The Paper Brigade’s Recording of Epitaphs in Vilna’s Old Jewish Cemetery: A Literary Analysis

Shnayer Leiman

I. Introduction.

Shortly after the Nazis captured Vilna on June 24, 1941, representatives from the “Special Detail of Reich-Administrator Alfred Rosenberg” (Einsatzstab des Reichleiter Alfred Rosenberg) arrived in Vilna. Their task was to loot the literary (and other) treasures of Vilna’s Jewish community, and to ship them to Frankfurt.[1] Under the aegis of Nazi “experts” in Jewish matters, a slave-labor unit consisting at times of some 40 Jews was established.[2] Like the other slave-labor units, the group gathered early in the morning each day at the gate of the Jewish Ghetto. It was then marched outside the Ghetto to the nearby YIVO building at 18 Wiwulskiego Street, which had become the headquarters of Einsatzstab Rosenberg in Vilna. A variety of tasks were performed by the members of slave-labor unit, including the sorting of thousands of books and documents, cataloguing materials, and the preparation of essays on topics selected by, and of special interest to, Einsatzstab Rosenberg. The primary Nazi goal was to loot the best of the materials and to destroy the remaining materials. The primary goal of the members of the slave-labor unit was to stay alive by biding their time, and – at the same time – to rescue from destruction as many literary and artistic treasures as possible. They are the heroes of what is known as “the Paper Brigade.”[3]

II. Issues to be examined. One of the more important compilations of the Paper Brigade, completed in 1942, was a list of 51 epitaphs from Vilna’s Old Jewish cemetery in Shnipishok (in use until 1830)[4] and 140 epitaphs from Vilna’s New Jewish cemetery in Zaretcha (in use until 1941).[5] Given the fact that the vast majority of tombstones of both these cemeteries were destroyed, in part during the Holocaust, and primarily during its aftermath under Communist rule, it is imperative that the compilations of the Paper Brigade, prepared in 1942, be examined for their accuracy, and ultimately for their contribution to historical truth. Fortunately, these compilations have been preserved and can easily be accessed.[6] This study will focus only on the 51 epitaphs from Vilna’s Old Jewish cemetery. It will attempt to address, at least in a preliminary fashion, such questions as:

1. Did members of the Paper Brigade actually visit the Old Jewish cemetery and copy the epitaphs that are recorded in the compilations?

2. What other sources may have been used by the members of the Paper Brigade in preparing their compilation?

3. Why were these 51 epitaphs selected for the compilation, given the approximately 300 tombstones[7] with legible epitaphs that were still standing in the Old Jewish cemetery in 1942?

III. Methodology. We will examine samples of the transcriptions of the 51 epitaphs, as they appear in the compilation, and compare them to the transcriptions of the same epitaphs as published in books prior to the Holocaust and as preserved in photographs. We will look for patterns that repeat themselves in the 51 transcriptions of the epitaphs, patterns that may shed light on how, and from where, they were copied.

Epitaph 1: The Vilna Gaon (d.1797).

Discussion: This copy of the Vilna Gaon’s epitaph, for the most part, preserves the text as it first appeared in Yehoshua Heschel Levin, עליות אליהו (Vilna, 1856), p. 90, and in Shmuel Yosef Fuenn, קריה נאמנה (Vilna, 1860), p. 146 (and second edition: Vilna, 1915, pp. 155-156). Henceforth, we will refer to Levin as L. and Fuenn as F. The opening letters of lines 3-13 spell the acrostic רב אליהו גאון. The closing words of lines 3-13 are poetic, all of them ending with the rhyming letters עים or אים. The narrative portion (lines 14 on) follows the texts of L. and F., but not their line divisions.

What needs to be noted here is that this was not what the Vilna Gaon’s epitaph looked like in 1942. Probably due to both natural deterioration and human negligence, some of the letters on the extreme right of the tombstone were rubbed out or smudged. Attempts were made to re-ink some of the missing letters, often creating imaginary words. See below, for photographs A and B.

Photograph A[8] is a pre-Holocaust photo of the epitaph. Photo B[9] is a post- Holocaust photo, taken circa 1995. Notice line 10 in the epitaph, which must begin with an enlarged letter ג , for it begins the word גאון in the acrostic. But in the photographs, one clearly sees what looks like םכר (which probably was originally ג]ם פר[ישות ). In any event, we are served notice by the very first epitaph that the Paper Brigade did not always record what they saw; they surely did not see the words גם פרישות on the Gaon’s tombstone in 1942. They recorded what they knew from other literary sources.

Epitaph 3: R. Shlomo Zalman, father of the Vilna Gaon (d. 1758).

Discussion: The epitaph is replete with letters in parentheses. Parentheses, of course, do not ordinarily appear on Jewish tombstones. Clearly, then, the Paper Brigade either saw a mostly illegible epitaph, and filled in the missing letters, marking them in parentheses, or they copied the entire text from a published book. There is no need here for guesswork. The epitaph was published previously by three different authors: L. (in 1856); F. (in 1860 and 1915); and Israel Klausner, קורות בית-העלמין הישן בוילנה (Vilna, 1935), henceforth K. Here are the three editions of the epitaph:

L. (p. 27, n. 3):

F. (p. 123; second edition, p. 128):

K. (p. 45):

It should be noted that the Paper Brigade erred in the title of the entry, wrongly listing ר’ אליהו חסיד as the father of ר’ שלמה זלמן. Nevertheless, it seems obvious that the Paper Brigade copied the text of the epitaph almost exactly as it appeared in K., recording כסלו (and not א’ דחנוכה), and even inserting the hyphen that connects the names ישכר and בער. There was no need to visit the Old Jewish cemetery in order to copy the epitaph.

Epitaph 9: R. Avigdor b. Shmuel, father of R. Shmuel – the last Av Bet Din of Vilna (d. 1771).

Discussion: It is certainly worth noting that the format follows exactly that of epitaphs 1 and 8, and many others in the Old Jewish cemetery, namely an acrostic at the right of the epitaph, included in a rhymed poem praising the deceased and mourning his loss, followed by a narrative text listing the titles and name of the deceased and the date of death. More importantly for our purposes, this epitaph was copied almost exactly as it appears in F., p. 165; second edition, p. 171:

But note that F. included two sets of parentheses that would not have appeared on the original tombstone. In line 1, the opening word אבי is marked by parentheses, since all three letters were necessary for the acrostic. In the last line, the word תקל”א [5]531 = 1771 was added (in parentheses) for clarification of the year of death. No such markings or words would have appeared on the original tombstone. Again, it is obvious that the Paper Brigade copied the epitaph from a published text. No visit to the Old Jewish cemetery was necessary.

Epitaph 10: R. Eliyahu b. R. Moshe Kramer (d. 1710).

Discussion: The Vilna Gaon was a great-grandson of R. Eliyahu b. Moshe Kramer and, indeed, was named after him. The epitaph preserved in the compilation is taken directly from F., p. 99; second edition, p. 105:

A photograph of the original epitaph has been preserved, taken shortly before or during World War I. It features a three-line marker that identifies the grave, painted just above the epitaph. These lines may well have been added to the gravesite after F.’s visit in 1860. But an examination of the original epitaph indicates that its line division differed considerably from F.

It is clear that the Paper Brigade did not visit the gravesite itself. Below is a photo of the gravesite and a transcription of its epitaph into modern Hebrew font.[10]

Photo Transcription:

Epitaph 14: R. Yehoshua Heschel: Av Bet Din of Vilna (d. 1749).

Discussion: This was a wooden tombstone, well preserved, and photographed circa 1935 (see K., p. 52). The compilation slavishly follows the line division of F., p. 110; second edition, p. 116:

F

The circa 1935 photograph of the tombstone, however, presents a different line division for lines 8 and 10.

K Photo

In F., lines 8 and 10 end with the words זהב and לעולמו, respectively. In K., in the photo taken at the cemetery, the same lines end with the words פרוים and בך”ו , respectively. This suggests once again that the Paper Brigade did not actually copy epitaphs in the Old Jewish cemetery.

Epitaph 30: R. Noah Mindes Lipschuetz (d. 1797).

Discussion: R. Noah Mindes Lipshuetz, distinguished Kabbalist, was buried next to the Vilna Gaon. They died within three months of each other, and were מחותנים as well. (The Vilna Gaon’s son, R. Avraham, was married to Sarah, the daughter of Rabbi Noah and Mrs. Mindes Lipshuetz.) It was decided that they would share one tombstone, with only a narrow painted ivy decoration separating their epitaphs. The original tombstone, with its epitaphs, can be seen to this very day in the Sudervas Jewish cemetery in Vilnius.

Whatever reservations one may still entertain about the compilation having borrowed information directly from F., will surely be dispelled by a careful reading of F.’s recording of R. Noah Lipshuetz’s epitaph:

F 171

The last line of the epitaph in F. (p. 171; second edition, p. 177) reads:

וי”נ (= ויצאה נשמתו) שנת ג’ טבת לפ”ק תאמי צביה “And his soul departed in the year 3 Teveth, equivalent (not counting the thousands) to the numerical value of “Ta’amei Zeviah.” See Song of Songs 7:4. Now the numerical value of “Ta’amei Zeviyah” (not counting the thousands) is [5]558 = 1797, which works perfectly. But the words “and his soul departed in the year 3 Teveth” are senseless. This, of course, is an error (or: typo, if you like) in F. One need merely look at the original epitaph[11] and read the correct Hebrew text: נפטר ביו’ ג טבת שנת תאמי צביה. “He died on the 3^rd day of Teveth in the year “Ta’amei Zeviyah.” But the senseless phrase “and his soul departed in the year 3 Teveth” reappears in the compilation prepared by the Paper Brigade! Had the Paper Brigade visited the Old Jewish cemetery in Shnipishok in 1942, it surely would have seen and recorded the correct text of the epitaph.

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There are two epitaphs included in the 51 listed, that merit special attention.

Epitaph 51: R. Shneur Zalman Kaczerginski (d.1815).

The German title at the top of the entry identifies Kaczerginski as a talmudic scholar and philanthropist who died in 1815. As such, he certainly qualifies for inclusion in a compilation of persons buried in Vilna’s Old Jewish cemetery, which was closed in 1830. Alas, no such person was buried in the Old Jewish cemetery! It turns out that Shneur Zalman Kaczerginski was born in 1817 and died in 1887, and – of course – was buried in the Zaretcha cemetery, Vilna’s second Jewish cemetery. The Paper Brigade borrowed the full text of the Kaczerginski epitaph, word for word, from Hillel Noah Steinschneider, עיר ווילנא (Vilna, 1900), vol. 1, p. 290; once again, a sign that the members of the Paper Brigade read books sooner than copying tombstone inscriptions while standing outdoors in the cold.[12] In other words, the Paper Brigade recorded only 50 genuine entries of epitaphs for the Old Jewish cemetery (Alter Friedhof). “Epitaph 51” properly belongs to the Zaretche Jewish cemetery (Neuer Friedhof). Interestingly, Willy Schaefer, one of the Nazi “Jewish” experts who lorded it over the Paper Brigade, writes specifically in his report on Vilna’s Jewish cemeteries that the Paper Brigade had prepared a 108 page research paper with a total of 190 entries of epitaphs.[13] The 108 page research paper has been preserved (and its epitaphs are cited throughout this essay), but Schaefer’s 190 entries of epitaphs was based on the assumption that 50 epitaphs were copied from the Old Jewish cemetery and 140 from the New Jewish cemetery, i.e. Zaretcha, for a total of 190 epitaphs. In fact, we have 51 numbered entries for the Old Jewish cemetery, plus 140 numbered entries for the Zaretcha cemetery, for a total of 191 numbered epitaphs. One can only speculate as to why epitaph 51 was added to the research paper, and in the wrong place at that. And speculate we will! But before doing so, it should be noted that one key spelling difference separates Steinchneider’s recording of the Kaczerginski epitaph from what appears in the Paper Brigade’s report as Epitaph 51. Steinschneider spells the deceased’s last name as: קאצערגיסקי [Kaczergiski]. He even adds in a footnote that the deceased hailed from a town outside of Vilna called Kaczergisak, and that is why the family name is Kaczergiski. But the Paper Brigade lists the deceased’s last name as Katscherginski (in German) and קאצערגינסקי (in Hebrew).

One suspects this may have to do with the key role played by Shmerke Kaczerginski,[14] a Vilna born partisan, and a prominent member of the Paper Brigade.[15] He may have wished to memorialize a possible ancestor who was overlooked by the editors of the Paper Brigade report on epitaphs in the Jewish cemeteries. Perhaps turned down by the editor of the report on Zaretcha, Kaczerginski was able to persuade the editor of the report on the Old Jewish cemetery to add one more entry, epitaph 51 – but that required a falsification of R. Shneur Zalman Kaczergiski’s date of death, and a slight change in the spelling of his name. Whether Steinschneider’s קאצערגיסקי is interchangeable with the name קאצערגינסקי (and its Yiddish equivalent קאטשערגינסקי ) seems questionable to me; and it remains to be proven whether R. Shneur Zalman Kaczergiski was, in fact, an ancestor of Shmerke Kaczerginski.

Epitaph 31: R. Dov Baer Natansohn (d. 1804).

R. Dov Baer Natansohn is described as being active in Vilna’s Great Synagogue, and serving as an official of Vilna’s Jewish Community Council. We know too that in a later period, members of the Natansohn family would play a leading role among Vilna’s moderate Maskilim in the middle of the 19^th century.[16] What’s unique about this epitaph is that it is the only one (of the 50 genuine epitaphs of Jews buried in the Old Jewish cemetery) that is not recorded in F. or K. or in any early source known to me. This is almost certainly an indication that R. Dov Ber Natansohn – at least in the eyes of Fuenn and Klausner – did not quite measure up to the names of those included in their monographs. In any event, one could argue, that this epitaph could only have been recorded by a member of the Paper Brigade who actually visited the gravesite at the Old Jewish cemetery. This may well be the case. But is also possible that a descendant of R. Dov Baer Natansohn in the Vilna Ghetto, kept a copy (or even a photograph) of the tombstone, and handed it to a member of the Paper Brigade, so that the epitaph would be preserved for posterity. It should also be mentioned that Khaykl Lunski,[17] the famed librarian of Vilna’s Strashun Library, was an early advisor to the Paper Brigade. In the Vilna Ghetto, he was busy working on a study of the epitaphs in Vilna’s Old Jewish cemetery.[18] He may well have provided a copy of R. Dov Baer Natansohn’s epitaph to a member of the Paper Brigade.

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In terms of which groups of Jews (buried in the Old Jewish cemetery) were selected for memory by the Paper Brigade, it is clear that a prior selection had already been made by F. and K. As indicated above, 49 out of the 50 genuine epitaphs were borrowed from the earlier accounts in F. and K. These were elitist accounts that focused primarily on professional rabbis and rabbinic scholars, and Jewish communal leaders. F. precluded women from the entries in his book; K. included women, but (for the most part) only to the extent that they were family members of famous rabbis, such as the Vilna Gaon. Looking specifically at the 50 epitaphs included in the Paper Brigade report, some 25 are distinguished professional rabbis and rabbinic scholars; approximately 8 others relate to the Vilna Gaon and members of his family (including women); approximately 8 relate to Jewish communal leaders; approximately 6 relate to professionals (e.g., doctors, printers, and cantors); with approximately 2 or 3 miscellaneous cases (e.g., the Ger Zedek; and R. Yehudah Asher Guenzberg, father of the Maskil Mordechai Aaron Guenzberg). Clearly, the report was prepared by someone who was sympathetic to the prominent role played by rabbinic culture in Vilna’s early modern period, and who knew where to look for the sources he needed in order to prepare the report.

Some will quibble over the tendency of the Paper Brigade to overlook the common man and woman when listing their selected epitaphs. After all, every Jewish man and woman who died in Vilna between 1592 and 1830 was buried in the Old Jewish cemetery. They seem to forget that it was 1942, under Nazi rule, and in the Vilna Ghetto, that the report was written, hardly the time and place to engage in original sociological research of any kind. At best, they could examine the printed books in the Ghetto library, or perhaps those gathered in the former YIVO building, now the headquarters of Einsatzstab Rosenberg. This they did with great skill, and often, at great risk to their lives.

In sum, it appears unlikely that the Paper Brigade spent much time, if any at all, in Vilna’s Old Jewish cemetery. The primary source for the epitaphs gathered by the Paper Brigade was a series of volumes published by a variety of scholars, including Shmuel Yosef Fuenn, Yisrael Klausner, and Hillel Noah Steinschneider. The content of those earlier volumes influenced the scope of the epitaphs that the Paper Brigade could choose for inclusion in their final report. Finally, we wish to stress that whatever is said here applies only to the Paper Brigade report regarding the Old Jewish cemetery. Even a cursory glance at the Paper Brigade report on the Zaretche cemetery indicates that its author recorded countless epitaphs that had – and have – never appeared in print. As such, it is imperative that the report be examined for the many epitaphs it, and it alone, preserves.

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NOTES

[1] For an early account of Alfred Rosenberg and his anti-Jewish “academic” activity, see Max Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes Against the Jewish People (New York: YIVO, 1946), pp. 77-78, note 171, and pp. 97-106. A vast literature exists on Rosenberg; for the more recent studies, see the bibliography appended to his entry on Wikipedia.
[2] On up to 40 Jews serving in the slave-labor unit, see Shmerka Kaczerginski, פארטיזאנער גייען: זכרונות פון ווילנער געטא (Buenos Aires: Union Central Israelita Polaca en la Argentina, 1947), p. 63.
[3] For the definitive study on the Paper Brigade, see David E. Fishman, The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis; The True Story of the Paper Brigade of Vilna (Lebanon, New Hampshire: ForeEdge, 2017). Cf. his Embers Plucked From the Fire: The Rescue of Jewish Cultural Treasures in Vilna (New York (YIVO, 1996; second expanded edition, YIVO, 2009); and his “Split Identity: Jewish Scholarship in the Vilna Ghetto,” אין געוועב : A Journal of Yiddish Studies, June 30, 2020, pp. 1-9.
[4]  For a history of Vilna’s Old Jewish cemetery, see I. Klausner, קורות בית-העלמין הישן בוילנה (Vilna: S. An-ski Jewish Historical and Ethnographic Society, 1935); Elmantas Meilus, “The History of Vilnius Old Jewish Cemetery at Šnipiškes in the Period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,” Lithuanian Historical Studies 12 (2007), pp. 63-92; and Vytautas Jogela, “The Old Jewish Cemetery in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Lituanus 61:4 (2015), pp. 76-93.
[5] A history of Vilna’s New Jewish cemetery in Zaretcha remains a scholarly desideratum. Tentatively, see I. Klausner, “צו דער געשיכטע פון יידן אין ווילנע: דאס נייע פעלד”, in צייט, October 4, 1933, p. 4; Zalman Szyk, יאר ווילנא 1000 (Vilne: געזעלשאפט פאר לאנדקענטניש אין פוילן, 1939), pp. 418-437; Vida Girininkiene, “The Jewish Cemetery on Olandų Street: History and Reflections,” in Rimantas Dichavičius, Paminklas Paminklui (Vilnius: UAB Balto Print, 2020), pp.19-25; and Irina Guzenberg, Vilnius: Traces of the Jerusalem of Lithuania (Vilnius: Pavilniai, 2021), pp. 691-700.
[6] The compilations of the Paper Brigade are available in Vilnius at the Judaica collection of the Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Based upon evidence from the Vilnius archives, Jogela (above, note 4), p. 84, claims that “a certain Goldbergas” compiled the list of 51 epitaphs. Jogela does not identify Goldbergas, but almost certainly it was Eliezer Goldberg, Jewish educator and historian. Prior to the Holocaust, he administered and taught at Vilna’s Esther Rubinstein School for Girls. In the Vilna Ghetto, he lectured widely on Jewish history in the various synagogues and schools. In 1943, he was deported by the Nazis to Estonia, where he perished in 1944. On Goldberg, see Shmerka Kaczerginski, חורבן ווילנא (New York: United Vilner Relief Committee, 1947), p.236; H.S. Kazdan, ed., לערער יזכור בוך: די אומגעקומענע לערער פון צישא שולן אין פוילן (New York: Martin Press, 1954), p. 72 (where Goldberg is described as א ייד א למדן און מיט וועלטלעכער בילדונג ); J. Biber, R. Kostanian, and J. Rozina, eds., Vilna Ghetto Posters: Album-Catalogue (Vilnius: Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, 2006), p. 265 (which includes a photograph of Goldberg); and A. Einat, חיי יום-יום בגטו וילנה (Haifa: Moreshet, 2013), pp. 240 and 417. It is too early to speculate how many other hands were involved in selecting the 191 epitaphs included in the Paper Brigade’s final report.
[7] See Klausner, pp. 77-82, who lists 220 named graves that were still standing in 1935. Actually, many of the “named graves” were grave sites with more than one named grave at the site, all of them listed by Klausner. Thus, a total of approximately 240 names are listed. On pp. 83-84, Klausner lists an additional 51 named graves , some of them grave sites, strewn throughout the cemetery. They actually total 55 names. The 240 names plus the additional 55 names yield an approximate total of 300 names.
[8] Photograph A is taken from the late Yeshayahu Epstein’s collection of pre-Holocaust photographs of Vilna. See Yitzchak Alfasi, ed., וילנא ירושלים דליטא חרבה! היתה ואיננה עוד (Tel-Aviv, 1993), p. 10.
[9] Photograph B is taken from the pamphlet Vilniaus Gaonas Elijahu אליהו הגאון מוילנה (Vilnius, 1996), no pagination, issued by the Lithuanian Jewish Community in anticipation of the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the death of the Vilna Gaon (1797-1997).
[10] The photo and the transcription are taken from S. Leiman, “A Picture and its One Thousand Words: The Old Jewish Cemetery in Vilna Revisited,” The Seforim Blog, January 14, 2016, section A, item 7 and notes.
[11] See above, at Epitaph 1, Photo B, for a full frontal color photograph of the joint tombstone inscriptions of R. Noah Mindes Lipschuetz and the Vilna Gaon; cf. Photo A. In the light of the evidence presented here, R. Noah Mindes Lipschuetz did not die in November of 1797, as claimed by the German heading to Epitaph 30. He died on, or about, December 22, 1797 (= 3 Teveth, 5558), some two and a half months after the death of the Vilna Gaon on October 9, 1797 (= 19 Tishre, 5558). For an alternate reading of the somewhat unclear last lines of the epitaph (that correctly preserves the יום ג’ טבת date of death), see R. Yitzchok Arnstein’s edition of R. Noah Mindes Lipschuetz’ פרפראות לחכמה (Brooklyn: Edison Lithographic Corporation, 1995), Introduction, p. 17.
[12] Steinschneider’s text reads as follows:


[13] See Schaefer’s essay entitled “Friedhöfe und Grabsteine der Juden in Wilna,” dated 1/9/1943 (in the Judaica collection at the Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania). On the title page he refers (in German) to his gathering together of “190 tombstone inscriptions in 108 typewritten pages.”
[14] A vast literature was produced by, and exists on, Shmerke Kaczerginski (1908-1954), Yiddish poet and Vilna partisan. In general, see the entry on him in לעקסיקאן פון דער נייער יידישער ליטעראטור (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, 1981), vol. 8, columns 48-50; and the more recent bibliography appended to his entry in Wikipedia.
[15] For some of Kaczerginski’s own reflections on the Paper Brigade, see his פארטיזאנער גייען! זכרונות פון ווילנער געטא (Buenos Aires: צאנטראל-פארבאנד פון פוילישע יידן אין ארגענטינא, 1947), pp. 61-69; חורבן ווילנע (New York: United Vilner Relief Committee, 1947), p. 337; and איך בין געווען א פארטיזאן (Buenos Aires: Cultura, 1952), pp. 40-44.
[16] See Mordechai Zalkin, בעלות השחר (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000), p. 34, n. 45, and passim.
[17]  On Haykl Lunski, see Hirsz Abramowicz, Profiles of a Lost World: Memoirs of East European Jewish Life before World War II (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999), pp. 260-264. Cf. Frida Shor, מ”לקוטי שושנים” ועד “בריגדת הנייר”: סיפורו של בית עקד הספרים ע”ש שטראשון בווילנה (Tel Aviv: Probook, 2012); and Dan Rabinowitz, The Lost Library: The Legacy of Vilna’s Strashun Library in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2019).
[18] S. Kaczerginski, חורבן ווילנע (New York: United Vilner Relief Committee, 1947), p. 198.