Jack Kagan

Dov Cohen

Pt. 1 (pp. 1-118), "My Life", contains memoirs by Dov Cohen (b. Berl Kagan, 1922); pt. 2 (pp. 119-254), "How I Survived", contains memoirs of his cousin, Jack (Idel) Kagan (b. 1929), both of them from Novogrudok, Belarus. They describe the Holocaust in Novogrudok: the execution of 52 male Jews on 26 July 1941, the massacre of 5,000 Jews on 5-8 December 1941, the establishment of the ghetto, and massacres on 7 August 1942 and 7 May 1943. Before the last massacre of ca. 250 "specialists" who worked in a labor camp in Novogrudok, Kagan and some others dug a tunnel and fled to the partisans. Cohen managed to leave the camp and join the partisans at the end of 1942. They relate the activities of the Jewish partisan group headed by the Bielski brothers, of which they were members. After the war, Cohen settled in Israel and Kagan in England. Pt. 2 includes facsimiles of documents pertaining to the Novogrudok ghetto and to partisan activities in the area.

Jack Kagan

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