Isaac Kowalski, holocaust survivor of Vilna, Lithuania. My family had a printing business, we print several newspapers, daily papers and weekly papers. I belonged all my years to the Zionist organization, came the head of the Lithuanian Betar and he took over organizing contact with all other Vilna organizations and partisans. We needed weapons to resist the Germans, we need a lot of money. I made a project to print false cards to get from the Germans products and we sold them. No Jews were allowed to work in printing I was the only one, because a man who operates the Lithuanian printing press went to the gestapo and asked for me. We smuggled the parts for a secret printing press to the ghetto. We printed many leaflets and posted them on gestapo’s houses, they couldn’t imagine it was the Jews who are doing this. We distributed leaflets all over the floors and sidewalks, this was a big sensation. Our organization got in contact with a German sergeant driving the milk delivery trucks and he did for us a lot of things, taking from one place to another, one day he was caught and they killed him. Another policeman was working with us watching that nothing happens to us. We decided to leave the ghetto to go to the forest. We went through the sewer system across half the city. Half of them managed to come to the forest to the partisan movement, fighting the Germans. We went on many actions against the Germans, all the time people were fell in battle. The partisans brought me my printing press to do what I can do, working very close with Abba Kovner I published many newspapers and put letters on highways, in villages. I was sleeping beside the radioman and he was all the time talking with Moscow. After the war Abba was my partner to organize escape for the Jews from Russia and Lithuania. When the war was close to Vilna we all got orders from main command to go with the partisans to liberate Vilna. I printed leaflets and we posted them all over the liberated town to the population that we are not enemies. I was appointed director of printing in Vilna. After the war all the Jews who survived came to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanan, there were 500 left of us who survived the war, before the war was 5,000.

 

https://theadornmentoflight.blogspot.com/2026/02/holocaust-world-war-2-survivor-isaac.html See Isaac’s words coupled with testimony from Gaza holocaust.

 

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504612 See Isaac and listen to his voice telling the story of holocaust.