Shabtai Blecher — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

On Thursday, the 23rd of September, 1944 the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto began. The local residents of Vilna stood on the wayside and watched the deportation commotion. They saw how the Germans, together with their Lithuanian and Ukrainian collaborators, urged the Jews to hurry and go off into the unknown. They looked at the hundreds of people who ran outside the ghetto gate in a panic, throwing away the last of their belongings. Then the local residents rushed to the piles of personal effects that had been discarded, looking for bargains. Boleslaw Boratynski, a Polish resident of Vilna who worked in a haberdashery shop, was one of the people who foraged, apparently looking for items to sell in his shop. While he was foraging in the piles he found a manuscript written in Yiddish, which he took home with him. That very evening, Boratynski had an unusual visit. A Jewish family, Albert Etingen, his wife Sonia and their two young sons, Max and Henry, had miraculously managed to escape from the ghetto during the deportation. Boratynski and Etingen had become friendly as a result of their business connections, and remained friendly even when Etingen was imprisoned in the ghetto. Boratynski dug a large pit in his garden and hid the family there. In addition to his care for the family, he gave them the manuscript that he had found. The family remained hidden for ten months and did not let go of the manuscript, even after they were liberated and moved to the USA where they built a new life. The manuscript that consisted of 114 printed pages was an album of biographies of twenty-one Jewish actors from the National Yiddish Theater of Vilna who perished in the Vilna forest between 1941 and 1942. Twenty of them were exterminated, one died in the ghetto but the album remained intact except for the front page that had disappeared. The author wrote a few lines at the beginning of the album in memory of his mother, Dina bat Menahem, who died prematurely in the ghetto. However, there was no clue to his identity and her name meant nothing to the Etingens. Fifteen years after the Liberation, the Etingens gave the album to Vilner Farlag in New York and discovered that the author was Shabtai Blecher.

Who was Shabtai Blecher and why did he write the biographies?

Blecher was a well-known figure in the cultural and theatrical world of Vilna. He began his acting career when he was a teenager at the beginning of the 20^th century. When the Jews were imprisoned in the ghetto, he was the founder and the leading force in the establishment of the Yiddish theater. He also acted in most of the productions.  There were critics of this initiative, led by Herman Kruk. They thought that going to the theater in the ghetto under the shadow of the extermination in the Ponary forest was surrealistic, a bizarre trip in a virtual reality, a plot by the Judenrat to distract the Jews from the murderous events that surrounded them. However, it would seem that the plays and skits that the people thronged to were, apparently, a comforting and pleasurable temporary escape for them.

Blecher was also the secretary of the association of writers and actors in the Vilna Ghetto that was founded on the 20^th of January, 1942. In the Vilna Ghetto whose very existence was based on productivity and hard labor, the intellectuals found it difficult to make a living and the association helped them financially and gave them moral support. However, the association's main task, in cooperation with the Judenrat, was to develop cultural activities for the residents of the ghetto; in addition, the association created a history of Jewish writers, artists and intellectuals who were deported from the ghetto, collected their lost work and prepared a literary-artistic file, but why?

Zelig Kalmanowitz, one of the intellectuals in the ghetto, wrote in his diary that at the end of July, 1942 the Judenrat prepared a program to assist the Vilna Ghetto and to set up a museum. It was decided that two albums were to be prepared: one that would include all the literary works that were written in the ghetto and the other would be dedicated to all the actors. One of them was the album entitled "Twenty-one", written by Shabtai Blecher who was also a writer, when necessary, according to Gavik Heller's diary,

Blecher's manuscript is an exceptional document which gives us a first-hand report of the Yiddish cultural and theatrical life in Eastern Europe before the outbreak of war and during the Soviet regime, Vilna being one of the most important centers of Yiddish cultural life.

It throws light on the vicissitudes of the lives of the individual Jewish actors and their families; some were flamboyant whereas others were impoverished. What they all had in common was that they were wandering messengers of Jewish art and culture. A majority of the actors who appear in the album were not born in Vilna but Vilna had always been an important stage in their professional lives. Under the Soviet regime when the National Yiddish Theater was established in the city, Vilna became their home base. However, when the city was occupied by the Germans, most of them lost their status and their source of livelihood was compromised.

For example, Lev Schriptzer, who was also known as "the king of humor" was an actor and a well-known comedian. Blecher wrote that when the Germans entered Vilna, he was almost sixty and had not managed to get a gold pass that was supposed to guarantee that he would not be deported to Ponary. Before the war he had earned a good livelihood and lived comfortably, however, he sought refuge in one of the hiding places but was unable to adjust to the new situation. He had a nervous breakdown, left the hiding place, was caught and imprisoned in the Lukishki prison and, together with his family, exterminated at Ponar.

According to Blecher, the same thing happened to Pinia Zegelboim, a young actor who was active in the Jewish Labor Movement and his brother, Shmuel, a well-known member of the Bund. When the Germans invaded Poland, he fled from Warsaw to Bialystok and then to Vilna. He also could not get the pass that he longed for; he tried his hand at hard labor but it was too much for him and he and his wife and their baby were exterminated at Ponary. They are just two examples of the twenty-one stories that Blecher brought in the album that record the tragic fate of the actors in the Jewish theater in Vilna during the Nazi occupation.

Shabtai Blecher remained in the ghetto until the 23^rd of September, 1943. Apparently, he was one of the thousands of Jews who were deported to Estonia and imprisoned in the Klooga camp. In September, 1944, as the Red Army approached, the Germans began to liquidate the camp and shot the prisoners and set fire to the bodies. In their panic, they did not manage to complete the task and some of the bodies and personal effects were only scorched and left as a charred testimony to life and its destruction.

It is a known fact that in the Vilna Ghetto there is no museum. The wish of Shabtai Blecher and his acting colleagues to present their cultural activity in the ghetto to the public has been partially fulfilled by Yehoshua Sobol's drama "Ghetto". Unfortunately, Blecher, who founded the Yiddish theater and was one of its leaders,  was never mentioned in the play.

In 1962, before "Ghetto" was written, the manuscript was published in its original form, in Yiddish; one more biography, that of Shmuel Blecher, was added to the twenty-one actors who perished in the Holocaust. Sadly, the historians, who have recorded the history of the Vilna Ghetto, did not use this important source. In fact, one could even say that they didn't use it at all.

Nevertheless, at the Holocaust museum at Yad Vashem, the first exhibit on the central concourse is Shabtai Blecher's scorched acting certificate with his picture; he kept this certificate in his pocket until his last days in the Kalooga camp. A picture of his wife, Genia Shapira Blecher, who was also exterminated, was beside it. It is not known where Gavik Heller, a teenager, was exterminated but the day before the ghetto was liquidated he found one of Blecher's stories and recorded the fact in his diary. Gavik's diary was published in a collection of research studies by Yad Vashem in 2003; in 1992, Boleslaw Boratynski, who saved the manuscript and rescued the Etingen family, and his wife Yosefa, were recognized as righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

In 2006, a bird-watching site on the northern side of Yad Vashem, overlooking the Jerusalem Hills was built, thanks to a generous donation by Max Etingen and his family, dedicated to his saviors, Boleslaw and Jozefa Boratynski.

So, unintentionally, but in my opinion, not coincidentally, out of the darkness, sensitivity, human kindness, gratitude, documentation and remembrance were united, and the victims, rescuers and survivors from Vilna have found a place of honor, here on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem.

Before the war, Albert Etingen, a resident of Vilna had business connections with Boleslaw and Jozefa Boratynski and helped them out when they ran into severe financial difficulties.  After the Germans occupied Vilna, Etingen, Sonia, his wife and their two sons, Max (16) and Henry (13) were imprisoned in the Vilna Ghetto. Even though the Jews were in detention during the occupation, Boratynski inquired after the fate of the Etingens and sent a message to Etingen that he and his wife would be prepared to shelter the four members of the family in their home. Despite his parents' objections to such a risky venture, he prepared a hiding place for the family in the cellar. Subsequently he dug a large pit in his garden where the family hid. The Boratynskis did this in gratitude to Albert Etingen who had saved them from financial ruin. They brought them food every day and cleaned out the excrement from the hiding place, without expecting anything in return. After the war, the Etingens emigrated to the USA but maintained contact with the Boratynskis and even invited them to come and stay with them.

On the 11^th of February, 1992 Yad Vashem recognized Jozefa and Boleslaw Boratynski as Righteous among the Nations.

Translated from: 21 Biographies published by Yad Vashem.      

The Blecher Family / Vilna, Lithuania

Shabtai-Shepsel (born in 1904) Blecher and his wife, Genia-Gittel (born in 1911, née Shapiro) were actors in the National Theater of Vilna. Genia studied law at the University of Vilna but after she met Shabtai, she went on to study acting and appeared on stage. She was also a talented pianist. The couple were married in 1939 and made their home in Vilna.

When the Germans invaded Lithuania in June 1941, Shabtai and Genia tried to flee east but they returned to Vilna. After the Vilna Ghetto was set up, Shabtai was a founder of the theater in the ghetto and one of the leading actors. Within the framework of the cultural activities that the Judenrat initiated, Shabtai wrote the story of his fellow actors who were murdered during the first year of the German occupation. He wrote dozens of biographies of the artists who were murdered at Ponary and another one about an actor who died of typhoid in the ghetto. His wife, Genia, also acted in the ghetto theater. Shabtai's mother, Dina, died in the ghetto.

Shabtai and Genia remained in the ghetto until it was liquidated on the 23^rd of September, 1943. On that very day, they were deported along with thousands of the residents of the ghetto, including Genia's mother, Zelda, to the Klooga camp in Estonia.

On the 19^th of September, 1944 as the Red Army approached the Klooga camp, the Germans began to liquidate the camp. They shot prisoners and burnt their bodies. Shabtai and Genia Blecher were, apparently, among those who were murdered.

Zelda Shapiro, Genia's mother, was also murdered at Klooga. Her father and brother had been murdered earlier in Vilna in 1942; her sister, Hannah, survived.