Sonia Levin — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

I survived the Nemenčinė Killing Valley/ Written by Sonia Levin

I was born in 1927 in the town of Nemenčinė in Poland, a town that is now part of Lithuania, as Shane-Haya of the Zorrer family. Nemenčinė is located about 20 kilometers north of Vilna, on the road to the town of Švenčionys. My father’s name was Berl, and my mother’s name was Sarah. My older brother, Yitzhak, was born in 1923, and my sister, Batya, was born in 1930.

My father traded food for animals with the Gentiles, and my mother ran a small grocery store during the summer months, when the wealthy of Vilna and the surrounding area came to vacation in the town. Yitzhak and I were gifted students, but my parents struggled to pay our tuition. In 1940, the town committee appealed to my wealthy aunt in Vilna and asked her to take us under her care. My aunt’s house was three stories high and very luxuriously furnished. Outside the house, in a place called Schulhof (synagogue courtyard in Yiddish) — a well-known location in Vilna — a beautiful carriage with a car was always waiting for any task my aunt required.

In June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, my aunt sent Yitzhak and me back to Nemenčinė. Her house was near what later became the entrance to the ghetto. She was apparently murdered at the beginning of the war, while her daughter was adopted by the Gentile nanny and raised as a Polish Catholic.

A few days after I arrived in Nemenčinė, the town was occupied by a huge convoy of armored vehicles. Red Army soldiers did not even attempt to resist the Nazi invaders and fled east and south for their lives. An open ghetto was established in Nemenčinė. Jews were required to wear yellow badges, and young men, like my brother Yitzhak, were sent to forced labor — something that later saved his life.

Preparations for Rosh Hashanah 1941 were in full swing. My father brought a lamb to the butcher, and after selling portions back to the Gentiles, brought home a well-prepared share for the holiday meal. My sister and I also received new dresses for the holiday, and for a short while, we forgot the day’s troubles.

On Saturday, two days before the holiday, at 4:00 a.m., Lithuanian police knocked on the windows of Jewish homes and ordered us to bring most of our belongings to the new synagogue. From there, we were told, we would march to the Vilna Ghetto to work. My father prepared small bundles for each of us. He carefully wrapped a portion of the lamb and placed it among the packages destined for the Jews of Nemenčinė. My little sister, Batya, wanted to wear her new holiday dress. “Are you crazy?!” I scolded her. “The dress will be ruined! Put it in the package.”

The Lithuanians led us to the courtyard of the synagogue. Yitzhak was not with us; the day before, he had been sent to forced labor outside Nemenčinė. When he finished, he decided to walk back toward the town. On the way, he met a Lithuanian man who warned him not to return, because the Germans were preparing to exterminate all the Jews there. Yitzhak fled east into Belarus, hiding in a different town each time.

Meanwhile, in the Nemenčinė synagogue courtyard, two German officers sat beside an open box into which Jews were forced to place their valuables. The box quickly filled with gold, pearls, and banknotes. The Germans even tore earrings from women’s ears. Using their rifle butts, they beat all the men of the town after ordering them to lie on the ground. I remember the cries, the shouting, and the complete chaos. Many defecated in their pants out of fear. Yet most of us still did not understand what was about to happen, even when some whispered that this was the end.

My cousin Zipporah’s baby began to cry. A German soldier asked her in German, “Why is the baby crying?” Without waiting for an answer, he snatched the baby from her hands, grabbed its legs, and tore it in two. Zipporah collapsed on the spot. To this day, when I go to sleep, that sight haunts me and gives me no rest.

We were kept in the synagogue courtyard from 6:00 a.m. until 12:00 noon. After the beatings, the Germans ordered us to stand, line up in threes, and prepare to march to work. By then, my father was no longer there. He was friendly with Gentiles, and one of the Lithuanian policemen — who could not explicitly warn him but wanted to save him — told him that, since he had a horse and cart, he could bring food and take care of the Jews working in the Vilna Ghetto. My father began walking away but soon hesitated at the thought of leaving his family to face the ghetto alone. As he retraced his steps, he met a Gentile acquaintance who asked where he was going. When my father said he was returning to Nemenčinė, the man warned him that his two brothers had just come back from several days in the forest, during which the Germans had ordered them to dig a pit — a pit they suspected was meant for the Jews of the town.

After the Germans lined us up in threes, they began marching us toward Vilna. Suddenly, we were ordered to turn into the forest instead of continuing toward the city. We still suspected nothing. My mother, my sister, and I were in the last group of three — a fact that proved critical to our survival. On both sides of the column stood drunken Lithuanian policemen ensuring that no one tried to escape.

I could see nothing, but my mother, who was taller than I, said in Yiddish that they were going to kill us. She had spotted a large pile of yellow sand in the distance, evidence of a freshly dug pit. “Why would they kill us?” I asked. “I never hurt anyone at school.” My mother looked at me and began to cry.

Moments later, the Lithuanians opened fire with machine guns, joined by Germans and probably also Poles. The wounded were pushed into the pit. At the head of the line was a cart carrying the elderly, including my grandparents. The Lithuanians did not waste ammunition on them; they simply rolled them into the pit, and others fell on top of them. They fell in groups of three, and heartbreaking cries filled the air. Many tried to escape, and the Lithuanians concentrated their fire on shooting those who ran.

When it was our turn, just a meter from the pit, my mother seized a brief moment of inattention, grabbed Batya’s hand, and ran into the forest. One of the policemen — perhaps a German — kicked me, and I fell at the edge of the pit but was not shot. Since I was the last, no one fell on top of me. Beneath me lay all the townspeople, some still alive. I did not understand what was happening. Suddenly, those not yet dead began to rise like a wave in an effort to breathe. Their movement pushed me upward until I was thrown out of the pit. It was then I realized I wanted to live.

I rolled behind a tree, but when I stood up, the Germans saw me and fired. A bullet grazed my left ear. Bleeding, I ran as fast as I could. As I fled, I believed I was the only one who had survived. In fact, a few others also managed to escape the pit, but I was too shocked to understand.

While running, I spotted my mother and sister not far from me. Suddenly, a local forester appeared, on his way to pick wild mushrooms, a sack in one hand and a knife in the other. He quickly grasped the situation, grabbed me, and shouted to my mother: “Stinking Jew, give me money or I’ll slaughter your child.” My mother looked at me and kept running. The man bent down to set aside his sack of mushrooms, and I slipped free between his legs. I ran through the forest crying in Yiddish, “Mama, mama,” but no one answered.

It was getting cold, and I wore only a dress without a coat. Night fell quickly under the high trees, hiding the sky. Hungry and exhausted, I lay down on the sand, felt something soft, and fell asleep. At dawn, I awoke to birdsong and realized, with horror, that I had slept on the body of a man — our neighbor, Moshe Andman, age 54 — his mouth covered in blood. He was wearing a warm black coat, which had kept me alive through the night. Terrified, I ran again, desperate to see someone alive, even an animal.

I soon encountered a Polish nun. I begged her for bread. She replied, “Jew, why did you run out of the pit? You could be in heaven now. This world is nothing; there is life in heaven.” I thought to myself: “She is old and still alive, and I am a little girl, and she is sending me to heaven?” She gave me bread and milk but immediately added, “Leave now, or I’ll call the Germans.”

Again I ran, without knowing where. Running itself gave me comfort. In the bushes, I heard cries and found the town’s so-called lunatic, “the crazy Slovak,” who was in fact coping remarkably well. She had two small children with her. I was overjoyed to see a familiar face. She told me she planned to go to Kimlishuk. When I heard that name, I was relieved, remembering that my uncle Bezalel’s family — who had died five years earlier — had lived there.

Because we could not walk openly by day or use main roads, our journey was slow. Kimlishuk was about 26 kilometers away in a straight line, but our roundabout path took nearly a week. We arrived just before Yom Kippur. At that time, an open ghetto was being formed there, concentrating the town’s Jews — about a third of its population — on one street. Survivors from Nemenčinė, Podbroj, and other towns also gathered in Kimlishuk.

Immediately upon arrival, I asked for the Zorrer family. I knocked on the door of my late uncle’s house, where his widow answered. I told her I was Barko’s daughter, but she angrily ordered me to leave, fearing the Germans might persecute her because of me. Shocked and rejected once again, I sat on the ground and cried. A kind Jew from the community invited me to sleep in the synagogue, though their ability to help was limited.

A few weeks later, my brother Yitzhak arrived in Kimlishuk, after wandering from town to town in Belarus. He knocked on our aunt’s door, but she too refused to let him in. When I saw him, I was filled with joy. Soon after, I also encountered my father in the street. By then it was winter, and snow covered the ground. He traveled between towns with a horse and sleigh, passing on information about events. Dressed and speaking like a Gentile, he was able to move freely. His bravery and confidence helped disguise his Jewish identity from both Germans and Lithuanians.

We lived in the Kimlishuk ghetto for about three months. One day, my father unexpectedly met Ludwig Motzkotz, a Polish Gentile and a good friend from the village of Stripona near Nemenčinė. Motzkotz was a very poor man with ten children crowded into a one-room house. To my father’s astonishment, he revealed that my mother and sister Batya had been hiding with him for the past three months. My father asked him at once to fetch them, and soon they were reunited with us.

My mother had barely removed her coat when sudden shouts rang out. My father realized the Germans were coming. We later learned that in January 1942, an Aktion was underway in the ghetto, with young men separated for work and others marked for death. My father ordered us onto his sleigh. “If we stay here, they will kill us,” he said. “We will try to escape from Kimlishuk. If we pass through the gate where the Germans are standing, we will survive; if not, at least we tried.”

The five of us climbed onto the sleigh. Yitzhak, with his dark hair and distinct “Jewish” appearance, hid behind us. My heart pounded wildly as the sleigh slid toward the gate. The German soldiers, unable to imagine that a Jew would possess a horse and sleigh, simply opened the gate and waved us through. Behind us, we heard shouts and shots. When we finally reached safety, my father said in Yiddish: “We’re still alive.”