Doba Levine, a seamstress, settled down in Paris in 1913 with her husband Peretz and their daughter Basia/Berthe. After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Peretz enlisted in the Foreign Legion – he died during the battle of the Somme in 1916. A widow of war, Doba was nevertheless deported with her daughter Berthe.
Aron Simanovitch is the most famous of the eight deportees, the “secretary of Rasputin”. After the murder of Rasputin and the Russian revolution, he managed to flee and settle down in Berlin and later in Paris. There, he became a gambler and a gambling promotor of bad reputation…
Walter/Wole Zavadier was one of the deportees whose life was the most difficult to rebuild. He was born in Sauliai, but a few years after his birth his father left for South Africa, where he became a famous doctor and even took part in the Boer Wars. Walter studied to become an engineer, first in Saint Petersburg and, from 1909, Vienna. His brother Nathan left for Switzerland to study medicine. His mother stayed alone in Sauliai until 1915, when the Russian army burned the city and forced her to evacuate to Ukraine. After the war she joined her son in Vienna. She died there in 1939 after the Anschluss. By that time, Walter had taken refuge in Paris, where he survived thanks to money sent from his father and his brother Nathan, who left for the United States in 1940.