Benjamin Anolik
1926-2018
"I was born in May 1926 in Vilna, Poland, the younger of two brothers. My father was a chief accountant and a teacher at the School of Accounting. My mother was a midwife. I studied at the Tushiya Hebrew Day School until the eighth grade. The language of study was Hebrew. At recess we spoke Polish between us. At home, my parents spoke Russian. My grandfather Abraham, on my father's side, lived with us. He was blind. My mother and I would read newspapers to him, and from time to time I would take him to the home of Tanya, his daughter, who lived nearby. My father had two other brothers and a sister. One brother lived in Moscow. My mother's whole family also lived in Moscow. She had no contact with them because of the Soviet regime.
All the residents on our street were Jews. My parents were traditional; we kept kosher and went to synagogue on holidays. My friends were my classmates; we would visit each other on Shabbat, and in the winter would go ice skating in one of the city's parks. In the summer we used to go on a vacation in the country (a dacha), near the Viliya River where we would swim every day with my brother.
In June 1941, Vilna was invaded by the Germans. The decrees against the Jews began. We had to wear a yellow badge; many Jews were caught on the street and inside their homes and taken to prisons; some were taken to the forests and shot. Three months later, all the Jews of Vilna were interned in the ghetto. In the ghetto we were assigned a small room inside an apartment where twenty-five people lived together. In this cubicle of a room, stood a table on which our parents slept with my brother and I slept under it. My mother worked in the ghetto as a pediatric nurse in the orphanage in the yard of the Jewish hospital. My father worked for the Germans outside the ghetto, and my brother worked for the hospital administration. My job was to take care of finding food and firewood.
For a while, I studied at a school in the ghetto and completed an electrical engineering course. One year, I worked outside the ghetto in a factory for the production of sockets, plugs and lamp housings. A club for children and youth was established in the ghetto; I liked to spend evenings there. I was very active, especially in the ghetto research department.
For two years, many Aktions took place, which involved the abduction of Jews from streets, and their hiding places, and transporting them to Ponar, until September 1943, when the liquidation of Ghetto Vilna began and lasted for about two weeks. My brother and I were transferred to camps in Estonia; my father was transferred separately to this country, and my mother perished during the liquidation of the ghetto.
In Estonia, we were transferred through six different camps; the hardest of all was the Klooga camp where we met up with my father and uncle. In August 1944, we were transferred to the Lagedi camp. I worked outside the camp in the kitchen of the Estonian SS. One day, a German from the camp's headquarters arrived and ordered us to return immediately to the camp. He said he would transfer us to another camp in Germany, and there we would be given better conditions. I went back to camp; my father had already left with the previous shipment. Everyone received a loaf of bread and we were then loaded onto trucks, forty women in one truck and forty men in another.
The truck in which the women were traveling broke down, our truck driver stopped to help and it delayed us until the evening hours. We continued our journey to the edge of the forest, and then a German soldier came out and announced that the work was over and we drove to Tallinn. At that time we did not understand the meaning of the words 'the work was over', only after the liberation did we learn that the first shipments were unloaded from the camp and everyone was murdered by the soldiers. After a night in the prison in Tallinn, we were put back on trucks and returned to Klooga. We saw that the camp's yard was full of groups of Jewish detainees, all kneeling with their hands on their heads. We were seated at the edge of the last group, near the house where the women lived. Our cousin who was close to us, pulled a watch out of his pocket and gave it to us, he said he would not need it anymore, and returned to his group. I have kept his pocket watch all these years, until I handed it over to the Yad Vashem Museum.
The Germans led the groups to the forest outside the camp; we heard automatic gunfire, and knew they were shooting them and that soon it would be our turn. We decided to run. We ran to the nearest residence, jumped to the top floor, huddled under a bunk and hid behind blankets. Shots were heard from the forest for hours. Finally, after two days of gunfire, the shots fell silent. We dared to go and look outside. We saw fire rising from the forest. One of the girls hiding shouted "the Germans are gone." This was on 2/9/1944, when the Red Army soldiers were approaching. When we saw the soldiers, we asked them to see what had happened in the forest. We advanced with the Soviet soldiers, and in front of us discovered three bonfires, charred trees, and between them charred corpses. The Germans had forced people to lie on logs and shot them, thus putting them on top of each other in four layers, pouring gasoline on them and setting them on fire.
We were released; we were free once again. My brother and I returned to Vilna where we found my uncle Szneir and my aunt Ida. We lived in a shared apartment with other relatives until 1945 when we left Vilna. I traveled to Poland with my brother, his wife and her brother. We joined the Dror Movement in Warsaw and from there were sent by the Movement to train orphaned children in children's home. After a few months, I was transferred to Germany and from there I continued my training. In 1947, the children were transferred to France prior to their aliyah to Eretz Israel while I was sent by the Movement's Center to a World Seminar in the town of Soriano near Rome.
In March 1949, I made aliyah to Israel and joined Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot. During my first years at the kibbutz I worked in agriculture and services, and then I trained youth groups who made aliyah from Iraq, Iran and North Africa. In 1951, I was drafted into the reserves as commander of the Kabri transit camp. It was a year of floods. The army cared for the transit camps. During my years in the reserves, I served in the communications corps. After graduating from the Youth Aliyah Teachers' Seminary; I directed an educational institution on the kibbutz for two years and then the local school for eight years. Over time, I also founded the Ghetto Fighter' House in Tel Aviv. In 1970, I joined the staff of the Ghetto Fighters' House, and for many years was the House's Secretary General. At the same time, I managed the International Janusz Korczak Association, based in Warsaw. Since that day I have been a member of the presidency of the International Association. Over the years, I have visited Poland around fifty times to attend presidential meetings and museum missions.
Since 1987, I have been a member of the Committee for the Designation of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem, and in 2000, became a member of the Yad Vashem Council.
In 1991, I was awarded a medal by the President of Poland Lech Walesa; and in 2005, I received another decoration for the promotion of Israeli-Polish relations.
In 2001 I served as a consultant for the film 'Ponar' produced on behalf of Channel One and visited Vilna twice with the film production team.
I was awarded the Youth Administration and Informal Education for Children Yakir Certificate due for my initial and crucial contribution to the educational enterprise of tours of Israeli students in Poland.
I am married to Pnina, a father to Moshe, Osnat and Sonny and a grandfather to nine grandchildren."
From: LEDOROT
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