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
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
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.
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.”
My annual visit to Vilnius Solomo Aleichemo ORT school
With director Misa Jakobas and teacher Teresa Segalienė
3D Printing
With Hebrew teacher, Ruth
Shabbat
Yummy food in the canteen
With the student who participated in our first ORT project
Emanuelis Zingeris MP
The Jewish member of the Seimas, the Lithuanian Parliament
Emanuelis Zingeris
Emanuelis Zingeris – Wikipedia
Emanuelis Zingeris (born 16 July 1957 in Kaunas, Lithuania) is a Lithuanian philologist, museum director, politician, signatory of the 1990 Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania, currently serving as a Member of the Seimas (1990–2000 and since 2004), chairman of its foreign affairs committee (since 2010), Vice President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (since 2009) and President of the Parliamentary Forum of the Community of Democracies (since 2010).[1] A Lithuanian Jew, he has been director of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, honorary chairman of Lithuania’s Jewish community, and is Chairman of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania. He is a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, that proposed the establishment of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism.
SIGNS OF THE RUINED LITVAKS WORLD IN THE CREATIVE WORKS OF GERARDAS BADGONAVIČIUS
Jewish Life In Lithuania
Friends
With Simonas GurevičiusWith Saulius and LauraWith Arturas Taicas
Jewish Vilnius
The Choral Synagogue
Restoration of Geliu Synagogue progressing
From my 2017 visit:
The restoration of the Geliu synagogue Renovation of Synagogue on Geliu Gatve starts in Vilnius The Lithuanian Department of Cultural Heritage confirmed on July 21, 2015, the renovation of the syna…
The Jewish cemeteries of Vinius are the three Jewish cemeteries of the Lithuanian Jews living in what is today Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, which was known to them for centuries as Vilna, the principal city of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire. Two of the cemeteries were destroyed by the Soviet regime and the third is still active.
I am appealing for information, any publications or articles on SOUTH AFRICAN LANDSMANSHAFTEN (ASSOCIATIONS)
(AKA Sick and Benefit Societies/ Mutual Aid Societies)
In South Africa in the early 1900s in there were many Mutual Aid Societies/Associations/Landsmanshaften from mainly Lithuanian towns including: Aniksht, Birzh, Chelm ( Poland), Dvinsk (Latvia), Keidan, Kelme, Kovno, Krakinowo, Kroze, Kupishok, Kurland (Latvia), Lutzin, Malat, Minsk (Belarus), Ponevez, Poswohl, Plungyan, Rakishok, Riga (Latvia), Shavlan, Shavl, Shater, Tels, Utiyan, Vilna and Zhagar.
To help one another and the new immigrants arriving with virtually nothing, Landsleit (people from the same towns or districts) banded together to form Landsmanshaften (Mutual Aid Societies) that helped the sick and poor, buried the dead and provided interest free loans to help members start businesses. They also provided a place where the community of mainly men ‘greeners’ could gather and socialise.
My next compilation PG will be SOUTH AFRICAN LANDSMANSHAFTEN (Jewish Sick and Benefit Societies / Associations of the early 20th century).
While I have published booklets on Keidan and Krakenowo and have booklets on Ponevez and Malat, I am appealing for information and any other publications of these Landsleit or any others from South Africa. Also, I am seeking publications of any Jewish Communities in Johannesburg.
Kupiškis ( pronunciation (help·info)) (Polish: Kupiszki) is a city in northeastern Lithuania. It is the capital of the Kupiškis district municipality. Kupiškis is located on the Lėvuo and Kupa rivers. The name of the city comes from the Kupa River. The Gediminas Bridge crosses the Kupa River. There are six parts of the city, which are named:
Anykščiai ( pronunciation (help·info); see other names) is a ski resort town in Lithuania, 20 miles (32 kilometres) west of Utena.[1] The Roman Catholic Church of St. Matthias in Anykščiai is the tallest church in Lithuania, with spires measuring 79 metres (259 feet) in height.
Kurkliai is a town in Anykščiai district municipality, in Utena County, in northeast Lithuania. According to the 2011 census, the town has a population of 374 people.[1] Center of eldership. In town there is Anykščiai Regional Park.
I met with Merunas Jukonis, the youth coordinator in the town. He and his dad, Vidmantas, have been very active in working in the field of Tolerance education, Holocaust commemoration and related projects. See report below:
Report by Abel and Glenda Levitt, November 2015
While in Lithuania last week we spent a fascinating 4 days in Birzai, known to the Jews who lived there as Birzh.
On 8th August 1941 the 2400 Jews of the town were marched to the forest where they were all murdered, Men, Women and Children.
There exists in Birzai an ancient Karaite and Jewish cemetery. For years it remained neglected and uncared for.
And then a few years ago, the local teacher of History and Tolerance, Vidmantas Jukonis, together with his son Merunas, also a teacher of History, started a project of cleaning up the cemetery , removing the overgrown grass and weeds, and cutting the trees. They were joined by the local Reformed Lutheran Church where they are members ,and then by a Lutheran community in Germany who came to Birzai in the summer, camped outside the walls of the cemetery, and helped with the work. Later they made contact with SEFER, the well-known organization in Moscow specializing in Jewish Heritage, Sefer conducted a big 3 year academic international project
The participants were:
1) Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization “SEFER” .Moscow
2) Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences .Moscow
3) Centre for the Studies of the Culture and History of East European Jews . Vilnius
4)Birzai Regional Museum “Sela” Birzai
5) Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority . Jerusalem
Professionals and Volunteers joined in the project and expertly cleaned the gravestones, identified the names, and mapped out the gravestones that were still there.The leader of the final group was Motl Gordon, a St. Petersburg Jew, who became religious a few years ago, fluent in Yiddish.This final group was funded by the Birzai municipality (half) and by local sponsors, including the family of Sheftel Melamed, the last Jew in Birzai, who passed away on 31st August 2015. The Birzai district municipality also helped with materials, logistics and more.
The Birzai “Ausra” secondary school’s Tolerance Education Centre, headed by Vidmantas Jukonis provided volunteers , citizens of Birzai, who remembered Jews, arranged meetings for those people, and drove groups of students to meet them.
In Birzai on Friday afternoon an event was held to celebrate the completion of the project, and to launch the book that had been written about the project and its findings.
The book, 374 pages , in Russian, was published by SEFER with the help of the GENESIS Philanthropy Group and the UJA FEDERATION OF NEW YORK.
INSIDE OF FRONT COVER
There is little in English in the book. But from the table of contents (in English) it appears that there is much of interest. The book is written in the form of essays written by scholars involved in the project and tables recording the 1627 stones that were found in the cemetery, mostof them with names.
Glenda and I were given a copy. When I asked if we could buy some more, for family and friends with an interest in Birzai (Birzh) Motl Gordon told usthat they had distributed the few copies that they had brought for the event, but that he would enquire from Sefer in Moscowwhat the cost would be to buy.
It is hoped that a translation into English will be available via a PDF document on-line. Attached are photos of the front cover (1), the back cover (2), a photo on the inside front cover (5) and a photo on the inside back cover (6). This book is of great historic importance.
A rough check of the list of tombstones shows that the last two tombstones to be erected and that remain are those of Barukh Michaelson (he was the famous town photographer) who died on 13th July 1939, and Herce (Hirsch) Evin, who died in 1940. Michaelson’s tombstone was found buried during the work on the cemetery and restored. It should be noted that after the Soviet occupation in June 1940 Jewish religious life came to a halt and it is probable that no further Jewish funerals and consecration of tombstones took place. There was however a tombstone dated 1945. And the newer tombstones from the ’30’s were probably stolen and used in building as was the case throughout Lithuania.
A short walk around town. Old buildings in the former Jewish area.
Merunas’s Lutheran Church
Soviet War Memorial
Merunas’s High school
Lunch Time and enjoying kvass
Kvass
Kvass – Wikipedia
Kvass is a traditional Slavic and Baltic beverage commonly made from rye bread ,[1] known in many Eastern European countries and especially in Ukraine and Russia as black bread. The colour of the bread used contributes to the colour of the resulting drink. It is classified as a non-alcoholic drink by Russian standards, as the alcohol content from fermentation is typically low (0.5–1.0%).[2][3] It may be flavoured with fruits such as strawberries and raisins, or with herbs such as mint.[4]
Biržai Regional Park covers 14,659 hectares (36,220 acres) in northern Lithuania near its border with Latvia. It was established in 1992 to preserve a distinctive karst landscape. About 20% of its area is covered by forest.
Biržai ( pronunciation (help·info), known also by several alternative names) is a city in northern Lithuania. Biržai is famous for its reconstructed Biržai Castle manor, and the whole region is renowned for its many traditional-recipe beer breweries.
