Women of Valor: Partisans and Resistance Fighters
Evelyn Kahn | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Footnotes

Evelyn Kahn - Footnotes

1. The Germans attacked Lithuania on June 22, 1941. They reached the area of Zdiecol a few days later. In Lida, a larger town nearby, SD and SS troops rounded up the men on June 28. They separated 92 lawyers, engineers, teachers and professionals, took them several kilometers outside the city and shot them. (Sefer Lida, Tel Aviv, 1970, p.281).

Irving Sholoff corroborates Evelyn Kahn's account of a similar Aktion in Zdiecol, immediately after the Germans occupied the town, in which 120 Jewish intellectuals were killed. (Center for Holocaust Studies, Oral History of Irving Shiloff, RG 870).

2. The ghetto was formed in January 1942 and liquidated I August 1942. (Oral History of Irving Shiloff).

3. Irving Shiloff describes a large Aktion in April 1942 in which one thousand Jews were killed at the Jewish cemetery.

4. In 1942 the thirteenth day of Iyar was April 30.

5. According to Irving Shiloff, Alter Dworetsky, head of the Judenrat in Zdiecol, secretly organized the Jewish ghetto police to collect arms and escape to the forest. The Germans caught two of the Jews as they tried to smuggle the arms into the ghetto in a sack of potatoes. When Dworetsky heard of this, he and his group of 25 took what arms they had and fled to the forest. After this episode the Germans gave the Jews an ultimatum, that if Dworetsky does not give himself up, 1000 Jews would be killed. Irving Shiloff is convinced that the Aktion was already planned, and the Germans used the arms smuggling as a tactic to identify other Jewish resisters.

6. Irving Shiloff reports that before the final liquidation of the ghetto, people prepared bunkers and other hiding places. He heard a rumour that the Germans would burn the ghetto, which would make hiding in a bunker hazardous, as well. Because of this, he escaped the ghetto and hid in the fields.

7. Irving Shiloff confirms that the final Aktion in the ghetto lasted several days. People were kept first in the marketplace and then in the Jewish cemetery, where final selections were made.

© Copyright Judy Cohen, 2001.
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