A tale of survival in the Lithuanian forest

In October 1943, Berl Kagan, a Lithuanian writer and lexicographer, escaped from the Kovno ghetto to the forest with his wife, Raja. “Almost every story that the Jewish child hears about ghosts and evil spirits has to do with the forest,” Kagan observes. “And now – now we live in the forest, now we sleep in the forest, now the forest is our protector.” There they and others are concealed by two Lithuanian peasants, Tadeusz and Barbora Pocius. Kagan’s journal was kept on the only paper he had at his disposal, a used butcher’s copybook. Kagan wrote “between the lines, and… made it look like a Hebrew-Yiddish song-book”.

In his prologue, Kagan claims he wrote most of his journal “as the events happened or immediately afterward so that as much as possible of the hot breath of the actual experience would remain”. The result is a no-nonsense account of survival in extreme circumstances and what that reveals about character. Tadeusz, who would be killed alongside him were they to be discovered, declares: “I just don’t want to see any more innocent blood spilled. If I could, I would save more Jews.” Another Jewish fugitive, wealthy Mr F, punishes Kagan for not being able to repay a debt, and cooks choice meats before him while he starves. Tadeusz threatens Mr F’s protector with exposure unless he hands over some of his food, then carries a 60lb sack of it across the swamp. “What is this impoverished gentile worth compared to our Jewish plutocrat?” asks Kagan.

At times, the uncertainty of their constantly fluctuating circumstances makes Berl and Raja yearn for the ghetto they have fled. There, “Jews still sleep in their own beds. The barbed wire is a sort of protection. Here we face death every moment.” Of the 35,000 Jews originally imprisoned in the Kovno ghetto, only 500 survived, including the author and his wife.

Kagan’s extreme circumstances sharpen the metaphysical insights they inspire, among them that deep faith will supply a solace denied to those who lack it, hence the far higher suicide rate among Jews in Germany than in the Kovno ghetto. But on liberation, “a world full of gravestones opens up before us, not a world full of happiness and freedom”.