The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee today reported that Dr. Jacob Vigodsky, the 85-year-old well-known Vilna Jewish leader, perished in the Vilna prison during the German occupation, and that Noah Prilutsky, former Warsaw Jewish leader, and famous philologist, who in 1941 was appointed by the Lithuanian Government to the newly-created chair for Yiddish language at Vilna University, was shot by the Gestapo.
prior to his execution, Prilutsky, who was arrested on August 1, 1941, was surrendered by the Gestapo to Dr. Gothardt, German expert on Jewish affairs who was sent from Berlin to Vilna to collect rare Jewish books and manuscripts. The German “scientist” asked Prilutsky to submit to him a list of all the rare publications of the famous Jewish “Strashun Library” in Vilna which had in its files books printed in the 16th century. After obtaining this list, Dr. Gothardt left for Berlin and Prilutsky was shot. The director of the Strashun Library who could not bear seeing how the Germans were “managing” the famous cultural institution, committed suicide by hanging, the report reveals.
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