A very personal journey

(Authors: Veronica Belling, Natalie Ginsburg, Vol. 69, No. 1, Pesach 2014)

In August 2013, I visited Lithuania for the first time. I had just finished translating a series of 25 articles on the Lithuanian shtetlech, originally published in the South African Yiddish newspaper, the Afrikaner Idishe Tsaytung (African Jewish newspaper) in 1953, relatively soon after the Holocaust. I had long wanted to visit Lithuania, the home of my maternal grandparents and paternal grandfather, but being employed full time at the Jewish Studies Library at the University of Cape Town had never had the time. Having retired at the end of 2012, this seemed to be the ideal moment. My visit was timed to coincide with the 16th Congress of the World Union of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, where I was participating in a Judaica Librarianship panel.

Accompanying me was my first cousin, Natalie Ginsburg, originally from the Strand and who has been living in Jerusalem for the past fifty years. Natalie is older than me. Her mother was the oldest in a family of nine, and came to South Africa from Lithuania as a small child. My mother was the second youngest in the family and, like my father, was born in South Africa. Her father came here as a young man and his relatives who stayed behind died in the Holocaust. Natalie therefore felt much closer to the events than I did. This article is a combination of both of our impressions.

We knew that our visit would be somewhat sombre. Proportionately, Lithuania had the highest Jewish victim rate of all the countries invaded by the Germans. It is estimated that 90%, 195 000 out of the community of 210 000 Jews, were killed. Today, Vilna has a community of only 5000 Jews, while Kaunus (Kovno in Yiddish), where our guide came from, has about 200.

Our journey turned out to be one full of unexpected encounters, connections and coincidences. As we passed through immigration at Ben Gurion airport, the airport official who checked my South African passport, with typical Israeli informality, said to me, “You are travelling to Lithuania, Veronica. Did your parents come from there?” It is widely known in Israel that most South African Jews came from Lithuania.

Our next encounter was in the waiting area for our charter flight to Vilnius where a woman, recognizing Natalie, approached us and introduced herself as Liba. She was a Holocaust survivor. Born in 1940, she was taken from her parents (they were doctors, which helped them to survive), and given to a Baptist woman who, together with a priest, helped to save her. Her sister, who was born underground under the home of the people who rescued them, was also taken from their parents, and given to someone to look after. As a baby, she would have endangered them. Fortunately, after the war the family was reunited and now Liba and her sister, were going to a Lithuania for a holiday. This was not her first return visit; they had been back before to visit the family who had saved them. When asked how she felt about going back, she said that she had mixed feelings. On the one hand they had been saved by such wonderful selfless people, but on the other, thousands were brutally murdered. She told us that she also meets up with old school friends but vets them very carefully. Towards the end of the war, she and the woman who sheltered her were betrayed and they were put in prison; they were released when the Russians came. However, the family who had sheltered them had to flee from the village because the partisans threatened to kill them for having sheltered Jews. On this trip they would be visiting the children of the family as the old couple had died.

Our guide, Simon Davidovich, was born in Kaunus long after the Holocaust. His parents had survived by fleeing into the forest where they were taken in by peasants. Simon, who speaks English and Yiddish, is Director of the Sugihara Museum in Kaunus. Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat who issued thousands of visas for Jews to leave Lithuania during the time of the Holocaust. Simon told me that he had equipped himself with the very latest reference book, Synagogues in Lithuania: a Catalogue (2010-2012), compiled by a team of Israeli and Lithuanian scholars that identifies the sites of all of the former synagogues, their history, and a short overview of the communities, to inform our visit to almost twenty cities, towns and villages. I wished to visit as many of the 25 shtetls I had written about as could be managed in eight days, while both Natalie and I wished to spend time in Birzai, the home of our mutual grandparents.

Hotel Alexa, where we were staying, was situated on the edge of the old Jewish quarter. The streets there are cobbled and even driving in a car one can feel every bump, making one realize what travelling in a coach or wagon must have been like. Near to our hotel was a small open market, with old men and women selling produce. Further up the same road was an arch, one of the original entrances leading into the old city, on top of which is built the Church of the Black Madonna, where queues of people were already on their knees reciting the morning mass. Lithuania is predominantly a Catholic country.

Our first tour with Simon was to the old Jewish quarter, where between 1941 and 1943 the Nazis created two ghettos: the large ghetto, liquidated in 1943, and the small ghetto in 1941. It is hard to imagine it today except in some little side streets where, if one peers into old courtyards, the old world poverty can still be seen. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – when Lithuania regained her independence – there has been a fair amount of memorialising of killing sites, graveyards, former synagogues, yeshivasand Jewish schools. The sites of both ghettos are marked with plaques, recording how many Jews were killed:4

30 000 from the big ghetto and 11 000 from the small one. The Judenrat (Jewish council) that was located in the premises of a Jewish school has a plaque recording that on 3 September 1941, 1200 Jews were selected there to be shot. Natalie captures the feeling of extreme discomfort that we experienced visiting such sites: “When we go into the courtyards where the Jews were gathered to be sent off to their deaths, I found it very hard to stand there, as I felt as if I was able to see them. I could feel their fear, almost as if I had been amongst them. The feeling never left me the whole day.”

Although many Jewish sites are marked, quite a few are not. For example, Simon pointed out the building where the ghetto library was situated. It was organised by Herman Kruk, whose detailed Togbukh fun Vilna Geto (Diary of the Vilna Ghetto, 1962) has now become available in English as The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Ghetto and Camps (2002). Simon also showed us the building that housed the ghetto hospital, as well as that of the famous Rom Press, which in its day printed the most famous Jewish religious books – Talmuds and siddurim – in the world. Just opposite this building stands a lifelike statue of the popular Jewish doctor, Tsemach Shabad (1864-1935), the founder of Oze, the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jews, in Vilna, co-founder of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, and Senator in the Polish diet.1

In its time Vilna, ‘Yerushalayim de’Lita’ had the richest Jewish culture in Europe. Not only Holocaust sites have been memorialized but also cultural sites, such as the house where the Vilna Gaon once lived and the apartments of the famous Yiddish poets, Avram Sutzkever (1913-2010) and Moshe Kulbak (1896-1937). Vilna has a Zydu Gatve (Jew Street) and a Gaono Gatve(Gaon Street). The site of the Great Synagogue that was bombed during the war is marked by a large billboard with posters under glass depicting the original synagogue and the damage done to it. An old Soviet style apartment block stands on the original site. We also visited the only active synagogue left in Vilna where there is a minyanevery morning and every evening, as well as the new Jewish cemetery dating to Soviet times. It contains the mausoleum of the Vilna Gaon as well as graves of Bundist heroes such as Hirsh Lekert (1878-1902), that were transferred from the older cemetery in Snipishok. The more recent graves from Soviet times are engraved only in Cyrillic script, with the face of the deceased carved in relief on the stone.

We visited the Yiddish Department at the University of Vilnius, where every summer a four- week program is conducted. This year there were approximately forty four students from a variety of countries, including Ireland and France, and even an Arab student from Israel. At the office we met 91 year-old Fanya Brantsofsky, who works as the librarian on the program and takes the students on walkabouts through the city. She herself is a Holocaust survivor, the only one of two from her large family, and fought with the partisans.

Fanya Brantsofsky

We also visited the new part of the city which is modern but built in good taste in an old world style that is pleasing to the eye. Both Holocaust museums, the original Green Museum as well as the Museum of Tolerance, are situated in the newer section of the city. The Green Museum, the first State Holocaust Museum originally created by Rachel Margolis, is directed by Rachel Constantian (who has visited South Africa). Said Natalie: “Although I have been to many Holocaust museums, the one thing that stands out over there is the killing that the Lithuanians perpetrated even before the Nazis started directing them”. The second Holocaust Museum, the Museum of Tolerance, is very modern by contrast. It has a large section devoted to child survivors, whose stories are related on panels, with the aid of live video clips. In the centre of this exhibit is a small booth devoted to the children who did not survive and whose pictures displayed on the wall were found lying at the side of the road along which they and their parents travelled to their deaths. In the background, poet and partisan, Shmerke Kaczerginski’s poignant lullaby, Shtiler, Shtiler (Quieter, Quieter), one of the most popular songs composed in the Vilna Ghetto, plays over and over again.

Food in Lithuania included many of the old favourites with which we were so familiar. Lunch in the Old Quarter was cold borsht with smetana and kvas, a fomented beverage made out of grain. Borsht, herring (salted not pickled) and potatoes and dumplings done in any number of ways are staples on menus in Lithuania.

Ponar – Paneriu forest: killing site

The following day we drove to Ponar, the Panerui forest, the largest killing site in Lithuania, located about seven miles outside Vilnius. Whereas in Soviet times the memorials at the killing sites simply mentioned that ‘Lithuanian inhabitants’ were killed, not mentioning that Jews as a category suffered the most, this has now changed. At Ponar the memorial, inscribed in Lithuanian and Yiddish, clearly indicates that of the 100 000 people who were massacred there, 70 000 were Jews. There is also a separate Jewish memorial, where Israeli President Shimon Peres – who had visited only a few days before us – had placed a blue and white wreath alongside the wreath in the red, green and yellow colours of the Lithuanian flag.

Next to the memorials are the pits where the bodies were buried, today grassed over and encircled with low, neat stone borders. The surrounding forests are quite beautiful. They are the jewel in the crown of Lithuania. A train line runs through the Ponar forest. The location of the mass killing sites was generally due to their accessibility by train, which made the transportation of the victims easier.

Ponar forest: One of the pits where the bodies were buried.

Whereas I, numbed by the horrors of Ponar, shied away from examining anything too closely, Natalie spent a long time studying the exhibits in the local museum and as a result was far more affected. The following is taken from a letter she circulated to our families:

I keep avoiding writing about this morning. My mind seems to close down as I try to find the words. It is so hard to convey. Words seem to trivialise what one wants to say. I started off by looking at the forests and thinking how beautiful they were. But then the picture in my mind changed and I thought of people running and hiding in the forests and I wondered if somehow their fear is still embedded in the bark of the trees. I thought of the partisans and where they would have hidden. As I alighted from the car I heard the whistle of a train and my throat constricted and then I heard the train coming closer and closer and the noise on the tracks and could see it racing past and I could not control myself and had to walk away. The whole time we were there we could hear the trains.

We went to the pits. You look at the high slope on which the people stood and it as if you cannot draw your gaze away. I felt as if I stood there long enough I would see the family I never knew. I wish that I knew that there was truly an afterlife that I could think of their looking down on us and knowing that we were there, remembering, part of them living on.

We saw the pit where prisoners were kept in shackles and in freezing conditions and those who had survived were brought out to burn the bodies of the dead in other pits so as to hide the evidence of the massacres. It is unbelievable that twelve of them were able to dig a tunnel with only spoons and to escape in this way. I found it all so overwhelming that I wonder how the survivors have the courage and the strength to come back…

One picture in the museum was of a little boy. He was found one morning playing in a sand pit and without even trying to find out if he was a local child they shot him. Four years old. You ask yourself who had the heart to photograph the child and then see him shot and how did the photograph survive.

There are so many harrowing descriptions. We all know that soldiers were changed often at the killing fields for fear of what their own actions would do to them psychologically and given vodka in large quantities. When you read that children were sometimes killed not by being shot but with their heads dashed against trees so as to save bullets you cannot understand where these people have come from… The child who was buried alive and when climbing out of the pit found her neighbor who was critically wounded and who begged her to smother him. When she asked with what he said to take the body of the dead child next to him and smother him with that. The girl survived. What terrible memories to carry with you for the rest of your life.

Ukmerge – Vilkomir

The following day we left for Ukmerge (Yiddish: Vilkomir), located 78 kilometres north-west of Vilnius. We first visited the killing site, located outside the town deep in the incredibly beautiful Pivonija forest. The white stone memorial, inscribed in Lithuanian, Yiddish and Hebrew reads: “On this place Hitler’s murderers and their local helpers killed 10 239 Jews, men women and children.” This acknowledgement of local participation in the killing is common to the Jewish memorial sites today.

I was more moved by that site than by Ponar, where there was a bus load of tourists. When we arrived it was deserted and you could hear the wind whispering through the trees. I thought of the Yiddish poem, Mayn Heym, by Chaya Fedler, where while dreaming of her former home, she writes: “During the nights the green leaves moan/ The wind in the branches says kaddish.”2

The actual city of Ukmerge is situated on two levels. The lower level is situated on the banks of the river, Shventa. In the main part of the town on the upper level, we found two plaques. One was a map indicating where the Jews used to live and a second was dedicated to the Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian writer and Zionist publicist, Moshe Leib Lilienblum (1843-1910), who had lived in Vilkomir. The Jewish cemetery, situated in the heart of the town, has been converted into a park. It has a memorial stone indicating that a Jewish cemetery was once there.

The stone and single grave marking the former Jewish cemetery in the centre of Ukmerge – Vilkomir

In some places when we have been photographing local people have stopped to watch us. Unlike in other countries, however, seldom did they ask us who we were. I got the feeling that possibly they were embarrassed by their own history but that might well have been my imagination. On one occasion in Ukmerge, someone enquired as to whether I was “Russki” and pointed me in the direction of the memorial for the Jewish graveyard. I was not sure if “Russki” was a euphemism or synonym for “Zydu” – Jew.

Kedainiai – Keidan

Not far from Ukmerge, is one of the best preserved of the former shtetlach – Keidan, famous for the fact that the Vilna Gaon married a girl from that shtetl and studied for some years at the yeshiva there. We visited a synagogue that had been converted into a Museum celebrating diversity. The bottom section was restored as a synagogue but without the Ark, and upstairs in the former Ladies section was an exhibition and an office. The large old market square adjacent to the synagogue has been left intact and is resplendent with its presumably original cobble stones.

Former synagogue, now a Museum of Diversity Keidan

Afterwards, we visited the killing site outside Kedainiai. Its unusual memorial is made of metal in which names have been cut out. Natalie’s heart stopped as the first name her eyes alighted on was that of her family: ‘Ginzburgas Natanas’. The memorial stands at the side of a clearing in the forest where the actual killing took place.

Besides the killing sites, we visited many of the old graveyards. Some, as in Vilnius and Kedainiai, are very well cared for, but many are old and neglected. The stones are weathered, broken, falling down. Some are close to the road (Kupiskis and Joniskis) and one wonders what will become of them. Although it is also very close to the road, the cemetery at Rakiskis is amazingly large and also evidently cared for as there were several bags of rubbish standing alongside some of the graves. Apparently, the government sometimes gives the unemployed the job of cleaning them up. Other cemeteries, such as in the larger towns of Panevezys, Ukmerge and Siauliai, were completely destroyed, with parks built over them. The only consolation is that there is are memorials indicating that they used to be Jewish graveyards.

Similarly, old disused synagogues are marked with plaques. Generally, the plaque simply reads in Lithuanian and Yiddish: Do iz geven a Besmedresh (Here was a Synagogue). However the plaque on the synagogue in the small village of Pusalotas has a more extensive inscription: “In memory of Pushelat Jews who lived and worked for centuries in peace with their neighbours, and those who were uprooted and murdered by the Nazi murderers and their accomplices in 1941. May their memory be for a blessing.”

Quaint former synagogue in the village of Krakenava (Krakinova). The section of its plaque reads Do iz geven der Besmedresh – ‘Here was the synagogue’.

Other former synagogues, such as one in Birzai (Birzh), have been converted into apartment blocks with no indication that they were ever Jewish places of worship.

I was keen to get a feel of what were once tiny villages when our grandparents lived there. However many, such as Rakiskis and Kupiskis (where the Penkins came from), have grown tremendously. At best there are roads where some of the small houses remain. We did visit several really tiny villages – Skopiskis, Krekenava (Krakinova), Vaskai (Vashki), and Zeimelas (Zheimel). These are still full of the original houses and their market squares have not been built up.

Simon told us that in the small villages, one can tell which houses were those of Jews and which were those of Christians. The Jews always had a front door, as they were generally shopkeepers. When the Lithuanians took their houses over they boarded up the front door as they believed that having the door at the back of the house was more secure.

Former Jewish home, with boarded front door, Pushelat

Panevezys – Ponevezh

We spent our first night outside of Vilnius in Panevezys, the fifth largest city in Lithuania, with a population of 99 690 in 2011.3 We stayed at the Romantic Hotel, probably our most upmarket accommodation with a wonderful view over the city. In the morning we managed to locate the building that housed the famous Ponevezh yeshivaof Rabbi Kahaneman. Now a bakery, it has a plaque in Yiddish and Lithuanian to identify it. As in Ukmerge, the large Jewish cemetery has been replaced by a beautiful park. In it is a memorial statue of a woman covering her face and crying up to heaven, with a menorah and an inscription in Hebrew from the first chapter of the Book of Lamentations: “For those I weep…”

The former Ponevezh yeshiva, today a bakery

Memorial at the former Jewish graveyard in Ponevezh, today a city park

Kupiskis – Kupishok, Skopiskis – Skopishok and Rakiskis- Rakishok

From Panevezys we made our way via Kupiskis, Skopiskis and Rakiskis to Birzai. In Kupiskis the old synagogue is today used as a library and community centre. There is a plaque in the entrance that includes many well- known South African surnames and dedications. An unusual cemetery was that for Free Thinkers; it was the place chosen to kill the Jews. The memorial to the “1000 murdered inhabitants of Kupeshok – most of who were Jews” – was rededicated by a group of their descendants in July 2004.

From Kupiskis we went on to Skopiskis, ancestral home of Natalie’s father’s family, where we stopped briefly to visit the graveyard. In Rakiskis we went directly to the killing site where Natalie believed that her family on her father’s side must be buried. It is located in a forest just off the road surrounded by a green fence. Straight mounds mark the graves. The memorial in rough grey cement stone has an inscription in Russian, Lithuanian and Yiddish that is unusual in that it specifically names the Lithuanians: “Here rest the Jews murdered by Lithuanian German nationalists, 15-16 August 1941.”

Natalie was extremely moved: “It was so hard in the end to walk away. I kept going towards the car and walking back again. You walk there and wonder how many bodies may have lain beneath your feet. I asked Simon if they were killed just in that field. He said that it is said that the Jews were killed in the forest itself. But then of course that was 70 years ago and the forest has grown up around the mounds. The trees were nourished with their blood.”

Our fifth night was spent in Birzai, the home of our grandparents. Even though, with a population of 14 565 in 20114, it is not one of the smaller towns, it is nonetheless very provincial. In the morning we went down to the lake around which the town, situated at the confluence of two rivers, is built. My mother had told me that Bobbe used to speak about it and it is truly beautiful. We crossed a walkway where people were fishing and it was very peaceful. I have never seen so many houses with apple trees. Everywhere you go the apples just lie on the ground.

We visited the Jewish and Karaite cemetery, where thirty Jews were massacred by the Germans at the beginning of the war. We then went to the memorial at the killing site, where there must have been an official gathering recently as there were two bouquets in the colors of Israel and Lithuania. 14 200 Jews were killed there and about 90 Lithuanians. Everywhere you see the words: un zeyere ortike bahelfers – “and their local helpers”. Natalie wondered how they felt when they killed their fellow Christians and not only the Jews. And when the church bells rang on Sunday morning she asked herself: did the church bells ring while the Germans and Lithuanians killed their victims? Did they maybe stop to cross themselves? How did they go to church in the morning after they had shot thousands in cold blood? Did they confess to the priests……at any rate to those whom they had not also sent to their death? And when they confessed to the priest, did he give them absolution time and again?

Siauliai – Shavli

Towards evening we arrived in Siauliai, the fourth largest city with a population of 109 328 in 20115, where we were to spend our sixth night. We went directly to a large shopping mall to a restaurant adjacent to an indoor ice rink, where we could watch the people skating while we ate. All so normal.

In the morning, we first went to visit the Frenkel Villa. Chaim Frenkel was the richest Jew in Lithuania who made his money from leather manufacturing. His house, a virtual palace, has been converted into a Lithuanian museum with one room devoted to the Jews. His vast estate contains his former factories, parks and its own red brick synagogue built specifically for his workers and which still stands today. Afterwards, we went to the Jewish cemetery which was destroyed, but marked with a memorial stone, inscribed in the Soviet Yiddish orthography. We photographed some of the dilapidated houses in the ghetto area, the entrance to which is marked with a memorial stone inscribed in Lithuanian only.

Home of Chaim Frenkel in Shavli, today a museum

Outside Siauliai there is another of the very large Jewish mass killing sites – over 8000 dead. It is located in the Lupaniai forest – nine pits. We went to three. Not all are accessible and it was muddy following recent rains. Besides, there is only so much a person can bear. Natalie asked Simon how he feels bringing people here all the time, particularly the survivors who come with their own pain and agonizing memories. He says that he has not become immune and that it still hits him every time, especially when he sees how his visitors are affected.

From Siauliai we made our way up north to the town of Joniskis (Yanishok), on our way to Zagare on the Latvian border. At that point the weather, which had been hot and humid, changed suddenly and we were caught in a driving rain that put paid to the rest of our touring that day. This is typical of Lithuania, where the weather can change in the blink of an eye. Nonetheless, we managed to visit the complex of two synagogues, built in 1823 and 1865. They are being renovated by the government, despite the fact that there are no Jews left there.

We drove through Zagare (Zhagar), a town on the Latvian border, about which much has been written by South African authors in Yiddish and in English: Solomon Fedler’s Shalechet (1969),6Chaya Fedler’s two collections of poetry (1951, 1954)7 and Rose Zvi’s Last Walk in Naryshkin Park (1997).8 It was raining so heavily that we did not stop but drove over the border into Latvia and then back again on our way to our last destination of the day and the furthest to the east of our itinerary: Plunge (Plungian). On our way we took a detour to Telsiai (Telz), to view the building that housed the famous yeshiva. It is today very run down and heavily boarded up but is apparently used by a business. Unlike the Ponevezh yeshiva, there are no plaques to indicate its former glory.

The former Telz Yeshiva

One of Jacob Bunka’s carvings at Plungian

The memorial site outside Plunge is very impressive with the series of wooden statues carved by Jacob Bunka, the only Jew in his village to have survived. There are plaques there, some of which are filled with the names of whole families who perished there. Our visit was unfortunately cut short by the rain and we drove back south east to Kaunus where we would be spending the night and where Simon, our guide, could enjoy the luxury of going home to sleep in his own bed.

Kaunus (Kovno), the second largest city with a population today of 315 993 in 2011,9 and the former capital of independent Lithuania (1919-1939) contains one of the worst of the killing sites and where the horrors are not relieved by the natural surroundings. This is the Ninth Fort, which was used as a prison by the Germans for Lithuanians, Jews and other nationalities. There are a several museums for all the various peoples who were killed. The large memorial site is set in cement fashioned along the contours of the hillside that is overlooked by a gigantic brooding Soviet statue. Built in 1984, it is 32 metres in height, abstract, but with faces of the victims carved into it. Inside the fort, which is very grim with life like statues of prisoners and guards, there is a special section on the Jews, recreating the way they lived as well as the way they died.

The Ninth Fort, Kovno, looking towards the Soviet statue in the distance, with the walls of the fort to the right

Later we visited the area of the Kovno ghetto where a memorial stone inscribed in Lithuanian only, marks the entrance. We also stopped very briefly to photograph the gracious building that until 22 June 1941 (according to the plaque) was the home of the world-famous Slobodka yeshiva.

Homeward bound

In the afternoon we were both relieved to be on our way back to Vilnius from where we would be returning to Israel early the following morning. We would be flying Polish Air changing flights to El Al in Warsaw. While struggling to find the El Al ‘Check in’ in Warsaw, we had another chance encounter, when an elderly couple, recognising that we were in the same predicament, hailed us, asking if we spoke Yiddish. She was the only survivor in her family, rescued by a German soldier, placed in an orphanage and eventually sent to Israel.

Safely back in Israel and now in South Africa, I look back on our trip as a very grim and sobering experience but very inspiring nonetheless. It transformed my identity as a Jew, seeing the humble way in which our ancestors lived, not to mention how they died. If anyone still wonders whether the Jews really need a country of their own, this experience would dispel any doubts. And in Natalie’s words: “I never had any desire to go to Lithuania but it has been an experience which I would not have missed however hard it was at times. I did the right thing in going but thank goodness it is over now.”

Dr Veronica Belling is the author of Bibliography of South African Jewry (1997), Yiddish Theatre in South Africa (2008), and the translator of Leibl Feldman’s The Jews of Johannesburg (2007) and Yakov Azriel Davidson: His Writings in the Yiddish Newspaper, Der Afrikaner, 1911-1913 (2009). This article was written in collaboration with her cousin Natalie Ginsburg, who lives in Israel.