Museum
Born March 28, 1928, Siauliai, Lithuania
The Russian Prisoner of War Grabbed the German Guard by the Neck, Trying to Choke Him »
Spiritual Resistance—The Hanging »
It was dark in the barrack where more than a hundred Russian prisoners of war were kept.
About a dozen of them gathered in the dark to finalize the plan to escape.
They have been planning it for months, checking all kinds of possibilities.
Now the time was ripe. They have been working at the airport where it was possible to hijack a plane. If they could just get rid of the guards. They needed a volunteer willing to risk his own life to save all of his comrades. One of the prisoners came forward and offered to be the one to do the job. The plan was for the volunteer to grab one of the guards by the neck with the hope that all the guards would come to his rescue. If they could just get the guards in one place they would jump them and take away their guns. The other possibility was to hit the guards with the shovels and picks that they worked with. They observed before that plane came in every day at noon. The prisoners figured that this is their only chance to escape. Many of the war prisoners were expert flyers.
The next day when the Russian prisoners came to work they were ready for the escape. At noon the plane landed, the passengers got off the plane, the cleaning crew came to clean and the time was right. The signal by the leader was to start the mission.
The prisoner that volunteered jumped forward, grabbed the guard by the neck, and started to choke the German. The rest of the guards rushed to rescue the guard. As planned the prisoners started to hit the Germans with the shovels and picks. Some of the guards fell injured, some dead. Many of the prisoners were killed, but many succeeded to get on the plane and escape to Russia.
The prisoner that volunteered to help his friends to escape paid with his own life. He was ordered to dig a hole in the ground and get in it and was buried alive up to his neck. The pressure of the earth was so strong that it killed him.
We the Jewish prisoners who worked across the road were ordered to witness the punishment. The head of the guards made a speech telling us that this is the punishment if anyone hurts a German guard. On the ground the prisoner lay dead with his eyes open looking up to the heavens hoping that the Lord guided his comrades to freedom.
©2002, Nesse Godin (Galperin). The text, images, and audio and video clips on this Web site are available for limited non-commercial, educational, and personal use only, or for fair use as defined in the United States copyright laws.
Nineteen forty-three was a very cold winter. Life in the ghetto was very difficult. People did not have wood to heat their rooms; they burned every piece of wooden furniture to keep warm. The hunger was great—the small ration that was given to us could not keep us alive.
When you worked outside of the ghetto you had contact with Lithuanian people who tried to help by sharing some food with you. Some people bartered some of their belongings for food so they could bring back some for their family, especially for their children or elderly parents who did not go to work.
To bring food into the ghetto was forbidden. The order by the Nazis was no smuggling food into the ghetto. When people came back from work, they were searched at the gate. Some of the Lithuanian policeman were bribed and they searched you but let you in with a few potatoes or a piece of bread.
Every so often, German SS officers came to the gate as groups of Jews were coming back from work. Many people were caught with food and taken to the Gestapo jail, where they were tortured and beaten.
Sometimes the Jewish Council intervened and the people were let out from jail. Records show that at the end of May, the Jewish Council was called to the Gestapo, where they were told that the Gestapo was holding a man by the name of Bezalel Mazavecki, who broke the law and was caught with some potatoes and bread as he was trying to smuggle them into the ghetto. Mazavecki was just trying to bring a little food for his wife and little girl.
The Jewish Council tried very hard to convince the head of the Gestapo—I believe his name was Bub—to let the man free but they did not succeed. The Gestapo ordered that a gallows be made in the Kaukazus ghetto—where my family lived—in the center of the large space, near the gate, where people assembled to go out to work. Two Jewish men were to be appointed to be the henchmen.
On Black Sunday, the beginning of June, all the Jews from the two ghettos were to assemble at that place near the gate. The Lithuanian police were running through the ghetto, checking every place to make sure that everyone obeyed the order.
When my family and I got to that place, there were already many people there. What I saw was a table in the middle of the area. On top of the table was a chair and a wooden pole with a cord hanging down. The two Jewish men that were to do the hanging stood near the table. I do not know how they were picked.
There was a silence, as though the angel of death was right there. All of a sudden we heard motorcycles and trucks coming. We saw many SS men and the head of the Gestapo, Bub, coming through the gate. Behind them Bezalel Mazavecki was led in by the police. He was taken directly to the gallows.
We were hoping that at the last minute the death sentence would be called off. When we saw Bub all our hope was gone. When Mazavecki reached the table, he asked to untie his hands and legs and then he hopped on the table, put the cord over his head, and with a loud voice he said to the Jewish men that were supposed to hang him that he forgave them and to the SS murderers and Lithuanian police he said, “You are not going to win the war by hanging me.” Then he kicked the chair from under his feet and his body fell limp.
The cry of the Jewish people was so loud, with people saying the kaddish, the prayer for the dead. Then dead silence. Bub, the commander of the Gestapo, made a speech. “This will be the punishment for anyone who tries to bring food into the ghetto,” he said. Then he turned around, walked through the gate, got on his motorcycle, and left.
I stood there wishing it was a bad dream, or that the earth under my feet would swallow me so I would not have had to witness that crime against an innocent person.
Yes, the Nazis killed Bezalel Mazavecki, but even in the last minutes of his life he resisted them spiritually. Every day of the Holocaust, Jewish people resisted the Nazis—some by fighting with guns and many of us just by not losing hope and surviving day by day.
©2006, Nesse Godin (Galperin). The text, images, and audio and video clips on this Web site are available for limited non-commercial, educational, and personal use only, or for fair use as defined in the United States copyright laws.
