Aharon Yakobson — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Aharon Yakobson talks about when the Vilna ghetto was established. His family moved there but later managed to escape thanks to the assistance of a non-Jewish cobbler. However, they later returned to the ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated in 1943, his family escaped with the aid of a local man, and found shelter in a basement until they were liberated. Aharon immigrated to Israel in 1948.

… “Every day, we would hear about specific streets being gradually cleared. This was a sign that the ghetto would probably be established there. Prior to the war, 80,000 Jews had been living in Vilna. Some had fled, so there were probably about 65,000 Jews still living in Vilna when the ghetto opened up. Some were taken off the streets and, unfortunately, we heard families being taken, night after night. This was how it started: notices were put up decreeing that, whoever had a husband or father who had been caught, and had supposedly been taken to work, had to present themselves at such-and-such a time in order to join their husbands or brothers. People couldn’t believe that they had been taken to Ponar, since they were supposed to have been working. It was impossible, just rumors. They had to be working. Then Jews started to be expelled from all over to Ponar.

One Saturday, 13^th September, Lithuanian soldiers were deployed. What should we take? Food, equipment, clothes? We couldn’t take carts. It happened that the Lithuanian army were relatively on our side, they didn’t shout, and we gradually entered the ghetto. They said: you are going to the ghetto. They told us where to go, 10 Yetzkeh Street, which was close to the ghetto. At night, all the Jews who had gone into that house were taken to Ponar. We had gone to that house. Grandfather, my father and his brothers, said that they would go more quickly to see where there was space and we should come later. We started walking. A sea of Jews walking. People and their belongings. They were getting tired and started to throw packages away, take packages apart, and the gentiles standing about came to take discarded clothes. We reached 10 Yetzkeh Street towards evening. Two of five brothers walked with us. The youngest one and one with a slight limp who walked with us at a slower pace. Grandmother and women with babies also walked more slowly. As we approached, we saw that they were closing the ghetto and my father and grandfather came looking for us. They had gone looking for us all over the ghetto. They came out and said: What are you doing here? Come quickly. And we walked over a few planks. My father asked a Jewish policeman he knew to let him enter the ghetto, and thus we were saved from Ponar that night. The next day, father and grandfather were taken to the prison. It was huge. Then the other brothers went to 15 ….. Street, which had a big courtyard with lots of people. Some of the people had already been in apartments from which others had been removed and taken to Ponar, so that there would be room for newcomers in the ghetto. We waited for one of the guards, a Christian who had remained there, to take charge of an apartment on the ground floor and then we settled in there after he had left. We would break into the building as it was too cold to sleep out of doors … father and all his brothers...we went in with all our belongings and found ourselves, about 40 of us, in some sort of a kitchen. It wasn’t a large apartment, just two rooms. We could barely stand or sit, except in the kitchen. Nobody felt like drinking, or even talking. How were we going to spend the time here? There were loud knocks on the door. The Judenrat told us to open up, which we did. They started taking people out. There was a lot of shouting. They left and my brother lost a shoe. The whole family started looking for it, but in vain. By now, it was 4 a.m. We had electricity, light, but no shoe. Everyone is standing around holding their belongings. In the end, a Jewish policeman said: turn off the lights and hold your breath so as not to be discovered. By about 5 a.m. the Aktion was over for this courtyard and the apartments, including the one we were in. We turn on the electricity and find the shoe in the middle of the room. We had been saved once again. We were told that whoever had work, or specific jobs should go to work. We waited there till noon.

Luckily for us, the Vilna Ghetto was an open ghetto. This means that, during the day, people can leave to go to work and return in the evening. Those who work in the ghetto – stay and work in the ghetto. Those who leave the ghetto are able to smuggle a little food in – this was a relative advantage of the Vilna Ghetto. We were inside the ghetto and didn’t leave. The Germans often came to apprehend Jews and relieve them of their gold. The Judenrat collected the gold so that the Germans wouldn’t need to come and apprehend Jews. This was a kind of bribe payment. It was for a short period, for these few days, we children were kept from going out into the street, or to public places. The ghetto was full to the hilt, despite people being taken time after time, which meant that we had more space, to our great sorrow. People would whistle from street to street and, in seconds, people would disappear and the streets would suddenly be empty, so that it should not look as if there were too many Jews in the ghetto. That was the objective … not to lose more people. It so happened that we were in the office there, we worked in the factory. Other Jews were taken to work inside the Gestapo building. What did they do there? They cleaned, worked in various workshops, all sorts of things under Gestapo control. As a result, many people worked for the Gestapo… the first block was on 12 Strashun Street, opposite no. 15. We moved there and stayed for a few days.

Q. Were you in a special block?

A.  We were in a special block. We moved to the special block.

Q. In other words, your father worked for the Gestapo.   

A.  (he worked) at the tannery, which also belonged to that group.

Q. Did you receive special benefits?

A.  No. the …. was a special benefit. Later one, I will tell you that they allowed

wood to be brought in for keeping these workers warm. They weren’t searched when entering so it was possible to bring food in, too.

A few days later, they emptied a large building, 31 Strashun Street. Some of its side windows were on the Aryan side, outside the ghetto. We were six families together with a few more families and we were allotted a 2-roomed apartment with another small room and kitchen, so there was relatively more space there.

Q.  How many people?

A.  There were my grandparents, as well as others whose parents had already been killed, they were neighbors, and so we had Life Certificates, which I will also talk about here. They were special certificates for special workers, and we had to keep them on us. If anyone was a bachelor, he would add his sister as his wife. That meant that we were at least 5 x 4, in other words, 22.

      We had food, but not enough of it. They would get hold of peas, potatoes, beans and flour to smuggle into the ghetto with them. The Jewish police would stand at the gate and watch those who were not working. There were two rooms next to the ghetto gate, one for men and one for women. If any food was found on them, then they knew what their sentence would be. There was a prison on Yetzkeh Street which was used by the Jewish police, and these people would be taken there and then removed from the ghetto.

      You had to be lucky and come when they weren’t sleeping, you had to be lucky enough to be able to bribe the Jewish police, you had to be lucky and work in a place where everyone could walk through the gates as a group. It was so surreal. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

      There were bakeries inside the ghetto which baked bread for everyone. However, there was one bakery which, instead of baking bread, baked cakes for the Jewish police. There is always somewhere that always …. After the winter, when the river rises, all the ‘flotsam and jetsam’ floats to the surface and whoever was at the bottom is suddenly floating on top. Amongst those coming to the ghetto were editors, newspaper editors, who came asking for a slice of bread. Some lived in one room. It was quite something to have received one room in the Vilna Ghetto at the beginning. There were some of those, too.

      … this was the situation when the ghetto was liquidated: The Jewish police were given orders by Herring, then Kittel, and then Murer, the Austrian, who till today has not yet been tried in Vienna. In other words, they had a preconceived plan which was […], it later became more sophisticated. How so? Those who were working continued to work for the Germans, and those who weren’t working – how could they be neutralized, how could they be separated and taken to Ponar. At the end of November 1941, the Judenrat issued a decree which we were obliged to read, stating that we had to go and be issued with certificates. A sort of identity card. They didn’t issue one to everybody, only to those who were working. Everyone had to be issued with this certificate – children, women, the elderly, everyone. I remember going to the Judenrat every night until we received our certificates.

Q.  So did all members of your family receive this certificate?

A.   We all stood one in line and were issued with certificates. Then, about a week later, there was another decree: Everyone was to come to be issued with a yellow certificate. This happened after the other ghetto (there were two ghettos in Vilna – the small ghetto which was in Yiddishe Gas and all over the Jewish areas). Night after night, the ghetto was gradually emptied of people. Whoever was not considered productive remained and was then liquidated there. After the other, small ghetto had been emptied, everyone was told that if they had Life Certificates, they would be taken to the prison, which was huge. It was a cold, snowy, frosty day. It was 1941 and the winter was extremely hard. Everyone trudged to the prison holding their belongings. The prison was a few kilometers from the ghetto and the Lithuanians stood at 50-meter spaces on both sides of the road. I noticed how a young woman managed to skip to the side and get away, probably after having bribed one of the Lithuanians. I also saw two young men who tried to leave the line and were shot. They were returned and subsequently some Jews had to carry them.

Herring, the head of the Gestapo, sat at the end of the corridor and checked each person against his name and certificate. My paternal and maternal grandparents, and all those who had attached themselves to us … were told: someone has been lying, we know that you have taken a lot and that’s not right. My parents and grandfather …. when he went outside with everyone, and had passed everyone by, and moved up, and my grandmother, who was poorly, shuffled along, turning her head. The moment the old man saw her he shouted out to her ... ‘go back’. The brothers did everything they could, but in the end, we were taken out and transferred to an unoccupied ghetto, just like all the other Jews.

Q.  Besides your grandfather?

A.   My grandparents, aunts and all the others who had attached themselves to us in the hope of getting out – didn’t manage to. That is, we were in the other ghetto. In the meantime, in the ghetto the Jewish Police and the Germans went from house to house, from hiding place to hiding place, looking for Jews and taking them. They took them to the prison and then on to Ponar. I don’t know where they got the idea from, but they achieved something else. At one and the same time, they relieved all those associated with us of their yellow certificates …

      While we were in the other ghetto, we knew that people managed to hide in all sorts of places for days at a time, even up to a few weeks.

Q.  Where did you hide?

A.   We were hidden by some Christians. People left hungry. […] of those who left were somewhat deranged, in a daze, driven crazy by the situation. Searching in fear, without food, with nothing, not knowing what they were doing. Running from one attic to another. They were rounded up and taken to the other ghetto with us, they were separated and also ……

Q.  What happened to you in the meantime?

A.   We set ourselves up in the ghetto, a more ‘spacious’ ghetto, a ghetto with fewer Jews. Nobody went to work. Two days later, we went back to our own places in the ghetto.

After returning to the ghetto, I started looking for friends… we searched in other courtyards, we saw a lot of coffins containing the dead. People starting searching. Coffin lids were removed and replaced. In the end they were not put back on the coffin. This spectacle of young people […] from hanging, and other methods, or had simply been killed there, repeated itself every day until the coffins were gradually removed. These spectacles affected me greatly as a child […]. Later on, some people who had escaped Ponar arrived and the Jewish police hid them so that they wouldn’t be counted. It was no secret.

Taken from the testimony of Aharon Yakobson, from Vilna, about the establishment of the Vilna Ghetto and expulsion to Ponar, as published by Yad Vashem.