Donatas Januta: Reply to Olga Zabludoff re Holocaust in Lithuania

Litvaks: Lithuania’s warriors

Donatas Januta

Dear Olga,

You and I disagree on a number of issues, including the contribution or non-contribution of Jews to Lithuania's economy.  But please don't take that to mean that I am not willing to acknowledge real and important Jewish contributions to Lithuania.    I wrote and published much of the following material in the Lithuanian language as an article in a Lithuanian newspaper a few years ago.  As I send this off to VilNews, we are heading into Thanksgiving, and I wish you and your family a pleasant holiday.  I will look forward to continuing our dialogue next week, including about our differences and about our common ground.

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For 600 years in Lithuania Jews and Lithuanians lived side by side, but separate. Lithuanians were peasant farmers. Jews were urban merchants, traders, craftsmen. Of all European Jews, those of Lithuania interacted the least with the people among whom they lived.  When they met, it was almost exclusively in the marketplace. This separation allowed the Lithuanian Jews, who called themselves “Litvakes”, to develop and maintain their unique and rich culture with little outside influence.

But there were times when the two groups consciously and earnestly supported each other for the common good. One of those times was at the beginning of the Lithuanian Republic in 1918-1924.  Lithuanian Jews fought and worked for Lithuanian independence, and they also obtained significant autonomy in the country.  A Ministry for Jewish Affairs was established.  Jews had their own representatives in Lithuania’s Parliament (“Seimas”), and by law the Jewish community was given the power to impose taxes, as well full rights over education and religious matters of their community.   This article is a small glimpse into that time when Jews and Lithuanians fought and worked together to achieve all those goals.

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Citizens! Take up arms, donate money, goods, everyting that can help the army, that can strengthen the country in battles against its enemies.

Those are the words, addressed to the Lithuanian Jewish community, in Yiddish and Lithuanian, of Ozeris Finkelšteinas, an attorney in Kaunas, an active member of the Lithuanian Jewish community, a member of the Lithuanian Founding Parliament, on October 9, 1920, after Želigowski’s Polish division invaded Vilnius and threatened the rest of Lithuania.

Jews were among those who, in the 1918-1923 wars of Lithuanian Independence, with their blood and suffering won Independence and freedom for Lithuania. In an honored place in the Kaunas choral synagogue, there used to hang a large black marble plaque, with the names written in gold letters of approximately 60 Jewish youths who had died fighting for Lithuanian indpendence.

One of those names was that of Robinzonas Leizeris, who was killed in the autumn of 1920 in battle with Poles near Druskininkai. Leizeris’ comrade, who fought alongside Leizeris and was captured by the Poles, spoke about Leizeris’ last hours. When it was suggested to Leizeris that they withdraw from the much larger Polish force, Leizeris replied: “The outcome is clear – it’s either death or captivity. . . . I’d rather die than end up in the hated Poles’ clutches.”

All who retreated then continued to fight in the new location: “We fought until it was no longer possible, and so . . . we end up prisoners. They disarm and line us up. We continue to hear thunderous gunfire. Comrade Robinzonas Leizeris has not lost hope and is  still shooting. A Polish officer hit by his well-aimed shot fell at our feet. Robinzonas Leizeris was approximately 50 paces from us. Holding his rifle at his chest, his face aflame and aiming at the enemy, he yelled: one, two, three . . . . Furious Polish officers ran towards the unknown warrior yelling ‘pšiakrėv’. Our Robinzonas Leizeris was shot dead by them with their Brownings, and left to lie where he fell.”

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Lithuanian Jews, calling themselves “Litvakes”, towards the end of the First World War, just as Lithuanians, did not wait for compulsory mobilization, but on their own initiative joined partisan groups to defend Lithuania – in the Panevėzys partisan group, 14 Jews fought against the Poles. In 1919 in Joniškis, when Lithuania still did not have its own army, the Jews themselves formed, outfitted and fed a batallion of Jewish volunteers.  When mobilization was finally announced, this already formed Jewish batallion was one of the first groups of soldiers of the Lithuanian army.

J. Šapiro, a Jew from Joniškis, in 1934 wrote about the forming of that batallion: “The joint historical fate of Jews and Lithuanians, having dragged the same czarist yoke for centuries, awakened in us Lithuania’s Jews, a consciousness of the same fate for our peoples, and a resolve to win, together, an indpendent nation. . . . I initiated a broad action to recruit Jewish volunteers. For that purpose I visited several places, explaining and persuading, and the Jewish youth came out in droves. . . . Some of those early volunteers fell in battle, and their graves are scattered throughout Lithuania’s fields.

Volfas Kaganas, distinguished in battle multiple times – against the Bolsheviks, against the Bermontists, and again against the Poles – was twice awarded the Vytis Cross for bravery.  One of his deeds is described: “On November 23, 1919, in combat against the German Bermontists near Radviliškis junior officer Volfas Kaganas, attacking the enemy in the town, was injured by artillery shrapnel, but he did not abandon the formation. Quickly, he bandaged his own wound, and continued the attack with his corps, in that manner encouraging others. The enemy was ejected from Radviliškis.

Later, Lithuanian Jews established an association of Jewish soldiers who had fought in the wars of Lithuania’s Independence, which in 1933 had chapters in 33 locations.  The association had over 3,000 members. Among them were volunteers from the very beginning and participants in the liberation of Klaipėda.   19 Jewish warriors were awarded the Vytis Cross and other medals for distinguishing themselves in battle.   Two Jewish Vytis Cross warriors, who were
cut to pieces by the Poles, rest somewhere in the Alytus cemetery.   All of Lithuania’s Jewish burials suffered during the German and Soviet occupations, and attempts are now being made to find those two warriors’ burial places. 

During the wars of Lithuanian Independence, the Lithuanian army had 9 Jewish officers.  Among the first class of graduates from the Lithuanian Military Academy were six Jews:  Goldbergas, Goniondskis. Gotlibas, Gensqas, Krisknianskis, and Mogilevskis.

Historian Dov Levin, born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1925, and living in Israel since World War II, who is, in general, not kindly disposed towards Lithuanians, writes that after World War I, Lithuanian  Jews understood and knew that life in Lithuania was  better for them than for Jews in the neighboring countries, and for that reason “it is easy to understand their general willingness  to serve in the Lithuanian army, and such patriotic associations as the Vilnius Liberation Commettee, and why the students of  Kaunas’ Hebrew gymnasium offered themselves as volunteers to serve in the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Association (“Šauliai”) against the Polish legions which were marching towards Vilnius.”

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During the Lithuanian Wars of Independence, supplying weapons to the Lithuanian Army was not an easy task.   At that time Lithuania was surrounded by enemies on all sides – Poles, Bolsheviks, Bermontiks, and, of course, Germans who were still there and were the masters of  the land.  Though Lithuania may have had funds to buy armaments, it was difficult to find anyone who would sell them to Lithuania.    Boris Šeinas, a Jew from Kaunas, agreed to support the army on credit, in other words, to risk his economic existence and his life, on the gamble that Lithuania would succeed against its enemies.  And so, he provided weapons,  horses, wagons, clothing, boots, bread.

In the beginning, the Germans prohibited the Lithuanians from establishing their own army, and a state of war existed  between Poland and Lithuania.  On one trip Šeinas illegally crossed into Poland to buy some horses for the Lithuanian army.  He was herding 25 horses back to Lithuania and the Poles caught him.  The Poles grabbed the horses, but Šeinas managed to escape – if he had not, he would have faced a military tribunal and been executed.   After hiding out for a week, Šeinas, with his helpers one dark night grabbed the horses from the Poles’ stables and eventually led them into Lithuania. They say that along the way, the Kaišiadoris pharmacist Morkunas, offered Šeinas 7,500 marks for each horse, but Šeinas turned it down and sold all the horses to the Lithuanian Army for the agreed price of 5,000 marks per horse.

One of the founding volunteers of the Lithuanian Army, genereal Vincas Grigaliūnas-Glovackis, himself  distinguished in battles, evaluated Šeinas’ and other Jewish merchants contributions to the wars of Independence:  “To keep benefical for us contacts with the Germans, to buy up weapons, to maintain secret warehouses with war material, to transport and deliver weapons .  .  .  Šeinas, Zisle, Frenkelis, Aronsonas and others carried out special assignments with true love of  their country, placing their live in danger, not  begrudging either money or labor.”

Jews also worked in the political arena in support of Lithuania’s Independence.  Simon Rozenbaum, having wide influence in  Europe’s Jewish community raised and promoted Lithuania’s Indpendence at the Versailles Peace Conference.    Also, in the 1919-1920 negotiations between Lithuania and the Soviet Union it was not a coincidence that Lithuania succeeded in getting favorable terms – representing Lithuania, one of the negotiators was Simon Rozenbaum, while the chief Soviet negotiator was the Jew Adolf Yoffe, and his superior was the Litvak Maxim Litvinov, who was from a Jewish family in Byalistok. 

The Jews of Lithuania in 1918-1920 contributed financially and politically to the re-establishment of Lithuania as an independent sovereign state.   And they also fought and they died as warriors with weapons in their hands, next to their Lithuanian comrades.    It is an enormous tragedy, and a most sad tragedy that two decades later, both groups – Jews and Lithuanians – were to suffer greatly, and separately.  But for the brief few years at the start of the 20th century, they fought and worked together, shoulder to shoulder.