Кому жить и кому умереть --

Memoirs of a Jew born in 1925 in Baranovichi as David Kolpenitskii. His native town was occupied by the Germans in June 1941, and he was interned in a ghetto with ca. 12,000 other Jews. After a murder action in the ghetto, when 3,000 Jews were killed, Myshanka joined an underground group which planned and carried out a series of escapes in September 1942, when a second murder action began. The young people joined an armed group in the forest, which proved to be a criminal band rather than partisans. Only in 1943 did Myshanka manage to join genuine Soviet partisans, with whom he continued to fight until 1944. In winter 1942 he visited the Baranovichi ghetto clandestinely several times, and in December 1942 he narrowly escaped the last action, when the ghetto was liquidated. During his stay with the partisans in the forests he witnessed antisemitism on the part of partisans several times. There were also cases in which Jews who had escaped from ghettos where killed by armed men who presented themselves as partisans. After the war Myshanka settled in Israel. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)