Shepsel (Shabtai) Bliacher and other young men singing, Wilno, Poland (Today Vilnius, Lithuania)

The photograph was found in the pocket of a murder victim in the Klooga Camp. See also: 4068/50, 51. On 19/09/1944, a few days before the Soviet army liberated the camp, the Germans and their Estonian collaborators murdered more than 2000 Jews in nearby forests. They tried to cover up the mass killing but did not have time to burn most of the bodies. When the Soviet soldiers reached the camp on 28/09/1944, they found the bodies and in their pockets photographs and personal documents. Most of the (prewar) photographs show friends and relatives of the prisoners and attest to a world that was lost with the Nazi conquest. Shepsel Bliacher (prisoner no. 798), year of birth: 1906. Shabtai was born in Wilno, to his parents - Hirsch and Dina. Had a sister - Lea, and a brother - Menachem. He married Genia. He was an actor and member of the Jewish Theatre Actors Association and was active in the Theatre groups in the Wilno ghetto. Bliacher wrote remembrance-chronicles documenting 21 Jewish actors who were murdered, 20 who were shot in Ponary and one who had died from Typhoid. When the ghetto was liquidated on September 1943, Biacher was sent to Klooga camp. His profession, according to camp registration: electrician. Once in every four weeks, prisoners had a day off on a Sunday. They used to gather on those evenings to sing-along songs of the ghetto-theater or folk songs. Hearing the news of the liberation of Wilno, an underground ball was held (13 July 1944). According to the testimony of Avraham Aharonson (from testimony collection no. O.3/2926, Yad VaShem), Bliacher was the organiser of the evening.