Moshe Shutan — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

He was born in 1924 in the town of Švenčionys in Poland to his parents Shmuel and Reisel as their only son together with five sisters. He studied at a Yiddish school. In 1941, when the war broke out between Germany and the Soviet Union, a group of five friends and Moshe gathered and discussed the question: to flee or stay. They stayed because of their families. Before the Germans occupied the town, they decided to fight the Nazis on the home front. The decision stemmed from the education they received from their teachers at the school and from the influence of the classical literature they read. The members of the group managed to obtain weapons during the German occupation, and before the liquidation of the Švenčionys ghetto in March 1943, a group of twenty-two comrades went out into the forest. After 10 days, Moshe decided to return to the ghetto and begged his family to go out to the forest with him, but only one sister, Esther, agreed and thus survived. Most of Moshe's activity as a partisan was focused on evacuating Jews from the Vilna Ghetto. In 1944, with the entry of the Red Army, Moshe was drafted into the army and when released sought to implement the decision he took when he was a partisan in the forest and make Aliyah to Eretz Israel. On his way to Israel during Aliyah B., he was captured and sent to a detention camp in Cyprus. After the establishment of the State, he was released, arrived in Israel in January 1949, and was drafted into the Palmach. Today Moshe is married. He had an only daughter, Nehama, who died of a fatal disease in 1999. He has published two books: "Ghetto and Forest" and "Steps in the Fog".

"My name is Moshe Shutan. I was born in the town of Švenčionys near Vilna. I grew up in a family of six children. My father worked at all kinds of jobs. Mother was a writer. We all studied in a Yiddish school. I started working with Father at a young age. From the age of nine I started helping him at work. And I went to school. When the Russians came, they liquidated all Jewish institutions; but the Yiddish school remained. Some friends went to a Russian school. They also opened a Russian school. I wanted to continue the heritage of the Jews: Shalom Aleichem, Mendele Mokher Sefarim, Shalom Ash, and I. L.Peretz. As writers, I considered them to be no less than the world's writers. And they spoke to my heart.

I will now move on to the period when World War II began in '41. A week before that there was talk that something was brewing. And people said that... war would break out. I had a friend who was my neighbour, Garman. He returned from Vilna to Švenčionys a few days before war broke out, and he said that on the way he saw trains with tanks and cannons driving down to the border. Indeed, on June 22, war broke out. We children were on leave from school. Panic broke out because we did not know what to do since the German attack was so powerful that the government did not say anything seeing the local people began to flee, and the Jewish population panicking as well. The panic was that the Germans were coming. Who were the Germans? Usually they knew. Avraham, the father of Ishika, was a Jew whose whole life centered on politics. He wanted to know what was going on because we did not know what was going on at the front. We had no news except the newspaper that we managed to obtain. The radio . . . An order went out to hand over all radios, and we were left with nothing. He managed to get a radio and we heard ... We heard radio Russia, Moscow. What did they talk about? They said that they, the Soviet army, the Red Army was holding on. That they were succeeding in stopping them. They even said that Germans were killing Jews. In what town, I don't remember exactly, but they said that seventy Jews were shut in some house and they killed them all...

They appealed to the population left at the home front, to the young people, and told them to join the partisans. That was in August '41. That they talked about going to join the partisans was for us ... well, how to say it ... kept us strong ... it gave us hope that the way we had chosen was the right one. We also managed to hear radio London. They appealed to the Polish people to keep weapons, to equip themselves with arms, but not to go out and fight. They would send a command of when to go out to fight. Meanwhile they should stay quiet. We once managed to hear radio Jerusalem. They spoke Hebrew. We thought it was some kind of appeal of the Jews there to our own Jews. There was nothing.

If at least from Russia, from Moscow, they would have said say 'Fight! 'Act'! But nothing .. . And persecutions were already taking place that killed forty people in our town, then one hundred. A month later, at the start of the war, the Germans decided to expel all Jews from the town and told them to form a ghetto. Part of the population would remain in the ghetto. First all the Jews had to enter the ghetto. After leading all Jews from Polygon, they said that on Sunday all Jews should enter the ghetto. Shayke's entire family was taken along with his father Abraham. And the radio stayed on. What to do with the radio? So he put it in a bag and brought it to the ghetto and we stayed in one house. He came with us and sat down. My mother asks: 'What are you sitting on? What's in the bag?' So he answered: 'A radio.' She heard 'radio', and turned pale. She said: 'Take out the radio quickly so I don't see it.' He took the radio, I don't know where. He placed it somewhere and came back.

In the meantime, an order was issued that all the head of families should gather in the ghetto's square 'on the main street' because the Germans were looking for something. So my father said, 'I'll go see what they're talking about over there.' My mother replied, 'Don't go.' My father answered, 'No, no; I want to go." So he went there and saw a Lithuanian officer with about ten Lithuanian policemen. They surrounded them and took them to prison. The next day, they took every one to the Ckasana ghetto, under Lithuanian guard. They asked: 'Where is your family?' So he brought them to an empty house, and said, 'They were there!' They found no one, so they left. That's how we were saved. Ten days later, we heard in the ghetto that all the Jews in Polygon had been murdered, among them my father and my grandmother. We were in shock. We did not know how we would survive; what would happen. All the women were at a loss. Rudol Galinsky, worked alongside Shayke Gertman at sign-making shop. That's the way Rudol met Shayke who loved to talk and show off. So he saw that since he is such a fighter type, he told him, 'Come on, Shayke: hear me out. You keep saying you have to fight. Do you know where we worked?' We worked in Khronka where there was a camp and now there were weapons kept there. Shayke heard about the weapons and came over to me right away. 'Moshe, there is a warehouse with weapons.' And we told this to all the comrades. We went to the Judenrat to say we were ready to go there to work. And they sent us. That's how we entered a warehouse that had weapons left over from the Russians when they retreated and threw away a lot of guns, and machine guns. There were even 120mm cannons there. I didn't know anything. I had never held a rifle in my hands, but they let us work there to clean the weapons. So we had to take out the bolts and lubricate them. That's how we worked. We said now is our chance to steal weapons; but there were two Germans: one Pampabel whom they called Schinke, and another one, a soldier called Hess - a simple solider. This soldier did not leave our side even for a minute which was really bad. There was nothing we could do. One day, he fell ill. He fell ill and Pampabel was left alone. He did not sit with us all the time. He would go out, come back, go out again and return. So we said today is the day we can take out a weapon. But we had a problem. We were not the only ones working there. Others did as well; and there were even some girls too. So we were afraid. We were together; they will see us take guns. So what to do? There was one man there who didn't belong to the group, named Gerschke Nadey, and I approached him ... he was 15 years old. I said: 'Listen, Gerschke, you know the situation of the Jews. You know what the Germans are planning to do to us. 'We need ... if we can take a weapon, what do you think, should we take one or not?' He answered, 'Yes,' without hesitating. Without thinking too much he immediately said yes. But I was still scared. He said yes, but it's a different story if he sees us take the guns. Maybe he can report us. So I said to him: 'Are you ready to take guns?' He answered, 'Yes.' When he said yes, I chose a Presença rifle with a stock and shorten barrel and I told him: 'Put this in your pants.'

It was winter and we wore our closed coats so it couldn't be seen. And so ... we finished work and in the yard was a gate where Lithuanians stood. Lithuanian police officers guarded it, and we passed through, and the Lithuanians who saw us leave with the Germans - what did they care - weren't suspicious. That's the way he brought the weapon out. I told him to give it to me in the ghetto toilet, and he handed it to me there. I hid the weapon in my attic under sand. The houses there were wooden houses with planks on the ceiling, and on these planks they would pour sand, that in case of fire the sand would put it out. So I hid the Presença under that sand. But that same day Itzhak Rudnisky also brought a Presença. He did not tell us that he had taken one as well, so now we already had two. When I look back, I or Itzhak or someone else should have taken weapons, as it was our duty, but this Gerschke didn't have to. And since he did, I see him as a hero. For me, he was the first to bring a weapon into the ghetto. Now that we had acquired a weapon, we were transformed from an ideological to a combat group. So we started taking more weapons from there. We even brought other guns, and a lot of ammunition and bullets. We started accepting more comrades, to tell them to bring in more guys into the group. And we came to have ... we had around fifteen people. We decided to hold a meeting and choose the head of the group and some deputies to coordinate actions - not each individually, but in an organized manner. So we chose the leader of the group to be Berl Yochai. I and another - I don't remember his name - would be his deputies. We continued working. We continued stealing weapons. And there came the day the German said that we had finished the work. I said, if so, it will no longer be possible to steal weapons, so we prepared fifteen rifles and decided to come back at night to take them out, and bring them to the ghetto. When we came to the ghetto and gathered we already had a commander. We said that we must carry out this operation. So we voted. It was interesting to see that all the first guys who had joined the group were the ones who decided to pick up the weapons. All those others who had joined later, refused. They were the majority and that's how it remained.

There occurred an incident in May '42. Suddenly we received the news that Russian partisans not far away, some 7-8 kilometers from our town, had killed two officers from Švenčionys, our town - two German officers. With them was a Polish girl the Germans used as a translator. They didn't kill her. Later, she came and told that among the partisans ... she saw one named Markov. Who was this Markov? Markov, under the Poles, was in the Communists Underground. The Poles did not want to give him a job so he worked as a teacher in our Yiddish school. He taught Polish language and history. That's how we happened to know he was a good friend. He was also a sports teacher. That way we got to know him pretty well. The fact that Markov was in the partisan group created a positive push to join. There is one we know you can contact, who is already a partisan. There are partisans in the area. So we decided to go out and look for contacts. One was Schinke Levy who also joined the group - he and his brother, Rufke Levy. Since he was a cattle dealer he would go to the villages so he knew the roads. I went out with him once. We came to some village. We travelled over thirty 30 kilometres but did not find what we were looking for. The farmer he knew said he didn't know, so we went back. I'm talking about May '42. We went through this whole period of summer. In the ghetto people begin to believe, if they had not believed this before, that the Germans would lose the war. After Stalingrad, Red Army leaflets fell from the sky with pictures of how the German prisoners of war were being held… so many Germans - a quarter of a million prisoners. This lifted our moral quite a bit, but to go join the partisans, since we did not find any more contacts, the new comrades didn't want to go.

We come to the winter of '43. The Germans brought more Jews from the area of Belarus to our ghetto. Where will they place them? Where there's room; where people already lived. There was terrible overcrowding. Eventually a typhoid epidemic broke out and the winter was hard with people dying of the disease. There were almost no medications. And what did the Judenrat do? They went from house to house looking for the sick. If they came upon some sick people, they immediately placed them in one house. The officer - the police commander - told us you must give up your weapons. We said no. We told them that if you collect money to bribe the Germans, we ask you to give us money to buy weapons. They agreed. They gave us 30,000 rubles and we bought a gun. So you could say the Judenrat was happy we were not making trouble, and we were happy they were leaving us to our own devices.

At the end of 1943, Jewish policemen came from Ghetto Vilna to tell us that they planned to move the ghetto from Švenčionys. We assembled and this time everyone agreed that we would go out into the forests without connecting with the partisans. We chose a forest. We had a map of the area. The main thing was that we had a comrade called Schinke Levy who knew the area. He was better than a map and better than a compass - better than anything else. He was a guide inside a person. I told my mother I was going to join the partisans. The first time she found out I had hid a rifle in the attic, she almost fainted. This time she said, go and I wish you success on your way. I said goodbye to the family, my mother, my three sisters, my brother-in-law and the little girl. At night, we assembled near the fence in several groups. Five people went out, and we said we would meet in another place after the town, in the forest. The group consisted of twenty-two people. This included three girls. We said everything should be done quietly so that no one would know – to do so in complete secrecy. We would not take other people, because to take someone you don't know is a danger to the whole group.

When we left, I was the commander of the fifth unit - the last one. The two comrades, whom I knew, came by and asked me to take them to the forest. Since the decision had been not to take anyone else, I told them they couldn't come. So they stayed. Peretz Garzon came and said: 'I am going with you.' I told him: 'No, you are not coming with us.' Can you see ??? he insisted, 'I'm coming with you,' and in spite of it, he joined us. What should I have done? Caused an argument near the fence that the Lithuanian police might hear and come? So he passed and joined us.  What I learned from this is that sometimes, in life, you need shoulders, you need hutzpah when it's a matter of life or death; and Peretz, with his audacity, passed and eventually became a good partisan and helped us a great deal. Well, we went out into the forest; and with Schinke Levy leading we walked about 30 kilometres. He said we will settle here. It was cold. Snow lay under the trees. The place was near a river. We could wash our faces but not our whole body - only hands and face. Food was a problem. How to get food? Basically, food for us was not a problem because we had weapons. Schinke Levy and Peretz knew the area. They knew the peasants, so they would take us, in a group of three people and we would go together. We would knock on the door. The farmer would open. 'Give us food.' We were armed. He had respect for us and so gave us food. In this fashion we went through a difficult time. It rained and it was cold. We therefore built three tents from twigs and branches. It wasn't so bad. That's how we lived. The food, whatever it was, was not cooked; and we would get cut pork from the farmers that we would eat with bread. Everything was cold and wet, but anyway the feeling was that we were free. Our main goal was to make contact with the partisans. Hence, everywhere we would go Peretz and Schinke would ask about them, but we made no contact.

In the meantime, we sat like this for about ten days. We said that since the ghetto remains, we should go and see what was happening with the ghetto. Some six of us went back to the ghetto. I went back to my family. They were glad I was alive when they saw me. I asked what's new. They said they were preparing to go to Vilna Ghetto. Then I thought to myself, if I had already been in the forests then I was a partisan. It does not matter if I had or had not seen Germans before, but my very attempt to live in the forest and get hold of food and weapons - weapons are important – then that showed that I could survive. My family was sent to Kovno. So I said to them, 'Listen, you're going to the forest with me.' So I thought, I have a rifle. . . Whether the group will agree to accept them or not, I don't know. If it does not agree, I will be alone with my family and leave the group. I said to my mother: 'Mother, there is nothing to think about here. We need to get ready for the road.' So she said: 'You know I have a heart condition. How can I endure the walking and the harsh conditions? I can't.' So my little sister Sarale said: 'I'm not leaving Mom'. And another younger sister, Hannale, also said, "I will not leave Mom.' And Abramco said: "How can I go to the forest with a two-year-old girl?" And my sister, Rutke, said: "What my husband says that's what will be.'  So it turned out that no one wanted to go. Only one agreed, my sister Esther. She said: ' I'm going with you.' I said: 'If not the whole family then I won't take just her with me to the forest because the conditions are very difficult.' In the meantime, we heard that the situation in Vilna Ghetto was more or less quiet. I knew I had an uncle in Vilna Ghetto. I'll take her to my uncle. She will be there, and when the situation gets bad, I'll take her then to the partisans. My mother sat with my two sisters in a cart with her face turned away. I went after the cart, and at the end told my sister: 'Now we'll escape.' That was the last time I saw them.

https://www.infocenters.co.il/massuah/notebook_ext.asp?book=59128&lang=heb&site=massuah [Hebrew