Children…

In the Baltics
The map to the left is taken from a report filed by Einsatzgruppe
A, which operated mainly in the Baltic countries. It shows the
number of “completed Jew executions”, illustrated by a “body
count” and a coffin. Estonia is declared “free of Jews”. The bottom
line says “Estimated number of still extant Jews: 128,000”.
In the Baltics, Belarus and Ukraine the Germans often received
assistance from local militia and regular German army units.
Avraham Tory was a lawyer who survived the Kaunas ghetto
in Lithuania. In his diary, he describes a day in 1941 when the
inhabitants of the ghetto were taken to a “selection”: Who would
live and who would die?
“Tuesday morning, October 28, was rainy. A heavy mist covered
the sky and the whole Ghetto was shrouded in darkness.
A fine sleet filled the air and covered the ground in a thin layer.
From all directions, dragging themselves heavily and falteringly,
groups of men, women, and children, elderly and sick who leaned
on the arms of their relatives or neighbours, babies carried in
their mothers’ arms, proceeded in long lines.
They were all wrapped in winter coats, shawls, or blankets, so
as to protect themselves from the cold and the damp.
Many carried in their hands lanterns or candles, which cast a
faint light, illuminating their way in the darkness.
Many families stepped along slowly, holding hands.
They all made their way in the same direction – to Demokratu
Square. It was a procession of mourners, grieving over themselves.
Some thirty thousand people proceeded that morning into
the unknown, toward a fate that could already have been sealed
for them by the bloodthirsty rulers.
A deathlike silence pervaded this procession tens of thousands
strong. Every person dragged himself along, absorbed in
his own thoughts, pondering his own fate and the fate of his family
whose lives hung by a thread.
Thirty thousand lonely people, forgotten by God and by man,
delivered to the whim of tyrants, whose hands had already spilled
the blood of many Jews.”
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