Diary of Yitskhok Rudashevski

This is the diary of Yitskhok Rudashevski, a Jewish teenager in the Vilna Ghetto. It is available in the original Yiddish as well as an English translation. Rudashevski was 13 years old and was a student at the Real Gymnasium when the Germans occupied Vilna in 1941. He began keeping a diary in Yiddish that chronicled the misery of life in the ghetto. He and his family hid in September 1943, when the ghetto was liquidated (emptied) and its inhabitants sent away to labor or death camps. But their hiding place was discovered. They were shot in the mass killing place at Ponar. Rudashevski was 15 years old when he died.

He described his first day in the ghetto like this:

“The first ghetto day dawns. I run straight out into the street. The streets are still filled with a restless mass of people. It is hard to push your way through. I feel like I am in a chest. There is no air to breathe. Wherever you go you run into a gate that cuts us off from Strashun Street. That is part of the ghetto too. I look for relatives and friends. Some people still have no place to live. They settle in on stairs and in shops. Suddenly the mass of people in the street starts to sway. People start to run. German officers are coming to photograph the crooked alleys, the frightened people. They are satisfied with the Middle Ages which they have brought all the way to the twentieth century!!! Soon they leave. People calm down. I decide I have to find my friends. I think we will have to be together.”

Digitization of this artifact has been made possible by the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project.