Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust Podcast
1) Chapter 1: Childhood Memories
Recollections of life before 1939 evoke the rich diversity of Vilna’s thriving Jewish community, including its multiple synagogues and political and social organizations. The impact on daily lif...Show More
2) Chapter 10: Aftermath
In this final chapter of “Remembering Vilna,” several of the survivors whose stories we’ve featured tell of their journeys to safety and new beginnings, even as the traumas they expe...Show More
3) Chapter 9: Judgment and Revenge
At war’s end, Vilna’s survivors struggle to regain their health, look for missing family members, and search for ways to leave Europe for the United States or Palestine. But a small group ...Show More
4) Chapter 8: Nazi Defeat
July 1944. For nearly two weeks, the Nazis and the Soviets fight for every street and block in Vilna. When the smoke clears, Jews hiding in the sewers emerge into daylight while other survivors and Je...Show More
5) Chapter 7: Liquidation
When the Nazis liquidate the Vilna ghetto, they send thousands of Jews to their deaths or to forced-labor camps. Others escape to the forest to join the partisans. Very few manage to hide. The Nazis a...Show More
6) Chapter 6: The Underground
Young people in the ghetto organize an underground group with the hope of leading an uprising against the Nazis. They risk their lives to build an arsenal, but when it becomes clear most Jews in the g...Show More
7) Chapter 5: Ghetto Life
Life in the Jewish ghetto demands vigilance and adaptation. Families improvise spaces for hiding. Food is smuggled at the risk of execution. And while young people start to organize a resistance, cult...Show More
8) Chapter 4: The Ghetto
They are given minutes to pack. A suitcase, a sheet-wrapped bundle, whatever they can carry. Thousands of the city’s Jews are marched at gunpoint to the newly enclosed Jewish ghettos, where the ...Show More
9) Chapter 3: Nazi Invasion
When Germany attacks the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis occupy Vilna and begin imposing their harsh antisemitic rule, banning Jews from sidewalks, requiring the wearing of an identifying yellow star,...Show More
10) Chapter 2: In the Shadow of War
With the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the country is split between the Nazi invaders and the Soviet Union. Vilna winds up in the hands of the Soviets, then the Lithuanians, then the...Show More