With a Rifle in My Hand and Eretz Yisrael in My Heart, Dov Levin

With a Rifle in My Hand
and Eretz Yisrael in My Heart

by Dov Levin

Acknowledgments

Project Coordinators

Our sincere appreciation to Professor Dov Levin
for permission to put this material on the JewishGen web site.

This material is made available by JewishGen, Inc. and the Yizkor Book Project for the purpose of
fulfilling our mission of disseminating information about the Holocaust and destroyed Jewish communities.
This material may not be copied, sold or bartered without JewishGen, Inc.'s permission. Rights may be reserved by the copyright holder.

JewishGen, Inc. makes no representations regarding the accuracy of the translation. The reader may wish to refer to the original material for verification.
JewishGen is not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in the original work and cannot rewrite or edit the text to correct inaccuracies and/or omissions.
Our mission is to produce a translation of the original work and we cannot verify the accuracy of statements or alter facts cited.

I.	Before the Nazi Conquest	1
	Under Soviet Rule	1
II.	My First Reaction to the Nazi German Conquest	3
III.	In the Slabodka Ghetto	4
	Events in the Summer of 1941	4
	Commands, Decrees, Systematic Killings (“Aktziye's”), Fear, Pressure and Despair	5
	The Time of “Relative Quiet” in the Kovno Ghetto (November 1941 to October 1943	7
IV.	In the Anti-Nazi Underground of the Kovno Ghetto	9
	The Craving for Resistance and its Realization	9
	The “Estonia Aktziye” – My Watershed Event in the Ghetto	9
	The Unfortunate Chapter of the Flight to the Augustow Forest	12
	In the Kibbutz – Mildos 7	13
V.	In the Ranks of "Death to the German Occupiers" Partisan Unit	16
	To the Forests	17
	The Dramatic Meeting with Abba Kovner and Its Consequences	19
	The Missive – Its Contents and its Significance	20
VI.	Exiting the Forest and "Self Evaluation"	22
VII.	Epilogue	24
VIII.	Appendix	28
	Monday – October, 15, 1945 – On the Way to the Ship in Italy	28
	Tuesday – October 16, 1945	29
	The Holy Sabbath – Day Six of the Journey to the Holy Land – With Best Wishes for Success – October 20, 1945	29
	Sunday – October 22, 1945 – The Seventh Day of the Voyage – Cyprus	30

Yizkor Book Project JewishGen Home Page

Yizkor Book Director, Lance Ackerfeld
Emerita Yizkor Book Project Manager, Joyce Field z”l
Contact person for this translation
This web page created by Max Heffler