Testimony of Mendel Kramer, born in Vilna, Poland, 1928, regarding his experiences as a child in the Vilna Ghetto and in Vaivara, Vivikonna, Narwa and other places

Testimony of Mendel Kramer, born in Vilna, Poland, 1928, regarding his experiences as a child in the Vilna Ghetto and in Vaivara, Vivikonna, Narwa and other places Life before the war; well-to-do, secular family; life until 1939. Outbreak of the war; labor in a "cooperative"; attends the Jewish school, with studies in the Lithuanian language; outbreak of the war [between Germany and the Soviet Union], 1941; German occupation; transfer of his brother to the Gestapo headquarters, and his disappearance; deportation to the Vilna Ghetto, No. 1; transfer to the Vilna Ghetto, No. 2; his mother's labor in a military camp outside the ghetto, using a work certificate; his mother's work as a seamstress, mending uniforms; death of his father, 1942; labor in the ghetto and outside the ghetto; liquidation of the ghetto; deportation to Vaivara by train; transfer to Vivikonna on a march; camp life; transfer to forced labor; transfer to Narwa; camp life; labor logging trees; search for food in the city suburbs; escape to a forest with a friend; life in the forest; detention during a search for food; life in detention in a prison for Jews; discovery of his Jewish identity; transfer for deportation; rescue due to lack of room on the truck; life in Vaivara; labor in the sick barracks; typhus disease; transfer to Sonda; transfer to Stutthof, summer 1944; transfer to Lubicz on a death march, 1944; liberation. Work for the JDC; help to the Bericha organization; aliya to Israel, 1948.