װ אַ ר ש ע. זאָל איך מיך נישט שעמען אויסצוזאָגן: שװער מיר װעגן דעם צו דערמאָנען, אָבער װיפֿל מאָל האָב איך שוין געװײנט צוליב דער מאַמעשטאָט זינט איך האָב איר פֿאַרלאָזן אין מײַן גלות־װעג? הײַנט האָבן מיר זיך װידער געגאָסן טרערן פֿון די אויגן װען איך האָב אויסגעהערט אַ גענויעם און באַריכותדיקן גרוס פֿון װאַרשע.
עטלעכע צװאַנציק יאָר געזעלשאַפֿטעלעכע טעטיקײט אין װאַרשע. יעדער שטײן איז מיר נאָענט. אַלץ האָט אין מיר געפֿיבערט װען מען האָט דערצײלט װעגן דעם.
װאָס קומט דאָרט פֿאָר? […]
אין װאַרשע שטאַרבן טעגלעך 500 מענטשן. די אָרעמקײט און דער הונגער איז אַזוי גרויס, אַז עס זענען פֿאַראַן זײער אַ סך פֿאַלן, װוּ עס איז נישטאָ פֿאַר װאָס מקבר צו זײַן מתים. דאַן דער אויסװעג – מען װאַרפֿט אַרויס די מתים אין גאַס. פּשוט און אָן צערעמאָניעס. […]
אין װאַרשע דערשײַנט אומלעגאַל אַ ייִדישע צײַטונג פֿון “בונד”, אַ צײַטונג פֿון “צוקונפֿט” און אַ צײַטונג פֿונ דער “צוקונפֿט” אין פּויליש. עס דערשײַנען אויך 3 אומלעגאַלע פּוילישע טאָגצײַטונגען. […]
איך פֿאַרשרײַב די דאָזיקע ידיעות נאָר דערפֿאַר, כּדי מיט דער צײַט, אויב איך װעל דאָס דערלעבן, קענען עס קאָנטאָלירן װי אַזוי ידיעות זענען צו אונדז דערגאַנגען. עס איז כאַראַקטעריסטיש פֿאַר דער געשאַפֿענער לאַגע און פֿאַר דעם טרויעריקן מצבֿ אין װעלכן מיר געפֿינען זיך.
אָפּגעריסן פֿון דער װעלט און אָפּגעשײדט פֿונעם נאָענטסטן אַרום.
“Warsaw. Shouldn’t I be ashamed to say it? It’s hard for me to mention it, but how many times have I wept for my home town since I left it in my exile? Today, once again, my eyes filled with tears when I listened to a detailed and extensive message from Warsaw.
Some twenty years of social activity in Warsaw. I know every stone there. Everything in me was feverish when they told me about it.
What is happening there? […]
In Warsaw, 500 people die every day. There is so much poverty and hunger that there is often nothing with which to bury the dead. The solution: the dead bodies are thrown in the street. Simply and without ceremony. […]
In Warsaw, a Yiddish newspaper of the Bund is published illegally, also a paper of Tsukunft 11The youth organization of the Bund in Poland and a Tsukunft paper in Polish. Three Polish daily newspapers also appear illegally. […]
I record the news from there only because in the future, if I live to see it, I will be able to check how news reached us. It is characteristic of the situation and of the sad state we find ourselves in.
Isolated from the world and cut off from the milieu that was dear to us.”
On 23 June 1941, the German Wehrmacht occupied Vilnius. Herman Kruk (1897-1944), a Polish Jew and activist of the Bund, lives in the city since his flight from Warsaw in 1939. On 28 August 1941, when Warsaw was already occupied by the National Socialists, he chronicles his pain when he thinks about his chosen hometown Warsaw and the destruction that obliterated most parts of his former life. The diary entry points to the present absence that haunts most migratory life.
Kruk lived in Vilnius for almost four years and experienced the fate of the Jewish community under Soviet, Lithuanian, again Soviet and finally German occupation. From 1941 until 1943, he lived in the Vilna Ghetto. Kruk documented his time in Vilnius as a chronicler. In 1943, he was deported to the concentration camp Klooga nearby Tallinn where he was murdered in September 1944. Parts of his manuscripts are missing until today.
Yiddish Original (PDF): Kruk, Herman, 1961: Togbuch fun Vilner geto, New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, pp. 37f.
For English translation, see: Kruk, Herman, 2002: The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939-1944, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 77.
Shortly after the German attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, it was decided within the first week of the war that the Polish government was to be withdrawn eastbound as Warsaw was threatened. The Polish press, among them representatives of the Jewish Polish press, was to be rescued as part of the evacuation plans.
On 8 February, 1940, Pese R. entered the office of the "Committee to Collect Material about the Destruction of Polish Jewry, 1939" in Vilnius, Lithuania in order to give an interview. She was one of many Polish Jewish refugees who had found shelter in Vilnius.
On 21 December, 1939, Chaim-Leyb D. was interviewed by the "Committee to Collect Material about the Destruction of Polish Jewry, 1939" in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Among the more than 10,000 Jews who were stranded in Vilnius in the fall of 1939 there was the librarian and political activist Herman Kruk from Warsaw. His exceptional diary records and press reports sketch a mosaic of the heterogenous society of refugees in Vilnius since the beginning of the war.
This list documents a selection of names, “nationalities”, arrival dates and places of origin of refugees who arrived in Vilnius in 1939.
Marcel Weyland (born 1927 in Łódź) survived the Holocaust thanks in part to Sugihara Chiune (1900-1986), the Japanese consul in Kaunas. Thanks to him,…
On the night of September 5 to September 6, 1939, only a few days after the German attack on Poland, a group of Jewish…
Mendel Balberyszski (1894-1966) was born in Vilnius but had been living in Łódź for over a decade at the outbreak of the Second World…
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Photo collection by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
Ilija Trojanow, who fled with his parents from Bulgaria to Germany in 1971 and whose life is marked by experiences of migration, deals in…
Ilija Trojanow, who fled with his parents from Bulgaria to Germany in 1971 and whose life is marked by experiences of migration, deals in…
This is one of the crucial excerpts from Hannah Arendt’s essay “We Refugees” that she published in 1943 shortly after arriving in New York.
