The Book Smugglers, page 30
They found inside a panoply of papers: an invitation to the wedding of Rabbi Menachem Mendl Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe; a poster announcing a 1921 performance of “The Dybbuk” by the Vilna Troupe Theater Ensemble; an entrance card to high holiday services in the Vilna Great Synagogue; a child’s geometry notebook with Yiddish notes; and a 1937 flyer congratulating the Soviet Union’s Jewish Autonomous Region, Birobidzhan, on its third anniversary. Nadler, YIVO’s research director, could barely hold back tears as he discovered photographs of the 1919 pogrom in Dubova. Eight members of his grandfather’s family had been killed in that pogrom. Dina Abramowicz picked up a letter by Max Weinreich from Copenhagen in 1940 to the YIVO staff. It was like entering a time machine.7
As more boxes were opened, archivists and administrators kept calling out, “Oh, my God!” Never had so many “Oh, my Gods” been heard in the walls of this secular research institute.8
Amidst the excitement, there was one special guest. Rachela Krinsky-Melezin was there to examine the papers she had helped rescue more than fifty years earlier. “It was so emotional,” she said of her first glimpse of the documents. “Back in the ghetto, I saw them every day.” Then, after further reflection, she added, “Kalmanovitch always said, ‘don’t worry, after the war you’ll get everything back.’ ”9
YIVO organized a large public celebration to mark the arrival of a second shipment of twenty-eight boxes in January 1996. The institute awarded a prize to the eighty-year-old Abraham Sutzkever, for his rescue of Jewish cultural treasures. It was the public tribute that he and Shmerke Kaczerginski didn’t receive back in 1947, because of Cold War considerations—a party almost fifty years late in coming. Sutzkever was too frail to travel to the United States for the event, so Rachela Krinsky accepted the award on his behalf.
Nadler, YIVO’s research director and an ordained rabbi, recited the blessing She-hechianu: “Blessed are you our God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this day.” Veteran Yiddish actor David Rogow, a native of Vilna who knew Shmerke and Sutzkever as teenagers, recited selections from Sutzkever’s poetry, including “Grains of Wheat.” It was an evening of joy mixed with tears. The chairman of the Vilnius Jewish Community, writer Grigorii Kanovich, said that given the history of the Jewish people in the twentieth century, all truly Jewish celebrations were joy mixed with tears.
While Sutzkever wasn’t present, the words he had offered several years earlier, at YIVO’s sixtieth anniversary, were hovering in the air. They were his last statement on his work for the paper brigade:
When I first received the invitation by director Samuel Norich to come to YIVO’s sixtieth anniversary, I thought to myself, this must be a mistake. YIVO is inside of me, where should I go or come?
But later, I reread the letter of invitation in a different mood, and the following lines latched on to me: “The most important thing we can pass on to American Jews is the treasury of our East European heritage. Our existence is based on our constant effort to secure our cultural continuity. No one alive has done more to secure that continuity than you.”
No one alive. I confess that the phrase caused me to feel an earthquake—if it is true that man was created from earth. And I sent a second letter to the YIVO director: I’m coming.
When the evil ones undertook to transform Wiwulskiego 18 into a Ponar for Jewish culture, and they ordered a few dozen Jews from the Vilna ghetto to dig graves for our soul, it was my good fortune, in the midst of our great misfortune, that fate anointed me with a Yellow Star of David to be one of those few dozen Jews.
Only then and there, when I witnessed how the YIVO temple was shaken, could I properly evaluate its architect, Max Weinreich.
I hope Weinreich will forgive me that while wrestling in the paper whirlpool of the YIVO building, I read various documents from his private home archive, which had been transferred there. But reading them encouraged me to rescue a few more things. And rescue meant mainly smuggling them back into the ghetto and burying them. The escaped limbs of YIVO felt safer and more at home amid Jews, in the ghetto soil of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. They waited for the Messiah in the bunker at 6 Shavel Street.
The rescue of YIVO’s treasures was performed with a deeply inherited sense of commitment, of performing a mitzvah, as if we were rescuing babies.
I wrote many of my poems that are signed “Vilna ghetto” and the date of their decomposition in Weinreich’s sinking temple. Perhaps even in his office. The divine presence of Yiddish did not leave me. It protected and inspired me.
To what may I be compared at that moment?
Native Vilners remember the city lunatic Isserson. People once saw the following scene: A painter stood on a ladder in a synagogue in the shulhoyf and dipped his paintbrush into a bucket of lime that hung on a ledge, painting the ceiling, back and forth. Suddenly, Isserson came over and shouted up to the painter, “Hold on to your paintbrush, because I’m taking away the ladder.”
I may be compared to—I in fact became—that synagogue painter. The ladder underneath me was indeed taken away, but I held on to the paintbrush, which didn’t even have a ledge. And lo and behold: I did not fall down. The bucket hung there between heaven and earth.10
Rachela Krinsky-Melezin was invited to say a few words as she accepted Sutzkever’s award, but she was too overwhelmed and choked up to read her prepared remarks. All she could think about was Shmerke, the book smuggler par excellence who slipped so many books and papers past the ghetto gate; Shmerke, the eternal optimist and the life of every party and gathering; and Shmerke, the love she had and sacrificed for her daughter’s sake. If only Shmerke had lived to see this day, he would sing out one of his lively tunes, perhaps the anthem he had written for the ghetto’s youth club: “Anyone who wants to can be young . . .”
When the program was over, a young journalist asked Rachela a question. Why had she risked her head to rescue books and manuscripts? Without batting an eye, she answered: “I didn’t believe at the time that my head belonged to me. We thought we could do something for the future.”11
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
At the end of seven years of intensive research and writing, it’s a pleasure to thank the people who helped me take this amazing journey.
Scott Mendel of Mendel Media believed in the importance of this story from the moment I sent him a short e-mail inquiry. Scott urged me to tell the human stories of the book smugglers, not only the history of the books, and thanks to him, the project took on a different shape and direction. Steve Hull of ForeEdge picked up where Scott left off and helped me grasp how narrative history differs from academic prose. It has been a pleasure working with him.
I owe a great debt of gratitude to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which played a great part not only in the book’s story but also in my writing it. I was fortunate to have a quiet office at YIVO and to write this book in an atmosphere where the memory of Max Weinreich and Abraham Sutzkever is palpable. I did much intensive work during the semester when I was YIVO’s Jacob Kronhill visiting professor. I want to extend special thanks to the library and archival staff who accommodated my every request and whim, even when it involved trips to YIVO’s warehouse in New Jersey: Lyudmila Sholokhova, Fruma Mohrer, Gunnar Berg, Vital Zajka, and Rabbi Shmuel Klein.
YIVO’s executive director Jonathan Brent not only encouraged me; he has dedicated himself to ensuring that the legacy of the paper brigade endures—by launching a monumental Vilna Collections Project, to digitize the books and documents in Vilnius and New York that are the subject of my book.
I benefitted from the assistance of institutions, researchers, librarians, and archivists in six countries.
At the outset of this project, I spent a very fruitful semester as a visiting scholar at the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The Israeli archives were both a goldmine and a pleasant working environment. My special thanks to Rachel Misrati and the staff of the archives department of the National Library of Israel, and Daniela Ozacki of the Moreshet Archive in Givat Haviva. When I wasn’t in Jerusalem myself, I could always count on Eliezer Niborski, editor of the Hebrew University’s Index to Yiddish Periodicals, to track down articles in rare Yiddish newspapers. Despite my pestering, Eliezer never lost his good cheer and wry sense of humor.
A remarkable group of people supported and assisted my work in Lithuania. My friendship with the late Esfir Bramson, head of the Judaica section of the National Library of Lithuania, inspired me to write this book. As the custodian of the surviving portion of Jewish books and documents in Vilnius, she was a true heir to the tradition of Chaikl Lunski and the paper brigade. I regret that she didn’t live to see this book’s publication. Her successor, Dr. Larisa Lempert, is a cherished friend who spared no effort to respond to queries and requests. Ruta Puisyte, assistant director of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, was my devoted and wise research assistant, and Neringa Latvyte of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum provided valuable information.
Vadim Altskan, senior archival projects director at the Mandel Center of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a godsend to scholarship. Parts of the book smugglers story would have remained unknown to me were it not for his guidance and advice on locating archival resources.
Among the people who provided substantive feedback and saved me from embarrassing mistakes, I want to single out Avraham Novershtern, professor of Yiddish at the Hebrew University, who read and critiqued an earlier draft of the book manuscript. Greg Bradsher of the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland, helped me swim in the waters of that mammoth repository. Bret Werb and Justin Cammy graciously shared with me their work and expertise on Shmerke Kaczerginski. Kalman Weiser shared documents from German and Polish archives on the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg looter and Judenforscher (Jewish expert) Herbert Gotthard.
Many scholars and colleagues contributed to this book with their comments and insights: Mordechai Altshuler, Valery Dymshits, Immanuel Etkes, Zvi Gitelman, Samuel Kassow, Dov-Ber Kerler, David G. Roskies, Ismar Schorsch, Nancy Sinkoff, Darius Staliunas, Jeffrey Veidlinger, and Arkadii Zeltser.
I am privileged to have known some of the heroes who participated in this story, and members of their families. Michael Menkin of Fort Lee, New Jersey, the last living member of the paper brigade, is my dear friend and a model of grace, generosity of spirit, and humility. He also explained to me things that I could never have known from any written source. I had illuminating conversations on the Vilna ghetto with Abraham Sutzkever in Tel Aviv in 1999. He remains a giant of literature and culture. Last but not least, Alexandra Wall trusted me with her notes, impressions, and memories about her grandmother Rachela Krinsky-Melezin. Alix is a devoted and proud bearer of the memory of her “babushka,” and of her mother, Sarah Wall.
I am fortunate to work in an institution that values what I do. The Jewish Theological Seminary of America has been my academic home and has helped form me as a scholar and person. Chancellor Arnold Eisen and provost Alan Cooper have supported this project and me from the outset.
My heartfelt thanks to the Biblioteca di Economia e Commercio, University of Modena, Italy, for hosting me in the summers and providing a quiet, pleasant space to write.
I am blessed with a loving family, who help me believe in myself: my mother, Gella Fishman, is, at age ninety-one, a powerhouse of energy and insight; my brothers Avi and Monele remind me gently about the importance of family commitments; and my adult children Ahron, Nesanel, Tzivia, and Jacob give me much pride and naches.
I owe my interest in Jewish Vilna, and therefore my writing this book, to two people who are no longer alive. First, my father, Joshua A. (Shikl) Fishman, who was a disciple of Max Weinreich and collaborated with him on many projects. “Pa” was the first person to tell me as a little boy about a magical place called Vilna and to instill in me a love for Yiddish. I mourn his passing and love him from afar. And second, the great Yiddish novelist Chaim Grade, with whom I developed a close friendship during the final years of his life. Thanks to Grade’s writings and conversations with me, prewar Vilna is as alive and vivid today as it was in 1930.
Words fail me in trying to express what I owe to my wife Elissa Bemporad. She has been my first and last reader, my learned critic and advisor. But beyond that, she has brought beauty, love, and poetry into my life. Together with her and our children Elia and Sonia, life is an exciting and joyous adventure.
NOTES
Introduction
1. Shmerke Kaczerginski, Ikh bin geven a partisan (Buenos Aires: Fraynd funem mekhaber, 1952), 53–58; Rachela Krinsky-Melezin, “Mit shmerken in vilner geto,” in Shmerke kaczerginski ondenk-bukh (Buenos Aires: A komitet 1955), 131.
Chapter 1. Shmerke—The Life of the Party
1. There are two excellent English-language treatments of Kaczerginski. Justin Cammy, Young Vilna: Yiddish Culture of the Last Generation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming), chap. 2; and Bret Werb, “Shmerke Kaczerginski: The Partisan Troubadour,” Polin 20 (2007): 392–412.
2. Yom Tov Levinsky, “Nokh der mite fun mayn talmid,” in Shmerke kaczerginski ondenk-bukh, 96; Yankl Gutkowicz “Shmerke,” Di Goldene keyt 101 (1980): 105.
3. Mark Dworzecki, “Der kemfer, der zinger, der zamler,” in Shmerke kaczerginski ondenk-bukh, 57.
4. B. Terkel, “Der ‘fliendiker vilner,’ ” in Shmerke kaczerginski ondenk-bukh, 79–80; the text of Shmerke’s first hit song is reproduced in Shmerke kaczerginski ondenk-bukh, 229–30.
5. Chaim Grade, “Froyen fun geto,” Tog-morgen zhurnal (New York), June 30, 1961, 7.
6. Gutkowicz, “Shmerke,” 108–9.
7. Grade, “Froyen fun geto,” June 30, 1961.
8. Elias Schulman, Yung vilne (New York: Getseltn, 1946), 18.
9. Daniel Charney, “Ver zenen di yung vilnianer?” Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) 14, February 26, 1937, 135; Schulman, Yung vilne, 22.
10. Shmerke Kaczerginski, “Amnestye,” Yung-vilne (Vilna) 1 (1934), 25–28.
11. Shmerke Kaczerginski, “Mayn khaver sutzkever (tsu zayn 40stn geboyrntog),” in Shmerke kaczerginski ondenk-bukh, 311–312.
12. See Cammy, Young vilna, chap. 2; and Krinsky-Melezin, “Mit shmerken,” 131.
13. Shmerke Kaczerginski, “Naye mentshn,” Vilner emes (Vilnius), December 30, 1940, 3; Shmerke Kaczerginski, “Dos vos iz geven mit bialistok vet zayn mit vilne,” Vilner emes (Vilnius), December 31, 1940, 3. On his marriage to Barbara Kaufman, see Chaim Grade, “Froyen fun geto,” June 30, 1961; and Shmerke Kaczerginski, Khurbn vilne (New York: CYCO, 1947) 256.
14. Dov Levin, Tekufah Be-Sograyim, 1939–1941 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Institute for Contemporary Jewry and Kibutz Ha-Meuhad, 1989), 139–41.
Chapter 2. The City of the Book
1. Schulman, Yung vilne, 17; Lucy Dawidowicz, From That Time and Place: A Memoir, 1938–1947 (New York: Norton, 1989), 121–22; Krinsky-Melezin, “Mit shmerken,” 135.
2. A. I. Grodzenski, “Farvos vilne ruft zikh yerushalayim de-lita,” in Vilner almanakh, ed. A. I. Grodzenski, 5–10 (Vilna: Ovnt kurier, 1939; 2nd repr. ed., New York: Moriah Offset, 1992).
3. Yitzhak Broides, Agadot Yerushalayim De-Lita (Tel Aviv: Igud yeotsei vilna ve-ha-sevivah be-yisrael, 1950), 17–22; see also Shloime Bastomski, “Legendes vegn vilne” in Grodzenski, Vilner almanakh, 148–50.
4. Zalmen Szyk, Toyznt yor vilne (Vilna: Gezelshaft far landkentenish, 1939), 178–85.
5. See Israel Cohen, Vilna (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1st ed.: 1943, 2nd ed.: 1992).
6. Abraham Nisan Ioffe, “Wilna und Wilnauer Klausen,” op. 1, file 16, Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, F. R-633, Lithuanian Central State Archive, Vilnius; Samuel Joseph Fuenn, Kiryah ne’emanah: korot ‘adat yisrael ba-‘ir vilna (Vilna: Funk, 1915), 162–63; Szyk, Toyznt yor vilne, 215–17.
7. Chaikl Lunski, “Vilner kloyzn un der shulhoyf,” in Vilner zamlbukh, ed. Zemach Shabad, vol. 2 (Vilna: N. Rozental, 1918), 100; Szyk, Toyznt yor vilne, 217.
8. Shmerke Kaczerginski, “Shtoyb vos frisht: 45 yor in lebn fun a bibliotek,” Undzer tog (Vilna), June 4, 1937, 5.
9. See Fridah Shor, Mi-likutei shoshanim ‘ad brigadat ha-nyar: sipuro she beit eked ha-sefarim al shem shtrashun ve-vilna (Ariel, West Bank: Ha-merkaz ha-universitai ariel be-shomron, 2012), and the literature cited there. See also Hirsz Abramowicz, “Khaykl lunski un di strashun bibliotek,” in Farshvundene geshtaltn, 93–99 (Buenos Aires: Tsentral farband fun poylishe yidn in argentine, 1958).
10. Daniel Charney, A litvak in poyln (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, 1945), 28–29; Dawidowicz, From That Time, 121–22; Jonas Turkow, Farloshene shtern (Buenos Aires: Tsentral-farband fun poylishe yidn in argentine, 1953), 192–93.
11. See the articles in Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) 13, no. 40 (November 27, 1936).
12. See Cecile Kuznitz, YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); YIVO bleter 46 (1980); and David E. Fishman, The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 93–96, 126–37.
13. Chaikl Lunski, “Der ‘seyfer ha-zohov’ in der shtrashun-bibliotek,” in Grodzenski, Vilner almanakh, 43.
Chapter 3. The First Assault
1. See Kalman Weiser, Jewish People, Yiddish Nation: Noah Prylucki and the Folkists in Poland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), esp. 244–59; Mendl Balberyszski, Shtarker fun ayzn (Tel Aviv: Ha-menorah, 1967), 77, 91–93, 104–6, 110; D[ovid] U[mru], “Tsu der derefenung fun der yidishistisher katedre baym vilner universitet,” Vilner emes (Vilnius), November 2, 1940, 1; Kaczerginski, Khurbn vilne, 226.
