קומענדיק קײן װילנע, האָב איך זיך גלײַך גענומען צוריק צו געזעלשאַפֿטלעכער אַרבעט. כ’האָב קודם־כּל אָנגעשריבן אַן אַרבעט װעגן מײַן װאַנדערװעג פֿון לאָדזש קײן װילנע. די אַרבעט האָב איך געגעבן נח פּרילוצקי, װעלכער האָט מיט “דזשאָינט”־מיטלען שוין באַװיזן צו אָרגאַניזירן אַ היסטאָרישע קאָמיסיע צו זאַמלען אַלע מעגלעכע מאַטעריאַלן פֿון דער דאָזיקער צײַט. סעקרעטאַר פֿון דאָזיקן ביוראָ איז געװען הערש גוטגעשטאַלט (אַ בונדיסט פֿון װאַרשע). דאָס ביוראָ האָט אויפֿגעזאַמלט אַ געװאַלטיקע צאָל מאַטעריאַל װעגן דײַטשישע רציחות אין אַ רײ שטעט און שטעטלעך פֿון פּוילן, פֿאַר די ערשטע חדשים פֿון זײער הערשאַפֿט. ידיעות פֿון יענער זײַט פֿלעגן אָנקומען כּסדר דורך פּליטים. עס האָבן זיך אין דער געהײמער קאָמיסיע אָנגעזאַמלט גבֿיות־עדותן, דאָקומענטן, געלע לאַטעס, מיט מגן־דוד’ס אין פֿאַרשידענע פֿאָרמען, דײַטשע אונטערדריקונגען, פֿאַראָרדענונגען א.אַ.װ.
When I came to Vilnius, I immediately resumed my social activities. First of all I wrote a report about my walk from Łódź to Vilnius. I gave the work to Noyekh Prilutski, who had already managed, with Joint funds, to organize a historical commission to collect all sorts of materials from that time. Secretary of this office was Hersh Gutgeshtalt (a Bundist from Warsaw). The office has accumulated a huge amount of material about German crimes in a number of cities and shtetlekh in Poland in the first months of their rule. News from the other side used to come through refugees all the time. The secret commission had accumulated testimonies, documents, yellow badges with Stars of David in various forms, German repression, decrees, etc.
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 War. In the interwar period, Balberyszski was an editor of the Yiddish newspaper Der Tog (The Day) in Vilnius. He became a member of the Polish Jewish Folkspartey (People’s Party) and, as part of it, fought for cultural autonomy for Polish Jewry. In 1925, Balberyszski founded the Association of Jewish Craftsmen and Small Entrepreneurs in Łódź and became the president of the largest Jewish aid organization Noten Lekhem (Bread Giver). In 1939, he became the leader of the Polish Democratic Party, one of the three most important political parties in interwar Poland.
In the first days of September 1939, he decided to flee from the German Wehrmacht to Vilnius, where he arrived in relief on September 29. Here he took part in a large documentation project of German crimes, which was initiated by the Jewish refugee community with Noyekh Prilutski 11Noyekh Prilutski (1882-1941) was a publicist, philologist and politician. He initially published in Russian and Hebrew, and from 1908 onwards mainly in and about Yiddish, for example in the journal Yidishe filologye, which he co-founded and edited. He founded and led the Jewish Folkspartey, with which he campaigned for the political interests of the national minority as a parliamentary representative in the 1920s. After his flight from Poland to Vilnius, he took over the chair of Yiddish language and culture there and headed the YIVO from January 1941. After the German occupation of the city, Prilutski was murdered by the Nazis in August. See Weiser, Kalman: Pryłucki, Noah, in: The YIVO Encayclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe: https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pry%C5%82ucki_Noah (October 17, 2019). as initiator and with the financial support of the Joint. Founded in November 1939, the so-called Komitet tsu zamlen materialn vegn yidishn khurbn in Poyln 1939 (Committee for the Collection of Material on the Destruction of Jewish Communities in Poland 1939) is considered one of the earliest historical Jewish commissions to offer documentary resistance in the shadow of the incipient Holocaust. 11For the history of the committee, see Schulz, Miriam, 2016: Der Beginn des Untergangs. Die Zerstörung der jüdischen Gemeinden in Polen und das Vermächtnis des Wilnaer Komitees. Berlin: Metropol. (http://metropol-verlag.de/produkt/miriam-schulz-der-beginn-des-untergangs/).
Balberyszski survived the “liquidation” of the small and large ghetto in Vilnius and experienced the liberation by the Red Army in a concentration camp in Estonia. After the end of the war he emigrated to Australia and continued to be actively involved in Jewish community work. He founded the Association of Partisans and Camp Survivors, of which he became president. His memoir Shtarker fun ayzn : Iberlebungen in der Hitler-tkufe (“Stronger than Iron, Surviving in Hitlers era”), this text being part of it, was published in 1967.
Excerpt:
Mendel Balberyszski, Shtarker fun ayzn : Iberlebungen in der Hitler-tkufe, Vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: HaMenorah, 1967), pp. 88.
From the Yiddish Book Center’s Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library.
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.
Internal communications between the Vilnius delegation of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the New York Headquarters.
Ilija Trojanow, who fled with his parents from Bulgaria to Germany in 1971 and whose life is marked by experiences of migration, deals in…
The Polish Jewish family Weyland from Łódź survived the Holocaust thanks in part to Sugihara Chiune (1900–1986), the Japanese consul in Kaunas just before…
On 24 June 1941, Kruk writes about his discouragement regarding his futile attempts to leave Vilnius for the USA shortly after the German attack…
Herman Kruk writes in his diary about his flight from Warsaw to Vilnius, September 1939.
Herman Kruk writes about his pain facing the catastrophic war situation in his chosen hometown Warsaw.
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Photo series by Bolesława and Edmund Zdanowscy
On the night of September 5 to September 6, 1939, only a few days after the German attack on Poland, a group of Jewish…
