Voices From the Holocaust

Yitzhak Arad

YITZHAK ARAD Dr. Yitzhak Arad was one of the legendary resistancefighters of the Jewish Underground during World War IT. Though barely beyond the age of childhood, he escaped from the Jewish ghetto at Vilna, Lithuania, and became an active combatant and a leader of this movement, fighting in the forests of Belorussia until the war's end. His parents and family perished in the Holocaust. After the Nazi surrende~ Arad fled to and illegally entered Eretz Israel. He volunteered for combat in the underground Palmahand laterservedin the IsraelDefense Forces where he had various command responsibilities until1972. His highest rank was that of brigadier general. Upon discharge from the military, Arad was appointed chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. He earned a doctorate in historyfrom the University at Tel Aviv, where he became a lecturer in Jewish history. His book Ghetto in Flames 11976), based on his doctoral dissertation, is a chronicle of the Jews in Vilna between 1941 and 1945. A subsequent volume, Belzec, Sobibor, Ti:eblinka, 11987) tells of the murders of over a million Jews at the three infamous concentration camps located in Poland under the code-name Operation Reinhard. He has also published many articles on the history of the Holocaust. YITZHAK ARAD 39 HJC Your reputation as one of the great resistance fighters is widespread. Would you say something about your experience in and around Vilna at that time? YA Initially I was in the ghetto underground movement from 1942 until 1944. Then I joined the partisans until the end of the war. We fought against the Germans and their collaborators . HJC How old were you then? YA When the war started I was not yet thirteen. I began my underground activity at fifteen. HJC How did you become involved in that? YA The Germans occupied my native town of Swieciany, which had about 3,000 Jews, at the end of July '41. In September they told all of the Jews that they were being removed to a ghetto. A total of about 8,000 Jews were taken-not to a ghetto but to an isolated military camp instead. They shot them on the second day. I escaped. HJC How did you get away? YA The night before we were deported from Swieciany to the so-called ghetto a group of us fifteen- to sixteen-yearolds decided to flee to Belorussia. Life for Jews there was !relative to those of us in Lithuania) much different. There were no mass killings, no ghettos. We did not know that we were escaping annihilation but we learned a few days after our arrival in Belorussia that Eisatzgruppen Eight murdered our people. Only 250 remained. They were skilled workerstailors , shoemakers, carpenters-who were forced to work for the Germans. But after a few months the killing of Jews began in Belorussia. So I left there and returned to my native town. There I was captured by the Germans and taken out of the ghetto with about ten others. We thought they would shoot us because we didn't have any documents. However, they took us to a place outside of town where there was a camp where they collected captured Soviet arms. We were put to cleaning the weapons. On the first day I put a small gun beneath my shirt without knowing if I'd be searched at the end of the day. I wasn't and was able to bring it back to Swieciany that night. We continued to work this way for 0.192] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 21:43 GMT) 40 Voices from the Holocaust about a month, and I and my friends were able to steal about ten guns. So we started an underground group. In February 1943 we left for the forest, and our group operated for about two months. HJC How many were you? YA There were twenty-five youngsters. It was very, very hard to do very much. In the forest the local population was not collaborating with Jews. In order to survive in the forest you must have support from the local people-to get informationabout the enemy, to get some help withfood. But they would immediately inform the Germans where we were, and peasants can always find you in the forest. It was very difficult ; but in about two months we met up with a Russian partisan group and we joined with them. HJC They were non-Jews? YA Yes, non-Jews. It was the...