David Silberman

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David Silberman (Preili/Latvia 1934) is a writer, researcher and a Jewish activist who, having escaped death when the Germans invaded Latvia. gathered and published facts, testimony, documents, from survivors of the Holocaust living in Latvia in the 1960's. He had several works published on that theme. Silberman lives in New York, is a US citizen and works as a consultant engineer. He was married in 1959 and has four children.

BIOGRAPHY

Silberman was born in Preili in Latvia in 1934. The Silberman family fled the German invasion of their home-town at the end of June 1941 and spent most of the war years in the Tatar region of the USSR. David Silberman graduated in 1957 as an engineer from the Tallinn Polyclinal Institute (Estonia).

In 1959, he met and married Bella Tartakovskaya with whom he had four children. In the 1960s, he joined a collective of Jewish activists intent on collecting facts, testimony and documents from survivors of the Holocaust living in Latvia at that time. On March 10 and 11, 1971, he and 55 fellow Jews from Latvia organized a sit-in and hunger strike within the Reception Hall of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in Moscow, handing a manifesto to the authorities in charge with a request to allow the Latvian Jews free emigration to Israel. He received permission to emigrate to Israel in April 1971.

Silberman lived in Israel for a number of years, had several works published in that country, and served as a reservist during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. He moved to the United States in 1977 to pursue his career. He now lives in New York, has become a US citizen, and is still active as a consultant engineer.

Reporting on the Holocaust

Many of the Jewish people who survived the Holocaust were unable to write their testimony into readable stories. Some others were unable to tell their harrowing accounts of survival. At the end of the 1950s David Silberman and other activists began to talk with Jewish survivors of the Holocaust living in Latvia. The USSR frowned upon such covert activities. Silberman and his historian companions met two of the four known survivors of the Rumbula Forest massacres of November and December 1941 (near Riga); these survivors trusted David Silberman with their accounts of survival as did countless other survivors of the Shoah. He crafted these stories into readable material which he began circulating and later publishing.

Serge Klarsfeld, the well known French Nazi-hunter and historian of the Shoah called David Silberman a pioneer in the historical research. Distinguished historian, Marger Vesterman, director of the 'Museum of the Jews of Latvia' in Riga had this to say about David Silberman: during decades he collected a great amount of testimony from survivors of the Holocaust that are now of a considerable historical and teaching value..

Silberman's first published work, in 1966, was The Right to Live - A Documentary Eyewitness Account of a Survivor, telling the story of Ella Medalye, a survivor from the Rumbula Forest (near Riga) massacre where, during just two days, some 28,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto were killed by bullets. In 1973, while living in Israel, David Silberman transcribed and adapted in Russian the writings that Frieda Michelson, also a survivor from the Rumbula forest killings, had originally written in Yiddish. It was first published under the title Ia Perejila Rumbuli (I Survived Rumbula) by the kibbutz Lokhamei Agetaot.

These two books came to the attention of the well-known historian of the Holocaust in Latvia, Andrew Ezergailis, who mentioned them as references in his staple work on that subject.

In 1989, Silberman's most ambitious work, entitled I Ty Eto Videl (and You saw it), was published in the United States by the Jewish publishing company Slovo (the Word). This details the German killing of Jews in Latvia and the Ukraine during WWII. from the point of view of the the intended victims. This book was brought to Serge Klarsfeld's attention in France and it was translated into French and published in 2011 The book contains an introduction by Serge Klarsfeld, the well-known French Nazi-hunter and historian/documentalist of the Shoah in France.

David Silberman also wrote the full story of Jan Lipke, a Latvian patriot who saved the lives of between 50 and 60 Jews from the Riga ghetto or Arbeitskommandos, hiding them, feeding them, arming them, and doing everything in his power to protect their lives until liberation by the Soviet Army. He received the 'Righteous among the Nations' medal in Yad Vashem, Israel, for these feats. Jan Lipke: An Unusual Man was first published in the USA in 1987 as part of Muted Voices, later published in 2006 in Riga in a longer version under the title Like a Star in the Darkness - Recollections about Janis (Zhan) Lipke. The Historian of the Holocaust in Latvia, Andrew Ezergailis, referred to the original version in his work

As of 2013, David Silberman is still actively writing. He is the only remaining member of the collective of activists formed in Latvia during the 1960s. He has just finished writing a story about Mordukha Glezer, a Jew who escaped from an Arbeitskommando in Latvia and joined the Soviet partisans.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• The Right to Live - a Documentary Account of a Survivor, Riga 1966, New York 2005;
• History of two Days - Diary of a Demonstrator, essay published in 1971 by the Israeli University edition 'Haumach' and in 1972 in the US journal 'American Zionist';
• Ia Perejila Rumbuli (I survived Rumbula),by Lokhamei Agetaot, Israel, in 1973, republished in Russian recently by the Rossiyskaya Biblioteka Kolokhosta in Moscow, ISBN 5-88832019-6;
• Jan Lipke: an Unusual Man, Slovo, USA in 1989, republished in Riga in 2007 under the title 'Like a Star in the Darkness', ISBN 978-9984-39-280-6, and recently in Russian under the title Podobno Zvezde vo Mrake by the Rossiyskaya Biblioteka Kolokhosta in Moscow;
• I Ty Eto Videl (and You saw it), Slovo, USA 1989, published in Russian in Riga in 2006, ISBN 9984-19-970-3, published in French in France for restricted circulation, under the title La Fosse - La Ferme aux Poux et autres témoignages sur la Shoah en Lettonie et Ukraine rassemblés par David Silberman, in 2011, by the 'Beate Klarsfeld Foundation', and republished recently in Russian by the Rossiyskaya Biblioteka Kolhokosta in Moscow.