Herman Kruk

Herman Kruk was born in the central Polish city of Plock on May 19, 1897. During the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, he fled from Warsaw to Vilna, where, after the formation of the Jewish ghetto, he organized a library and became its librarian. The diary he kept from 1941 to 1943 offers an extensive and essential account of everyday life in the Vilna ghetto. With the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943, Kruk was sent to a concentration camp in Klooga, Estonia, where he continued to make diary entries until he was murdered there on September 18, 1944.

Biography

Herman Kruk was born in the central Polish city of Plock on May 19, 1897. During the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, he fled from Warsaw to Vilna, where, after the formation of the Jewish ghetto, he organized a library and became its librarian. The diary he kept from 1941 to 1943 offers an extensive and essential account of everyday life in the Vilna ghetto. With the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943, Kruk was sent to a concentration camp in Klooga, Estonia, where he continued to make diary entries until he was murdered there on September 18, 1944.