Chaos, trauma, and despair, as they pack whatever they can into bundles. He later learns that instead of being led to the Ghetto, 5,000 Jews were transferred to the Ponar[1] and executed. Gathering their belonging, transferring things to Christian neighbors. “Tomorrow we shall be led to the ghetto.”
On the morning of the move to the Ghetto, he writes “I look at the house in disarray, at the bundles, at the perplexed desperate people.” Is he talking about his parents and other adults, the ones he counted on for his safety and protection? "At home we are packing. The women go around wringing their hands, weeping as they see their homes looking like after a pogrom…I see things scattered that were dear to me, that I was accustomed to use. We carry the bundles to the courtyard.”
The Courtyard fills with other families, other belongings. People help each other, people steal from each other. A woman stands in despair, wringing her hands, weeping. “Suddenly everything around, me begins to weep. Everything weeps.”
On September 6th he writes, “Here is the ghetto gate. I feel that I have been robbed, my freedom is being robbed from me, my home. And the familiar Vilna streets I love so much…We settle down in our place. Besides the four of us (Yitskhok, his mom, dad, and grandma) there are eleven persons in this room. He later writes, “I consider that everything must be recorded and noted down, even the goriest, because everything will be taken into account.”
In the first weeks in the Ghetto, he learns of “several thousand people uprooted from the ghetto at night. These people never came back again” He finds temporary sanctuary in a three-story warehouse serving as a hideout. The stairs to the upper floors have been removed but there is an entrance to the upper two floors from a nearby apartment. The hideout fills with humanity. “By the light I see people lying on the bricks like rags in the dirt. I think: into what kind of helpless, broken creature can man be transformed?”
He describes the emotional toll of being separated from his grandmother during a move to a new portion of the ghetto, “We take little bundles and join the stream of lucky ones who are leaving…We learn that old people who are registered as parents are not admitted through the gate. Grandmother cannot go with us. …We quickly say goodbye to Grandmother – forever…I shall never forget the two imploring hands and eyes that begged ‘Take me along!’ On October 23, 1941, after his grandmother’s death in the smaller ghetto, he writes about the grief at home: "The house became gloomy. Everyone walks around silent, with a terrible sadness in their hearts." A year passes before he writes again.
After over a year in the ghetto, Oct 5, 1942, he writes, “Finally, I have lived to see the day. Today we go to school.” Classes: Latin, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, math, science, history, Jewish history, geography, drawing. From Wikipedia, “The Vilna Ghetto was called "Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) of the Ghettos" because it was known for its intellectual and cultural spirit. Before the war.
This is a peaceful, uplifting period. On Oct 18th, “people can walk freely in the new courtyards.” On Oct 27, he learns that his eulogy honoring one of his favorite teachers “was very beautifully written” he is invited to read it at the memorial service. He is seated at the speaker’s tables with the artists, teachers and leaders making room for him. At the end “They tell me I read well, a fine essay. While lying in bed my cheeks still burned.”
Throughout the fall and winter conditions improve: a neighbor installs a stove; the Soviets trap an entire German Army at Stalingrad. In December as part of his schoolwork, there is a mock trial of King Herod, Yitskhok is the lead prosecutor. Herod is found guilty. On December 13, 1942, the ghetto celebrates the circulation of the one hundred thousandth book in the ghetto library. “Hundreds of people read in the ghetto. The reading of books in the ghetto is the greatest pleasure to me.”
