Ziezmariai 18

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Inside

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Notice Boards

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Ziezmariai, Lithuania

Source: kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/ziezmariai/Home.html

Ziezmariai Synagogue One of a Handful of Surviving Wooden Synagogues in Europe
Žiežmariai Synagogue One of a Handful of Surviving Wooden Synagogues in Europe
 

LRT TV News Service LRT.lt When Lithuania joined the European Route of Jewish Cultural Heritage, the synagogue in Ziezmariai was chosen as the symbolic first site.

Source: www.lzb.lt/en/2017/10/11/ziezmariai-synagogue-one-of-a-handful-of-surviving-wooden-synagogues-in-europe/

Samantonys Farm Stay

My host was Arūnas. I was his first guest on airbnb.

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Samantonys Farm Home – Guesthouses for Rent in Samantonys, Lithuania

Samantonys Farm Home – Guesthouses for Rent in Samantonys, Lithuania

Private room in Samantonys, Lithuania. Homestead with organic/permaculture garden, sheep, bees, chicken, home baked bread, home made cheese, our honey, fresh eggs, pond with fish, Russian style sauna, bike rides. No TV, radio available on demand. Outhouse. Our location on Google Maps -…

Source: www.airbnb.com.au/rooms/26262331

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The dunny

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More views and breakfast

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With Barry Mann in Kaunas

 

 

Lita Shtetl Visits – 2018

Siauliai with Sania Kerbilis & Antonina Gainulina

 Panevezys with Gennady Kofman

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Master Yuter Family Tree

Panevezys Telephone Directory

Visitors Book

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With Gennady Kofman &  a scout group

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Panevezys Lithuania

Source: kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/panevezys/Home.html

Josvainiai with Laima Ardaviciene and Harry Gorfine (Australia)

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Ukmerge with Vida Pulkaunkiene & Arturas Taicos

Ukmerge, Lithuania

Plateliai – 2018

With Eugenijus Bunka

Litvak Land – Plateliai, Lithuania

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Jakovas Bunka Charity and Sponsorship Fund 

Jakovas Bunka Charity and Sponsorship Fund |

Dear friends, Jakovas Bunka Charity and Sponsorship fund has bought a piece of land about 1 km north from Plateliai. Close to the main road we created a

Source: jbfund.lt/our-plans/

Moze being restored

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Before restoration!

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Kazys Striaupa wood carving

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Kazys Striaupa wood carving – Žemaitijos parkas

Kazys Striaupa wood carving – Žemaitijos parkas

Kazys Striaupa wood carving – Žemaitijos nacionaliniame parke gausu lankytinų objektų, gamtos paminklų, ir pėsčiųjų takų, ekskursijų ir edukacinių užsiėmimų.

Source: zemaitijosnp.lt/en/veikla/products-of-trademark/medzio-meistro-k-striaupos-darbai/

Žemaitijos nacionalinis parkas

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Žemaitijos nacionalinis parkas

Žemaitijos nacionalinis parkas – tai gausybė lankytinų objektų, išsidėsčiusių aplink Platelių ežerą, gamtos paminklai, kultūriniai draustiniai ir vertybės.

Source: zemaitijosnp.lt/en/

Plateliai KehilaLink, Lithuania

Source: kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/plateliai/Home.html

Kuliai 2018

Kuliai – images from Eugenijus Bunkas’ collection

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Holocaust sites near the town

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The town

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Kuliai – Wikipedia

Kuliai – Wikipedia

Kuliai (Polish: Kule) is a town in Telšiai County, Lithuania. According to the 2011 census, the town has a population of 625 people.[1]

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuliai

Virtual Tour of Kuliai, Lithuania

Virtualus Kulių turas / Virtual Tour of Kuliai, Lithuania

Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=owgE6ZgoHY4

Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman – Wikipedia

Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman – Wikipedia

Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman (1886–1969), יוסף שלמה כהנמן‬, was an Orthodox rabbi and rosh yeshiva of the Ponevezh Yeshiva. He was a renowned Torah and Talmudic scholar, a distinguished member of the Council of Torah Sages of Agudath Israel.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosef_Shlomo_Kahaneman

Nosson Meir Wachtfogel – Wikipedia

Nosson Meir Wachtfogel – Wikipedia

Nosson Meir Wachtfogel (Hebrew: נתן מאיר וכטפוגל‎) (18 February 1910 in Kuliai, Lithuania – 21 November 1998 in Lakewood, New Jersey, USA), known as the Lakewood Mashgiach, was an Orthodox rabbi and long-time mashgiach ruchani (spiritual supervisor) of Beth Medrash Govoha (the Lakewood Yeshiva) in Lakewood, New Jersey. He was one of the primary builders of that yeshiva into a world-class institution,[1] enacting the goals and direction set forth by its founding rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Aharon Kotler. He also helped establish “branches” of the Lakewood Yeshiva in dozens of cities, and pioneered the community kollel concept with the opening of combination Torah learning/outreach centers in the United States and other countries. A revered mentor and guide to thousands of students over a career that spanned more than 50 years, he was a strong advocate and prime example of musar study and working on one’s spiritual self-development.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosson_Meir_Wachtfogel

Warsaw-Vilnius-Klaipeda 18

Warsaw to Vilnius

I usually take the Lux bus. What a pleasure travelling this way, by plane. An hour fifteen minutes!

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Klaipeda Jewish Community Centre

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The Centre

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Klaipėda – Wikipedia

Klaipėda – Wikipedia

Klaipėda (Lithuanian pronunciation: [ˈkɫɐɪˑpʲeːdɐ],  listen (help·info); Samogitian name: Klaipieda, Polish name: Kłajpeda, German name: Memel), is a city in Lithuania on the Baltic Sea coast. It is the third largest city in Lithuania and the capital of Klaipėda County.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaipeda

Jewish Community of Klaipe—da

Jewish Community of Klaipėda

Contact Feliks Pozemskij, Klaipėda Jewish Community chairperson, tel. 8-650-21335 email felix.bonasta@yahoo.com

Source: www.lzb.lt/en/2012/02/27/jewish-community-of-klaipeda/

Jewish Klaipe—da | Sightseeing 

Jewish Klaipėda | Sightseeing | Klaipeda

Jews were first mentioned as living in the city in 1567, although much the same as with the remarkably similar city of Gdańsk, the Jews never made an enormous impact on Klaipėda as they did in the rest of the region. By the time the Germans re-occupied the city in March 1939 some 8,000 Jews had al

Source: www.inyourpocket.com/klaipeda/sightseeing/jewishklaipeda

Beit Hatfutsot – Memel

Source: dbs.bh.org.il/place/memel-klaipeda

Home

Memel, Lithuania

Source: kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/memel/Home.html

 

People – Lithuania 2018

The people I photographed or met in Lithuania, from 29 July to 4 August 2018

Vilnius

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Trakai

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Klaipeda 

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Plateliai with Eugenijus Bunka

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Siauliai with Sania Kerbelis and Antonina Gainulina

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Panevezys – at the Jewish Community Centre with Gennady Kofman

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Josvainiai with Laima Ardaviciene and Harry Gorfine

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Ukmerge

With Vida Pulkauninkiene and Arturas Taicas

Samantonys -Farm Stay with Arunas

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Kaunas

With Barry Mann

 

Keidan Yizkor Book

From David Solly Sandler

KEIDAN MEMORIAL (YIZKOR) BOOK

There are three Yizkor books originating in South Africa. Two Yizkor books, Keidan and Rakishok, commemorate Lithuanian towns while the third remembers Chelm in Poland.  In my humble opinion the articles, stories and memories in the Keidan and Rakishokbooks, more than any other books I have read, tells us about Jewish life in Lithuania as it approached its destruction.

The Keidan Memorial (Yizkor) Book (see full details below) has now been translated into English. Bella Golubchick translated many of the articles into English and all the translations were reviewed and edited by Aryeh Leonard Shcherbakov and Andrew Cassel of the Keidan Associations of Israel and the US. I compiled and published the book.

This is now the second yizkor book originating in South Africa that has been translated into English. The first was the Rakishok Yizkor book published in September 2017 where I assisted with coordinating the translations for Jewish Gen. the publisher.

For more information or to obtain a book please contact

David Solly Sandler. sedsand@iinet.net.au

 

Keidan Memorial (Yizkor) Book 

The Keidan Memorial (Yizkor) Book, was first compiled in 1977 mainly in Hebrew by the Keidan Associations and Keidaners living in Israel, The US and South Africa to commemorate the 500 years of Jewish life in Keidan that was abruptly ended in July 1941 by the Germans helped enthusiastically by the local Lithuanians.

The book offers a multi-faceted historical view of Jewish life in Keidan – its 500-year history, its religious, educational, social and cultural institutions, youth organizations, portraits of its prominent people, memoirs of witnesses and survivors, the stories of exiles and wars and the Holocaust.

The publication of this Memorial Book in 1977 was the most important contribution of the Keinaner Associations to future generations of Keidaners. Originally released mostly in Hebrew (with smaller Yiddish and English sections), it has now been fully translated into English.

At first glance this book is like all the other hundreds of books published since the end of World War II in memory of the Jewish shtetl in Eastern Europe that had been and is no more. Keidan itself was one of those thousands of towns in the old Pale. Small towns with all their lights and shadows, their geographical and human landscape, their spiritual climate, the Jewish people who worked and toiled all week like busy ants in order to bring food to the family. With its odd and strange figures, whose daily life and golden dreams of the redemption of the nation and salvation of the world. In short, a shtetl, like all shtetlech.

The birth pangs of this book were hard and prolonged. Yet it is natural, and it doesn’t lessen its importance, if we shall consider that the whole book is a product of the common effort of the town’s people who invested in it the most important element – love. Actually, no scientific research works have been included in this book, but memories which sometimes reach the height of true art, and – what is even more important – they distinguish themselves with a clean and refined truth, as it was seen with the eyes of the writers. They described all they had seen in a quiet, restrained way, without any trimmings, yet, for all that these memories speak to the reader with an unusual strength of expression.

One of the main goals of the book is the commemoration of the period of the Holocaust. Very few people have remained from that terrible period. Very few of those who had seen the terror from close up saved themselves by a miracle, and it is their duty to tell about their personal experiences. There are others who succeeded to escape from the Holocaust and to spend the war in wanderings in distant places or in fighting the cruel enemy. Each one told, in his own language, the facts as he knew them. More than once the book contains different versions of the same events. This fact, which can happen in historical scientific works too, will no doubt be forgiven in a book which was written not by historians, but by men who drew their descriptions not from documents in an ivory tower of a library, but from their own memories, that were tortured in the ghettos, concentration camps and forests. This is however the naked truth, rough and not polished, a truth solid like rock from which eternal monuments are shaped.

Still, this book is more than an eternal monument. It is an effort to return to the shtetl in its happy moments as well as in its last hours, to be together with the father and the mother, with the brothers and sisters, at the Shabbat table as well as at the mass grave on the fateful day, to isolate oneself within Keidan, one of the precious stones in the lost crown whose name was Eastern European Jewry.

There is no relief in this book for the wounded soul of a son of Keidan, but there is in it a eulogy and a kaddish which was not said on the grave of the martyrs, and which will be said now whenever we shall take this book in our hands.

For more information or to obtain a book please contact

David Solly Sandler. sedsand@iinet.net.au

Keidan Memorial (Yizkor) Book – the cover

Plunge Saule Gymnazyum Tolerance Centre

Plungyan KehilaLInk

Home

Plunge, Lithuania

Source: kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/plunge/Home.html

Plunge Saule Gymnazyum
With Gintautas Rimeikis, Yolanta Mazhukne and Danutė Serapinienė 

Tolerance Centre
The Ronald Harwood International Art Competition

Ronald Harwood 

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Harwood

Sea Point High School 

Sea Point High School – Wikipedia

Sea Point High School, formerly Sea Point Boys High School, is a co-educational public high school in Main Road, Sea Point, Cape Town, South Africa. The school was established on 21 April 1884. In 1925, the senior grades were separated from the junior grades. In 1989, the school merged with Ellerslie Girls’ High School after becoming co-educational.

Sea Point Boys connected to Plunyan

  • Sir Ronald Harwood (Horwitz)
  • Sir Antony Sher
  • Abel Levitt
  • Eli Rabinowitz (KehilaLink manager)

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Point_High_School

The Last Jew in Plunge

Last Jew

Source: kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/plunge/Last_Jew.html

                    

Gintautas Rimeikis and Yolanta Mazhukne

 

Yolanta Mazhukne, Gintautas Rimeikis and Danutė Serapinienė 
 

 

Building of Lost Shtetl Museum begins in Lithuania

SA Jewish Report

 
The construction of a new museum in Lithuania to commemorate Jewish life lost in the Holocaust began last week, after a ceremony attended by Lithuania’s top officials – including the country’s prime minister, Speaker of Parliament and foreign minister, as well as senior diplomats and Jewish leaders.
by TALI FEINBERG | Jul 05, 2018
 

Designed by the same Finnish company which designed the award-winning POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, the state-of-the-art museum, located in Šeduva – 175km north-west of Vilnius – will open in 2020.

The museum complex will include a sprawling Jewish cemetery, which was completely restored and opened in 2015, monuments at three separate sites of Holocaust mass executions and burials, and a symbolic sculpture in the middle of the town.

“It will tell the story of the life of what was once the largest European Litvak Jewish population living in shtetls,” according to the museum’s website. “Lifestyle, customs, religion and the social, professional and family life of the Jews of Šeduva will serve as the centrepiece of the museum exhibition.

“Museum visitors will be taught the tragedy of Šeduva’s Jewish history, which ended in three pits near the shtetl in the early days of World War II, concluding five centuries of the history of the Jews of Šeduva.”

Ex-South African educator Eli Rabinowitz, who now lives in Perth, attended the ceremony and spoke on behalf of the Litvak Diaspora, especially South African Jews. “Many Litvaks migrated to South Africa, aptly named the ‘goldene medina’,” he said. “Jewish life in the small South African country towns often mirrored that of the Litvak shtetl. We often heard stories from ‘der heim’, describing the rich Jewish cultural life throughout Lithuania, which had existed over many centuries.

“Those Litvaks who left Lithuania before the Holocaust were indeed lucky. More than 95% of the Lithuanian Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, a greater percentage than any other country,” said Rabinowitz.

“In the future, when we visit this museum, we will be able to access the past with a better understanding of history. We will view the collection of objects and artifacts, giving us insight into how our ancestors lived their cultural, religious, work and home lives. We will learn about their values from their daily lives and from the items they kept and used.

“The museum will showcase the richness and the importance of Litvak shtetl life of years gone by. It will also reflect on the Jewish world that was destroyed by the Holocaust.

“The museum will educate Lithuanians and visitors to Lithuania, and so provide an opportunity to learn from our history and strive for a better world.”

Rabinowitz said he thinks the museum is being built now – before, as politicians and historians have realised, this past is lost to history.

He emphasises that the location is important, as “our Litvak heritage stems from the shtetls in this geographical region in Lithuania – not the bigger cities of Vilnius or Kaunas”.

Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaitė said the laying of the cornerstone “heralds the reconstruction of an important part of Lithuanian history, closely interlinked with the history of Lithuania’s large Jewish community and its tragic fate”.

She added: “The Lost Shtetl Museum will bring back from oblivion the names and faces of many families, friends and neighbours, as well as their customs and traditions.”

Said Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius: “This unique museum will capture not only the memory of the Šeduva but also the Jewish communities of Lithuania as a whole.”

Source: www.sajr.co.za/news-and-articles/2018/07/05/building-of-lost-shtetl-museum-begins-in-lithuania

 

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