The Family

by David Laskin

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: WONDER GIRL

  Nazi officers convinced the Rakov Judenrat: “Testimony by Uri Finkel.”

  “Many such shameful and worn-out lies: . . .”: Rakov Yizkor book.

  Murder by gas would be perfected: Timothy Snyder, review of “The Auschwitz Volunteer,” by Witold Pilecki, New York Times Book Review, June 24, 2012, notes that Zyklon B was used at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor.

  In the six months between June and December 1941: Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010), p. 189.

  By the end of 1941: Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 186.

  Heydrich announced that the Reich’s goal: “The Wannsee Conference and ‘The Final Solution,’” U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site, www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005477.

  February 4, 1942: This date is from The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos During the Holocaust, edited by Guy Miron (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009); other accounts, including “Rakov Under Nazi Occupation,” put the date at February 2, 1942.

  all assembled in the courtyard: Accounts of the liquidation of the Rakov ghetto and the torching of the synagogue have serious discrepancies and I agonized over which account to choose in narrating this event. The essential difference concerns whether the ghetto prisoners were shot outside the synagogue and the corpses then thrown into the synagogue and torched, or whether the prisoners were herded into the synagogue and then incinerated alive. Ultimately, I chose the latter because more sources give this account. I also followed the advice of Adi Grynholc, who has researched this episode thoroughly. It’s possible, as my friend Ivan Doig speculated, that both accounts have some truth: it could have been that the Nazis began shooting the prisoners in batches and at some point decided that it was taking too long—there were 950 men, women, and children to kill—and so they herded the remainder into the synagogue and set the place on fire.

  A group of six witnesses: “The Destruction of Rakov Jews” report written in August 1945, in “Memory to Volozhin Region,” www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/volozhin1/Volozhin1.html#TOC.

  Moshe Pogolensky gave a different account: “Rakov Under Nazi Occupation.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: BREAKDOWNS

  “I was torn,” he recalls: Interview with Leonard Cohn, Stamford, Connecticut, August 5, 2011.

  Two rabbis imprisoned in the stifling house: Volozhin Yizkor book, pp. 33–34.

  Itel managed to secure a “declaration of essentiality”: Evans, They Made America, p. 314.

  Itel’s campaign to “safeguard the value and goodwill of Maiden Form’s name”: www.apparelsearch.com/names/M/Maidenform/Maidenform_Brands.htm.

  Gold, though restricted, was still available: Cohen, As I Recall, p. 80.

  Twenty-three years old in 1942, Rose was a pretty: Interview with Rose Rubenstein Einziger and her daughter Laurie Bellet, Walnut Creek, California, February 27, 2010. Also unpublished diary that Rose Rubenstein kept as a young woman.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: DESPAIRING PEOPLE

  another nine thousand souls had been slaughtered: www.deathcamps.org/occupation/vilnius%20ghetto.html.

  “the blood-drenched delusion”: Rudashevski, The Diary, p. 36.

  Doba had no permit: Most sources, including www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/terrible_choice/ter002.html, note that only those who held permits were allowed to live in Ghetto 1—the Large Ghetto where Doba and the boys were recorded in the 1942 census. But Tsipora Alperovich, in interviews in Tel Aviv, June 8, 2010, and March 29, 2011, described visiting with Doba and her sons in the ghetto and insisted Doba had no permit.

  He was a good man, a confirmed bachelor: H. Kazdan, ed., Teacher’s Memorial Book (in Yiddish; New York: Committee to Perpetuate Memory of Deceased Teachers, 1954), pp. 284–285. Yitskhok Senicki is mentioned on p. 233 of Kruk, The Last Days; the footnote to this page states that “He was killed in a camp in Estonia.”

  the average “living space” in Vilna ghetto: www.deathcamps.org/occupation/vilnius%20ghetto.html.

  She remembered that he suffered serious hearing loss: Tsipora Alperovich in the June 8, 2010, interview said that Shimon suffered hearing loss after contracting meningitis—but from the letters it seems that he suffered some hearing loss after contracting scarlet fever as child. It’s possible that Tsipora was mistaken or confused. The extent of Shimon’s deafness is unknown.

  “the insanely wild conditions of life . . .”: Mark Dvorzhetski quoted in Rudashevski, The Diary, p. 16.

  “The book unites us with the future”: Rudashevski, The Diary, p. 106.

  “the same sad ghetto song . . .”: Rudashevski, The Diary, p. 73.

  “Frozen, carrying the little stands on their backs: . . .”: Rudashevski, The Diary, pp. 91–92.

  “Let us not go like sheep . . .”: www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/vilna/during/responses_to_the_murder.asp?WT.mc_id=wiki.

  to arm his Jewish ghetto police with guns: Kruk, The Last Days, p. 562.

  “An American incursion has landed”: Rudashevski, The Diary, pp. 93–94.

  Battle of Kasserine Pass: H. R. Knickerbocker and Jack Thompson, Danger Forward: The Story of the First Division in World War II (Washington, DC: Society of the First Division, 1947), pp. 13, ff.

  Seventy years later, Len: Interview with Leonard Cohn, Stamford, Connecticut, August 5, 2011.

  “Today the terrible news reached us . . .”: Rudashevski, The Diary, pp. 138–140.

  Gens, though by some accounts he secretly supported: www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/terrible_choice/ter002.html.

  “The chase after Wittenberg went on for hours”: Balberyszski, Stronger Than Iron, p. 241; www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/gens.html.

  Gens coined a slogan: Kruk, The Last Days, p. xlvi.

  A throng of “underworld characters . . .”: Kruk, The Last Days, p. xlvi.

  “Look, Jews are standing in the street,” Abba Kovner told Wittenberg: www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/terrible_choice/ter002.html.

  signaled the beginning of the end: Kruk, The Last Days, p. xlvi.

  Of the eighty thousand Jews living in Vilna: deathcamps.org.

  At Ponar alone, some seventy-two thousand Jews: Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 192.

  “No other Jewish community . . .”: deathcamps.org.

  By then Jacob Gens was dead: Gens remains an extremely controversial and enigmatic figure. Some believe that as the ultimate pragmatist he saved many Jews from death, doing the best he could in an impossible situation. Others write him off as a megalomaniacal collaborator—a traitor, a perpetrator of shameful deeds, and a leader who was taken in by German lies and ended up “pushing others to their deaths.” For a good discussion of Gens’s contradictions, see www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/terrible_choice.ter002.html.

  At seven o’clock on the morning of September 23: Balberyszski, Stronger Than Iron, p. 265.

  “Screaming obscenities . . .”: Lily M. Margules, Memories, Memories: From Vilna to New York with a Few Stops Along the Way (Annapolis, MD: Lighthouse Press, 1999), p. 69.

  “As soon as we passed the gate . . .”: Balberyszski, Stronger Than Iron, p. 265.

  “It is naïve, absurd, and historically false . . .”: Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Summit Books, 1988), p. 40.

  “Germans tore into our columns”: Balberyszski, Stronger Than Iron, p. 266.

  “there were two rows of Gestapo . . .”: Sonia Pauline Beker, Symphony on Fire (New Milford, NJ: Wordsmithy, 2007) pp. 58–59, quoted in www.untilourlastbreath.com.

  “I don’t know how to describe the sound and the smell of death . . .”: Margules, Memories, Memories, p. 72.

  “No, they won’t do this to you”: Beker, Symphony on Fire, pp. 58–59, quoted in www.untilourlastbreath.com.

  “Ukrainian guards walked among the half-sleeping people . . .”: Kruk, The L
ast Days, p. 662.

  the gas chambers at Sobibor: I have found a number of conflicting accounts about the liquidation of the women and children of the Vilna ghetto. Some sources, including Vilnius Ghetto Lists of Prisoners, vol. 1, Vilnius: Jewish Museum, 1996, say that the women who were not sent to Kaiserwald (labor camp) were exterminated at Majdanek concentration camp—not Sobibor. Balberyszski in Stronger Than Iron also cites Majdanek. Other sources, including Howard Margol, a past president of LitvakSIG at Jewish Gen and a well-known expert on the Vilna ghetto, says the women were all transported to Ponar and shot there. Dr. Rose Lerer Cohen wrote the following in an e-mail of October 25, 2012: “From The Holocaust in Lithuania a Book of Remembrance published by Rose Lerer Cohen and Saul Issroff—I found the following references—between June and November 1943 Jews from the Vilna Ghetto were transported to Kaiserwald and on 23–24 September 1943 3,500 prisoners were transported from the Vilna Ghetto—males to Estonia via Siauliai and women were transported to Kaiserwald. The weak were murdered on the spot. The remaining prisoners were transported to Stuttoff, and from there the children were transported to Auschwitz together with their mothers. Others were transported to Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, Natzweiler and Neuengamme.”

  However, Zvi Bernhardt, a researcher with the reference and information services of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, wrote the following in an e-mail message dated October 31, 2012: “According to [Yitzhak] Arad’s 2004 book History of the Holocaust Soviet Union and Annexed Territories volume 2, pg. 572–573: 1400–1700 younger women were sent to Kaiserwald, 4000–4500 were sent to Sobibor and a few hundred were shot in Ponar. Arad’s 1980 book Ghetto in Flames is still considered the authoritative book on the Vilna Ghetto.” However, in Ghetto in Flames (New York: Holocaust Library, 1982), Yitzhak Arad writes the following on p. 432: “About 1,600–2,000 of the males assembled at Rossa Square were dispatched to camps in Estonia, and 1,400–1,700 women to Latvia, totaling 3,000–3,700 persons. Another 4,300–5,000 women and children were sent to the Majdanek gas chambers, and several hundred elderly and sick people were shot at Ponar.”

  Many questions remain unanswered—and will never be answered—about the final months of Doba’s life and about her death. My narrative choices were based on the following: the majority of the prisoners recorded in the May 29, 1942, census were still alive when the final liquidation of the ghetto was made on September 23–24, 1943—therefore it seems logical to conclude that Doba was among them; Yad Vashem’s researcher has identified Arad as the authority on the Vilna ghetto and Arad says in his most recent account that “4000–5000 were sent to Sobibor”—so again, it seems logical to conclude that Doba and Velveleh were among those. I have been unable to resolve the question of whether the women and children of Vilna who were selected to die perished at Majdanek or Sobibor, about which Arad himself offers conflicting accounts.

  My intention was that Doba would represent the thousands of Jewish women in Vilna whose stories have never been recorded—so I chose to narrate her final days to reflect the most common experiences.

  For details about the gas chambers at Sobibor, I relied on Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp, by Jules Schelvis (Oxford: Berg Press, 2007), pp. 99–113. Schelvis cites two contemporary accounts of transports arriving at Sobibor from Vilna (p. 220).

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: KLOOGA

  Gestapo Chief Kittel did the counting: Balberyszski, Stronger Than Iron, p. 268.

  One hundred of the old and feeble: Kruk, The Last Days, p. 662.

  “People started to cry”: Saul Slocki testimony in the archives of Beit Lohamei Haghetaot (The Ghetto Fighters’ House), Israel.

  the train halted at Klooga . . . on Wednesday, September 29: Anton Weiss-Wendt, Murder Without Hatred (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2009), p. 301; Balberyszski, Stronger Than Iron, p. 286.

  The next morning they gave him a cup of chestnut coffee: These details on life in the camp come from Weiss-Wendt, Murder Without Hatred, and from interviews with Tola Urbach, Adele Jochelson, and Michael Turner recorded by the USC Shoah Foundation, Institute for Visual History and Education, archived at Stanford University Library, Palo Alto, California (among other libraries). In Stronger Than Iron, Balberyszski noted that roll call was usually held at 6 P.M. and initially was not so bad—only gradually did it become a torture.

  Gradually the daily quotas were raised to nineteen, thirty: Weiss-Wendt, Murder Without Hatred, p. 303.

  “Everywhere [the strong ones] are the first ones . . .”: Kruk, The Last Days, p. 680.

  “They would use the roll call to punish ‘offenders’ . . .”; When Kurt Stacher: Balberyszski, Stronger Than Iron, pp. 286, 301; and Weiss-Wendt, Murder Without Hatred, p. 304.

  Michael Turner watched SS guards: USC Shoah Foundation testimony.

  “The hunger was unbelievable”: Tola Urbach, USC Shoah Foundation testimony.

  The food ration was “neither enough to live on nor to die on”: This quote and details about camp life are from Kruk, The Last Days, pp. 685–687, 690.

  Occasionally the slaves sang Hebrew songs: Kruk, The Last Days, p. 678.

  Some of the men smuggled prayer shawls: Balberyszski, Stronger Than Iron, p. 301.

  A few written traces: These traces were located by research wizards Leah Teichthal and Rita Margolin at Yad Vashem and William Connelly at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Mr. Connelly helped me translate the German and interpret the various terms on the forms.

  One hundred were shot after three prisoners succeeded in escaping: Balberyszski, Stronger Than Iron, p. 306.

  In June 1944, Klooga had 2,122: Statistics for Jewish forced-labor camps in Estonia, September 1943–June 1944, based on monthly reports by camp chief physician Franz von Bodman, archived at Yad Vashem.

  “Everything is being liberated . . .”: Kruk, The Last Days, p. 698.

  Itel was also doing her bit: Information on the pigeon vest from Maidenform Collection and Evans, They Made America, p. 314.

  “mighty explosions and bombardments,” “Soon you will be liberated,” and “You can sense the front . . .”: Kruk, The Last Days, pp. 699, 694, 702, respectively.

  transferred to Danzig: Weiss-Wendt, Murder Without Hatred, p. 307.

  The 301 healthy men: My description of the last hours of Klooga comes from Weiss-Wendt, Murder Without Hatred, pp. 311–313; testimony of Tola Urbach, Adele Jochelson, and Michael Turner, USC Shoah Foundation. Also Kruk, The Last Days, p. 685, and Balberyszski, Stronger Than Iron, pp. 314–315. For the appearance of the funeral pyres, I relied on the extensive photo archive at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

  491 could be identified: Weiss-Wendt, Murder Without Hatred, p. 318.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: POSTWAR

  For Future Generations: Kruk, The Last Days, epigraph.

  Shalom Tvi booked the first available passage: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, File Series A-File, File Number A-2958053, records relating to Sholom Kahanowicz.

  hundreds of thousands of Arabs: The exact number is a source of heated controversy—with estimates ranging from 335,000 to nearly a million depending on the source.

  In 1998, an estimated 15,672 refugees: www.palestineremembered.com/Tulkarm/Wadi-al-Hawarith/index.html.

  the Jewish population of Israel almost doubled: Kramer, A History of Palestine, p. 320.

  print ads crafted by Mary Fillius: Reichert, The Erotic History of Advertising, p. 145, and Evans, They Made America, p. 315. Material at Maidenform Collection, Series 1: Company History, 1922–1990, states that Kitty D’Alessio “worked extensively” on the Dream Campaign and may have originated the idea.

  The tagline was so catchy: Evans, They Made America, p. 315.

  “The edge of Vilna Street stayed intact”: Zelig Kost in Rakov Yizkor book. Additional information from telephone interview with Estelle Trooskin, December 2011, and interview with Inda Epstein
Goldfarb, Freehold, New Jersey, July 26, 2010.

  Hyman includes one paragraph: Cohen, As I Recall, p. 82.

  “Auschwitz,” writes Yale historian Timothy Snyder: Timothy Snyder, “Holocaust: The Ignored Reality,” The New York Review of Books, July 16, 2009, www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jul/16/holocaust-the-ignored-reality/.

  “First, I can’t afford it”: Maidenform Collection.

  EPILOGUE

  So Shimon Dov is my great-great-grandfather: Technically I am not a Kohain because membership in the priestly caste passes from father to son.

  INDEX

  The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.

  A. Cohen & Sons, 66–69, 70, 86, 90, 92, 130–31, 149–50, 205, 221, 224, 278, 281–82, 283, 318–19, 322

  Agnon, S. Y., 9, 10

  Aktion (roundup and slaughter), 249, 250–52, 255–56, 279–80

  Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 276–77

  Aleichem, Sholem, 37

  Alexander II, Tsar of Russia, 20

  Alexander III, Tsar of Russia, 29, 119

  Alien Property Custodian, 282

  aliyah (“ascent”), 118, 120, 124, 140, 154, 268

  “Aliyah Bet” (human smuggling campaign), 182, 185

  Alperovich, Tsipora, 191, 285–86, 293, 295

  American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (“the Joint”, 213

  Amir, Yisrael, 142

  Anna (cook), 260

  Anolik, Ben, 299

  anti-Semitism, 94–95, 168–69, 185, 213, 242

  in Poland, 189

  Arafat, Yasser, 324

  Aragon, Louis, 238

  Army Graves Registration Service, U.S., 102

  Army Signal Corps, U.S., 302–3

  Armstrong, Louis, 314

  As I Recall (Cohen), 322

  Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, 273, 301, 317

  Austria, German invasion of, 185