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ARTIFACTS
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MORAL CHOICES
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Historical Artifacts

Quote: Someone who had a vision for all young people.
Witnessing a Life: The Diary of Yitskhok Rudashevski

Scholar text by Alexandra Zapruder

Two pages from the diary of a young man
Diary of Yitskhok Rudashevski

Vilna Ghetto, 1941-43. Diary of Yitskhok Rudashevski

Yitskhok Rudashevski and Family’s Maline

Video and photographs, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2022.

White page typed in black ink, in Polish.
Report on the Liquidation of the Piotrków Ghetto

Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland, 1942. Typed report.

Black ink drawing on tracing paper of city blocks with the area of the Vilna Ghetto marked by a dotted texture. Streets are named in Lithuanian.
Map of the Vilna Ghetto

Vilna Ghetto, 1942. Ink drawing on tracing paper.

Page handwritten in blue or black ink, with seven columns. 4 rows on the left side and 3 rows on the right side. In Yiddish.
List of Names and Addresses of Ghetto Residents

Vilna Ghetto, 1942. Handwritten report.

Page of a diary typed in Yiddish
Page from the diary of Herman Kruk

Vilna Ghetto, Circa 1940. Diary of Herman Kruk

Group photograph of Jewish partisans
Jewish partisans who helped liberate Vilnius

Vilnius, Lithuania, 1944. Jewish Partisans

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Moral Choices

In this section we propose questions to reflect on the moral choices made by individuals as they were going through extenuating circumstances.

If you could only save one document or thing, what would you save? Why?

A page from the diary of Yitskhok Rudashevski
A page from the diary of Yitskhok Rudashevski

Think about your own life. If something tragic like this happened to your whole family, what would you want to have for the future to remember them by? Can you understand why Sore would be happy to find her cousin’s diary up in the maline?

Now step back to consider this from a historical perspective. How is his diary a witness to what happened, and what must never be forgotten? And, what makes Rudashevski’s diary relevant today, from both a contemporary and moral perspective?

Could it have survived?

In July 1944, the Nazis were driven out of the city of Vilnius by the Soviet Army. Sore Voloshin was a teenager, and the sole survivor of over 50 family members. She then went back to the attic of 24 Dysnos Street in Vilnius. This was where she had hidden with some of her family, including her cousin Yitskhok Rudashevski, to avoid the Nazis. But like so many others, her cousin had been murdered. Perhaps she could find something in there?

This experience will take approximately 2 minutes
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What was happening in the world?

In this section you will find headlines of newspapers showing what was happening in the world at the same time that we tell Yitskhok Rudashevski’s story, following the chapter’s timeline.

1944

newspaper clipping

New York Times, June 6th, 1944. Courtesy of The New York Times.

newspaper clipping

New York Times, June 11th, 1944. Courtesy of The New York Times.

newspaper clipping

Labor Action. July 17th, 1944. Source: Source: Marxists Internet Archive.

newspaper clipping

New York Times, June 6th, 1944. Courtesy of The New York Times.

1944
1944
June 6th: D-Day - Allies invade Normandy, France
Image credits: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Yad Vashem, and Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, Israel/ Photo Archive

What she found in the attic was the diary of her cousin, Yitskhok Rudashevski. But who was he?

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