Well yes, she exists the same way Harry Potter exists. But Kruk was fond of giving supporting roles to non-existent people
With the same stylistic dryness and precision, Kruk documents an orgy in the offices of the Judenrat on New Year's Eve, 1942, and reports on the Jewish girls who have good relationships with the Germans, and even mentions the name of one of them, a former worker in a pharmacy, Ms. Lili Reszanska. And he adds: "This is a local detail I considered it necessary to note." Who is Lili Reszanska? It turns out that at the time he was writing these things down in the journal, she worked in the Jewish police in the ghetto and was one of the few Jews who walked around without the obligatory yellow star.
Like Pesye Schloss, Lili Reszanska doesn't appear in the Ghetto census.
Well, he mentions Lili Reszanska in spring '42 as well, again as a collaborator. Source for your depiction? According to Harshav, p135 of Kruk, at least one other diarist mentioned Reszanska as a collaborator, in a profile of Oberhardt. Mendel Balberyszki in his memoir written shortly after the war also mentions Reskanska as Solomon Gens's wife and as a pharmacist, one of the ghetto's privileged group, during his escort from the ghetto in September 1943.
No, Mr Caution. The 1st of September - the same day as your forged Bekanntmachung. Please strive for accuracy in these matters.
Well, since Kruk explained that the announcement reached Jews by means of the press on 2 September, two days before another announcement on the subject, I was most accurate. Forgive me, but I will trust Kruk on this, after you tried passing off an order from the mayor, who was subordinate to the occupying authorities, as one of the orders of the occupying authorities. To take but one example.
While I have no doubt Ponary diary was written after the war and being written or innumerable scraps of paper could easily be updated, its worth pointing out that Sakowicz's account is subtly different.
It doesn't really mention posters - and since it would be pointless to place notices for the Ghetto on the outskirts of the city, if it has any meaning at all (which is doubtful) it must mean a physical announcement. Do strive for accuracy at all times, Mr Caution.
Very true, and since Sakowicz didn't include a copy of the announcement in downloadable form, it is clearly at odds with the reference made by Kruk.
Kruk, 2 September: "The morning, Vilna Commissioner Hingst distributed an order around the city that the murderers of the two Germans killed by Jews on Sunday were shot. To prevent similar cases, Jews are allowed to be in the street from 10 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon, except for men and women with passes . . . So the Jews are to be punished." Kruk probably didn't see the announcement, as his note had it a bit mixed up. He also hadn't been briefed by the NKVD or others that the party line was to be that the shooting incident was phony. Lord have mercy.
Sakowicz, 2 September: "These shootings were a punishment for the bogus shooting at German soldiers in Wilno on Sunday, August 31. There, on the outskirts of the city, Hingst announced that Jews would be punished for the shooting on the previous Sunday." It simply could not be from this brief note that Sakowicz means the same announcement as Kruk - which neither apparently saw. These have to be references to separate things, Sakowicz's more likely referring to a fireside chat given by Hingst or a campfire talk outside the city. I think that is clear from the two statements.
The forgers of Sakowicz, whilst getting word from the MFF that the shooting was a staged pretext, 1) were apparently quite sloppy making such an egregious and tell-tale slip in not mentioning the precise physical form of the announcement, copying it or at least describing the type and languages in which it appeared and 2) forgot, fatally to the historiography of the Holocaust it would seem, to coordinate with the forgers of Kruk. But then again, we are still missing the evidence for any forgery at all, let alone for the claimed and fanciful Moscow Forgery Factory. Your stating those things you have no doubt of, you will understand, is of utterly no interest to me. What is revealing is to see which untruth you will try spinning and unloading about the scenario involved.
A bit of slight of hand - Glezer (Glazier) is another rendition of Szklana - since Niemiecka and Glezer (Szklana) don't intersect, can't intersect as they run parallel.
http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/pic/bigvilniusghettomap.jpg
we have a very odd mistake from our "eyewitness", on the spot diarist. Lord knows there aren't that many streets to choose from. Possibly the author was doing his level best to try and create another provocation, different to the one in July at Szklanna and Wielka corner.
I don't see why you are all making such a fuss. 300 unjustly executed in a reprisal for a phony incident at Szklanna and Wielka street seems quite terrible enough. There seems no need to run a reprise reprisal again in September.
Why thank you for making clear, in your own pedantic manner, what Harshav did much more simply and which has already been noted, that the incident could not have occurred where Kruk first noted. Golly, it is good to have a pedant on board. Now, it could not be that in over 700+ pages Kruk never made a slip or jotted down something in error or noted a rumor that could not be substantiated. Is that your point? And where was it stated that Kruk was an "eyewitness" to all this? Lord, the diary makes pretty clear that Kruk was not an eyewitness to the "incident" itself - or to the immediate reprisal action or probably to the first removals of Jews from their neighborhoods and certainly not of their progress to Lukishki and then from there to Ponar. As I wrote earlier, Kruk wrote precisely about what he "learned" (not witnessed) in the case of the removals, ticking off street names. As to the incident itself, although Kruk opened his account "On the corner of Niemecka and Glezer Streets, a shot was heard. They say a German was wounded," he added, "someone pointed to a Jew from a house on that corner of Glezer and Wielka Streets, the one who must have shot the German," then describing a pogrom "against Jewish property [that] spread over Glezer and Jatkowa Streets." As a result of the actions following this initial pogrom he had learned of, Kruk gave a figure of 5000 Jews driven out, although clearly he was not as you insinuate claiming to be an eyewitness to each and every step of this process. p83 None of this remotely suggests a postwar trump-up or sleight of hand, your two charges. Rudashevksi in his diary gives a different location for the provocation, but he seems to mean by provocation the actual removals - indicating that he was hearing additional or somewhat different information to that reaching Kruk. What this suggests is that the sources largely mesh on this series of events and their impact on the Jewish quarter, with some details not corroborated, as one would expect in a large, confusing event noted in real time, and that Kruk was as I had described him, an observer / chronicler, trying to gather information and document to the best of his abilities what he saw, heard, learned, and gathered. His diary is useful because of its immediacy and in that it meshes well with other accounts and documents. That Kruk, who possessed a strong point of view, can be shown to be honest and a good chronicler reinforces the value of his document.
