The spirit of ORT during the Holocaust
In the summer of 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet
Union. In Nazi occupied Lithuania the Holocaust had begun.
However, it soon became clear that those who practised a trade
had a chance to survive. When they found themselves in the
ghetto, former teachers of ORT schools and courses understood
this very well. They did everything they could to organise trade
courses in the Vilnius and Kaunas ghettos. In the ghetto, a
skilled trade guaranteed life for the whole family.
Kaunas ghetto
Avraham Tory wrote in his Kaunas ghetto diary that on 13
September 1942 the Jewish Council in ghetto decided to
establish a vocational school. Technical and general subjects
were taught there, and young people who left school had a
chance to work in German workshops. The school, which also
conducted cultural activities, operated until the ghetto was
liquidated in 1944. It was founded and headed by former ORT
Kaunas principal Jacob Oleiski, helped by Mendelis Sadovskis.
Vilnius ghetto
In the ghetto, there was a technical school and courses for
teenagers and trade workshops for children. Matitjahu
Schreiber, former Head of the ORT Vilnius school, established a
vocational school that had sixty students. Here they acquired a
trade: they were trained, according to a programme, to work
glass, as joiners, in pottery, knitting, sewing and mending of
military uniforms.
In the foreground: commanders of the Kaunas ghetto police; in the
background, second from left: Jacob Oleiski, Head of the vocational school.
Tel Aviv Beit Hatfutsot museum stocks. Oleiski survived, left for Israel after
the war, and was Director of ORT Israel. He died in 1984.
Samuil Kaplinskij. VGSJM. Graduating from the ORT Vilna Technicum in
1932, Kaplinskij had a job in the water supply system in Vilnius. At the
beginning of the Second World War he was sent to the Vilnius ghetto. On the
day it was liquidated, Kaplinskij led away about 150 members of the ghetto
resistance organisation FPO–including future World ORT Director General
Joseph Harmatz–through the water supply pipes to Rūdninkai forest. From
September 1943 to July 1944 he was the commander of the partisan
detachment “For Victory”. After the war, he continued working in the same
water supply system in Vilnius.
Address by the work section of the Jewish Council to the ghetto male
inmates: “…[there are] quite a few men who do not go to their permanent
work places; many able-bodied men who avoid registering at the work
section. Because of this the city is short of labour. Remember: work is a
question of life or death. Your fate is in your hands.” 15 March 1942,
LCVA
Students of the Kaunas Ghetto vocational school, 1942. VVGŽM. In
March 1942 a vocational school for boys and a sewing school for girls
were organised. Later, training in other specialities was provided.
Certificate issued at the Vilnius
Ghetto, 15 October 1941. VGSJM