"The Witness Trees" tells through poetry, eyewitness accounts, and a moving historical narrative the tangled web of Lithuanian Jewish history. David Wolpe, a powerful Yiddish poet and writer, reports on the events during the summer of 1941 when the Jews of Keidan, a Lithuanian shtetl [village], were systematically massacred by local towns people. He was one of the few survivors when 2,076 men, women, and children perished and he describes in detail how a relatively cooperative and amicable community became a killing field.

Translated by: Rabbi David Wolpe