Series XXVIII: Various Materials from inside and outside the Ghetto

The Sutzkever-Kaczerginski Collection, RG 223 Part I, relates to the Vilna Ghetto during the Nazi occupation. The records of this collection reflect primarily the activities of the Judenrat in Vilna Ghetto No. 1, its various departments and antecedents, and the Jewish interaction with the German and Lithuanian authorities. Daily life and living conditions in the ghetto are clearly reflected in these documents. Detailed reports of the Statistical Department based on material gathered from all departments of the Judenrat, serve as good sources for studying Jewish life in the Vilna Ghetto. Added to this material are records generated by the experiences of former Vilna Ghetto inhabitants among the partisans, and in Nazi labor camps and concentration camps during the war. Some of these records were written while the war was still in progress; some, soon after it had ended. Also included in this collection are items which relate to Jewish life in Vilna immediately after the Holocaust, and post-war testimonies against war criminals or in praise of righteous gentiles.

The records consists of: maps of the ghetto, 1942; diaries, chronicles and manuscripts on the history of the ghetto by Zelig Kalmanowicz, Herman Kruk, Yitskhok Rudashevski, and Szmerke Kaczerginski; personal identification documents such as badges, armbands, identification cards, food cards, and a variety of different colored passes, each with its own meaning; materials on the ghetto administration and its divisions: health, social relief, distribution and supply, statistics, ghetto police, ghetto court, cultural affairs, labor, and education; materials on various cultural groups and their activities; issues of the “Geto yedies” (Ghetto news-bulletin), 1942-43, a weekly bulletin, appearing every Sunday; materials about the partisan groups in and outside the ghetto, including underground publications, and materials on life in the labor and concentration camps.

It should be noted that the Records of Vilna Jewish Community Council 1800-1940, RG 10 in the YIVO Archives, includes numerous documents generated during the first year of the German occupation of Vilna. Also to be noted are many items in the Berlin Collection, RG 215 in the YIVO Archives, which are relevant to the Vilna Ghetto, such as folders: OCCE 3-33, 38, 40, containing the correspondence during 11/7-12/3/41 of the Reichskommissar für das Ostland concerning the Wehrmacht complaint about the liquidation of Wehrmacht-employed Jewish workers in Vilna, and folder OCCE 3bα-99, containing ordinances of the Vilna District Commissioner, Hingst, 1941.