Holocaust Remembrance / From Lithuanian ghetto to leading Israeli jurist

"My dear friends, Leshem, I am alive and I am free. After three years of suffering I am once again like everybody else. The accursed Germans murdered my whole family," Tzvi (Hirsch) Brik wrote to Yehudit Leshem in Palestine on September 1, 1944, after the liberation of the ghetto in Kovno, Lithuania.

"I do not yet have Liba and Arik [his wife, and his son, the future Supreme Court president Aharon Barak]. "I still hope to find them. Even if I want to make a list of all our mutual friends who were murdered, the paper will not suffice. I am also tired of doing this. Now I am working and I am not lacking for food ... Send clothing urgently if it is not too difficult for you. Say hello to Haim Berles, uncle Shor, Eliyahu Dobkin, Moshe Kleinboim [Sneh] ... and all my friends. I long to embrace you, everyone, and to cry ... Kisses to all and to your children, Yours, Hirsch."

Dr. Leah Price, director of projects at the Yad Vashem Holocaust commemoration authority's International School of Holocaust Studies found this letter, written by the father of retired Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, in the Yad Vashem archives.

"I recalled my mother, who was a pioneer at the training kibbutz in Memel, Lithuania, talking about extensive Zionist activities led by Yehudit Leshem," Dr. Price says.

With the German occupation in March, 1939, Leshem moved to Kovno where she met Tzvi Brik, who headed the Palestine Office [an office opened by the World Zionist Organization to smooth Jewish immigration to Palestine], and the two corresponded after the war, Price recalled.

Leshem, who moved with her husband and two children to Tel Aviv in 1940, felt an obligation to the Jews who remained behind, so she followed their fate through letters, which clearly reflected the uncertainty, the fear and the longing for Palestine. Occasionally Leshem would hear directly from little Arik, who had learned to read and write from his mother. In one letter, Liba wrote:

"Dear friends, Hirsch has already written you everything. I have only to thank you from the depths of my heart for your true friendship. Yes, dear ones, many terrible and nightmarish years have passed since we accompanied you on your way to Palestine. What we have gone through is difficult to describe. We can never have back what we lost. A whole beautiful Jewish world has been destroyed. No Jew with a beard can be seen in Lithuania. Our fathers and mothers have disappeared, the bearers of Jewish life, good and pure! No one around us is ashamed; on the contrary, they continue to hate us, the remnants. Our only hope is Palestine, a new life, with strength and enthusiasm. Arik is 9, a good, big boy, but our wanderings have had a very bad effect on him. I pin my hopes on the land. Yours, Liva."

In a childish hand, at the bottom of the page, appear the words: "I greet you warmly. Shalom, Arik."

Tzvi Brik, his wife Liba and their son Arik entered the Kovno ghetto when Arik was 5 years old. Although they could have received a certificate of emigration to Palestine, Brik chose to remain and assist the local Jews. In March 1944, Arik was saved from a major round-up of the ghetto's children when his parents hid him. They understood that the only way to save their son was to get him out of the ghetto. So Liba and Arik escaped, and Tzvi remained with his brother-in-law in the house of a Lithuanian farmer they knew, where they hid until the liberation of the ghetto in August 1944.

In July 1944, the men of the ghetto were sent to Dachau, but Brik and his brother-in-law saved themselves by hiding in a trench. When they returned to Kovno, Brik recognized his uncle by the jacket he was wearing, and they were reunited with Brik's father as well. After the war, the family did not want to remain under Soviet rule, so they fled to Italy, where many Jews were gathering. At that time Brik also wrote a number of letters, and in 1947, the family came to Palestine, after turning down visas to the United States.

"Most outstanding in the letters is their concern for the child," Price says, noting that Brik asked for books so his son could keep up his studies. Price says Barak himself recalled in his testimony about those days that he "was not abnormal, because what he experienced was normal for those days," Price says. "They also emphasized their hope regarding Israel. They were ardent Zionists."

On January 29, 1945, Brik wrote that he was not applying for permission to emigrate because there were 800 certificates for 1600 refugee applicants, and that priority was given to the sick, medical personnel, pregnant women and orphans. "There is nothing new with us. Liba and Arik are studying Hebrew hard. If you can, please send us occasionally the newspaper Hegeh with vowel points. It will mean a lot to Liba."

In 1946, Brik wrote: "Please send at book-rate books on geography and Jewish history, science, etc. If it is not difficult, send us a Hebrew-English/English-Hebrew dictionary. You can't get that here, even for money."