Herman Kruk

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Herman "Herschel" Kruk (born May 19, 1897 in Płock , Russian Empire ; died September 1944 in Keila ) was a Polish librarian , secretary of the Warsaw "Culture League", and chronicler and librarian in the Vilnius ghetto . He was murdered in 1944 in Keila in German-occupied Estonia in a satellite camp of the Klooga concentration camp .

Life

Childhood and Adolescence (1897–1915)

Herman Kruk grew up as the oldest child of an accountant in the Polish city of Płock. His father died when Kruk was 17 years old and from then on he and his mother had to support the family. He had two siblings, his sister Golda and his brother Shmuel (later called Pinkhas). During the First World War, Płock was occupied by tsarist troops and later by the German Empire. Kruk had trained as a photographer and worked as a war photographer and as a foreman in a vegetable factory. He was passionate about reading and was active in the Zionist youth movement. He borrowed literature from the Hasomir Library, one of the oldest Jewish libraries in Poland.

Youth in the socialist and communist movement (1915–1920)

In the Hasomir library, Kruk met personalities from the Zionist and socialist movements. He got in touch with the Bundists and worked on the Bundist weekly newspaper "Lebensfragen". He joined the Social Democrats of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania , which united with the Polish Socialist Party in 1918 . Even after joining the Communist International, Kruk remained a member. After the November Revolution in Germany, Kruk helped disarm the German occupation forces. Despite his diverse commitment to communism, Kruk could not understand the persecution and combating of the Jewish faith in the Soviet Union and the Polish Communist Party. "Although he was not religious himself, he respected the piety of others [...] and defended political freedom," writes his brother Pinkhas Kruk, which then also led to the separation from the Communist Party. He was intensely involved with the Bundists and was an accumulator of Yiddish cultural and educational work, especially for ordinary workers.

Time in Warsaw (1920–1939)

Kruk served in the military in Warsaw as a photographer and used his position to smuggle leaflets for the federal government. Since the federal government was already banned at that time, it was a highly risky undertaking that was punished with death. After the end of his military service, he continued his educational work for the workers and initiated the union's own cultural department, of which he became its secretary and key designer. He “organized theater evenings, concerts, scientific and literary lectures for workers [...]. Under his leadership, the Grosser Library grew enormously and was able to move to larger premises despite constant financial difficulties. He developed the “Kultur-Liga” library center, a “service and training facility” for the 400 Jewish libraries in Poland ”.

Escape from Warsaw and time under Soviet occupation in Vilnius (1939 - June 1941)

During the dangerous escape from Warsaw, Kruk and his contacts managed to run a soup kitchen for the needy in Lutsk . There he met his brother Pinkhas, who worked as a journalist, by chance. Together they went to Vilna. Once there, Kruk researched the history of the library in Vilnius and became a press officer at TOZ / OZE (Obshchestvo Zdravookhraneniia Evreev / Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jews). In 1940 he received a visa to emigrate to America. However, he postponed the trip to save his wife, which is why his visa expired. He did not accept the offer to work abroad as a spy for the Soviet Union and to be allowed to travel abroad for it. At the beginning of the German-Soviet war , he decided not to flee, and noted in his diary:

“What is happening around us only allows the conclusion that we are prisoners in German hands. A new, perhaps the most difficult time of my life is ahead. "

Time in the Vilnius Ghetto (1941–1943)

In the ghetto, Kruk was chairman of the BUND committee and worked for the Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut ( YIVO ). He collected Jewish books and opened the ghetto library on July 7, 1941, just a few days after the ghetto was established . To do this, he used the holdings of the library of the Havrah Mefitsei Haskalah (Society for the Annunciation), a large Jewish library in Vilnius, and expanded it. The loan of the 100,000. The book from the ghetto library was celebrated with a ceremony on December 13, 1942. The library became an information center of the ghetto where messages and documents could be received, collected and exchanged. Kruk then immediately began to draw up a chronicle of the ghetto in triplicate. For the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce Kruk should sort out the valuable Jewish books and other cultural goods. However, he and his colleagues often managed to separate and save them. In October 1941 he risked his life saving Pati Kremer, a pioneer of the Jewish-socialist BUND party, by entering the old woman on his work card as his wife. With the old woman under his arm, he successfully passed the control and saved her life for a short time. She was selected and murdered when the ghetto was liquidated.

Deportation to Klooga concentration camp and murder (September 1943 to September 18, 1944)

When the ghetto was liquidated, Herman Kruk was deported to Klooga concentration camp in September 1943 . There he continued his notes. His little diary was brought to the Jewish Museum in Vilnius by a survivor with his other notes. On August 22nd, he and 500 Jews were deported to the Lagedi satellite camp of the Vaivara concentration camp . There, too, he kept a diary. On the night of September 18 to September 19, 1944, Herman Kruk was taken to the shooting range and shot by the SS. A short time later, the concentration camps were liberated by Soviet troops.

Find and publish the Ghetto Chronicle

The three copies of the Ghetto Chronicle were hidden by Kruk in different places. One was given to a Polish priest who was believed to have been murdered by the Germans. One remained in the library and the third he buried in a metal container. The poet Abraham Sutzkever was able to collect the individual pages from the opened container in months of work after the liberation of the liquidated ghetto by the Soviet Union and bring them to safety in Moscow. So far it has only been published in German in small parts. A complete publication of all pages found in the chronicle and diary of Herman Kruk is available in English. Some of the records from outside the ghetto have been lost. Only fragments have survived. The publication of the entire ghetto chronicle and the diaries of Herman Kruk in German remain a desideratum to this day.

literature

  • Dina Abramowicz: The library in the Vilna ghetto. Books and libraries in ghettos and camps . In: Abramowicz, Dina: Herman Kruk on the 100th birthday , Laurentius: Von Menschen, Bücher und Libraries, 3, 1991
  • Yitsḥaḳ Arad: Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust . New York: Holocaust Library, 1982 ISBN 0-89604-043-7 .
  • Herman Kruk: The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps; 1939-1944 . Ed. Binyamin Harshav. New Haven, Conn .: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 2002 ISBN 0-300-04494-1 .
  • Herman Kruk: Between the Fronts: Records from 1940-1944 . Yiddish texts with translation. Laurentius / Kleine Historische Reihe, 2 (Seelze: Laurentius, 1990), ISSN  0937-9835
  • Maria Kühn-Ludewig, Pinkhas Schwartz (ed.): Hermann Kruk (1897–1944): Librarian And Chronicler In Ghetto Wilna (1941–1943) , Laurentius special issue, 2., ext. u. verb. Hannover edition: Laurentius-Verlag, 1990

Web links

  • Herman Kruk in the Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims

Individual evidence

  1. Schwartz, Henry, 'Herman Kruk. His life, his work in the Vilna Ghetto and his death ', In: Hermann Kruk: Librarian and Chronicler in the Wilna Ghetto (1990), 1-47 Laurentius special issue, 2., exp. u. verb. Ed. (Hannover: Laurentius-Verlag, 1990) p. 2 f
  2. Schwartz, Henry, 'Herman Kruk. His life, his work in the Vilna Ghetto and his death ', In: Hermann Kruk: Librarian and Chronicler in the Wilna Ghetto (1990), 1-47 Laurentius special issue, 2., exp. u. verb. (Hannover: Laurentius-Verlag, 1990) p. 10
  3. Schwartz, Henry: 'Memory of Herman Kruk', Between the Fronts: Testimonies from the Years 1940-1944; Yiddish texts with translation, 1944 (1990), p. 11
  4. Schwartz, Henry, 'Herman Kruk. His life, his work in the Vilna Ghetto and his death ', In: Hermann Kruk: Librarian and Chronicler in the Wilna Ghetto (1990), 1-47 Laurentius special issue, 2., exp. u. verb. (Hannover: Laurentius-Verlag, 1990) p. 11
  5. Schwartz, Henry, 'Herman Kruk (1897–1944). His life, his work in the Vilna Ghetto and his death 'In: Hermann Kruk: Librarian and Chronicler in the Wilna Ghetto (1990), 1-47 Laurentius special issue, 2., exp. u. verb. (Hannover: Laurentius-Verlag, 1990) p. 28
  6. Schwartz, Henry, 'Herman Kruk. His life, his work in the Vilna Ghetto and his death ', In: Hermann Kruk: Librarian and Chronicler in the Wilna Ghetto (1990), 1-47 Laurentius special issue, 2., exp. u. verb. (Hannover: Laurentius-Verlag, 1990) p. 40
  7. Arad, Yitshak, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the | Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (New York: Holocaust Library, 1982), p 256
  8. Abramowicz, Dina (1991). The library in the Vilna ghetto. Books and libraries in ghettos and camps: 119–131. In: Abramowicz, Dina, 'Herman Kruk Zum 100th Birthday', Laurentius: Von Menschen, Bücher und Libraries, 3, p. 123
  9. Schwartz, Henry, 'Herman Kruk. His life, his work in the Vilna Ghetto and his death ', In: Hermann Kruk: Librarian and Chronicler in the Wilna Ghetto (1990), 1-47 Laurentius special issue, 2., exp. u. verb. Ed. (Hannover: Laurentius-Verlag, 1990) p. 45 f
  10. Schwartz, Henry, 'Herman Kruk (1897–1944). His life, his work in the Vilna Ghetto and his death 'In: Hermann Kruk: Librarian and Chronicler in the Wilna Ghetto (1990), 1-47 Laurentius special issue, 2., exp. u. verb. (Hannover: Laurentius-Verlag, 1990) p. 30 ff
  11. Schroeter, Gudrun, Words from a Destroyed World: The Ghetto in Wilna, Art And Society, Studies on Culture in the 20th and 21st Century, Vol. 4 (St. Ingbert: Röhrig, 2008) p. 39 f.