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God's Sabbatical Years: The Story of Alan Weiler

As a boy, Alan Weiler lived in Vilna, Lithuania, a city famed for its Jewish learning. A promising student, Alan planned to attend the city’s university and become a doctor. In 1941, when he was 13, Germans captured the city. The tried to flee, but were captured and brought back. Gangs began to roam the streets hunting Jews for bounty, dragging them to prison or massacre. Alan and his family were stripped of their belongings and sent to the Vilna Ghetto, where many starved or died. The Ghetto was itself only a stop on the way to a succession of concentration camps, where the only alternatives were slave labor or slaughter. Yet through a combination of guile, linguistic ability, and luck, Alan survived.

During the Holocaust, about 95 percent of Lithuania’s quarter-million Jewish population was murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. In telling his story to journalist Peter Harris, Weiler said it should be called God’s Sabbatical Years, contending that “if there is a God in Heaven, he must have been on holiday” during those long years of suffering.

This Holocaust memoir was written over 40 years ago, with only three typed copies produced. One surviving copy was being donated to the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in London, when the archivist remarked to the author Peter Harris, that the books deserves to be published. So now this long forgotten important first-hand account of the horrors of the Shoah appears in print and are available to the public.

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God's Sabbatical Years: The Story of Alan Weiler

As a boy, Alan Weiler lived in Vilna, Lithuania, a city famed for its Jewish learning. A promising student, Alan planned to attend the city’s university and become a doctor. In 1941, when he was 13, Germans captured the city. The tried to flee, but were captured and brought back. Gangs began to roam the streets hunting Jews for bounty, dragging them to prison or massacre. Alan and his family were stripped of their belongings and sent to the Vilna Ghetto, where many starved or died. The Ghetto was itself only a stop on the way to a succession of concentration camps, where the only alternatives were slave labor or slaughter. Yet through a combination of guile, linguistic ability, and luck, Alan survived.

During the Holocaust, about 95 percent of Lithuania’s quarter-million Jewish population was murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. In telling his story to journalist Peter Harris, Weiler said it should be called God’s Sabbatical Years, contending that “if there is a God in Heaven, he must have been on holiday” during those long years of suffering.

This Holocaust memoir was written over 40 years ago, with only three typed copies produced. One surviving copy was being donated to the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in London, when the archivist remarked to the author Peter Harris, that the books deserves to be published. So now this long forgotten important first-hand account of the horrors of the Shoah appears in print and are available to the public.

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God's Sabbatical Years: The Story of Alan Weiler

God's Sabbatical Years: The Story of Alan Weiler

God's Sabbatical Years: The Story of Alan Weiler

God's Sabbatical Years: The Story of Alan Weiler

Overview

As a boy, Alan Weiler lived in Vilna, Lithuania, a city famed for its Jewish learning. A promising student, Alan planned to attend the city’s university and become a doctor. In 1941, when he was 13, Germans captured the city. The tried to flee, but were captured and brought back. Gangs began to roam the streets hunting Jews for bounty, dragging them to prison or massacre. Alan and his family were stripped of their belongings and sent to the Vilna Ghetto, where many starved or died. The Ghetto was itself only a stop on the way to a succession of concentration camps, where the only alternatives were slave labor or slaughter. Yet through a combination of guile, linguistic ability, and luck, Alan survived.

During the Holocaust, about 95 percent of Lithuania’s quarter-million Jewish population was murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. In telling his story to journalist Peter Harris, Weiler said it should be called God’s Sabbatical Years, contending that “if there is a God in Heaven, he must have been on holiday” during those long years of suffering.

This Holocaust memoir was written over 40 years ago, with only three typed copies produced. One surviving copy was being donated to the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in London, when the archivist remarked to the author Peter Harris, that the books deserves to be published. So now this long forgotten important first-hand account of the horrors of the Shoah appears in print and are available to the public.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781939561565
Publisher: Jewishgen.Inc
Publication date: 08/05/2017
Series: Yizkor-Books-In-Print
Pages: 234
Product dimensions: 8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Peter Harris is a writer and journalist who for more than 25 years was Health and Medical Correspondent of the Manchester Evening News, former sister newspaper of the revered Manchester Guardian, now the national daily, The Guardian. He was born in the seaside resort of Cleethorpes, near Grimsby, coincidentally, in the same county of Lincolnshire where Alan Weiler settled when he first came to England. Now semi-retired, Peter and his wife, Wendy, live in the historic small market town of Sandbach in Cheshire. His leisure interests include oil painting, gardening and country walking.

As a boy, Alan Weiler lived in Vilna, Lithuania, a city famed for its Jewish learning. A promising student, Alan planned to attend the city's university and become a doctor. In 1941, when he was 13, Germans captured the city. The Weilers tried to flee, but were captured and brought back. Gangs began to roam the streets hunting Jews for bounty, dragging them to prison or massacre. Alan and his family were stripped of their belongings and sent to the Vilna Ghetto, where many starved or died. The Ghetto was itself only a stop on the way to a succession of concentration camps, where the only alternatives were slave labor or slaughter. Yet through a combination of guile, linguistic ability, and luck, Alan survived. During the Holocaust, about 95 percent of Lithuania's quarter-million Jewish population was murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. In telling his story to journalist Peter Harris, Weiler said it should be called God's Sabbatical Years, contending that "if there is a God in Heaven, he must have been on holiday" during those long years of suffering.

Table of Contents

The Trial At Hechingen

My Childhood Years

Our Flight From Vilna

Return To The Ghetto – And The “Yellow Star” Life In The Ghetto

Under The Nazi Jackboot

Going Into Hiding

Becoming A Blackmarketeer

Survival In The Ghetto

Living And Dying By Bread Alone

Civil Administration Under Hingst and Murer The “Lides Affair”

My First Teenage Sweetheart

The “Colonia Toz” Mass Murder

Joining The Partisans

“Legal” And “Illegal” Diseases

Making The Vilna Province “Judenrein” – Clear Of Jews

Icik Witenberg And The United Partisans Organization

The Liquidation Of The Ghetto

Our Arrival At Vaivara

My “Baptism Of Fire”

Arrival at Narva

Life Under Pannicke and Schnabel

Harsh Treatment In A Harsh Winter

My “Grandma” Evginia

Arrival At Kivioli 2

Arrival At Aseri

Arrival At Goldfiltz

On The Road To Tallinn

Arrival At Stutthof

Arrival At Schomberg - And The “Scourge of Dautmergen”

The Death Of My Father

Dautmergen Under Kruth And Schnabel

Increase In Allied Air-Raids

The Evacuation Of Dautmergen

Our First Taste Of Freedom

List of those murdered in Dautmergen

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