Page from Ghetto Notes by Shmerke Kaczerginski

Ghetto notes by Shmerke Kaczerginski, 7th section, starting July 27th, 1943. Kazczerginski was a Yiddish writer and cultural activist. The notes recount the history of Itzik Wittenberg’s arrest by the Gestapo. Wittenberg, who was a communist, was the first commander of the United Partisan Organization (Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsye, FPO), a Jewish resistance organization in the Vilna Ghetto. The Lithuanian police arrested him after being betrayed by one of his contacts whom the Germans had captured. Wittenberg was subsequently set free and hidden in the ghetto by FPO soldiers. Tensions peaked when the Germans threatened to destroy the rest of the ghetto if Wittenberg was not given up. Jacob Gens, the commander of the Jewish police in the Vilna Ghetto, appealed to the ghetto population to surrender Wittenberg, and many turned against the FPO. When Wittenberg learned that the communist ghetto leaders supported his surrender, he accepted their decision and gave himself up to the Jewish Police. That day, July 16th, 1943 was named “Wittenberg Day.” Wittenberg committed suicide at the prison by taking poison.

The notes also describe when the author, Kaczerginski, left Vilna for the partisan forests. In September 1943, Kaczerginski, along with the poet Avrom Sutzkever, his wife, Freydke, and other members of the FPO, escaped from the Vilna ghetto as part of an organized group of fighters just before its liquidation. They joined a Soviet partisan unit in the Naroch Forests, where Kaczerginski fought as a partisan until the liberation of Vilnius in July 1944.

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