Lev Student Research Fellow Aliyah Blank presents on Jewish resistance in the Vilna and Kovno ghettos

Aliyah Blank, USC alumna and 2025 Beth and Arthur Lev Fellow, gave a lecture at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research about Jewish resistance in the Vilna and Kovno Ghettos from 1941 to 1943. The research presented in the talk holds personal significance for Blank, whose great-grandmother Faye Blank was born thirty minutes outside of Vilna and left Lithuania during the Holocaust.

Blank began with a series of family portraits of relatives who lived in Prienai, Lithuania before immigrating during the war. However, not all relatives successfully escaped, and Faye Blank’s grandfather Osher Milstein was murdered. Though there is limited information about Milstein, Blank noted that his name is listed at the Oregon Holocaust Memorial and that her research has allowed her to reconnect with her family’s heritage. These family histories inspired Blank to pursue research about resistance in Lithuanian ghettos, which are commonly overlooked in Holocaust Studies.

Part of this oversight, Blank commented, is a consequence of the country’s small population as well as the near total decimation of Lithuanian Jewry. During the Holocaust, approximately 95-96% of all Lithuanian Jews were killed, with roughly 80% having been murdered even prior to the emergence of ghettos and death camps in the area. These numbers emphasize the importance of studying resistance’s critical role in Lithuania. As Blank asked, “What does resistance look like in a place where almost all of the Jewish people [had been] eradicated?”

Blank referred to Professor Wolf Gruner’s definition of resistance to provide a framework for thinking about the various ways that Lithuanian Jews resisted Nazi occupation. She underscored the importance of challenging the conception that Jews were passive victims by relying on Gruner’s definition of resistance, which acknowledges a wide range of activities contesting oppression regardless of their success or failure. In addition to secondary sources, Blank noted the following primary sources as being central to her research: testimonies in USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, archival materials in USC Special Collections, and historical images from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Blank next addressed the ghettos more directly by describing the living conditions. She referenced the personal experiences of Abraham Resnick and Jack Brauns, whose testimonies detail the lack of heat, clean water, and sewers. Yet, despite the severe lack of resources, Jews in both ghettos developed healthcare systems, schools, and mutual aid networks. Most of these programs and facilities were clandestine operations, and Jewish residents risked their lives to participate in them.

Healthcare was especially sophisticated, Blank explained, and the medical facility at Kovno had different departments such as the Sanitary Epidemiology Service and the vaccination station. Sanitation was of particular concern, as adequate healthcare would prevent natural death from diseases such as typhoid, as well as preventing the Nazis from developing a pretext for eliminating the ghettos. The medical facilities also supported secret births and abortions. Blank asserted that the option to decide the fate of unborn babies was in itself an act of resistance that helped families survive and remain together as a unit. Blank used these examples to emphasize the need for addressing communal acts as a form of resistance.

Blank then continued addressing other notable forms of community organizing and resistance. In the Vilna ghetto, residents established public kitchens, a public health office, and an orphanage. Blank referred to Liba Augenfeld’s testimony in which she describes the difficulties of working in an orphanage. Augenfeld and others like her provided care and emotional support for some of the ghetto’s most vulnerable residents. Both the Vilna and Kovno ghettos created secret schools. Mandatory education in Kovno demonstrates that schooling was not only seen as a core function of society but as a critical form of resistance.

Blank concluded by returning to the definition of resistance. She stated that Lithuanian resistance during the Holocaust did not always come in the form of grand gestures. Instead, resistance most commonly took the shape of daily acts that preserved one’s values, identities, and lifestyle. Survivor testimony about life in the Vilna and Kovno ghettos reveal that armed resistance was only one form of fighting oppression. Blank argued that daily acts of resistance were not just about surviving but also about the refusal to surrender one’s humanity.

A lively Q&A followed the talk, and questions centered around the specifics of medical treatment, communication amongst Lithuanian Jews during the Holocaust, and the relationship between Vilna, Kovno, and other ghettos. The ensuing discussion shed further light on the logistics and challenges of daily life in Vilna and Kovno, as well as the broader networks that supported the survival of Jewish residents in Lithuanian ghettos.