BBC BBC.

BBC.

Hello and thank you for downloading witness from the BBC World Service with me Alex Last

and today we hear from 92-year-old Sarah Ghanita, a Jewish Lithuanian Partizan who escaped

from the Kowness Ghetto to fight the Nazis during the Second World War.

In 1941, when the German occupied Lithuania, the same day pogroms against the Jews started which were organized not by the

Germans but absolutely only by the Lithuanians.

And my three uncles were killed at the backyard of their home.

Sarah Gennite was born into a Jewish family in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1924.

From the end of June, beginning July, the Germans took over all the Jewish question and new killings began.

I was imprisoned in the Kowness ghetto and on October 29

the selection started right and left.

Right and left.

9,200 people were sent to the 9th fourth in Kaunas and all were killed among them 5,000 children.

In this moment I decided that I am not going to die how the Germans prepared for me.

I will join any underground organization and I will really be the master of my fate.

Sarah joined a small cell of the Jewish underground resistance inside the ghetto called the

Anti-Fascist Fighting Organization. a At the end of the meeting, a nice looking young man, to Michelle Rubinsonis, entered the room and introduced himself,

he was the leader of a unit of seven cells.

He was a very tall, nice-looking man. We were the same age,

16, 17 years old. Soon he became my friend and later on the friendship turned into love.

For the Jewish fighters there was one goal to escape from the ghetto to join the communist-led

...