אונדזער פּײַנלעכע װאַנדערונג האָט זיך גענומען דערנענטערן צום סוף. מיר האָבן ניט געװוּסט, װאָס עס דערװאַרט אונדז אין װילנע. אָבער מיר האָבן אַלע געפֿילט, אַז װילנע װעט זײַן אַ לענגערער אָפּשטעל אין לאַנגן גלות, װעלכער שטײט אונדז איצטער פֿאָר.
[…] שװער איז אונדז אַלעמען געװען אויפֿן געמיט, װען די באַן איז געפֿאָרן צום באַקאַנטן װילנער װאָקזאַל. הינטער אונדז איז געלעגן אַ שװערער װאַנדער־װעג, אַ פֿאַרשפּילטער קריג און דער אײגענער פֿאַרברענטער נעכטן. פֿאַר אונדז איז געװען אַ פֿינסטערע צוקונפֿט, אַ ביטערע גלות־פּערספּעקטיװ, אַן אומבאַשטימטער מאָרגן. דאָס אײנציקע, װאָס האָט געװאַרעמט אונדזערע הערצער, איז געװען די גרויסע האָפֿענונג אויף אַ צוקונפֿטיקן זיג פֿון די װײַטע פֿאַרבינדעטע איבער די שװאַרצע כּוחות פֿון היטלערן.
Our arduous meandering was slowly coming to an end. We didn’t know what to expect in Vilna, but we all felt that Vilna would be a longer stop of our long exile that was now ahead of us.
[…] We were all melancholic when the train entered the well-known Vilna station. Behind us lay a difficult wandering, a war gambled away and our own burnt yesterday. A dark future lay ahead of us, the prospect of a bitter exile and an indefinite morning. The only thing that warmed our hearts was the great hope for the future victory of the widely ramified allies over Hitler’s black forces.
The journalists reached Vilnius on October 10, 1939 after a long, dangerous and erratic journey. Pinkhas Shvarts 11Herts, Y. Sh. (ed.), 1956–1968: Doyres Bundistn, Vol. 3. New York, pp. 116–122; 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/, p. 93 was on board and relates the ambigious feeling he had when arriving in the city. Shvarts was a member of the Bund, writer and correspondent of the Yiddish Folks-tsaytung (People’s newspaper) in Warsaw and brother of the famous chronicler of the Holocaust in Lithuania, Herman Kruk. 22For biographical details see Kruk, Herman, 2002: The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939-1944. New Haven: Yale University Press. He was one of the few Polish-Jewish writers who managed to get a seat on the so-called journalist train, which left Warsaw for Lublin on the night of September 5-6, 1939, to escape the German invasion. He tells of the fears, guilty conscience and (self-)reproaches that accompanied and plagued the refugees on their flight.
Arriving in Vilnius, the Jewish refugees did not hesitate for long. In November 1939, a group of refugee fellow writers and journalists founded the Committee for the Collection of Material on the Destruction of Jewish Communities in Poland in 1939, probably the earliest Jewish historical commission in Eastern Europe, which, in the shadow of German crimes, secretly began to document the destruction of Polish Jewry since September 1939. Pinkhas Shvarts survived the Shoah by escaping via Vilnius in the direction of New York, and in 1957 became a leading member of the Bund‘s World Coodinating Committee.
Excerpt from:
Pinkhas Shvarts, 1943: Dos iz geven der onheyb, New York: Farlag “Arbeter-ring”, pp. 59–72.
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.
Herman Kruk writes in his diary about his flight from Warsaw to Vilnius, September 1939.
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…
On November 27, 1939, Motel Grajer, a Yeshivah student from Markuszów, Poland, who had escaped the Germans to Vilnius, gave an interview to the…
Benzion Benshalom tells of the hardships of everyday life of the refugees in Vilnius and their worries about the measures taken by the Lithuanian…
Joint Funding Agreement for the “Project for Investigating the Destruction of Jewish Population in Poland and its Current Situation” of the YIVO, 20 November…
Herman Kruk was a refugee from Warsaw who wrote reports on the refugee situation in Vilnius for the Yiddish magazine Folks-gezunt (Public Health) of…
Benzion Benshalom writes about his euphoria after attending a Zionist assembly in Vilnius for the first time.
On 20 November 1939, the YIVO in Vilnius approached the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee with a funding request for the “Project of Investigations…
