In Janjelgava in Latvia, I found the grave of my Great-Grandfather, it was shattered into thousands of pieces, today it appears in its original state after a complete re-build and restoration to what it would have been when my Grandmother and her siblings would have had it constructed.

Author: Grant Arthur Gochin, Los Angeles, California, USA.

I document my family to the 1700’s in Papile, Akmene District in Lithuania. Jews have lived in Lithuania around 700 years, it is possible that my family has been Lithuanian since the 1300’s. A prerequisite for any Jewish settlement is that a cemetery be built to bury the dead, and so, after 700 years, Lithuania holds many hundreds of Jewish cemeteries, and in all likelihood, there are thousands that had the name Gochin that were buried in the vicinity of Papile.

A religious requirement and a community requirement of Jews is that they maintain and honor the cemeteries of their ancestors, and so, throughout the world where Jews live, one can see clean and neat cemeteries where descendants honor their ancestors. This is very similar to the Lithuanian tradition of All Souls Day where families visit and honor, and remember the graves of their ancestors.

Jews and Lithuanians lived in mostly peaceful coexistence for centuries, when Vilnius was known as the “Jerusalem of the North” and hundreds, if not thousands of Jewish cemeteries existed in the lands of Lithuania.

In 1915, Jews of the Baltics were deported into the Russian territories of the Ukraine and Belarus. An estimated 100,000 Jews of Baltic origin died of starvation and typhus in faraway foreign lands, including the majority of my family. At that time, almost no records remain of their deaths or burials, and 100,000 Baltic Jewish souls have largely been forgotten. From 1919 Jews were allowed to return to Lithuania, and populations began to regenerate. Burials were recorded, cemeteries restored and communal life re-established. Some of my relatives emigrated to South Africa, and new burial grounds were established.

The Holocaust murdered 96.4% of remaining Jews on Lithuanian soil. From a pre-World War 2 population of about 240,000 Jews, an estimated 3,500 Jews now live in Lithuania, a tattered remnant of the great community of learned thinkers and progressives that once inhabited our ancient homelands. For many, the Survivors were the only remnant of their families, all history having been wrenched away from them when their elders and teachers were so brutally murdered. During the Holocaust hundreds of Jewish cemeteries were destroyed, stones used for building materials, or just wanton destruction. The end of the war brought Soviet occupation, where Jewish cemeteries were further deliberately desecrated and destroyed, and most of the remainder were taken back by nature, the great population that populated Lithuania for 700 years was to be forcefully forgotten, and all signs of their presence to be eradicated, so that the last wafting memories of their existence could be destroyed over time.

My beloved Grandfather tried many times to return to Lithuania after the war, but the Soviets barred South African citizens from entering Lithuania, and so, in 1984 he went to his death without ever having been able to visit the graves of his family. The task fell to me to honor my ancestors.

Research showed that 75% of the land of the Jewish cemetery in Papile was now covered with apartment buildings; not a single stone remained standing for a single relative whose memory was now erased from Papile where documents prove at least 250 years of residence. In 2005, I put up one new stone to memorialize all Gochins that must be buried in that cemetery.

My Maternal Grandmother believed she had been born in Raguva (in fact she was born in Birzai) but given the deaths of both parents during the deportations when she was a young child and the removal of all memory, she had no facts. Research discovered the following photograph from the Raguva Jewish cemetery. I went looking….

After the round up and murder of the Jews of Raguva, local villagers used the gravestones for building material. Stories then spread of “rich Jews” that had been buried with gold fillings, and so much of the remainder of the cemetery was destroyed as people dug for gold from dead bodies. Today, few stones remain. This is not unusual for any Jewish Cemeteries in Lithuania.

Repeated visits to Raguva failed to restore the cemetery, applications for permission went unanswered and frustration set in. Municipalities in Lithuania are responsible for maintenance of Jewish Gravesites and so Governmental pressure was inconsequential. Restoration may ONLY be done with the cooperation of local officials, and regulation requires that the cemetery soil not be moved, as this would be desecration.

I strongly believe that their colorful lives, their contributions to humanity, their vibrant and learned culture should not be forgotten. Their memory is a blessing, their loss will never be able to be recovered and Lithuania will always be less than it could have been without their presence. To allow their lives to be forgotten is a tragedy none should tolerate. We, who are the descendants of those few that survived, owe it to those who had no surviving descendants to remember them, to clean their cemeteries and acknowledge their existences.

During my journeys and efforts, I made two friends, Sergey Kanovich, Public Relations advisor to the Lithuanian Jewish Community, and son of Grigor Kanovich (Past Chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community), and Alexander Avramenko, who believe and think similarly to myself, who value our heritage and our roots and who hold memory as a treasure for the ages. Together we have worked on multiple cemeteries in Lithuania (as can be seen on http://litvak-cemetery.info/index.php?lang=en

Between us, we have built a network on the ground in Lithuania that now know how to navigate the system of municipalities, have volunteers in place to perform the physical work that is needed, and the historians to document information that can be gleaned from the stones. We are connected into the international genealogical Associations that will distribute the information (for free) to any interested people. A non-profit status has now been granted to Maceva in Lithuania. An International Board has been built comprised of historians, government officials and those that care about maintaining and recording the memory of our roots, so that when Jews talk about heritage, we can show our children and grandchildren tangible signs of the greatness of our history, and the combined efforts and travails it took to bring the current generation to the place of safety and position we may now hold.

We, who are not subject to deportations or pogroms for our Jewish birthright, cannot make things better for those that were so badly treated, but we can bring them honor, dignity and remembrance, and give them thanks for where we are today.

Grant Gochin sits on the International Advisory Board of http://litvak-cemetery.info/index.php?lang=en

He is President of www.GAAWS.com and serves as the Honorary Consul of Togo in California, and is Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Los Angeles Consular Corps.