Abraham Sutzkever-Szmerke Kaczerginski Vilna Ghetto Collection

On 9/19/39, Vilna was taken over by the Soviet Army. A few weeks later, on 10/10/39, the city was ceded to the Lithuanians. On 10/28/39, the Lithuanians took control of Vilna and three days of anti-Jewish rioting took place, with the Lithuanian police joining the rioters and beating the Jews. On 7/15/40, the Soviet Army took over Lithuania, and by 8/3/40, Vilna, as part of Lithuania, was incorporated into the Soviet Union. All Jewish institutions and organizations were disbanded, which created a vacuum of responsible and committed communal leadership, so long characteristic of Vilna Jewry.

On 6/22/41, the Germans invaded Lithuania, and by 6/24/41, they occupied Vilna. Persecution of Vilna’s Jewish population began immediately. A few days after the invasion, the German military authorities and the Lithuanian local officials proclaimed a number of anti-Jewish decrees: Jews had to wear special bands and later on, the yellow badge; they could not change their living quarters, use the sidewalks, public transportation, or recreational areas, and certain streets were entirely off limits; a night curfew was imposed, and shopping for the Jews became highly restricted. On 7/4/41 the Germans ordered that a Judenrat (Jewish Council) be established. In 7/41, Einsatzkommando 9 together with Lithuanian collaborators rounded up 5000 Jewish men in Vilna, took them to Ponary, a town 7.5 miles away, and murdered them.

Between the end of 7/41 and early 8/41, control of Lithuania passed from the German Army to the German Civil Administration, Lithuania becoming part of Reichskommissariat Ostland. Hans Christian Hingst was appointed the Vilna District Commissioner, and Franz Murer became his Deputy for Jewish Affairs. On 8/6/41 these officials demanded that 5 million rubles be paid to them as tribute; only 1,490,000 rubles, 33 pounds of gold, and 189 watches could be collected by the Jews.

Then came the “Great Provocation,” staged by the Germans as a sniper attack on their own soldiers, but blamed on the Jews, and followed by the Aktion of 8/31-9/3/4, carried out in retaliation for this supposed crime. 8000 Jews were taken to Ponary and murdered, including most members of the Judenrat. Two ghettos were then set up where most of these Jews had lived, Ghetto No. 1, and Ghetto No. 2. On 9/6/41, about 30,000 Jews were moved into Ghetto No. 1, and about 10,000 Jews into Ghetto No. 2, and 6,000 more were taken to Ponary and killed. On 9/7/41, the Germans set up a Judenrat for Ghetto No. 1 headed by A. Fried and a Judenrat for Ghetto 2, headed by E. Lejbowicz. They also organized a Jewish police force headed by Jacob Gens.

From 9/15/41-10/21/41, those families having at least one parent with a work permit were moved into Ghetto No. 1, but families without at least one parent with a work permit were moved into Ghetto No. 2. Meanwhile, the “Yom Kippur Aktion” took place on 10/1/41. Further Aktionen took place on 10/3-4/41, 10/15-16/41, and 10/21/41, which liquidated all the Jews in Ghetto No. 2.

The Germans planned to allow 12,000 Jews to remain alive in Ghetto No. 1. They distributed 3,000 work passes among the Jews in this remaining ghetto, permitting the bearers to register a spouse and 2 children. The Aktionen of 10/24/41, 11/3-5/41, and those in December, brought the legal population of Jews in Ghetto No. 1 down to 12,000, with another illegal 8,000 Jews in hiding.

A relatively peaceful period without mass murders now began, lasting from January of 1942 until March of 1943. Most Jews were employed at workshops in the ghetto or at jobs outside of the ghetto, in accordance with the Judenrat belief that the Germans would allow those Jews to survive who were of economic value to them. Cultural activities were resumed. On 7/15/42 Jacob Gens, as ordered by the Vilna District Commissioner, became the sole Judenrat chief, with Fried continuing as the assistant for administrative matters. In this capacity, Gens was personally responsible to the German authorities for law and order in the ghetto, and the dispensing of food, clothing, heating materials, and all social services needed to maintain the well-being of the ghetto inmates. The Judenrat established a wide range of departments in order to control all aspects of ghetto economic, social, and cultural life. Religious life, synagogues and yeshivas, continued to function surreptitiously.

The situation of the Jews in the Vilna Ghetto began to deteriorate in the spring of 1943. The surrounding smaller ghettos were first liquidated. In 6-7/43, labor camps where Vilna Ghetto Jews worked were liquidated. These liquidations undermined the confidence of the Vilna Ghetto’s inmates in their future. They could no longer believe that their economic usefulness to the Germans would protect them from extermination.

On 1/18/42, the FPO (United Partisan Organization) was established in the Vilna Ghetto. This movement coexisted with the Judenrat leadership well enough at first until the spring of 1943, when Jacob Gens began to feel that the partisans’ activities posed an ominous danger to the remaining Jews of Vilna. The most serious confrontation occurred in 7/43 when Yitzhak Wittenberg the commander of the FPO, while under arrest, was freed by FPO members. The Nazis demanded his return, and under pressure from Gens, the ghetto inmates, and even fellow FPO members, he surrendered himself to the Nazis and was soon dead.

Heinrich Himmler’s order of 6/21/43, that all the Jewish ghettos in the Reichskommissariat Ostland were to be liquidated, meant that the end of the Vilna Ghetto was near. The final liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto occurred on 9/23-24/43. 3,700 Jews were sent to concentration camps in Latvia and Estonia. Other Vilna Jews perished in Sobibór and Ponary, with about 2,500 remaining in Vilna labor camps. A few hundred FPO members escaped into the surrounding forests. On 7/2-3/44, the Jews in the local labor camps were taken to Ponary and were killed there. From the time of the establishment of the Vilna Ghetto until a year after its liquidation in 1943, approximately 70,000 Jews met their death at Ponary. Vilna was liberated by the Russian Army on 7/13/44. Only between 2,000 and 3,000 Jews survived, out of a pre-war population of 57, 000.

References:

Arad: Yitzhak Arad, “Ghetto in flames,” Holocaust Library, New York, (1982).

Kruk: Herman Kruk, “The last days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania,” YIVO and Yale University Press, New Haven and London, (2002).