Stories from a Tower of Faces: The Rabbi
Szymen Rozowski was the last rabbi of Eisiskes.
He was killed in September 1941 after Nazi Germany occupied the area, which is now Lithuania. And he was not the only Jew to perish in the massacre: 4,000 Jews from Eisiskes and surrounding villages were killed, ending their community’s peaceful, 250-year history.
Rabbi Rozowski’s dignified portrait is among more than 1,000 photographs from Eisiskes on display in the “Tower of Faces” at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. It both humanizes and memorializes victims who were killed in their town, by German and Lithuanian forces, just 80 years ago.
He was an ardent Zionist (a movement with the goal of creating a Jewish state). Because of local antisemitism, Rabbi Rozowski encouraged young people to get to Palestine, even helping them pay for necessary documents.
His zeal for Zionism was not appreciated by other local rabbis, who were more traditional and were concerned about the growing secularization of their communities.
When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, he organized the Refugee Committee in Eisiskes to assist people fleeing toward Lithuania. When Soviet forces occupied eastern Poland according to the terms of a pact with Germany, the rabbi and his family were thrown out of their home. They continued to work to help refugees and those displaced by war, and to ensure that children could receive a Jewish education.
In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. After German forces reached Eisiskes, the synagogue was stripped of its treasures and turned into a horse stable. Rabbi Razwoski held secret meetings with other Jewish leaders, trying to figure out how to cope with German demands. In September 1941, after learning of the destruction of the Jewish community of Varena, he urged that the community obtain arms to fight back, a suggestion other members of the community opposed.
Shortly thereafter, the Jewish residents of Eisiskes were rounded up by Germans and Lithuania forces. They were held for three days at the synagogue. On September 25, 1941, Rabbi Razwoski was at the head of a procession being marched to the killing site — an old Jewish cemetery where an open pit had been dug. He was the last person killed during the massacre, so that he would be forced to witness the deaths of his congregants. Some accounts say that he was shot last, others say that he was thrown into the pit and buried alive.
One resident of Eisiskes who heeded the rabbi’s warnings was Moshe Sonenson. He found hiding places for his wife and three children. After the roundup, he escaped from the synagogue and went to his family. They managed to survive the Holocaust in a series of hiding places. Decades later Moshe Sonenson’s daughter, Yaffa, collected the photographs that comprise the “Tower of Faces.”
More stories from the “Tower of Faces”:
Jewish Victims and Survivors from One Small Town
The Youth Group
The Toddler
The Sisters
The Soccer Players
The Guardian of Memory
