THE CHARACTERS
KITTEL was an artist, a singer. He had been to a drama school in Berlin and on a police training course in Frankfurt. He synthesised these two educations very harmoniously. Every Sunday he enjoyed himself in front of Vilna radio's microphone. He played the saxophone and sang romantic songs. Born in 1922, he was the youngest and most handsome of all his colleagues.
During the liquidation of the ghetto Kittel ordered a piano to be brought out and he began to play. At that moment a hiding-place was discovered and a young man hauled out. When he saw Kittel at the piano he threw himself down and begged for mercy. Without stopping playing with one hand, Kittel used the other to get out his gun and shoot the prisoner.’ Abraham Sutskever
DR PAUL came to Vilna in January 1942. He was a member of the ‘Einsatzstab Rosenberg’, an organisation aimed at rooting out and destroying Jewish culture. Having studied folklore at the university in Jerusalem in the 30s, Paul served as ‘specialist’ in Jewish literature, and became adviser to Alfred Rosenberg, the man who tried to give the Nazi race theory a semblance of a scientific basis.
All Jewish books were listed in inventories. First the books from the university library were burned, next those from the 300 synagogues and Jewish libraries in Vilna–100,000 in all. Paul selected a small number and had them sent to Frankfurt for his museum. 200,000 were packed up and sent to Germany. The rest were sold to a paper factory.
JACOB GENS, born in Kovno, of Jewish descent, trained as an officer in Lithuania. He became a member of a Zionist organisation and signed on in the First World War as a volunteer to fight for the independence of Lithuania. Later he became director of the Kovno prison. He married a Christian girl, which would have enabled him to conceal himself outside the ghetto. However, Gens preferred to leave his wife and daughter to join his brothers in faith. ‘He owned a large estate in Lithuania. He had as little need to be head of the Jewish police as someone needs a brain tumour. He could easily have lived safely with his wife and children’ (Eichanan Magid).
After the Vilna Ghetto was founded, Gens was appointed second head of the Jewish Council. Nine days before the liquidation of the Ghetto, Gens was warned that the Gestapo wanted him executed. He was advised to escape, but answered: ‘If I, leader of the Ghetto, save myself, thousands of Jews will pay for my flight with their death.’
Gens was arrested and on 14 September 1943 was shot.
HERMANN KRUK was born in 1896 and came to Vilna as a refugee from the Nazi terror in Warsaw. One of the leading figures in the Jewish socialist movement, he became chief librarian of the Ghetto when he was not elected chairman of the Jewish council. He kept a diary of everything that went on politically, culturally and personally. The diary suddenly ends on 14 July 1943. Kruk was deported to Estonia where he arrived two months later. The notes he had made were hidden in a biscuit tin by worried inhabitants of the Ghetto.
THE VILNA GHETTO
THE SONGS
THE AUTHOR'S NOTES
THE COMPANY
THE STORY AND PRODUCTION PHOTOS