“Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto, by Walter Reich” is an incredible book in its dimension of historical fact and documentation. The book “Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto “ begins in the summer of 1941 – soon after German troops invaded Soviet territory, including Soviet-controlled Lithuania“. It ends with the mass-murder of Jews and total incineration of the Kovno Ghetto.

There are almost 400 photographs that are incorporated within the pages, but I will tell you that the Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto is not a “coffee table” book, but is a true historical accounting in every sense of the meaning. The photographs, are not only of people being forced out of their homes to move to the Kovno Ghetto, or photographs of people within the confines of daily life within the Kovno Ghetto, but photographs that depict so much more, within the intensity of the horrendous and atrocious situation. Those brave individuals who dared to create testimony, within the barbed wire walls are testaments to the struggle to survive.

The historical essays, reproductions of poetry, music lyrics, photographs of artifacts, photographs of private journal and diary pages, written histories, artists paintings and artwork, charts, maps, graphics, and so much more substantiate and document the events leading up to the forcing of the Jews into the living conditions in the Kovno Ghetto, and the resulting final days of the murder of tens of thousands of Jews, and the destruction of buildings and homes, down to rubble and ash.

“Above all, we have been put under an obligation to remember, to record events and facts, to describe people and characters, images, and important moments; to record in writing, drawing in painting-in any way and in every means availabe to us.” Avraham Tory diary entry July 25, 1943

And, true to the words of Avraham Tory, documentation was written and secreted, hidden and passed on, by those who wanted to the world to know the realization of what actually occurred in the Kovno Ghetto. The Jews were remarkable in their endeavors to illuminate their daily lives, the events within the barbed wire walls and scenarios they saw and lived through. Documentation was created in many forms, and the will of those who wanted the atrocities, murders, squalid living conditions, etc., to be remembered and passed on, came to finality, buried beneath the ghetto’s surface, after the Germans blew up homes and finally “poured gasoline over much of the former ghetto and incinerated it“.

“In liberated Lithuania, only 8,000 to 9,000 Jews remained from the prewar population of 235,000. More than 95 percent of Lithuanian Jewry had been destroyed“. – Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto

Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto” is a book not to be missed, and is a book that will leave you with incomprehension, as you try to absorb the contents. Walter Reich did a remarkable and incredible job in compiling everything within the pages. The courage of each individual and their testimony, no matter the form, is a testament to mankind’s strength and willpower, and of man’s need to make the truth known. It is an intense and incredible book that will live on, within my book shelf, and one I will pass down to my children, so they can read and remember the individuals and the events of the past. We must honor those who came before us, and struggled, lived and died, under the atrocities. I know, after reading it, I won’t be able to forget what I perused, between the lines, within the lives of those who dared to have the courage to write Testimony.

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Jew Wishes…Peace to you all.
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