The Safer Place Was German-Controlled

Leyzer Goldman’s escape route ran out of Lithuanian-administered space and into a Nazi-administered town.

The first chapter followed the property. The second followed the authority. The third followed the calendar. One fact still demands its own treatment: the escape route.

One of the most damning facts in the Valkininkai record is not that Germany was innocent. Germany was not innocent. Nazi Germany created the genocidal framework, conquered the territory, and made the destruction of the Jews possible. The damning fact is more specific: in Leyzer Goldman’s account, the immediate zone from which a Jew had to escape was the Lithuanian-administered local order.

Goldman was among the Jewish men assembled in Valkininkai on September 21, 1941. They were told that they were being taken to work in Eišiškės and would live in a ghetto. Some believed the story. Others understood that they were being taken to be shot. About 300 men from Valkininkai, Selo, and Leipunis were marched under armed guard. Goldman concluded that the destination was death. In the Gireikis forest, he escaped.1

After slipping away, Goldman was stopped by Lithuanian partisans. He bought his release with a gold watch and made his way to Woronowa, also rendered as Voronova and known today as Voranava in Belarus. The introductory note to his testimony states the point with extraordinary bluntness: Voronova was “controlled only by the Germans.” There, Goldman found temporary refuge in the ghetto.2

The survivor did not flee German-controlled space into Lithuanian safety. He fled Lithuanian partisans into a town controlled by Germans. That does not turn Germany into a protector or the Voronova ghetto into safety. Goldman later lived through the destruction of other ghettos and saw death repeatedly. The immediate comparison remains historically explosive: at that moment, for that fugitive, the........

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