Aharon Barak
Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Israel
The Holocaust Made Me Optimistic
The Personal Perspective
I was born in the year 1936 in the city of Kaunas in Lithuania. My father was a lawyer. He didn’t work in the field, he was the manager of the Artziyisraeli office in Lithuania. My mother was a teacher of Latin and Lithuanian history. Her father – my grandfather – was a rabbi who served as the rabbi of two communities, one of Rokiškis and the other of Obeliai (Abel).
Under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Lithuania was given to Russian administration. Sometime after, Lithuania was annexed to the Soviet Union. With the beginning of Operation Barbarossa the Germans conquered Lithuania (in June 1941). I remember the flyover of German war planes above Kaunas very well (on 22 June in 1941).
This is how the Jewish holocaust in Lithuania began. This is also how my families own personal holocaust began. With the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Lithuania and prior to the invasion of the German army, the pogroms began, and hundreds of Jews were murdered in Kaunas. With the German army invasion of Lithuania (on the 24th of July 1941), they declared that in Kaunas a labor camp would be established, the Kovno Ghetto[1]. I remember well how my parents and myself left our home in the city and with the help of a horse and wagon moved our belongings to the ghetto. Another 30,000 Jews from Kaunas did the same[2]. We were ordered (on the 17th of July 1941) to wear a yellow star of David on our shirts. Around the ghetto a barb wire fence was erected. Entering and exiting the ghetto was prohibited (on the 15th of August 1941).
The Ältestenrat, a committee of elders headed by Dr. Elhanan Elkis, handled the internal management of the ghetto. The committee ordered 500 intelligent people to be brought to the entrance of the ghetto. It was said to be to assist in the organization of Lithuania’s archives. Those who were selected were taken to the Fourth Fort, a fortress on the outskirts of the city. Upon their arrival they were shot to death. Thus began those infamous actions.
The “Great Action”[3] took place on October 28, 1941. All the Jews of the ghetto were ordered to gather in the main square of the ghetto, called Democracy Square. In the square, selections were made throughout the day. Those who the Germans deemed “unfit for work” were sent to the right, and the others to the left. More than 9,000 Jews found on the wrong side were sent to the Ninth Fort (also located on the outskirts of Kaunas). In describing the horrific event Leib Garfunkel wrote that: “Throughout the day, the Jews were exterminated in groups of 100 people. They were pushed into pre-prepared pits and exterminated by machine guns. Immediately afterwards, the pits were covered with earth. Many Jews who were injured or those not injured at all were buried alive.”[4]
A “quiet” period began after the “Great Action”. It was a time without actions, but filled with anguish, fear and death. The ghetto was a large prison filled with death row inmates[5]. Pregnancy was prohibited; Opening prayer houses or educational institutions was prohibited; Teaching of any kind was prohibited; Carrying any money was prohibited. After the German army suffered a great defeat in Stalingrad in early 1943, 44 Jews were abducted and shot dead at the Ninth Fort.
There was constant hunger in the ghetto. The Germans provided about 750 calories per person per day. Alongside the hunger, the overcrowding in the ghetto stood out in particular. There was a housing shortage. During the winter there was a great shortage of kindling for heating. The Jews in the ghetto were cut off and had no information on what was happening in the world. Sending and receiving letters was prohibited; There was no telephone contact with the outside; Listening to the radio was prohibited.
The ghetto was run by the Ältestenrat[6]. The Ältestenrat continued to manage the internal affairs of the ghetto, while implementing the instructions of the German authorities. A Jewish police force operated alongside the Ältestenrat. The ghetto had a cultural department, headed by the researcher of Hebrew literature, Prof. Chaim Nachman Shapira, who established schools and held talks, lectures,[7] and exhibitions[8] (including exhibitions of paintings by Esther Luria who painted many pictures about life in the ghetto). A medical department, a pharmacy and a social welfare department were also established in the ghetto[9].
A court which had the authority to adjudicate both criminal matters and civil disputes between residents of Kovno was established in the ghetto. The court’s authority was derived from the ghetto’s “Basic Constitution”, published in August 1941 and amended several times. The law that was enforced in the ghetto was the law that was enforced in Lithuania between the two world wars. However, in civil matters, Jewish law also served as a legal source in court rulings. In addition, many regulations were enacted in the ghetto in all areas of life, which served as a basis for judgement[10]. The Ältestenrat formed an orchestra and the melody of “Kol Nidrei” was heard in their first concert (August 1942).[11]
The Kovno ghetto was located in the suburbs of the city, which was famous in the world of Jewish religious thought. This is a suburb of Slobodke, which housed the “Knesses Yisrael” yeshiva, known as the “Slobodke Yeshiva”, one of the most important yeshivas of the Musar movement founded by Rabbi Yisrael of Salant. Torah study in the ghetto continued underground without a break despite the German prohibition. The rabbi of the ghetto was Rabbi Avraham Dover Shapira. Public prayers were held in secret quorums, mostly on Saturdays and holidays, despite the order issued by the Germans forbidding prayer and ordering the closure of synagogues[12].
The “quiet” period ended in the summer of 1943. By order of Heinrich Himmler (dated June 21, 1943), the ghettos in the Baltic states and Belarus, including the Kovno Ghetto, were officially abolished and turned into concentration camps[13]. Under German civilian rule, the Kovno Ghetto was subordinated to the SS.
On March 27, 1944, the worst happened. The “Children’s Action” begun. Every child under the age of 12 was apprehended and transferred to the Ninth Fort. Also transferred there were the elderly. Most were killed in the Ninth Fort in cold blood, and some were sent to extermination in Auschwitz. The Children’s Action lasted two days.
By some miracle I survived. My mother said that she hid me in one of the rooms of the house where the pursuing forces entered. From another source I heard that I was hid in a hiding place (a type of “Bunker”) outside the house. It was clear that it was no longer possible to stay in the ghetto. The difficulty that arose was not actually escaping the ghetto, but rather surviving outside of it. There were young people who left the ghetto and joined the partisans. But who would take me, an eight-year-old Jewish boy, trying to escape from the ghetto? None of my mother’s non-Jewish friends agreed to take me in.
We finally found a Lithuanian farmer (Rakevičius) and his three sons who agreed to take me and my mother in. To get out of the ghetto, I was hidden in a bag filled with clothes for the German army that were sewn in the ghetto workshops. The sack was thrown, along with other sacks, onto a horse-drawn wagon. The wagon exited the ghetto with a German soldier sitting on it – that is, sitting on me literally. I lay curled up in a sack, quiet and motionless. At the same time, my mother left the ghetto through the main gate with the help of a bribe she paid to the German guard. The cart arrived and the sacks were unloaded. “My sack” was collected by the Lithuanian farmer and his sons and taken to their home.
We stayed in Rakevičius’s house for only a few weeks. There were other Jews like us who fled the ghetto and were taken in by Rakevičius. The Germans suspected him, and he had no choice but to transfer the Jews who stayed with him to another farmer. My mother and I were transferred by him to a farmer by the name of Mozūraitis, his wife Ona and their children Malina, Alphonse, Azna and Zenos. We lived in his house for about half a year. I was given the name Algirdas. During the day we had to hide, since the other villagers would otherwise discover us. Based on my memories and my mother’s stories, a wall was built in the farmer’s house parallel to another wall, with a meter between them. My mother and I hid in this space between the walls during the day. My mother homeschooled me while we hid. At night we came out from between the walls and breathed fresh air. I would play with the farmer’s children.
Why did these two farming families save us? When I met them a few years ago, I asked them this question. I added that it was clear that if the Germans had found us, it was not only our fate would have been certain death; It was also their fate and the fate of their families. How did they take this risk? Their answer was: You needed help and we could help. We are devout Catholics. We did as our religion commanded. I heard these honest words and asked my wife Elisheva and two of our children who were with us whether we would also have behaved this way. Members of both families were of course recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations[14].
We were liberated by the Soviet army in the summer of 1944. We did not know what happened to my father. We drove to Kaunas to look for him. On the way I recognized my uncle (my mother’s brother) coming towards us while on his way to search for us. He told us that towards the end of the ghetto, all those who remained in it (7,000 to 8,000 people) were sent to concentration camps in Germany, where most of them died of disease and malnutrition. Many of the ghetto’s residents hid in pre-prepared bunkers. These too were captured, as the Germans burned the wooden houses and had to escape the suffocation. Only two bunkers built in the courtyard of the house survived. My father was in one of the bunkers (named after him, “Brick Bunker”), which was built by the husband of my mother’s sister (Mendel Calvaria) and his two brothers (Simon and Chaim).
My father’s troubles started with the entry of the Red Army into Kaunas, who as mentioned, was the director of the Artziyisraeli office in Lithuania before the war. It was clear that a new period of anguish had begun. We joined the escape effort. We received forged certificates stating that we are Greeks returning to Greece and joined an extensive movement of refugees. They returned to their homes and countries. Although for us – our homeland was the Land of Israel, and the British did not allow us to enter. In 1945 we traveled, therefore, to escape from the Soviets and to wait for an opportunity to immigrate to Israel.
We left Kaunas and traveled to Vilnius, from there to Warsaw (which was in ruins) and from there to Bucharest. While on a freight train transporting coal from Bucharest to Budapest, we heard the train siren announcing the end of World War II. From was torn Budapest we moved to the Russian side of Austria. We climbed mountains and traveled to the British side of Austria. There we were greeted by British soldiers. They were the soldiers of the Hebrew Brigade. On their uniform was a symbol: a blue-and-white flag. It was a moment that will never be forgotten.
The Brigade took us to Milan, and from there we traveled to Rome. We lived there for two years in anticipation of immigration to Israel. In Rome I ‘studied’ for the first time in school. It was a Jewish school for immigrants with two classes, one for grades 1-6, and the other for grades 7-12. My only memory from school is the trips to Rome, where we received humane treatment for the first time. We were finally not only refugees, but also human beings.
In May 1947, my father received an offer to move with the family to Cyprus, in order to help inmates in immigrant camps who were captured by the British on ships on their way to Israel during the Second Aliya. My father was given the choice whether to arrive by ship to Cyprus via Athens or via Haifa. We chose the second option. I remember well the wonderful sight of the Haifa sunrise from the deck of the ship “Transylvania”. We were given the opportunity to leave the ship for a few days and visit Haifa. We did so on May 17, 1947. We never returned to the ship. We received fake IDs, and this is how we began our lives in the land of Israel.
[1] As part of the “rule of law”, the Germans were careful to establish a legal framework for their actions. The ghetto was a legal entity established by order of the Germans, called the “Williampola Ghetto” and by the Jews “the Slobodka Ghetto”. Supervision of the ghetto was entrusted to the German Civil Administration headed by the Stadt Kommissar. In the fall of 1943, the ghetto was transferred from the Civil Administration to the SS and was defined as the Kauen Concentration Camp.
[2] For the history of the Kaunas (Kovno) ghetto, see: Leib Grofenkel (ed.), Lithuanian Jewry (Association of Lithuanians in Israel, 1983), Vol. IV, pp. 184-63; Leib Garfunkel, Destruction of Kovno’s Jewry (Yad Vashem, 1959); Eilat, Shalom Aliti, Crossing the River (Yad Vashem, 1959); Avraham Tori, Everyday Ghetto (Bialik Institute, Tel Aviv University, 1988). Leib Garfunkel’s son wrote about Lieb’s life and contribution: Zvi Garfunkel, “Leib Garfunkel”, Avraham Tori (ed.), The contribution of Lithuanian Jews to the building of the Land and the State of Israel (Union of Lithuanian Academics, 1988).
[3] For a personal description of the Great Action, see: Aryeh Segelson, In the Heart of the Dark: The Destruction of Jewish Kaunas – An Inside View (Yad Vashem, 2003), pp. 146-116. Aryeh Segelson, later a judge in the Tel Aviv District Court, was 18 years old when the Great Action took place.
[4] Lithuanian Jewry, p. 66.
[5] Id., at 73.
[6] Id., at 79; see also: Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe During the Nazi Occupation (Yad Vashem, 1969), based on the name Kaunas (Kovno) in the index. In Tori’s book (pp. 488-425) there are many reports which were submitted to the Ältestenrat.
[7] Lithuanian Jewry, p. 81.
[8] Id., at 124; See also: Itamar Levin, Spirit in a Storm: A Collection of Sources on Spiritual Perseverance During the Holocaust (Moreshet, 2019), pp. 181-173.
[9] Ibid., Lithuanian Jewry.
[10] See: Rami Neuderper, The Jewish Police in the Kovno Ghetto – A Chronicle of Conflicts (Master’s Thesis, Tel Aviv University, 2015). The basic bylaws of the courts also stipulated that “”he special living conditions in the ghetto” would serve as a basis for judgement.
[11] Lithuanian Jewry, p. 140.
[12] Lithuanian Jewry, p. 141.
[13] Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, Avraham Margaliot (Eds.), The Holocaust in Documentation (Yad Vashem, 1977), pp. 364-363.
[14] See: https://www.yadvashem.org/he/righteous/stories/rakevicius-mozuraitis.html.