Litvak forum

 
I am Ieva – the producer of the project
“Phenomenon of Civilization: Jews, Litvakes, Lithuanian Jews”.

Letter from Ieva Sabaliauskaite, United Kingdom

Only with the awaken memory the nation can preserve its history. Our Lithuanian history has deep imprints of Jews, who made this country flourish through their sincere spirit and unique approach to religion, culture, education and economics. Now they are undeservedly out of our memories… Our project aims to enlighten today’s society about great achievements and unique culture of Jews’ in our country and in the whole world.

Since the Middle Ages the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had been a safe place for Jews from wild anti-Semitism that was burning in neighbouring countries. With granted special rights, the Litvakes – Jews of Grand Duchy of Lithuania - were allowed to reach a degree of prosperity unknown to their Polish and German co-religionists at that time. Litvakes were settled in Stetls – towns there Jews made up a significant proportion of the population. Majority of cities’ businesses and factories belonged to them. Those cities had particular coloration of Jews’ spirit, but now it’s impossible to find a single living sign of Jews apart of signs to genocides places.

Litvakes had massively emigrated from Lithuania, and from those who stayed, only a few thousands have left. But there were over the million of them scattered throughout the world and most of them never forgot their roots. Their unique approach to life is being passed through generations, giving births to new talents and achievements. In fact, Litvakes are distinguished in the whole world in various fields. There are many Nobel Prize winners, art, music, politics, cinema and literary stars, such as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Michael Douglas and numerous other Litvakes. The name of Vilna Gaon is known to all, even to little educated Jews, as well as to other nations’ people. Litvakes are considered as the elite of Jews. What is the reason of this phenomenon? To discover that, we must take a look at a picture of Jews in general.

Astonishing facts prove their greater brilliance comparing to other nations: although Jews constitute only about 0.2% of the world’s population, they won 29% of the Nobel Prizes in literature, medicine, physics and chemistry in the second half of the 20th century. So far this century, the figure is 32%. The extraordinarily high proportion of Jews in such fields as medicine, law, finance, literature, science, creative arts and the media is as obvious as it is devastating.

Maybe Jews really are “God’s Chosen People”? Or does a distinction of Jews lie in their religious roots? Maybe Jews’ traditionally responsible approach to progeny and education is a cornerstone of their huge talent? Or could it be that those prosecutions and genocides caused exclusive development of Jews’ intellect? Or is there rather freedom and granted special rights that is a reason of Jew's great intellectual and cultural development?

Our project seeks to reveal the superiority of Jews and to bring back to our memories the forgotten Litvakes’ contribution. Our website http://litvaks-lithuanian-jewish.com . Litvakes. Lithuanian Jews.is created to collect any kind of information about Jew’s lives in Lithuania. With collected information we intent to shoot a TV documentary scrutinizing Litvakes issue in the context of all Jewish community, while capturing interpretations of various fields’ experts, as well as interviewing famous Litvakes and illustrating that with documentary material about them: their mores, religious and cultural traditions, their lives in Stetls, etc.

We are strongly motivated to awake this sleeping history realm of Jews in Lithuania, so that the memory of us becomes alive and universal, but not selective, not judging, not stereotyped. Your comprehensive contribution is invaluable to us: your ideological support, any kind of historical material you could share. We would be thankful for anything that could support this project. Please join us on http://litvaks-lithuanian-jewish.com/forum/  and on our Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/Jews.Litvakes.LithuanianJews

Phenomenon of Civilization: Jews, Litvakes, Lithuanian Jews. Be part of us! We are waiting for your suggestions and comments!

Lithuania's parliament (Seimas) on Tuesday approved the decision to pay 128 million litas (over 37 million euros) in the next 10 years to compensate Jewish people for their property alienated by totalitarian regimes.

82 MPs voted for the adoption of bill on Good Will Compensation for Real Estate of Jewish Religious Communities, 7 were against and 16 members of the Lithuanian parliament abstained.

The compensation will be paid in 2013-2023 and used for religious, cultural, health, sports, educational and scientific goals of Lithuanians Jews in Lithuania. A one-off sum of 3 million litas will have to be used to support people of Jewish nationality who lived in Lithuania and suffered from totalitarian regimes during the period of occupation.

Under the adopted bill, the compensation will be transferred to a special fund the governing body of which would represent the Jewish Community in Lithuania, the Religious Jewish Community of Lithuania and other Jewish religious, health, cultural and education organizations.

The bill, drawn up by the Ministry of Justice, was substantially amended during its consideration by parliamentary committees. A provision was included stating that the sum of compensation is final and no claims can be made in the future and the sum of compensation changed.

Parliamentary committees also decided that the government should audit the way the compensation is used. The initial version of the bill did not foresee financial accountability.

If an audit showed the fund misused the money, the government would have the right to suspend paying the compensation and decide on another fund.

The compensation makes around 30 percent of the value of Jewish property nationalized or alienated in any other way by Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes.

Authors of the bill believe the adopted law will demonstrate good will to restore historic justice, improve Lithuanian-Jewish relations as well as to show respect for human rights and commitments to global Jewish community and international organizations. Moreover, it is hoped that the transfer of property would provide Lithuania with politically stronger positions in its talks with Russia on compensation of damage caused by the totalitarian regime.

 
The Great Synagogue in Vilnius was partly destroyed by the Germans during World War II. The ruined synagogue and the whole “schulhof” complex which had grown around it were demolished by the Soviet authorities from 1955 to 1957 and were intentionally replaced by a basketball court and a kindergarten to effectively prevent any future initiatives to rebuild a cultural monument.

With a view to perpetuating the memory of the former Jewish spiritual and cultural center – the Great Synagogue of Vilnius – a historical archaeological excavation of the site has been launched. The exploration team led by archaeologist Zenonas Baubonis is ready to embark on the exploration of the site of the former Jewish house of worship at Vokiečių Street 13A. This work is expected to be completed by September so that the elementary school of Vytė Nemunėlis, which happens to be in territory of the former Synagogue, could start on time.

"The Great Synagogue is not only about the Jewish history, it is a particularly important element in the Lithuania’s history of the colorful and multiethnic Vilnius. It is a place closely related with the great Jewish thinker Gaon, who lived and developed his thought in Vilnius, which was justifiably called the Northern Jerusalem, an intellectual Jewish center of the Central Europe. The above mentioned exploration is one of the most important steps towards the rediscovery of the lost Vilnius. The exploration is needed to properly commemorate the history of this significant site, which might become a magnet for tourists from all over the world, "- said Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius.

Last year, the analysis of the historical cartographic material that has survived till these days was carried out, thus enabling archaeologists to pinpoint specific areas for excavation to make the work as accurate as possible and help to identify key fragments of the former synagogue. The material served as the basis for the archaeological excavation program. In April, it was presented to Vytė Nemunėlis elementary school community, which has an active interest in the history of that place.

The findings of the archaeologists will shape a decision as to how to perpetuate the memory of the Great Synagogue.

The Great Synagogue of Vilnius was the most important Jewish spiritual and cultural center in Lithuania from the end of the sixteenth century until the forties of the twentieth century. There were times when this house of worship surpassed in its size and splendor all the synagogues built across the Commonwealth of the Two Nations. In spite of natural disasters, fires, enemy attacks, the artwork and precious items donated by most affluent members of the community survived in this Lithuanian Jewish temple for a considerable time.

World War I saw many of these items removed to Russia. The WWII brought a major destruction to the Great Synagogue of Vilnius, leaving but the walls and some elements of the interior. In the state like this, the Synagogue was still restorable, however the Soviets chose otherwise, and destroyed it completely in 1955-1957.

 By Ellen Cassedy

The Jewish cemetery in Rokiskis, where Ellen Cassedy found the gravestone
belonging to her great-grandfather, Dovid-Mikhl Levin.
Photo courtesy of Ellen Cassedy.

When I traveled to Rokiskis (Rakishok), the town where I trace my Jewish roots, I was seeking to imagine a way of life long gone. I filled my eyes with the fields and the sky, the brightly painted wooden houses and the muddy vegetable patches, the market square and the gracious expanse of the count’s estate.

And I visited the old Jewish cemetery on the edge of town. The grassy paths were clogged with nettles and blackberry vines. Some headstones had fallen face down into the earth, and many were too deteriorated to be readable. But it was not long before I found the gravestone inscribed with the name of my great-grandfather, Dovid-Mikhl Levin.

As I knelt down and traced the moss-covered Hebrew letters, I felt the satisfaction of offering respect to my forebears. In return, I felt a kind of blessing coming from them to me.

Now, a fellow descendant of Rokiskis Jews has launched a project to restore Jewish cemeteries throughout Lithuania.

Sign identifying the Jewish cemetery at Varena, in the Druskininkai municipality, where restoration will be carried out by the Lithuanian Heritage Project, in partnership with Mayor Ricardas Malinauskas. The cemetery includes 300 monuments.

At an April 1 ceremony at the Lithuanian Embassy in Washington, D.C., Harley Felstein of the Lithuanian Heritage Project said he and his partners hope to begin restoration work at a cemetery in Druskininkai, the popular spa town south of Vilnius, in June.

Druskininkai’s mayor, Ricardas Malinauskas, and the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture have pledged support. The project will involve local students, as well as students from outside Lithuania, in the restoration work.

Zygimantas Pavilionis, Lithuanian ambassador to the U.S. (left), and Harley Felstein of the Lithuanian Heritage Project, at the April 1, 2011, announcement of project to restore Jewish cemeteries.
Credit: Fred Shapiro.

Zygimantas Pavilionis, Lithuanian ambassador to the United States, and Emanuelis Zingeris of the Lithuanian Parliament attended the ceremony. Pavilionis praised the project as a means by which Lithuania’s younger generation will learn about the nation’s Jewish heritage. “We are discovering this history,” Paviolionis said. “It is a sad one. We are also learning of the beauty of the harmony that we had together. It is not only your heritage. It is our heritage.”

In addition to Felstein, of Rockville, Maryland, other participants in the project include Michael Lozman and Franklin Swartz of the Eastern European Heritage Project, who have led similar restoration projects in Belarus. (For more information, visit www.restorejcem.org.)

“The cemetery is holy ground,” Felstein said. “It is our moral and ethical duty to restore the resting places of our forefathers.” He was inspired to launch the project, he said, after his teenage son visited Rokiskis and brought back pictures.

Felstein would like to hear from people whose family members are buried in Lithuania’s Jewish cemeteries. Contact him at: harleyfelstein@yahoo.com.
 

 
A new book by the famous French-Litvak writer, Henri Minceles, has recently been published.
“Le mouvement ouvrier juif. Récit des origines (The Jewish Workers Movement. Story of the Origins)”
Éditions Syllepse, Collection Yiddishland, Paris, 2010.

Other books by Henry Minczeles As single author or co-author

Three African Governments are these days coordinating a combined honouring of twelve Litvaks who through two centuries made outstandingly much to help their African homelands and their peoples. They release these honours publicly as a completely new stamp issue now in March 2011. The stamp issue acknowledges the extraordinary sacrifices made by Jews to the liberation of their African brethren, and these stamps recognize some of the most significant contributors to global humanity in the 20th Century.

In the anti Apartheid South African Liberation struggle, it was estimated that Jews were over represented by 2,500 percent in their proportion to the governing population. This stamp issue acknowledges the extraordinary sacrifices made by Jews to the liberation of their African brethren, and these stamps recognize some of the most significant contributors to global humanity in the 20th Century.

LIBERIA

Helen Suzman

Helen Suzman (nee Gavronsky) was born in the South African mining town of Germiston on 7 November 1917 to Samuel and Frieda Gavronsky, both immigrants from Lithuania who had come to South Africa to escape the restrictions imposed on Jews. 

Read more



Eli Weinberg

Eli Weinberg was born in 1908 in the port of Libau, in Latvia on the Baltic Sea. He experienced the First World War and the October Revolution of 1917 as a child, and this led to his socialist political development. During World War I, he was separated from his family.

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Esther Barsel

Esther Barsel (born October 17, 1924, in Raguva, Lithuania; died October 6, 2008, in Johannesburg) was a South African politician and long-standing member of the South African Communist Party (SACP). She was a member of both her local African National Congress branch and the SACP's Johannesburg Central Branch..

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Hymie Barsel

Hymie Barsel was born on September 11, 1920 in Fordsburg, Johannesburg, South Africa to Faiga and Moishe Barsel, both of Litvak heritage. He was raised in a Zionist oriented home. He suffered from epilepsy which was ill understood at that time, eventually receiving treatment from Dr. Max Joffe, also a Zionist.

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SIERRA LEONE

Yetta Barenblatt

Yetta Barenblatt was born on 24 September 1913, in Dublin, Ireland, to Basna and Solomon Malamed of Lithuanian origin. In 1925, a friend encouraged her to come to South Africa with the promise of employment. However, due to her circumstances, further education was not possible and Barenblatt was forced to seek employment at a retail store.

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Ray Alexander Simons

Ray Alexander Simons née Alexandrowich was born on 12 January 1913 in Latvia. While at school, she displayed little fear in challenging authorities. Her independent thinking suggested she pursue a career in medicine but she soon took up politics. When she was about 13, she became active in the underground Latvian Communist Party. 

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Baruch Hirson

Baruch Hirson, named after his late grandfather, was born on 10 December 1921 at Doomfontein near Johannesburg in the Transvaal. His father was an electrician. His parents, Joseph and Lily Hirson, were Jews who had immigrated to South Africa to evade the pogroms, persecution and discrimination Jews were subjected to in the old Romanov Empire.

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Norma Kitson

Norma Kitson was one of a generation of Jewish activists, who committed themselves to the struggle against racial tyranny in South Africa. The drive of these South African Jews was to give witness against racism and social injustice, even at great personal cost. Norma Kitson's autobiography, Where Sixpence Lives (1986), uniquely fuses the personal and the political.

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GAMBIA

Ruth First

Ruth First was born on May 4, 1925 to Jewish immigrants Julius and Matilda First. Julius, a furniture manufacturer, was born in Latvia and came to South Africa in 1906. He and his wife were founder members of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) or South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1921 . Ruth and her brother, Ronald, grew up in a household in which intense political debate between people of all races and classes was always present. 

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Hilda Bernstein

Hilda Bernstein was born in London in 1915. Her father was Simeon Schwartz from Odessa, Ukraine. He relocated to England in 1901 where he became a Bolshevik and represented the new USSR in UK for a short while in 1920's. He returned to the USSR when recalled in 1925, and died in the 1930's without ever having returned to the UK.

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Lionel "Rusty" Bernstein

Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein was born in Durban, in 1920; the youngest of four children of European émigrés. Orphaned at eight years old, he was raised by relatives. These early disruptions to his family life were compounded when he was sent to finish his education at a boys’ boarding school. Hilton College, a private school, that was the South African equivalent of Eton or Harrow. 

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Ronald Segal

At an early age, Ronald Segal proclaimed himself a Socialist, saying he did not want to be a millionaire. But he had no choice. His father was a co-owner of Ackerman's, a giant cheap clothing chain in South Africa. At their home on the slopes of Cape Town's Lion's Head, his Zionist parents entertained visiting dignitaries. At age eight, Ronald read “Gone With the Wind” and a biography of Disraeli.

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© Legendary Heroes of Africa

Stamps may be purchased at: www.CyberStamps.com. 
www.LegedaryHeroesofAfrica.com is not affiliated with www.CyberStamps.com. The above link is provided as a servise to our visitors.

Jews in South Africa

Some background/facts:

1.      Nelson Mandela in his “Long Walk to Freedom” wrote, “I have found Jews to be more broadminded than most whites on issues of race and politics, perhaps because they themselves have historically been victims of prejudice”. It was a firm of Jewish lawyers Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman that challenged Apartheid by engaging Mandela as an articled clerk, thus giving him the rare chance for a Black man to become a lawyer. While studying law he became friends with fellow students and future anti-Apartheid political activists Joe Slovo, Harry Schwarz and Ruth First.

2.      Jews comprised only about 2% of the White (ruling) population and 0.6% of the total population, South African Jews should take tremendous pride in the very high proportion that opposed Apartheid in multiple fashions. Of the 150 charged in the 1956 Treason Trial of Anti-Apartheid activists, 23 were whites and of the 23 whites, at least 14 were clearly identifiable Jews (well over 50%). Advocate Isie Maisels won acclaim for his leadership of the defense team which achieved acquittal of all the accused in the Treason Trial. As a committed Jew, Maisels had served as President of the Federation of Synagogues, as well as on the Executives of the Jewish Board of Deputies and the South African Zionist Federation. The 1963 Rivonia Trial resulted from the ANC having secretly established underground headquarters where the military arm of the ANC Umkhonto we Sizwe (The Spear of the Nation) was conceived. The premises at Lilliesleaf Farm were acquired by Arthur Goldreich who had served as a volunteer in the nascent Israel army in 1948. Nelson Mandela stayed at the farm in the guise of a farm worker. Significantly, all the whites arrested in this epoch-making event  were Jewish: Arthur Goldreich, Rusty Bernstein, Dennis Goldberg, Bob Hepple, and Dr Hilliard Festenstein. Goldreich now lives in Israel

3.      It is doubtful that any other group can boast anything approaching the proportionate number of Jews who took part in the struggle against Apartheid. The South African Muslim community comprised 1.1% of the total population compared with Jews 0.6%. The number of Muslims known to have actively opposed Apartheid is minimal and in fact they were reported to have cooperated with the Apartheid government. While Afrikaans newspapers frequently accused the Jews of subverting the Apartheid Regime, pointing to the high percentage of Jews among the whites detained by the police, the Afrikaans newspaper Die Burger in a two-part series, praised the Muslim community for its cooperation. It said: “Moderate Muslim theologians (geestelikes) in the Peninsula are of the opinion that not even civil disobedience is permissible for the Muslim minority in South Africa where they are to obey the law and are under obligation to negotiate if they consider the political system to be unjust or oppressive.”

4.      The secretary general of the African National Congress Kgalema Motlanthe in his address to the 42nd Biennial Conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies in Gauteng on October 19, 2002 said “That people of Jewish descent should be so prominent in the liberation movement says something fundamental about the compassion of Judaism”. Many Jewish immigrants who arrived in our shores in abject poverty, laying claim to little but their rich commitment to humanitarian and egalitarian ideals. These commitments were sometimes rooted in traditional Jewish teaching. They sometimes emerged from traditions of socialism. Whatever the case, Jewish compassion is the fruit of empathy, rather than sympathy. It is the fruit of struggle over many millennia, against racism and persecution”.

5.      Jewish influence towards racial equality in South Africa dates back to the earliest days of Jewish immigration. As far back as 1917 a Yiddish-speaking branch of the International Socialist League was formed. This league, a forerunner of the South African Communist Party (SACP) organized unions and co-operatives without distinction of class or color, eventually being absorbed into existing unions. Another typical example of the early days was the Garment Workers Union (GWU) a militant and multiracial trade union led by its general secretary, Solly Sachs from 1935 to 1948. White unions and the government fiercely opposed the GWU.

Mr.  Motalanthe (mentioned in 4 above) said of Joe Slovo
 
“he was proud to acknowledge the Jewish roots of his compassion. Brought up as a child in a Lithuanian ghetto, he experienced at first hand the degradation and misery of being unfairly treated for no proper reason. So in the South Africa he grew to love, he determined that no one should be singled out for unfair treatment for no proper reason.

The disproportionate representation Jews amongst the minority of whites that chose to cast their lot in with the oppressed did not go unnoticed by the racist regime and there were consequences for the Jewish population by the racist regime.

Jews being marched from their ghetto in the centre of Vilnius (today’s Old Town) to the Paneriai (Ponary) forest outside the city for execution, 1942/1943. Paneriai is an area of wooded hills, where in 1941-1944 60,000 to 70,000 Jews from Vilnius were executed.  - Drawing by Fajwel Segal

What happened to the Jews in Lithuania during World War II is a matter of grim record. Of the 250.000 Jews in 1939, only between 12.500 and 17.500 survived; of those, only about 200 remain today.

It has been estimated that of the 265.000 Jews living in Lithuania in June 1941, 254.000 or 95% were murdered during the German occupation. No other Jewish community in Nazi-occupied Europe was so comprehensively destroyed.

The Red Army occupied Vilnius on 19 September 1939. Lithuania and the Soviet Union signed a treaty of mutual aid, in accordance with which Vilnius and the Vilnius region were returned to Lithuania. In 1940, Vilnius became the capital of Soviet Lithuania.

Vilnius remained under Soviet control until 26 June 1941, when the city fell to the invading German Army (Wehrmacht). On 8 July 1941 an order was issued stating that all Jews must wear a special patch on their back; subsequently they were ordered to wear the patch on their chest. In addition Jews were forbidden to walk along the main streets of the city, and shops were ordered to sell them food in limited amounts. Jewish people were fired from their jobs, deprived of the means of personal transportation and radios, forbidden to use public transport, and prohibited from public places. Jews were arrested on the streets, at their work places, and in their houses.

Paneriai forest near Vilnius.
Jewish victims of execution before the mass burial, 1943.

The Vilnius Ghettos

The first shootings of Jews in Vilnius occurred on 4 July 1941 (or even earlier), after the military administration was replaced by a civil administration. On the same date the Germans ordered the establishment of a Judenrat (Jewish Council) which was intended to control the Jewish ghetto police and various departments of: work, health service, social welfare, food, housing, etc. Of special importance was the department of work.

The mass extermination of the Jewish people in Vilnius began at the moment when district commissar Hans Christian Hingst arrived, together with the "expert on Jewish questions", Franz Murer.

It has been estimated that between one-half and two-thirds of all Lithuanian Jews were killed by local militia, although it should be said that there were also some Lithuanians as well as Germans who assisted Jews. Even if few in number, their courage serves to highlight the barbaric acts of their compatriots.

Two ghettos were installed, separated by Niemiecka Street. This street was outside the limits of both ghettos and served as a barrier between them. A wooden fence enclosed each ghetto, and the entrances of houses facing the outside were blocked off. Each ghetto had only one gate for exit and entry, placed at opposite ends of the enclosed area, so that it would be impossible for those entering and leaving to cross paths.

29.000 people were incarcerated in Ghetto 1 and 9.000-11.000 in Ghetto 2. The living conditions were those common to the ghettos of countries under Nazi occupation - dilapidated housing, lack of sanitation, unbearable congestion. A doctor calculated that in the 72 buildings, which comprised Ghetto 1, the average living space was 1.5-2 square meters. The killing never stopped. Even on the day of the setting up of the ghettos, a day on which it was intended to lull the Jews into some sense of security, killings had taken place.

1941-43 was a period of relative quiet in the ghetto. Vilnius became a "working ghetto". The Judenrat’s policy of "rescue through work" was based on the assumption that if the ghetto would be productive, it would be worthwhile for the Germans to keep it going, for economic reasons. In this it shared a belief common to the Judenrat of many other ghettos. All sought, in their different ways, to preserve the precarious balance between work and death.

Few Jews wanted to be members of the Jewish councils. The Judenräte were instruments by which the Germans held control over the Jews. Since the council's functionaries were Jewish, the members felt as if they were betraying their co-religionists. The Vilnius Judenrat was initially established with extreme difficulty, as those who were selected as members by Rabbi Simeon Rosowski refused the position. Thus, the decision was made at a meeting in the prayer house, that if someone was elected, they were obligated to accept.

By the summer of 1943, the final death throes of the Vilnius Ghetto had begun in accordance with Himmler's order to liquidate the ghettos of the Reichskommissariat Ostland. All provincial work camps of the Vilnius Ghetto (in Baltoji Voke, Beznodys, and Kena) were dissolved, and several hundreds of their prisoners killed by the German police.

Under the supervision of Bruno Kittel, head of the Jewish section of the Gestapo from June 1943, the Vilnius Ghetto was liquidated on 23 and 24 September 1943.

By 25 September 1943, only 2.000 Jews officially remained in Vilnius, in four small labour camps. More than 1.000 were in hiding inside the ghetto. Those in hiding were gradually hunted down and executed.

Between 2.000 and 3.000 of the original 57.000 Jewish inhabitants of Vilnius survived, either in hiding, with the partisans, or in camps in Germany and Estonia, a mortality rate of approximately 95% - almost exactly corresponding with that of Lithuania as a whole. The 2001 census indicated that the population of Vilnius was 542.287 of whom 0.5% or about 2.700 were Jews.

In post-war trials of the major war criminals of Vilnius, Franz Murer, the "expert on Jewish affairs" in the city from 1941 to 1943, also called by survivors "The Butcher of Vilnius" was arrested in 1947 and extradited to the Soviet Union. There he was sentenced to 25 years hard labour. In 1955 he was released and returned to his native Austria, where he became a farmer. He was eventually traced by Simon Wiesenthal. A further trial took place in Austria in 1967, at the conclusion of which Murer was acquitted. Soviet courts tried some Lithuanians. Most perpetrators were never prosecuted.

Map of the two Vilnius‘ ghetto districts.

The Kaunas Ghettos

Footbridge connecting the large ghetto and the small ghetto.

Kaunas (Kovno) ghetto, Lithuania, 1941.

Between 1920 and 1939, Kaunas (Kovno) was Lithuania's capital and largest city. It had a Jewish population of 35.000-40.000, about one-fourth of the city's total population. Jews were concentrated in the city's commercial, artisan, and professional sectors.

Kaunas was also a centre of Jewish learning. The yeshiva in Slobodka, an impoverished district of the city, was one of Europe's most prestigious institutions of higher Jewish learning, with a rich and varied Jewish culture. The city had almost 100 Jewish organizations, 40 synagogues, many Yiddish schools, 4 Hebrew high schools, a Jewish hospital, and scores of Jewish-owned businesses. It was also an important Zionist center.

Kaunas‘ Jewish life was disrupted when the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in June 1940. The occupation was accompanied by arrests, confiscations, and the elimination of all free institutions. Jewish communal organizations disappeared almost overnight. Soviet authorities confiscated the property of many Jews. Meanwhile, the Lithuanian Activist Front, founded by Lithuanian nationalist emigres in Berlin, clandestinely disseminated antisemitic literature in Lithuania. Among other themes, the literature blamed Jews for the Soviet occupation. Hundreds of Jews were exiled to Siberia.

Following Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 22 1941, Soviet forces fled Kaunas. Immediately before and following the German occupation of the city on June 24, anti-Communist, pro-German Lithuanian mobs began to attack Jews (whom they unfairly blamed for Soviet repression), especially along Jurbarko and Krisciukaicio streets. These right-wing vigilantes murdered hundreds of Jews and took dozens more Jews to the Lietukis Garage, in the city center, and killed them there.

In early July 1941, German Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) detachments and their Lithuanian auxiliaries began systematic massacres of Jews in several of the forts around Kovno. These forts had been constructed by the Russian tsars in the nineteenth century for the defense of the city. Einsatzgruppe detachments and Lithuanian auxiliaries shot thousands of Jewish men, women, and children, primarily in the Ninth Fort, but also in the Fourth and Seventh forts. Within six months of the German occupation of the city, the Germans and their Lithuanian collaborators had murdered half of all Jews in Kaunas.

The Nazis established a civilian administration under SA Major General Hans Kramer. Between July and 15 August  1941, the Germans concentrated the remaining Jews, some 29.000 people, in a ghetto established in Slobodka. It was an area of small primitive houses and no running water. The ghetto had two parts, called the "small" and "large" ghetto, separated by Paneriu Street. In the autumn of 1943, the SS assumed control of the ghetto and converted it into the Kauen concentration camp. On 8 July 1944, the Germans evacuated the camp, deporting most of the remaining Jews to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany or to the Stutthof camp, near Danzig, on the Baltic coast. Three weeks before the Soviet army arrived in Kaunas, the Germans razed the ghetto to the ground with grenades and dynamite. As many as 2.000 people burned to death or were shot while trying to escape.

Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania. The completely destroyed Ghetto, 1944. 
In July 1944, the Germans blew up and burned down this Ghetto 
in search of Jews in hiding there. 

Emmanuel Zingeris:

Vilnius was like a Mediterranean city!

“Vilnius was like a Mediterranean city. Lithuania before Holocaust was a society of love, full of colourful life and warm interaction between people. Imagine that here, in the street we are sitting, the windows would now be open, the mothers would be shouting to their children, and the street would be filled with joyful people discussing, singing, reading and mingling in a happy crowd of friends, colleagues and visitors.”

Stikliai Hotel’s outdoor café at Gaono Street was the venue for my talk with Emmanuel Zingeris a late September afternoon when the temperature still could remind a lively town on a more southern latitude. The café, however, is located only a few metres away from one of the infamous gates that during the war-time fenced in a whole population of Jews in Vilnius Old Town, reminding us about the incomprehensible tragedy this city was undergoing when 95% of its 80.000 Jewish inhabitants were murdered. No other Jewish community in Nazi-occupied Europe was so comprehensively destroyed.

Emmanuel Zingeris (53) was born in Kaunas in a family of Lithuanian Jewish survivors.  His mother, Polina Tatarski, became a prisoner of a Kaunas ghetto in the year she ended Lithuanian secondary school. From the ghetto she was deported to a German concentration camp in Stutthof. After the war she was engaged as a physician. His father, Mykolas Zingeris, fought against Nazis in Lithuanian division of the Soviet army and was a teacher of English after the war.

Zingeris began his life-long efforts for the Lithuanian Jewish community already as a young student, in 1983, when he attempted to open a show of Lithuanian Jewish cultural heritage at Vilnius University, where he was studying Lithuanian literature. He also became a leading politician in the Conservative party with Professor Vytautas Landsbergis, and has later been elected to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly on looted Jewish cultural assets. He has been Chairman of the international Commission for the Evaluation of Crimes Committed by the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes of Lithuania, he is a member of the Lithuanian delegation to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, a member of the Committee on Culture and Education of the Assembly, and has been President of the Jewish Community of Lithuania and Director of the Tolerance Centre in Vilnius.

This is the brief background of the man who for twenty years now has been in the forefront for the Jews in Lithuania, and my first question to him was about who these Jews are.

Rotuses Square, Vilnius, 1905.

These were my questions to Mr. Zingeris, and, even more important, his answers:

You are today one of the few Litvak Jews in Lithuania, whereas the majority of Jews here now are of Russian origin. Can you tell me more about the Litvaks, the people who constituted such a great part of Lithuania’s population and history for hundreds of years?

Litvaks are the descendents of the big migration group of Jews (Ashkenazim) that left from Western and Central Europe, mostly Germany, starting in the 14^th century. They were renowned for their strong religious feelings, intellectual rationalism, intellectual approach, learning and spiritual matters as well as to day-to-day affairs. All of that distinguished them from the others and they became known as Litvaks. Litvaks are all Jews who resided in the territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In our times, due to the emigration of Lithuanian Jews and their high status, Litvaks and Litvak traditions have spread all over the world, in particular to Israel, South Africa and the United States.

The Litvaks came to the Grand Duchy from Western Europe due to pursuit reasons, but what was it that made Lithuania such a unique place and important cultural centre, carrying a weight far greater than its relative size in Jewish history?

Here the Litvaks found an umbrella for flourishing. Lithuania was cold by temperature but warm in its welcoming atmosphere for the Litvaks. The Grand Duchy represented the safe haven these people hadn’t seen earlier on their wanderings from the German areas, and before that from the Mediterranean shores of the Roman Empire. They brought their Southern European features with them here, which is why Vilnius became such an exotic city over hundreds of years. At the same time they were people with deep religious belief who for centuries had been developing very strong traditions of culture and intellectual activity, and in Lithuania they found the freedom that gave them the opportunity to make these qualities flourish. Lithuania was truly a multicultural paradise where the special mixture of Mediterranean and Nordic features brought really fantastic results – until it all was so brutally terminated during the years of 1940-44.

Do you see any possibility for the Litvak culture to start growing again?

No. There is no chance. There were simply killed too many for that. The parent stock of our people is destroyed forever. Holocaust made an effective end to the Litvak people and its amazing culture.

Have you ever reflected on why the Nazis were so determined to kill the Jews?

I believe it was because the Jews always were in opposition to the Nazis pathetic constructions of a heroic society. Jews represented the best brains in Germany as well as in many other countries, often thinkers ahead of their own time, and the Nazi rulers felt threatened in their attempts to recreate neo-romantic ideologies, like in the Nibelung (Nazi Germany's main defence fortification was called the "Siegfried Line," after the mythic hero in Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung). The Jews were sitting in their cafés laughing at the rulers, and as Hitler said in his famous speech from the 30^th of January 1939, that “You are still laughing, but not much longer”.

(What Hitler said in this speech, was: ”During my struggle for power, the Jews primarily received with laughter my prophecies that I would someday assume the leadership of the state and thereby of the entire nation and then, among many other things, achieve a solution of the Jewish problem. I suppose that meanwhile the laughter of Jewry in Germany that resounded then is probably already choking in their throats”).

Already as a young student at the Vilnius University you became active in the Lithuanian resistance fight against the Soviet rulers?

Yes, and I can tell you that it was not an easy task, of several reasons. I was called by my relatives in Israel and South Africa and asked why I tried to help Lithuania when it in this country had been such big groups that had collaborated with the Nazis, helping them in killing the Jews, and it was of course also not easy to convince the West that the time had come for a free Lithuania at the same time as the Soviets used all possible tricks in order to stop our “revolutionary activities”. Let me add that all my people, and also all official Jewish leaders, became very pro Lithuania’s fight for freedom when they understood the importance this country’s fight had for the resistance against the Soviets.

You were fighting against the Soviets side-by-side with professor Vytautas Landsbergis. How would you define him?

I have great admiration both for the person and for his courage. I was with him to Moscow several times, and I saw him moment after moment stand in front of the huge groups of generals and politicians explaining and fighting for Lithuania’s freedom, and in this aspect I am disappointed to see that the people of Lithuania has not shown this man the respect he deserves, trying to understand the importance of seeing his actions by then in a historical perspective.

How would you define today’s relationship between Jews and the native Lithuanians?

Emotions are still not the best. Among some groups of Lithuanians there are still suspicions that the Jews will be coming back to take over their pre-war properties, and Jews are sad to see that there seems to be little grief among Lithuanians about the losses of their former neighbours. But I would also say that I think the antagonism between our peoples now gradually is becoming smaller.

You have the latest years become a politician with the complete world as your arena. How do you see Lithuania in such wider perspective?

The biggest problem for the Lithuanians of today is that they don’t any longer believe in idealism. Politics as well as other spheres in Lithuania are ruled by groups who base their actions on tactical games instead of creating common, visionary strategies for the best of the country. The word idealism is considered more negative than positive in today’s Lithuania, and even young people believe that only losers can be idealists.

The twilight of the Indian-summer evening in Vilnius has embraced us and the Gaono Street Café while we have been talking. Small groups of tourists and individuals are passing us in calmness. But the liveliness of the Jewish quarter this once was, is gone – forever.

The good old days in the Jewish quarter of Vilnius Old Town.

A widespread saying had it - if one wants to do business, one has to go to Lodz, but if one wants to gain wisdom - one goes to Vilnius.

The first document mentioning Jews in Vilnius dates back to 1567. At that time Jews did not have the right to purchase houses in the city, they could only rent them. Jews gained the right to own buildings in Vilnius only in 1593. Before that, they were allowed to reside in the lands which did not belong to the magistrate, so called jurisdiks. At the end of 16th - beginning of 17th centuries they were allowed to inhabit Zhydų (Jewish), Šv. Mykolo (Saint Michael's), and Mėsinių (Butchers') streets. They could also live on Vokiečių (German) street, but the windows of their apartments could not face the street.

The Jewish quarter was formed in the Old Town. According to 1784 census there were around 5,000 Jews in Vilnius at that time; according to 1897 census Jews constituted 38.8% of town's population (64,000 Jews). After WWI their number somewhat decreased, and in 1923 only 55,000 Jews lived here (33.3% of the population), and on the eve of WWII, in 1939, Jews made up 27.9% of the population, which then was around 60,000 people.

In the 18th century the great genius Gaon of Vilna emerged. Since then Vilnius became a recognized spiritual center called Jerusalem of the North. There are several versions of the story why Vilnius was so exceptional. One of them says that there were 333 scholars in the town who knew the whole Talmud by heart.

But this is only a legend. The fact is that before the Catastrophe Vilnius indeed was the most honoured centre of Judaic culture. On the eve of WWII there were over 100 synagogues and 10 yeshivas, the most famous among them - the Ramaile yeshiva, in Vilnius. The world recognition of Vilnius is testified by the dream of the hero of the story "If I were Rotshild" by the great Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem. The dream is to establish a huge charity organisation, which would provide work for all Jews, everyone would live in peace and study Talmud in yeshivas. And above all yeshivas there would be the chief one, "of course, in Vilnius".

Jewish merchants played an important role in the development of Vilnius. As far back as early 15th century, the Town Hall Square was bordered by small shops. With the expansion of the city and the development of trade the number of small shops was increasing. Most of them were selling salt, iron and meat products. It is known that all of these shops could not have been sold, donated or transferred will-fully as everything was strictly regulated. Trading on the Town Hall Square was restricted by a number of regulations such as the prohibition for the Jewish butchers to build their shops both on the urban market and on Vokiečiu Street. It was also prohibited to buy up products on the roadsides and sell them later in the city at a higher price. It was a measure to avoid the season of high prices, especially if there was a shortage of some product such as grain in deficit times. Any violations were punished with monetary fines, flogging, imprisonment and confiscation of merchandise. By the way, confiscated goods were donated to various refuges and hospitals. However, fighting with resellers was often a real challenge: powerful owners of jurisdictions would not always obey the orders of the rulers. For some reasons, Scottish and Jewish tradesmen in the 17TH century were forbidden to trade in golden, silver, silk and semi-silk fringes and edgings, but this prohibition was not applied to the said articles produced in manufactories of Naples and Frankfurt. It is also interesting that following the example of a foreign city Vilnius was granted the Magdeburg rights. According to these rights, merchants from other countries travelling on the routes through Vilnius were not entitled to go round the city and they had to stop in the capital and to sell the goods they had brought to local buyers, if any wished to buy them. In 1503, the city was obligated to build a special guest house so that foreign traders should have some place to stay. Such guest hose was built on the site of the nowadays National Philharmonic. They had rooms for merchants and their retinues to accommodate and some premises to store their goods as well as room for horses, carts and sledge. Strict regulations were also imposed on traders and guilds regarding the construction of their market places and participation in the city’s events.

 Text: Linda Cantor (USA) http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/kupiskis/kupishok.htm

The Uzpaliai ‘shtetl’ in the 1920’s

“Shtetl” is the Yiddish word for small town, the type of community that many of our Eastern European ancestors lived in for centuries before either emigrating or being killed during the Holocaust. Under the aegis of JewishGen, Inc. and its ShtetLinks project (http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/), genealogists are able to memorialize the shtetl that their families came from. For me this is a wonderful way to honor not only my grandparents who grew up in these communities but also all those who came before them. It’s a way to remember the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe that no longer exist -- the people, the culture, and the institutions.

I maintain three Shtet Links sites for the Lithuanian towns of Kupiskis, Rokiskis, and Uzpaliai. My father’s parents were born in Kupiskis and Uzpaliai and many family members lived in Rokiskis. After a visit to these towns with my father, I decided that I wanted a more permanent way of honoring my family and all their neighbors and so I started my websites. But while I maintain them, the content is a result of a huge group effort. Photos and information were shared by survivors and descendants of people from these towns. I have tried to recreate the communities that existed in the past through family stories, family photos, and archival and historical records.

There are over 400 ShtetLinks sites that cover eastern and western Europe, as well as the rest of the globe. The creators are all volunteers who are doing this as a way to commemorate their family pasts. In essence, we are writing the history of our families and their communities.

90% of all Jews in South Africa are Litvaks 

Text and photos: Aage Myhre

For the tens of thousands Litvaks who came to South Africa during the years 1860 –
1940, the Cape Town harbour was the first glimpse they had of their new homeland.

It is considered that around 90% of the approximately 80,000 Jews living in South Africa are of Lithuanian descent (the so-called Litvaks), which thus constitutes the largest pocket of Litvaks in the world! You are hereby invited to learn more about this unique Jewish community that still holds Lithuania alive in their hearts, museums and synagogues.

The Jewish Museum in Cape Town is more Lithuanian than Lithuania itself.

The Jewish Museum in Cape Town offers visitors a journey back in time. Most museums do. The striking feature of this museum, however, is that the journey to the past also brings us to a completely different part of our world, from Africa's southern tip to a seemingly modest little country far to the north, to a country where around 90% of South Africa's Jewish population has its roots (there are today about 80,000 Jews in South Africa).

The museum's basement is dominated by a village environment (shtetl) from the late 1800s. A few houses are reconstructed in full scale, and you can clearly see how people lived and co-existed at the time. The village is called Riteve. It was recreated in the museum on the basis of entries made in the 1990s by a group of experts who went from South Africa to Lithuania to find traces of the family of the museum's founder, Mendel Kaplan. 

The village is called Rietavas in Lithuanian. It is there to this day, less than a half hour drive from Klaipeda, at the highway direction Kaunas and Vilnius. The Kaplan family emigrated from here in the 1920s, while the village's population was still 90% Jewish. Today, no Jews live in Rietavas. 

A stroll among the house-models in the Cape Town museum's basement is like walking around in a part of Lithuania, almost more Lithuanian than Lithuania itself. This impression is becoming no less strong when I discover that the café that is a part of this comprehensive Jewish complex in Cape Town, is also named after the founder's home town in Lithuania, and that the older part of the museum is a replica of a Vilnius synagogue. This synagogue was built in 1863, and was the first ever built in South Africa. 

The museum and Café Riteve are just two of the elements of an extensive complex of Jewish-related buildings here in Cape Town's incredibly beautiful botanical garden, so if you first come here, I recommend that you take your time. Worth a visit is the Great Synagogue from 1905, the Gitlin Library (including a large collection of books in Yiddish that the Litvaks brought with them on the long sea voyage from Lithuania to Cape Town), and the Cape Town Holocaust Centre (see below).

Lithuanians dominate the Jewish community in South Africa

Lithuanians dominate the Jewish community in South Africa to an extent seen in no other country. Casino magnate Sol Kerzner (1935 - ), communist leader Joe Slovo (1926 – 1995) and veteran anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman (1917 – 2009) make an unlikely trio but have in common that they are all of Lithuanian descent.

Like their Lithuanian ancestors, whose political ranks included wealthy capitalists, zealous Zionists, prominent religious scholars and committed communists, South Africa's Litvaks, have spanned the political spectrum. On the left stands Slovo, the former head of the South African Communist Party, who was born in Lithuania in 1926 and came to South Africa at the age of nine. On the right stands Kerzner, a flamboyant businessman who built the famous casino resort Sun City (north of Johannesburg) and founded the entertainment and leisure giant Sun International.

Jewish emigrants from Tsar occupied Lithuania are generally thought of as having fled the persecution and poverty for the safe shores of America. A much less known story is that of the many Litvaks who travelled to South Africa. Many of these migrants came from the Kaunas region (Kovno in Yiddish), but many also came from towns such as Palanga, Panevėžys, Rietavas and Šiauliai.  

Many travelled via the Liepāja port in Latvia on ships bound, via the Baltic Sea and (after its opening in 1895) the Kiel Canal shortcut, for English east coast ports. From there, they travelled overland, usually via London, to Southampton to embark for Cape Town.

This movement of people was not accidental: a whole business existed to cater for them, from the ticket agents in Kaunas or Vilnius, to shipping lines such as the Wilson Line shuttling between Liepāja and Hull, to the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter in London which housed and orientated many of the trans-migrants, to the Castle Line and the Union Line which specialised in the route to South Africa.

And like any successful movement of people, it became self-perpetuating, as the new South Africans sent home letters, and money, encouraging others to follow suit. The first countrywide Union of South African census in 1911 indicates a population of 46,919 Jews, a majority of whom were Litvaks. By 1921, the Jewish population had risen to 62,103, but with more of a shift in gravity towards the gold-mining and commercial centres of Witwatersrand in the Transvaal area (which accounted for 33,515). 

What this means is that a great many of those North Americans and British with Litvak ancestors are likely to have kin in South Africa. There are many good sources for Jewish family history research in Lithuania and prospects of success are often favourable, as long as the place of origin within the country is known or can be identified.

The extraordinary story of Sammy Marks (1843 – 1910) from Taurage

The entrepreneur Samuel Marks was born in the Lithuanian district of Taurage in 1843. He was one of the very first Litvaks to arrive on African shores. He came here via England in 1868 and began his career by hawking cheap jewellery and cutlery in Cape Town. Later he moved on to Kimberley where he went into business with his brother-in-law Isaac Lewis and Jules Porges. Together they formed the French Diamond Mining Company. 

Following this, Lewis and Marks decided to relocate to the Eastern Transvaal where they established the African and European Investment Company. This company proceeded to become a major Rand finance house with controlling interests in several gold mines. Mr. Marks had become a leading magnate and one of South Africa’s richest men.

An example of his many success stories is one of the companies he started, theZuid-Afrikaanscheen Oranje Vrystaatsche Mineralen en Mijnbouvereeniging, which became the basis of the town Vereeniging. Marks also developed the Viljoen’s Drift coal mine and encouraged the expansion of the Witbank coalfields.

Sammy Marks was also a close friend and admirer of South Africa’s State President Paul Kruger (who is often called the father of the Afrikaner nation) and a popular figure within the Transvaal business community. It was Marks who advised Kruger to build a railway line from Pretoria to Lorenco Marques. He served as a senator in the Union Parliament from 1910 until his death in 1920 in Johannesburg.

Worth a visit is the Sammy Marks Museum north of Pretoria and Johannesburg. The museum building, a splendid Victorian mansion dating from 1884, was the residence of Marks, whose significant contribution to the industrial, mining and agricultural development of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek has given him an outstanding position in South African history, so very far away from his birthplace in Taurage, Lithuania…

Some of today’s Litvaks in South Africa

Let me introduce you to some of my good friends in South Africa. Most of them are second and third generation Litvaks (plus one single first-generation Litvak). There is also a small colony of Lithuanians who have moved down here the last 20 years. My conclusion is that Lithuania and the Lithuanian spirit is alive and present, even in modern South Africa.

SAM (SHMUEL) KEREN

BORN IN PABRADE, LITHUANIA, IN 1934. A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR

Sam's life story is worthy of a screenplay. His autobiographical book, 'Mulik the Zulik', says it all. Sam was the only person of his family able to escape the Holocaust in Lithuania. A Polish neighbour family acted as if he was their son and managed in this way to smuggle him out of Lithuania during the war. The rest of his family was executed.  After WWII, Sam managed to get to Switzerland, and later to Israel. But it was South Africa that was to become his new homeland, in the 1960s. Here he has done well in business and private. Sam visits Lithuania and his home-place Pabradė every summer since the 1990s. He likes Lithuania, but is still sceptical of Lithuanians and their involvements in the killing of Jews during the Holocaust. I took the above photo of Sam in his office in downtown Cape Town. On the walls hangs many of the memories from his enormously challenging youth. The image he shows me is of the tombstone he installed on his mother's grave a few years ago. In Pabradė village, Lithuania.

JEANETTE JEGGER

FILM PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR. PREPARING A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT LITVAK LITHUANIA

PROFESSOR MILTON SHAIN

DIRECTOR OF THE ISAAC AND JESSIE KAPLAN CENTRE FOR JEWISH STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN

Professor Shain excuses himself, mildly and courteously, as he welcomes me in shorts this December day. "It's really all in the middle of summer here," he says as he leads me into the facilities he is the head of, here at the “Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town”. And it is by his crowded desk that I get to know so much more about the amazing relationships between his ancestral homeland, Lithuania, and the intellectual South Africa he represents. So, dear reader, if you want to know more about Jews in South Africa, you should definitely read Milton's latest book “Jews in South Africa”.

RICHARD FREEDMAN

DIRECTOR OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN HOLOCAUST FOUNDATION, CAPE TOWN

Richard meets me at the entrance to the Holocaust Centre in Cape Town. I was expecting a man that would put the most emphasis on the many tragic events of the Holocaust in Lithuania and in Europe in general. Richard is, after all, a Litvak himself. But what he instead emphasizes, is that there are an infinite number of comparison points between the Holocaust in Europe and the apartheid in South Africa. "Whites who look down on blacks, Nazis who look down on Jews, people who think themselves better than others, aren’t they all of the same kind?", he asks…

KIM FEINBERG

 THE ‘JEWISH TEA MOTHER’ AND HER RENTLESS FIGHTS AGAINST HIV-AIDS IN SOUTH AFRICA

The Christmas trees are beautifully decorated in the district of Rosebank, Johannesburg, this summer afternoon in December. I am slowly strolling around when I suddenly see an energetic white young lady in the middle of a crowd of black youths. It turns out that she is a genuine Litvak, and that she is the head of the organization 'Tomorrow's Trust', which in recent years has become a leading institution in the fight against AIDS-HIV in South Africa.

Kim is the one who some years ago walked out of the movie ‘Schindler’s List’ filled with a sense of purpose. “I just thought, ‘I have to do something. I spoke to my rabbi and then started my own oral history project,” she explains.

What an amazing person and determination. Her name is Kim Feinberg, soon 50 years old, still young forever.

RUTH RABINOVWITZ

THE LITVAK MEDICAL DOCTOR WHO REPRESENTS THE ZULUS IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN PARLIAMENT

An unlikely Zulu, Ruth Rabinowitz represents the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party in the South African parliament!

I meet Ruth in the library of the Johannesburg Grace Hotel to talk about her unusual life and political career. And Ruth tells an almost incredible story. About how her Litvak family, many years ago, became close friends with the Zulu king and his family. She tells about her medical background, but first of all, she focuses on the circumstances for Africa's largest tribe, the Zulus, that today includes three million people, almost as many as the number of inhabitants in Lithuania, the country her ancestors came from (if to count only the present, local population of Lithuania, of course)…

THE HONORARY CONSULS OF LITHUANIA TO SOUTH AFRICA

THREE SUCCESSFUL ATTORNEYS - ALL LITVAKS

Here they are. Lithuania's three musketeers in South Africa: Raymond, Alan and Ivor. Three skilled lawyers, all of them genuine Lithuanian Jews. It is these three who make up the front line in terms of current relations between Lithuania and South Africa. It is these three who help facilitate Lithuanians arriving to Africa's southern areas, and they are also the ones constantly informing South Africans about the wonderful country called Lithuania.

They were, some years ago, recommended as consuls by the Lithuanian ambassadors to Israel. Israel? Yes, believe it or not, but the fact is that Lithuania does not have its own ambassador to the country having the largest pocket of Litvaks in the world… The Lithuanian ambassador in Tel Aviv must serve Israel, Cyprus and South Africa altogether. But then, in turn, the ambassadors we've had so far have done a good job. It was, as an exemplary example, the very capable Lithuanian ambassadors Romas Misiunas and Alfonsas Eidintas who recommended these three smart guys we today are naming Lithuania's three musketeers in South Africa.

I have had the pleasure of meeting all three of them several times, both here in Lithuania and in South Africa, and I know that they all burn for stronger ties between our two countries. But I've also heard them talk about how sad it was to experience the Lithuanian Constitutional Court rule that Lithuanian citizens around the globe could no longer be registered as Dual Citizens. They feel, as I do, that it is terribly sad to see nowadays Lithuania burn bridges instead of seeking renewed contact with its fantastic diasporas around the world. In this aspect, sadly, every day that passes is a day lost…

The impressions from the Jewish Museum in Cape Town were as glued to my memory. So in August last year I decided to visit Rietavas, the village the Kaplan family emigrated from almost 100 years ago. I had expected to find proud traces of the family; a museum, a memorial, or maybe even something more sophisticated… But I got terribly disappointed. What struck me, then and there, was that this was almost like coming to Salzburg without seeing Mozart mentioned at all... 

What a shame. I took some pictures and went from there with bowed head. Mendel Kaplan, by far the wealthiest and certainly one of the wisest Lithuanians ever, was not mentioned with a single word or symbol in the very home village of his own family...

When I came back to Vilnius from Rietavas that August evening, I sent my photos and comments to Dr. Kaplan in Cape Town. This is what he replied a few days later:

Mendel Kaplan (1936-2009) died of a stroke three months after he sent me the above message. In the obituaries that followed, leading Jews stated that Dr. Kaplan was a man who could be termed “the father of the South African Jewish community.”  They wrote that he had served as a leadership capacity in several Jewish organisations, that he was involved in the establishment of the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town and was also one of the first founders of the ‘City of David Archaeological Excavation Project’ in Israel.

Born in Cape Town, Dr. Kaplan had qualified both in law and with an MBA, survived by his wife, four children and grandchildren.

I never met Mendel Kaplan face to face, but I was told that there had been much for him to celebrate in his 73 years of living: The steel company Cape Gate had been transformed from a modest business selling products like wrought iron and garden benches into a vast conglomerate producing its own steel; becoming one of the largest privately owned companies in South Africa, an expansion largely orchestrated by Mendel and his brother Robert.

Dr. Mendel Kaplan, a world leading Litvak philanthropist, lawyer, writer and business magnate passed away just four months ago. His ties to and care for Lithuania were strong and impressive. Isn’t it time for Lithuania to offer a proper response?

If to compare with the more than 70,000 Litvaks living in South Africa, the numbers of Lithuanian expatriates of today are very modest. But there are a few of them, and I want to tell you all a little bit about Jadvyga Kazlauskiene from the village Vievis between Vilnius and Kaunas. Jadvyga emigrated to South Africa mid 1990s with her daughter, now 20 years old. She started her career down under as a waitress in a Johannesburg restaurant, but began gradually to climb up the career ladder after she came in contact with the property industry in South Africa's main city and most densely populated area.

My personal impression is that Jadvyga's success started the day she met her current manager and boss, property queen Wendy Machanik (along-standing with Jadvyga in the above photo). Wendy is an amazing Litvak with phenomenal successes within real estate brokerage in the Johannesburg area for many years (hi Wendy, are the pictures still hanging there, in correct positions?).

Last time I saw Jadvyga and her family was at her home village Vievis, here in Lithuania, on a very cold winter day just a few weeks ago, when they all came here to bring their beloved mother to her final rest. The contrast between warm Johannesburg and freezing Lithuania must have been enormous. When the funeral was over, I thought that now one more link between Lithuania and South Africa had been cut. How often will Jadvyga come back up north now when her mother is gone? 

But maybe there is something we can do to keep the ties and connections alive, all of us who love both Lithuania and South Africa? Please feel free to write me with your suggestions and ideas…

Aage Myhre