Seta – Jonava – Vandziogala – Kedainiai

I travelled with my friend, Laima Ardaviciene, the English teacher at Kedainiai High School, to Seta, Jonava, Vandizogala and back to Kedainiai

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Jonava

Municipality:
- Jonava District Municipality
Area:
- 13.67 km²

Jewish buildings, including the former synagogue. Information posters on the buildings.

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Former synagogue Former synagogue

The Jewish Cemetery

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The amphitheatre and holiday entertainment

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Vandžiogala

Population:
- 946 (2001)

The Holocaust site on the outskirts of the town.

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With Rimantas & Laima

A walk around Kedainiai

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June 19, 2016June 20, 2016

Pakruojis & Siaulenai

Screen Shot 2016-06-18 at 11.23.53 AM

I visited Pakruojis to see the wooden synagogue in the city.

As you can see from the images, it is currently being restored. We previously saw that the wooden synagogue in Ziezmariai is also under restoration.

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Other views of the town

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Screen Shot 2016-06-18 at 11.24.38 AM

My visit to my wife’s family town of Shavlan or Siaulenai was not so successful.

Her maternal grandfather’s family name was Saevitzon, in Israel, Shavei Zion.

I searched for the Jewish cemetery, asked at the Christian cemetery and was told by locals that there was a Jewish cemetery on the other side of town. I couldn’t find it and I ran out of time.

I later emailed Sandra Petrukonyte of Maceva, who kindly replied:

Dear Eli,

It is so pity that you could not find. I tried to search for exact location. The map is attached (for your future journey!).
It is seems that the way to the cemetery is not marked by any sign, the path is not paved and the cemetery itself is in a small distant forest. Not surprising that you got lost.

MACEVA does not have own photos, therefore I am adding links to another websites with general view of the cemetery:

http://kvr.kpd.lt/#/static-heritage-detail/0fb28967-e816-4101-9930-978e9dc5588a . Photos were taken almost 2 years ago. According to their data, about 40 tombstones remained. Judging from my experiecne, usually amount of tombstones is bigger than Lithuanian Culture Department claims…
http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Siaulenai/Cemetery%20pictures.html Several pretty old photos. Probably you have seen this.

Siaulenai_jewish_cemetery

So, I will a revisit next time.

Here are some images of the town:

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IMG_8518a

I’m still on the long flight home to Perth. Great to have access to the Internet!

June 18, 2016October 15, 2019

Vabalninkas

My friend, Owen Ogince, was born in Johannesburg, but lived in Theunissen in the Orange Free State in South Africa. He went to boarding school in a larger city, such as Bloemfontein, typical of the many first generation of South African born Jews who lived in the country areas. Their parents often spoke only Yiddish and Afrikaans, creating an interesting sub culture which in many ways reflected their previous lives in the shtetls of Lithuania. They were often referred to as boerejode. For more information on boerejode, see the end of this post.

I took the opportunity to visit the shtetl of Vabalninkis in Lithuania, where Owen’s family came from.

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The Jewish Cemetery and the memorial to the Resistance.

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The Former Synagogue

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The Boerejode of the Boland

June 18, 2016October 15, 2019

Linkuva – Joniskelis – Pasvalys

Before I get onto this post, to those technologically challenged, here is another one to get your head around:

this post has been written and uploaded aboard an Emirates flight from Warsaw to Dubai en route to my home city of Perth.
I am not daunted by the tyranny of distance and having to spend almost a day in the air getting home. So this is another meaning of “staying connected”

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Now onto the post!
Linkuva

On my way to Vabalninkas from Joniskis, I stopped off in Linkuva, Joniskelis and Pasvalys

Linkuva town

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A Holocaust memorial a few km out of town

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Joniskelis

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Pasvalys

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The Jewish Cemetery

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Poswohl and Johannesburg

Digging Up Old Jewish Johannesburg

June 16, 2016October 15, 2019

Joniskis

Update:

The Ten Commandments have just been added – thanks to Cliff Marks for providing the update and 2 photos.

My original photo

The complex of the two synagogues

I was let into the buildings by a caretaker and revisited an hour later when I was fortunate to meet Linas Vinickas from the local museum. Linas gave me a tour of Jewish Joniskis.

The Raudonoji Synagogue

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A short video of Linas Vinickas

The Baltoji Synagogue

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Students’ tour of the synagogues

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The third synagogue building

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The Mural which includes the actor Laurence Harvey

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Joniškis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joniškis

City

Flag

Coat of arms

Coordinates:

56°14′0″N 23°36′0″ECoordinates:

Joniškis district municipality

Eldership

Joniškis eldership

Capital of

Joniškis district municipality
Joniškis eldership

First mentioned

1526

Granted city rights

1616

Government

• Mayor

Gediminas Čepulis

Population (2011)

• Total

9,900

Time zone

EET (UTC+2)

• Summer (DST)

EEST (UTC+3)

Website

http://www.joniskis.lt/

Joniškis church

Joniškis ( pronunciation (help·info)) is a city in northern Lithuania with a population of about 11,150. It is located 40 kilometers north of Šiauliai and 14 kilometers south of the Lithuania–Latvia border. Joniškis is the municipal and administrative center of Joniškis district municipality.

With the Church of the Accession of the Holy Virgin Mary (founded in 1901) and a complex of two Jewish synagogues – Red (built in 1897) and White (built in 1823) at its centre, the town has the status of an urban architectural heritage site.^{[citation needed]}

Joniškis has a Culture Centre, a local venue for music and theatre events.

A railway line connecting Riga and Šiauliai runs along the western boundary of the city. West of the railway, the city’s allotment gardens and the Lutheran and Victims of World War II cemeteries are located. Joniškis hosts the Jonas Avyžius Public Library of Joniškis District Municipality

Name

Joniškis is the Lithuanian name of the city. Versions of the name in other languages include Polish: Janiszki, Russian: Янишки Yanishki, Belarusian: Яні́шкі Yanishki, Yiddish: יאנישאק Yanishok, German: Jonischken, Latvian: Jonišķi

History

Joniškis was established in the beginning of the 16th century. It was mentioned in written sources on 23 February 1536 when Bishops of Vilnius and Samogitia visited the area and found that people still practiced the old pagan faith. People were worshiping the God of Thunder (Perkūnas), fire, snakes and other pagan deities. The bishop of Vilnius, John of the Lithuanian Dukes baptized the locals and established the new parish on 23 February 1536. A wooden church was built and the town of Joniškis was built around it. Bishop of Vilnius named the town Joniškis after his own name Jonas. Joniškis was on the crossroad of important trade roads.^[1]

In late 1941, 148 Jewish men were shot near Joniškis in the nearby forest. The remaining Jews (men, women and children) were murdered in the forest in September 1941. 493 people were murdered in total by an Einsatzgruppen of Joniškis policemen and Lituanian nationalists supervised by the Germans.^[2]

Notable people

June 13, 2016

Plateliai to Papile

My previous visit to the area was in 2014. Here is the link to that post

Plunge, Salantai & Plateliai, Lithuania

Wikipedia

Some images from this visit:

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Wikipedia

A visit with Eugenijus Bunka to Darbenai where we first visited the high school and met teachers Edita and Zivile.

We discussed ideas for the TEC – Tolerance Education Centre program, the school participates in.

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Eugenijus and I then visited the town, the Jewish cemetery and Holocaust sites.

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Wikipedia

Holocaust sites

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Former Jewish homes

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Wikipedia

Holocaust site outside Mazeikiai

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Wikipedia

Running late, so only took a few photos here.

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June 2, 2016

Ziezmariai & Switched At Birth

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The synagogue

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and surrounds

Read about the restoration here.

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Here is an amazing story connected with Ziezmariai

Sam & Ida Benson, neé Zlate Kot

In January I posted a request on LitvakSIG and JewishGen for stories or photos for the new Ziezmariai KehilaLink.

This is one of the replies I received:

I do have links in Zhezhmir (Ziezmariai! My grandmother, Ida Benson, neé Zlate Kot, immigrated from Zhezhmir to New York in 1907. Her parents were Kopel Kot and Frieda Rubinovitch, from the same town. In addition to Ida, she had a sister, Channa (Annie) and Mosche (Max) who followed her. That’s the good news. The bad news is that until a year ago we didn’t know who our grandparents were. Our father, James Patrick Collins, was somehow or another was mistaken for an Irish baby born on the same day in the same New York City teaching hospital. The other child was raised by my biological grandparents. Dad wasn’t so lucky. His Irish mother, Katie Kennedy, died when Dad was 9 months old and his Irish father, John Collins, put the three children in a Catholic orphanage when none of the sisters would agree to raise the children. We only discovered the mistake 99 years after Dad’s birth and solved the mystery almost exactly a year ago. I’ll include the relevant links to the story.

Since making contact with the Bensons, we’ve had many long discussions about our common grandparents and where they came from in Lithuania. Unfortunately, my first cousins said our grandparents (who they knew quite well), never talked about the old country or their early lives. I am so excited to see that someone is researching their Shtetl and may possibly provide some understanding of their lives. I went to Lithuania 3 years ago and it pains me that I was so close to Ziezmariai, but didn’t know I should visit.

Thanks

Alice Piebuch

Please read the full and amazing story on these two links:

<Switched-at-birth >

Strangepilgrimage

Cousins Alice Piebuch and Phyllis Pullman

My reply:

29 January 2016

Alice

Three years ago I met a CHABAD Rabbi in Tallin, Estonia and asked him where his family were from. He told me Ziezmariai in Lithuania.

His name is Shmuel KOT.

When I was in Riga the next day, I attended the morning service at the Peitav shul. The young CHABAD Rabbi told me that he was the brother of Rabbi Shmuel in Tallinn.

Eli

With Rabbi Shmuel KOT in Tallinn

With Rabbis Glasman & Shneur Zalmen KOT in Riga

We are now trying to find links between these two KOT families from Ziezmariai.

The Ziezmariai KehilaLink can be found here

May 25, 2016

High Flying back to the Shtetl

Somewhere over the Indian Ocean on my 6th visit to the shtetls of Europe.

This is my first live post from an aircraft at 12000 metres, thanks to the $1 wifi service Emirates offers on their A380 Airbus .

Posting from my iPhone 6+

Lots of entertainment on the 11 hour flight to Dubai, connecting with an 8 hour Qantas flight to London.

On Monday, I start my nine day drive around Lithuania. Lots of towns and shtetls to visit! I will be using Airbnb for the first time.

The following week I am in Kiev and Lviv, my first visit to the Ukraine.

On the final leg, I will be visiting Lublin and Warsaw in Poland before returning to Perth on 18 June.

I look forward to your company and feel free to comment. Let me know if am anywhere near your shtetl.

May 5, 2016May 5, 2016

Remembering Uncle Moisey

Is this Uncle Moisey, my mother’s brother?

There is nobody alive today who can tell us his story or would recognise his image! As kids, my cousins and I were told that he perished in the Holocaust in Latvia.

With his generation now gone, no one can remember the details.

My cousin Sonia Bloch and I found this photo recently – we believe it is Moisey Zeldin!

In 2011 I commissioned Rita Bogdanova of the Latvian State Archives in Riga to research my mother’s family.

This is what she found specifically about Moisey.

Moisey’s parents (my grandparents):

1.5 Ishochor (Zachar) Zeldin a petty bourgeois from Dvinsk, aged 23, married on May 22, 1905 in Riga to Hasia Jonje – Hase Jonin, daughter of Jossel Jonin, a petty bourgeois from Dvinsk, aged 20, and marriage was registered in the marriage records of the Riga Jewish community for 1905. Ktuba – 100 rubel. Isochor and Hase:

1.5.1. son Moisey Zeldin, born on October 14, 1905 in Daugavpils (see copy of his birth registration entry). He was not married, lived in Riga at Parka Street 1–4 and Lačpleša Street 129–4.

Birth registration entry Nr. 411 in the birth records of the Dvinsk Jewish community for 1905:

Moisey Zeldin was born on October 14, circumcised on October 21, 1905 (Julian calendar) by Abram Leib Evzin.

Father – Dvinsk petty bourgeois Isochor son of Leib Zeldin.

Mother – Hasia daughter of Josel Jonin.

My mother, her 5 sisters and parents were all in South Africa by 1937.

Moisey’s brother David somehow survived, as did David’s wife Esther and their two children who escaped to Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

All members of the family were struck off the house-register of Lačpleša Street 129–4 on June 26, 1941 which means that they had fled.

David, his wife and children were living back in Riga when my late cousin, Phyllis Jowell met them in 1960.

Esther and her daughter Sofka were last seen in Israel in the early 1980s. They then moved to Canada.

We have lost contact!

In the last few months, I wrote to the Names and Fates Project so that they could update their database at:

http://names.lu.lv/en.html

http://names.lu.lv/cgi-bin/one?lang=en&code=889014574631

I now have written to Yad Vashem to include Moisey on their database of Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

In Latvian Army uniform

We remember Moisey today on Holocaust Remembrance Day

April 28, 2016April 28, 2016

The Boerejode of the Boland

A visit to Cape Town is not complete without a drive to one of the towns in the Boland.

From Wikipedia:

Boland, Western Cape

The Boland (Afrikaans for “top country” or “land above”^[1]) is a region of the Western Cape province of South Africa, situated to the northeast of Cape Town in the middle and upper courses of the Berg and Breede Rivers, around the mountains of the central Cape Fold Belt. It is sometimes also referred to as the Cape Winelands because it is the primary region for the making of Western Cape wine.

Although the Boland does not have defined boundaries, its core lies around the towns of Stellenbosch, Paarl and Worcester. It may be understood to extend as far as Malmesbury, Tulbagh, Swellendam and Somerset West. This is approximately the area included in the Cape Winelands District Municipality, which was formerly called the Boland District Municipality. To the southwest lies the Cape Town metropolitan area, to the northwest the Swartland and West Coast, to the northeast the Great Karoo, to the east the Little Karoo, and to the south the Overberg.

The “Boland” name is given to a number of sports teams from the region, including the Boland cricket team and the Boland Cavaliers rugby union team.

Many of the Jews who came to Africa from Europe settled in rural areas and small dorps. They formed a subculture within the Afrikaner environment of these towns and many were known as Boerejode, Afrikaner Jews or more literally “farmer Jews”.

These towns could be regarded as Africa’s version of the shtetl back in Eastern Europe.

In the earlier years of settlement, there was the Jewish pedlar or smous, who travelled from town to town, farm to farm, selling his wares. Here is a memorial to the smous or pedlar on my new Graaff Reinet KehilaLink:

http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/graaff_reinet/Smouse.html

Below you will find a selection of my images of Stellenbosch, one of the main towns of the Boland with its striking mountains, rich winelands and outstanding Cape Dutch architecture.

I have also included some interesting articles which I found at the Kaplan Centre archives at UCT, the Univeristy of Cape Town, my alma mater!

A big thank you to Juan-Paul Burke, the librarian at the Kaplan Centre, always so obliging and helpful, for allowing me to use them.

And on a tangent – on campus there was no sign of Cecil John Rhodes, except for the old signs!

Boerejood

in Wikipedia, die vrye ensiklopedie

Afrikaner-Jews

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Afrikaner-Jews or Boere-Jode as they are sometimes known, are an offshoot of Afrikanerdom and Judaism. At the beginning of the 19th century, when greater freedom of religious practice was introduced in South Africa, small numbers of Ashkenazi Jews arrived from Britain and Germany. They established the first Ashkenazi Hebrew congregation in 1841. Between the end of the 19th century and 1930, large numbers of Jews began to arrive from Lithuania and Latvia. Their culture and contribution changed the character of the South African community.

According to the South African Jewish Museum, “Many of the later immigrants arrived with no resources other than their wits and experience. Most could not speak English when they arrived. Often they would learn Afrikaans before English. Their households were often multi-lingual, with parents speaking Yiddish and Afrikaans, and the children learning English at school.”^{[citation needed]}

The University of Cape Town Jewish Studies library has a comprehensive collection of South African Yiddish books. Its collection of Yiddish periodicals is, however, not as comprehensive.

Famous Afrikaner-Jews

Olga Kirsch was a noted Afrikaans author and poet.
Rabbi M. Romm translated and published the Siddur (Hebrew prayer book) into Afrikaans, which was widely distributed.^{[citation needed]}
Pieter-Dirk Uys is a South African satirist, active as a performer, author, and social activist.
David Kramer is a South African singer, songwriter, playwright and director.
Siegfried Fraenkel is widely regarded as the founder of Judaism in South Africa.