Proclamation "Let us not be led like sheep to the slaughter!"

Proclamation "Let us not be led like sheep to the slaughter!"

Deportation

Gestapo

Holocaust

Jewish Resistance

Abba Kovner

Moreshet Archive, No. D.1.4630.

1942-01-01

Let us not be led like sheep to the slaughter!
Jewish youth, don’t trust those who deceive you. Of 80,000 Jews in
"Yerushalayim de Lita", only 20,000 are left. Our parents, brothers, and
Sisters were torn from us before our eyes.
Where are the hundreds of men who were seized for labor by
Lithuanians?
Where are the naked women and the children seized from us on the
Night of fear? Where are the Jews of Yom Kippur?
And where are our brethren of the second ghetto?!
No one returned of those marched through the gates of the ghetto,
All the roads of the Gestapo lead to Ponar.
And Ponar means death!
Those who waver, put aside all illusion! Your children, your wives,
Your husbands are no more. Ponar is no concentration camp. All were
Shot dead there.
Hitler conspires to kill all the Jews of Europe. And the Jews of
Lithuania has been picked at the first line.
Let us not go like sheep to the slaughter!
True, we are weak and defenceless, but the only answer to the murderer is resistance!
Brothers! Better fall as free fighters than to live at the mercy of the
Murderers! Rise up! Rise up until your last breath.
January 1, 1942 Vilna ghetto