Frontpage – Cape Jewish Chronicle
Frontpage – Cape Jewish Chronicle
Source: cjc.org.za/building-of-lost-shtetl-museum-begins-in-lithuania/
The Cape Jewish Chronicle
Source: cjc.org.za
The Lost Shtetl Museum – Report
Vilnius 2018
My annual visit to Vilnius Solomo Aleichemo ORT school
3D Printing
Yummy food in the canteen
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.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuelis_Zingeris
Avraham Mapu
Avraham Mapu
Emanuelis Zingeris MP talks about Avraham Mapu
Source: youtu.be/r_TGbEO9lsQ
Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum
Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum
Samuel Bak
SIGNS OF THE RUINED LITVAKS WORLD IN THE CREATIVE WORKS OF GERARDAS BADGONAVIČIUS
Jewish Life In Lithuania
Friends
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…
Source: elirab.me/back-to-vilnius/
The Second Jewish Cemetery at Užupis
The first Jewish Cemetery at Šnipiškės
Jewish cemeteries of Vilnius
Jewish cemeteries of Vilnius – Wikipedia
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.
The End of the Day
Zhager
May 2018
The Jewish CemeterY & Holocaust Site
Zagare Regional Park
Walk at Dusk
Morning has broken
The Old Jewish Cemetery
A walk into town
Plaque and Memorial
cycling around town with Sarah Mitrike
At the Lithuanian / Latvian border
Video
With Alma, Geography teacher at Zagare High School
Video – watching my presentation
My previous visits to Zagare were in 2014 & 2016
Zagare
Photos and info from my 2016 visit.
Source: elirab.me/zagare/
The Lost Shtetl of Lithuania
My op-ed in the Australian Jewish News today
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
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/
Forest Jerusalem
My visit to the Naliboki Forest in Belarus on 16 May 2018, with Tamara, Alexander and Ivan.
This is where the Bielskis and many other partisans had their camps in the latter part of WWII. Aptly named Forest Jerusalem.
Please watch the nine videos of Tamara telling us more.
The road into the forest.
Naliboki forest
Naliboki forest – Wikipedia
Naliboki Forest (Belarusian: Налібоцкая пушча, Nalibotskaya Pushcha (pushcha: wild forest, primeval forest)) is a large forest complex in the northwestern Belarus, on the right bank of the Neman River, on the Belarusian Ridge.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naliboki_forest
Alexander and Ivan walking towards the partisan camp.
Oak Tree Remembers
Oak Tree Remembers
Tamara Vershitskaya in the Naliboki Forest
Source: youtu.be/oaL75ktaeVs
Tunnel Escape in Novogrudok
Tunnel Escape
Tamara Vershitskaya
Source: youtu.be/wt1odw9pU9c
A metal bucket
Proof of Bielski Camp
Proof of Bielski Camp
Tamara Vershitskaya
Source: youtu.be/HQ8HCRYDVJM
Partisans in the Naliboki Forest
Partisans in the Naliboki Forest
Tamara Vershitskaya talks about the Naliboki Forest and the Bielskis
Source: youtu.be/q6u8qcKO7Cg
Amount of People
Amount of People
Tamara Vershitskaya
Source: youtu.be/5C_M-kNrJiA
Women and children
Women and children
Tamara Vershitskaya
Source: youtu.be/OKc_wMsKxwE
Attack on the camp
Attack on the camp
Tamara Vershitskaya
Source: youtu.be/bOKtffhGIkk
Naliboki Forest Jerusalem- Information
Naliboki Forest Jerusalem
Tamara Vershitskaya talks about Naliboki Forest and Bielskis with Alexander Pilinkievich
Source: youtu.be/Uc6O0YJUyfc
Ivan preparing our picnic lunch near the fire ranger
A VERY treif lunch – I had the herring!
Beekeepers
Trees for sale
Amnesia’s Antidote by Ariel and Ryan Luckey
Amnesia’s Antidote by Ariel and Ryan Luckey
www.arielluckey.com www.comuntierra.org In May 2013, the Luckey Brothers journeyed to their great-great-grandfather’s childhood village Lubca in rural Belaru…
Source: youtu.be/XPCGtmxd2Hk
Zog Nit Keynmol – The Partisans’ Song
Zog Nit Keynmol
Source: elirab.me/zog-nit-keynmol/
Bielski partisans
Bielski partisans – Wikipedia
The Bielski partisans were an organization of Jewish partisans who rescued Jews from extermination and fought against the Nazi German occupiers and their collaborators in the vicinity of Nowogródek (Navahrudak) and Lida in German-occupied Poland (now western Belarus). They are named after the Bielskis, a family of Polish Jews who led the organization.