As secretary of the Ghetto's Jewish Council of Elders, Tory had access to privileged information and documents.
[1][3] Tory was a gymnast and competed in the first Maccabiah Games (1932), a Jewish sporting competition in Tel Aviv.
[2] After the Soviets deemed Zionism to be "counter-revolutionary", Tory fled Kovno for the city of Vilna to avoid arrest and deportation to Siberia.
[2] Tory was secretary of the Kovno Ghetto's Jewish Council of Elders, a body that was forced to administer German rules and regulations.
Before escaping the camp himself on March 23, 1944, Tory buried his diary and the secret archive in five crates beneath Block C, an unfinished Soviet-era building.
[2] He included a note that said, "With awe and reverence I am hiding in this crate what I have written, noted and collected with thrill and anxiety, so that it may serve as material evidence--’corpus delecti’--accusing testimony when the Day of Judgment comes.”[3] Tory, Pnina and her daughter survived until the liberation of Lithuania by hiding on a farm.
Pnina's first husband, Pinchus Sheinzon, had been murdered at the Seventh Fort, a defense fortification that was used as the first concentration camp in Lithuania.
Tory established a law firm in Israel and was secretary general of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurors.
[2] Tory's meticulous records were used as evidence in the war crime trials of Lithuanian and German perpetrators including the mayor of Kovno and an SS officer that ordered the murder of 9,200 Jewish men, women, and children.