Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary (review)

Volume 9, No.2 Hlinter 1991 95 contradictory relationship between Vienna and its Jews. As Beller sees it, due to antisemitism in the late nineteenth century, Jews assimilated into Viennese culture but not Viennese society, and, whether they realized it or not, the Viennese culture into which they assimilated was largely a Jewish creation . He argues that Jews invented a culture of·the future to which they could belong, rather than accepting the Viennese culture of the present, which rejected them and their values. Their culture was based on liberal principles , secularized Jewish ethics and an idealized German culture of the Enlightenment , rather than the real Viennese world in which they lived. Beller sees the Viennese situation as unique, because Vienna was the only European capital to have an elected antisemitic municipal administration at the end of the nineteenth century. However, even though the dates in the title extend to 1938, he never explores the post-World War I period when the Jewish-led Social Democratic Party, rather than the antisemitic Christian Social Party, controlled city hall to see whether that was really the most important variable that separated Vienna from Berlin, Budapest, or Paris. Vienna was undoubtedly different from other cities for a variety of reasons, but I doubt that its antisemitism truly made it "unique." Jews elsewhere also responded to antisemitism and were excluded from civil service positions, turning to the free professions and intellectual pursuits. More comparative data on Jewish cultural influence in other cities would have been helpful. Despite reservations as to its approach and methodology, I found this book intriguing and definitely worth reading. Although it sheds little light on the interwar period, it certainly increases our understanding of fin-de-siecle Vienna. While perhaps raising as many questions as it answers, it merits a respectable place on the ever-expanding shelf of books on Viennese Jewry. Harriet Pass Freidenreich Department of History Temple University Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, by Avraham Tory. Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1990. 554 pp. $34.95. Along with Emanuel Ringlebloom's description of the Warsaw Ghetto, the archives of the Bialystok Ghetto, and the daily jottings from the Lodz and Lvov Ghettos, Avraham Tory's diary of life in the Kovno Ghetto, Surviving the Holocaust (edited and introduced by Martin Gilbert), is an especially valuable description of the tragedy that befell Kovno during the Holocaust . As Deputy Secretary of the Kovno Jewish Council, Tory was at the center of activities, keeping and maintaining not only his diary, but also 96 SHOFAR records and documents, a substantial part of which he was able to hide and preserve. The diary and documents, along with Tory's testimony, were subsequently employed in war crimes trials. With the German attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Tory said, "I went from the frying pan into the fire" (p. xii), for on that day Lithuanian mobs seized and murdered hundreds of Jews and on the very next day German troops took the city. On 10 July 1941 the Kovno Ghetto was established and most of Kovno's 35,000 Jews were required to wear a yellow Star of David and were forced into the Ghetto, where they were obliged to create a police force, select a Jewish Council to administer the Ghetto under the Nazis, and elect a leader, Dr. Elchanan Elkes. Tory was able to maintain his diary from June 1941 through most of 1943, escaping from the Ghetto on 23 March 1944 and after the war settling in Israel. During Tory's stay in the Kovno Ghetto available German statistics indicate that from August 1941 to February 1942, 136,421 Lithanian Jews were killed. On 26 September and 14 October 1941,2500 Jewish residents of the Kovno Ghetto were murdered. On 28 October 1941, the entire Ghetto population was forced to stand all day long while 10,000 Jews were selected, marched off, and slaughtered by Germans and Lithuanians. Tory described the scene: "Thousands of curious Lithuanians flocked to both sides of the road to watch the spectacle...." Lithuanian and Nazi troops stripped each batch of victims, pushed them into pits, and machine-gunned them. Tory said, "So...