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IN MEMORY OF JEWISH KAUNAS

Chiune Sugihara:
The Japanese diplomat/
spy who became a hero of the Holocaust

Chiune Sugihara (1900 – 1986)

By Boris Bakunas, PhD

In the Year of Shame 1940, while the bulk of the German military machine was consolidating its grip on Poland, 110 French and British divisions sat idly on the Western Front, facing a token German force a fraction its size.

In the Year of Shame 1940, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the dreaded NKVD, massacred 22,000 captured members of the Polish Officer Corps, turning the Katyn Forest into a vast mass grave.

In that same Year of Shame 1940, Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat and spy stationed in Kaunas, Lithuania – along with his wife Yukiko – made a joint decision in defiance of direct orders from their government, and together they lit a beacon of hope for thousands of Polish and Lithuanian Jews.  From 19 July to 28 August, 1940, the two-storey, white stucco building on 30 Vaizgantas Street that housed the Japanese Consulate, became the moral capital of the world.

Chiune and Yukiko Sugihara with their two children had arrived in Kaunas from Helsinki in 1939 not long after Nazi and Soviet troops sliced Poland into two zones of terror. Chiune’s ostensible mission was to serve as the Japanese Vice-Consul in Kaunas.  His real assignment was to gather intelligence on the strength of the Soviet military in the West.

But a chance encounter at a delicatessen with an eleven-year-old Lithuanian-Jewish boy named Solly Ganor intervened, transforming the suave foreign-service officer renowned in diplomatic circles for throwing lavish parties into a hero of the Holocaust. 

Jewish refugees at the gate of the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas, July 1940.
Thousands of Jews lined up here, hoping to receive transit visas allowing
them to escape to the Far East and to America or Palestine.

“Now is the time to leave.”

Years later, an elderly, but healthy Solly Ganor recalled that fateful encounter.

 As Solly, his hair flaked with snow, stepped through the door of his Aunt Anushka’s delicatessen in Kaunas, he saw her chatting amiably with “an elegantly-dressed man with strange, slanting eyes.”

“Ah, my dear nephew has come for his Hanukah money,” Aunt Anushka exclaimed.  “Come here and meet his Excellency, the Consul of Japan, Mr. Sugihara.”

“How do you do, Sir?” Solly said.

The man shook Solly’s hand and smiled.  Solly remembers taking an immediate liking to him.  “There was humor and kindness in those strange eyes,” he later recalled.

Aunt Aunushka said to Solly, “You want to go to the movies, and you need a litas, right?”  Solly nodded eagerly.

But before Aunt Anushka could get to the cash register, Mr. Sugihara reached into his pocket and handed Solly a shiny coin.  “Since this is Hanukah, consider me your uncle.”

Solly hesitated.  Then he impulsively blurted out an invitation.  “Since you are my uncle, then you should come Saturday to our Hanukah party.  The whole family will be there.”

The arrangements made, Solly went off to see a Laurel and Hardy film.

At six, Aunt Anushka arrived with  Mr. and Mrs.Sugihara and Yukiko’s sister Setsuko at the Ganors’ apartment. Solly recalled that Mr. Sugihara wore a striped suit. His wife Yukiko, was dressed in an elegant black dress.

The Ganors had lived in Kaunas for generations.  Solly’s father Chaim was a successful businessman.  Among the many guests were two refugees from Warsaw, Mr. Rosenblatt and his little daughter, Lea.  

The family and guests sat down at the long dinner table. Yukiko had never seen such a huge meal.  There was even a duck, Japanese-style, which Aunt Anushka had specially prepared.

Mr. and Mrs.Sugihara attentively watched the Hanukkah rituals.  Solly noticed that Mr. Sugihara was particularly interested in the story of Judah Maccabee, the leader of a successful Jewish revolt against foreign invaders in the second century B.C.E.  He asked many questions about it.

Later, Mr. Sugihara asked Solly about his hobbies. When he learned that stamp collecting was one of them, he invited Solly to the consulate to see some Japanese stamps.

After dinner, Mr. Rosenblatt described his narrow escape from Poland and the things he had witnessed:  his wife’s death during the bombings of Warsaw, Jews terrorized by Nazis and anti-Semites, arrested, and shipped off to camps. As he recounted the atrocities, Mr. Rosenblatt started to cry.

 “It was painful to hear those horrible stories,” Solly recalled. “But Sugihara listened to every word.”

Later Solly overheard Mr. Rosenblatt pleading with Mr. Sugihara to issue him a visa so he could leave Kaunas. “Even a transit visa will help.” 

Mr. Sugihara told Mr. Rosenblatt to come see him.  

One day after school, Solly visited the consulate.  Mr. Sugihara showed him into his office and pulled out an envelope from his desk drawer containing Japanese stamps.  After showing him the stamps, Mr. Sugihara asked Solly a series of questions.

Had Mr. Rosenblatt and his daughter gotten their transit visas yet?  How was Solly’s family faring?  Solly knew that his father was hesitant about selling the family business. He couldn’t imagine Hitler invading Lithuania with Soviet troops in the country.

Mr. Sugihara’s voice suddenly sounded serious.  Would Solly give his father an important message? Solly nodded.  Mr. Sugihara spoke very quietly, as if he were telling a secret.  “The time to leave is now,” he said.

 “They all looked so sad.”

On the morning of July 27, 1940, as was his custom, Chiune rose early, ate breakfast, and climbed down the stairs to consular office below.  What he saw outside his window caused him to rush back upstairs to show Yukiko.

Instead of the tranquil tree-lined street, she saw a crowd of about two hundred people, many of them dressed in bedraggled clothes.

“There were children, women, and young men,” Yukiko later said.  “They were all hanging onto the fence.  The young men were trying to climb over the fence.  But the security of the consulate was pushing them back.”

Yukiko took several photographs.  “They all looked so sad.  Some women were looking right at me with great sorrow.”

To calm the throng, Chiune Sugihara agreed to meet with a delegation of five in his office.  Zorach Warhaftig, a leader of Poland’s religious Zionists, was selected as head of the group.  One by one the delegates described the terrible plight of the Jews.  Mr. Warhaftig also told Mr. Sugihara that the Dutch consul had agreed to give Jewish refugees entrance visas for the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao.  But to get there, they would have to travel to Japan first. Would Mr. Sugihara issue transit visas for Japan?

 Mr. Sugihara expressed his deep sympathy. However, he could issue only a few visas on his own authority.  He told the Jewish delegates that he needed time to think. He asked them to come back the next day.

That night Chiune and Yukiko tossed and turned in a restless half-sleep.  In the morning, they saw that the crowd had grown.  Entire families were now sleeping on the ground, afraid that they might lose their place in line.

When Sugihara met with the Jewish delegates, the acting Dutch consul, Mr. Jan Zwartendijk, was also present.

Mr.  Zwartendijk affirmed that he was willing to do all he could to help.  Everybody now looked at Mr. Sugihara.  Looking them straight in the eyes, Mr. Sugihara announced that he was willing to cable the Japanese Foreign Ministry for permission to grant transit visas, provided that his wife agreed.

The meeting adjourned.  The first spark of hope had been struck.  What had begun as a chance meeting between an eleven-year-old boy and a Japanese Consul was fast turning into a conspiracy.

Chiune Sugihara with his wife Yukiko 

“This request is a humanitarian plea.”

That evening Chiune and Yukiko descended the stairs to the consular office, where Chiune began the laborious process of encoding a cable to the Foreign Ministry.  Yukiko transcribed the cable in triplicate by hand.

“I request permission to issue visas to hundreds of Jewish people who have come to the consulate here in Kaunas seeking transit visas.  They are suffering terribly.  As a fellow human being, I cannot refuse their requests.  Please permit me to issue visas to them.  This request is a humanitarian plea.  The refugees’ request for visas should not be denied.”

Two days later, Chiune Sugihara decoded a cable from Japan.  His urgent plea had been emphatically denied.  The denial ended with the words. “No exceptions. STOP. No further inquiries expected. STOP. K. Tanaka, Foreign Ministry Tokyo.”

Undaunted, Sugihara sent a second request.  The crowd of refugees, many with faces ashen from hunger and fatigue, continued to grow.

A second cable from Tokyo arrived.  “Permission denied.”

Sugihara tried a third and final time. DENIED!

Wearily he went upstairs to share the bad news with Yukiko.  They both knew they faced a grim, and possibly deadly choice.

If Chiune defied the Foreign Ministry’s orders, at the very least, his career would be ruined.  At worst, he would be placing his life and the lives of his wife and children in peril.  As Yukiko later said, “If we were in Germany, and we did something like that, my husband, myself, my children could all be taken away by the Nazis. I didn’t know what they would do to us.  Maybe they’d kill us.”

Chiune looked into Yukiko’s eyes and told her that he had decided to issue visas under his own authority.  Did she approve?  Yes.

The next day, Chiune Sugihara had his chauffer drive him to the Soviet Embassy where he met with the Soviet consul.  Sugihara spoke fluent Russian.  After a brief period of negotiation, the Soviet consul agreed to allow the refugees to travel across the Soviet Union via to trans-Siberian railroad to ports along the Pacific coast where they could board ships for Japan, but at five times the standard price.

As the shiny black Buick with the Japanese flag slowly drove past the refugees outside the consulate, all eyes were trying to gauge the look on the diplomat’s face.  But they saw no hint of what had transpired.  The tension in the crowd grew.

Finally, Mr. Suhigara stepped out of the building and stood in front of the gate. In a calm, authoritative voice, he announced that he would issue a visa to every man, woman, and child.  After a moment of stunned silence, the crowd erupted in cries of joy.  Families and friends hugged and kissed.

Sugihara interviewed each refugee, asking probing questions in an attempt to find useful details to write on the visas.  Each visa had to be written by hand, signed, stamped, and registered in a log containing its number and the name of the person or family who received it.

As word spread among the Jewish community in Kaunas, the crowd in front of the consulate mushroomed.  To speed up the process Sugihara ordered his staff, including his German assistant Wolfgang Gudze, to assist him.

“How can I handle a thousand visas?”

Among those who came to the consulate was Moses Zupnik, a yeshiva student who looked barely out of his teens.  His purpose?  To obtain 300 visas for the Mir Yeshiva, a Jewish school for religious education.

Zupnik later recalled:  “I came in, and I was all excited. And I saw that he measured me. He was sitting at his desk and he was measuring me from the top to the bottom.  Who I am?  What I am?  I said to him, ‘I am a representative of the Mir Yeshiva, and we want to go to Curacao.  We just want to go through Japan.”’

Zupnik fidgeted nervously as he awaited Sugihara’s response.  To his amazement, Sugihara agreed to write all 300 visas.

“I still remember when he looked at me, when he said, ‘Alright I’ll give you all the visas.’  I don’t forget these things, because they are still all alive in me.  He saw people suffering, and he thought maybe he could help.  And he helped.”

When Zupnik returned a few days later to pick up the visas, he found Wolfgang Gudze fraught with panic.  “How can I handle a thousand visas?”

Zupnik said, “You know what?  I will help you.” 

When Sugihara heard about the offer, he said to Gudze, “Let him help you.”

For the next two weeks, Zupnik and Gudze worked side by side assisting Sugihara.  During that time, Gudze made a deep impression on Zupnik.  “He was a zaddik, a groyse zaddik” (a righteous man), Zupnik said years later.

But others reported that Gudze was a Gestapo agent

Then on 2 August, a cable from the Japanese Foreign Ministry arrived, ordering Sugihara to shut down the consulate immediately.  Since the Soviets had forcibly “annexed” Lithuania into the U.S.S.R. in late July, they did not want any consulates in Kaunas. Sugihara fired off a passionate appeal to the Soviet Embassy for a delay.  He was told that his request would be placed under consideration.

Sugihara speeded up the visa writing process again. Soon he was working 16 hours a day. By evening his hands ached so fiercely that Yukiko had to massage them before he could fall asleep.

On 10 August. Sugihara saw that the ever-swelling crowd now included the poorest of the poor, late-comers who lacked the connections to hear about the goings-on in the Japanese consulate.  “They all seemed very tired and exhausted,” Sugihara wrote.  “I did not know whether they had any place to sleep in Kaunas, maybe they just slept in the station or on the street.”

Sugihara told his staff that from now on he would issue visas even to those whose documents were obvious forgeries, even to those with no documents at all.

In mid-August, the long-dreaded reply for an extension from the Soviets arrived.  Hands trembling, Sugihara slit the envelope open.  Gudze heard him sigh with relief.  Inexplicably, the Soviets had agreed to an extension until 28 August.

The unexpected news reinvigorated Chiune.  Yukiko offered to help write visas, but he refused, firmly ordering her to stay as far away from the consular office as possible.  Perhaps he didn’t trust Gudze.  Most likely, he didn’t trust anybody.  What he was sure of was that the responsibility for his actions should fall on his shoulders alone.

Former Japanese consulate in Kaunas. 

“Banzai Nippon!”

Then came a final warning from Japan.  Close the consulate immediately and leave.  Chiune  told Yukiko to start packing, while he, Gudze, and Zupnik continued writing visas.

On 28 August, their suitcases packed and all documents burnt, the Sugihara family squeezed into the black Buick and drove off.

By this time Chiune Sugihara was worn out.

 “He was so exhausted, like a sick person.” Yukiko recalled.  “Even though he was ordered to go to Berlin, he said he couldn’t make it to Berlin and suggested we go to a hotel and rest before leaving.”

On the gate, Sugihara had left a note for the refugees. It said that he would be staying at the Metropolis Hotel. 

Even before he could settle into his room, Sugihara got an urgent message from the hotel desk.  He was needed downstairs.  Having read the note on the gate, the refugees had followed him to the hotel.  Sugihara wrote more visas.  He wrote and he wrote until the family finally had to leave for the station and board the train for Berlin.

The refugees followed.

On the train, Sugihara continued to write visas on plain paper, signing them and flinging them indiscriminately to outstretched hands in the hope that the refugees would fill them in and find a way to outwit the Soviet and Japanese officials on their own.

As the train moved away from the station, Sugihara heard a voice shout, “Banzai Nippon!”  Others joined the chorus.  “Banzai Nippon!  Banzai Nippon!’  These words meant “Long live Japan!”  Sugihara had told some of the refugees to say this when they encountered Japanese officials.

Some witnesses reported they heard Sugihara say, “Please forgive me. I cannot write anymore. I wish you the best.”

Chiune Sugihara memorial in Vilnius.

 “I may have disobeyed my government, but if I didn't I would be disobeying God."

Chaim Ganor never sold his business.  He and dozens of other family members, including Aunt Anushka, were sent to German concentration camps.  Only Chaim, Solly, and Solly’s sister survived.

On May 2, 1945, Solly Ganor lay nearly frozen under a blanket of snow.  A four-man signal unit of the US 522th artillery battalion was passing by, when one of the soldiers looked back and said, “Hold it fellow, something strange is lying there in the snow.”

They found a whole group of people in striped clothing.  The soldier picked Solly up.  Solly looked into his eyes and saw that they looked strangely familiar – slanted.  The soldier was Corporal Clarence Matsomura.  Years later Solly and Clarence met again in Jerusalem.  In 2003, Solly Ganor’s book Light One Candle:  A Survivor’s Tale from Lithuania to Jerusalem was published.

Moses Zupnik, who came to ask Sugihara for 300 visas for the students of the Mir Yeshiva and stayed to help write visas during the two final weeks at the consulate, made it to Japan.  The Japanese sent him and the other students to Shanghai, where they stayed until the war ended.  Moses went to America and settled in New York City, where he became a rabbi.

Wolfgang Gudze is said to have reluctantly joined the German army.  Once, when Moses Zupnik asked Gudze how he could thank him, Gudze replied.  “You don’t have to thank me.  But the world is a wheel.  Today Hitler is on top.  Tomorrow he may be down.  Don’t forget what I did.”  Zupnik never heard from Gudze again.

Although Mr. Rosenblatt and his little daughter Lea obtained their visas, I have not been able to learn if they survived the Holocaust.

Soon after arriving in Berlin, Chiune Sugihara was posted to Prague, where he and his family got a much-needed rest.  Even so, he continued writing visas in Prague, and later in Koenigsburg, his last diplomatic post.

After the war, he and his family were detained by the Russians in one internment camp after another. The Soviet Union had declared war on Japan in August of 1945.  When he returned to Japan, Chiune Sugihara was summarily dismissed from the Foreign Service in 1947. His youngest son Haruki died shortly after, but four years later a new son was born. To support his family, he worked at odd jobs, including selling light bulbs.

In 1960, because of his fluent command of the Russian language, Sugihara got a job for a trading company that did business with the Soviet Union that required him to live in Moscow. He visited his family from time to time for sixteen years until his retirement.

In 1968, Jehoshua Nishtri, an Israeli diplomat in Tokyo and one of the Jews Sugihara had helped save, finally tracked Sugihara down.  Together with others, he lobbied the Israeli government for Chiune Sugihara’s inclusion in the Yad Vashem memorial, which was granted after extensive research, in 1985.  By this time, Chiune was ill.  Yukiko went to Israel and accepted the honor on his behalf.  In gratitude for his deeds, Chiune Sugihara and his descendants were granted Israeli citizenship in perpetuity.

Nobody knows exactly how many visas Chiune Sugihara issued to Jewish refugees. He reported to the Japanese Foreign Ministry that he had issued 2,132 visas of which 1,500 were to Jews.  It is estimated that he helped save anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 Jews. At least 40,000 descendants of Sugihara visa-holders are alive today.

In Japan, Chiune Sugihara was honored in the year 2000 on the 100^th anniversary of his birth. He had been born on January 1, 1900 – the first day of the 20^th century.  In 2002, a bronze statue of him was erected in the Little Tokyo district of Los Angeles in the United States.

The Polish Government posthumously awarded him the Commander’s Cross with the Star of the Order of Polonia in 2007.

In Kaunas, the Sugihara Museum now stands what used to be the Japanese Consulate at 30 Vaizgantas Street, which for a short time in the Year of Shame 1940 became the moral capital of the world.

References

Chiune Sugihara.  In Wikipedia. Retrieved December 23, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/Chiune_Sugihara.

Gold, Alison Leslie. A Special Fate: Chiune Sugihara, Hero of the Holocaust. New York: Scholastic Press, 2000.

A Japanese Holocaust Rescuer.  Retrieved December 23, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0lizzqOxuI.

Levine, Hillel. In Search of Sugihara: The Elusive Japanese Diplomat who Risked his Life to Rescue 10,000 Jews From the Holocaust. New York: Free Press, 1996.

Paldiel, Mordecai. “Sempo Sugihara.” In The Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust, 252-257. Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav Publishing House, 1992.

Solly Ganor – Remembrance – Ron Greene.Com. Retrieved December 23, 2012, from www.rongreene.com/sollyintro.html.

Sugihara – The Conspiracy of Kindness. 4/6. Retrieved December 23, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISsybs_89mQ.

Yad Vashem. “Visas to Japan:  Chiune Sempo Sugihara.”  Retrieved December 23, 2012 from http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/sugihara.asp.

Sugihara's widow with Lithuania's then president Valdas Adamkus at
a tree planting ceremony in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2001.

Ellen Cassedy

The book We are Here

Daiva Markelis

Professor Daiva Markelis, Illinois: Essay/review of Ellen Cassedy's book We Are Here

I’ve always been interested in Lithuanian history and, lately, in Jewish-Lithuanian history. Jews have been living in Lithuania since the 1300s, have contributed to the work of nation building throughout the centuries, suffered alongside their Christian neighbors during the reign of the tsars. Despite their once considerable numbers—over seven percent of the population at one time—and formidable achievements, I don’t remember ever reading about them in Lithuanian Saturday School vadoveliai, readers filled with patriotic poems, variations of stories about the founding of Vilnius involving a dream about an iron wolf, and photographs of storks nesting atop the thatched roofs of simple country cottages. (Every year the same stork seemed to appear in yet another edition of the book.) 

At home, my mother talked about a Jewish friend she’d had in Klaipeda.  My father remembered a Jewish peddler who sold fabric and buttons. So, yes, Jews had lived in Lithuania, but only a handful over six centuries—that’s the impression I received.  Soon after Lithuania regained her independence, I learned from my Aunt Birute about the once-thriving Jewish community in Dusetos: “This was a grocery store,” she said as we walked down Kazys Buga Street, “and here stood a bakery, and beyond that, over there, the best restaurant in town.”

I tell the Dusetos story to Ellen Cassedy, author of We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust, recently published by the University of Nebraska Press, over coffee at the Corner Bakery. She nods: “The collapse of the Soviet Union made it possible for people to speak openly about what happened during the occupation. During both of the occupations, Communist and Nazi.”

 Ellen had emailed me a few months earlier, having gotten my name from a mutual acquaintance who knew I’d be at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Chicago. She is a warm, elegant woman with a crown of curly blond hair, a good listener and asker of questions, befitting her background as a journalist. I’ve been acquainted with her for all of thirty minutes and already she knows that both my first language and first husband were Lithuanian, that I’ve kept my maiden name, that my second husband is of Bohemian and Greek descent (and a keeper), that my parents immigrated to the United States in the 1940s, that I’ve visited Lithuania four times.  I know that Cassedy’s Jewish great-grandmother had worked on a dairy farm, supervising the Lithuanian workers and keeping the books; that her grandfather had been a religious scholar, that he had escaped to the United States to avoid the czarist draft.

We’ve talked about the perils and pleasures of publishing books and the highs and lows of academic conferences.

            “What do you think of Val Adamkus?” she asked, referring to the former president of Lithuania and a long-time resident of Hinsdale, Illinois.

            “I love Adamkus. I used to work as a waitress at a golf resort he owned in Michigan back in the Seventies. He was a friend of my father’s.”

            “Do you know Al Domanskis?” she continued.

            “There’s one degree of separation for Lithuanians living in Chicago. So, yes.”

            Domanskis is a prominent Lithuanian lawyer and activist involved in efforts to promote Jewish-Lithuanian dialogue.

            Other Lithuanians we know (or know of) include Julija Sukys, whose Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Simaite, also published by the University of Nebraska Press, recounts the struggles of the Vilnius librarian who helped save Jews and was deported to Dachau; Ina Navazelskis, who works in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and Saulius Suziedelis, the noted professor and historian who writes extensively about the Holocaust in Lithuania.  

            As our talk shifts to the Holocaust, I realize I’m a little worried for Ellen. Not all Lithuanians will greet her book with the interest, respect, and admiration of the above-named individuals.

            “You’re going to receive some flak,” I say.

            “Really?” she says, sounding sincerely surprised.

            Perhaps I’m being presumptuous. I haven’t read the book yet, after all. And one of the blurbs on the back is by Adamkus, a man highly respected, even idolized, by a large number of diaspora Lithuanians. Adamkus writes that We Are Here "can help us to reach out, open our hearts, and rediscover one another in the spirit of mutual understanding."

            But I know from experience that Lithuanian complicity in the Holocaust is a topic most Lithuanians wish would just go away.  Some deny that Lithuanians were involved in the massive killings, despite countless eyewitness accounts and historical research from a wide range of highly respected scholars. Others bring up ethically questionable not to mention specious counter-arguments: “The Jews were communists and thus responsible for the take-over of Lithuania by the Soviets.” Still others fear that acknowledgment of any involvement will be seen by susceptible minds as an admission that Lithuania, a small, relatively poor country with a history of occupation, was the instigator of the Holocaust. 

The most frequent response is that Lithuanians have endured their own significant losses: the massive deportations to Siberia; the death of family members to starvation and disease in that vast, unforgiving region; the enforced Russification of the entire country.  “What about us?” is the sometimes unspoken reaction to real or imaginary accusations. The trauma of war, displacement, and occupation make it difficult to see beyond one’s own sufferings, to realize that victims can also be victimizers.

            Back home in Charleston, Illinois, surrounded by cornfields and Baptists and a university newspaper whose motto is, somewhat inexplicably, Tell the Truth and Don’t be Afraid, I crack open We Are Here and am immediately drawn into the book’s narration.

 Cassedy begins by describing her first days in Vilnius during the summer of 2004. One of her reasons for visiting Lithuania was to study Yiddish, the mother tongue of her forebears. I suspect that more than one reader will identify with her struggle to learn foreign syntax and vocabulary. How many individuals born in the United States or Canada to Lithuanian parents haven’t felt that seven cases for Lithuanian nouns are six cases too many?

Cassedy’s intimate beginning, with its emphasis on the intricacies of language learning, works to make readers more emotionally receptive when she shifts to what might be termed the more momentous reasons for her trip: to uncover family secrets about her Uncle Will, who served as a Jewish policeman, a morally controversial post, in the Siauliai ghetto during the Nazi occupation; and to chronicle how Lithuania has been dealing with its turbulent wartime past. Choosing to start with less “heavy” subject matter may be a carefully considered (and highly effective) rhetorical move, but it is also a hallmark of Cassedy’s chosen genre. We Are Here is not an academic history, nor is it a traditional memoir; it can best be described as an ethnographic chronicle of discovery, a book where personal experience is seamlessly integrated with in-depth interviews and formidable historical research. In addition, the sections about Uncle Will make this a detective story in the tradition of Dostoevsky’s novels, where the circumstances surrounding a crime create suspense but are ultimately less important than the psychological motives and moral dilemmas underpinning the perpetrator’s actions. 

In We Are Here, Cassedy weaves a complex and colorful tapestry where certain themes emerge, then recede, then appear again. Her encounter with Steponas, an old man from her ancestral town of Rokiskis, who wants to “speak to a Jew” before he dies, parallels in some ways the anguished history of her uncle.  Reading this section brought to mind the famous quote by Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”  Steponas had been a witness to the executions, had done “a little” to help out his Jewish neighbors. Cassedy writes: “It seemed to me that it was his anguish about whether he could have done more that had led him to want to speak to me, and then to weep before me.”

The individuals Cassedy meets during her summer journey—Lithuanian gentiles, Lithuanian Jews, her fellow classmates at the language institute—are depicted with a writer’s eye for detail and a humanist’s desire for understanding the motivations of ordinary people.  This doesn’t mean Cassedy is blindly accepting—there is nothing Pollyannaish about We Are Here. We see her irritation when someone says something contradictory or just plain idiotic, though this is almost always portrayed with raised eyebrows rather than harsh words.

We Are Here is not always easy reading. How could it be, with such serious, often tragic, subject matter? But it is not emotionally overwhelming reading. Cassedy structures her book so that readers can digest broader historical events and think about their implications while at the same time immersing themselves in the writer’s personal quest to unearth family information and navigate a new country. The writing itself is masterful— honest, uncluttered, evocative, and often highly poetic, as when Cassedy describes Rokiskis: “My ancestral home. Except for the trilling of birds, the town seemed hushed, suspended like a held breath. There was so much air. Somehow my images of the past hadn’t allowed for so much blank space.”

This is an especially important book for English-speaking Lithuanians who live in the West and are unaware of the slow but steady progress that is being made in Lithuania with coming to terms with what happened during the Holocaust. There is so much to learn, so much that needs to be done in terms of writing Lithuanian Jews back into the history that had been so brutally taken away from them. We Are Here is a great starting point.

The Litvaks

Watercolour by Izabele Bindler (1932 – 2003)

Jews trace their origins in Lithuania back to the days of Grand Duke Gediminas in the early 14th century, and by the late 15th century there were already thriving Jewish communities here. In time, Vilnius became known as the "Jerusalem of the North," a centre of Jewish religious learning. The Jews of Lithuania lived an intense Jewish life, and their role and influence in the major Jewish political and cultural movements were far greater than their numbers would have suggested. Vilnius became a prominent international, intellectual centre. Here there were once as many synagogues (totally 96) as churches—including the Great Synagogue, built in 1573, a vast complex of prayer spaces and schools.

Here were the innumerable yeshivas, with their famously erudite scholars (it was said that at one time there were 333 Jews of Vilnius who could recite the Talmud by heart). Here, in the 18th century, lived one of the greatest Talmudic experts of all time, the legendary Gaon of Vilna, to whom congregations from as far away as Portugal would send questions about matters of religious law or textual interpretation. Here, too, was the birthplace of the world-renowned Yiddish Scientific Institute; here was the Strashun Library, with its tens of thousands of volumes containing irreplaceable incunabula of Hebrew texts. Here flourished the most distinguished publisher of Hebrew books, the Widow & Brothers Romm, whose multi-volume Talmud, each page a masterwork of scholarship, composition, and design, was considered the pinnacle of Jewish publishing. Vilnius was also the greatest city of Diaspora learning, and at a time when others in Europe were effectively illiterate, all the Jews in Vilnius could read and write. This was so unusual that it provoked the invention of a brand-new word, "Vilner," meaning "an educated man with knowledge.

The below information about the Litvaks is from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_Jews

Background
Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks are Jews with roots in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: (present-day Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine, and the northeastern Suwałki region of Poland). The term is sometimes used, especially in Israel, to cover all Orthodox Jews who follow a "Lithuanian" (Ashkenazic and non-Hasidic) style of life and learning, whatever their ethnic background.

Lithuania was historically home to a large and influential Jewish community that was almost entirely eliminated during the Holocaust: see Holocaust in Lithuania. Before World War IIthere were over 110 synagogues and 10 yeshivas in Vilnius. Before World War II, the Lithuanian Jewish population was some 160,000, about 7% of the total population. Vilnius (then Wilno in the Second Polish Republic) had a Jewish community of nearly 100,000, about 45% of the city's total. About 4,000 Jews were counted in Lithuania during the 2005 census.  There are still strong communities of Jews of Lithuanian descent around the world, especially in Israel, the United States, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Australia.

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania

The adjective Litvish means "Lithuanian" (Latvian Jews were known as Lettish): the noun for a Lithuanian Jew is Litvak. Of the main Yiddish dialects in Europe, the Litvishe Yiddish(Lithuanian Yiddish) dialect was spoken by Jews in Lithuania, Belarus, and in the Suwałki region of northeastern Poland.
[edit]Ethnicity, religious customs and heritage

The characteristically "Lithuanian" approach to Judaism was marked by a concentration on highly intellectual Talmud study. Lithuania became the heartland of the traditionalist opposition to Hasidism, to the extent that in popular perception "Lithuanian" and "mitnagged" became virtually interchangeable terms. However, a sizable minority of Lithuanian Jews belong(ed) to Hasidic groups, including Chabad, Slonim, Karlin (Pinsk) and Koidanov. With the spread of the Enlightenment, many Lithuanian Jews became devotees of the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment) movement in Eastern Europe pressing for better integration into European society, and today many leading academics, scientists and philosophers are of Lithuanian Jewish descent.

The most famous Lithuanian institution of Jewish learning was Volozhin yeshiva, which was the model for most later yeshivas. "Lithuanian" yeshivas in existence today include Ponevezh,Telshe, Mir, Kelm, and Slabodka. In theoretical Talmud study, the leading Lithuanian authorities were Chaim Soloveitchik and the Brisker school; rival approaches were those of the Mir and Telshe yeshivas. In practical halakha the Lithuanians traditionally followed the Aruch HaShulchan, though today the "Lithuanian" yeshivas prefer the Mishnah Berurah, which is regarded as both more analytic and more accessible.

In the 19th century, the Orthodox Ashkenazi residents of the Holy Land were broadly speaking divided into Hasidim and Perushim, who were Lithuanian Jews influenced by the Vilna Gaon. For this reason, in modern day Israeli Haredi parlance the terms Litvak (noun) or Litvisher (adjective), or in Hebrew Litaim, are often used loosely to include any non-HasidicAshkenazi Haredi individual or institution. Another reason for this broadening of the term is the fact that many of the leading Israeli Haredi yeshivas (outside the Hasidic camp) are successor bodies to the famous yeshivot of Lithuania, though their present-day members may or may not be descended from Lithuanian Jewry. In reality, both the ethnic makeup and the religious traditions of the mitnagged communities are much more diverse.

History
Some sources claim that Jews began living in Lithuania as early as the 8th century. In 1388 they were granted a charter by Vytautas, under which they formed a class of freemen subject in all criminal cases directly to the jurisdiction of the grand duke and his official representatives, and in petty suits to the jurisdiction of local officials on an equal footing with the lesser nobles (szlachta),boyars, and other free citizens. As a result, the community prospered.

In 1495 they were expelled by Alexander Jagiellon, but allowed to return in 1503. The Lithuanian statute of 1566 placed a number of restrictions on the Jews, and imposed sumptuary laws, including the requirement that they wear distinctive clothing, including yellow caps for men and yellow kerchiefs for women.

The Khmelnytsky Uprising destroyed the existing Lithuanian Jewish institutions. Still, the Jewish population of Lithuania grew from an estimated 120,000 in 1569 to approximately 250,000 in 1792. After the 1793 Second Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Lithuanian Jews became subjects of the Russian Empire.

Lithuanian Jews in the Second World War
The Jewish Lithuanian population before World War II numbered around 220,000. During the German invasion of June 1941, 206,800 Jews were murdered by the Nazis and Lithuanian collaborators. Most of the Jews were taken into the woods to be shot in graves they were forced to dig themselves. Notable execution locations were in the Paneriai woods (see Ponary massacre) and the Ninth Fort .

Culture
Litvaks have an identifiable mode of pronouncing Hebrew and Yiddish; this is often used to determine the boundaries of Lita (area of settlement of Litvaks). Its most characteristic feature is the pronunciation of the vowel holam as [ej] (as against Sephardic [oː], Germanic [au] and Polish [oj]).
In the popular perception, Litvaks were considered to be more intellectual and stoic than their rivals, the Galitzianers, who thought of them as cold fish. They, in turn, disdained Galitzianers as irrational and uneducated. Ira Steingroot's "Yiddish Knowledge Cards" devote a card to this "Ashkenazi version of the Hatfields and McCoys."  This difference is of course connected with the Hasidic/mitnagged debate, Hasidism being considered the more emotional and spontaneous form of religious expression.
The two groups differed not only in their attitudes and their pronunciation, but also in their cuisine. The Galitzianers were known for rich, heavily sweetened dishes in contrast to the plainer, more savory Litvisher versions, with the boundary known as the "Gefilte Fish Line."

Genetics
The Lithuanian Jewish population may exhibit a genetic founder effect. The utility of these variations has been the subject of debate. One variation, which is implicated in familialhypercholesterolemia, has been dated to the 14th century, corresponding to the establishment of settlements in response to the invitation extended by Vytautas the Great in 1388. A relatively high rate of early-onset idiopathic torsion dystonia in the population has also been identified as possibly stemming from the founder effect.

Jews in Lithuania today
Interest among descendants of Lithuanian Jews has spurred tourism and a renewal in research and preservation of the community's historic resources and possessions. Increasing numbers of Lithuanian Jews are interested in learning and practising the use of Yiddish.

The beginning of the 21st century was marked by conflicts between members of Chabad-Lubavitch and secular leaders. In 2005, Chief Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky was physically removed from the Synagogue by two men hired by the community's secular leader Mr. Alperovich, who then declared a new Chief Rabbi.

Among notable contemporary Lithuanian Jews are the brothers Emanuelis Zingeris (a member of the Lithuanian Seimas) and Markas Zingeris (writer), Arkadijus Vinokuras (actor, publicist), Gercas Žakas (football referee), Gidonas Šapiro-Bilas (pop-singer from ŽAS), Dovydas Bluvšteinas (music producer), Leonidas Donskis (philosopher, essayist), Icchokas Meras(writer), Grigorijus Kanovičius (writer), Aleksas Lemanas (singer), Rafailas Karpis (opera singer (tenor)), Šabtajus Kalmanovičius (businessman and alleged criminal mastermind), David Geringas (world-renowned cellist and conductor), Liora Grodnikaitė (opera singer (mezzo-soprano)).

11 March marks the restoration of
Lithuania's independence – how can the
authorities allow neo-Nazis to dominate
this important day for the nation?

Lithuanians marching for freedom, 10 January 1990. Photo: Vitaly Armand/AFP/Getty Images

Neo-Nazis marching in Vilnius 11 March 2010. Photo: http://defendinghistory.com

For the fifth time in the past five years a neo-Nazi parade (this year with a permit enabling a maximum of 2,000 participants) will march through the heart of Vilnius on 11 March, Independence Day, one of the proudest and most significant days for the people of Lithuania. The neo-Nazi theme will be “Homeland.”

Their display, if permitted by the government, will be taken by extremists throughout the region and Europe as a stamp of growing approval of neo-Nazi activities and a signal that the murder of about 95% of Lithuania’s Jewry during the Holocaust, largely by local collaborators, is taken lightly by today’s government.

Help us ban this blemish on a day reserved for the celebration of the internationally acclaimed bravery of the March 11th 1990 declaration of independence that was and continues to be a source of inspiration to all nations seeking freedom from oppression and foreign domination. Allow Lithuania a Day of Dignity.

Help combat racism and anti-Semitism with your signature to the following petition. You’ll find the petition text HERE.

11 March is not a day to
glorify the perpetrators

By Olga Zabludoff

When I learned that the municipality of Vilnius had again issued permits for a neo-Nazi march on Lithuania’s March 11th Independence Day, I was disturbed for more than one reason. Why would the government, which has been purporting its wish for reconciliation with its small Lithuanian Jewish community and Jews everywhere, sanction the resurrection of a Holocaust image? Why would the government, which has been purporting its wish to better its tarnished image with worldwide Jewry, accept and endorse the display of the LAF white armbands imprinted with the flaming swastika? Most survivors of the Lithuanian Holocaust are more traumatized by memories of the white-armbanded Lithuanian Activist Front than by memories of Hitler’s Aryan henchmen. It was the local LAF murderers who began to butcher Jews who had been their neighbors -- this even before their German Nazi masters/commanders came upon the scene. It was the LAF who unleashed the Holocaust in Lithuania. It was then that their slogan was born: “Lithuania for Lithuanians!” (Lietuva Lietuviams).

I am well aware of the constitutional right of free speech granted to all citizens in democratic countries. That is not even the issue here. All groups, no matter how repugnant their agendas, have the right to march and to chant. However, the government has the right to regulate when and where they march and chant. Independence Day in Lithuania is a special day on the calendar – a day to commemorate its freedom after nearly 50 years of Soviet repression. It is not a day to glorify the perpetrators and their nightmarish actions that led to the extermination of 95% of Lithuanian Jews and the large proportion of the country’s other ethnic minorities during WW2. It is not a day to honor the Nazi collaborators armed with their nauseating symbols and sickening chants. Is this under the guise of “patriotism” or a flawed, sinister concept of patriotism?

The government should not so appease neo-Nazis as to allow them to take over the heart of Vilnius on the sacred Independence Day, March 11. Under the permit issued by the government, up to 2,000 neo-Nazis are permitted to parade along Gedimino Prospect during prime time. Sure, they should be allowed to demonstrate, but on another day and at another location. Why is it that the human rights activists who plan to counter-march in Vilnius have been relegated to a much later hour -- long after the neo-Nazi procession has left its footprints on Vilnius’s major boulevard? Why is there no accommodation for the human rights community to look the neo-Nazis in the face and peacefully and legally confront them?

The governments in various cities in Germany have taken actions regarding neo-Nazi marches: they do not permit these parades along major boulevards. Some 40 years ago in Skokie, Illinois, USA (a community with a large number of Holocaust survivors), a group of fascists applied for a permit to march. After years of legal battles, permission for the march was rejected in Skokie. Instead, the group was permitted to march in a secluded area outside of Chicago. In my country there are neo-Nazis too as well as white supremacist groups and other organizations that promote hatred, intolerance and bigotry. But you don’t see them marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, on July 4 – our Independence Day.

Appalled by the government’s tacit approval of annual Independence Day neo-Nazi marches since 2008, I launched, in partnership with DefendingHistory.com, a petition to the Lithuanian Ambassador to the United States urging him to persuade his government to ban the 2012 Vilnius march. On the internet some opponents have asked why a foreigner would dare to interfere in their country’s policies and politics. The answer is very simple for me: Exactly 70 years ago the world remained silent while millions of human beings were gassed in death factories and exterminated in killing fields. We all live on the same planet. We are governed by human rights which have no boundaries.

Let me tell you what I have learned from the petition. If the theme of a petition strikes a universal chord, it travels far and wide, finding its way into remote places on the planet. It takes on a life of its own and connects strangers to one another through a common cause. In the first ten days of its life, the petition drew more than a thousand signatures from 42 countries on every continent. Many were accompanied by poignant statements (reasons for signing the petition). In some cases a single email or post, either from me or from a second party, can generate 50 signatures, and those 50 signatures can multiply into hundreds more.

“This is MY country and if I sign your petition,
I will have problems, you understand?”
I stumbled onto a few Lithuanian Facebook websites and posted on their walls. First came a flurry of “Likes.” I had ventured into a network of Lithuanian youth. Then one of them asked: “This is MY country and if I sign your petition, I will have problems, you understand?” I responded that if he believed he would have problems, he should not sign. Within ten minutes his signature came in, followed in rapid succession by half a dozen others from the same town. In unity they felt empowered to speak their collective mind.

This kind of banding together for strength should send a signal to the government in Vilnius that their decent citizens want no part of resurrecting and glorifying neo-fascists. These young men and women are the true patriots who realize that their government’s sponsorship of neo-Nazism will ultimately bring their country down.

Here are some comments from Lithuanians who have signed the petition:

“I am signing because I love my country.”
“Our homeland is for all who want to live there.”
“Even in a tolerant society racial hatred cannot be tolerated.” 
“I am ashamed that my nephews are growing up in Lithuania believing that such hate speech is considered ‘normal’ by the government. More should be done to support marches that are organized by tolerant Lithuanians.”
“This march is not just about racism and anti-Semitism. It’s also about homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, and an overall culture of violence, close-mindedness and hatred.”
“I have found the Lithuanian government’s failure to acknowledge and accept the Lithuanian people’s part in the only Holocaust to have taken place in Lithuania, the murder of innocent Jews during 1941 to 1944, a disgrace and a shame for all the decent folk of the country.”
“I don’t like hate and I doubly hate this because I’m ethnically Lithuanian.”
“The parade in Vilnius on Lithuanian Independence Day is a tragic continuation of centuries of anti-Semitism that has brought shame to much of Europe.”
“It is a pity that people don’t understand that Nazism will bring mankind to a catastrophe.”
“It is shameful that neo-Nazis march through the heart of Vilnius on March 11, Independence Day.”
“Live in peace and love.”

Every time a new signature is registered, the Lithuanian Ambassador to the US receives an email with the signed petition letter and comment (if one is made). Isn’t it time, Mr. Ambassador, to tell your government that the people of Lithuania do not support neo-Nazi parades? Instead of condoning these marches, Lithuanian leaders should be speaking out publicly against them -- and certainly against these marches being held in the city center of the capital on Independence Day. Instead of appeasing the ultra-nationalist factions in the country, who have a strong political voice for their numbers, leaders should lend an ear to their worthy citizens who crave tolerance and harmony. Their numbers are greater than you may wish to acknowledge. Lithuanian leaders must realize that to be a viable part of the democratic world, they must take a vigorous stance against those groups who would honour the memory of the LAF and its heinous crimes against humanity. The LAF’s legacy is Lithuania’s shame. Those courageous Lithuanians who rescued Jewish neighbors from the LAF should be Lithuania’s pride.
_______________________________________________________________________

Here is a percentage breakdown by country of the first 1,100 signatures to the petition:

United States                                             37.6
Lithuania                                                    22.5 *
Israel                                                           7.0
Latvia                                                          5.6
United Kingdom                                        4.9
Canada                                                      3.1
Russian Federation                                   2.8
Germany                                                    2.5
South Africa                                               1.7
Australia                                                     1.6
Estonia                                                       1.4
Poland                                                       1.3
Brazil                                                         1.2
France                                                       1.2                                    
28 other countries                                     5.6
                                                               _____
                                                               100.0 %

The 28 other countries represented in the petition include: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Finland, Greenland, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Korea Republic of, Lebanon, Mexico, Moldova Republic of, Nambia, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, Uruguay.

*Includes at least 31 Lithuanians living in other countries.

_______________________________________________________________________

The petition is here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/lithuanian-ambassador-to-the-united-states-ban-neo-nazis-from-desecrating-the-dignity-of-lithuanias-independence-day

For a report on the recent neo-Nazi march which took place in Kaunas on February 16, see:
http://defendinghistory.com/300-neo-nazis-march-through-the-center-of-kaunas-on-lithuanian-independence-day-they-are-addressed-by-members-of-parliament/31188
and
http://defendinghistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Nerijus-Povilaitis-interview-of-Dovid-Katz-on-16-Feb-2012-Lietuvos-rytas.pdf 

For a parallel petition against the Waffen SS march in Riga, Latvia, please see:
http://stop16marchinriga.blogspot.com/