A Guest at the Shooters' Banquet

by Rita Gabis

  * Rachel, Ķlarah, and Bertha Treegoob, 1925. Author’s collection.

  * A page from Babita’s KGB arrest file, translated by Anastasia Kurochki. Original file from Lietuvos Ypatingasis Archyvas, f. V-5, ap. 1, b. 40373, l. 12.

  * Partial interior of the Vilna ghetto library, 2014. Permission for use granted by Milda Jakulytė-Vasil.

  * Pranas Puronas, in his certificate of naturalization, February 6, 1962. Permission for use from the National Archives.

  * Dzielna Street, Warsaw, where the Jewish quarter once was, in 2013. Photo by the author.

  * Postcard of the gymnazija/Kasino in Švenčionys, “Švenčionių gatvės dalis (inventorinis numeris IE-2685).” Permission for use granted by Nalšios Muziejus.

  * Postcard of the Catholic church and fairgrounds, Švenčionys. Gift to the author.

  * City Market during the Years of the Polish Occupation, “Švenčionių miesto turgaus aikšté. Lenkų okupacijos metai (inventorinis numeris IE-2685).” Permission for use granted by Nalšios Muziejus.

  * Postcard of Schule Street, Švenčionys, before World War II. Permission for use granted by Stephanie Comfort, jewishpostcardcollection.com.

  * Chaya Palevsky’s map. Permission for use granted by Chaya Palevsky née Porus.

  * Seven young Jewish men of Švenčionys who survived World War II, attempting to properly bury the dead at Poligon, circa 1950–60. Zinaida Aronowa’s husband Solom Aron is second from the left. Permission for use granted by Zinaida Aronowa, to whom the photograph belongs. She could not identify the photographer.

  * Decomposed bodies of Poligon victims in a photo that belonged to Moishe Shapiro from Pobradze, who donated it to the Nalšia Museum (Nalšios Muziejus). The photo is part of the small file they have on the Poligon massacre, all of which was made available to me for study and reproduction.

  * Bernard (Bernie) Treegoob, the author’s great-uncle. Author’s collection.

  * Lili (Swirski) Holzman, June 2013. Photograph by Lily Fishleder.

  * The Swirski family before World War II, in front of their house on Piłsudski Street. Permission for use granted by Lili Holzman.

  * Poligon pit mound, side view. Photograph by the author.

  * Killing tree. Photograph by the author.

  * Senalis’s 1920 registration or “Service Record” for the National Riflemen’s Association (Lietuvos Šaulių Sąjunga), from the file the KGB kept on his family. His wife, Ona Puroniene, was also a member. As a member of the Šauliai (“shooters”), my grandfather participated in the Klaipėda revolt in the winter of 1923 and then, in 1940, led a platoon of anti-Soviet Lithuanian nationalists in acts of sabotage against the occupying Russians before the Germans broke their amended version of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and invaded Litauen (German for Lithuania) in the summer of 1941. The Šauliai both volunteered and were recruited by the Germans to serve in the different units of the police, and as shooters in Hamann’s mobile killing unit. I do not know if Babita ever learned to fire a weapon, though rudimentary arms training was part of what membership offered. LYA, f. V-5, ap. 1, b. 40373, l. 22.

  * Horst Wulff’s ID. Permission for use granted by Bundesarchiv.

  * Joseph Beck’s office and living quarters in Švenčionys. With him are Eleanora Rakowska and, in the middle, an unidentified office worker. Permission for use granted by Konrad Beck.

  * Aunt Karina’s passport photograph for emigration. Author’s collection.

  * The author at twelve. Author’s collection.

  * The Hotel Terminus. Author’s collection.

  * Advertisement from Naujoji Lietuva, a wartime “Lithuanian” newspaper that was both a vehicle for German/Lithuanian racist propaganda and a platform from which to attempt to rally the increasingly embittered population to support the German war effort.

  * ID photograph of Joachim Hamann. Permission for use granted from Bundesarchiv.

  * Švenčionys prison, 2012. The door in the photo opens to the old, unused portion of the police station. It was possible to go in and walk the upper hallways, where my grandfather’s office was. Outside, the bars on the lower windows indicated jail cells. Away from view, below ground level, were the two rat-infested solitary cells. Prisoners marched from the jail yard to the Jewish cemetery would have passed both the town center and the ghetto: a twenty-minute walk at a slow pace. Photograph by the author.

  * Section of a 1942 census of Švenčionys, giving the address (Gedmino #11) of Pranas Puronas. Photograph by the author. LCVA, Wohnungs-Haushaltungsliste Buto-Ūkio Lapas Nr. 13, f. R743, b. 5901, l. 165–66.

  * The misspelled version of the author’s grandfather’s name, from Zdzisław Chlewiński’s Groza i Prześladowanie Polaków i Żydów na Wileńszczyźnie (Peril and persecution of Poles and Jews in the Vilna region). Photograph by the author.

  * Veronica Usiene. Permission for use granted by her daughter, Vanda Pukènienè.

  * Sketch of the Švenčionys Ghetto by Chaya Palevsky née Porus.

  * Moshe and Basia Gordon. Permission for use granted by the Photo Archives of the USHMM.

  * Order from my grandfather giving permission to Elena Las to live outside the ghetto.

  * Work release from my grandfather for Motel Gotkin, Ilel Šulheferis, and Icek Bres.

  * Mugshot of a Lithuanian woman in the Lukiškės arrest records for Poles and Lithuanians. This particular file contained the photographs and fingerprints of several dozen women, a majority of them married, charged with prostitution. In Vilnius, the surfeit of Germans in the civil administration and Lithuanian police created a demand, and poverty and hunger produced women to meet it. From the Lietuvos Centrinis Valstybinis Archyvas.

  * Jewish cemetery, Švenčionys, winter 2014. Photograph by the author.

  * Yitzhak Arad, June 2013. Photograph by Lily Fishleder.

  * Josef Beck with Eleanora Rakowska and an unidentified woman to the left of Rakowska. Permission for use granted by Konrad Beck.

  * Anton Lavrinovich, August 2013. Photograph by the author.

  * Josef Beck. Permission for use granted by Konrad Beck.

  * Killing site at dusk outside Švenčionys during Beck reprisals. Photographer unknown; permission for use granted by Illeana Irafeva.

  * Žiežmariai Synagogue. Photograph by Stephanie Comfort, jewishpostcardcollection.com.

  * Jonas Maciulevičius. Ši nuotrauka (daryta apie 1925 m.) yra iš Jono Maciulevičiaus asmens bylos. Ji tik ir liko, nes buvo elektroniniame pašte, o visa foto grafuota byla pradingo.

  * Švenčionėliai train station, August 2013. Photograph by the author.

  * Chaya Palevsky’s mother, Malke Porus, before the war. Permission for use granted by Chaya Palevsky née Porus.

  * Chaya Palevsky née Porus, 2015. Photograph by Edwin Torres.

  * Puronas ancestral grave. Photographer Egijidus Puronas.

  * Altai Gulag timber camp. Permission for use granted by Maryté Puronas.

  * Ona Puroniene, 1956. Author’s collection.

  * Emigration document for Ona Puroniene. Author’s collection.

  * Joseph Beck, with Eleanora Rakowska and an unidentified office worker. Permission for use granted by Konrad Beck. Photograph appears here a second time.

  * Eleanora Rakowska. Permission for use granted by Dr. Monika Tomkiewicz.

  * Romuald-Jakub Weksler-Waszkinel, August 2013. Photograph by Emil Salmon.

  * Handmade memorial for the Porus family, created by Chaya Palevsky née Porus. Permission for use granted by Chaya Palevsky; photograph by Edwin Torres.

  * Family of Yitzhak Arad, Warsaw. Permission for use granted by Yitzhak Arad.

  * Mindaugas Lukośaitis, from the series Jews: My History, 2010–12. Pencil on paper, 21 x 29 cm, from the Collection of Modern Art Centre.

  NOTES

  * * *

  EPIGRAPHS

  * We were riding through: Czesław Miłosz, “Encounter,” trans. Robert Hass, in The Collected Poems, 1931–1987 (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco, 1988), 27. Used with permission
from Harper Collins.

  * Sventiány was remembered: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), 716.

  * We were dreamers: Abraham (Avrom) Sutzkever, “The Lead Plates at the Rom Press,” in The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse, ed. Irving Howe, Ruth R. Wisse, and Khone Shmeruk (New York: Penguin, 1988), 678. Translated by Chaya Palevsky née Porus.

  PROLOGUE

  * variously as Tregub, Trigub, or Tregubas: Kiev Gubernia Duma Voters List Database, http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Ukraine/KievDuma.htm.

  * Vsia Rossiia business directory: Visia Rossiia Database, http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/vsia.

  * Shoah Victims’: Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names, Yad Vashem, http://db.yadvashem.org/names.

  * three-by-five card: U.S. Naturalization Record Indexes, 1791–1992 (indexed in World Archives Project), record for Wolf Treegoob, ancestry.com, accessed November 5, 2010.

  * version of The Book of Blessings: The Book of Blessings: For the Sabbath and Holidays with the Family, ed. David Arnon and Helli Doucani (Israel: Matan Art, 2010). Gift of the Jewish National Fund.

  A SMALL THING

  * meeting with Michael MacQueen: Michael MacQueen, interview by author, Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Washington, D.C., February 12, 2014.

  * Vincas Valkavickus: “Lithuanian Prosecutor Trying to Show Some Movement in Investigating War Criminals,” U.S. State Department, January 2000 (Docno: Vilnius 000148).

  * a write-up about MacQueen: David Holzel, “Hunting War Criminals,” May 3, 2011, University of Michigan website, http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lsa/archives/ci.huntingwarcriminalsv2_ci.detail.

  FAYE DUNAWAY AS AN INVADED COUNTRY

  * a scene in Chinatown: Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski, 1974.

  * Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop: A Biography (New York: Crown, 1992), 233–50. For further discussion of the different pacts between Germany and the Soviet Union leading up to World War II, see Yitzhak Arad, In the Shadow of the Red Banner: Soviet Jews in the War Against Nazi Germany (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2010), xxv–xxx.

  * Lithuania lost all independence: Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 83–84.

  * On June 22: Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames (New York: Holocaust Library, 1982), 36.

  * Reichskommissariat Ostland: Snyder, Reconstruction of Nations, 84.

  * in 1990, when Lithuania declared: Ibid., 97–102.

  * “Year of Remembrance of Defense of Freedom and Great Losses”: Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, “2011-ieji paskelbti Laisvės gynimo ir didžių netekčių atminties metais,” September 28, 2010, http://www3.lrs.lt/pls/inter/w5_show?p_r=4445&p_d=102577&p_k=1.

  * “Year of Remembrance of Lithuanian Citizens Who Were Holocaust Victims”: Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, Public Relations Unit, “2011 Proclaimed as the Year of Remembrance of Holocaust Victims of Lithuania,” September 21, 2010, http://www3.lrs.lt/pls/inter/w5_show?p_r=7694&p_d=102309&p_k=2.

  * displaced persons camps were established: “Lithuanians in DP Camps,” Displaced Persons’ Camps, http://www.dpcamps.org/lithuania.html. To identify family members who were in DP camps, readers may consult the International Tracing Service Inventory Search, now a part of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: https://www.its-arolsen.org/en/homepage/index.html.

  * in Germany in the deportation camp: A.E.F D.P. Registration Records, 3.1.1.1/68719292#1, 68719295#1, 68719288#1, 68719286#1, 68719291#1/ITS Digital Archive, Bad Arolsen.

  * Lithuanian Activist Front: Kai Struve, “Rites of Violence? The Pogroms of Summer 1941,” Polin 24 (2012): 264–71. See also Stasys Lušys, “The Emergence of Unified Lithuanian Resistance Movement Against Occupants, 1940–1943,” Lituanus 9, no. 4 (1963): http://www.lituanus.org/1963/63_4_03.htm; Jürgen Matthaüs, “Key Aspects of German Anti-Jewish Policy,” Lithuania and the Jews: The Holocaust Chapter (USHMM Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, 2004), http://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/Publication_OP_2005-07-03.pdf.

  * the Russian occupation of Lithuania: Prit Buttar, Between Giants: The Battle for the Baltics in World War II (Oxford, England: Osprey, 2013), Kindle ed. ch. 1.

  * Nazis violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact: Bloch, Ribbentrop, 334–47.

  * a pay voucher for local police: Lietuvos Centrinis Valstybinis Archyvas (hereafter LCVA), f. R-1548, ap. 1, b. 1, l. 226–31. This voucher, submitted to the German command, lists the names, towns, and amounts owed to locals under their employ between September 27 and October 9, 1941. Not everyone who participated in the Poligon massacre is represented on this list.

  For the letter that was sent to accompany this voucher, with translation, see I. Guzenberg et al., ed., Ašmenos, Svierių, Švenčionių apskričių getai: Kalinių sąrašai (Vilnius, Lithuania: Valstybinis Vilniaus Gano Žydų Muziejus, 2009), 121.

  WORD GETS AROUND

  * The generals of Stalin’s army: Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin, 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2002), 436.

  * many were executed: Ibid., 322.

  * Peretz Markish: Elie Wiesel gives a brief, informative account of Markish’s biography in his introduction to Peretz Markish, Inheritance, trans. Mary Schulman (Toronto: TSAR, 2007), xi–xii.

  * “You’ll pay with your head”: Peretz Markish, “To a Jewish Dancer,” in Inheritance, 26.

  BAD STUDENT

  * confirmed that he was chief of Saugumas: Lietuvos Ypatingasis Archyvas (hereafter LYA) to Rita Gabis, “Relating to Search for Documents,” February 10, 2011.

  * Mike Plant’s boat was found: Barbara Lloyd, “Solo Sailor Is Presumed to Be Dead,” New York Times, November 26, 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/26/sports/solo-sailor-is-presumed-to-be-dead.html.

  IT’S OPRAH’S FAULT

  * “You may encounter reluctant witnesses”: John M. Howell, Homicide Investigation Standard Operating Procedures, revised March 2001, http://www.policeforum.org/free-online-documents.

  FATHERS AND SONS

  * Darton learned printing: “Children’s Books Published by William Darton and His Sons: A Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, April–June, 1992: A Machine-Readable Transcription,” Lilly Library Publications Online, 2005, http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/etexts/darton.

  * Darton traces the Bug River: The Bug River created the line used to divide Poland’s territory between German and Soviet occupants in the treaty of September 28, 1939.

  * the Pale of Settlement: For a straightforward introduction to the Pale and its various incarnations over time, see Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 358–62.

  AN EDUCATION

  * Three hundred and thirty-six young Lithuanian men: Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos Karo Akademija, trans. Laima Grigalauskaitė (Vilnius, Lithuania: General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania, 2007), 7.

  * the academy will relocate there: Ibid., 11.

  * Soviet-Lithuanian peace pact: Snyder, Reconstruction of Nations, 63.

  * Nisonas Mackebuckis: “Žydų Kariai Savanoriai Žuvę Kovose Už Lietuvos Nepriklausomybę” (Jewish volunteer soldiers who died fighting for the independence of Lithuania), Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum website, last updated January 12, 2007, http://www.jmuseum.lt/index.aspx?Element=ViewArticle&TopicID=179&IMAction=ViewArticles&EditionID=86.

  * Lieutenant Colonel Moshe Dembovskis: “Laukiame žinių apie savanorius,” Santaka, translated by Anatanas Zilinskas on “Moshe Demboski Family Album,” Vilkaviskis: A Small Town in Southern Lithuania Where the Jewish Community Is No More, http://www.jewishvilkaviskis.org/Moshe_Demboski_Family_Album.html.

  * “You shall not draw the sword”: Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos Karo Akademija, 9.

  * “smoked meats all cured”: Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz (New York: Mondial, 2009), 40.

  WAR

  * a Jewish bank, a separate Jewish library: Anatolij Ch
ayesh, “Some Historical Facts and Stories About the Jewish Community of Žeimelis,” trans. Yuriy Levin, 1997, http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/zeimelis/zanatoli.htm.

  * In 1937 there were nine Jewish tailors: Yosef Rosin, “Zheimel (Žeimelis),” ed. Sarah and Mordechai Kopfstein, 1999, http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/zeimelis/YosefRos.htm.

  * was he the famous Rabbi Kook?: For a fascinating look at the life of Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the spiritual leader, see: Yehudah Mirsky, Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014).

  * “Did he think of them all as Communists?”: Šarūnas Liekis and Antony Polonsky, “Introduction,” Polin 25 (2013): 34.

  THIS KIND OF WORLD

  * “Life like a dream”: Alexander Harkavy to his brother in the United States, date unknown, from the author’s collection.

  * “Sowgoomas”: MacQueen, interview by author, February 12, 2014.

  * “Obama does what his Jew owners tell him”: Theo Emery and Liz Robbins, “In Note, More Clues to Holocaust Museum Killing,” New York Times, June 11, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/us/12shoot.html.

  * records of the Gebietskommissar Wilna-land: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Record Group 26.017M, “Records of the Gebietskommissar Wilna-Land,” 5 microform reels. I am grateful to Lietuvos Centrinis Valstybinis Archyvas for permission to use these records in the text.

  * “Perhaps world society does not know”: Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman, “From the Diary of Doctor Elena Buividaite-Kutorgene (June–December 1941),” The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry, trans. David Patterson (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), 335–68.

  * Jakob lives at Maironio str. 18: USHMM, RG-26-017M.

  * first major order in German and Lithuanian: Ibid.

  For a full translation of this order, along with a discussion of its historical context, see Arad, Ghetto in Flames, 94–95.

  * Bessemer’s Hall of History Museum: “Special Collections,” Bessemer Hall of History Museum, http://bessemerhallofhistory.blogspot.com/p/hitlers-typewriter.html.