Name: So We Died: A Memoir of Life and Death in the Ghetto of Šiauliai, Lithuania
Author: Cammy, Justin
ISBN: 9780817322144

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

by Levi Shalit
translated by Veronica Belling, Ellen Cassedy and Andrew Cassel
introduction by Veronica Belling
afterword by Justin Cammy

University of Alabama Press, 2025
eISBN: 978-0-8173-9534-6 | Cloth: 978-0-8173-2214-4 | Paper: 978-0-8173-6174-7

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK

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

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

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 Šiauliai, 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 Šiauliai, Lithuania by Aharon Pick.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Maps

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction: Veronica Belling

Translators’ Note

Part I. O, Israel, People of Faith

Chapter 1. May One? Must One?

Chapter 2. Introductory Remarks

Chapter 3. And So It Was . . .

Chapter 4. O, Israel, People of Faith

Chapter 5. He Remained on His Land

Chapter 6. Tamara (The Mother of the Ghetto)

Part II. So We Lived

Chapter 7. Life in the Ghetto

Chapter 8. What We Ate in the Ghetto

Chapter 9. Apartments

Chapter 10. Heating and Lighting

Chapter 11. Production, Crafts, and Trade

Chapter 12. Health Matters

Chapter 13. Schools and Houses of Study

Chapter 14. Management and Administration

Chapter 15. So We Lived

Chapter 16. Hunted by Predators

Chapter 17. Black Asphalt on Warm Bodies

Chapter 18. “If Not Still Higher”

Chapter 19. Out of the Depths

Chapter 20. A Fight for the Unborn

Chapter 21. Flowers

Chapter 22. A Mortal Exchange

Chapter 23. So Rules the Rambam

Chapter 24. Smugglers

Chapter 25. The Unfortunate People of the Book

Chapter 26. The Brass Mortar

Chapter 27. Telz without Jews

Chapter 28. News

Chapter 29. Court

Chapter 30. Play, Fiddle, Play

Chapter 31. A Living Greeting

Chapter 32. Vilna Jews in a Transport

Chapter 33. Together

Chapter 34. Ghetto Women on Trial

Chapter 35. A Hanging

Part III. The Masada Book

Chapter 36. The Masada Book

Chapter 37. Gold Diggers

Chapter 38. Vengeance

Chapter 39. He Brought Medicines: A Portrait

Chapter 40. A Greeting from the Land of Israel

Chapter 41. The Cellar

Part IV. The Community Dies

Chapter 42. Quartered in Barracks

Chapter 43. The Traitor

Chapter 44. Black Friday

Chapter 45. Rise Up, Little Table

Chapter 46. Where Is Moyshele?

Chapter 47. The Fate of a Jewish Child

Chapter 48. After the Storm

Chapter 49. Ingathering of the Exiles

Chapter 50. The Community Dies

Chapter 51. Twenty-Four Hours in Stutthof and One Year in Dachau

Afterword: Justin Cammy

Glossary

Yiddish and Lithuanian Forms of Place Names

Notes

Bibliography

Contributors

Index

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