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 way to the town of Švenčionys.

My father's was called Berl and my mother Sarah. My older brother, Yitzhak, was born in 1923 and my sister Batya was born in 1930. My father traded in food for animals with the Gentiles, and my mother used to run a kind of grocery store during summer months, when the rich of Vilna and the surrounding area came to vacation in the town.

Yitzhak and I were gifted students, but my parents had a hard time paying our tuition, thus in 1940 the town committee turned to my rich aunt in Vilna and asked her to take us under her wing.

My aunt's house was three stories high, furnished very luxuriously. Outside the house, in a place called Schulhof (synagogue courtyard in Yiddish) - a famous place in Vilna - a beautiful carriage with a car always stood waiting for any task assigned to it by my aunt.

In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and my aunt sent me and Yitzhak back to Nemenčinė. My aunt's house was close to what was then 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 town, it was occupied by a huge convoy of armored vehicles. Red Army soldiers did not even think of fighting the Nazi invader and fled for their life east and south. An open ghetto was established in Nemenčinė. Jews walked around with yellow badges, and young men, like my brother Yitzhak, were sent to forced labor, which later saved his life.

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

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 take most of our possessions to the new synagogue, because from there we would march to the Vilna Ghetto to work.

My father arranged small packages for each one of us. He carefully wrapped a portion of the lamb and placed it in the pile of packages destined for the Jews of Nemenčinė. My little sister, Batya, wanted to wear the 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 at this event. He was sent the day before to forced labor outside Nemenčinė. When he finished the work, he decided to walk towards the town. He met a Lithuanian man who warned him not to return to Nemenčinė because the Germans were about to exterminate all the Jews of the town. Yitzhak fled east to Belarus and each time hid in a different town.

Meanwhile, two German officers sat in the Nemenčinė synagogue courtyard, next to an open box in which the Jews were required to place their valuables. The box quickly filled with gold, pearls and banknotes. The Germans even forcibly ripped earrings from the women's ears. With their rifle butts, they beat all the men of the town after telling them to lie on the floor. I remember the cries, the shouts and the complete chaos. Many defecated in their pants out of fear; and yet most of us did not understand what was going to happen, even when some claimed that this was the end.

My cousin Zipporah’s baby started crying. A German soldier asked her in German, "Why is the baby crying?" Without waiting for an answer, he snatched it from her hands, grabbed his legs and just tore him in two. At that moment, Zipporah collapsed. To this day, when I go to sleep, the sight haunts me and gives me no rest.

We stayed in the courtyard outside the new synagogue from 6:00 in the morning until 12:00 in the afternoon. After the beatings, the Germans ordered us to get to our feet, stand in threes and get ready to go to work. At this point my father was no longer in the courtyard. My father was friendly with the 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 rest of the Jews going to work in the Vilna Ghetto. My father started walking, but stopped after a short time by the idea of letting his family go to work alone in the ghetto. While retracing his footsteps, a Gentile he knew came towards him. The Gentile asked him what he was doing. When my father told him he intended to return to Nemenčinė, his friend told him that his two brothers had just returned from a few days in the forest, and during their stay the Germans ordered them to dig a pit, and they think the pit is intended for the Jews of the town.

After the Germans arranged us in threes, they marched us towards Vilna. At one point, we were suddenly instructed to enter the forest instead of continuing in the direction of Vilna. We still did not suspect anything.

My mother, sister and I were the last trio, a fact critical to our rescue. On either side of the lines stood drunken Lithuanian policemen who made sure we did not try to escape. I could not see anything. My mother, who was taller than I, said in Yiddish that they would kill us, because she saw in the distance a large pile of yellow sand indicating that a deep pit had been dug there. I asked my mother "Why would they kill us? I did not hit anyone at school," she looked at me and started crying.

Then the Lithuanians using machine guns started firing at everyone, and with them stood Germans and probably also Poles. The wounded were pushed into the pit. At the top of the line was a cart carrying the old who could not walk, including my grandparents. The Lithuanians did not even bother to waste ammunition on them and simply rolled them into the pit. Other people of the town fell on top of them. They fell in three by three; heartbreaking cries were heard from everywhere. Many tried to escape; the Lithuanians devoted all their attention to shooting anyone who tried to escape.

When our turn came, about a meter before the pit, my mother took advantage of a second of inattention on the Lithuanians’ part, grabbed my sister Batya’s hand, and ran into the forest. One of the policemen kicked me - maybe one of the Germans - and I fell at the edge of the pit, but was not shot. Since I was the last one, no one fell on top of me. Below me lay all the townspeople, some still alive. I did not understand what was happening. Suddenly, the people below me who were not dead rose like a wave in an attempt to breathe some air. The Jews shouted all the time. The wave became stronger and threw me out of the pit. It was then that I realized I wanted to live. I rolled behind a tree, but the Germans noticed me when I got up and fired at me. Luckily, the bullet hit me superficially on the left ear. Bleeding, I ran as fast as I could.

The moment I walked away from the pit, I was sure I was the only one who survived. Several people actually managed to escape the pit, but I was still in shock trying to understand what was happening. As I ran, I noticed my mother and sister running not far from me. Suddenly, a local forester on his way to pick wild mushrooms appeared in front of us a sack in one hand, a knife in the other. He understood in seconds what was happening and managed to grab me. He called to my mother: "Stinking Jew, give me money or I’ll slaughter your child." My mother just looked at me and kept running. The Gentile bent down to place his sack of mushrooms, and I took the opportunity to escape between his legs.

I ran in the woods crying and shouting in Yiddish "Mama, mama." No one answered me. It was already getting cold, and I wore only a dress, without a coat. The evening fell and it began to get dark; the trees were high and the sky could not be seen. I was hungry. I lay down on the sand, felt something soft and fell asleep on it. I woke up in the morning when the first rays of the sun began to shine and the birds to chirp. It became clear to me that out of stress and shock I had actually run in a circle, because I had fallen asleep not far from the pit and no one was alive there anymore. I found out that I had slept all night on a body - a man with lots of blood dripping from his mouth, wearing a warm black coat, thanks to which I survived the cold night. It was our neighbor, Moshe Andman, 54 years old at the time of his death.

I was so scared I ran away without knowing where to. I so wanted to see someone alive, even a cat or a dog. Suddenly, I noticed a Polish nun. I ran to her and asked her for bread. She said to me: "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 looked at her and said in my heart, 'She's an old woman still alive and I'm a little girl, and she's sending me to heaven?' The nun gave me bread and milk, and immediately afterwards told me: "Get out of here or I’ll call the Germans."

Again I found myself running without knowing where to. Running, gave me some comfort. I heard cries in the bushes. I went in there and found the town's lunatic, 'the crazy Slovak’, who was probably less crazy than we thought because she coped very well with the situation, along with two small children. I was so happy to see a familiar face. She told me she wanted to go to Kimlishuk. When I heard the name Kimlishuk, I was happy, because I remembered that my uncle Bezalel's family, who had died five years earlier, lived there.

Since we could not walk during daylight and not on open roads, our progress was slow. Kimlishuk is about 26 km in a direct line. We had to stretch the road, and our march lasted about a week. We arrived at Kimlishuk a little before Yom Kippur. At that time they began to establish an open ghetto, and the trend was to concentrate the town’s Jews - about a third of its inhabitants - on one street only. Survivors from Nemenčinė, Podbroj and other towns flocked to Kimlishuk. Upon arrival, I immediately I asked where the Zorrer family lived. I knocked on the door in anticipation. My late uncle's wife stood in the doorway, a weary widow. I told her that I was Barko's daughter, but she angrily told me to leave, since because of me the Germans might still harass her. I was shocked. I was once more rejected, again left alone. I sat down on the ground and started crying. One of the community’s Jews invited me to sleep in the synagogue. The truth is that their ability to help was extremely limited.

A few weeks after I arrived, my brother Yitzhak, who had been rolling from town to town in Belarus, arrived at Kimlishuk and knocked on our aunt's door, but she did not let him in either. When I saw him I was of course filled with great joy. Shortly afterwards, I also met my father on the street. By that time it was already winter and it snowed, and he wandered around with a horse and sleigh between towns, passing on information about what was happening. My father was dressed, spoke and looked like a Gentile, so he could walk around unhindered. In addition, he was a very brave man, and the confidence he radiated helped him disguise his being a Jew from Germans and Lithuanians.

We were in the Kimlishuk ghetto for about three months, when one day my father was surprised to meet Ludwig Motzkotz in town, a Polish Gentile and a good friend of his from the village of Stripona near Nemenčinė. Motzkotz, a very poor man, who raised ten children in a one-room house, told him that my mother and sister Batya had been hiding with him for the past three months. My father immediately asked Motzkotz to ride to his village to fetch my mother and sister. Motzkotz did return with them. Mother did not even have time to remove her coat when suddenly shouts were heard. My father understood that the Germans were coming and that the situation was getting dangerous. We later learned that at that time, in January 1942, an Aktia was taking place in the ghetto, and young men who could work were separated from anyone considered useless by the Germans.

Father ordered all of us to get on his sleigh and said, "If we stay here they will kill us. We will try to escape from Kimlishuk on the sleigh. If we pass the gate where the Germans are standing we will survive; if not, at least we tried." The five of us sat down on the sleigh. Yitzhak, with his dark hair and ‘Jewish’ appearance, hid behind us. My heart was pounding wildly. The sleigh slid towards the gate. German soldiers, unable to imagine a Jew with a sleigh and a horse, opened the gate and waved us through, while shouts and shots were heard behind us. When we arrived at a safe place, my father said in Yiddish: "We’re still alive."