Monia Levinski, the younger child of Chaja and Leon Levinski, was born in 1931 in Kazlu-Ruda, a small village in rural Lithuania. Monia was a part of a large, loving, extended family. His father was a lumber dealer.
Both of Monia’s parents grew up in Kazlu-Ruda but attended high school in the closest city, Marijampole, which hosted a vibrant Jewish community. The 2,545 Jews earned their livelihoods from trading in agricultural produce and from small industry. The first Hebrew high school in Lithuania was established in Marijampole, as well as a small farm which trained youth interested in becoming Halutsim (pioneers) in Palestine (pre-1948 Israel). However, life was soon to take a turn for the worse when, in summer 1941, the Germans invaded Lithuania.
With the German occupation, Monia and his family were forced to leave their home. Together with all the Jews of the surrounding area, they were deported to the Marijampole Ghetto. The ghetto was overcrowded, unsanitary and sealed from the world without food, medicine or heat.
At the beginning of September 1941, the Germans liquidated the ghetto. They forced all the Jews to march in groups of 500 to a site outside the city, under the watchful eye of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile German killing squads) and their Lithuanian collaborators. There, in front of large previously-dug pits, Monia, his family and all the Jews were shot by machine guns and their bodies fell into the pits. The dead and any that fell in still alive were buried together in those pits.
Monia was 10 years old.
Monia was one of 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust.
A personal history from the Archives of the SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER 1991-183 [001]
