The Book Smugglers, page 9
The ERR office in Riga, which was in charge of the Vilna team, followed up with guidelines on how to treat various categories of “adversary writings.” Hebrew and Yiddish materials, the Riga office wrote, “should be completely destroyed, to the extent that they do not qualify for shipment to the Frankfurt Jews’ Institute.” The only choice was between Frankfurt and incineration. There would be no more transfers to Wilno University Library.7
Pohl established a quota: no more than 30 percent of books and documents were to be sent to Germany. The remaining 70 percent or more were to be destroyed. Sporket, the businessman, made arrangements with local paper mills to receive shipments of makulatur, trash paper, from the YIVO building, in exchange for a payment of 19 reichsmark per ton. The mills melted the papers into a pulp and recycled them as new blank paper. The destruction of books became a small business venture, which covered the ERR team’s pocket expenses.8
Sporket and his team generally left the sorting of materials, between those items designated for “collection” and those destined for “destruction,” to the Jewish forced laborers themselves. This made the work brigade of Jewish scholars, educators, and writers responsible for life-and-death decisions about the fate of cultural treasures. On the rare occasions when Sporket and his team sorted Jewish material, they literally judged books by their covers and sent the volumes with attractive bindings to Germany.9 Paradoxically, the harshest policy applied to Judaica books written in German, all of which were sent to destruction. “We already have an abundance of them in Riga; hundreds of thousands,” Sporket barked.10
Kruk, the librarian, shuddered as he recorded the moment when the book dumping began, in early June 1942: “The Jewish laborers who are engaged in this work are literally in tears. Your heart breaks just looking at the scene.” As someone who had built libraries, first in Warsaw and then in the Vilna ghetto, he recognized the full magnitude of the crime that was being perpetrated and the cultural catastrophe that was unfolding. He also noticed the parallel between the fate of Vilna’s Jews and their books. “The death throes of the Yiddish Scientific Institute are not only long and slow, but like everything here, it dies in a mass-grave, along with scores and scores of others. . . . The mass grave, ‘the trash paper,’ grows bigger every minute.”11
Pohl, on the other hand, was quite pleased with the efficiency of the Vilna operation. In a report to his superiors in Berlin, he boasted, “The objects are sorted by Jew labor. . . . The useless material is segregated as trash paper. . . . The sorting work at YIVO is efficient, because it obviates the need to send unnecessary material to the Reich.”12
Religious objects met the same fate as books. The ERR team sold three hundred looted Torah scrolls to a local leather factory, which used the parchment to repair the soles of German army boots. The recycling idea was Sporket’s. He was, after all, a livestock and leather industrialist.13
For Kalmanovitch, a religious believer, it was difficult to look at the scrolls destined for desecration: “How odd they appear in our time. Today I saw them in two different places—in all their ruination and degradation. They were leaning against the wall in the corner of the attic—tens of naked scrolls of the Torah and prophets, large and small, beloved and gentle—by order of the masters. What will be their end?”14
In perhaps the climactic act of destruction, Pohl sold the lead plates of the Romm Press’s Vilna edition of the Talmud, weighing sixty tons in all, to smelting workshops, which melted them down into liquid form. The lead was then shipped to German armaments factories. The smelting workshop paid Pohl thirty-nine marks per ton for the lead.15
The destruction was not limited to Jewish materials. As Muller had foreseen, the Sporket team began processing not only Jewish books but also all sorts of “adversary writings” in Vilna. Russian and Polish books and archives started streaming into the building at 18 Wiwulskiego Street: Russian-language books from the Wroblewski State Library and Wilno University Library, books from the Tomasz Zan Polish public library, the research library of the Polish Society of Friends of Science, the warehouse inventory of the Józef Zawadzki Publishing House, and the library of the Wilno Evangelical Church—all were sent to YIVO for processing and sorting. The “Jew labor” (as Pohl called it) was responsible for making the “selection” of these materials as well.16
The ERR even sent Jewish forced laborers on special assignments to local churches and cathedrals, to process their collections. One such excursion stood out: Working under the supervision of a Polish professor, the group of ghetto inmates sifted through the 2,500-volume library of the Our Lady Gate of the Dawn Chapel (Polish: Ostra Brama), Vilna’s most hallowed Catholic site. Not far from the icon of the Virgin Mary, which according to believers had performed numerous miracles, the work group “secured” five hundred volumes of Christian homiletics, exegesis, and theological literature, for shipment to Germany. It was probably the first time that a group of Jews paid an extended visit inside Ostra Brama.17
In later months, Russian manuscripts and archives from neighboring Belorussia began to arrive in the YIVO depot. In April 1943, a special train brought a vast collection of materials from the Smolensk museum and archives, which included chronicles from the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the diary of Peter the Great’s chamber servant, and letters by Maxim Gorky and Leo Tolstoy. Soviet collections from the Vitebsk archives were also transferred to Vilna, en route to Germany.18
Sporket was an efficient administrator. He divided the “intellectual brigade” into departments, each of which was located in a different room of the YIVO building. Sutzkever recalled the building layout and the staff assignments as follows:
First floor: Sovietica books—Paturksy, Spinkler, and Sporket; Judaica books—Mikhal Kovner and Dr. Daniel Feinshtein; Polish books—Dr. Dina Jaffe, Tzemach Zavelson; Card catalog room—Hirsh Mats, Brayne As.
Second floor: Manuscript room—Abraham Sutzkever, Rachela Krinsky, Noime Markeles; Youth studies—Uma Olkenicka; Pedagogical department—Ruzhka Korczak; Hebrew department—Israel Lubotsky, Shmerke Kaczerginski; Lithuanian department—Benjamin Lamm; Translation department—Zelig Kalmanovitch; Dr. Jacob Gordon.
Third floor and basement: Newspapers department—Akiva Ger-shater, David Markeles.19
Three out of the eleven departments dealt with non-Jewish materials. Sporket himself worked on sorting Russian books.20
Shortly after the destruction of material began, Sporket announced to Kruk that he had orders to “remove and process” the ghetto library. Kruk was horrified. The ghetto library was the apple of his eye, his greatest cultural achievement, and the single most important support to the ghetto’s morale. He launched into action and came up with a scheme to annul the decree, by playing different Nazi-German agencies off against each other.
Kruk approached Jacob Gens, the head of the ghetto police, who was by that point, in June 1942, the effective head of the ghetto. He asked Gens to secure an order from Franz Murer, deputy Gebietskommissar for Jewish affairs, that duplicate books from the ERR worksite should be handed over to the ghetto library. Gens, who had recently deposed engineer Anatol Fried as head of the Judenrat, was eager to gain popularity among the ghetto intelligentsia. So he was glad to do Kruk a favor. Murer, the deputy Gebietskommissar, was eager to strengthen Gens’s new position of supremacy in the ghetto and acceded to his request. So he issued a written order to the ERR to hand over Judaica duplicates to the ghetto library. When Sporket received the order, he took it as a sign that Murer, the top German official for all Jewish affairs in Vilna, was interested in preserving the ghetto library. Sporket had no choice but to give up his plan to “remove and process” the ghetto library.21
It was a small consolation, in an ocean of book destruction. Meanwhile, Kruk took the one precaution of transferring most of the contents of his book malina (hiding place) from the ghetto library to a new location, a cellar in the center of town, outside the ghetto.
After July 1942, Kruk’s diary rarely mentioned the ERR operation at YIVO. What was happening there was too painful to describe—the physical extermination of an entire culture. But scholar Zelig Kalmanovitch kept a ghetto diary of his own and provided a chronicle of the destruction process in short entries:
August 2, 1942: “Actions have been taken which cannot be undone—all the libraries have been dismantled. The books are thrown into the basement like junk. Our master announced that he will obtain vehicles to take the ‘paper’ to the mill. The basement must be emptied to make room for a new transport.”
November 19, 1942: “The nearby paper mill has closed down. The paper from the basement is being sold to a mill that is at a distance of tens of kilometers.”
January 24, 1943: “They are constantly removing trash paper. Our master is dumping more and more trash paper.”
July 5, 1943: “The remnant of the YIVO library has gone to the mill.”
August 26, 1943: “I sorted books all week. I sent several thousand books to their destruction with my own hands. A mound of books is lying on the floor of the YIVO reading room. A cemetery of books. A mass grave. Books that are victims of the War of Gog and Magog, along with their owners.”
While the transports to the paper mills were frequent, the shipments to Germany began later. They required supplies (crates), coordination (with the military and railway administration), and approval from Berlin. The first shipment to Germany, consisting of archival documents, took place at the end of October 1942. On November 16, fifty crates of books were sent to Germany, and in February 1943, there was a shipment of thirty-five crates, containing 9,403 books. There were two main destinations: the ERR headquarters in Berlin and the Institute for Investigation of the Jewish Question in Frankfurt. Soviet publications were usually sent to the nearby ERR Main Working Group for Ostland in Riga. The last major shipments to Germany took place in June and July 1943, and consisted of approximately ten thousand Yiddish and Hebrew books.22
The materials sent to Germany were the “fortunate” minority. For most of the books, manuscripts, and documents, the YIVO building at 18 Wiwulskiego Street was their Ponar, the last stop on their way to the paper mills.
CHAPTER NINE
The Paper Brigade
AMONG GHETTO INMATES, the ERR was considered an easy work brigade. It didn’t require strenuous physical labor and it didn’t include demeaning tasks, such as cleaning toilets. All you did was sort books and papers, fill out catalog cards, and make inventories of archival files. And you didn’t have to worry that the Germans would replace you with a Pole who was stronger or better skilled, as was the case in factories and workshops. The ERR was the only all-Jewish worksite outside the ghetto.
With a touch of mockery, the Jewish guards at the ghetto gate nicknamed the group di papir-brigade, “the paper brigade,” to suggest that there was no substance to their work. They were just pushing papers. The name spread and stuck. Some took the joke a step further and called them di papirene brigade, “the brigade made of paper,” which meant the brigade of weak-bodied intellectuals.
The YIVO building at 18 Wiwulskiego Street was a peaceful and safe place to work. Beatings were not commonplace, and most of the German masters, with the notable exception of Sporket, spoke calmly. “They are refined gentlemen,” Shmerke wrote with bitter sarcasm. The building was maintained in good condition, there was light and heating, and the slave laborers received a daily meal at work (tea, bread, and either an egg or a potato), prepared in the basement.1
Best of all, the Germans didn’t spend more than a few hours per day in the YIVO building. They arrived late, left early, and took a long lunch break. Sporket and the ERR team spent more time in their offices on Zigmuntowska Street. When the Germans were out, a Polish civilian guard named Virblis watched over the site. Johannes Pohl wanted to maintain a “civilized” work environment and did not allow the use of military guards. The only other living soul in the vicinity was an old Polish woman who had been YIVO’s caretaker before the war and who lived in a hut at the edge of the building’s grounds.
Despite these advantages, the YIVO building wasn’t a particularly desirable workplace. Unlike a factory or a warehouse, there were no goods to steal and then sell. There were only books, for which there was no buying market. And there were no Christian coworkers, from whom you could buy food in exchange for money or an object of value. Shmerke recalls a friend from a different work brigade chiding him, “We get beaten every now and then at work. But it’s easier to endure a blow from a rifle butt or boot on a full stomach, than to work while starving, with your head and stomach spinning.”2 Many of the physical laborers, who did the lugging and packing, asked the Labor Department of the ghetto administration to transfer them to more promising worksites.
And the members of the paper brigade, all of them book lovers, paid an emotional price for their work: they felt responsible for sending thousands of volumes to their destruction, and for dismantling YIVO, an institution they loved dearly. When Herman Kruk first offered Rachela Krinsky the opportunity to work there, she hesitated, because she wasn’t sure she could endure the experience of seeing books treated like trash. Kruk himself was deeply disturbed by the scene, even a half a year after the book destruction began: “Your heart bursts with pain at the sight. No matter how much we have become used to it, we still don’t have enough nerves to look at the destruction calmly.”3
Each morning, the paper brigade would assemble near the ghetto gate at 9:00 a.m. and march in rows of three, led by their brigadier, Tzemach Zavelson, through the streets of the city—literally through the streets, since it was forbidden for Jews to walk on the sidewalks. There were no German or Lithuanian escorts to or from work, but the members knew that if anyone disappeared, there would be severe repercussions for the entire work brigade. The route to the YIVO building took fifteen to twenty minutes on foot and passed by Rachela Krinsky’s pre-ghetto home. She could see the sign that still hung on the gate to her house, with her family’s name on it: Krinsky. Whenever she saw it, she felt she was reading the epitaph on her tombstone.4
The YIVO building was located in a quiet, green residential area, far from the noise of the city center and from the crowded grime of the ghetto. The daily workload assigned by Sporket was easy and could actually be filled in two or three hours’ time. The ERR masters and their Jewish slaves had a mutual interest in not performing their work too quickly. The Germans didn’t want to leave Vilna for a new station closer to the front. Some of them had girlfriends in Vilna who worked as secretaries and assistants for the German military, civil administration, and other agencies. Shmerke wrote in a diary, “Schaefer’s only desire is that we make a commotion when guests or other strangers appear, to show them that there is work going on.”5
Most mornings passed uneventfully. Things got more interesting once the German officers left the building for their long lunch break. The Polish guard, Virblis, would disappear to take care of his own affairs, and the laborers were left on their own. They turned to other activities: in warmer weather, they lounged on the lawn in front of the YIVO building. They took a fresh shower in the basement, or just chatted.6
One of the most enjoyable lunch-hour activities was reading. Each slave laborer hid his or her own secret stash of reading material buried in a corner or pile. Rachela Krinsky later recalled the intensity of the reading experience in the YIVO building and the bond between reader and book: “Who knows? These might be the last books we ever read. And the books were also, like us, in mortal danger. For many of them, we were their last readers.”7
At lunch, the members of the paper brigade often gathered in one of the rooms, to listen to Sutzkever and Shmerke hold forth. Sutzkever would recite works by his favorite Yiddish poets: H. Leivick, Aaron Glants-Leyeles, Yehoash, and Jacob Glatshtein. Shmerke told jokes and stories, and recited his own newest poems, often while standing on a table, with the group gathered around him. He was still the life of the party. Krinsky listened as she knitted a sweater. She later recalled, “Thanks to the poetry, we had many hours of forgetfulness and consolation.” In quieter moments, Shmerke and Sutzkever wrote their “ghetto poems” in the YIVO building—which was, strictly speaking, outside the ghetto.
There were other activities: Dr. Daniel Feinshtein, a popular lecturer, prepared the notes for his talks; Uma Olkenicka, the artist, drew illustrations, including draft stage sets for performances by the ghetto-theater; Ilia Zunser, who was responsible for cataloging YIVO’s music collection, read sheet music, which he said he could “hear” as clearly as if he were at a concert.
Rachela later remembered her work in the German-occupied YIVO building as a kind of lost paradise—the only part of her wartime experience in which she retained some joy, humanity, and dignity. It was the only place where she could see the sky and the trees, and could, thanks to poetry, remember that there was beauty in the world.8
Also during the unsupervised lunch hours, members of the work group received visitors, Christian friends who gave them food and moral support, and shared news about the outside world. They included Wiktoria Gzmilewska, the wife of a Polish military officer who had helped Shmerke and dozens of other Jews hide outside the ghetto; Ona Ŝimaite, a librarian at Vilnius University, who repeatedly entered the ghetto under false pretenses, ostensibly to collect overdue books but in fact to lend aid and support to friends; and Shmerke’s young Lithuanian friend Julian Jankauskas, who hid Shmerke’s wife Barbara for several weeks, after the couple separated angrily in the forest.
