How did the diary survive?

Yitskhok’s diary lay untouched in the family’s hiding place (maline) for well over a year. When his cousin, Sore, returned to Vilna after the city’s liberation, she went back to the family’s hiding place to see if anything remained. There, she found a few family photos and the diary, ensuring that Yitskhok’s extraordinary record of daily life in the ghetto would be safeguarded and preserved. To tell the story of the diary’s life after Rudashevski’s death, we must begin with Sore’s survival.

This experience will take approximately 5 minutes

Sore’s first FPO meeting

FPO members met on this date in the ghetto. Sore’s youth group often did small tasks for the FPO, like collecting glass bottles to make weaponry and posting notices. The organization had to be secretive, and for a long time, Sore wasn’t told who she was helping.

Photo Captions

1. Abba Kovner’s proclamation, “Let us not be led like sheep to the slaughter.” Vilna Ghetto, Jan. 1, 1942. EHRI Documents.

2. Portrait of Abba Kovner, Polish-born Jewish partisan and commander of the United Partisan Organization (FPO).

Ilya Sheynbaum’s death

Ilya Sheynbaum led a group called the Second Fighting Organization. When the Gestapo liquidated the ghetto, the SFO resisted using guns, grenades, and Molotov cocktails. Sheynbaum was killed by a shot to the neck. Many partisans mourned him as a martyr.

Photo Captions

1. Ruins of the headquarters of the FPO, where members of the SFO made their final stand in the Vilna Ghetto.

2. Portrait of Ilya Sheynbaum

3. Lithuanian and Jewish police guard the entrance to the Vilna Ghetto. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Sore’s family moves into the maline

During the liquidation of the ghetto, thousands of Jews were taken to be murdered in Ponar and Sobibor. To avoid capture, 11 people hid in a maline. This included Sore, her mother and sister, and other family, as well as Yitskhok, his parents, and a few others.

Photo Captions

1. A Jewish man emerging from a maline, similar to what Sore and her family hid in, at 6 Strashun Street. Yad Vashem.

2. Portrait of Sore Voloshin and her father. Ghetto Fighters' House Museum, Israel/ Photo Archive

The maline occupants are caught

11 days after the water was shut off in the building, people in the maline were desperate. Someone went to fetch water. But the Gestapo followed him back, forcing everyone out. The occupants were taken to the police. Sore ran away.

Photo Captions

1. Main entrance to the Vilna Ghetto. Wikicommons.

2. Photo and transcription of inscriptions on walls of the Vilna Ghetto prison, carved by those awaiting execution.

Sore escapes to Kailis Block

Sore ran to Kailis, a labor camp where she knew partisans sent people into the forest. Partisan leader Sonye Madeysker helped her join a group headed to the forest. Sore was the only one in her family to escape arrest. The rest, including Yitskhok, were murdered.

Photo Captions

1. Jewish partisans with the Korchagin battalion in the forests of Lithuania. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Sore enters the forest

Sore joined a group of 50 people headed into the Rūdninkai Forest to link up with the partisans. When Sore and her group arrived where the partisans were gathered in the forest, the night was rainy and cold. But they were met with a warm welcome.

Photo Captions

1. Group portrait of partisans from the Vilna ghetto. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2. List of Vilna partisans in the “Avengers” brigade who were killed in action.

Capture of Sonye Madeysker

Gestapo agents ambushed Sonye Madeysker. Thinking quickly, she killed three officers and then tried to shoot herself. She survived, though badly injured. When interrogated, she refused to give any information. She later died in the Lukiškės prison.

Photo Captions

1. Portrait of Sonye Madeysker, the partisan leader regarded as a martyr for her bravery.

2. A partisan places dynamite on the railroad tracks outside Vilna, sabotaging Nazi supply routes.

Vilna Ghetto is liberated

The Soviet Union sent troops and partisan fighters into the Vilna Ghetto to dismantle the Nazis’ garrison, liberating the ghetto and its remaining inhabitants from German rule.

Photo Captions

1. Members of the “Avengers” brigade, including Abba Kovner in center, pose in a newly liberated Vilna.

2. Armed partisans, possibly also accompanied by Soviet soldiers, walk down the streets of liberated Vilna.

Publication of Auschwitz Report

Two escaped Jewish prisoners published statistics regarding deaths in Auschwitz, making the public aware of the scope of Nazi atrocities in Auschwitz for the first time.

Photo Captions

1. SS guards walk along the arrival ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, with two crematoria visible in the background.

2. Drawn outline of Auschwitz from the Vrba-Wetzler Report. FDR Presidential Library and Museum.

Sore finds Yitskhok’s diary

Sore and her friend, Feyge, went back to the house where her family had hidden. The space was tight, and Sore needed Feyge’s help to climb into the maline. When she entered, she found Yitskhok’s diary and treasured family photos.

Photo Captions

1. A deserted alley in Vilna, filled with rubble and debris from bombed buildings.

2. The inside cover of Yitskhok Rudashevski’s diary, discovered in the maline by Sore.

Sore brings Sutzkever the diary

Sore brought the diary to Avrom Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginski, both of whom knew Yitskhok in the ghetto. After the war, they founded a museum dedicated to preserving Jewish culture and memories from the ghetto. There, they displayed the diary in the museum.

Photo Captions

1. Sutzkever stands in front of the ruins of the ghetto school in Vilna. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2. A group of partisans, including Sutzkever and Abba Kovner, gather to read a document.

SS discovers the Frank family

Anne Frank also kept a diary during WWII. While she spent years in confinement, and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, she never experienced life in a ghetto. Each unique account is important for what it reveals about life during the Holocaust.

Photo Captions

1. Anne Frank writing at a school desk during her final year of primary school. Anne Frank Stichting.

2. The cover of Anne’s wartime diary. Anne Frank Stichting.

3. Dutch Jews from Westerbork, Netherlands, board a deportation train to Auschwitz. Wikicommons.

World War II is over

German forces surrendered to Western Europe on May 7th and to Eastern Europe on May 9th of 1945, marking the end of World War II. The end of the war was rightfully celebrated around the world, but the depth of its destruction left deep wounds to repair.

Photo Captions

1. Headline of the U.S. Army 45th Division newsletter announcing the end of World War II. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

2. Polish prisoners at Dachau toast to the liberation of the camp. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Nuremberg Trials begin

In November of 1945, the Allies staged an international tribunal to hold remaining members of Nazi leadership accountable for their war crimes, including the planning and execution of mass genocide.

Photo Captions

1. Overhead shot of the judges’ bench during the Nuremberg Trials. National Archives and Records Administration.

2. US Army staffers sort through stacks of evidence for use in the trials. National Archives and Records Administration.

The diary leaves Lithuania

As Soviet authorities increasingly sovietized political and cultural life in Vilna, Sutzkever realized that the Jewish artifacts in his museum were in danger. He removed Yitskhok’s diary from it and gave it to YIVO in New York. Sutzkever moves to Palestine.

Photo Captions

1. Cover of the Israeli Air Force Magazine, or “Bitaon,” 1948. Wikicommons.

2. Lithograph print depicting Jonah in the Belly of the Whale. Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

3. Railway station, Lod: Photograph for Palestine Railways. Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Di Goldene Keyt publishes the diary

Sutzkever published Yitskhok’s diary in the original Yiddish in Israel in his literary journal, Di Goldene Keyt, as a testament to the strength and intelligence of the youth of the Vilna Ghetto.

Photo Captions

1. The title page of a 1973 edition of Di Goldene Keyt, Sutzkever’s literary journal which ran under his editorship from 1949 to 1995. Yiddish Book Center.

2. Sutzkever and his wife, Freydke, examine documents and literary works that they rescued from Vilna. Yad Vashem.

YIVO Rudashevski exhibition is launched

Yitskhok’s diary, which resides in the YIVO archives in New York, preserves not just his memory, but that of the youth in the ghetto. Though tragic, his story highlights how young Jews were brave and creative in their efforts to resist Nazi violence.

Photo Captions

1. Yitskhok Rudashevski in Vilna, Poland, 1938. Ghetto Fighters' House Museum, Israel/ Photo ArchiveClose

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