Michael Shemyavitz — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

1926-2018

"The Jews in the ghetto worked day and night to find ways to build hiding places: melinas. The name was borrowed from the slang of the underworld of Vilna, referring to the place where stolen goods were stored. Two melinas were also built in our house.

My mother and I, together with several other residents in the house, ran to hide. The melina was on the ground floor of the building in the area of the shops (I have already mentioned that the front of our building was outside the ghetto).  There were two entrances to the shops: the main entrance from the street and a back entrance. Both entrances were blocked by the Germans. We broke through the back entrance, put benches, a container of water and a first aid kit in the shop. We closed off the entrance with a large cupboard that had iron rings on the back. When we went inside we pulled the cupboard that obscured the entrance way.

There was a family with us in the melina, a couple with their daughter-in-law and two-year old grandson. The child cried and there was a real danger that we would be discovered. The grandmother announced that she was prepared to sacrifice herself and her grandson so as not to endanger the others. She was prepared to leave the hiding place and give herself and the child up. Fortunately, the child stopped crying and fell asleep.

We were in there for about six hours when the cupboard was moved from outside and the ghetto police burst in. They assembled us in the yard where there were already dozens of Lithuanians and Ukrainians. They hit the women and the elderly over the head with the butts of their rifles indiscriminately. They found my tefilin (phylacteries) bag while searching through my pockets. The Ukrainian thought it was a grenade so he threw it to the corner of the yard and hit me. Fortunately he missed my head and the blow landed on my shoulder. While we were standing in the yard, more and more Jews who lived in the building and had been in hiding joined us. There was an orphanage with about fifty children in one of the wings of the building. Most of the staff abandoned the children and went into hiding. To this day, I can still hear the sound of the cries and shouts of the untreated, starving children. The poor wretched children were thrown on to a truck crying and shouting from pain and fear.

Two of the caregivers from the orphanage who were with the children were also thrown on to the truck. We were led to the exit gate."

source:  the blog: Toldot Michael (The History of Michael)