel and Israel Rachlin never got the proper answer on why they were deported to the Soviet union at the time.
Israel Rachlin died in October 1998, and Rachel Rachlin died a few months after.
