The Holocaust in Eastern Europe by Waitman Wade Beorn

Author:Waitman Wade Beorn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

FIGURE 14Jews move into the Kaunas ghetto with their belongings. Photo by ghetto inhabitant George Kadish. Kaunas, Lithuania, August 1941.

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

On October 27, 1941, the Jewish Council was told that all Jews were to assemble the next morning on an open ground known as “Democracy Square.” The Jewish Council, torn over how to respond, finally turned to Chief Rabbi Shapiro for advice. Shapiro spent the night studying Hebrew scripture, searching for an answer to this impossible problem. He determined that, as diarist Avraham Tory recounted, “When an evil edict had imperiled an entire Jewish community . . . communal leaders were bound to summon their courage, take the responsibility, and save as many lives as possible.”97 Elkes made the decision to order the assembly.98 He hoped, like Rumkowski, to save some portion of his community by allowing others to be “selected.” In the end, 9,200 Kaunas Jews were marched out and murdered in the nineteenth century Fort IX, on the outskirts of the city.99 This became known as the “Great Aktion.” Ghetto diarist Tory wrote that “Some thirty thousand proceeded that morning into the unknown, toward a fate that could already have been sealed for them by the bloodthirsty rulers.”100 To his great credit, Elkes forbid his Jewish council from giving preferential treatment to friends and relatives.101

Elkes wrote later what the responsibility of leadership felt like, saying, “We are steering our battered ship in the heart of the ocean while every day waves of persecutions and harsh decrees hasten to drown it.”102 However, unlike Rumkowski, Elkes personally went to the square to intervene. He successfully saved some families and was nearly beaten to death for his efforts.

Like ghetto leaders elsewhere, Elkes focused on making his ghetto as productive as possible. Tory wrote on March 16, 1943, “Lately, we have been inclined to connect our fate with the growing demand for Jewish labor . . . the Ghetto has eight to nine thousand productive and creative workers, who contribute their part to the German war effort.”103 The Jews of the Kaunas ghetto worked as slave laborers at a variety of locations and this did probably prolong the ghetto’s existence, even when it was turned into a JULAG concentration camp. Ultimately, the ghetto was liquidated in 1944, with surviving inhabitants being sent to concentration camps in the Reich.

Two other elements distinguish Elke from his peers: support for resistance and the behavior of his ghetto police. Unlike some ghetto leaders, Elkes supported the underground and resistance in Kaunas. Many ghetto leaders actively opposed armed resistance, fearing collective reprisals against the ghetto population. Elkes, on the other hand, “financed the purchase of arms for the local resistance organization and provided facilities for manufacturing grenades and explosives.”104 In addition, the ghetto police, often corrupt and vindictive elsewhere, were resisters and generally honorable men in Kaunas. Indeed, during the liquidation of the ghetto, the Nazis arrested the remaining policemen and tortured them to discover hiding places in the ghetto. Thirty-six policemen were killed as a result.

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