Small Riga Ghetto

184
How strongly Jewish religious life pulsated here! It was, after all, the city of
the great Vilno gaon (leading rabbinical scholars)! The magnificent, unique
synagogue rose out of the tangle of narrow streets of the Vilno ghetto of former
and present times. In it the famous zadik (holy man) had learned and
taught. How many unique and special things were contained in the synagogue
courtyard alone! Just as every Catholic's duty was to visit the holy Ostra
Brama when he came to Vilno, so was the great gaon synagogue a place of
pilgrimage for us Jews.
Secular Jews founded in Vilno the greatest institute of Jewish studies, called
the YIVO. All the treasures of Jewish art and literature were collected there,
and they were destroyed * along with the rest of Jewish Vilno.
In these notes I must not fail to mention the names of Dr. Zemach Schabad
and Dr. Wigodski. It may be that I too owe my life to these well-known Vilno
personalities.
I would also like to remind the reader of the names of the great Jewish artist
Antokolski and the tragicomedian Motke Chabad, and of the great Jewish library
of Straschun.
Today Jewish Vilno exists no more. Today Vilno is synonymous with Panar
(where many thousands of Jews were killed); this name belongs together with
those of Kaiserwald, Klooga (Estonia), and later on the Stutthof, Buchenwald
and Dachau concentration camps. The Vilno Jews too owe their deaths for the
most part to the local Lithuanian population.
The old city was badly damaged, but Jewish Vilno was totally destroyed.
XV.
On 25 November 1943 it was my turn: I had to go to Kaiserwald!
A large eight-ton open truck took me together with the rest of the Jews from
the already liquidated Small Ghetto into this new world.
Besides the usual guards, our new "host" – the supreme commander of the
Kaiserwald concentration camp, Obersturmbannführer Sauer – drove alongside
us in a beautiful small private car.
We said farewell to our ghetto from afar.
Once more, the memory of all the bloodshed and suffering we had experienced
there pierced us like a bolt of lightning.
In my thoughts I said farewell to the old Jewish cemetery.
* [Ed.: A good part of the YIVO library was saved and is now located in New York.]