So We Died: A Memoir of Life and Death in the Ghetto of Siauliai, Lithuania

A powerful eyewitness account of the Shavl ghetto in Nazi-occupied Lithuania

So We Died: A Memoir of Life and Death in the Ghetto of Siauliai, Lithuania (Azoy zaynen mir geshtorbn) is a powerful eyewitness account of the Shavl ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania. Written in Yiddish by Levi Shalit and available now for the first time in English, the work fills a stark void in historical records.

Shalit divided his work into four sections. In the first, he describes the German invasion of Siauliai, the murder of thousands of Jews in the city and surrounding countryside, and the forced relocation of the surviving Jews into the Shavl ghetto. In the second, he describes daily life in the ghetto in engrossing detail. In the third, titled "The Masada Book," Shalit describes ghetto residents' attempt to organize a resistance group of which he himself was a member. In the fourth, he narrates the transformation of the ghetto into a concentration camp and the seizure and deportation of the community's children.

Few accounts of the Shavl ghetto survived the war. Shalit's work offers English-language readers a rare insight into a vital chapter of history. The translators artfully reveal Shalit's literary prowess and the ways he illuminated the Shavl ghetto's daily struggles, false hopes, and atrocities.

More than an account of a previously overlooked episode in Holocaust history, So We Died is a testament to the enduring power of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable tragedy. It offers keen insight into a time of war, fascism, and resistance. A must-read for anyone seeking understanding and remembrance.

Levi Shalit (1916-1994) was born in Kuybyshev (now Samara), Russia, and raised in Lithuania. During World War II, he was confined in the ghetto in Siauliai, Lithuania, then transported to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. After the war, he lived in Munich, where the original Yiddish-language edition of this book, Azoy zaynen mir geshtorbn, was published.

Veronica Belling is author of Bibliography of South African Jewry and Yiddish Theatre in South Africa: A History from the Late Nineteenth Century to 1960. She is translator of Leibl Feldman's Jews in Johannesburg and author of many scholarly articles.

Justin Cammy is a professor of Jewish studies and world literatures at Smith College.

Ellen Cassedy is translator of On the Landing: Stories by Yenta Mash, the cotranslator (with Yermiyahu Ahron Taub) of Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories by Blume Lempel, and author of We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust.

Andrew Cassel is a former newspaper editor and reporter. He is cotranslator (with Gabriel Laufer) of Notes from the Valley of Slaughter: A Memoir from the Ghetto of Siauliai, Lithuania by Aharon Pick.