Sunday, November 18, 2012
Abraham Belka (Up-stander)
There were only five or six of us, but our numbers were growing. Soon the Nazis would know that the Vilna Resistance Force meant business. The Nazis didn't think us a huge threat through any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they thought us more an amusement than anything, a joke. That would all change in time. Right now about all we were capable of doing was slashing tires, throwing rocks or starting minor fires. Soon we would get more men, and with them would come weapons and the ability to strike the Nazis more forcefully than ever. For now we would have to deal. We were planing to have a meeting that night, that was before the Nazis captured our top asset, a man named Gideon Azramo, who had key information on the Nazis plans to liquidate the Jews in the ghetto. We needed to get him back. I staged a plan for a small task force of two men to sneak into the ghetto, grab Gideon, and sneak out, all while the Nazis were preoccupied with the chaos my other men would be creating. It was going great up until the Nazis called reinforcements and they were able to capture my men causing the commotion. They ended up catching Gideon and the two other men also and shot them all. That's when the killing started. From that point on, I've been moving from house to house, evading the Nazis and hoping one day to make it to any neighboring towns and build another resistance force there and bring it back to Vilna. Until that day comes, I'm just going to have to keep out of sight while simultaneously doing as much damage as is possible for a single man to do. I pray to God that he will make my life easy and the trip to another town will be soon, and the fall of the Nazi forces in Vilna will be quick and decisive by the hand of my men. With that, I leave whomever may read this here, hoping my actions will not go unnoticed, and I will be in your prayers.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Angelika Nowak (Bystander)
I could see it all unfold from my kitchen window, the rise of the ghettos. First, the barbed wire fences went up, and then the Jews were moved from their homes into the ghetto. There was a house across the street from me, a nice woman with two children, that was right outside the ghetto borders. She was told that they had to move into the ghetto and when she protested, proclaiming that she lived right on the edge of the ghetto and it was ridiculous the Nazi soldier backhanded her. At that point I couldn't watch anymore, and closed my shutters. The next day, I peeped out the window to see her and her two little boys outside with some baggage. A Nazi came up to them and told her that they wouldn't need any belongings and to put them back. Learning from her earlier mistake, she did as she was told. But the youngest of her two refused to part with his stuffed rabbit. Seeing that coaxing him didn't work, the Nazi went over to the boy, picked him up by his collar, and pinned him against the wall. I could hardly believe my eyes. Here I was, watching this boy, who looked to be four or five years of age, being screamed at by a six foot tall, big, burly Nazi just because he wanted to take his stuffed animal with him into the ghetto. The Nazi dropped him and seized his rabbit. After tearing it to shreds in front of his face, he led the family into the ghetto, the woman trying to calm down her son. For days I watched. Watched families upon families leave everything, and get crammed into houses that would seemingly burst at any second. This went on until the killings started. At that point I had had enough. I was already packed and I started my journey to Grodno, hopeful to leave the violence and hate of` Vilna.
Hienz Kristen (Perpetrator)
As we drove into Vilna, I could see Poles fleeing from the street, others closing their shutters. There was a strange silence, not just a lack of usual city noises, but the animals were quiet too. No birds chirping or flying around, no squirrels or dogs in sight. It was the calm before the storm. We pulled up beside a rather large and nice house. We knocked on the door and were met by a smiling woman who, as soon as she took a minute to process the situation, slammed the door in our face and we heard it lock. We knocked again and nothing. We went around the back and much to our luck, the door was unlocked. We walked in and saw the woman heading up the stairs, so I called to her. With a terrified look on her face, she slowly edged closer. I reassured her that we would not harm her and her face loosened up a bit. I asked her where we could find the most prestigious Jew in the town, and she directed us up the street. We approached the house and there was someone outside waiting for us. I walked up to the man, who appeared to be in his mid-forties. I told him that there would be more Nazis coming and to hold a meeting with the rest of the Jews in the town to tell them so. I said nothing else and just walked away. The takeover had begun.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Samuel Bak (Victim)
The Nazi's showed up a few days ago, rounding up all the Jews in Vilna and forcing them into segregated portions of the town they call "ghettos". They fenced us off with barbed wire like animals and forced us to wear patches that made it easy to recognize us as Jews. After a few days, the Nazi's took a bunch of Jews, including both my grandfathers into the Ponari forest and shot them. They took both of my grandmothers on the following Yom Kippur holiday and I assume they suffered the same fate as their husbands. At that moment, it was only me, my mother, and my father. After some time passed, we began to become accustomed to the ghetto lifestyle, hoping and praying we weren't to be the next taken into the forest. My father died, he was shot, a few days before the liberation of Vilna. Only the Lord knows why he couldn't have stayed alive a few more days. That image will forever haunt me, my father was asked to come outside by a Nazi officer, and I sat there, hiding under the stairs, peering out the window, watching their mouths move, not knowing what was being said. It felt like hours he was out there, a cold sweat dripping down my brow the whole time. As soon as they stopped talking, I was eager to open the door to let my father in, when they started to walk away. I jumped up, but my mother stopped me. I shot her an angry look, only to see tears welling up in her eyes. She knew what was going to happen, as did I. The last I saw of my father was a desperate look on his face as he walked off with the Nazis to his death. His head held high, I saw a single tear drop from his face as he turned the corner. I will never forget that moment as long as I live, be it one more day, or one hundred more years. By some miracle, my mother and I have made it this far, now I can only pray the road ahead is smooth and filled with improvement.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Terezin Summary
Terezin (Theresienstadt) is a town in northwest Czechoslovakia founded in the late eighteenth
century by Emperor Joseph II and named after his mother, Maria Teresa. It was originally a fortress meant to keep out Prague invaders. During WWII, it was made a ghetto camp for holding Jews that
were to be deported to other killing centers in the east. It was also used as a forced labor camp and most importantly, used by the Nazis as a propaganda "model camp". The Red Cross was aware of all the other concentration camps and the mass killings and horrible conditions that the prisoners were kept under. They wanted to visit a concentration camp to see the conditions up close. The Nazis invited the Red Cross to Terezin to inspect the camp. They prepared for the visit by painting houses, renovating barracks, and planting gardens. Social and cultural events were set up and the Red Cross representatives didn't find anything wrong. After the Red Cross members left, the Nazis resumed deportations. From it's start on November 24th, 1941 to it's end on May 9th, 1945, 140,000 Jews were deported to Terezin. Of that, 33,000 died there and 88,000 were deported to eastern killing centers. 3,000 of the deported Jews survived the killing centers, and when the camp was liberated, 19,000 were found alive.
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