Shmuel Elhanan / Shmuel Rabinovitch (M / Lithuania, 1930), Holocaust survivor

Shmuel Elhanan / Shmuel Rabinovitch (M / Lithuania, 1930), Holocaust survivor

Amos Rabinovitch (M / Germany, 1925), Holocaust survivor

Binyamin Rabinovitch (M / Germany, 1926), Holocaust survivor

• Shmuel Remained with his father. Was not included among the Kovno Boys.
• <Kovno Ghetto> <Kaufering> <Death March>

USHMM

Shmuel Elhanan was born Shmuel Rabinovitch in Kaunas in 1930. He was the youngest of three children born to Shulamit Rosenblum (b. 1901 in Minsk) and Dr. Yitzchak Elhanan Rabinovitch (b. 1900 in Kaunas). Dr. Rabinovitch was named after his grandfather, the renown Talmudist and Chief Rabbi of Lithuania, Rabbi Yitzchak Elhanan Spektor. Dr. Rabinovitch left Kovno for Berlin in the 1920s to study chemistry at the University of Berlin. There, he met Shulamit Rosenblum (b. 1901) who had fled from Minsk in 1917 and was studying the Montessori educational method. They married in 1924 and had two sons, Amos (b. 1925) and Binyamin (b. 1926). The family returned to Kovno in 1927, where the father went to work in his family's hardware business. Their youngest son Shmuel was born in Kovno in 1930. The Rabinovitch' were avid Zionists and sent their boys to the Schwabe Hebrew Gymnasium. In April 1940 the two older boys immigrated to Palestine legally under the Berlin quota. The rest of the family stayed in Kovno and were later confined to the ghetto. While in the ghetto, Dr. Rabinovitch served as the deputy head of the German labor office under Lieutenant Gustav Hermann, who was known for his human decency. Hermann left his deputy in charge of the day to day operations of the office, which allowed Rabinovitch to use his position to help relieve the sufferings of other Jews. At times, Hermann would convey German plans about the ghetto to Rabinovitch, who would forward the information to the Jewish Council. Shmuel, who was too young to work in the regular labor force, worked as an eilbote or messenger for the Jewish Council. Yitzchak, Shulamit and Shmuel Rabinovitch survived the war and were reunited on July 8, 1945 at the Pontebana transit camp, near Tarvisio, Italy. There, they met Amos, who was a soldier in the Jewish Brigade. The family immigrated to Palestine four months later. The middle son, Binyamin, was later killed in action in Israel's War of Independence, on July 18, 1948.

USHMM Oral Interview

Shmuel Elhanan (born Rabinovitch) discusses his prewar family life in Lithuania; his brothers who immigrated to Palestine four weeks before the Russians entered Lithuania; his father’s studies in chemistry at the University of Berlin where he met his mother and married in 1924; their return to Kovno in 1927; his father’s position as the deputy head of the German labor office under Lt. Gustave Hermann; taking care of the vegetable gardens and potato fields left by the Lithuanians; studying in vocational school in the ghetto and learning metalwork and woodwork; working as a messenger boy; his Bar Mitzvah which took place in the ghetto; living in fear his entire time in the ghetto; his mother’s view that they would not survive; how his mother declined the offer from a Lithuanian who was ready to find a hiding place for him; his mother’s goodbye letters to her sons in Palestine, one of which reached a brother in 1944; being sent to the “right” side during the big action when 10,000 Jews were deported in one day; how during the children’s action someone told him to stand on a stool so he would look older; being taken out of the ghetto with his parents in one of the last groups; being forced into cattle cars and sent near Danzig; how his mother stayed with them when some of the other women were taken off and sent to Stutthof; being sent to the subcamp of Dachau to the labor camp Kaufering; being sent on a death march to Dachau; their liberation on May 2, 1945 by a Japanese unit; and his view that his optimistic outlook helped him survive.