Bookvica

[HOLOCAUST] Partizaner fun Кaunaser geto = Partizany Kaunasskogo getto [i.e. Partisans of the Kaunas Ghetto].

Yelin, M., Galperin, D.

Item #2697

Moscow: Der Emes, 1948. 162, [2] pp.: ill. 20 × 13 cm. In original cardboards with letterpress design. Fragments of spine and edges of oversized covers lost, tears of spine, some small stains on covers, otherwise very good and clean pages.

First edition. One of 7000 copies. In Yiddish.
The Kovno (Kaunas) ghetto was established in August 1941 and 30 thousand Jewish people were barbed wire. From there, the Jewish prisoners were taken to the Ninth Fort located on the outskirts of the city. It was also used by NKVD as a way-station for GULAG prisoners being transported to labor camps (1939—1941). During the Nazi occupation the Ninth Fort was a place of mass murder. The ghetto had several Jewish resistance groups. The resistance acquired arms, developed secret training areas in the ghetto, and established contact with Soviet partisans in the forests around Kovno. On the night
of December 25—26, 1943, a group of 64 prisoners broke out of this fort. Some of them hid in the Kaunas ghetto and then, in early January 1944 they were transported to the partisans out of the city. The Soviet army liberated Kovno on August 1, 1944. Shortly before it, the ghetto was burnt.

The book was released in Yiddish at Der Emes printing shop in 1948. No wonder, the text was permeated with gratitude to the USSR and the Red Army. Both authors were active members of the rebel movement in the Kaunas ghetto. Meir Yelin (or Jelin, 1910—2000) was an older brother of the organizer and leader Haim Yelin (died in 1944). Together, the brothers were interned in the Kovno ghetto.
Meir Yelin chronicled ghetto life, joined the partisans after escaping and founded a kindergarten, a school and an orphanage for surviving Jewish children. In this book, he published some photographs of participants and places.
Some years after the book was released, Soviet authorities began a large-scale anti-Semitic campaign which essentially lasted for decades. In 1958, the Ninth Fort became a memorial to the murdered. Research began on the sites of massacres and collected exhibits. However, Jews weren’t mentioned in the exhibition at all. In 1962, Soviet Lithuania released a film about the escape from the Ninth Fort, ‘Žingsniai naktį’ [Footsteps in the Night], which mentioned no Jewish victims.

Copies are located in Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Holocaust Memorial Museum, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Wisconsin, Chicago, Emory, Michigan, John Hopkins, Southern California Universities.

Status: On Hold