Dr. Yaakov Shapiro and His Family — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Dr. Yaakov Shapiro and His Family / By Rosa Litai

Testimony and Memory from the Kovno Ghetto

My mother’s cousin, Dr. Yaakov Shapiro, studied medicine in Italy. From there he brought with him Italian songs that had been translated into Yiddish by Jewish students. These songs accompanied the life of our entire family—and especially my grandmother—since Yaakov was her most beloved nephew.

Before immigrating to the Land of Israel, and at the request of his mother, Berta, Yaakov decided to travel to Lithuania. This was in 1941.

In the Kovno Ghetto, Yaakov served in the “Jewish Police” and worked as a physician. As part of his role, he helped save Jewish children who were hidden in malinas—secret hiding places built within the ghetto. He smuggled children out of the ghetto, transferred them to an infants’ home run by Dr. Baublis, and arranged for their concealment with Lithuanian families.

The entire Shapiro family—the uncle Motel, the aunt Berta, their sons Yaakov, Israel (Srolik), David (Dudik), and their daughter Miriam (Mirale)—was annihilated in the Kovno Ghetto.

Israel (Srolik) was killed in a firefight while attempting to escape and join the partisans.

My grandmother’s sister, Berta, together with Mirale and Dudik, were burned alive inside a malina shortly before Soviet forces entered the city.

The Children’s Aktion in the Kovno Ghetto

In the autumn of 1943, the Kovno Ghetto was converted into a concentration camp. Aktionen were initiated to locate and eliminate Jews deemed unfit for labor. In March, the “Children’s Aktion” took place, beginning with the arrest of all 133 members of the former Jewish police of the ghetto.

The detainees were taken to the Ninth Fort, where they were subjected to severe torture. Gestapo officers attempted to extract information from them about the ghetto underground, and especially about the locations of the malinas—the hiding places where children were concealed.

The vast majority of the Jewish policemen refused to cooperate with the Nazis. Dr. Yaakov Shapiro was among them. As a result, the entire command staff of the Jewish police—39 men—was murdered during that Children’s Aktion.

My mother lights a memorial candle for Yaakov every year on the anniversary of the Children’s Aktion.

The Fate of the Children

The cruelest and most horrific Aktion of all was the one carried out against the children. It was conducted after the Kovno Ghetto had already been transformed into a concentration camp, and with exceptional brutality. Not only SS men took part, but also auxiliary units, including those referred to as “partisans” and Vlasov units.

Children were lured into the streets with music and loaded onto trucks. Children in hiding were dragged out from beneath sleeping bunks by dogs. Mothers who refused to hand over their children were beaten nearly to death and thrown onto the trucks together with their children.

On March 27, 1944, the child hunt began in the former Kovno Ghetto and lasted two days. It was carried out by SS units and the assisting Ukrainian police. During the hunt, about 1,000 Jewish children and a number of elderly people were captured. They were murdered or deported to extermination camps, primarily Auschwitz–Birkenau.

The following day, about 300 additional children were seized from the malinas and deported from the ghetto. During the Aktion, approximately 300 children were taken to the Ninth Fort of the Kovno fortress and shot there. About 300 more children from nearby camps were captured and deported in the same Aktion.

Only about 200 children were hidden and managed to survive in the ghetto during those two days.

With the conclusion of the Aktion, the former ghetto’s Jewish police ceased to exist. The Judenrat—the Jewish Council of the ghetto—was also dissolved.