Abraham Kretschmer — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

The Story of the Life of Abraham Kretschmer, Former Captain in the Red Army

Towards the end of 1941, the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces led by Stalin, decided to establish a Lithuanian Division within the Red Army, to recruit into its ranks refugees from Lithuania scattered throughout the country, as well as senior citizens of Lithuanian origin, and attach to it soldiers from the 29th Lithuanian Territorial Rifle Corps who withdrew together, in the first days of the war, with the Red Army, along with most of corps commanders and soldiers, when battles were still taking place in Lithuanian territory, and had defected and sided with the enemy while killing Jewish soldiers who did regular military service in the corps units. It was one of the few cases of the creation of a military division according to national identification. The considerations for the establishment of the Division were clearly political, with the aim of demonstrating to the world the Lithuanian people's solidarity and identification as an integral part of the Soviet people struggling against Nazi Germany.

In the long run, the establishment of the Lithuanian Division was intended to establish the Soviet Union's grip on the Baltic republics at the end of the war. According to these considerations, the Latvian Division and the Estonian Corps were also established, which took part in the battles for the defense of Moscow,.

Establishment of the Lithuanian Division and Jewish Youth

The Jewish refugees from Lithuania, especially the youth, whose eagerness to join the armed struggle against Nazi Germany burned in their bones, welcomed the news of the establishment of the Lithuanian Division with great satisfaction and many of them expressed their willingness to enlist in the Red Army.

Soon, in the vicinity of the city of Balakhna on the Volga (Gorki region), began to gather refugees from Lithuania, mostly Jews from all corners of the Soviet Union.

The Beginning of Abraham Kerschmer in the Lithuanian Division

I was drafted into the Red Army at my temporary residence, in the city of Stalinabad, now Dushanbe, at the foot of the Pamir Mountains, and sent to the 16th Lithuanian Division at the end of December 1941. When I arrived at the Division, it was still in its early stages of organization and consolidation. Having a technical education, and even before the outbreak of the war having graduated in mechanical engineering from the State's Technical High School in Kovno, I was appointed to the position of Artillery Officer in the 249th Brigade with the rank of Lieutenant. I was later promoted and completed my military service as head of Artillery Armament of the 167th Brigade with the rank of Captain.

The Lithuanian Division as a Unique Phenomenon for Jews

The Lithuanian Division was a unique phenomenon in the Jewish resistance movements against Nazi Germany, both in terms of the concentration of almost 5,000 Jewish fighters in one combat division, and the duration of their active warfare, from the end of 1942 until the last day of the war on May 8, 1945. Officially, it was the Lithuanian Division in the Red Army, but in fact many of its fighters - soldiers and officers at all levels - were Jews.

We fought under a foreign flag and on foreign land, but it was clear to all of us that this was our war - the war of the Jews. The slogan "Kill Germans!" expressed the feeling beating in the hearts of the Division's Jewish fighters. The Jewish fighters in the Division were mostly young people, aged 18-30, some of them Hebrew-speaking, members of Zionist youth movements, of Zionist student organizations, former students of the glorious education framework in Lithuanian cities and towns. Their hatred of the Nazi murderers, their strong desire to avenge the blood of their parents, brothers and sisters, and deep-rooted national consciousness, was fertile ground for manifestations of great heroism and courage. This was a rare and unique phenomenon in that period, before the IDF, when thousands of Jewish fighters in infantry combat units, field artillery, anti-tank artillery, the engineering corps, the medical corps, etc., under brigade, battalion, squadron, platoon and squad commanders, took part in bitter and bloody battles for two and a half years consecutively, repulsed hundreds of enemy attacks, stormed positions, defeated and pushed them back as far as the shores of the Baltic Sea and East Prussia.

The Harsh Battles of 1943

The Lithuanian Division's fighting began with the bitter winter battles of February-March 1943 on snowy Orel steppes. The Division took part in the well-known summer battles of July 1943 in the Orel-Kursk "arc", which successfully repulsed all enemy attacks, launched a counterattack and liberated large areas in the direction of the Orel-Bryansk of the Central Front. During the autumn of 1943 till spring of 1944, the Division fought fierce battles in the swamps and forests of Belarus, in the Vitebsk-Polotsk region. The Division continued its battle route on Lithuanian soil, in battles at the entrances to the city of Šiauliai and in the crushing breach through the Zemaitija region in the direction of the Neman, at the border with Germany, and in the conquest of the port city of Klaipeda (Memel) on the Baltic coast.

The battle route was completed by the Division in the Tukums-Liepaja sector in Courland, Latvia, where the Reichswehr (German Army) were encircled. There, the Germans were forced to surrender to thousands of Jewish soldiers from the Lithuanian Division.

The Mass Graves

Throughout the Lithuanian Division battlefields are scattered mass and personal graves of Jewish warriors, including the huge mass grave, dug in the frozen soil of the village of Alexeyevka in Belgorod Oblast, Russia. Thousands of Jewish fighters were awarded decorations and medals for their distinction in battle, and for their display of courage and heroism. Among the twelve who were awarded the highest "Hero of the Soviet Union" decoration, four are Jewish fighters from Lithuania: Wolf Wilenski, Boris Zindel, Kalman Schoor and Hirsch Oshpol.

The Jewish Character of the Division

The high concentration of Jewish fighters in the various units left its mark on the Jewish character of the Division and in the daily lives of the fighters. The soldiers spoke in Yiddish to each other as well as to their Jewish commanders. A very common phenomenon among the soldiers was public singing of Jewish folk songs in Yiddish, and sometimes even in Hebrew, during long and arduous journeys. Sometimes, when one of the Jewish politrucks was not around, a narrow circle of members of the youth movements even dared to sing Hebrew songs in a low voice, such as, Bialik's "On a Summer's Hot Day," "Tchernichovsky's "Play, Play on Dreams," (aka 'I Believe') and others. On holidays and festivals and especially on Days of Awe, the warriors would organize in minyanim (quorums of 10 adult males) and hold prayers. The liturgists knew the prayers by heart and did not need a prayer book. In rare cases, when one of the Jewish fighters received a package from Eretz Israel, the unit's soldiers celebrated.

The relationship between the Jewish fighters and their commanders was friendly. Many were closely associated, with the commander and members of the command headquarters being of the same city or town, students from the same school or members of the same youth movement.

Loss and Pain

Concern for the fate of the parents, brothers and sisters who remained under Nazi occupation did not give us rest for a moment. The Soviet newspapers and radio stations did not publish - in fact silenced - the news of massacres of Jews, which were discovered in Kiev (Babi Yar) and other Ukrainian towns after their liberation. Only through the letters of the Russian-Jewish writer Ehrenburg, published in the daily military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (The Red Star), did we learn, but only in part, about what was happening in the occupied territories. We knew nothing about what was going on in the ghettos on Lithuanian soil and the existence of the Majdanek, Treblinka and Auschwitz extermination camps, until the atrocities of the Nazis were discovered after the liberation of the camps by the Red Army.

Shock, rage and pain hit us after we entered Lithuanian territory and before our eyes was revealed the terrible fate of Lithuanian Jewry in all its severity. After the excitement that gripped us as we crossed the old border with Poland and found ourselves on Lithuanian soil, awaited us a face-to-face meeting with bitter reality: Lithuania’s cities and towns were left empty of Jews. Lithuanian Jewry was almost completely annihilated.

At noon we entered Vyzuonos a small district town in the Utena County. What the pastoral appearance of the peaceful town revealed to our eyes hid the tragedy. A typical Jewish town, with winding and narrow alleys, houses with roof tiles blackened over time, an ancient synagogue, a market square paved with stones - everything, seemingly, as it was from time immemorial, but without Jews… Mezuzahs were still hanging on the door posts at the entrances to houses or signs were visible in places from which they had been torn off. I stood stunned in the empty market square. A soldier much older than I, standing near, shed silent tears. He was one of the town's residents. Similar sights were repeated in dozens of cities and towns we encountered on the way - Ponevezh, Subocz, Šiauliai, Kelm, Krai, and others. We had an exciting meeting with a small group of Jewish girls in the town of Subocz, whom the local priest hid in a monastery. They cried with joy when they heard us speak Yiddish. We also met a handful of survivors in Šiauliai.

I arrived in Kovno on the first days of August, a few days after my release on August 1, 1944. Here I was informed of the bitter fate of my parents and my only sister Fruma. My sister died in the ghetto after a serious illness, on December 1942. She was only 25 years old. My ill-fated parents were executed by Nazi assassins during the liquidation of the ghetto on July 13, 1944, just two weeks before the liberation of Kovno from Nazi occupation. The only ray of light in the darkness that surrounded me was an exciting meeting with some close classmates and friends and from the youth movement - lights protected from fire… I wandered like a sleepwalker through the streets of my city. Every street and alley, every square and garden, every house and yard was familiar to me from my childhood. Compared to the horrific appearance of the burned-out ghetto, Kovno stood almost entirely intact. The city looked to me like one large cemetery …

The Spring of Victory

The start of the year 1945 found us on a long and arduous trek along the muddy roads of the Zemaitija region. The Division was transferred from the battle zone in the Klaipeda region (around the German city of Tilsit on the Neman) to the front line between the Latvian cities of Tucoms and Liepāja (Libawa), where we continued fighting against German army formations, besieged in the Courland region of Latvia.

Towards the end of January, the Division was transferred to the front sector at the entrances to the Lithuanian port city of Klaipėda (Mamel) on the shores of the Baltic Sea.

On January 29, in conjunction with other military units, our brigade was the first to break into the city and thus complete the liberation of Lithuania from Nazi occupation. Following the completion of "Operation Klaipėda," the brigade was returned to the front sector in Courland. The terrain and climatic conditions at the site were particularly harsh and distressing to the warriors. The intense cold, combined with damp sea air, penetrated the bones. Strong gusts of wind blew from the sea, tearing pieces off our thin military tunics and stabbing our faces, as if cutting them with knives. In all the agricultural farms in the area, not a single building remained, and for protection we built dirt huts on the site or over the remains of ruined buildings. Gradually, however, winter came to an end - the fourth and final winter of the terrible war. Like the enemy, who felt the inevitable nearness of defeat, so too winter continued to cling to every mound and hill, every ditch and niche on the surface, in a desperate attempt to retain its hold on another piece of land hidden under the blackening snow, and on the lakes and streams bound by the pressure of ice.

Fighting Against Besieged German Army Units

Our brigade was stationed in the part of the sector not far from the town of Saldus, and waged bitter battles with besieged German army units. In retrospect, despite being cut off from their rear bases, these units did not suffer from disruptions in current supply. On the contrary, they had a huge supply of ammunition of all kinds, and food and fuel, which allowed them to last a long time. Their desperate situation, which prevented any possibility of breaking the siege and escaping, increased the Germans' stubborn resistance and they literally clung with their teeth along the entire fortified line of defense. The terrain conditions did not allow for the massive use of tanks, and the battles were fought more than once face-to-face. Both we and the enemy forces suffered heavy losses. We reached the end of April, after having undergone exhausting and bloody fighting. The warm rays of the spring sun began to thaw the snow. The dirt roads released from the icy layer and plowed by the chains of tanks and APCs (armored personnel carriers) and the wheels of trucks, became impassable. Vehicles sank in the quagmire and soldiers were knee-deep in thick mud. Everything around us - the faces and uniforms of soldiers, their personal weapons, the cannons and the vehicles - was covered with a thick layer of brown-gray slime…

The month of May began; it was, colder than usual in those places. We still continued to wear winter uniform. Spring lingered, but we already felt it in the air. Under melting snow, here and there snow flowers began to appear, fresh grass stalks sprouted, and the air resounded with the cheerful chirping of flocks of birds flying over bare leaves and bushes. The spring's melting snow dripped at a steady rate … Together with the spring's thaw, we already heard the bells of impending victory! In the mornings we waited impatiently for the news that the "Sovinformburo" (military news agency) published about what was happening on the various fronts. We already knew from it, that on May 2^nd, Marshal Zhukov's troops had occupied the German capital, Berlin, and hoisted the victory flag over the Reichstag building! Marshal Konev's troops completed the liberation of Czechoslovakia, while the First Baltic Front, under the command of General Bagramyan, under which our Division fought, still fought on and meanwhile failed to collapse the besieged enemy forces. In those days there was a joke among the fighters: Marshals Zhukov, Vasilevsky, Rokossovsky, Konev and Malinowski will fly back to Moscow after the victory. While flying over Latvia, they hear cannon thunder. What is the meaning of this cannon fire, they ask in bewilderment, and the answer was: General Bagramyan crushing the enemy in Courland … Indeed, Berlin had already been conquered, but we continued our routine operational activities, which in official announcements were defined as "battles of local importance."

On the morning of May 8, one of the Brigade's squadrons set out on an initiated "combat patrol" operation. The fighters broke the front lines of the enemy, destroyed several machine guns, seized a captive and returned safely to their base. This was the last operation of our forces.

At noon that day, brigade chief of staff, Major Sukachev, summoned me to discuss current issues. Suddenly the field phones rang, Major Valis, First Battalion Commander, reported that in his battalion's sector, the Germans had stopped firing and were waving flags, sheets and white towels - a clear sign of surrender! Similar reports soon arrived from the commanders of the 2nd and 3rd battalions, Captain Silitskas and Major Gladkov. Sukachev called the headquarters of the 156th and 249th Brigades. The reports from there were the same. It was clear - the Germans had surrendered; the war was over!

We learned later that on that day, May 8, 1945, the Reichswehr's Commander-in-Chief, Generalfeldmarschall Keitel, signed a letter of unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.

May 9, 1945. A vast field on the edge of a pine forest was designated as the gathering place of the surrendering army units. I was ordered by the brigade commander to coordinate the collection of weapons of all kinds, ammunition and other arms from the Germans. In the early hours of the morning, the Germans began to lay down their arms which were stacked in neat piles - thousands of rifles, submachine and machine guns, countless boxes of artillery shells, mortar shells and other weapons. Hundreds of field guns, anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, mortars, etc. were laid-out in long lines. Thousands of disarmed German soldiers stood in long lines and, accompanied by armed guards, began moving toward our front lines. From there, they continued to POW camps to feel on their own flesh the bitter taste of captivity…

It is difficult to describe what I felt at the time. At the start of the war, I was a young Jew from Kovno who fled for his life where his feet led him, and who experienced firsthand the hardships of a homeless refugee. At the end of the war, he was an officer in the Red Army, watching the invincible Reichswehr soldiers laying down their weapons stained with the blood of their victims, at his feet.

The Bitter Fate of my Sister and my Parents

At that time, I already knew about the bitter fate that had befallen my sister and my parents - Ida and Yohanan Kretschmer.

In his book of memoirs from the Kovno ghetto, "Facing the Size," Dr. Aharon Peretz (Pertsikovitz‏) describes the last hours of my parents:

"A midwife, who worked with me in the ghetto, was already standing with her husband in the same group of people whose fate the Nazi murderers had decided. Her face was plaster-white, her blank eyes looking into infinity. Her husband, wounded with bloodstains on his clothes, noticed me in the line and made a gesture with his hand, as if he meant to ask: "Is this the end?" Both husband and wife walking embraced… "

I looked at the piles of weapons, neatly and meticulously arranged German-style. For a long moment, the thought that one of these weapons might have been used by my father and mother's killers, would not let go.

My military life in the ranks of the 16th Lithuanian Division, which began in the winter of 1942/43 with the battles of the Orel-Kursk arc, through Russia, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia - ended.

The joy of victory was overshadowed by the pain of loss and bereavement.

Jewish Warriors Made Aliyah to Israel

Almost all of the surviving Jewish fighters of the Lithuanian Division made aliyah to Israel: a few made it through the "escape" and 'illegal' immigration routes, some as "expatriates," to Poland, and most of them in the early 1970s, when the road to aliyah from the Soviet Union was paved. As most of them were professionals or had an academic education, they were soon absorbed and integrated into all areas of activity in the economy and society - in industry, medicine, education and culture. War veterans, who fought in a foreign army, were proud of their sons and grandsons, who willingly joined the ranks of the IDF as regular, permanent and reserve soldiers. Alongside the medals of distinction the fighters received on the battlefield, they also received "Aleh" medals - "Medal of State Fighters," and "Medal of Warriors Against the Nazis," awarded to them by the State of Israel. This was an official recognition that the struggle of Jewish fighters in the Red Army against the Nazis was an integral part of the stubborn struggle of the Jewish people for the establishment of a sovereign Jewish State in Israel. The fierce fighting of the Jewish fighters in the ranks of the Lithuanian Division refutes and completely denies the historical lie inherent in the humiliating expression "like sheep to the slaughter" and elevates Jewish heroism in all its manifestations.

From: Lives of Others