On 26 September 1943, 250 Jewish prisoners escaped from a tunnel that they had dug to escape the Novogrudok Ghetto and Labour Camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. 170 survivors of the escape went on to fight with Jewish partisans in the forests, made famous in the film Defiance. In this blog post, we share the story of one of the men who escaped that day - the late Jack Kagan BEM (born Idel Kagan in 1929). This post draws on Jack's own words (in quotation marks) and IWM has worked closely with his daughter Debbie, who has kindly shared photographs and film that tell her father's remarkable story.
A special thank you to Tamara Vershitskaya who worked so hard with Jack Kagan over the years, to help make everything possible.
I was born in 1929 in Novogrudok [then Poland, now in Belarus] to a unique family. Two brothers married two sisters and harmony reigned in our house! Although we had two houses, we lived in one. Everything was done together; the most important thing in life was family. My father Yankel was a businessman. My mother, Dvore, was a businesswoman who looked after our two shops, where we sold the saddles and sandals produced in our workshops. I had a sister, Nachama, two years older than myself. We were a middle-class family and we did not want for anything.
When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and marched into Novogrudok in 1941, these young Jewish people and their families suffered the full horror of Nazi rule. All Jewish residents were forced onto the town square and divided – the largest group, including members of Jack’s extended family, was driven out of town to be shot into mass graves.
Jack and his immediate family along with the rest of the second group were moved into the Novogrudok ghetto, which operated as a labour camp. Jack and his father worked as ‘specialists’ making saddles for the German army.
[Music]
Lisa Reibel: “I didn’t have any youth in my life. My youth I spent in the ghetto. The Germans told all the Jews from the town to come to the courthouse. And they put them right in the trucks and straight to the graves. The Germans said that the people who were left could stay here and work for them, and we were going to remain alive.
But the youth from the people that was left in the ghetto decided to build a tunnel. And one day they said, “The tunnel is ready, we’re going out.” When we got out, the first thing we smelled was the freedom. We got out of the ghetto after so many years. We were free.”
[Music]
Voice over: “On the rainy night of September the 26th, 1943, Lisa Reibel with her sister Rae and father escaped through a tunnel from the Novogrudok work camp with nearly 250 other Jews. After five days and nights of living in the forest, they were found by the famous Bielski Brigade, a group of Jewish partisans, resistance fighters. Lisa and the other survivors joined them, and for nearly a year helped the Bielski partisans fight the Germans and their collaborators with 1,200 other Jews.”
“We didn't think that we’d remain alive when we got out from the tunnel. But we were between life and death.”
Title: A Partisan Returns: The legacy of two sisters
Lisa Reibel: “Today I'm going back to Novogrudok. I was born here. And now after 60 years, I'm going back.”
Voice over: “Novogrudok was part of Poland until 1939, when Germany and the Soviet Union divided the country under a secret non-aggression pact. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, Novogrudok became part of the independent country of Belarus. Lisa Reibel and her family have embarked on an incredible journey. She has returned to her birthplace to attend the opening of a new museum dedicated to her and her fellow Novogrudok survivors, many of them Jewish partisans like Lisa.”
Lisa Reibel: “I feel very bad about coming back because when I lived there, we had 6,000 Jews and now we have only graves.”
Helen Zelig: “Growing up in our home we knew about the ghetto and the tunnel and how they lived in the forest with the partisans. But hearing the stories and actually being there was a totally different experience.”
Jonathan Kushner: “OK, I think he's backing us into the grave so that it's easier for him to get out. It's a good location because it's quiet, it's, the forest is very thick. I felt great about being able to be there with my Aunt Lisa. I also sort of felt like I had a little bit of my Bubbe Rae with me. I never really understood her until I went there and saw where she came from.”
Rae Kushner: “I had two sisters and one brother. One sister, Lisa Reibel, and the other sister, Hanesta, was killed in the first ‘clean up’ of the Jews. I had a brother, Honen, but he was killed when he went out from the tunnel. My father came from 14 children, 14 children, so he had sisters and one brother. And then my mother was from four children, but they killed them right away.”
Voice over: “On their first day in Novogrudok, they visit a mass grave where her oldest sister, Hanesta, is buried along with 90% of the town's Jews who were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators.”
Member of the public: “So, were all the people from Novogrudok? Those are the 5100 that are here?”
Jack Kagan: “Yeas, that’s the 5,100 are here. The first slaughter.”
Member of the public: “Was your mother in this one?”
Lisa Reibel: "My sister Hanesta was here."
Jack Kagan: “No, no. Your sister was here. Your sister was here.”
Robert Bielsky: “This is the place where it was the first action in Novogrudok and my grandparents were taken from their home, they were brought to the courthouse, and they were brought here, and they were killed. And here they are. Here is the place. Have heard about it for many years, first time I've seen it. I was feeling angry because I felt the connection to the people that were buried there. These people were living their lives, working hard, growing families and they were taken from this peaceful, quiet environment and just, their lives were destroyed for no good reason.”
Lisa Reibel: “It was a happy life, a happy childhood. I used to go to Hebrew school. Saturday we used to sing Shabbat at the synagogue, and we had a wonderful childhood.
Rae Kushner: “The whole family was in the hat business and fur business. About two days a week we used to have markets. You know, we used to bring out all the stuff on the street and we used to sell it. We had a nice social life before the war.”
Voice over: “On June 22nd, 1941, Germany broke the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union and soon Novogrudok was under German control. Anti-Semitic laws were enforced. Jews were relocated into ghettos and lost most of their rights, jobs and businesses. Life was only going to get worse.”
Lisa Reibel: “A few weeks after the Germans were here, we were in the trucks to go to the first grave. So, two Germans came running and they said, “Where are the furriers?” And we had a fur business. So, my mother ran over – she said, “My husband’s a furrier!” So, he said, “Come here, do you have a family?” She said, “Yes.” And they put us all back in the courthouse. And she saved our lives.”
Voiceover: “Lisa has come to see where her mother is buried.”
Jonathan Kushner: “When we got to the mass grave that held my great grandmother, it was just the most powerful experience because my Aunt Lisa had never been to her own mother's grave and it's on top of a hill and she was not able to get there on her own and my brothers and my cousin Jacob and myself carried her up there.”
Jacob Schulder: “She had been mentioning how this was going to bring everything full circle. She had never seen the grave of her, of her mother, and she was able to achieve a sense of wholeness in that sense.”
Lisa Reibel: “She was 42 years old. 42 years old and four children, a business, and everything and she didn’t see nothing in her life.”
Jonathan Kushner: “For nothing, it’s such a waste.”
Lisa Reibel: “For what?”
Helen Zelig: “Hatred.”
Jonathan Kushner: “Yeah.”
Lisa Reibel: “I had a very nice relationship with my mother, but she was taken very young. And when I really started to know my mother, I lost her. I knew she was killed, but I didn't know where she was buried, and it really bothered me very much. And after 60 years I went to visit her grave and I was very happy at least I knew where she rested. To me it was like I saw everything in my life.”
Novogrodek Work Camp
Jack Kagan: “The first time I came here was on the 6th of December 1941, together with 6,000 Jews. They put down a high fence so that we shouldn't be able to see the outside world, double barbed wire around us they made in the front building, which used to be here, workshops for specialists to work for the German Army. I was working here with my father as a saddle maker.”
Voice over: “Here was the Novogrodek work camp where 65 years ago Jack Kagan and 250 other Jews escaped.”
Jack Kagan: “After the last killing, the 250 people where my mother and sister was killed, the plan was taken to dig a tunnel.”
Voice over: “Today Lisa and her family are here at the opening of a new museum commemorating their escape.”
Jack Kagan: “I would like to lay a wreath for the 70 people who escaped from the tunnel and didn't survive. So, this is for the victims of the Novogrodek.”
[Applause]
Lisa Reibel: “It brings a lot of memories. It's memories that I wanted to forget a little bit.”
Helen Zelig: “Growing up and hearing the stories is not the same as actually standing in the courthouse and looking around. You felt the people that were sitting there not knowing what the next hour is going to bring. Being a part of this whole experience made it more real. I got a better understanding of what these people really went through. You must know these people?”
Lisa Reibel: “There’s my father, my mother. And this is the barracks. It used to be straw. They called it the nares,’ that’s where we slept. It had straw on top of it and we slept. I didn't think we were going to escape.”
Jack Kagan: “They started on the third week of May, and they finished on the 26th of September. And because this was the last room as far as possible from the police station, the decision was made to make the tunnel here. So, they made a lift-up from the last bed, as you have seen, and they started digging from here. At night, everybody is to get a bag, we used to sit in a row. Each one was passing on the bags, double walls were built and earth was put in between these two walls to get rid of the earth. It was a major operation.”
Voice over: “With only spoons and makeshift tools the prisoners dug a tunnel 750 feet long, hiding over a half million pounds of earth in the walls of their barracks. Finally, on the night of September 26th, nearly 250 Jews escaped through a hole approximately 2 feet wide, crawling one by one to an unknown fate.”
Lisa Reibel: “We weren’t so scared because, you know, we were within life and death. If you're not going to do it, you're going to die anyway, so you might as well go. Just do it.”
Voice over: “Lisa, Rae and her father walked in the forest for five days looking for food, shelter and freedom. The Bielski partisans had heard of their escape and were looking for them. During World War Two, there were approximately 20 to 30,000 Jews who escaped the Germans and their collaborators. They fought in partisan units all over Europe. Partisans were armed resistance fighters behind enemy lines. They blew up trains and convoys and saved thousands of lives. Tuvia Bielski and his brothers formed one of the most important Jewish partisan groups. Most Jews were a minority in their partisan unit. Like the armies of today, partisans looked for young men to join their ranks. But the Bielski’s were different. They brought in the elderly, children and women. Tuvia would say, “I would rather save one old woman than kill 10 Nazi soldiers.”
Rae Kushner: “We heard that Tuvia Bielski had sent out young boys to pick us up and bring us. And they took us to the woods.”
Lisa Reibel: “And then finally, when we came there, they said, “We have some bunks. You’re going to sleep in the bunks and you’re going to live here.”
Voice over: “A small group within the Bielski Brigade actively fought the Germans and their collaborators, but most of the 1,200 partisans worked to support their fighters and local Russian partisans all needing clothes mended, weapons fixed, and meals cooked. Towards the end of the war, the Bielski’s built a permanent partisan camp with a metal shop, a bakery, a soap factory, a mill, a tannery and a tailor shop. They even had hat makers. Lisa, Rae and her father fit in perfectly within this group.”
Lisa Reibel: “They said to my father, ‘You should make hats for the partisans.” So, I was helping him, and everybody was a little occupied. And they gave us rations. Some bread and everything to eat, and that's the way we stayed about the year.
We had a dinner in New York for the Bielski partisans and they said that of the 1,200 people that were saved, it’s now 10,000 people.”
Jonathan Kushner: “What I really enjoyed about the trip to Novogrudok was getting to see the life of my Bubbe Rae and getting to see where she came from as a child and where she grew up before life drastically changed. I always knew that because my grandmother had climbed through a tunnel, I am here today, OK? But seeing the tunnel, I appreciate my life that much more than had she not climbed through that tunnel and had Lisa had not gone through the tunnel, we all wouldn't be here.”
Helen Zelig: “It's an unbelievable legacy to think that my mother survived and therefore I am alive and now, thank God, I have children and grandchildren, and each time I look at my grandchildren and my children, I think this is a beautiful tribute to the determination, the courage that these people had. It saved generations and generations of people.”
There were further incidences of round ups within the ghetto, where people were murdered. On 7 May 1943, Jack’s mother, sister and aunt were killed.
On 7 May 1943, early in the morning as was the general custom, 500 camp inmates assembled in the courtyard for a routine count and as before, 250 of the ‘specialists’ were taken to the main hall of the workshops for the extra food rations: 1 kilo of bread for 10 days (the normal food ration was only 150 grams of bread and a bowl of soup made from potato peels per day). As soon as the specialists entered the building both groups were surrounded by the local police. The remaining 250 in the courtyard were taken about a kilometre away to a prepared mass grave and shot.
Jack’s father was moved to another camp, Koldichevo, where he died trying to escape early in 1944. Jack recalled,
The parting was so quick, and to this day I see my poor father putting on a brave face, saying he would see me soon, knowing very well that this was goodbye forever.
Jack joined a committee that was formed to make a mass break out from the labour camp, with the hope of joining the partisans (armed resistance fighters) in the forests. The committee was made up of:
Berl Yoselevitz, Nota Sucharski, Ruvke Shabakovski, Abram Rakivski, Motle Morduchovitz, Aizik Yarmovski, Lionke Portnoi, Neach Sosnovski, Moshe Niegnievicki and Chonie Kushner
They had at their disposal six rifles, a few pistols and hand grenades. The original plan was a suicide attack on the guards, to die a hero’s death, but as the Germans reinforced the guards after 7 May, the committee decided on another plan, i.e. to dig a tunnel. The tunnel was to be dug below the last bunk in the stable. It was about 40 metres from the fence, facing the forest as there was a corn field behind the camp. An engineer was checking the direction left to right and depth of the dig. The length of the tunnel it was estimated was approximately 100 metres. The tunnel was 1.5 metres below ground level, about 60 centimetres wide and a metre in height.
The planning committee believed that the chances of escaping during a very dark light would be very good and hoped that the digging would be completed before August, just before the harvest. The problem was how to overcome the searchlights. There was an electrician by the name of Rukovski who arranged fuses in such a way that the searchlights could be switched on and off at our will. He also introduced an electric cable into the tunnel, as we were not allowed electricity in the camp.
The joiners prepared railway lines and a trolley. The tailors prepared bags using blankets and reins to pull the trolley. The work started in earnest, a battle against time, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
A signal was arranged. If the guards came into the camp, the ‘stable’ inmates were alerted. The loft was reinforced, and a chain operation started to fill up the earth in bags and carry it up to the lofts. The metal workers made the necessary digging tools.
It was dug from May to August according to plan. When the attics were filled, double walls were created to fill up the outgoing earth. Occasionally it was contrived that the searchlights would fail. Electricians from the camp and outside the camp would be called but they could not find the fault.
“Panic stations” – The Germans brought a tractor to cut the corn before the scheduled time! We were worried whether the tunnel would hold out under the weight of the tractor. It did and the work resumed. Now that the harvest had taken place it was necessary to dig a further 150 metres beyond the little hill. The rainy season arrived. Wood had to be stolen from the workshops to reinforce the ceiling and the digging went on.
We started counting the days for the escape. A list was drawn up, I do not know how. The first in line were to be half of the armed inmates. After them the main diggers, then the younger men and at the end again five people with the pistols. Their job would be to keep order.
For over fifty years, Jack gave many talks to children, to university students and the general public. The same question was continuously asked ‘how was it possible to dig for more than four months and not be discovered?’
1. It was due to the consolidated effort of the Jews of the Ghetto and a great deal of ingenuity. There were numerous differences in the opinions on how to proceed, there were even threats of disclosure, but in the end, most were united in the effort to complete the tunnel.
2. We were very careful. We were always on the look-out. Two people were always on guard and Rukovski installed a warning bell. The dug soil was moved only at night.
3. The Jewish tradesmen made certain that the work in the workshops was not neglected and that the output did not drop. There was no reason for the Polish and Belarus foremen to suspect that any other activity was going on.
4. The sanitary conditions in the Ghetto were appalling and the smell was atrocious. There was a lack of everything, including water. This was one of the reasons that the Germans kept, as much as possible, away from the Ghetto.
And most importantly WE WERE LUCKY!
On the day of the escape, 26 September 1943, Jack was just 14 years old.
We were very lucky that the weather was horrible, rain, wind and totally darkness. The searchlight was out but we had light in the tunnel. The first 120 went into the tunnel and the break-out began. There was complete silence and perfect organisation but because of the light inside the tunnel and the total darkness outside, people became disoriented, lost their way, and ran towards the camp.
The guards thought that partisans had come to liberate the camp and started shooting. We do not know how many were killed there. The following morning when the guards realised what had happened, they alerted the Germans, and a full-scale chase began. Some were captured alive, and some were shot on the spot. We reckon that altogether eighty people did not reach the partisans.
The young escapees joined various partisan fighting brigades. The remainder joined the Kalinin brigade where Bielski was the commander. In this brigade were 1,200 Jews from the age of eight to seventy and thanks to Tuvia Bielski and his brothers, around 400 Jews from Novogrudok survived. They were liberated on 14 July 1944.
It was difficult for the survivors to remain in Novogrudok after the war. For them it was a place with too many memories. The loss of their families was too much to endure. Most wanted to start a new life, preferably in an independent state of Israel.
Jack moved to Britain, where he settled, married Barbara and raised three children. Their family grew, with grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In 1986, Jack gave his testimony to Imperial War Museums, which you can listen to online here.
Jack Kagan: “I'll start my story from the 7th of August 1942. On the 7th of August, we got up as usual from the ghetto where we lived, about four and a half thousand people to go to work. The first party assembled by the ghetto gate {inaudible] to go out to work. The first party was 500 workers working at the German barracks. I was in the second party of 500 people, that was the specialists to go to work in the courthouse which is here. Everything seems normal inside the ghetto was Jewish Police checking your cards and letting you out.
I was working with my father. My father was a saddle, a saddle specialist and he managed to get permission for me to get a, a card to go to work with him. We walked away to the barracks, there was a 4 kilometre walk here. To the courthouse was about a kilometre and a half. We were escorted by police, but we realise something abnormal is taking place; there are too many German police and German soldiers around the area.
They arrived here in the courthouse. As soon as they have arrived, they closed the gate behind us and we found that they have, they are surrounded by police and German soldiers. As soon as the people have arrived in the barracks they were surrounded by German
soldiers and the ghetto was again surrounded around and immediately they started taking the people from the ghetto, which was between 4,000 to 5,000 people, taking them about a kilometre away in prepared pits and machine gunning them. The 500 people in the courthouse were lined up here in the front in evening the SS men Rauter, Traub, Gebietskommissar, searched for children. I can't remember whether I stood on a stone to make myself taller, but I stood in the line. He passed me and I wasn't touched. Other children from the line was taken out, thrown on lorries taken to Litovka where the killing place took place. The following day they assembled here in this place. Rauter and Traub arrived, and he said, “From now on, you will be found yourself in a labour camp. From now on, you are going to live here and going to work here. If you are going to work hard they will let you live. If you won’t, we will kill you.”
This was allocated for 500 people. These two-and-a-half buildings. 36 people to a room. Bunks were built for nine people in three rows of nine people on the right and on the left. No water facilities, no cooking facilities, no heating facilities, and nothing to lay on except the boards.
People were brought in from Jalova, they would join us and they have started building bunks for the people. For them this was the last place this they supposed to have live but these people knew all the villages so before they settled in, more than half of them have escaped.
We received for the work early morning to late at night, 250 grams of bread and soup made out of potato peels. They used to give an allocation how much work they got to do and it had to be finished a week's allocation as a week's allocation had to be finished otherwise you will be punished by cutting the food ration.
Two lots of barbed wire was put around as you can see and then a wooden fence very, very high so they shouldn't be able to see what's happening outside. But by that time, they found out that there are partisans, the Bielski partisans are in the forest and anybody who can escape should escape.
And there was a very strange thing; suddenly we heard the two Righteous Gentiles, one Bosky and one Bobrovsky said that if you are managing to escape to them they will conduct you where the partisans were. They knew, everybody knew Bobrovsky he was a dog catcher living about a kilometre from town. And the other one was 14 kilometres on the way to Lida. And again, once people found out people started to escape either by bribing the guards or by going to fetch water because they didn't have water in the camp.
11 people used to go out 10 used to return and some of them have escaped from here because the search lights which are here could not reach behind the toilet, so people used to slip out and it came November, November ’42. My cousin has organised a group and they have escaped, 11 people escaped. I decided that I will escape. I became friendly with some warehouse men to steal from the German means hanging but I became friendly with him, and he said he will help me to get a pair of boots because I looked at my shoes; the shoes are completely torn. Winter is coming. They are talking about an area which is minus 30°, minus 35° can reach but I decided to escape. I came to him, and he said he will steal a pair of boots for me. I came in, I put one felt boot under my coat. My room was here. I took the other one and I was ready to escape.
Suddenly I saw Ishia Oppenheim, which was a friend of mine. He came to take out his mother and sister, so I knew that I must watch him and wait for the day when he's ready to escape. And on the 23rd of December I saw him putting on a heavy coat, I knew that he's going to escape today. I was walking around, and I saw a lorry coming in here, a German lorry to unload raw material and he left the gate open. It was so cold. I put on my boots, I tore off the number which we had on the back with a yellow star, and I walked through the gate. I crossed this highway that's a Minsk highway, I went to the little forest by 6:00 in the evening we were already 14 of us and we started
walking towards the dog catcher to meet the partisans.
The walking was very difficult. It was deep in snow and dogs were barking so we had to go, we had to go around a very big area and we came to a place called Brzezinka where the water never freezes, it's a fast running water. When some of the people passed through when it came to me the ice gave way and I fell in, in the ice and I felt immediately that I'm in trouble because the felt boots started absorbing the water.
And I felt that my feet, my feet are freezing. We reached Bobrovsky’s house. Mrs Bobrovsky brought me out a plate of hot soup and I think she saved my life, but she told us the bad news; that the partisans have already been there waiting for us till 12 o clock. Because they are late they will be coming back in three days’ time. I knew that I will not survive this three days so I decided I'll go back to the camp. And I walked back by miracle, I managed to reach the camp the people who was going to fetch water brought me in. My father tried to take off the boots but it was impossible they all frozen in. He started cutting them to pieces. We had no medicines, we had nothing at all. we had no doctor, dentist called, and he said after three or four days, “Your toes got to be cut off.” And you can imagine without any iodine without anything else they've just cut off the toes on both my, on both feet and being in a camp not to be able to work it means automatically our was sentence to death, and of course, no more food; because if you didn't go to work you didn't get any food.
And so, I laid on the bunk January, February, March but because of the dirty conditions which we lived in here, there was millions of bugs, 36 people in a room and maybe a couple of million bugs on the walls, and they used to bite my where the toes were. And of course, they didn't heal properly. And so I laid there and it was a lovely day today 70 years ago, the 7th of May, I laid here there was 250 people on one side where my mother was and 250 high specialist based on the other side and I looked out and suddenly I saw some specialist being taken away to this building. My mother and sister and others were standing and out of nowhere police came around hitting them with a butt of the rifle and I knew what is happening, but my mother came over to the window and said, “It's nothing”, to calm me down but I knew what it was all about.
I've laid on this bunk, I took the junk which we had, and I covered myself. I heard the crying, after a short while I heard the machine gun fire and I knew that my mother, sister and the 250 were killed. A bit later the guards who killed them came into my room to search what they can rob, but they didn't have anything, so they took all the junk from the lower bunk and threw it on top and they covered me even more. And I laid there until that 250 specialists came back, back to that and immediately a meeting was called, and a resistance committee was formed.
The resistance committee was formed here on the loft and a decision was made to, sorry here on the loft, to throw in hand grenades which we had in some rifles into the police station here and run. Whoever will manage to run away will because they knew if even five will survive, it will be better than waiting for them to be killed. And a meeting was called to dig a tunnel. The tunnel was dug in there a people from Jalova lived, a shaft one and a half metres deep and started digging. It's very, it’s impossible to tell somebody how much else is going out of the tunnel, everybody had its mission, each one had a function to do.
The first people were the engineers to make tools for digging the tunnel and the tools were made like meat choppers; small round tools with a handle and one person will be in the tunnel and just chop away the earth and then the joiners were brought in to make a little trolley with a platform on it to carry the earth. As soon as we went deeper, 2 metres a day we was supposed to dig, as soon as we went deeper, the lamp, which had no electricity the lamp didn't light not enough oxygen so a person by the name Rakovski, who was one of the most excellent electricians in the area, he made a surge and he managed to find a cable and he managed to bring in electricity into the tunnel. Not only that, he made a switchboard that he could switch off the search lights which was going around and from
time to time he used to switch off the search light, they used to bring in first of all he said he doesn't know what they brought in electrician from the town and they said, “It's intermediate fault, they can't help it,” and so it remained to the last day.
The intention was to dig only 100 metres where the wheat was growing. And the plan was to escape in August. So, it was May, June, July was digging the tunnel. In August a list was made and each one got a number but because of my feet my number was the last one because the tunnel is very small and if I would not be able to make it nobody would be able to cross over me. But early morning we saw a tractor arriving with a farmer and SS men and they cut off the wheat which was growing, the wheat was a metre 20 high, so it means we can't escape anymore because in the open field the guard would be able to see us and just kill us one by one.
So, it was made a decision to keep further. Now, would we have escaped as we planned in August, the 10th of August none of us would remain alive because not knowing to us the German have opened called an offensive. Offensive Helman, they brought 52,000 soldiers to our town, SS brigades and so on to fight the partisans. Would we have escaped? We would have been just in the middle of this 52,000 soldiers. They’ve had a battle with the partisans, an unsuccessful battle, I must say, for one month and they've gone away. And they continue building the tunnel up to this scale where you see. There we found a very big stone and we had to make a curve but at the same time it was impossible for one person to pull the trolley. The trolley which was built at the beginning was unsuccessful because it was just a platform. The tunnel was 650 centimetres, millimetres high by 700 mm wide and a meter and a half in depth. This is a trolley which was built by Skolnik. This flap opens up and the air was pushed on, on it. when my father was involved in making the ropes, saddle maker making the ropes because it's very long ropes and it had to be strong.
This flap used to open up at the very end and there we put in small bags. Everybody was sitting in a line passing over the bag, that's why it was not made big bag but small bags and putting it on the loft of the living quarters. By that time it was built for 36 people to a room but 250 were killed so we had only 18 people to a room so bunks were broken down, double walls were built for the bags to put in. And that went on until 26 of September. Each one was again given where he's going to stand in line. It was a terrible dark night, one of the
darkest night which I have ever seen. Rakovski cut off the search light they broke through the exit, so the decision was made
to break out on Saturday night the 26th of September. As it happens it because Saturday night the guards used to get drunk. It was the darkest, stormiest night I've ever seen.
Each one started, the first I don't know 50/60 people went into the tunnel because they worried about not having enough air for so many people and very soon I knew that they broke through because we felt a cold wind while we were standing on the loft to go down to the hole.
Once I came into the hole I heard already machine gun fire. The guards are shooting. And I came out the whole area was lit up. What happened, we’ve made a very bad mistake. We had electricity in the tunnel coming out from the light of the tunnel into such a total darkness people, people lost their way. Instead of running toward the forest they run left toward the building. When the guards saw movement they probably thought that partisans came to liberate the camp and they opened fire. Well, I've managed to, it was very difficult for me because of my toes to run. You had to have before I escaped I looked at my legs, my legs were just little sticks completely hungry because some people were already without full stomachs because from the 7th of May which exactly 70 years ago our ration was cut from 250 gram of bread to 125, the same slice of bread which is, the bread was straw that was all for a day, for a day’s work. So, if would have left us for a little while they would have starved from hunger just the same. So, people didn't have enough energy and they couldn't run fast enough to the forest. Now while the preparation was going on to escape there were two lots of people
of five; one had an ailing sister and one had a son which was too weak to run. So, they have decided that they will go up on the
loft of the workshops making them, themselves a hiding place and hide themselves. So, while everybody ran away they remain there and hidden themselves. In the morning, they heard the guard and German police coming to, they heard first of all that the gates were open and there's no, nobody’s there in the camp. The police chased after the people and of course the one who didn't run fast
enough about 70 were either caught alive or killed enroute and the remainder managed to reach the partisans because they heard about the partisans, they knew their location and myself with another friend Peter Habanovich they ran exactly the same way, we fell in the same river, they came to this Bobrovsky’s house they walked for about two more nights, and they found the partisans. It's a million and one chance to walk in a forest and find exactly the group which we were looking for. And I joined the Belski partisans, which everybody who escaped, any Jew escaped was welcome there we moved from there to Naliboki and in ‘44 we were already liberated by the Russian Army. And so I survived. What I didn't tell you in July 11 people, specialists were taking away from here to a terrible camp called
Koldichevo. My father was, his, my father was taking away. So, I've been on my own. And my father escaped but he never reached the partisan; somewhere he was killed enroute.
But the main story which I want to tell is about the tunnel. Last year we went a group of people organised by Israeli man called Schartz to search for the tunnel. Last year, there's a film producer who wanted to make a small film about the escape from the tunnel and he decided that he will take survivors, he chose three of us, with their children and grandchildren and to go to Novogrudok and search for the tunnel.
Eventually there were 50, over 50 people. We took diggers and for seven days they dug in every area and couldn't find anything. On the last day an elderly woman approached him and said, “What are you looking for?” So, he told our story, she said, “Come with me, I'll show you exactly where it is because I was a little girl and I went there a number of times to this hole.” And she said, “Here it is.” They dug and found not only the hole from the tunnel, but they found the trolley which you could see which was made to carry that, they found the wheels from the trolley. So now he wants to make a documentary of searching for it and I want to link it on with him he should have about the escape and then searching for the tunnel because it’s an extraordinary story for 250 people at that time to start it, hungry people to dig for so many days under the eyes of the guards, as the Germans to steal so much wood and other things and not to be caught and not to be disclosed and such a great success that 170 people survived. Even before the escape there were some people who didn't want to escape. Some people said it's a certain death maybe let's wait here and so on. Documents which I found not long ago say that would we have not escaped on the 26 of September, within a few days they would have killed us because a document said that they will deal with the Jews in Novogrudok after the 19th of September. So, it means within days they would have killed us. But the day beforehand you can imagine people saying goodbye to each other, people coming into my room because knowing that I won't be able to run to say goodbye to me like I would be [inaudible] escaping. It was a tremendous atmosphere.
The young people hoping that everything will go through. They had, as I said, they had some hand grenades and rifles. The people with the rifles were the first five which went out and there were about at the end there, again some with pistols that the order was if you will break the rule not to go in your way they will kill them. You must keep to your line because people were afraid that everybody will
push forward and chaos will start but everything went according to plan, people didn't push there are people which, there was Mr Kushner zel Kushner he had two daughters if what I was told that he tied them up to himself that when they come out in the darkness they shouldn't lose themselves. A lot of people lost each other because it's very difficult when you come out from the darkness and machine gun fire going over your head to orientate where you are going but it seems that it was very successful building a tunnel like that and to be able to tell the story afterwards of what actually happened.”
Interviewer: “And can you tell me once again what happened the night of the escape? Like, you told me already but if you wouldn’t mind repeating it again.”
Jack Kagan: “The night of the escape we stood on the loft here because the hall was here. Everybody stood in line, and we felt the hole has been opened because we felt a cold wind blowing and one after another started moving down to the hole. I think once the hole has been opened, 120 people went straight away into the tunnel because they weren't afraid anymore about not having oxygen. As the line started moving and myself and Pesak my friend, we moved and as they came out it was completely lit up. We knew where we wanted to run. We crossed over this highway and we went to the little forest which was right above and we started walking towards the
Brzezinka which we've been there in December during my terrible period where I got frost bitten. And from there I stayed over a day in a bush, both of us. We didn’t hear anything; we didn’t see anything because they have been exactly 180 degrees from the town the people who run that way toward the forest the Germans have run towards the forest with lorries, of course, and cars. On the other side of the town nobody was looking and so we stayed there over the night. It was a terrible rain, we were drenched. We dried ourselves out and probably for another two nights we walked in the forest and then we saw Jewish Partisans.”
Interviewer: “Amazing.”
Jack Kagan: “And we knew that, that we are safe in the forest. When we saw the Jewish partisans with rifles and machine guns they knew that they can't just pick us up and, and shoot us there can be a battle, yes, but not just an unjustified…”
So I survived. It's hard to describe since Friday we found out that the escape will be Saturday night so Saturday during
the day it was an amazing day, people said goodbye to each other. Myself, I looked, I didn't have a pair of trousers was all torn to pieces but my father had a jacket which he left behind so I've exchanged it with somebody for a pair of trousers and a piece of bread which helped and we waited Saturday till orders will be given to go on the loft and to wait and it was arranged for 9 o’clock the
first people will go down to break out and everybody started as soon as orders were given according to the list which was arranged beforehand.
People came down to the tunnel and they felt the wind blowing, so they knew that they broke through and by that time already half the people went into the tunnel because they weren't worried anymore about oxygen, so it went as fast as you could you went in. I was the last one so I already heard the machine gun fire when I came in the tunnel it was already shooting. It didn't take me long to walk through the tunnel, one doesn't know how long but believe me, you walked very, very fast on all fours, of course, you couldn't lift, it was only that was this high. And I was lucky.”
Interviewer: “And what was the night, what was, did you say before it was quite a stormy night?”
Jack Kagan: “It was so dark, it was so black. They had here one small building, this one, which was a zinc roof not a tiled
roof and they cut off the nails so the zinc shouldn’t make a noise in the rain and in the storm. And it was so dark, especially the search lights were cut off there was no search light, which you weren't used to it. And once we were out you had to have orientation which way you are running. People who didn't orientate it went towards a town and not towards the forest, but you had to be strong to run about 10 to 15 kilometres. It's a long, a long march for starved people. I went about 8/9 kilometres but for me it was very, very difficult because the earth was ploughed and it's not just walking on straightforward earth. My feet was giving way and I saw already that they are
bleeding the engineers have made me a metal stick but it was useless because once I leaned on it I had a job pulling it out, so very soon I threw it away and I walked without it, but I had enough energy and willpower to live that it pulled me through. It's the willpower to live.”
Interviewer: “How, how many of the people who escaped survived?”
Jack Kagain: “170. What happened to them?
Interviewer: “Yeah.”
Jack Kagan: “They all joined, most of them 90% joined the partisans some of them were mobilised in the Red Army and fought in Stalingrad in Königsberg got killed like Aesio Belnski. The rest came back to my little town which nobody was there, no Jews was
there, settled in and eventually left for Poland displaced person camps and came to Israel or to Palestine first and then settled in Israel and we had a quite a big community in Israel.”
Interviewer: “And can you tell me a little bit about Novogrodok before the war? because I remember you showed me that footage that you had.”
Jack Kagan: “Novogrodok had 12,000 people, 6,000 Jews and 6,000 mixed between Poles, Belarussian and Tatars Muslims. It was a very rich community in culture and then of course all this existed untill the 1939. After the 1st of September 39 Soviets came in and we lived for two years under the Soviets. They have liquidated the richness of the Jewish culture because everything which was connected to Jewish had to be closed. Not because Jews but everybody else. The synagogues had to be closed I went to a tabut school a Hebrew school it had to be closed because Hebrew wasn't allowed. The shopkeepers that had to be closed, old age home [inaudible] all this had to be closed because it had to be a, a joint a general thing and not just Jewish and of course then of course 22nd of June ‘41 Russian German war and that gave us a big problem and by the time they finished they reckon 600 Jews, 10% which is a high percentage survived out of the 6,000. Only due to the Belski brothers. “
Interviewer: “Were the Belski brothers from Novogrodok? Did, did you know them before the war?”
Jack Kagan: “Yes I went to school with one of them, Stanavich, a village 12 kilometres/ 8 miles from Novogrodok.”
Interviewer: “And what was their story before the war?”
Jack Kagan: “They were millers. And the war broke out they decided not to go into a ghetto or anywhere else but to go to the forest and then in ‘42 they decided that any Jew who's escaping from anywhere will be welcomed, and they made a brigade, a Jewish brigade. Kalinin Brigade under the Soviet’s command.
That's a village. We built a town in the forest. We had bakeries, we had all sorts of workshops, we had a town. 1200 people, 1200 on the day of liberation, 1230 Jews came out from this village.”
Interviewer: “And how long did you live in that village for? How long were you there?”
Jack Kagan: “I was, I joined them in September ‘43 and we were liberated in July ’44, nine months, just over nine months the number of the Germans.”
Interviewer: “And were there any more moments of like battle with the Germans?”
Jack Gagan: “They had all their battles but it didn't affect us. We were in a place called Naliboki that was enormous forest, 40 kilometres by 40 kilometres, you can live there for hundred of wars and survive if you don't have to eat but unfortunately for1230 people you had to provide food and that was the camp which was built up to sabotage the Germans to go on missions and to provide food for the
people who couldn't fight.
Well, I didn't have a lot of space moving inside. It's 650 millimetres by 700. Would I have not been able to, to make it? I think nobody else would have been able to, to get over me.
As you could see, I didn't have enough space inside it. if I would have not been able to make it and collapse in the tunnel, I don't think anybody would have been able to crawl over me, it wouldn't be just enough room as it was 650 millimetres by 700 millimetres but it seems everybody made it except for the clever 10 people who have hidden themselves on the loft. They waited till the German moved out and then they walked out in middle of the night three days afterwards and joined the partisans, so, they were the clever ones, they didn't have to go through the tunnel.”
Jack revisited his hometown (now Navahrudak, Belarus) and was involved in excavations to locate the tunnel through which he escaped. The story of the Bielski partisans became more well known thanks to the 2008 film Defiance starring Daniel Craig, whose premiere Jack attended.
In 2016 Jack was named in Her Majesty the Queen's New Year Honours List and received the British Empire Medal (BEM). He passed away in 2016.
Jack's daughter Debbie wishes to close this post with the words of Hirsh Glick's Zog nit keynmol (Never Say This Is The End), as a tribute to the courage of the Jewish partisans.
Never say this is the final road for you,
Though leaden skies may cover over days of blue.
As the hour that we longed for is so near,
Our step sends out the message: we are here!
Acknowledgement for kind permission to use the photographs and film:
Further reading: