Oral history interview with Alex Faintelson

Oral history interview with George Kadish

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hannah Woods

Oral History

Oral history interview with Benjamin Woods

Oral History

Oral history interview with Si Frumkin

Oral History

Oral history interview with William Good

Oral History

Oral history interview with Dr. Joel Elkes

Oral History

Dr. Joel Elkes (son of the Kaunas Ghetto Jewish Council leader Elchanan Elkes) describes the experiences of Dr. Jack Brauns, including the Russian occupation in Lithuania; conflict between Zionists and Yiddishists; the transportation of many Jews to Siberia; remaining with his father in Kovno; his father’s work with Bikur Cholim Hospital; the flow of refugees into Lithuania in 1939; a family friend who Chiune Sugihara helped get to the United States; his father’s return from Vilnius in June 1941 after the end of Operation Barbarossa; the departure of the Russians and arrival of the Germans; being able to stay in their apartment because his father spoke German having studied medicine in Cologne; how his family was protected by the Wehrmacht until they had to move to the ghetto; feelings of betrayal by the Lithuanian people; the two hospitals in the Kovno ghetto; the “Little ghetto;” how the ghetto had 29,000 inhabitants but no running water or sewers; how his father Dr. Moses Brauns was in charge of the contagious diseases hospital which the Germans burned down because they had been falsely told that some of the patients had leprosy; the reality that the ghetto had a low number of contagious diseases; forts in the ghetto which were used as execution sites; how 200 Russian Jewish army officers were sent to the forts to dig up graves to destroy evidence of killings; his work in one of the Werkstatten (workshops) in the toy department where the artist Esther Lurie painted some of the toys; how the toys were sent to Berlin by the authorities for German children; how the Council of Elders tried to appease the Germans, but also bought guns for those who wanted to join the partisans; how Jews stole uniforms and dressed as Germans to help them escape; how the Jewish Police and Council had contacts with the partisans; hiding in the ghetto during its last days; being found and deported to Dachau; working in an airplane factory in the sub camp of Dachau- Kaufering from July 13, 1944 until his liberation on April 29, 1945; his desire to record events with help of Avram Tory a young lawyer in the ghetto who was on the Jewish Council; how after the war three of the five crates of hidden documents were dug out and taken to Israel; and how papers given by Jack’s father were part of that documentation.

Oral history interview with Avraham Tory and Pnina Tory

Oral History

Oral history interview with Joel Elkes

Oral History

Joel Elkes, who was a medical student in England from 1931 to 1938 and later lived in Birmingham, England from 1940 to 1957 before he immigrated to the United States, discusses being terrified about the fate of his family and of the Lithuanian people; going to the Russian embassy in England where his Lithuanian passport was confiscated; knowing very little about what was happening in Lithuania and Poland, occasionally receiving messages from friends and from the Red Cross; cutting himself off mentally and emotionally and immersing himself in work; his relationship with his father Elhanan Elkes, Head of the Jewish Council in Kovno Ghetto; learning only after that war that his father was the head of the Judenrat; his father’s ethical teachings and influence as a selfless doctor; receiving a letter from his father in Fall 1945 addressed to him and his sister in October 1943; how Pnina Tory smuggled out the letter, guarding it with her life; the letter in which his father wrote that he knew the end of the ghetto was near; how the letter served as a last will and testament to his children; learning that his father died in Dachau; bringing his mother who had survived the Stutthof concentration camp to England from which she eventually immigrated with his sister to Israel; being unable to discuss the Holocaust for years, until he learned more about what happened in the ghetto from Avraham Tory; how his father’s letter gave him a clear picture of what he endured; and how he can finally confront the past.

Oral history interview with Esther Lurie

Oral History

Esther Lurie discusses leaving Belgium, where she was studying art, to visit her family in Kovno in 1939; how she was unable to leave Kovno once the war began, despite having a British passport; painting large portraits of Stalin for the National Theatre during the Russian occupation; feeling protected by the non aggression pact between Stalin and Hitler; how her husband was sent to work in a factory and eventually executed along with 500 intellectuals; the bombing of Kovno and arrival of the Germans; being imprisoned and forced to wear a yellow star upon her release; being sent to the Kovno Ghetto where she remained with her sister and her sister’s baby; documenting in art what was happening in ghetto; meeting Avraham Tory with whom she discussed the need to record events; drawing people gathering potatoes in the fields; hungry crowds, soup lines, and the bridge separating the ghetto from the Aryan side; entering people’s apartments in order to draw without being seen; advice from Tory about specific scenes to record; working as a slave laborer and drawing in her time off; how the Germans discovered that she was an artist, gave her extra bread rations and organized an art studio where she had to copy Old Master drawings for them; cooperation of the Jewish police with Germans; the execution of many of the ghettos children in the Ninth Fort; the reaction of the parents who returned from work to find their children gone; burying her drawings; how Tory had her drawings photographed prior to leaving the ghetto; recovering 30-40 of the drawings after the war and reconstructing others from photographs; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944; being deported with her sister and nephew to Stuffhof concentration camp; the death of her sister and nephew in Auschwitz; hiding 12 works of art with Lithuanian women; finding the 12 works 40 years later and exhibiting them in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s exhibition on the Kovno Ghetto; her dedication to perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust; and her feelings of guilt for having survived.

Oral history interview with Dita Spirling

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hanna Woods and Esther Kagan

Oral History

Oral history interview with Shmuel Elhanan

Oral History

Shmuel Elhanan (born Rabinovitch) discusses his prewar family life in Lithuania; his brothers who immigrated to Palestine four weeks before the Russians entered Lithuania; his father’s studies in chemistry at the University of Berlin where he met his mother and married in 1924; their return to Kovno in 1927; his father’s position as the deputy head of the German labor office under Lt. Gustave Hermann; taking care of the vegetable gardens and potato fields left by the Lithuanians; studying in vocational school in the ghetto and learning metalwork and woodwork; working as a messenger boy; his Bar Mitzvah which took place in the ghetto; living in fear his entire time in the ghetto; his mother’s view that they would not survive; how his mother declined the offer from a Lithuanian who was ready to find a hiding place for him; his mother’s goodbye letters to her sons in Palestine, one of which reached a brother in 1944; being sent to the “right” side during the big action when 10,000 Jews were deported in one day; how during the children’s action someone told him to stand on a stool so he would look older; being taken out of the ghetto with his parents in one of the last groups; being forced into cattle cars and sent near Danzig; how his mother stayed with them when some of the other women were taken off and sent to Stutthof; being sent to the subcamp of Dachau to the labor camp Kaufering; being sent on a death march to Dachau; their liberation on May 2, 1945 by a Japanese unit; and his view that his optimistic outlook helped him survive.

Oral history interview with Solly Ganor

Oral History

Solly Ganor discusses the influx of refugees coming to Kovno and its effect on his family and the Jewish community. The 1940 arrival of the Russians and closing of the embassies, except for the Japanese one where Chuine Sugihara worked; his family’s close relationship with Sugihara; Sugihara’s special interest in the Jewish community; entering the ghetto with his family; starvation in the ghetto; how the Germans chose men for forced labor; the selection process in which he was almost separated from his parents; how his sister was sent to work at the railroad station where she could exchange his family’s clothing for food; the shrinking of the ghetto and feelings that no one would survive; the Jewish leadership’s difficult decision to cooperate with the Germans; his family’s attempt to hide during the liquidation of the ghetto; and being deported with this family in July 1944 to Stutthof concentration camp where conditions were much worse than the ghetto.

Oral history interview with Helen Yermus

Oral History

Oral history interview with Trudi Birger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Zev Birger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Hanni Krispin

Oral History