Alexandra Dagarova-Noim Honored

Well Deserved Tribute for Righteous Gentile
By Ivar Brod

The day dedicated to the memory of Jews killed in Latvia during the Holocaust was marked, in Boston, by honoring a Righteous Gentile from Latvia.

In the presence of hundreds of people Nadav Tamir, the Consul of Israel in New England, presented a letter of commendation and a medal inscribed "Righteous Gentile" to the daughter of Alexandra Dagarova-Noim who was one of the collaborators with the legendary Janis Lipke. Janis Lipke's name is inscribed at Yad Vashem-Jerusalem.

One of Lipke's associates was Alexandra Dagarova. A. Dagarova was the housekeeper of the farm Reshni near Dobele. This is the place, with the well equipped bunker, where some eight inmates who Lipke took out from Riga Ghetto and Kaiserwald concentration camp were hidden. Dagarova was both the cook and the nurse for her "wards". She also seemed to be a conspirator. In spite of the fact that the Nazis and their henchmen were roaming around in the area, all of them lived to meet their liberators - the Red Army. After the war A. Dagarova married the Jewish man whose life she saved - dentist Herman Noim. They both died in Riga in advanced age. Herman Noim in 1988, Alexandra in 1989. Their daughter Dana married Rafail Kushak and came to the USA in 1990. They settled in Boston where Rafail Kushak became a professor at Harvard. They are members of Jewish Survivors of Latvia. It took Yad Vashem a longer time to trace their records. Finally Dana received the medal on behalf of her late mother in recognition of her unforgettable rescue efforts.

Thomas Menino (Mayor of Boston), Wolfgang Forverk (Consul of Germany), and Jim Segel (Chairman of the Council of the Jewish Communities of Greater Boston) have all taken part in the remarkable ceremony.

After the official part, participants of the ceremony, who were mostly Latvian Jews, had been invited to one of the oldest synagogues in Boston. There the film "The Melody of the Riga Ghetto", created by Vladimir Molchanov, was shown as well as the photo-film "Alexandra", which had been created by Dana, Rafail and Ariana Kushak, narrating the life and magnificence of their mother, mother-in-law and grandmother.

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This is an expanded version of the article that originally appeared in the Latvian Jewish Courier, published by the Jewish Survivors of Latvia.

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