Litman Mor — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

1917-2021

The uprising against the Germans in the Vilna Ghetto started when the Underground Zionist Coordination, also called in Yiddish the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye was established in late 1941, and once the Communists joined, it was named the United Partisan Organization (FPO).

On the night of December 31, 1941, Abba Kovner read his famous proclamation "Let us not go like sheep to the slaughter." That night, about 150 teenagers assembled in the kitchen of Nissan Reznik, at 2 Strashun Street, and I was one of them.

Much has been written about FPO operations and accomplishments, among them the important events called "The Glazman Affair", the "Wittenberg Day", thefts and arms purchases, weapons training, the escape of the Švenčionys group, the Underground printing, the armed resistance on September 1, 1943, the smuggling and removal of weapons to the cemetery, the escape to the Narocz forests - a distance of about 250 km from Vilna - by three groups of the FPO, the exit through sewer pipes on September 23, 1943, and the escape to the Rudniki forest on the day the ghetto was liquidated.  

At first, the Underground advocated armed resistance against the Germans, if and when they came to liquidate the ghetto, assuming that the FPO would be a kind of "first resistance" hoping that the ghetto Jews would join the uprising. The Underground took into account that, under existing conditions, chances of winning or surviving were extremely slim.

The ghetto was established in the heart of the city, on the site of the old ghetto (1633-1861), in the neighborhood of a hostile Polish population, and Lithuanians assisted the Germans in guarding the place.

The distance from the Vilna Ghetto to Ponar, where about 80,000 Jews were murdered, is only 8 kilometers.

The abduction of Jews, mostly men, and their murder, took place even before the ghetto was established. Death reigned in Ponar, but in the ghetto - except for Aktia days - life went on more or less as usual. The Judenrat was tolerable and headed by public activists. Although there was a Jewish police force, whose leaders cooperated with the Germans in supplying "quotas", there was also a sanitary and economic police force, a court, proper administration, a hospital, social assistance, a theater, a choir and more. (The songs of the Vilna Ghetto are known to this day).

In early 1942, the Vilna Underground sent emissaries to Warsaw (Shlomo Antin and the Zilber sisters) to warn the youth movements that the Germans intended to physically exterminate all Jews. The murders that took place in Vilna and Lithuania were the opening signal for extermination of Jews, wherever they happened to be.

On September 1, 1943, at 5 a.m, the Ghetto was unexpectedly surrounded and companies of armed Germans and Estonians entered it. Within about half an hour, the FPO headquarters recruited members of the Underground. The headquarters, the first battalion, and I among them, were positioned at 6 Strashun Street. Together with my friends, we waited to be provided with weapons, which were kept in hidden places. The rest of the positions were scattered throughout the Ghetto.

I obtained a rifle and a number of bullets. The weapons we had were meager and mostly composed of pistols, a few rifles and one machine gun. In addition, we had no combat experience and only a handful of members had served in the military. My personal knowledge of the use of rifles, I learned during high school, but was not drafted into the army due to my studies. My battalion position was surrounded by the Germans, the second was captured before weapons could be handed out, and the 3rd position, led by Yechiel (Ilya) Sheinbaum, opened fire, and threw grenades at the Germans. Several Germans were hit and returned lethal fire. Sheinbaum was killed immediately and the others retreated to the central post. After the Germans bombed the third post, they withdrew and left the Ghetto.

The Jewish police handed over to the Germans around 6,000 Jews, men and women, who were then sent to a labor camp in Estonia and were required to send letters to the ghetto, stating that their condition was satisfactory and their lives not in danger.

Towards the end of 1942, partisans led by Moshka Shoten from the Vilna area began to organize, after a group from Švenčionys and the countryside fled the Ghetto. A group of Jews led by Yitzhak Rudnicki escaped to the Narocz forests, and in June, contact was made with, Markov, commander of the Voroshilov partisan brigade in the Narocz forests. On September 11, a group led by the painter Alexander Bogen (Katzenbogen) escaped, and I was among them. Two other groups, one led by Shaike Gartner and the other, numbering about 50 people, who had been headed by Ilya Sheinbaum, also managed to escape to the forests.

What were the uprising’s expectations?

In 1941-42, the intention was to revolt, even though the chances of survival were nil. When contacts were made with the partisans, and after the disappointment on "Wittenberg Day", the headquarters decided to move the FPO fighting bases from the Ghetto to the forest. For the first time, we thought there might be a chance not to fall in battle in the Ghetto but survive in the forests, although fighting in the forest did not guarantee this either.

Ever since I escaped from the Ghetto to the forest, I belonged to Markov’s Brigade. Our battalion numbered about 100 men, among them three Jewish men and women. I was the only Jew in my company along with a Jewish ‘politruck’ (a political commissioner) impersonating a Russian.

The partisan fighting strategy was to avoid face to face battles with the enemy. The aim was to blow up railway tracks, attack and eliminate police stations in villages and small towns, and most importantly, ambush German transport and supply routes on main and secondary roads. We tried to attack and hit quickly and retreat immediately back into the forest. In most cases, we achieved the goal at night when German transportation and supplies were completely immobilized.

Eleven thousand Jews were sent from here to their death, from September 6, 1941 to October 29, 1941.

Translated from: The Partisans' Organization of Underground and Ghetto Fighters

Listen to Litman Mor's testimony: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn502800