and Jewish Life
With Rabbi Levi Wolff at Shacharit at Central Synagogue this morning
The importance of family histories, and how they are shared.
Rabbi Levi Wolff’s story
Book resources:
Finding your shtetl:
Shtetl names – variations
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View Mini Trailer:
http://youtu.be/1z5Wh1kDdMY
From the press release:
“Everything I believe in life is about looking ahead; but without looking back, sometimes you can’t appreciate the beauty of looking forwards.” – Fay Sussman, introducing her performance of the Yiddish song “Makh Tsu Di Eygelekh” on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto… which she dedicated to the memory of 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust.
Even three generations after the Holocaust, many Jews have a deeply conflicted, even suspicious view of the Polish people… perhaps even more than towards the people of Germany itself.
The sheer scale of the murder that took place on Polish soil – with the active and undeniable collaboration of many Poles – speaks for itself. Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Treblinka… just some the infamous death camps where 3 million Polish Jews met their deaths.
The tiniest remnants of that community survived and Australia has the largest population of such survivors, after Israel. Many of them – and their children – hold painful memories and still harbour anger toward Poland.
Against these stark facts – and the alarming current resurgence of European anti-Semitism – is the surprising discovery that Poland is one of the few countries in Europe now trying to reconcile with the history of horror on its home soil.
What then does one make of a tour of Jewish Australian musicians playing klezmer music in small Polish towns where entire Jewish communities were wiped out?
Amazing, inspiringly, this is exactly what singer Fay Sussman and her band, Klezmer Divas, did last year. And an extraordinary documentary – currently in the making – is set to tell the story.
Fay Sussman was born in Poland in 1946 and – until recently – vowed never to return. But overcoming her fears – and the anger she inherited – Fay decided to make this surreal pilgrimage as a gesture of hope and love.
Filmmakers Judy Menczel and Paul Green accompanied Fay and her band; what they recorded is both stunning and moving. In each town the musicians were greeted warmly – with standing ovations – by people who didn’t even realise Jews had ever existed in their towns… and were hungry to know more. She met with young local people preserving Jewish graves which lay forgotten in peoples’ backyards or recovering broken gravestones being used as building materials; campaigns to save a synagogue being turned into a shopping centre; moves to remove a public toilet built over a Jewish gravesite.
It’s a story that will move you and restore your faith in the human spirit.
The team behind “Pockets of Hope” (working title) is now seeking support to fund the making of the full feature documentary.
The film looks at the issue of reconciliation between Jews and Poles through the 3rd generation of young people “on both sides of the fence” as they try to come to terms with the horrors of the Holocaust – and make genuine moves towards peace and understanding.
“The film we aspire to make looks at the attempts by individuals to respect each other’s pain, reach out and move forward towards tolerance and healing,” says Judy Menczel. “Fay and her music deeply touch the people leading this new movement for truth and reconciliation. It is a microcosm of what can be achieved by individuals to somehow move forward after genocide as well as a lesson in how the young can respectfully and honestly deal with the traumas of the past.”
Our Jewish faith tells us that we cannot hold the children responsible for the sins of the parents,” says one holocaust survivor in the film.
“I don’t hate,” adds Fay. “My vision is that we change the cycle of hate so that the children of tomorrow have hope.”
Short (3 minute) preview of Pockets of Hope here;
http://youtu.be/KGR5ztIYNis
Longer (6 minute) trailer here;
http://youtu.be/H-agiKSdc4U
SUPPORT FOR THE FILM
If you would like to help financially towards the completion of this film, please contact:
Judy Menczel, Producer: judy_menczel@hotmail.com
The Birzh ShtetLink has been upgraded to a KehilaLink
Visit: http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/birzai
Read:
I have four talks coming up:
Perth, Australia
Beth Protea, Herzlia, Israel
IAJGS International Jewish Genealogical Conference, Jerusalem, Israel
Gitlin Library, Cape Town, South Africa
Limmud Oz Sydney has finished.
A most successful Festival of Jewish Ideas with 200 presenters over 2 ½ days.
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The students take me on a multicultural tour of Kedainai, the last stop being the two former synagogue complex, one of only a handful in Lithuania. The centre is run by Rimantas Zirgulis, director of the Museum and includes a permanent Jewish display, one of the first towns in Lithuania to do so.
The video report on a Lithuanian TV channel with a synopsis in English by two of the students: Juste & Julija
Kedainiu Zinios 7:21 – 9:55 – meeting at our school
The English teacher Laima Ardavičienė surprises her students every single lesson. She is diversifying her lessons with various tasks and even guests.
Laima says, „ Last year I was working on a project and the main idea was to introduce different cultures to students. I found a video of Jewish weddings which reflected Jewish traditions. After watching this video, I asked the author if I was able to use it and I got shocked when he replied „ Laima, you can use it. By the way, you can be really surprised, but I‘m rooted in Kėdainiai“. The author of the video was our guest Eli Rabinowitz. It‘s the second time Eli Rabinowitz is visiting our school. Last year he was a participant in our project too, while students were learning about different communities in Kėdainiai. Meetings like this never end. We keep in touch via skype and have skype meetings with students.
An article in the Lithuanian press:
Anglų kalbos pamokos kitaip
Iš arčiau 2015/05/29 by Vilija Mockuvienė
Vieni „Atžalyno“ gimnazijos mokiniai mokytojos Laimos Ardavičienės anglų kalbos pamokų laukia su baime, kiti – su džiaugsmu. Gimnazistai žino, kad šios patyrusios pedagogės pamokose nebus nei nuobodulio, nei tuščio laiko leidimo.
Paįvairindama pamokas „Atžalyno“ gimnazijos mokytoja Laima Ardavičienė į Kėdainius pakvietė Australijoje gyvenantį žydą E. Rabinovičių, kuris turi sąsajų su šiuo miestu ir mielai bendrauja su jaunimu.
For further see:
http://muge.eu/anglu-kalbos-pamokos-kitaip/
My images are supplemented with some provided by Vilius, a delightfully engaging student, who would like one day, to have sports photography business, possibly in South Africa!
I visited the Vilnius Jewish Public Library where the WJC, the World Jewish Congress, were running a seminar “Pearls of Yiddish Culture” over three days. 26 top educators from Israeli schools, universities and other institutions came to study Yiddish culture, language and literature. Study tours of the Jewish sites of Vilnius were part of the program. This seminar was a result of the cooperation between the WJC and Shai Bar Ilan Jewish roots travel agency affiliated with Bar Ilan University (Israel).
From Wikipedia
Vilnius Sholom Aleichem ORT gymnasium – full-time secondary school in Vilnius, IT Kraševskio g. 5 engaged in primary, secondary and non-formal education programs in Hebrew, Lithuanian, Russian. Named after writer Sholom Aleichem.
Vilniaus Šolomo Aleichemo ORT gimnazija – dieninė bendrojo lavinimo mokykla Vilniuje, J. I. Kraševskio g. 5, vykdanti pradinio, pagrindinio, vidurinio ir neformaliojo ugdymo programas hebrajų kalba, lietuvių, rusų kalbomis. Pavadinta rašytojo Šolomo Aleichemo vardu.
I met with the Director Misha Jakobas, who kindly showed me around the new campus and its impressive facilities. The students appeared to be very well behaved and there was a lovely atmosphere in the building, which they moved into only 3 months ago.
Parents attended the year end concerts, including my friend, Daniel Gurevich. We were quite surprised to bump into each other!
From Wikipedia
Roman Vishniac (/ˈvɪʃni.æk/; Russian: Рома́н Соломо́нович Вишня́к; August 19, 1897 – January 22, 1990) was a Russian-American photographer, best known for capturing on film the culture of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust
Vishniac was a versatile photographer, an accomplished biologist, an art collector and teacher of art history. He also made significant scientific contributions to photomicroscopy and time-lapse photography. Vishniac was very interested in history, especially that of his ancestors, and strongly attached to his Jewish roots; he was a Zionist later in life.[3]
Roman Vishniac won international acclaim for his photos of shtetlach and Jewish ghettos, celebrity portraits, and microscopic biology. His book A Vanished World, published in 1983, made him famous and is one of the most detailed pictorial documentations of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe in the 1930s.[2] Vishniac was also remembered for his humanism and respect for life, sentiments that can be seen in all aspects of his work.
In August 2014, the International Center for Photography in New York City announced that 9,000 of Vishniac’s photos, many never printed or published before, would be posted in an online database.[4]
My second visit to the Museum, but first time meeting with Simon Davidovich, director of the Museum and Jewish tour guide. Also visiting the Museum were Richard Freedman of the Holocaust Centre in Cape Town and Saulius Mikuckis. This was my second meeting with Ramunas Garbaravicius of the Museum.
The Museum is a must visit when in Kaunas.
Video – Simon Davidovich:
Visit: http://defendinghistory.com/sugihara-house
From their website:
Chiune Sugihara (1900 — 1986) was Vice Consul for the Japanese Empire in Kaunas, Lithuania from 1939 to 1940. With a breathtaking generosity of spirit, risking his career and his family’s safety, Sugihara wrote and stamped visas that facilitated the escape (and, as it turned out, rescue from near-certain murder at the hands of the Nazis who invaded in June 1941) of over six thousand Jews to Japanese territory. Entire Jewish institutions, most famously the Yeshiva of Mir (Mírer yeshíve) survived the Holocaust thanks to Sugihara. Sugihara’s legendary consulate building in Kaunas is now a high-powered condensed museum that is a testament for locals and visitors alike to the power of courage to do the right thing.
Video: Rabbi Levi Wolff of Sydney Central Synagogue talks about Sugihara.
Day Two in Warsaw was highlighted by a visit to JHI Warsaw
I watched a 45 minute movie on Jewish life in Warsaw during the Holocaust.
Followed by two exhibitions:
“AFTER THE HOLOCAUST. THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF POLISH JEWS 1944–1950 – a unique collection of documents, photographs and films illustrating the way the CCPJ operated.
SALVAGED: The collections of paintings, drawings and sculpture held by the JHI Museum. According to the JHI, this exhibition is an attempt to break the silence surrounding these little known yet excellent artists.
I also caught up with Aleksandra Dybkowska of the JHI Genealogy department
Also with Wojciech Konończuk
and Marla Raucher Osborn at FODZ
Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw
An exhibition on the first floor
The Jewish Historical Institute (Polish: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny or ŻIH) is a research institute in Warsaw, Poland, primarily dealing with the history of Jews in Poland
The Jewish Historical Institute was created in 1947 as a continuation of the Central Jewish Historical Commission, founded in 1944. The Jewish Historical Institute Association is the corporate body responsible for the building and the Institute’s holdings. The Institute falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. In 2009 it was named after Emanuel Ringelblum. The institute is a repository of documentary materials relating to the Jewish historical presence in Poland. It is also a centre for academic research, study and the dissemination of knowledge about the history and culture of Polish Jewry.
The most valuable part of the collection is the Warsaw Ghetto Archive, known as the Ringelblum Archive (collected by the Oyneg Shabbos). It contains about 6000 documents (about 30 000 individual pieces of paper).
Other important collections concerning World War II include testimonies (mainly of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust), memoirs and diaries, documentation of the Joint and Jewish Self-Help (welfare organizations active in Poland under the occupation), and documents from the Jewish Councils (Judenräte)
The section on the documentation of Jewish historical sites holds about 40 thousand photographs concerning Jewish life and culture in Poland.
The Institute has published a series of documents from the Ringelblum Archive, as well as numerous wartime memoirs and diaries.[1]
In 2011, Paweł Śpiewak, a Professor of Sociology at Warsaw University and former politician, was nominated as the Director of the Jewish Historical Institute by Bogdan Zdrojewski, Minister of Culture and National Heritage.[2]
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