HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

Zelig Kalmanovich, Hope is Stronger than Life: Vilna Ghetto Diary (Viltis stipresnė už gyvybę. Vilniaus geto dienoraštis), Vilnius: Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History, 2021, 226 pp.

On 16 May 1942, Zelig Kalmanovich, one of the directors of the YIVO Institute, who had been living in the Vilna Ghetto for almost a year, began to write a diary in Hebrew on cut-up letter paper sheets, bound in a small blue notebook, which he later continued on a booklet of YIVO magazine subscription slips. The final diary entry is from Monday, 30 August 1943. Kalmanovich’s diary from the Vilna Ghetto was hidden and preserved, after the war, with the blue notebook remaining in Lithuania, and the part written on the slips being deposited in New York at the YIVO Institute. This book therefore constitutes the first time that both parts (i.e. the entirety of Kalmanovich’s Ghetto Diary, which is considered one of the most important documents testifying to the tragedy of the Vilna Ghetto) are published together. The entries provide a glimpse into everyday life in the ghetto, the political transformations and upheavals underway, Kalmanovich’s daily cultural activities, his efforts to preserve the books of the Strašūnas’s library and Jewish written heritage, and his striving to maintain his own humanity and endure the complexity of human existence in the face of war, trusting in God unconditionally and believing that “hope is stronger than life”. In his diary, Kalmanovich also reflects on the past, present and future of the Jewish people, noting that the Jewish community of Vilnius exemplified how Jews can live and create their culture in the diaspora.

Zelig Kalmanovich (1885–1944) – scholar, translator, one of the directors of YIVO, one of the spiritual leaders of the Vilna Ghetto, and referred to by many inhabitants of the ghetto as a prophet. He was educated as a traditional rabbi and later turned to secular studies. He studied Semitic Philology and History at the universities of Berlin and Königsberg. In 1929, he moved to Vilnius, where he worked at the Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO), founded in 1925, and was editor-in-chief of the journal “YIVO Bleter”. After the Nazi occupation of Vilnius, Kalmanovich was imprisoned in the Vilna Ghetto together with other Vilnius Jews. When the Vilna Ghetto was liquidated in September 1943, he and his wife were sent to an extermination camp in Estonia, where they died in 1944.