By Dr. Samuel Kassow

When the war ended, the survivors of Vilna emerged from the concentration camps, from their hideouts, and from the forests. They were soon joined by more “Vilners” who returned from the Red Army and from their wartime places of refuge and hard labor in the Soviet Union. After the war, Vilna once again became part of the U.S.S.R., the capital of the Soviet Lithuanian Republic. 

But because Vilna Jews had been Polish citizens before the war, they, unlike the rest of the Jews of pre-1939 Lithuania, were able to take advantage of the Polish-Soviet repatriation treaty and leave for Poland. For almost all the Vilna survivors, Poland, with its postwar antisemitic violence and encroaching Communist oppression, was no more than a temporary stopping point before they left for displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy. 

How many Vilna Jews survived the war? According to Anna Lipphardt, when the Red Army entered Vilna in July 1944, it found 500 survivors out of a prewar community of 60,000. (Just a few days before the liberation, the Germans had murdered a few thousand Jews from the HKP and Kailis labor camps.) 

In April 1946, a survey conducted by the Association of Vilna Jews in Poland estimated that 3,500 Vilners survived the Holocaust, 43 percent of whom were in the Soviet Union. Thus, no more than 2,000 survived under German occupation. Some years later, the total number of survivors, including those who spent the war in the Soviet Union, was revised upward to 5,000. 

By 1949, the DP camps of Germany had emptied out. Anna Lipphardt calculated that about 1,200 Vilners went to the United States, a number equal to those who went to Israel, while the rest emigrated to Canada, Australia, Latin America, and France. A few remained in Poland and the Soviet Union, although most of this group left the U.S.S.R. and Poland for Israel and other countries in 1957–59. Most of the postwar Jewish community in Vilna, which consisted of Jews who had been born elsewhere, left the city between 1972 and 2000.

After the war, even as the Vilna Jewish survivors rebuilt their lives in different places and in different circumstances, even as they mourned their murdered families, they also showed their love for and attachment to the memory and legacy of the “Jerusalem of Lithuania.” In the United States, the survivors looked to YIVO, that bedrock of Yiddish secular Vilna that had moved from Vilna to New York in 1939–1941. 

It was YIVO that helped the survivors establish the Nusakh Vilne society in 1953. Nusakh Vilne held annual memorial meetings (azkores), collected material about Vilna’s history, and put out a journal for Vilna survivors. A key organizer of Nusakh Vilne, Leyzer Ran, published books about Jewish Vilna that researchers and the children of Vilna survivors treasure to this day. One of Ran’s greatest achievements was publishing the two-volume Yerushalyim d’Lite (1974), which included, in addition to text, thousands of drawings and photographs that illustrated Vilna’s Jewish history, from its beginnings through the postwar period. 

In Israel, Vilna survivors started the Association of Jews from Vilna and the Vicinity, which rented a building in Tel Aviv (Beit Vilna) and conducted a wide range of activities, some in conjunction with the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum (Beit Lohamei HaGhetaot) and with Yad Vashem. With the encouragement of Yitzhak Zuckerman, a native Vilner and the deputy commander of the Jewish Fighting Organization in the Warsaw ghetto, the association created a permanent exhibit in Beit Lohamei HaGhetaot.

In this final chapter, we hear the testimonies of different survivors of the Vilna ghetto as they rebuilt their lives in the United States, Israel, and Australia. The emphasis in chapter 10 is not on collective commemoration but on individual memory. The individuals who appear in this final chapter were, like most survivors, still young when the war ended. With luck, they could still seize the chance to resume their education and make a new start in life. 

William Begell, who had already lost his father, learned that the Germans had shot his mother and grandmother just days before the liberation. Like other survivors, he made his way to Lodz, Poland, and from there to DP camps in the American zone of Germany, where he resumed his interrupted studies. Thanks to the sponsorship of an uncle, he arrived in the United States in 1947, changed his name, married Esther Kessler, a fellow Vilna survivor, and had two children. With degrees in nuclear engineering from Brooklyn Polytechnic and Columbia University, Begell worked at Columbia and then for the U.S. Air Force. He subsequently founded Begell House, which became a major scientific publisher. Begell suffered his share of personal heartbreak, including the tragic deaths of his two children. But in true Vilna tradition, he persevered and kept working until his final illness.

Samuel Bak became a world-renowned artist, just as Avrom Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginski predicted in the Vilna ghetto. He and his mother went to a DP camp, and then to Israel, where he studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, served in the IDF, and eventually moved to France. Bak and his wife settled permanently in Boston in 1993. Museums dedicated to his work have opened in Vilnius and at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. In a recent interview, Bak said that “my hometown is eternally imprinted in my soul. Vilnius, the Jerusalem of the north, was an important center of Jewish culture and a source of Litvak pride. Being part of the cultural map of my hometown is extremely important to me.” 

Abram Zeleznikov became a well-known figure in Melbourne, Australia, where for many years he and his wife, Masha, ran the legendary Café Scheherazade, immortalized in Arnold Zable’s book of the same name. Melbourne was a Jewish community like no other in the world, transformed by the migration of thousands of Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivors from eastern Europe. There, as they picked up the threads of their lives in a place as far from Europe as they could get, they would come to the café on Sundays and after work to speak Yiddish and share stories from home, from the ghettos and from the camps. People who could not pay got free meals. Abram and Masha were married for 67 years and had three children. 

Abram also became a major community figure in Melbourne, serving as president of the Australian Jewish Welfare and Relief Society, as a member of the executive of the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies, as chairman of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, and as a representative of the Jewish community on the Ethnic Communities’ Council. Abram also remained true to the traditions of Yerushalayim d’Lite and to the legacy of the Jewish Labor Bund. Each Sunday morning, he conducted Yiddish classes. And whenever naive “dolts” on the Left began to extol the virtues of the Soviet Union, he was there to remind them that the same system that had killed his father and so many other Bundists still remained a despotic dictatorship. 

Another Vilner who carried on the traditions of her native city was Henny Durmashkin Gurko. She grew up in one of Vilna’s most musical families. Her father, Akiva, had been the choir director of the famous Choral Synagogue and her brother, Wolf, had conducted the symphony orchestra in the ghetto. As we saw in the notes to chapter nine, after she survived the camps, Gurko helped organize a celebrated orchestra and ensemble that toured the DP camps after liberation. While Gurko had hoped to go to Israel, her sister persuaded her to come to the United States. On the boat, she met her future husband, Simon Gurko. They settled in New Jersey, where they had three children and six grandchildren. Gurko did not forget Vilna; she recorded an album of ghetto songs and sang at many memorial events.

Mira Verbin was the only member of her family to survive. As we saw in chapter nine, “Judgment and Revenge,” she joined the secret group assembled by Abba Kovner right after liberation to wreak vengeance on the Germans. In 1946, she boarded one of the rickety ships that ran the British blockade and arrived in what was then Palestine, eventually settling in Kibbutz Yakum. She married Moshe Verbin in 1947, and they had two children.

These notes can only describe some of the survivors who appear in this 10-part series. Despite their different backgrounds and experiences, what they all shared was their love of their special native city and their realization that giving testimony and bearing witness were sacred gifts that they could pass on to future generations.

The author wishes to acknowledge Anna Lipphardt, whose work he has used extensively in preparing the beginning section of these notes.

###

Samuel Bak: My mother learned that there was a plan to transfer me to Russia, because in Russia there was a school for, um, talented children. And my mother was in panic, because after all we went through, she certainly didn’t want to lose me. So she decided to escape.

———

Eleanor Reissa: You’re listening to “Remembering Vilna: The Jerusalem of Lithuania.” I’m Eleanor Reissa. Chapter 10: “Aftermath.”

Samuel, his mother, and a friend’s daughter boarded a train that was filled with Jews attempting to get to displaced persons camps in Germany. They were traveling with fake documents provided by a Jewish aid organization. By the time the train reached the German border, the organization’s clandestine efforts had been discovered, and the train was stopped by Soviet guards.

———

Samuel Bak: There were trucks standing and giving light with their, uh, strong lights to the, uh, police. There were Russians there, because it was on the border of the Russian zone of Germany. And they were shouting, “Everybody out! Everybody out! Everybody out!”

So she took me with this girl, with our little suitcase, and went out on the other side of the train, which was complete darkness. And she started to walk with us towards the, um, head of the train. And when she arrived to the head of the train, there was one of the… Poles, the drivers of the train, he said, “What are you doing here? You should be there with all the other passengers for the control.” She took off her watch and she gave it to him, and she said, “You must bring me and these two children to Berlin.” He told us, “Come in here,” when we went into the second wagon of, um, of the train.

Now, that particular wagon was serving a particular purpose for the Russian Army. It was actually a wagon in which there were women giving services to the soldiers, and on every station, soldiers were waiting there, they were going up, they were coming down, and some were even continuing the trip.

Now, there, my mother was trying very much to hide from me and from that girl what was going on, with a distance of about, uh, an arm length, uh, from where we were standing. But since I have already seen facts of life and so on… we succeeded to, to, to hide in a corner. Now, my mother’s concern was mainly for that little girl. Also somehow for her, because every woman that was in that wagon was there for a very given purpose. But, uh, I don’t know, all this was in the dark. I must say that, uh, when I think of what my mother went through, she was a real hero.

———

Eleanor Reissa: Abram Zeleznikov suffered a head injury during the final battle for Vilna. He was unconscious for several weeks. When he finally got out of the hospital, he went back to the place where he had been working—the Soviet unit for counterespionage.

———

Abram Zeleznikov: They said to me, “Okay, you, would you like to go for a holiday to Crimea and then to a school?” I said, “School, all right.” I was then 20 years. I lost so many years in the ghetto school, to go to school, I was, okay. Gave me some papers to sign, oh all right.

I come out and I saw there was a, um, captain in this group that I saw, I didn’t know him. He called me on the side and said to me, “You are a Jew?” “Yes.” “You know what you signed?” I said, “Yes, I know. I am going, uh, to a school to Moscow.” “You know what kind of a school it is?” I said, “No.” So, he said, “Look, you can do whatever you want. Now, you must swear on everything what is holy for you that you, you won’t talk to anybody what we are talking here.”

He was a Hasidic Lubavitcher man and he told me, “You know, this is a school for spies. If you will go in this school, you will never come back. You will always have to work for them. If you want to go out of it, I will give you an address. There is a m-medical, you’ll have to go to a medical check. There is such and such a doctor. Go over and tell him that I send you.”

Samuel Bak: So we arrived to Berlin, and from there we arrived to a big meeting point of refugees where there was an American, uh, army rabbi who was trying to question the people, to see who is a Jew and who is a pretending Jew. Because there were many refugees who pretended to be Jews, because they knew that there are certain American organizations that help the Jews and it was a privilege now to be a Jew.

So we had to queue up. And the tension was growing. Because many people came out shattered from there, they were insulted by this man. He was asking them, “Now tell me this prayer,” or “Tell me this, uh, this bracha,” and so on. And he was insulting them if they did not know it.

When we came in, he said to my mother, “Well, I understand that you pretend that you are Jewish.” So she told him, “Look at this boy. How do you dare? How do you dare to be in this position?” I don’t think I’ve ever heard my mother yell and scream at somebody. This man who was sitting there behind a desk, my God. He did not know where to hid himself, where to hide himself. He ask for forgiveness, he apologized. Well, I think he—she gave him quite a lesson.

Abram Zeleznikov: So I decided I’m going to this doctor. Come to this doctor, this doctor was a Jew from Kovno. I come over, he had a look of mine papers, had a look. “Zeleznikov.” He said, “Any relation to Yankl Zeleznikov from the Bundists in Vilna?” I said, “Yes. That’s my father.” He said, “You know? What are you doing here?” Only for, because, you know in the, in the Soviet [inaudible], you have to all, at least once a week, to write your curriculum vitae.

And I write—wrote—in my curriculum vitae that my parents have been killed by a, killed by the Nazis. Only for this you can get five years, if not more because you told a lie to the organs of the Soviet Union. You hide that your father is arrested by the Soviets. This is a v—crime for… He said, “All right. I’ll give you a paper that you are, m-m, could have loss of memory.”

Well, he give me a medical certificate. I come back to this, um, colonel. He had a look on this. “Get out from here!” He didn’t talk with me anything. “Get out from here and don’t tell anybody where you have been working!” Gave me some money, gave me some food, gave me a paper that I am taken off of this. Okay.

Samuel Bak: We were sent to one German town, to another German town, to a fourth German town, and we ended up in a DP camp called Landsberg. And in Landsberg, I have spent about two years, I think, waiting for papers to go to Palestine. And we got the papers, and we started our move towards south of France to go on the boat. And we left actually before the declaration of the state. And we arrived in Israel when the war with the Arabs started, broke out, and was in, in, in its full.

Abram Zeleznikov: There was a law that if you can prove that your parents have been Polish citizens and that you are under 20 years, you can be adopted by somebody what goes to Poland. So, it was everything, everything legal and the first of May, 1945, it was still the war I come to Lodz.

———

Eleanor Reissa: Abram stayed in Lodz for several years. In keeping with his family tradition, he joined a socialist party. When the Soviet-backed regime cracked down on political activity, Abram escaped to Prague and eventually settled in Australia.

———

Abram Zeleznikov: What got me to Australia, it was the furthest point in the world. I want to go away from everything and everybody.

———

Eleanor Reissa: In Melbourne, Abram and his wife, Masha, opened a cafe called Scheherazade, which became a gathering place for Holocaust survivors.

After the war, Mira Verbin participated in an attempt to poison German soldiers. Then she left Europe and moved to Israel.

———

Mira Verbin: Getting used to being in Israel was difficult. It was very hard, not knowing the language, knowing that no one is waiting for you at the port when you arrive. You stand on the refugee boat and you start crying for all those years you went through, for all the years you haven’t cried. A new place, no one knows you. Not being used to the heat. When there’s a break, there’s nowhere to go. But we no longer feared for our lives.

I moved to a kibbutz, where I met my husband. We got our room the same night of the declaration of the Jewish state. Three days later, my husband was drafted for the war.

———

Eleanor Reissa: William Begell was a teenager, and alone, when Vilna was liberated.

———

William Begell: Uh, then I went to my old apartment and I had a, a large apartment for myself for about two days, because, uh, the apartment was listed as a place where Germans lived during German occupation. And before you know it, the KGB took it over and they gave me the maid’s room that I could stay. And wh-, be, within three days, they threw me out.

But I got a job, uh, uh, in a factory, uh, that was supposedly doing aviation equipment, but nobody did anything. And I stayed doing nothing till March of 1945, when, as a Polish citizen, I was able to leave Vilna for Poland. I was in Lodz, and, uh, I made a living by, uh, playing the piano in a restaurant.

In September, I went to Prague. That’s ’45, the war is over. From Prague, you could get easily into the American zone of Germany. The, uh, uh, brihah found a way of, uh, transporting Jews from Prague to, to Munich, and that’s where I finish high school, in Munich. And I found my uncle in New York and came to America.

———

Eleanor Reissa: Henny Durmashkin Gurko and her sister were in a DP camp in Landsberg after the war. Henny sang with an orchestra there, and her sister was a pianist. They stayed until 1950, when they moved to the United States.

———

Henny Durmashkin Gurko: I was about to go to Israel, and it was my dream. I speak Hebrew fluently, I was a Zionist, and I couldn’t wait for Israel to be there. And here all of a sudden, I’m coming to this country. So, but it happened because of my sister. She got involved with one of the, uh, a violinists in the orchestra.

And he got papers to come to America. And they got married, like very fast, like marriage, so she could come on his papers to this country. And she was begging me to come here. And she said, “You’ll come, and if you won’t like it, you’ll go to Israel. But come with me. I can’t leave you. I can’t leave you.” So that’s what happened. And I came here, I right away had the children. I have two daughters, Vivian, Rita, and my son, Abe.

———

Eleanor Reissa: When the Vilna ghetto was liquidated, Sheila Zwany survived by hiding in the sewers. She hid there for 10 months.

———

Sheila Zwany: In 1944, in July, we were liberated. Until 1946 we left Vilna. And we were the last to have the Jewish people leaving, because mostly the partisans, everybody already left, because it was not for to stay there with the memories with everything.

So we went to, to Poland. From Poland there were already the Jewish organizations that took us, you know, farther to Germany to DP camps. I got married in 1947 in DP camp in Germany. He is from Vilna. And his whole family got killed also.

Mostly we were in [inaudible]. Then we went to Lechfeld. They sent from one camp to another. I think from Lechfeld I came to America. They didn’t let me out, because I was pregnant and I was not well, too. So they didn’t want to let me out.

My brother and my mother, my sister-in-law with a baby they left to America, and me they didn’t let go out. Till I had a baby there. I had a baby there, also they didn’t let me go out. The baby was sick there and took five months till I couldn’t take out because he got infections in the ears, and I had to leave him in the hospital and we had to stay in the camps.

We went through so much even already after the liberation. Then when we got here, I left my mother with my baby and I went to work in a factory to sew sleeves. And my husband worked nights in a factory, too, in New Jersey.

———

Eleanor Reissa: After the war, most of Vilna’s Jews who had survived tried to get out of Europe. Haim Bassok stayed. He joined a covert Jewish organization that was smuggling young Jewish refugees to Palestine. After two years, he narrowly avoided arrest in Poland, and decided it was time for him to leave, too.

While he was still in Vilna, Haim visited Ponar, the mass murder site outside the city. He had filled an envelope with sand and human ashes. He took the envelope with him when he left Europe.

———

Haim Bassok: I arrived at the land of Israel in a ship that left Marseille. We arrived in Haifa just before dark. The British wouldn’t let us off for security reasons. I took out the ashes from my pocket and held them up toward the lights on Mount Carmel. I told them, “We have arrived.” In the morning, when I got off the ship I laid down on the ground and said Shehecheyanu.

Later, when I was in the kibbutz, in the Haganah, when I was an explosives engineer, when I was an officer in the army, the envelope always came along with me. I thought that if I would be killed in combat, they would bury me with the sands of Ponar. 

Then, when I became a career officer in the army, I didn’t carry the envelope with me anymore. I moved it to a locked drawer at home. No one in the family knew what it was, and the drawer had a special lock. My children would ask, but I would not answer. That’s how it was for many years.

Then the association of Jews from Vilna decided to build a memorial in Kiryat Shaul. I gave them the envelope and the sand, and it is now in Kiryat Shaul. One day my children found that the drawer was unlocked. Only then did I tell them the secret of the closed drawer. 

Mira Verbin: When they ask me how I survived all this, I don’t know the answer. I did not have a will to live. Sometimes people think those who survived must have had a stronger will to live. But I had no will to live. I made no special effort. My efforts were for my sister to live. I brought her food, I collected penny by penny to buy her winter boots. But for myself, I was indifferent.

William Begell: I had a relationship with God that I developed since I was 10 years old, maybe two years before the war, and I spoke to God daily before it became, uh, apparent that we are slated for destruction. And, uh, I, uh, believe that there was not a single day of my life during, uh, from the beginning of the war until now that I haven’t spoken to, to God. I, uh, asked God to give me, uh, strength and opportunity to survive.

Abram Zeleznikov: One very important thing what I think what helped to, to save me, I ha-, didn’t have the feeling of fear. I met danger openly. It was maybe my savior. Because if I would fear, I wouldn’t be able to go out to things like this, like going with a carriage in ’41 before the ghetto, when thousands of Jews have been taken to Ponary. Uh, I didn’t understand it, I didn’t know. I di-didn’t have the feeling of the danger. It wasn’t in mine conscious. And I think, I think that this saved me.

Samuel Bak: The war started in ’39, I was six years old. And, um, by the time the war finished in ’45, I was 12. So, very often, when I think about myself, it’s like thinking a number of a lottery that turns in a big kettle and just falls out. It doesn’t know why. Just, uh, a number of miracles, strange circumstances, and you are there, while all the others are gone.

After the war was over, I somehow realized that my mother and I were the survivors, the only survivors of the family. Uh, we belonged to a club of people that had a need to talk one to another belonging to the club of the survivors. And they wouldn’t talk to people who were outside of the club, because the things that were to be said were of such a… unprecedented nature that there were no words. It was also unpleasant to think that people who did not go through that would never believe.

So I remember that when I was thirteen, when I was fourteen, we spent many, many evenings just listening to people telling their stories. And it was somehow in a very closed circuit, because I know that many years later, people had a great difficulty to speak of those things, to relate to, even to their own children.

Sheila Zwany: My children knew everything what I went through. Some people, they wanted to hide. Like, I have friends who say, “Oh, going to hurt them. They won’t—they don’t have to know.” I said, no, I want they should know. Because, you know, when I’m going to gone, this generation is already—a lot died. And the time is very short. So I say, I want they should know what was and what was going on. Sometimes I shake. Sometimes I dream the whole things what I—you know what I went through. Sometimes I cry. But you can’t forget these things.

Abram Zeleznikov: My wife met me in ’45, June ’45. That means about a year after the main events. Then I was full of hatred. Full of anger. Everything what I was talking, what I remember, was full of… pain. And after the years I start understanding things differently. And getting older, building up a family, having children, feeling the responsibility, uh, for your children. Having sickness of your children. Having a tragedy in the family when mine youngest daughter was killed in a car accident when she was only 17 changed me. It’s not that I remember the things differently. I feel them differently.

Mira Verbin: I am the only one left from our family. My sister and I were very close, and I miss her to this day. Losing her as I did was very hard. It was a matter of hours that my sister might have been able to stay alive. Not days—hours.

It is very difficult. We are a generation that has it very hard, and they don’t always understand us. I have a lot of nights without sleeping, still today. If someone says that time heals the wounds, it’s not true. Every year it’s more difficult. The missing becomes physical. I get panicked and the snowball begins to roll. That’s it. We have to live with it.

William Begell: I have lived with it for such a long time and I’ve had such feelings of guilt that I was not able to take either my mother or my grandmother to escape with me. I, uh, sound very unemotional about it, but it’s part of my history. And, uh, it’s even difficult for me to cry today.

Within my family there were 14 to 15 people having breakfast, dinner, and supper every, every day and I’m the only survivor.

———

Eleanor Reissa: In this final chapter of “Remembering Vilna” you heard from Samuel Bak; Abram Zeleznikov; Mira Verbin, whose Hebrew testimony is voiced by Rachel Botchan; William Begell; Henny Durmashkin Gurko; Sheila Zwany; and Haim Bassok, whose Hebrew testimony is voiced by Claybourne Elder.

This special series about Jewish life in Vilna is written and produced by Nahanni Rous and Eric Marcus. Stephen Naron is the executive producer. Our composer is Ljova Zhurbin. Our theme music is an arrangement of “Vilna, Vilna,” the 1935 song by A. L. Wolfson and Alexander Olshanetsky. The cellist is Clara Lee Rous. Our audio mixer is Anne Pope.

Hebrew-to-English translation was provided by Sarit Lisigorsky, Nahanni Rous, and Ned Lazarus. Thank you to Christoph Dieckmann and Sam Kassow for historical oversight. Additional thanks to Sam Kassow, who prepared notes that provide historical context and accompany each episode. Notes and archival photographs can be found on the podcast’s website at ThoseWhoWereThere.org. Thanks also to photo editor Michael Green and genealogists Michael Leclerc and Adam Gelman, as well as social media producers Nick Porter and Cristiana Peña.

Thank you to David Koral, Inge De Taeye, Rennie McDougal, Christy Bailey-Tomecek, Daniel Blokh, and Daniela Ozacky Stern for their assistance; to MacDowell; to CDM Sound Studios; and to the Kennedy Center, for providing space to work with our composer. A special thank-you to Kata Bitoft, audio engineer at the National Library of Lithuania.

We’re grateful to our colleagues at YIVO, including Jonathan Brent, Eddy Portnoy, Alex Weiser, Stefanie Halpern, Vital Zajka, and Julia Rothkoff.

This podcast is a collaboration between the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University and YIVO, the Institute for Jewish Research. I’m Eleanor Reissa. You’ve been listening to “Remembering Vilna: The Jerusalem of Lithuania.”

———

Eleanor Reissa: [Sings a portion of “Vilna, Vilna,” recorded on Thursday, September 21, 2023, at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. See below for the song’s complete lyrics in English and Yiddish.]

Vilna, city of spirit and innocence.
Vilna, conceived in Jewish ways,
where soft prayers are murmured,
soft nocturnal secrets.

I often see you in my dreams,
my dearly beloved Vilna,
and the old Vilna ghetto
in a foggy glow.

Vilna, Vilna, our hometown,
our longing and desire.
Ah, how often your name
brings a tear to my eye!

Vilna streets, Vilna rivers,
Vilna forests, mountains and valleys.
Something gnaws at me, makes me yearn
for the days of long ago.

I see the Zakret forest,
enveloped in its shadows,
where teachers secretly slaked
our thirst for knowledge.

Vilna sewed the first thread
in our flag of freedom
and inspired its children
with a gentle spirit.

Vilna, Vilna, our hometown,
our longing and desire.
How often your name
brings a tear to my eye!

Vilna streets, Vilna rivers,
Vilna forests, mountains and valleys.
Something gnaws at me, makes me yearn
for the days of long ago.

———

ווילנע, שטאָט פֿון גײַסט און תּמימות,

ווילנע, ייִדישלעך פֿאַרטראַכט,

װוּ עס מורמלען שטילע תּפֿילות,

שטילע סודות פֿון דער נאַכט.

אָפֿטמאָל, זע איך דיך אין חלום,

הייס געליבטע ווילנע מײַן,

און די אַלטע ווילנער געטאָ

אין אַ נעפּעלדיקן שײַן.

ווילנע, ווילנע, אונדזער היימשטאָט,

אונדזער בענקשאַפֿט און באַגער,

אַך, ווי אָפֿט עס רופֿט דײַן נאָמעם,

פֿון מײַן אויג אַרויס אַ טרער.

ווילנער געסלעך, ווילנער טײַכן,

ווילנער וועלדער, באַרג און טאָל,

עפּעס נויעט, עפּעס בענקט זיך,

נאָך די צײַטן פֿון אַמאָל.

כ’זע דעם װעלדעלע זאַקרעטער,

אין זײַן שאָטן אײַנגעהילט,

װוּ געהײם עס האָבן לערער,

אונדזער װיסנדורשט געשטילט.

װילנע האָט דעם ערשטן פֿאָדעם,

פֿון דער פֿרײַהײטספֿאָן געװעבט,

און די ליבע קינדער אירע

מיט אַ שטאַרקן גײַסט באַלעבט.

װילנע, װילנע אונדזער הײמשטאָט,

אונדזער בענקשאַפֿט און באַגער;

אַך, װי אָפֿט עס רופֿט דײַן נאָמען

פֿון מײַן אױג אַרױס אַ טרער.

װילנער געסלעך, װילנער טײַכן,

װילנער װעלדלעך, באַרג און טאָל.

עפּעס נױעט, עפּעס בענקט זיך

נאָך די צײַטן פֿון אַמאָל.

װילנער געסלעך, װילנער טײַכן,

װילנער װעלדלעך, באַרג און טאָל.

עפּעס נױעט, עפּעס בענקט זיך

נאָך די צײַטן פֿון אַמאָל.

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