- First of all, tell me when and where you were born.
- I was born in Kovno in 1929.
- To a family I had two brothers, an older sister.
- My parents were affluent.
- My father was the owner of a wholesale grocery.
- Was the second largest in Lithuania.
- A normal religious family in Lithuania.
- We lived in downtown Kovno on [INAUDIBLE] gatvė later which
- changed to [? Grodno ?] gatvė Nothing special till 1939.
- Then things start to change with the war starting, German,
- Polish, 1940 the Russians marched in,
- confiscated the store.
- We were already uprooted.
- At one time we got wind that the Russians wanted
- to come and arrest us as bourgeoisie
- because we are rich people and wanted to send us to Siberia.
- Once we got wind of it, everybody left the house.
- The children were sent away to different areas,
- and when they came to get us nobody was home.
- I was sent away down the Neman, that
- was the river to a town I should go in the market there
- and told them what to do.
- And they came back three days later.
- And that's what the Russians were doing.
- If they came a place where they didn't find them, forget it.
- They did a talk, moved on, and you don't
- know when they will come back.
- But this time we were saved.
- And that was after they confiscated the store.
- In the beginning, they put my father as a worker there.
- He worked there for a few months and then they chased him out.
- We had enough to live on, but you
- had to have some kind of an occupation, otherwise,
- you are already a criminal.
- So my father took a occupation as to being a watchman.
- That's the only way you could get away
- without working on Saturday.
- Later on, we saw that this wasn't the answer.
- We opened what we called a little restaurant in our house.
- We had a big apartment with a big dining room,
- so we made a little restaurant.
- Actually, this was a cover so people can come in
- without drawing any suspicion.
- And between them, they did a little business on the side.
- If any stranger, anybody that is unknown used to come in,
- everybody was shh, quiet.
- Nobody would say a word and just eat a meal, pay your bill
- and get out.
- That was 1940.
- In '41, when the war broke out, that was a Saturday night
- or Sunday morning, I remember that Sunday evening we
- had a meeting in our house and they had to decide,
- my father, a lot of friends came in the house,
- should we run or should we stay and wait for the Germans
- to come in?
- We did not know the realities that you couldn't run.
- When the Germans were in Vilnius day before Kovno,
- they cut off any routes to run away.
- But even without knowing that, they
- decided not to run because we hated
- the Russians so much that they were
- no better than the Germans.
- So the decision was not to run.
- Those that did run, unfortunately, didn't make it.
- It was a couple of months that the Germans send us
- to the ghetto.
- The Germans came in, I think it was
- Wednesday morning, Tuesday morning or Wednesday morning,
- in Kovno.
- The time before we went into the ghetto
- they used to come into our house to pray in the morning
- and they needed a minimum, what's
- called a quorum, 10 people.
- So people either from the house or from very close by used to
- sneak into our house to pray.
- One day we were in middle of praying
- and they saw a German officer come in.
- I don't know what he knew, but he came to Father
- and looked at him.
- They were in their garb with the tefillin, that [HEBREW]..
- And all of a sudden, he comes over
- said, do you have a [HEBREW].
- Which is actually the code of the Jewish law.
- And my father was amazed a German officer should
- ask him a question like that.
- He showed it to him.
- He put it back in the bookcase and left.
- It didn't take more than five minutes,
- a whole group of German officers came in and questioned
- was anybody here?
- Did he demand anything?
- Did he ask for anything?
- And this again interrupted the prayers.
- They didn't say anything and left.
- A few minutes later, a few high-ranking officers, exactly
- I don't know what the rank were but there
- were higher-ranking officers came in and told all of us
- to get out to the yard.
- We thought this is the end of it.
- We tried to take over the [HEBREW],, the scrolls,
- and the tefillin.
- And they went, no, no, you should not.
- Don't take it off.
- So we thought this is the end for us.
- They want us the way we look.
- They took us out in the yard, put us against the wall,
- take out cameras and took pictures
- and told us all to get back in.
- This was Wehrmacht officers.
- Of course, our lives were on the line.
- We thought this is the end of us.
- This is one of the first experiences
- that I had with seeing the Germans.
- It didn't take long, I think in the middle of the summer,
- and everybody was supposed to find a place and get there.
- They designated an area and all the Jews had to move there.
- Looking around where to find a place to move wasn't easy.
- The Lithuanians that had to move out for that area
- weren't too happy either.
- However, my father had owned the building,
- I think it was a 16-family house, what
- they called [LITHUANIAN],, the Green Mountain, in Kovno.
- And in looking for a place, he found a Lithuanian
- that had a four-family house, five-family house, four-family
- and an attic.
- And he said, how about making exchange?
- I'll give you a big house, 16 families, a real income house,
- for this little cottage you have without water,
- without any plumbing, and that's the way they exchanged houses.
- So we found a little place in the ghetto.
- There were four little apartments.
- Each apartment had a kitchen and a room
- and a little vestibule in front, and an attic, which
- was also a couple of rooms.
- My uncle and the family, my aunt and uncle's family,
- took one apartment.
- We took another apartment.
- And another couple of families, whatever the arrangement was I
- didn't know, they took the apartment.
- That's how we moved in together.
- Do you remember what you took with you?
- We took the bare necessities.
- We had a big apartment at Grodno gatvė [? katalotika ?] number
- 14.
- And where we went is only two rooms, a room and a kitchen.
- So only the most important things
- that you could think of we took along with us.
- Among the things we took along with us was somehow
- we had a valise with wheat, not ground wheat,
- and my father foresaw that in case
- we have to stay there through Passover
- he will need something to make matzah from,
- so took along that valise.
- That was among other things.
- Of course, we took along [HEBREW]..
- And a Bible and whatever books, the most important books, we
- took along with us.
- And that's how we went to together.
- OK, we have to reload.
- Part.
- Oh, setting sticks.
- OK.
- Go ahead and tell me.
- While we were looking a place in the ghetto,
- I went along once with my father.
- And that was what you call Slobodke.
- The ghetto was in Slobodke.
- Kovno was like a peninsula.
- They had two rivers on either side of the town.
- And at the end of the town that the two rivers met--
- the one river was the Neman the other one the Viliya.
- Slobodke was on the other side of the Viliya.
- That's where the Kovno ghetto was.
- While going there to look for a place
- that we had to move into the ghetto,
- we walked into some of the abandoned houses
- that Jewish people lived before.
- And the blood that we saw in the beds, beds unmade,
- cribs full with bloodstains in the cribs.
- And that was right after the Germans came in.
- The Lithuanians themselves made such a pogrom.
- They went through Jewish houses, killing everybody.
- Old, young, babies in the cribs.
- That scene, with the blood in the beds
- and the blood in the cribs, this I'll never forget.
- And that was the Lithuanian [YIDDISH],,
- the Lithuanian murderers that committed these things.
- Later, we have seen a lot of other atrocities.
- Well, that was one of the most horrible scenes
- that I have seen, even throughout the Holocaust.
- When you moved into the ghetto, were you afraid?
- Fear was not the question.
- We were afraid every time we heard footsteps.
- The joke was that you knew when the Germans are coming
- because they are banging on--
- the way they were walking, you could hear for a block away.
- The only problem was, in ghetto, in the street that we lived,
- it was not paved.
- It was sand.
- But if you saw a German from the three blocks away, you hid.
- In ghetto itself, after it got to some kind of normality,
- whatever normality could be in ghetto, they did have rations.
- And they had to supply the minimum of bread or whatever,
- the minimum of--
- they need trusted and capable people to man to the store,
- to watch the bakeries, and so on.
- My father being a very honored and trusted individual, capable
- businessman, they somehow favored him.
- I'm talking the ghetto administration.
- And gave him an inside job.
- In order that he should not have to go out
- every day from the ghetto to work.
- But gave him a job in the ghetto because they needed him.
- They needed somebody to trust, who
- should administer a store where bread
- was being divided and given out on the rations to the people.
- So that was my father's job most of the time.
- In a store and also, later on, a bakery
- that he was the, so to speak, the manager of the bakery
- to watch what's going on, that nothing should be stolen,
- nothing should be done unjustified.
- And they trusted him.
- And he was taking care of that job.
- So that enabled him not to have to meet
- the Germans on a daily basis.
- And what about humiliation to your father?
- Tell me about his--
- Humiliation?
- Once, while he was in the store behind the counter,
- a German came in.
- And seeing my father with a beard, pulled out his sword,
- and cut it off, half a beard.
- And he wanted to go further, but somehow,
- from the outside, somebody called him.
- So he left him like this.
- My father, being a religious man, and didn't care.
- You know, he will not give in to the--
- so he will not even straighten out his beard.
- Half of it was cut off.
- He took a scarf, wrapped it around his face,
- and that's the way he was walking
- till the beard grow back.
- But he wouldn't cut it.
- Bigger humiliations than beatings and spitting
- in your face.
- That was even worse.
- Yes.
- I had cousins and other family that were beaten brutally.
- I remember one specific and older cousin.
- I was at the time 11, 12 years, 13 years.
- And a cousin that was 19 came with boils from head to toe.
- A German, somebody else probably wouldn't have survived.
- He was a young fellow, strong fellow.
- And he was black and blue from head to toe.
- That was a daily occurrence.
- Do you remember one of the early Aktions the Intelligentsia
- Aktion?
- That was, in the Jewish calendar, Marcheshvan,
- [HEBREW] Marcheshvan, the seventh day of the month
- what you call Marcheshvan.
- That was the big Aktion that everybody had to go out
- on the big, open field.
- And they were selecting right, left, left, right.
- At that time, most of them were families.
- They didn't take-- not as much breaking up families,
- but families on one side, families on the other side.
- Fortunately, we were selected on the right side.
- Those that were selected on the left side,
- they pushed in the what you call the Kleiner ghetto.
- The ghetto was a big highway, or what
- were there was a big highway went through the ghetto.
- On one side of the highway was a smaller part that
- was called the Kleiner ghetto.
- But being that the highway had to go through the ghetto,
- so each part was individually wired or fenced in.
- So those that selected were taken in the small ghetto.
- And the next day in the morning, they
- took them to the Ninth Fort and killed them.
- At that time, I understand, 9,000 Jews
- were killed, I think, in the Great Aktion.
- Do you remember that day?
- I remember the day vividly.
- It was still dark outside when we went out from the house.
- And we were all standing there for hours.
- The day was a dismal day.
- It wasn't raining but was a cold, damp day.
- And stayed there till late in the evening.
- And then we were sent back to the house.
- From my family, my uncle [PERSONAL NAME] family,
- only three children were left on the right side, the rest
- of the family on the left.
- So these three children later moved
- in with us in the two rooms that we
- had the kitchen and the room.
- And we partitioned of the kitchen.
- These three slept behind the partition in the kitchen.
- While we, meaning my parents and the two more brothers,
- myself slept in one room, in the other room.
- It means at night, the room became one bed.
- It wasn't a very large room, either.
- And in the morning, they used to put it together
- because they wanted to make a quorum, a minyan in our house,
- even in ghetto.
- So everything was pushed aside and the 10 people
- used to come in and used to pray down right there.
- Later, they took away the books and there was--
- they gave up the books.
- So we had to hide whatever we wanted to.
- The few books that we kept, we had to hide them,
- that god forbid somebody shouldn't see it.
- And that was the biggest crime.
- In the big Aktion, do you remember
- going past the German doing the selecting?
- It was a fleeting moment.
- It was a go this way.
- And that's where we went.
- It wasn't that we were looked over for hours.
- It was a fleeting moment.
- It became the line.
- We go to the right, we went to the right and that's it.
- Did you know-- had you already figured
- out which was the good side?
- I did not remember figuring it out at that time.
- But after a while, we realized that we are on the right side.
- OK.
- We have to put another roll in.
- Mark.
- Three marker.
- In the big Aktion, when you talked before to Paul,
- you told him that it looked like the people doing the selecting
- and the guarding were enjoying their jobs.
- Is that right?
- Laughing.
- To them, it was a joke.
- They're kidding around.
- Go here, go there.
- It was like with smiles on their faces.
- And the biggest joke was that people did not know
- what is right, what is wrong.
- People did not know what's happening.
- And when the people wanted to go the wrong way,
- and they were laughing, they made the biggest joke to them.
- They did them a favor.
- Some day, some people asked them to go the other way
- because families were separated.
- So they-- there was a joke.
- You want to go there, go ahead.
- They did him a favor.
- That was a joke.
- There was-- I don't remember exactly,
- but a few officers that was there, standing there.
- And of course, a lot of guards.
- And that's the way it went through.
- Go ahead.
- As a result of that big Aktion, what we call,
- people realize that many times--
- there was a lot of other Aktions, even before and after.
- That if you're not there and you survived it,
- you have a better chance to stay surviving instead
- of going to a selection.
- So what we started doing is make hiding places.
- Bunkers as we called.
- And of course, not every house or every place was suitable.
- So we teamed up with a neighbor across the street
- from us who had a little house.
- And the water source was a well in the yard.
- And next to the house, maybe 10, 12 feet away from the house
- was a barn.
- That way he kept at one time wood
- if he had anything to keep there.
- So he decided to dig up the barn,
- make like a bunker underneath, cover it up with whatever wood
- he could, and cover it up with the dirt, and dig a tunnel.
- Because once you went into that little house,
- the vestibule had like a cold basement.
- I mean, it's poured cement.
- That was like a basement.
- Only small, but just under the vestibule.
- So they had a trap door to get onto that place.
- They broke through a wall in the cement
- and dug a tunnel from there to the room that was actually
- underneath that barn.
- Now, they needed any kind of supplies.
- So the well was very close by.
- So it made it so that they took out the first round
- from the well, covered it up, and put
- a well also into the bunker.
- Not no well.
- And they were taking water from our well
- that we had in the backyard.
- By the Kinderaktion, and that was already in '44.
- In then Jewish date, it was two days, the Kinderaktion,
- that was the third and the fourth day
- of the month of Nisan.
- We were hidden there in that bunker.
- However, a parent of one of the people of another neighbor
- somehow was found somewhere else.
- And in order to be released, or what
- he thought he'll be released, he snitched on us
- so they should let him go.
- So the second day of the Kinderaktion,
- in the late afternoon, all of a sudden,
- they started banging on the wall,
- because they already found this out.
- They wouldn't have found it unless somebody
- pointed a finger.
- And that's the one that pointed a finger at us.
- They took us all out and that's when my father and my younger
- brother were taken away.
- Before that, when I was about 14,
- that was means two years in the ghetto,
- they also realized that if you have a profession
- or you're employed, you had a better chance of survival,
- at least on a day to day basis.
- So my father put me in the [GERMAN] in ghetto.
- I should learn a trade of tinsmith.
- And capable I was and picked up very fast.
- Within a few months, I was a full-fledged tinsmith,
- so much so that what we were doing there was for hothouses.
- We used to make the cans, the spray cans or milk cans.
- So it needed turning the metal and also a solder iron.
- I caught on so fast that it's not
- how you holding the solder iron or you're leading the solder,
- but how you apply the acid before.
- And that's how the solder will be.
- When I once brought in a utensil finished,
- it was only about two months after I
- started, not even two months.
- And I showed him that I finished it.
- The foreman couldn't believe it.
- You couldn't do it.
- He wouldn't trust me.
- He accused me that somebody else did it for me.
- Till he went in the shop with me,
- and I showed him how I solder.
- That just like a string.
- That convinced him there that I did it.
- And a month later, he made me the foreman for the whole shop.
- That was what I did in the ghetto after I was 14.
- My father worked during that time,
- as I said before, in the bakery.
- But when they were short in people
- to send out for certain jobs outside of the ghetto and they
- didn't have enough who to send.
- And they had, let's say the demand was that they give me
- 60 men, or 100 men, or 300 men, and they were short,
- they grabbed whatever they could.
- So even my father, who was employed in the ghetto,
- had to go outside.
- Usually he did not go outside the ghetto.
- The problem was that this was a winter.
- And they used to go out when it was dark and used
- to come back when it was dark.
- And here, my father was very religious,
- and he had to put on the tefillin.
- During the day, not during the night, you cannot put it on.
- So he needed to put on the tefillin in the morning
- before he went out, put a forehead on top
- of the tefillin.
- A forehead.
- And a whole day, he used to work like that,
- and came back at night.
- That is torture.
- Because anybody knows that there are certain
- limitations, certain restrictions
- what you can do within the tefillin, when
- you wear the tefillin.
- And that is torture, but few times he had to do it.
- Otherwise, he was not exposed to the outside of the ghetto.
- In the house, was it cold?
- In the house, we had a oven that was heated by wood.
- And the back of it was in the other room
- in between the two rooms.
- And the same over we used to bake some things.
- And being, like I say, my father in the bakery,
- so we probably had maybe a little bit better
- than most people.
- But in the house, the cold of the house
- was more or less bearable.
- We managed the best we could.
- Of course, it was not comfortable.
- But manageable, according to the ghetto standard.
- At one summer, I remember, we had nowhere
- to put the garbages.
- So in the backyards, these houses were separate,
- and each one was the small houses on lots.
- So those backyards, the toilets were a separate little house
- in the backyard.
- And when they used to dig a hole for garbage,
- to put the garbage.
- But when the hole were filled up, you covered it with dirt,
- and dug a hole next to it.
- And that's the way you go around to it,
- to get rid of the rubbish.
- One summer or spring morning, I go out, and I take a look.
- There are certain weeds, a certain grass that grows
- on top of an old garbage dump.
- And I recognized this is tomato, two plants.
- And I kept it a secret.
- But I said, these are definitely tomato plants.
- So in corner of the house that we had in the other side,
- I took these plants and made a garden.
- That year, I picked 150 kilo of tomatoes.
- I was about 14--
- 13, 14.
- I used to sell the tomatoes, a kilo of tomatoes
- for two kilo of bread.
- That helped us survive while other people had
- to do other things.
- Let's talk a little more about food.
- So you had the tomatoes, but what other kinds of things did
- you have?
- And what ingenuity did your mother use, for example?
- What actually helped us a lot to me that I said before,
- three of my cousins stayed with us.
- One of them was going out to work in a kitchen in Kovno.
- I don't know what kind of a place it was,
- an army place or--
- But one of the jobs was peeling potatoes.
- Of course, they're peeling potatoes and the peels
- they're bringing home.
- And you imagine that being that they
- knew that the peels so that they get
- go home they peeled a little heavier.
- But this was one of the sustaining things, potato peels
- that came from kitchens.
- And that we used to be washed, cooked, and all kinds of food
- made out of it.
- Even if he had to burn a little flour
- and make [SPEAKING HEBREW],, the potato
- balls, and then put in hot water and boil it
- and make soup out of it.
- That was part of our diet.
- And whatever else you could find or trade.
- Or people that used to go outside of the ghetto
- and deliver the Gentile's and they give away
- a piece of a sweater or a garment or jewelry
- or whatever they could find, anything for a piece of food.
- But all in all, we comparatively,
- we managed for the ghetto standard the best we could.
- And earlier you said you had to cheat somehow to survive.
- Tell me about that.
- Well, we did a lot of things to cheat.
- We stole whatever we could.
- We needed wood.
- You asked me about heating.
- Anywhere you had a piece of wood that you
- could tear off and bring it home, that was brought home.
- Anywhere they could find a piece of wire that was brought home.
- For instance, we made ourselves a
- what you call it, to make hot water.
- I took two spoons, wired them up, hold out a piece of cotton
- on a piece of wood and then you connected it
- and put it in the water.
- This is boiling.
- You made makeshift things.
- I want to go back to the Kinder Aktion.
- I said before when they found us in the bunker
- they pulled us out and they made a selection and put
- part on one side, part on the other side.
- We did not know what's going on, but my father was on one side
- and I was on the other side.
- And then one of the officers turned it around and said
- to send my father on that side and me he
- pulled it to the side.
- We didn't know what is the right and what is wrong.
- My brother and a girl, a daughter of the neighbors,
- escaped by a miraculous.
- There was a game by the Germans had big dogs
- and they told these two kids, go ahead, run.
- And they told the dog to chase them.
- Somehow, as I said before, it was late in the afternoon.
- The dog chased them.
- They ran around the houses.
- A couple of times a dog grabbed my brother by the arm
- but he had a heavy coat on so he couldn't bite him,
- and finally they hid behind a door
- and the dogs were called off and they remained there.
- That's how my brother survived the Kinder Aktion.
- That was something that you survived from day to day.
- Every other day there was something else.
- Had it not been a minute before, a minute after,
- you wouldn't have been here.
- And how did they let you and your father go then?
- My father was taken away with my younger brother in the Kinder
- Aktion.
- I was pushed on the other side, so I
- remained with my mother and my brother in the ghetto.
- That was in '44, in the spring of '44.
- Early spring.
- How old was your brother who went with your father?
- Five years my junior, five years younger than me.
- I was at that time 14, 15, so he was 9, 10.
- And did you see them get on--
- All we saw them is on a truck and they go out of the ghetto.
- I haven't seen him since.
- And they took them to Auschwitz, as far as I know.
- And the great action, how did you find out
- what happened to the 10,000 people who were--
- That was in a few days that it was the day talk in the ghetto.
- A few days later everybody said that they took him
- to the ninth fort, which is down that highway
- that I just spoke about before.
- And that was then they dug the ditches
- and then in front of the ditches they machine-gunned them.
- And the mood in the ghetto changed after that?
- That-- The big action, most people said that's it,
- we are doomed.
- Sooner or later it was a question of time.
- Sooner or later it will be our time will be up.
- And as I said before, the religious people,
- even if they have a knife on their throat
- don't give up hope.
- So that's what it was.
- And weren't books and religious practices forbidden?
- Tell me about the rules as if I don't know about it.
- Tell me about the ghetto rules.
- There was a time, I don't know exactly when,
- that was a command that all books to be brought outside,
- to be brought in a pile in the field there.
- And any books we found them and like any there was only one
- punishment and get killed.
- If you didn't obey the rules, that's the only thing.
- The same thing is with the yellow star.
- Even before they get the clothes every Jew
- had to wear a yellow star on his lapel, on the front.
- I think later they put it on front and back.
- And what about religious practices?
- Was that allowed in the ghetto?
- I don't think there was even a question.
- Nothing was allowed.
- But a few religious people that secretly kept it.
- Of course if you heard somebody coming
- you dispersed immediately, but we did practice.
- Most of the time we didn't have a minimum,
- means that 10 people that used to
- sneak in, and pray in a quorum.
- Many times we didn't have 10 and I wasn't 13 yet.
- They used to give me a book and count me
- in that maybe I was close to 13 enough
- that they put me in the quorum.
- What about other things in the ghetto like culture
- or other social life?
- They did try to have some kind of social activities.
- I wasn't much involved.
- My family wasn't involved.
- But as far as religious activities,
- like there was a few rabbis.
- So the religious people tried to organize
- a little learning, a little teaching for the youngsters.
- There was something called [HEBREW] Oshry
- who is right here in New York.
- He organized a group of youngsters
- to have a group to learn.
- But of course it was disrupted and it
- couldn't be on a steady basis.
- But as much as you could and whenever you can get away
- there was a little bit learning, but very little.
- Did you go to his group?
- Yes, I did go for I don't know for how long,
- but I did belong to that group that's called the [HEBREW]..
- Tell me a little more about it.
- Tell me about an average day.
- An average day till I went to that work,
- the [NON-ENGLISH] Werkstätten, I actually did nothing except be
- around the house except around the garden or planting
- something or things like that.
- But later on, when I to be in the morning to the Werkstätten
- the whole day and come back into the house late
- in the afternoon, so that was more or less taken up with
- this.
- Very little teaching.
- The older ones used to get a chance
- to teach for a while, while my father took
- a private individual and that they should go there every day
- and he should learn with me to teach me.
- So that was--
- It was so much interruptions, so scarce
- the time that you could feel safe.
- And you did not want to show your face too much
- in the street in the ghetto.
- Because you were a kid?
- Because a kid and because you didn't want it to appear.
- If you're not a kid, what were you doing?
- If you're and adult you're supposed
- to be occupied to do something.
- You knew that just if you meet somebody's going in the ghetto
- it was terrible.
- If you saw a German, you disappeared, you hid.
- Tell me about the police in the ghetto.
- There was a Jewish police force.
- I had one incident with that police force,
- and that is while I was working in the [NON-ENGLISH]
- Werkstätten and they needed somebody to go outside to get
- it to work for whatever reason I don't remember but I did not
- show up and they came and arrested me and put me in jail
- in the ghetto.
- There was a jail in the ghetto.
- And I was miserable.
- There were characters in ghetto in jail
- that I guess like in every jail.
- And I had to stay overnight there.
- Even my father with all his [? protective, ?]
- with all these people that he knew
- couldn't get me out before the next day.
- And I think [? Snegg, ?] who was a friend of the family,
- and he was a member of the Jewish committee,
- having to win to let me out of that jail that
- was the next day.
- That was my personal encounter with the police.
- All in all, I understand that they were, as a whole,
- they were helping the Jewish people rather than hurting
- them, other than giving out.
- So they were not collaborating with the Germans
- as I've heard other places.
- But this is as a rule generally.
- Of course, there were at one time
- I understand the policemen were arrested
- and they were tortured that they should tell about bunkers,
- about things in ghetto, did you give out
- secrets for the ghetto?
- And a few of them succumbed or did they give out,
- but most of them stood their ground.
- This is as far as my knowledge and my personal
- to do with the police.
- I didn't know anybody personally that I knew as a policeman,
- but as a whole, we were not afraid of the Jewish police.
- For instance, when I was in a concentration camp
- I wouldn't trust the kapos.
- They were terrible.
- But in the ghetto we did not fear the Jewish police,
- at least not our family.
- And tell me about the rabbi of the ghetto.
- The [? Kovnorov ?],, who was the, Devar Avraham, Avraham Shapiro,
- that's his name.
- He died in 1942.
- I personally as a kid I was nine or 10 years old
- when I had an incident and I met him.
- And that was because there was a summer place not far
- from Kovno called Kulautuva.
- And he used to stay in a villa there
- and we were also for the summer in that place.
- One day I went in the street and I see him going out for a walk.
- I went over, was a very brazen young kid,
- and I said, good morning, Kovnorov.
- He took me for his hand and for an hour
- he walked with me, asking me all kinds of questions,
- my family, so I had a big honor and unusual that I
- had met that known person.
- He was a very learned scholar from what
- I have in his book Devar Avraham,
- and in general he was very highly respected.
- But in ghetto I understand that they let him alone when he died
- and I went to his funeral.
- This was 1942.
- What was the funeral like?
- I do not remember details.
- I only remember there was people, not too many,
- but there was people nevertheless went today
- that the funeral.
- I do not know where the burial ground was,
- but I remember the funeral and I remember going to the funeral
- In the ghetto, did you ever have fun?
- Fun?
- As normal as kids, regardless what's
- doing outside there's always you live in the present
- and the present is always you have
- to have whether it is fun or play or games.
- Of course, between interruptions,
- between the black clouds from the outside,
- we did not constantly live as children.
- We did not constantly have it on our minds.
- But we were reminded quite often that we were in ghetto.
- Quite often we were reminded.
- My cousins were taken away.
- I don't remember what aktion.
- They were sent to Riga or they were sent away.
- Then there were not there anymore.
- After my father and my younger brother were taken away,
- I remained with my other brother and my mother.
- We were numb.
- It wasn't a question, we weren't crying,
- but we were like numb, just pieces of wood.
- I remember it was 10, 12 days before Passover,
- and Passover came, we called in some acquaintance
- to make a seder, say the prayers for seder,
- and I think we had a couple of matzohs there.
- But this was going through the motions.
- Till after that Passover I remember
- that the news was that the Germans are retreating,
- the Russians are pushing then back,
- and it's only a question what they will do
- or when they will do liquidating the ghetto
- and how they'll do it.
- The day came.
- At that time we were already too numb to look for shelter
- to look for bunkers to hide.
- Some did hide and survived.
- Some hid and did not make it because a lot of the houses
- were burned to the ground.
- If they had a suspicion anybody is hiding there,
- they burned the houses to the ground
- and the ghetto was liquidated, but I understand about 7,000
- people that they were liquidated from the ghetto
- and they took us into the freight trains.
- And we came to Stutthof.
- That's what separated the women and children
- from the other men.
- My brother wanted to go with my mother
- and my mother wouldn't let him.
- She understood that a better chance even for a young kid
- to be with a men in a working camp
- rather than to go with the women.
- And he wanted to go to Mother, Mother pushed him away.
- You can imagine how hard for a mother to push away a child,
- but she figured that this is a better chance.
- From my mother I never heard since.
- I mean I did hear about her that she was still
- alive in the beginning of the winter of '44, '45.
- A couple of weeks after Sukkot somebody still saw her
- in that camp near Stutthof, but after that we never heard
- of her.
- My brother and I myself were sent to Dachau.
- In Dachau, after the second week they separated the younger kids
- and took away about 120, 130 children
- and send them back to Auschwitz and my border with them.
- I remained in Lager 1 till April of '45.
- During that time, I work in mall and that
- was building an underground airport for the Germans.
- To describe this airport after I look
- at it and being in construction now,
- it was fabulous type of construction.
- They actually created a mountain,
- put a 10-meter cover of solid cement
- reinforced with the metal rods, and afterwards dug out
- the mountain from underneath leaving a big, large tunnel
- where two large planes can pass by each other side by side.
- And at the end at the other side of it they had the workshops.
- That was a fabulous idea.
- However, they did not finish it.
- My brother was sent in Auschwitz.
- I stayed in Dachau till April.
- In April they took us back to, when the Americans came closer,
- they took us to Dachau proper, and from there afterwards we
- went on the death march in Tyrol,
- and I was liberated in Tyrol May 5.
- My brother I didn't find.
- Actually, I didn't find him till the day
- before Yom Kippur of 1945.
- Now I want to take you back to the ghetto.
- Tell me as if I'm a kid.
- Describe to me the werkstatten in the ghetto.
- Who were they for?
- Who did they service?
- How many different ones?
- Were there a variety of things there?
- The way I understand, the committee in the ghetto,
- and that is Kovno ghetto, I think
- they were more loyal to the Jewish people in the ghetto
- than what I hear in other ghettos.
- They really transformed the ghetto in a work lager,
- in the workforce, making the Germans
- being dependent on the labor that the ghetto was providing.
- And I think that is maybe one of the reasons
- that Kovno ghetto survived longer than other ghettos.
- Because after a while, they became
- to be dependent on the labor force that
- used to go out to the ghetto in different areas
- to perform work.
- In the ghetto there was a kleiner werkstatten
- and the [? graze ?] werkstatten The kleiner werkstatten were
- doing small things and also services,
- like I said before, for hothouses, for other areas,
- for farmers, to supply them with the necessary things.
- But the [? graze ?] werkstatten even more so.
- They did a lot of things like fixing shoes and fixing things
- and clothes and stuff that the Germans really needed it.
- And therefore this idea was everybody should be employed.
- If somebody could not be employed,
- they were hiding it and pushing it under,
- making sure that everybody has a name and a number they
- are employed.
- And this was the idea in the ghetto,
- and that's why I think the Kovno ghetto survived
- longer than otherwise.
- With this in mind, that was the idea that I became a tinsmith
- and I came to concentration camp in Dachau.
- They ask, do you have any profession?
- Yes, I'm a tinsmith.
- The end was I ended up in taking care of one
- of the officers in the morgue.
- For a long time and took care of the hut.
- I had to make sure that as they sweep up.
- The foremen, they were Germans, and there
- was a big, big foreman that he had his special room.
- He was a big shot there.
- And the other ones had the front room
- but I had to make sure that every morning I
- come in the morning, I make the ovens, I make heat,
- and I make the water.
- And they come in for lunch I have
- the kettle on and so forth.
- This helped me too because I was a kid of 15, 16 and I
- used to do a good job and used to clean up and make sure
- that everything is clean and everything is neat
- and everything is in order.
- And the way I always orderly, always the place
- for a long time.
- I worked like that.
- It was a time when I did go out to work
- and we used to work 12-hour shifts.
- And in the 12-hour shifts you only
- had two breaks of 15 minutes.
- And they used to give us what they called soup.
- Actually used to be moldy bread that was actually green.
- And that's what they called--
- They boil it.
- They made soup out of it.
- The soup was green.
- And that was you had a bowl and that's what you ate.
- One break like that and we were working in the forest
- knocking down trees and cleaning it for the lumber.
- I laid down on a bunch of branches and fell asleep.
- They probably wouldn't have missed me
- if they were not called back because the main work was
- to carry the cement from the bags into that van
- there that they had a system where they are pulling out
- the cement from the bags on the ground
- and there was a screw that was pushing
- the cement to the machines that are making the concrete.
- But when the wagons were not there with the cement,
- they didn't come in time, they took us to the forest
- to do other work.
- When the wagons came, we were called back.
- Every 20 people had an SS storm trooper
- watching us besides the foreman German to tell us what to do.
- And that was for [? mo. ?] I fell asleep
- and they had to go away and they counted and somebody's missing.
- Now the German watchman, the SS man,
- he would have gotten hell for somebody missing.
- They were looking around.
- It took about a half hour to 3/4 of an hour.
- And finally they were shouting and I woke up.
- That night, if I survived anything,
- that was the time that the God that saved me.
- Because when we were marching we were five abreast, 20 lines,
- 100 people marching.
- We had to go from one place to the other place.
- We had to stand abreast, three, four, five abreast, and that's
- the way we were marching so the German could
- see exactly who is marching, how many people we are.
- Because he was late and he got hell for not watching his men,
- he wanted to take it out on me.
- He took the rifle, and holding it by the barrel
- he wanted to hit me over the head with the butt.
- Because if I'm dead I'm accountable,
- but if I'm missing, then he gets hollered at.
- Fortunately, he didn't hit me over the head,
- he hit me over the shoulder and the barrel broke in two.
- The rifle broke in two.
- He kept it on a sling over his shoulder, half a rifle
- on the front, half on the back.
- But wherever he just looked for me.
- He wanted to kick me, hit me.
- So the people protected me by if he went on the right side,
- then I changed places to the left side.
- A whole evening.
- The only time I was safe if I was carrying cement
- because he wouldn't dare to break and ruin a bag of cement.
- That's when he will not hit me.
- So the minute I was in line it used to be like this.
- Used to be 10 people.
- Two people were loading on the shoulder,
- six people were running and two people were taking it off.
- So the minute I was in line with the six people
- to take the next bag, I may have been the fifth or the fourth,
- if I see him coming, I was the first
- with a bag on my shoulder running back with the cement.
- And that's the whole night that's how it went down.
- That was one experience.
- There was other experiences where I had a gun or a rifle
- right to my face.
- And somehow, I don't know the reasons, but I'm still here.
- Did you build the alarm clock in the ghetto?
- Yes.
- Tell me about it.
- I don't know how you know about the alarm clock.
- We didn't use Saturdays there was a little electric
- but I told you before, in the same room we ate,
- the same room we prayed, and the same room we slept.
- And we needed a little light and Saturday we
- don't put out the lights.
- Before the Holocaust or now, we have either a regular alarm
- clock, a regular time clock, and we
- have people that are allowed to put off the lights
- so it's no problem.
- But there was a problem.
- So what we did is I took a regular alarm clock
- that you wind up and you take a piece of string
- and put it on the switch.
- You put the clock tight on the wall,
- and when the time comes and it starts ringing,
- it shuts off the light.
- This we build ourselves if that's
- what you call alarm clock.
- When the time comes, it shut off.
- Tell me about the council.
- Tell me about the administration in the ghetto, what
- you knew about them.
- The administration.
- While I was in ghetto, I had little
- to do with them because I was a youngster.
- Except with my father and he being a prominent Kovno
- citizen, knew everybody and everybody knew him, so
- all the politics that went on more or less
- we knew it in our house.
- And all I know is what I overheard
- the adults talking about.
- And the council was--
- He had many, many predicaments.
- Like if the Germans made a demand to make an Aktion,
- they had to make a decision.
- Are we going to cooperate with them or we'll say,
- no, we're not cooperating?
- By not cooperating it means two things.
- Either they can kill them all and the Germans
- do it on their own, or they can maybe sometimes intervene.
- But they did not, I think, that the council did not cooperate,
- did not collaborate with the Germans as much as they could.
- Can you tell me about your brother's bar mitzvah?
- Yes, I'll tell you.
- I was bar mitzvahed in the ghetto in 1942.
- I remembered the necessary things to learn.
- An uncle of mine who was still there
- taught me and I said my kedoshim, my speech,
- in the ghetto on a Saturday.
- But more vivid and more interesting
- is my brother's bar mitzvah, which came out in a sukkah.
- In the ghetto, my father, as much as he could,
- with the minimum possibility that they had,
- kept up whatever he could as far as the religious things to do.
- And we had a sukkah.
- The sukkah means we take a couple old doors
- and covered it up with some of the growth which
- that's the sukkah.
- And we had a sukkah in the ghetto.
- My brother, who was born on Yom Kippur,
- had a bar mitzvah on Sukkot.
- And at that time, we had a few people
- that we did [HEBREW] praying in our house.
- After that, went into the sukkah, and my mother,
- whatever she--
- where she took it from I don't know,
- but had a couple cookies and what they called something
- to say l'chaim on, and they had the celebration in the sukkah
- around the table.
- At that time, one of the secretaries,
- the secretary for the committee, passed by
- and my father called him into the sukkah.
- And he begged off, not to want to come in
- because he was called for important meeting
- in the committee.
- Nevertheless, my father took hold of him,
- wouldn't let him go, pulled him in the sukkah,
- introduced him to the people.
- And he got pulled in.
- He was served also the refreshments, whatever it was,
- and he was told that this is the bar mitzvah of my brother.
- He was amazed, and this Avraham Tory, writes in the book,
- he was amazed how the religious people can forget about
- all the trials and tribulations, all
- it was doing outside the ghetto and the Germans
- and still we're devoted and with such fervor
- to pray and to sing even so the song was something
- that expressed the hopefulness in the worst situations.
- We still the hope to God, the hope to Hashem, so much so
- that the man ends his book that he envies those that believe.
- And that was my father's character
- to make somebody happy.
- I know of another story that somebody asked, what are you
- doing on this street?
- You don't live here.
- People used to go out to work for a long, long day
- from early morning to night.
- And that man used to pass by our house, say,
- you don't live here.
- What are you doing here?
- He's said, well, I was hoping maybe I
- would meet Fievel Zisman and a few words would enliven me,
- would condole me for the next day or so.
- That was the character of my father.
- And that's what people thought of him.
- To speak to him a few words was enough to uplift somebody.
- And unfortunately, with all the hope some of them
- did not materialize.
- And he perished in the Holocaust like so many other millions.
- But the bar mitzvah of my brother
- was something special that other people in ghetto
- could celebrate together with him.
- Was religion a form of resistance?
- It was not a question of resistance.
- It is a question that we will not give up.
- That we will not surrender.
- We will do ours.
- Whatever happens, we will still do ours with hope
- and with prayer to God that somehow,
- hopefully, we will survive.
- And those that did, did.
- I did.
- And the year that this bar mitzvah took place?
- When was this relative to the Kinder Aktion?
- It was a half a year before the Kinder Aktion.
- This was in the beginning of the winter
- and the Kinder Aktion was in the end of the winter.
- Did you know anything about partisans?
- We heard about it through the grapevine.
- And as a matter of fact, I had somebody
- that came in to the ghetto that I knew from before the ghetto.
- And he used to come in, disappear, and reappear.
- And he used to sneak out of the ghetto somehow
- and he belonged to the partisan.
- He is alive now.
- What's his name?
- Yuzhak.
- I can't recall his name, but yes, he went to the partisan.
- And can you again describe for me the hiding place?
- Did you help build the hiding place?
- Yes.
- Sure, we helped dig that tunnel on all fours
- to dig a tunnel in the ground, support it
- with whatever we could.
- Pieces of lumber, pieces of wood to support.
- The only way to get in, as described before,
- is through that basement of that vestibule.
- And there was a slab of cement that when you took it
- out and from the inside you had a way
- to put it back in place, to pull it back
- in place, that when you looked at it
- you could see a crack in the cement
- but you would not recognize that this was something like a door.
- And you had to go on all fours to creep into that,
- and the 10, 12 feet to go to that room that was dug out
- there in that room was made like a couple of beds like one
- on top of the other.
- And that's where people sat or laid down.
- And there was also a problem with air.
- So there was a pipe in the back of that shed.
- In the bushes there, we left one pipe for air
- so we'd have some air inside there.
- And the tunnel was like a Y. It had a turn that it went
- to the well, and any time you wanted
- you could fetch some water with a pail and a rope.
- And from there it went back to the shed
- where underneath the shed, maybe two
- or three feet underneath it, was two feet of dirt on top of it.
- And underneath there, there was a bunker.
- So yes, we built it and took us months to build it.
- Of course, this was done only at night.
- One night the well disappeared.
- Nobody knows there's a trace of it.
- We covered.
- We took off a couple of rings, covered it up and filled it
- with dirt, make sure that there was some growth on top of it
- like nothing before.
- And that was the bunker.
- While there, air was the biggest problem.
- We had also made a couple of cans and the little food that
- we did have, so we spilled something and dried up,
- make what you called, "sakharinkes"
- [Yid, rusks] We made dried pieces of bread into cans
- in case we have to stay there for more than a day or two that
- we'd have something to nourish ourselves.
- This was also left in cans in the bunker.
- But when they came in and we knew that we are found out,
- they had no choice but to get out of there.
- Had we stayed there, they would have blown up the whole thing.
- And what did you do with the dirt?
- With the dirt, we put it aside and then put on top
- and spread it out and put it on top of the well
- where there was a hole.
- The dirt was a problem where we spread out of the gardens,
- especially if they did it in the time where it was not winter.
- And there was big lots around the houses.
- It wasn't just a house, it was a house and lot,
- so there were places to put the dirt and spread it out.
- OK.
- Thank you.
- Have I not asked you anything of importance?
- Well, I don't know what else you want to know.
- A lot of interesting stories that I have.
- For instance, in the ghetto, since I was bar mitzvahed
- I used to put on a tefillin every day.
- In the concentration camp, we only had one pair of tefillin
- and that was Barav Snegg.
- Many times, he used to work day shift, night shift.
- On the way we used to meet and pass by
- and as we passed by we pass over each other.
- All this was taking chances with your life because had you
- been caught, you probably they put you up and shoot you.
- To them it was the biggest thing to make you an example.
- And you're telling me that, things that you saw
- In the ghetto there was what they called a hospital.
- I don't know how much of a hospital it was,
- but children were there.
- I remember once they had an open truck outside
- and children were thrown out by Germans right
- through the window into the open truck, live children.
- It looked like one-year-old, six months, babies,
- right from the window in second floor, third floor
- into the truck.
- The atrocity that I saw was--
- By that time you were numb.
- I saw somebody just--
- All the silver, all the everything, the valuables,
- should have been surrendered.
- A German went and saw a silver spoon in the dirt.
- He went out into the house and accused
- the woman that was there that he saw a piece of silver flatware.
- He put them up against the wall, took aim
- with the left hand behind his back
- as if he's a real soldier like, and killed them
- while they are executed right there on the spot.
- This was the Germans' idea of teaching somebody a lesson,
- you know, it's to make everybody obey.
- There was a systematic way from the Germans, the Gestapo,
- to make you believe that this is it
- and there's no way of escaping them.
- In spite of all that, people hid and people--
- [INAUDIBLE] if it came to a concentration camp.
- Everybody was supposed to give up whatever they had--
- any valuables, any money, anything bring it to front
- and give it up.
- People were scared.
- If somebody had money was scared to put it on the table
- because he'll be accused of doing something wrong.
- How do you come to the money?
- But they had no choice.
- So there was a latrine, you know what
- a latrine is, the bathrooms.
- It happened to be new.
- But this is two days that there were a couple
- of thousand people in camp.
- And they used it.
- The latrine was full with money, with whatever
- valuables they brought along.
- They filled up there.
- The Germans got wind of it.
- They sent down the people into the human waste, barefooted,
- took out every valuable thing, every dollar, everything
- to take out from the latrines.
- And that was the biggest joke to see the people in the latrine,
- in the human waste collecting their valuables.
- They enjoyed seeing somebody suffer.
- They made a game out of people suffering.
- They made a game of murder.
- They made a game of target practice, shooting people.
- That was the whole idea of the Germans.
- And anybody telling me that this is just orders from above,
- they did 10 times more than the orders were given.
- In other words, they enjoyed doing that on their own,
- regardless what the orders were.
- And if anybody had said that this was only
- a segment of them, they knew very well what's going on.
- I spoke with Germans after the war.
- They knew what was going on and either they didn't care
- or who cares, this is it.
- If they had a chance, they would kill you.
- I do not forgive them.
- And there's no punishment for that.
- So the thing you have to remember
- that there is no way to condone it or forgive it
- or to forget it.
- They are enemies.
- And as long as the world exists, the longer
- they exist they'll have to carry that burden of that guilt
- on the whole German nation.
- The Lithuanians were no better.
- Murderers to the last of them.
- This is from my experience and this
- is what I will never forget it, never forgive it, and tell
- my children to do the same.
- In the ghetto at the beginning there
- was a hospital that was burned.
- Did you see that?
- I heard about it.
- I did not witness it myself but I heard about it.
- I did see the children thrown from there,
- but I did not see it burn.
- And when you saw the children thrown, when was that?
- Was it during the Kinder Aktion?
- No, that was way before.
- It was way before.
- It wasn't in the last year.
- It was the second year of the ghetto or something like that.
- So there were just random atrocities.
- There were atrocities done constantly.
- And sometimes it was an individual act
- and sometimes it was an organized act,
- but there were atrocities in a daily occurrence.
- Here you heard this one was killed and this one killed.
- Every day something else was happening.
- In general, in the ghetto did people help each other?
- Did Jews help each other do you think?
- On a general rule, I would say everybody looked out
- for themselves.
- Self-preservation was also the rule in the ghetto too.
- But I would say definitely within religion,
- especially there's a lot of people that knew each other,
- and those families of course they helped each other.
- Everybody looks for their own family, which is normal.
- Everybody looks for their own children, for their own,
- and for themselves.
- To what extent, that's the question.
- How much--
- Would somebody kill somebody else to protect themselves?
- In some cases, yes.
- Like the one that snitched on us.
- I don't think he survived the Holocaust.
- But at that moment he thinks that he'll get away
- with by snitching on other people,
- so he exposed maybe 20 people by trying to save himself.
- This happened, too, but not that often.
- I wouldn't say that that was the rule.
- The rule was to sacrifice more than to give out somebody.
- Any other things that you remember in the ghetto
- that I haven't asked you about?
- I had a moment to say all the instances I don't remember
- except that I remember a cousin coming beaten up from head
- to toe, black and blue.
- A German caught him, and just because he looked like a Jew,
- for no reason at all.
- I remember one cousin, Labal Means.
- He came once beaten up, and he was a religious, pious kid,
- and he said, well, somehow I must
- have deserved it somewhere.
- And with cold compresses, with all the things he survived.
- But atrocities I remember seeing it as you would shivah.
- And after a while you're numb.
- You get used to.
- You can get used to anything.
- But this was the situation with what you lived through.
- Did the ghetto progressively get worse and worse
- as it got smaller and smaller?
- Can you tell me?
- It was more and more difficult to survive, to have food.
- It was more and more difficult. In the beginning you handled--
- you got in from outside.
- You got help here, you got help there.
- Like I said before, here you got the potato peels
- and here you got the deal where you sold a pair of pants
- or a piece of jewelry and got half a pound of butter
- or something for it.
- So as the ghetto progressed, it became
- more orderly in the sense there was working.
- You had to go to work, you came back.
- You know what you have to do.
- But to survive became even harder.
- It was harder to what we used to call to organize,
- to organize means to have something
- to eat or have something additional to do
- the meager ration that you get.
- And how did you keep your tomatoes from getting stolen?
- It happened to be in a corner of the house
- and there was some kind of a fence in front of it
- so it wasn't obvious.
- And I used to ripen it, I used to dig it up green
- and ripen it under a blanket.
- And that's how we got it through.
- OK.
- Thank you very much.
- You're welcome.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Berel Zisman
- Interviewer
- Sandra Bradley
- Date
-
interview:
1997 June 03
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
5 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Sandra Bradley, a film production consultant for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conducted the interview with Berel Zisman on June 3, 1997 in preparation for the exhibition "Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto," which opened in November 1997. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received a copy of the interview on July 11, 1998.
- Funding Note
- The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:41:43
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn511029
Additional Resources
Transcripts (6)
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- This record is digitized but cannot be downloaded online.
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Also in Oral history interviews of the Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto collection
Contains oral history interviews with sixteen Holocaust survivors recorded in preparation for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's exhibition, "Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto," which opened in Nov. 1997. Collection includes interviews with: Brigitte Altman, Miriam Gershwin, Eta Hecht, Henry Kellen, Tamar Lazerson, David Levine, Jacob Lewin, Esther Lurie, Ted Pais, Avraham Pnina, Abraham Rodstein, Ivar Segalowitz, Avraham Tory, Helen Yermus, Celia Yewlow, and Berel Zisman. The interviewees discuss their experiences of living in the ghetto in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania, during the Holocaust
Date: 1997 May-1997 July
Oral history interview with David Levine
Oral History
Oral history interview with Celia Yewlow
Oral History
Oral history interview with Brigitte Altman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ivar Segalowitz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Eta Hecht
Oral History
Oral history interview with Henry Kellen
Oral History
Oral history interview with Abraham Rodstein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Miriam Gershwin
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ted Pais
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jacob Lewin
Oral History
Oral history interview with Helen Yermus
Oral History
Oral history interview with Avraham Tory
Oral History
Avraham Tory (né Golub), born in 1910 in the small town of Lazdijai, Lithuania, discusses hiding in Kovno (Kaunas, Lithuania) when the war broke out on June 22, 1941; keeping a diary for three years; life in the Kovno ghetto and life in hiding for four and a half months; leaving Kovno to go to Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania); escaping in February 1945 and going to Lublin, Poland; his escape route through Bucharest, Romania as well as Czechoslovakia and Hungary; crossing the Austrian border and subsequently going to Italy, where he became active in the illegal immigration movement; arriving in Tel Aviv on October 17, 1947; his early years in Palestine; and the sequence of events that led to the publication of the “Surviving the Holocaust: the Kovno Ghetto diary” (see https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/bib2956).
Oral history interview with Pnina Tory
Oral History
Oral history interview with Esther Lurie
Oral History
Oral history interview with Tamar Lazerson
Oral History