Vilna During the Holocaust
Final Days of the Ghetto
Yitzhak Wittenberg, the first commander of the FPO (Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsye - United Partisan Organisation) in Vilna
Members of the FPO Staff Command
Yechiel Scheinbaum, commander of "Yechiel's Struggle Group," one of the underground groups in the ghetto
In Spring 1943 Partisan activity in Lithuania increased. Following the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943 the Germans became aware of the possibility of armed Jewish resistance in the ghettos. On the 21st of June 1943 authority over the ghettos of Lithuania was transferred from the German Civil Administration to the SS.
In March 1943, during the distribution of the new scheins, rumours spread through the ghetto about the final liquidation of the work camps and small ghettos in the Vilna region, Oszmiana, Swienciany, Michaliszki and Sol, over which Gens was in charge. Simultaneously there was a large aktion in the Grodno Ghetto. The Germans promised Gens that the Jews of the small ghettos would be resettled in Vilna and Grodno. Gens and groups of police from the ghetto left to organise the resettlement. About 3,000 people were sent from the small ghettos to the Vilna Ghetto and to the work camps, but about 3,800 people were sent to Ponary by train, where they were murdered. News of the murder spread through the ghetto, bringing fear and despair. The synagogues filled with prayers and the religious Jews declared a Yom Kippur Katan (Minor Day of Atonement).
From the end of June until the beginning of July 1943 the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPO - security police) of Vilna, under the leadership of Bruno Kittel, liquidated the work camps in the Vilna region, Biala Waka, Kene, Bezdany and Nowa Wilejka, because of the prisoners' links to the partisans and because of cases of escape. Although Gens claimed that the Germans needed a working ghetto which was beneficial to the Germans and that working for the Germans was the only possible means of survival, there was a growing sense that the end of the ghetto was near.
On the 21st of June 1943 the SS Chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the liquidation of the ghettos in Ostland and that the Jews be sent to concentration camps.
On the 6th of August Jews who worked outside the ghetto were kidnapped. Many of them resisted but about 1,000 of them were sent by train to Estonia. Gens promised the public that they had been taken to work in Estonia and not to be murdered. On the 24th of August a second transport, of approximately 1,500 men, women and children, was sent to Estonia.
On the 1st of September towards dawn, the ghetto was surrounded by German and Estonian security forces and leaving for work was forbidden. Estonian soldiers began arresting men and removing them from the ghetto. The Germans demanded 3,000 men and 2,000 women for deportation to Estonia. People began hiding in melinas. The FPO issued a call-up order for all members of the movement. About 100 members of the underground who had amassed around the weapon stores were surrounded by Germans and Estonians before they managed to arm themselves and were removed from the ghetto. A number of them managed to escape and to remain in the ghetto. The FPO concentrated their remaining forces in Strashun Street. The FPO published a notice calling the Jews to resist but the ghetto inhabitants did not respond. Yechiel Scheinbaum, in command of the force on Strashun Street, opened fire on the Germans and was killed in an exchange of fire. Gens wanted to avoid a battle and agreed with the security forces that the ghetto management would supply the quota of Jews without the entrance of the Germans to the ghetto.
The aktion continued until the 4th of September 1943, following which the FPO abandoned the idea of an uprising and began sending their members to the Rudniki and Narocz forests. On the 14th of September Gens was murdered in the courtyard of the Gestapo headquarters in Vilna. On the 23rd – 24th of September the Vilna Ghetto was liquidated. Over 4,000 women, children and elderly were sent to the death camps in Poland where they were murdered. Hundreds of sick and elderly were taken to Ponary and murdered. About 3,700 men and women were sent to the concentration camps in Estonia and Latvia. In Vilna about 2,500 Jews remained in the work camps Kailis and HKP under the command of the Wehrmacht captain Karl Plagge and in the military hospital and the factories of the SiPO. Over 1,000 people hid in melinas in the ghetto and the majority were caught over the course of the following months. Hundreds of underground fighters left for the forests. On the 23rd of September the final group of FPO members, 80 - 100 fighters led by Abba Kovner, left the ghetto. Members of the organisation established a number of partisan units in the forest. They worked in partnership with the Red Army in the battles to liberate Vilna in July 1944.
The Kovno Train
On the 3rd - 4th of April 1943 the remaining Jews from the ghettos of Oszmiana, Michaliszki and Sol were loaded onto freight cars and sent to Kovno. A few days prior to this a notice was published in the Vilna Ghetto that those with relatives in Kovno could join a train of Jews that was to pass through Vilna. About 350 Jews were brought from the Vilna Ghetto to the train station and put onto six carriages that were attached to the train en route to Kovno. Among them were Jacob Gens and a number of police.
The train departed on the night between the 4th and 5th of April. Following their departure it became clear to Gens that the destination was Ponary. At Ponary station Gens and the Jewish police were returned to Vilna by Lithuanian police and passed over to the SiPO. With first light the Jews saw through the cracks that they had arrived in Ponary. When the doors were opened the people were taken to the pits and shot. Hundreds tried to flee but most were shot at the train station and only a few succeeded in escaping.
On the 5th of April towards morning a train carrying people from the Swienciany Ghetto arrived in Vilna. Five carriages were disconnected from the train and sent to Bezdany camp; two carriages containing the Judenrat members from the Swienciany Ghetto and from other ghettos were also disconnected and remained in Vilna. The rest of the carriages were sent from the station in Vilna to Ponary. When the people understood where they had been taken they broke out of the carriages and began to run. Some resisted and attacked the Germans and Lithuanians, who surrounded them, with weapons and fists. The Germans and Lithuanians shot into the crowd; about 600 Jews were killed at the train station and in the nearby fields. A number of the escapees succeeded in reaching the Vilna Ghetto. The SiPO became aware of this and demanded they be turned over to them but the order was cancelled by the Germans in order not to arouse the suspicions of the Jews of the ghetto. Gens was promised that the Vilna Ghetto was not in any danger.
Kailis
Oscar Glik, a Jew from Austria was deported to Vilna. He met a German soldier, a childhood friend from Vienna who arranged work for him in Kailis – a fur factory. Glik disguised himself as a Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) and secured forged papers for himself. Many of the Jewish workers of Kailis were deported during the Aktions and the factory faced closure. Glik proposed to the Major responsible for military supplies in the region to run Kailis for the army. Following the liquidation of the Ghetto II, Kailis became a closed labour camp and the workers and their families were housed in a special wing of the factory. In January 1942 a fire broke out in the factory and following a German investigation it was revealed that Glik was Jewish. Glik and his wife were arrested and shot.
In Kailis the Jews lived under relatively good conditions and the Jews of the ghetto considered it to be a safe place. Initially there were around 800 people there; over time the number rose to around 1,250. In Kailis there was a school for children and a small library, lectures were given and sports activities took place. The Germans murdered the Jews of Kailis in Ponary a short while before Vilna was liberated by the Red Army.
H.K.P - Heere KraftfahrPark
With the conquest of Vilna, engineering units of the Wehrmacht established two military-vehicle maintenance facilities in the city as part of the HKP network of Wehrmacht factories. Jews were employed in them under the command of Major Karl Plagge. Following the first transport to Estonia in August 1943 the HKP workers and their families, about 1,000 people, were transferred from Ghetto II to two groups of buildings in Subocz Street, outside the ghetto. The site was enclosed and became a camp. On the 27th of March 1944 an aktion took place against the children in the camp. With the advance of the Soviet army the HKP camp was liquidated and the people were transported to Ponary and murdered. On the night between the 2nd and 3rd of July about 150 people escaped from HKP. On the night of the 4th of July an armed group from HKP was caught by the SS guard; they injured two guards and escaped from the camp. 150-200 people from HKP, including children, survived in melinas and by escaping.
Yechiel Scheinbaum
Yechiel (Ilya) Scheinbaum was born in 1914 in Odessa, Ukraine. He was brought up in Kowel by his grandmother following the death of his mother. He studied at the Tarbut school and joined the Hechalutz Hatzair youth movement and the hachsharah (training) kibbutz Klosowo. He studied to become an electrician at the Polytechnic School in Lwow and then enlisted in the Polish army. During his army service he was active in Hechalutz Hatzair and was punished for this multiple times with imprisonment. In November 1940 he married Pesia Zlotnik.
On the eve of the German invasion Scheinbaum was living in Lodz, when the invasion began, members of youth movements were transferred, by the Germans, from occupied areas to Vilna. In the Vilna Ghetto he worked as an electrician in a Wehrmacht factory and sabotaged German equipment to the best of his ability. On the 1st of September Scheinbaum was killed in battle with the Germans who had entered the ghetto. Out of respect for Yechiel Scheinbaum, Gens permitted his burial in the old cemetery where the Vilna Gaon was buried.
Yitzhak Wittenberg, the first commander of the FPO (Fareynegte Partizaner Organizatsye - United Partisan Organisation) in Vilna
Members of the FPO Staff Command
Yechiel Scheinbaum, commander of "Yechiel's Struggle Group," one of the underground groups in the ghetto
