KAMENETS: A Holocaust Memoire

There’s a photograph I’ve been carrying for years. Three young girls stand by a wooden fence in Kamenets-Litovsk, a small town near Brest in what is now Belarus. Two of them are wearing dresses my mother sent from Argentina—clothes meant for a journey across the ocean, for a reunion that never came.

Rivka and Rachel Gurisnki-Kaplan dressed in white. Murdered in Kamenets

Announcement published in the Memorial Book of Kamenets

My grandfather had sent for them. There was a steamship waiting. But it was a race against time, and the girls lost. Not long after this photo was taken, they and their parents were forced to dig a mass grave and were executed at its edge by German soldiers.

For decades, their names were unknown to me—just faces in a fading image. Until now.

Thanks to the Memorial Book of Kamenets Litovsk, I was able to identify them at last: Shoshana Kaplan (affectionately called Shoul’ke), her husband Mirtche Gurinski, and their daughters Rivka and Rachel. They either perished in that mass execution or were later deported to Treblinka.

That discovery has given shape to a project that’s long lived quietly inside me: a documentary about Kamenets-Litovsk—not just about my family, but about the rich Jewish life that once existed there. A vibrant community that was wiped out, but not forgotten.

We’re now in the early stages of development, and I’m preparing for a first scouting journey to Kamenets. I also hope to collaborate closely with the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York as this project moves forward.

If you have family stories, photos, or information related to Kamenets-Litovsk, I would be honored if you’d share them with me. These voices matter—each memory is a thread in the larger fabric of this story.

Please follow along as this journey unfolds—and if this post moves you, I encourage you to share it. There are more faces waiting to be named, more stories to bring back into the light.