(Author: Sorrel Kerbel, Vol. 73, No. 3, Chanukah 2018)
This Keidan Memorial (Yiskor) book in English translation is a wonderful achievement, one that will enable English speakers to read for themselves the unique accounts of a once vibrant Jewish community ultimately destroyed in the Holocaust. Two months following Operation Barbarossa, the German attack on the Soviet Union, all that survived of that community was a large mass grave and just three eyewitnesses.
The book offers a precious glimpse into daily life in what was an important city in Lita from the late 19th to the mid-20th Century, when almost half of the population was Jewish. Included are heartfelt personal reminiscences; scholarly ‘Litvak’ reflections on literary, political, Zionist and economic concerns; vivid accounts of Kaidaner personalities, rabbinic and secular, and of folk ‘types’ and customs; and an important section of harrowing first-hand accounts of the Shoah.
As a descendant of Rabbonim who didn’t know her grandparents, I loved reading Yitzhak Edelman’s “Memories of my Teachers”. The story barely mentions his Rebbe, who taught cheder from the main entrance to the house. The Rebbe, of course, had nothing to do with the store – that was his wife’s domain. Keidan’s Rebbetzin offers her customers whatever goods they need. Farmers come to market to buy new horse whips (often stolen or broken in drunken brawls) and almost everyone requires the ubiquitous axle grease to “oil those wheels”. This entrepreneurial Rebbetzin decants a few kopeks of fish-oil into a small bowl so the customer can paint it onto his boots with a brush, “leaving proud and happy with his glistening footwear.”
The Rebbetzin also owns a goat, whose beard the children love to pull when no one is looking. The goat often stands on its rear legs leaning on the half door to the store “as if looking for a customer”! That wonderful image lives with me – though I know that my own Bobbe in Rakishok sold yeast and didn’t keep a goat!
The photographs, too, are important, though somewhat grainy and indistinct in this printing. They show school classes in cheder and also, schools taught through the medium of Hebrew in the years of an independent Lithuania, when there was a special Ministry for Jewish Affairs. There are images of the early Zionist pioneers of the land, the ‘Kibush’ training farm in 1924 at Pelednagai, a neighboring Government estate. This was the first Hachshara training centre in Lithuania. Another photograph from 1924 shows the aspirant chalutzim (pioneers), men and women men side by side with hoes and rakes, even before the establishment of ORT – OZE, an organisation that sponsored and taught agricultural training and other skills for those wanting to make aliya. There is a photograph celebrating the 10th anniversary of ORT OZE in 1937. One finds a smiling photograph of the firefighters’ football team before a match against the Jonava Maccabees, and another of the Jewish volunteer firefighters, so necessary for those who lived in precarious wooden homes, complete with helmets and modern machines. This was after the disastrous fire of 1914 that wiped out half the city, while water from the river was easily to hand. It includes the heroic Tzadok Shlapobersky, who was also an officer in the Fourth Brigade of the Lithuanian army.
In his essay The Girl From Human Street (New York Times, 1 April, 2016), Roger Cohen writes, “Every Jew of the second half of the 20th Century was a child of the Holocaust. So was all humanity. Survival could only be a source of guilt, whether spoken or unspoken. We bore the imprint of departed souls … I wanted to understand where I came from.” This quest for knowledge about the silenced past is vital if we are to understand the present and look to the future.
Following the German invasion, in the period 23 July – 24 August, 1941, there emerged in Keidan and other parts of Lithuania, a Lithuanian fifth column of fascists and hooligans who organised themselves into so-called ‘Partisan’ groups that set about murdering Jews and plundering their property. This was well before the decision, taken at the Wannsee conference in January 1942, to exterminate all Jews in Nazi-held Europe. A leading part in this was “played by professionals and the educated, by doctors, chemists, teachers, government officials, as well as their sons … headed by two notorious Lithuanians, Povylius and Markunas, both sons of past mayors and the three brothers Varys, Juazas and Stepan Sulcas, who lived on the horse market square” (Keidan, p230). The names of the leading members of this group of willing collaborators of Keidan are listed by a Jewish eye-witness, David Wolpe. They were originally published in the Yiddish journal Fun Letstn Khurbn in Munich 1948 and in English in 1950 by the Keidaner Benefit and Benevolent Society in Johannesburg.
Wolpe also the names Vaclovas Lacinskas, a carpenter of Josvainu street, and a Raudonis (his first name is not given), owner of the Hotel Vilnius, who were involved in the brutal murder of Tzadok Shlapobersky. Shlapobersky died a hero, pleading for the lives of his children, then, in late August 1941, attacking the Nazi officer in charge of the mass shootings at Count Totleben’s estate. In another incident, Lithuanians rounded up 100 Jews, alleged Communists, who were forcibly marched through town and shot in the Babenai woods about two miles away. The names of both killers and victims are there. Other harrowing tales include that of Rachel Shisiansky, wife of Aba Shisiansky the miller, who pleaded that she be shot before her children, whereupon her children were wrenched from her and shot before her eyes. There were elderly and ailing women brought by car and then buried alive and small children killed by Lithuanian bayonets. Many Jews were rounded up from shtetlach like Shat and Zheim and slaughtered. Those who hid in houses and sheds in Keidan, when rounded up, faced forced labour and death by famine and typhus in the ghetto. By December 1941, Commandant Jaeger, in charge of the all Nazi forces in Lithuania, was able to record in his detailed notebooks (not in this book) that the Jewish problem was already solved in Lithuania. Jews in Lithuania thus perished in huge numbers by bullets even before the gas chambers at Auschwitz or Treblinka began functioning.
Some young Jews from Keidan tried to flee to enlist in the Russian army; many were shot at by Lithuanians before they reached their regiments. There is a list of those who reached the Soviet army, several of whom achieved distinction in combat. Then the German forces reached Keidan, decreeing that the remaining Jews wear yellow patches and be forced into labour camps.
On the last page of the book is a reminder: “There is no relief in this book for the wounded soul of a son of Keidan. However there is in it a eulogy and a Kaddish (prayer for the dead) which was not said on the grave of the martyrs, and which will be said now whenever we take this book into our hands.”
The new English translation, overseen by Aryeh Leonard Shcherbakov and Andrew Cassel, is refreshingly direct and punchy, making for easy reading. It should be of interest to scholars of Jewish history as well as to Lithuanian historians, economists and sociologists. Jewish genealogists and others seeking to trace their roots in the city may be a primary audience for the valuable material provided. However, it has the potential to be of much broader interest.
Keidan Memorial (Yizkor) Book, compiled by David Solly Sandler, edited by Aryeh Leonard Shcherbakov and Andrew Cassel and translated by Bella Golubchik, Jeremiah Curtin, Meyer Dwass, Chaim Charutz, Miriam Erez and others. Originally published in Hebrew and edited by Josef Chrust, Tel Aviv, 1977. This English edition published by the Keidan Association in Israel and USA in English, June, 2018. Available only in soft cover from D S Sandler sedsand@iinet. au @ USD50 including delivery; all proceeds go to Arcadia Jewish Children Home, Johannesburg
Sorrel Kerbel (D.Phil, UCT) is editor of Routledge Encyclopedia of Jewish Writers (2003 and 2010) and contributor to the Yiskor Book of Rokiskis (Jewishgen.com, 2018).
