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ON THE
OTHER SIDE OF THE GHETTO
by AKIVA GERSHATER d.1970, Holon,
Israel
in Bleter Vegen Vilna (Pages About
Vilna)
published by Farband fun Vilna Yidden
in Poilin,
Lodz, Poland,1947.
Translated from the Yiddish
by Abraham Gershator b.1905,
Vilna--d.1984, NY,
assisted by David Gershator.
With thanks to the late Dina
Abramowitz,
former YIVO librarian in New York
The surrounding world’s relationship
to us was a chapter unto itself. If
one should ask of the people who
survived Vilna’s ghetto, “What was the
attitude of the surrounding gentiles
to our calamity?” the answers would
vary greatly, and their impressions
would be contradictory. By no means
can we share a unified opinion and
concept regarding this tragic episode.
We can’t say that the surrounding
population’s relation to the Jews was
good, honest, and sympathetic. On the
other hand we can’t say that the
milieu was totally evil. People are
different under different
circumstances, and therefore the
attitude towards us was also varied.
Thus, if one would like to arrive at a
general conclusion, we would have to
say categorically that it would be
impossible to do so. We’d be obliged
to summarize all known details and
consider them as statistical data in
order to obtain results, as if this
were a general question and answer
inquest.
Our impressions of the relationship of
the surrounding world to us, the Jews
in Vilna, was received during various
stages of our calamity and was as
great and different as the general
situation could be. Our notes are in
chronological order. At the outset we
must distinguish the two major
groupings in the Vilna area, namely,
the Poles and the Lithuanians. Besides
the Poles and Lithuanians, there were
also the White Russians and a small
handful of Karaites. This was the
situation up to June 24, 1941.
Most of the German military entered
the city on motorcycles. The day
before their arrival, the majority of
younger Jews fled to the eastern side
of the city to get away. Most of the
neighboring Christians watched the
panic with calm indifference, though
the news coming from occupied Poland
was not auspicious for the Christians.
However, the majority of them
expressed a certain satisfaction at
the arrival of the Germans. These
circles were inflamed by the old
“clerical poison” and could not
forgive the Soviet Union for what it
had done during its occupation of
Vilna. Vilna was the main stronghold
of this negative attitude due to the
USSR’s occupation policy.
However, on the second day of the
German occupation, the Germans had
seized 90 people--60 Jews and 30
Poles--as hostages. A few days later
it was known unofficially that all 90
had been shot. Then the more cultured
Poles came to their senses and their
attitude changed. Their excitement at
the swift Nazi victory cooled off. The
Christian mob, however, was excited
over the display of weaponry. And now
the dark days for the Jews began.
For the time, we had coupons for bread
and other provisions, but when a Jew
came to the government depots to buy
bread, he got thrown off the long
queues, and none of the gentile
population attempted to protect him in
any way. On the contrary, they tried
to extract the location of possibly
hidden provisions from the womenfolk.
No one protested the government’s
actions. There were cases where honest
Polish neighbors took the bread card
from Jewish neighbors and obtained
bread for them on this card as though
it were for their own use. In many
cases they were successful. Usually
the sellers were Lithuanians and they
manipulated the market in the sense of
doing business as usual. Later,
however, the Germans started looking a
bit closer at the sellers. This was
July, 1941.
In this period the Lithuanian
kidnappers dressed in uniforms and
civvies and went through all the
courtyards, calling out to the
concierges and asking them to point
out Jewish residences. They carried
away the males who were not heard from
again. It was seldom that a Jew could
find shelter with a Christian
neighbor. There were two reasons:
first, not every man is ready to do
such a favor, and second--and we have
to admit this is a major reason--the
Christian neighbor who was friendly
was simply afraid, knowing that he
might be found out by the Germans or
be denouced by his own neighbors.
However, we did find Poles in Vilna
who did not refrain from helping a
Jewish friend and put their own lives
in danger doing so. The number of such
friendly houses was not large. The
courtyard guards in those days played
an important role. Many of them were
bloodthirsty, helping the kidnappers
in their work. Yet we have singular
cases where courtyard guards put their
lives on the line in order to rescue a
Jewish neighbor. This was September,
1941.
The Jews of Vilna were thrown partly
into the ghetto and partly into a
place called Ponar. At the very
begining the thugs were exclusively
Lithuanian fascists. They were also
the executors of the German will. They
were the ones who led the Jews into
the ghetto and they were the ones
taking the Jews to Ponar. They were
the ones who were the de facto
murderers. In general, the Lithuanians
are the ones who played the most
bloodthirsty role in Vilna. The
Lithuanian fascists were the wolves,
the predatory animals who the Germans
sicced on the Jews. We seldom heard
about a Lithuanian who showed
humanitarian feeling toward the Jews.
It was a rare case when a Lithuanian
acted like a human being. According to
reports from the Jews rescued by the
Poles, we can affirm that the
relationship with the Poles was
entirely different. As examples we can
relate a few cases.
The teacher Zlote Kacherginsky, whose
married name was Burguin, was saved by
the well known family of the Vilna
professor Zezowski(Chezovsky). His
wife took this teacher into her house
as a servant and there she was kept
until liberation. The chief guard of
Bunyemovich’s courtyard on 22
Deutsches Gasse hid a group of mainly
elderly Jews in the guise of cleaners
and assistants.
Such an example was also found in the
case of a woman serving as head guard
on Panarska Street (previously called
Poltawska). A group of Jews were
concealed a full year in this house.
The oldest of this group was a 75 year
old man with wife and daughter and her
groom. The Christian neighbors in the
courtyard kept this secret up to a
month before liberation. However, at
the end, one of the neighbors got
drunk and delivered the head guard to
the Gestapo. The old man, Isaac, and
his wife were caught, but the
daughter, her groom, and the
housekeeper succeeded in jumping out
the window and disappearing.
In the first days of the ghetto the
well known Vilna physician, Dr.
Goldberg, told us that he was caught
in the street while visiting a patient
and thrown into the ghetto. But
information reached a priest of All
Saints Church for whom Dr. Goldberg
was house doctor, and the priests,
through their channels, supplied his
wife and child with food whenever
possible. In general, All Saints
Church opposite the Ghetto Gate played
a very big role in the life of the
ghetto. Rumors had it that for his
humanitarian deeds the priest himself
fell into the hands of the Germans.
They replaced him with their own
priest; however, this ploy was not
successful. The newly appointed priest
was even nicer and better than the
first. He struggled to supply bread
not only in packages but in basketfuls
and wagonloads. The Jews of the ghetto
placed their hopes on the people of
All Saints and many projects were
carried out with the cooperation of
the church. A group of Jews built a
tunnel underneath the courtyard of 27
Rodnitzker Gasse facing the church.
Through this channel many Jews
escaped. Naturally this couldn’t have
happened without the priest’s help.
A man named Eltzik Kaponsky built
himself a niche in his own apartment
at 23 Rodnitzker Street. It was
constructed under his oven. There he
hid for 10 months up to liberation.
During the time the courtyard guard
supplied him with food.
There is only a single case of
humanitarian attitude on the part of a
Lithuanian to which I can personally
testify. This occurred after the
liquidation of the Vilna ghetto for a
period of six months, until the time
of liberation. I myself was concealed
by one of my friends, a Lithuanian, at
number 9 Sadova. His name: Antonas
Poska. He was a Lithuanian writer and
scientist, and this transpired during
the most horrible period of the German
terror. Vilna was already considered
to be Judenrein. We know of a second
case of a Lithuanian in Vilna called
Rosgiff who displayed humanitarian
feelings concealing and saving from
the ghetto a major group of Jews.
Furthermore, one knows of the
exceptional attitude of the Lithuanian
woman writer Simyayta who saved many
Jews and survived the horrors with
them.
In general there were many cases when
Poles from different social groups
made friendly gestures towards Jews in
those days. Our friend, an engineer
named Jaffa, in his article titled
“Miracle” presents a big list of such
cases. I would like to mention lastly
two Polish ladies of the aristocracy.
I would like to call them simple women
of great piety in the fullest sense of
the word: Madame Marie Sedetzka
occupied a very high and responsible
position in the Polish government
apparatus and Maryla Abramovich Wolska
was a lecturer in languages at the
University of Vilna. Now she occupies
the Polish consulate in Rome. About
their deeds on behalf of the Jews one
must write a separate chapter. They
were in constant close contact with
the partisans in the forests.
Undergoing exceptional personal trials
and tribulations they lent their
support even with material means. When
somebody would call on them for help,
everything was done in order to secure
bread and a safe hideout. I recall the
moment when I escaped from a
discovered hideout in the ghetto area
19 days after the liquidation. I was
going through the dark streets to Mme
Maryla Abramovich of Great
Pogulanka(Great Promenade). Her friend
opened the door for me hesitatingly
and finally let me in. I waited until
Maryla (as we used to call her on an
informal basis) came. At first she did
not recognize me because she was
myopic and I, naturally, had changed a
great deal. I identified myself and
her exuberance and elation was great
and expressed by grasping my hands
with both her delicate hands. She
became red faced, turning this way and
that and fixed her gaze on
mine...sadness and happiness, deep
sympathy and empathy, encouragement
and maternal concern were shown in all
these moments of my great distress,
and I’ve never felt up to this moment
such a heartfelt emotion of goodness.
Her “criminal action” was finally
revealed to the Gestapo. She was
arrested and tortured. But she never
revealed or disclosed anything about
us and was finally released. However,
she did not interrupt her activities
and even after liberation she
continued her efforts with greater
tenacity.
To our sorrow the percentage of such
people was a very small one and their
number stood in great disproportion to
the number of evil elements who
surrounded the Jews in times of
distress. There were also a number of
cases of double crossing. A gentile,
for example, who befriended Jews or
lived in neighborly closeness would
conceal a Jew through the most
dangerous moments of the German
liquidation, up until liberation.
However, at the same time, the same
Christian caused the destruction of
other Jews, even by his own hands. In
the ghetto such cases were not unique
ones. I know a concrete example of
such a person. One of my aquaintances,
a Mr. A.L., along with his wife and
little girl, was saved by a Christian
neighbor, Mr. Simon, with whom he had
earlier on made aquaintance. Mr. Simon
had saved him by his own initiative,
helping them by getting Aryan
documentation. He took them to a
village in the vicinity of Lieder to
his relatives and invented a general
excuse to settle them there because
these Jews and their little child bore
more facial resemblance to Aryans than
Jews; and the Poles never discovered
that these people were Jews. They were
there during the entire occupation.
Thus, we would consider such a
Christian as the better kind if not
for the fact that a few weeks after
liberation the same Christian was
arrested through Soviet security under
suspicion of collaboration with the
Germans. My aquaintance, Mr. A. L.,
came running to me in a hurry with a
petition to rescue Mr. Simon from
libel. “How come,” he said, pleading
with me, “that such a person should
fall into such gross injustice!
Friend,” he said, “you must help me.”
We decided to compile a memorandum to
the government. A.L. described
distinctly how Mr. Simon had rescued
him and his family from death for a
period of three years. The memo was
delivered by A.L. to the Security
Commander. When the Commander
eventually investigated, A.L. was
thoroughly convinced that the
intervention was a justified one...he
then referred to the acts of Mr. Simon
and proclaimed astounded: “This is an
extraordinary case! He has saved one
Jew and murdered another!” A few
months later it was revealed that Mr.
Simon’s case was not the only one.
Another category of gentiles was a
group who were in a position to risk
little and profit from the situation.
For example, in the Fall of 1942 news
came to the ghetto that in the
vicinity of the district called
Oshmene there was a manor house owned
by a very fine person who offered the
possiblity of sheltering a group of
Jews in his domain by calling them
farm workers. The estate was far away
from the main battlefields and the
Germans seldom went there as guests.
The houses were built in such a manner
that it seemed to be most secure. So
what did this manor owner require? One
thing only. A hundred gold rubles for
each man and constant labor on his
estate fields! The terms of
concealment came after Passover,1943.
Were there a number of people who
accepted such a proposition? I didn’t
hear since the results of the
negotiations remained secret.
For a number of gentiles this chasing
after Jews was solely a sport. For
others it was a hypocritical approach
to both sides in order to purchase
grace. There were also those who kept
the secret that here and there
somewhere a Jewish child or adult was
concealed. But as soon as they had a
quarrel or difference among
themselves, then these secrets went
immediately to the Gestapo. They did
this knowing full well that this meant
sure death for the Jew. The main thing
was that the neighbor with whom one
quarreled or had a difference over a
glass of brandy should be arrested or
be punished by a fine--the Christian
was not generally in danger of the
death penalty. With money one could
redeem oneself.
Such gentiles usually collected
everything they could from the Jews
before the Jews went into the ghetto,
acting as trustees for their
possessions. When a Jew succeeded in
escaping and tried to get back
something, even clothing against the
advancing winter’s cold, then the
Christian would tell him that the
Germans searched the house and took
everything away or simply that he was
robbed. If the Jew exposed the
falsehood, then the Christian trustee
threatened to call the Lithuanian
kapos. Others used to make more
outrageous excuses so that the
Lithuanian policemen would make a
sudden search and snatch the Jew. This
miserable Jew naturally had to
disappear and in many cases was caught
and shot.
There was a different attitude towards
us on the part of the White Russians.
The simple folk had in many cases
shown brotherly sympathy, and in many
White Russian villages they had
concealed Jews with great success up
to liberation, but the intelligentsia
had from time to time shown a
fascistic attitude. In Vilna the White
Russians established a White Russian
National Council which collaborated
with the Germans. One of the important
members of this committee was the well
known Vilna lawyer Jan Bekish. One of
the major activists was Anofri
Alihanovich, the author of a pamphlet
in Polish (“In the Clutches of the
OGPU”). The pamphlet was edited by the
monarchistic newspaper called SLOVO
(Word) printed in Vilna. Alihanovich
was shot by the underground
anti-fascist resistance in Vilna at
the start of l944. But the Germans
gave him an extraordinarily pompous
funeral. All along the boulevard a
White Russian orchestra paraded with a
conductor--the famous white Russian
composer Sheman--all dressed in
national uniforms.
The Karaites assumed a singular
attitude. This handful of Vilna and
also Troki karaites, immediately
started proclaiming that they were
radically different from the Jews.
Because of their Jewish religion they
were very frightened that they
shouldn’t, by mistake, be attached to
the Jewish Nation and least of all to
the Semitic race. Their main hacham
(chief rabbi) in Vilna, Professor
Shafsal (a famous anti-semite), was
jumping out of his skin to prove to
the (Nazi) Rosenberg Department the
scientific Judaistic theory that the
Karaites had no relationship to Jews.
We, a group of ten Jewish Hebraists,
as the Rosenberg group called us,
worked in those days in the YIVO
building preparing and sorting all
Jewish libraries and printing houses
and translating them into German.
At the head of this task force was
Zalman Kalmanovich, may he rest in
peace, a famous Judaist and scholar.
The Germans called upon this group of
scientists to find for them all the
materials relating to this question:
the full truth about the Karaites, and
translating it into German. The work
dragged on for many months. Our group
of Hebraists investigated and
researched thousands of manuscripts,
journals and any other papers
pertaining to the Jews and Karaites,
especially what pertained to the
Karaites. Dr. Yacov Gordon, Dr. Dina
Jaffa, and Dr. J. Lam worked for
months and months on the translation
of this material into German. And on a
certain day the Germans arranged a
symposium about this question between
Zalman Kalmanovich and the renowned
Professor Shafsal, the Karaite.
According to Kalmanovich, of blessed
memory, someone told me that he was
already in agreement with the opinion
that the Karaites have no relationship
to the Jews because, besides the
Pentateuch, they have no connection
with the Jewish Nation. This means
that they do not belong to the semitic
race. Professor Shafsal visited us
several times at the Yivo Institute in
order to verify the accumulated
material. At the same time he told our
colleagues that he often visited the
District Commander, the hangman by the
name of Hingst. And according to
information he was entrusted with,
there would be no more slaughter of
the Jews. This was 4 to 5 months
before the liquidation of the ghetto.
The bloody deeds of the Lithuanian
fascists were already well known to
the outside world. One may say that
the major part of Vilna Jews and
Lithuanian Jewry was already destroyed
via and through the Lithuanians.
We will recount here an interesting
episode in connection with the
persecution of the Jews. In the
begining of Spring,1945, the rivers
Nieman and Viliya overflowed their
banks, inundating great stretches in
the vicinity of Kovna. Because of
certain technical defects the dams in
Kovna broke open suddenly in the
middle of the night. Thousands upon
thousands of people saved themselves
from their submerged houses only by
swimming. It is understandable that
there were many victims, mostly in the
lower parts of the region nearer the
river. However, Jews did not live in
that area and therefore they were
spared. In this flood and purely by
chance no Jews drowned. The Lithuanian
rabble which is mostly religiously
inclined started to run to the
churches to pray after the flood broke
loose and they had suffered many
casualties. A year before, the
Lithuanians together with the German
murderers had set the Vilna ghetto on
fire. The priest of Kovna’s cathedral
took this opportunity to deliver a
fiery sermon to the congregation and
said, “This comes to you as a
punishment from the Lord God Himself
for the innocent blood which you have
shed last year on the very same day.”
The public wept bitterly and many
Lithuanians openly agreed with the
preacher that the punishment was
surely meted out to them by heaven for
the sins that they had committed
against the Jews. The flood however
did not wipe away the flood of evil
committed by these very same people.
Post Script--D.Gershator, 2010
This essay published in Lodz is all I
know of Akiva Gershater’s writing, but
in his attempt to be objective, he
reveals quite a bit of himself. The
essay, supposedly detached and
attempting to be chronological, ends
on a veritable fable Kafka would
appreciate. Most of this information
has been documented by other eye
witnesses, but the Karaite account
adds an unusual element.
Was Akiva a close or distant relative?
I don’t know. What he didn’t say can
fill volumes, of that I’m sure.
Through another contact, Ginette
Gershater Gottesman, discovered
through Dina Abramowitz of YIVO, I
learned that Akiva was a Bundist and a
professional photographer. He became a
shoemaker in order to survive during
the war. Not mentioned in the essay is
the fact that he also lost a wife and
daughter. How does one interpret this
omission?
Dr. Gottesman told me that after the
war, Akiva married a cousin in Paris
and that they had a daughter in
Israel, where he lived in Holon until
his death in 1970. Immediately after
the war he took on the mantle of
rescuer of Jewish orphans in Poland.
He had a self imposed mission to round
up as many children as he could find
and send them to Palestine. He was
mostly successful in this quest and
celebrated many birthdays of his
“rescued” children, and their
children, year ’round in Israel.
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