Taits Karolina (1919)

Taits Karolina (Khena-Brayna Motelovna, née Knoch) (24 February 1919, Dmitrov) — hairdresser-wigmaker, ghetto prisoner.

A few months after her birth, Karolina’s family returned to Latvia. She grew up and received her primary education in Viesīte, and her secondary education at the Jēkabpils Gymnasium. Alongside her studies, she completed courses in the specialty of theatrical hairdresser and makeup artist.

In December 1940, she married and moved to Riga. With the outbreak of the war, her husband, Charles Taits, being a serviceman, ended up in the Soviet rear, while she, together with her parents and sister, was imprisoned in the Riga Ghetto.

During the first “aktion” at the end of November 1941, she was taken with a column of ghetto prisoners to the execution pits in Rumbula. She was among the very few who miraculously escaped execution. A few days later, she fled captivity and hid with the family of a Russian Baptist, Vladimir Mitsko, who many years later was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

For three years, until the arrival of Soviet troops, she hid in a specially dug cellar, knitting mittens and scarves for sale.

After the war, her husband returned to Riga, and the family was reunited; in 1947, a daughter was born. In Riga, she worked as a theatrical hairdresser and wigmaker: from the early 1950s until 1957 at the Riga Film Studio, and from 1958 to 1966 at the Theatre of Musical Comedy (during this period she adopted the name Karolina).

In 1966, she emigrated with her family to the United States. She lived in New York. From 1969 until her retirement in 1988, she worked as a wigmaker at the New York City Opera.