Status Updates From Nuo Vilniaus geto iki Niurn...

"... Murer came to Hospital Street 6 and said that an order had come from Berlin to the effect that Jewish women should not bear children and that if the Germans found out that a Jewish woman had given birth, the child would be exterminated. Towards the end of December in the ghetto my wife gave birth to a child, a boy..."

"... Pockets were searched and anything discovered was removed. One worker stood by with pliers to rip gold teeth from the bodies. The teeth were collected in special boxes that the Sturmführer, or Weiss, later took. The bone-crushers were tasked with picking out all bones, down to the tiniest fragments, that had not been consumed by the fire..."

"... altogether some two hundred children, to Krakow, where they were put into a German hospital. The children underwent a selection there. Blood was drawn from some of them to supply transfusions for Germans. German specialists extracted the most delicate facial skin from the other children for use in cosmetic surgeries on wounded and burned German soldiers."

"On 23 September 1943 the Vilna ghetto was liquidated. Under the careful watch of the Gestapo, its last remaining Jews were taken to the Gestapo gardens on Rose Street, where they underwent a selection, some to the right and others to the left. Those chosen to go left were sent to their deaths. Most of them were the elderly, women, and children, about five thousand people in all, sent to the crematoria of Majdanek."

Kittel had three gallows erected: one for the teacher, Yankl Kaplan, another for the attorney, Avrom Khvoynik, and the third for the twentyyear-old student, Asya Big. Kittel gathered all the Jews and warned them: the same thing will happen to anyone who dares raise a hand against the Germans. He hanged the three heroes himself. Asya swayed like a cornstalk in the centre, with Kaplan and Khvoynik on either side of her

"Disabuse yourselves of your desperate hope. Your children, your wives, and your husbands are no longer among the living! Ponar is not a camp. They were all executed. Hitler conceived of a plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe. We are the front line. Let us not go like sheep to the slaughter! "

" Ellen took out a spade and threatened that if Lyube did not undress that second she would gouge out her eyes. Lyube undressed. She continued on naked. She descended into the pit where she found bodies covered in lime. Weiss and Murer, the latter with his monocle, looked on. Ellen Degner, a former student at the University of Hamburg, grabbed a machine-gun, and in one burst of laughter, riddled Lyuba with bullets. "

The liquidation of the ghetto was near. August 1943. A Friday. Screams permeated the streets, which were strewn with rags of every colour imaginable. Faces illuminated by the setting sun expressed an atmosphere of madness. An old woman elbowed her way into the middle of the crowd. She was carrying a pot of tsholent, running to the bakery to put it in the oven for the Sabbath, all the while howling: They shot children

"... Dr Gotthard ordered him to put together a list of incunabula (that is to say, the earliest printed documents through the 16th century housed in the famous Strashun Library.) Strashun, the director of the library and the grandson of its founder, could not bear to see the Germans take possession of the library. He hanged himself by the straps of his phylacteries..."

"... Of the three hundred people associated with cultural life in the Vilna ghetto (teachers, writers, actors, intellectuals, painters, and musicians), only a small number survived. And of the several thousand children in the ghetto schools, only a few dozen survived..."