In memory of Baruch Shuv (1924-2020)
It was a warm, sunny day in Western Belarus as I was getting ready to continue my study tour to Radoszkowice, and other small towns in the area as part of my dissertation research. I had decided to physically visit the places I was writing about to get a feel for the area, to absorb the sights and to look for Jewish traces. Whilst previously collecting materials for my research at the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, I had previously encountered the video testimony of Baruch Shuv, who was a partisan in the forests near Vilna during the Second World War. I thought – it is interesting how sometimes, we as historians come across a single story that particularly touches us, and through this experience, we lead our research in its direction. This was my experience with the testimony of Shuv.
In the introduction to his autobiographic book, issued in Israel in 1995, he states: “This book was born after much consideration. I asked myself – who needs another book on the Holocaust? Who will read it?”. He then adds that for years, he tried to avoid discussing the Holocaust and wanted to keep the separation between “there” and “here”. Indeed, he wanted to be a “normal” person, just like anyone else. Yet, approximately seventy years later, his story will stand at the core of a new research on the Holocaust in Western Belarus.
Living and dying in Radoszkowice
Born in Vilna in 1924 to a family of merchants, Shuv grew up in a traditional Jewish atmosphere with three siblings. He studied at the “Heder” (religious school), and later in the “Tarbut” gymnasium, at which the studied language was Hebrew. Following the German occupation of Lithuania in June 1941 and
the creation of the Jewish Vilna Ghetto in September, Shuv and his older sister Zipporah were sent by their parents to the small town of Radoszkowice, where they had acquaintances – the Starobin family. Yet, this town was also under Nazi occupation, and the Jewish population was confined to a curfew at night. Jews were enforced to wear a yellow star on their clothes, and the German authorities ordered that all Jewish property be handed over onto them. On 11 March 1942, the Germans conducted a deadly Aktion in Radoszkowice: they surrounded the town and captured around 900 Jews. They led them to the nearby village of Udranka, separated 110 young people who were qualified for work, and the others were shoved into a barn, shot to death, and eventually the barn was set alight. Zipporah Shuv was one of the victims murdered that day. During the roundup, and taking advantage of the chaos, Shuv had fled to the “Todt” garage where he worked; his co-workers there were Russian POWs. With the help of a friend, he was hidden in a pit. In the evening, his Russian colleague beckoned to him – “Come out, you’ve got to see this”. The garage was on a hill, and the town visible in the valley below. He saw a long line of people – he learned that they were the Jews, and not far away he saw a small house, which looked like a barn. People stood in line and one could hear gunshots the entire time. Shuv went back to hide, and when he came out again later, he saw the barn blazing. The whole area was full of flames and smoke: “I saw it as if I was watching some kind of a dream, a movie“, he recalled in later years. He waited for morning, then realized that some Jews had been kept alive in the town to work for the Germans and decided to join them. After the Aktion a small ghetto was formed, in which the survivors and forced labourers were incarcerated.
