My op-ed in the Australian Jewish News today
The Lost Shtetl of Lithuania
On The Road In Belarus
For a 5 day visa free visit to Belarus, you must fly in and out of Minsk airport. My drive from Minsk to Pinsk took 4 hours, mostly on an excellent toll road, free for Belarusian registered cars. Watch out for speed cameras though!
Speed camera – beware!
Lenin
An Orthodox Church
A cemetery
The latest model
Pinsk – at last!
Town signs
Mir
Zelva
Sometimes to get somewhere, make your own pathway!
But it can be worth it!
Reading road signs in cyrillic can be fun!
A pit stop on the E30 Toll Road
On the road to Moscow
At the Minsk airport petrol station
My biggest challenge: Filling up with petrol at the airport before returning the rental car.
With hardly anyone able to speak English, try guessing how many litres you need to fill up the car, then going into the shop and ordering the correct amount. They do this as people drive off without paying. I guessed the amount within one litre. Not bad!
Let’s meet at the airport petrol station!
I hope I’m not flying on one of these!
Where?
Found it!
Making sure we leave!
I had a great time in Belarus – see my previous posts!
Mir, Belarus
The Jewish Cemetery
Mir Kehilalink
Mir, Belarus
Source: kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/mir/Home.html
Victor’s Private Museum
Tamara Vershitskaya reading records of the Cynkin family of Mir
Video
Video
Descendants of Shlomo Yosef Cynkin
Descendant Chart Shlomo Yosef CynkinYiddish music
Video
More museum Jewish exhibits
My accomodation at the guest house attached to the museum
Mir Castle
The Town Centre
Farewell
Former Synagogue Buildings
Now the Mirski Posad Hotel
The Town Square
The Orthodox Church
Road signs
Zhetl, Slonim and Zelva
Dzyatlava / Zhetl
Dzyatlava – Wikipedia
Dziatlava (Belarusian: Дзятлава, Lithuanian: Zietela, Polish: Zdzięcioł, Russian: Дятлово, Yiddish: זשעטל Zhetl) is a town in Belarus in the Hrodna voblast, about 165 km southeast of Hrodna. The population was 7,700 in 2016.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzyatlava
dzyat.htm
Dzyatlava massacre
Dzyatlava massacre – Wikipedia
The Dzyatlava massacres (Yiddish: Zhetel, Polish: Zdzięcioł, and Belarusian: Dzyatlava) were two consecutive mass shooting actions carried out three months apart during the Holocaust.[1] The town of Zdzięcioł was nominally Polish until the end of World War II in 1945. It was located in the Nowogródek Voivodeship of the Second Republic prior to the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland. Zdzięcioł was overrun twice, first by the Red Army in September 1939, and again, by the German forces in June 1941 after the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa.[2]
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzyatlava_massacre
High School #1
Tamara translating my presentation on the Partisans’ Song Project
The town square
Zhetl KehilaLink
Source: kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Lida-District/dzyat.htm
Slonim
Slonim – Wikipedia
Slonim (Belarusian: Сло́нім, Russian: Сло́ним, Lithuanian: Slanimas, Polish: Słonim, Yiddish: סלאָנים, Slonim) is a city in Grodno Region, Belarus, capital of the Slonim district. It is located at the junction of the Shchara and Isa rivers, 143 km (89 mi) southeast of Grodno. The population in 2015 was 49,739.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slonim
Synagogue
Slonim KehilaLink
With Tamara Vershitskaya
The Museum
Town Centre
Zelva
Zelva – Wikipedia
Zelva (Belarusian: Зэльва, Russian: Зельва, Polish: Zelwa, Lithuanian: Zelva, Želva, Yiddish: זעלווא) is a town in Grodno Region, Belarus, the administrative center of Zel’va district. It is situated by the Zel’vyanka River.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelva
Lots of radar in Belarus!
Video
Zelva Belarus
The Town Square – looking for something specifically Jewish – no luck!
Lenin of course!
Around the town square
Litouka
If you ever get to Novogrudok in Belarus, be sure to visit this most unusual homestead owned by Sergei Koval who initiated and sponsored a memorial sign to Michle last year and now patronizes the Jewish Resistance Museum. Amazing art!
Navahrudak Tunnel – Statue of Michle
Navahrudak Tunnel
Source: elirab.me/navahrudak-tunnel/
A memorial sign to all the Jewish children from Novogrudok who perished during the Holocaust was unveiled at the Jewish Resistance Museum in Novogrudok on September 26, 2017. The monument was sponsored by Sergei Koval, a local Jew, who according to his own words ‘fulfilled the wish of the girl’.
Michle Sosnowski whose picture is in the exhibition of the Museum served as a prototype for the monument. The picture was provided by Jeannette Josse from London who visited Novogrudok in 2005 searching for her roots. Two years later Jeannette sent a book to the Museum in which she incorpoated old pictures into the new ones made during her trip.
Michle happened to be in her family album because she was her mother’s friend. Together with Sheindel Sukharski they tried to escape from the labour camp in Novogrudok but were recognized in the street, denounced, arrested and taken to prison from which they never came out.
It’s a monument to the child whose greatest wish was to live. Dressed up for Purim she will dance forever next to the Tree of Life which incorporates the Star of David from the Novogrudok synagogue.
The ceremony was followed by a panel discussion on Remembrance and Commemoration dedicated to the blessed memory of Jack Kagan, a survivor from Novogrudok and a Bielski partisan, whose efforts to preserve the history of Novogrudok Jews and their unprecedented resistance to the Nazis were recognized by awarding him a title of the Honorary Citizen of Novogrudok in 2011.
With Tamara and Sergei
We Remember Novogrudak
Video
We Remember Novogrudak
Novogrudak School #4
Source: youtu.be/PDIGVhRKH3E
The Bishop welcomes us
, M
With Tamara and the Bishop
The artist
Navahrudak School #4
Navahrudak Jewish Cemetery and Holocaust Sites
NAVAHRUDAK: Grodno Belarus – International Jewish Cemetery Project
NAVAHRUDAK: Grodno [Novogrudok,Novaredok, Novogrudek, Novohorodok, Novradok, Nowogrudok, Nowogradek, Navharadak, Nawahradak, Nowogródek, Navaredok , Naugardukas , | belarus – International Jewish Cemetery Project
The IAJGS International Jewish Cemetery Project mission is to catalogue every Jewish burial site throughout the world. Every Jewish cemetery or burial site we know of is listed here by town or city, country, and geographic region is based on current locality designation.
Source: www.iajgsjewishcemeteryproject.org/belarus/navahrudak.html
Novogrudok, Belarus KehilaLink
Novogrudok, Belarus
Source: kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/navahrudak/Home.html
Holocaust Memorials
First Site
Second site 
Third site
From Wikipedia:
WWII
Soviet troops entered the city in 18 September 1939 and it was annexed into the Soviet Union via the Byelorussian SSR. The Polish inhabitants were exiled, mostly to Siberia and the Soviet Union, as prisoners. In the administrative division of the new territories, the city was briefly (from 2 November to 4 December) the centre of the Navahrudak Voblast. Afterwards the administrative centre moved to Baranavichy and name of voblast was renamed as Baranavichy Voblast, the city became the centre of the Navahrudak Raion (15 January 1940). On 22 June 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the USSR and Navahrudak was occupied on 4 July, following one of the more tragic events when the Red Army was surrounded in what’s known as the Novogrudok Cauldron. See Operation Barbarossa: Phase 1.
During the German occupation it became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland territory. Partisan resistance immediately began. The Bielski partisans made of Jewish volunteers operated in the region. On 1 August 1943, Nazi troops shot down eleven nuns, the Martyrs of Nowogródek. The Red Army reoccupied the city almost exactly three years after its German occupation on 8 July 1944. During the war more than 45,000 people were killed in the city and in the surrounding area, and over 60% of housing was destroyed.
Navahrudak was an important Jewish center and shtetl. It was home to the Novardok yeshiva, led by Rabbi Yosef Yozel Horwitz, as well as the hometown of Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein and of the Harkavy Jewish family, including Yiddish lexicograph Alexander Harkavy. Before the war, the population was 20,000, of which about half were Jewish; Meyer Meyerovitz and Meyer Abovitz were the Rabbis there at that time. During a series of “actions” in 1941, the Germans killed all but 550 of the approximately 10,000 Jews. (The first mass murder of Navahrudak’s Jews occurred in December 1941.) Those not killed were sent into slave labor.[3]
Navahrudak Tunnel
NavaHrudak Jewish Partisans’ Tunnel
Video
Navarudok Jewish Partisans’ Tunnel
Tamara Vershitskaya 14 May 2018
Source: youtu.be/iB1okmue4fg
We Remember Novogrudok
Video
We Remember Novogrudak
Novogrudak School #4
Source: youtu.be/PDIGVhRKH3E
Museum of the Jewish resistance
Novogrudok, Belarus
Source: kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/navahrudak/Museum_of_History.html
Lenin
Monument to mark mass ghetto escape unveiled in Novogrudok | Press releases, Belarus | Belarus.by
Monument to mark mass ghetto escape unveiled in Novogrudok | Press releases, Belarus | Belarus.by
Official press releases, Belarus
The Beis Aharon Bielski School
Moshe Fhima Intro – Eli
Video
Moshe Fhima Intro
Beis Aharon School Pinsk Belarus 13 May 2018
Source: youtu.be/vi86WhEv3tA
Zog Nit Keynmol – Pinsk
Video
Zog Nit Keynmol – Pinsk
Beis Aharon Bielski School
Source: youtu.be/yN3QGZkmGjY
Counting of the Omer – Moshe Fhima
Video
Counting of the Omer – Moshe Fhima
Beis Aharon Bielski School Pinsk 13 May 2018
Source: youtu.be/qawR9BEqqjM
Yad Yisroel – Wikipedia
Yad Yisroel – Wikipedia
The Yad Yisroel is non for profit 501(C)(3) organization which was started by the Stoliner Rebbe in 1990. Yad Yisroel is an organisation with a goal to bring Russian Jews closer to their heritage.
Moshe Fhima Enjoying Oif Dem Pripetchok
Video
Moshe Fhima Enjoying Oif Dem Pripetchok
sung by Cantor Harry Rabinowitz 1959 Beis Aharon School Pinsk 13 May 2018
Source: youtu.be/XQDfkp1s1ys
Oyfn Pripetshik
Oyfn Pripetshik – Wikipedia
Oyfn Pripetshik (Yiddish: אויפן פריפעטשיק, also spelled Oyfn Pripetchik, Oyfn Pripetchek, etc.;[1] English: “On the Hearth”)[2] is a Yiddish song by M.M. Warshawsky (1848–1907). The song is about a rabbi teaching his young students the aleph-bet. By the end of the 19th century it was one of the most popular songs of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, and as such it is a major musical memory of pre-Holocaust Europe.[3] The song is still sung in Jewish kindergartens.
Itzik Soloveitchik and Moshe Fhima
Video
Itzik Soloveitchik and Moshe Fhima
Great (great) grandson of Chaim Soloveitchik Halevy Beis Aharon Bielski School Pinsk 13 May 2018
Source: youtu.be/y-D_ssh8S4A
Itzik Soloveitchik
Video
Itzik Soloveitchik
Great (great) grandson of Chaim Soloveitchik Halevy who taught my Zaida Nachum Mendel Rabinowitz in the Brisk Yeshiva c1905 Beis Aharon Bielski School Pinsk …
Source: youtu.be/IOA1FS6dkrE
Shacharit
With Moshe Fhima at Chaim Weizmann’s school, Pinsk
Video
Moshe Fhima at Chaim Weizmann’s school, Pinsk
Source: youtu.be/I_ik3K4I1zw
Two Pinsk Synagogues
Moshe Fhima – Kiseh Elijahu – Circumcision Chair
Video
Moshe Fhima – Kiseh Elijahu – Circumcision Chair
Source: youtu.be/roYeLnUqVXo
The Second Synagogue
Some Previous Jewish buildings opposite
With Moshe Fhima at The Holocaust Site & Memorial
Moshe Fhima at Holocaust Memorial
Video
Source: youtu.be/Q4TQ0gIeSWk
A second site and memorial
1919 Pinsk massacre – Wikipedia
Pinsk massacre – Wikipedia
The Pinsk massacre was the mass execution of thirty-five Jewish residents of Pinsk on April 5, 1919 by the Polish Army. The Polish commander “sought to terrorize the Jewish population” after being warned by two Jewish soldiers about a possible bolshevik uprising.[1]. The event occurred during the opening stages of the Polish-Soviet War, after the Polish Army had captured Pinsk.[2] The Jews who were executed had been arrested were meeting in a Zionist center to discuss the distribution of American relief aid in what was termed by the Poles as an “illegal gathering”. The Polish officer-in-charge ordered the summary execution of the meeting participants without trial in fear of a trap, and based on the information about the gathering’s purpose that was founded on hearsay. The officer’s decision was defended by high-ranking Polish military officers, but was widely criticized by international public opinion.
The Town Square
Pinsk – Cultural Heritage Card – Shtetl Routes – NN Theatre
Pinsk – Cultural Heritage Card – Shtetl Routes – NN Theatre
Pinsk is a town, a district center in Brest region. It is situated on the bank of Pina River (the left tributary of Pripyat) 186 km to the east from Brest, 304 km to south-west from Minsk. It has a railway station on the line Brest-Homel.
Source: shtetlroutes.eu/en/pinsk-cultural-heritage-card/
ZNK – New videos
Here are new videos of students singing Zog Nit Keynmol that reached me in the last ten days.
- Melbourne Yom Hashoah Holocaust Commemoration in April:
Resistance
The background and context
The ‘Partisans’ Song’ – Zog Nit Keynmol–written by Hirsch Glik, 22, in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943 is one of the most powerful songs of resistance and defiance ever written.
While Hitler boasted that his Reich would endure for a thousand years, it is the Jewish people who resisted the forces of hatred and have endured, not the murderous Third Reich, which lasted twelve years.
Today, 75 years on, long after the demise of Hitler’s murderous regime, the partisans’ song is now sung worldwide to mark the Jewish spirit of resistance.
(Michael Cohen, Melbourne)
Melbourne Yom Hashoah – Zog Nit Keynmol
Melbourne Yom Hashoah – Zog Nit Keynmol
Commemoration April 2018 Using video footage from The Partisans’ Song Project
Source: youtu.be/SvNoyReKxO0
PARTISANS’ SONG
Zog nit keyn mol, az du geyst dem letstn veg,
khotsh himlen blayene farshteln bloye teg.
kumen vet nokh undzer oysgebenkte sho,
s’vet a poyk ton undzer trot: mir zaynen do!
Fun grinem palmenland biz vaysn land fun shney,
mir kumen on mit undzer payn, mit undzer vey,
un vu gefaln iz a shprits fun undzer blut,
shprotsn vet dort undzer gvure, undzer mut!S
s’vet di morgnzun bagildn undz dem haynt,
un der nekhtn vet farshvindn mit dem faynt,
nor oyb farzamen vet di zun in der kayor –
vi a parol zol geyn dos lid fun dor tsu dor.
Dos lid geshribn iz mit blut, un nit mit blay,
s’iz nit keyn lidl fun a foygl oyf der fray,
dos hot a folk tsvishn falndike vent
dos lid gezungen mit naganes in di hent.
To zog nit keyn mol, az du geyst dem letstn veg,
khotsh himlen blayene farshteln bloye teg.
kumen vet nokh undzer oysgebenkte sho –
es vet a poyk ton undzer trot: mir zaynen do!
2 & 3
Schools are now recording the song on their travels:
JDS 8th Graders from Seattle WA sang the Partisans’ Song while visiting Yad Vashem and Masada in Israel:
JDS Seattle School Video – Zog Nit Keynmol
Seattle School Video – Zog Nit Keynmol
Yad Vashem May 18
Source: youtu.be/O8ZOBgVrxNs
JDS Seattle School Video – Zog nit KeynMol
JDS 8th Grade at Masada 14 May 2018
Masada, Israel
Source: youtu.be/NZRH7aq-N3I
Beis Aharon School and Orphanage
Zog Nit Keynmol – Pinsk
Zog Nit Keynmol – Pinsk
Beis Aharon School Pinsk, Belarus 13 May 2018
Source: youtu.be/yN3QGZkmGjY
Moshe Fhima Intro
Moshe Fhima Intro
Beis Aharon School Pinsk Belarus 13 May 2018
Source: youtu.be/vi86WhEv3tA
Learn More about how to get involved
An Inspirational School Project
An Inspirational School Project
A Project For Your School We are seeking students who will recite or sing the Partisans’ Song in their home tongue, or in a language they have learnt. Please make a video, which can be as cre…
Source: elirab.me/znk/