The Fate of the Mirkin Family and Execution of the Lithuanian Jews in the Pine Forest of Pivonija

The Mirkin name was well-known and respected in the shtetl of Shirvint of Ukmerge Uyezd for many generations. Israel Mirkin and his wife Rachel, before the establishment of the Soviet power in Lithuania, owned a big fabric store, two apartment complexes in Shirvint and a large house in Ukmerge. The Soviet authorities confiscated it all.

Israel and Rachel had three children. Daughter Leah and son Velvl (Wolf) graduated from Ukmerge Hebraic Gymnasium with an education in Classical Hebrew (the language of Torah). Reb Lampert was director of that gymnasium. ("Reb" is a Yiddish title of respect for a Jewish teacher or other highly respected man in the Jewish community.) He was a wonderful teacher and a favorite among the students. Leah and Velvl moved from the shtetl of Shirvint to the city of Vilnius with great hopes for obtaining a good education and for a chance for a better future. The youngest son Hirshl after graduation from Shirvint Hebraic Folkshul (elementary school with education in Classical Hebrew) continued his education in Lithuanian school.

When the armed NKVD officials came to deport the Mirkins to Siberia on June 14, 1941, they did not find Leah and Velvl, who were studying at that time at Vilnius University. The NKVD officials drove only three "socially dangerous elements" to Ionova railroad station for deportation.

Then, suddenly misfortune occurred. Israel Mirkin suffered a heart attack and felt unwell at departure, and the NKVD officials had to take the sick man off the train and transfer him to the Vilnius hospital. Rachel and Hirshl were not allowed to stay with him and they were taken into exile. They were very worried about the state of his health. Rachel and Hirshl became even more depressed when they found out that German troops had attacked the Soviet Union. They got moral support and comfort from other special settlers on board.

After the long and difficult journey, the special trains with the "socially dangerous people" from Lithuania arrived in Biysk. Rachel and Hirshl, along with the other deportees, were escorted under guard to the village of Smolensky by the armed NKVD sentinels and the Mirkins were settled into a room with a built-in plank bed. The Koltuns, the Rezniks, and other Jewish families from Ukmerge Uyezd were located in the same village along with some Lithuanian families.

Rachel, after a while, started working at the administrative office of a district trading organization. Hirshl started attending the fifth grade of the local school. He knew almost no Russian, but his knowledge of Polish helped him quickly learn the new language. Hirshl worked on a collective farm throughout the summer, including haying fields with a mowing-machine. The Mirkins were given uncultivated, virgin plots of land where they grew potatoes just as other special settlers did.

Climate was continental in the village of Smolensky with long and extremely cold winters (sometimes there were snowstorms and school was closed down for a while) and hot, short summers. Hirshl liked that weather very much.

He often played volleyball with the superintendent of the special commandant’s office of the NKVD. Hirshl asked him to allow his family to live in Biysk where they moved after the superintendant issued the permit.

By that time, the Mirkins had set up correspondence with Rachel’s brother, who lived in Tel Aviv. He started sending them parcels of clothes, which they sold to improve their family’s financial situation.

Lithuania was liberated from the German occupation during the summer of 1944. Rachel Mirkin wrote a letter to her former Lithuanian neighbor in Shirvint in which she asked him about the fates of her husband, children, and other relatives. Velvl came to Shirvint then in search of information about his family. He stopped to inquire of the neighbor who then gave him the address of his mother and brother. There was no limit to his joy. After that, they corresponded regularly with each other. Velvl wrote his mother and brother that he was locked up in the Vilnius Ghetto after the Germans had occupied the city. He had managed to escape to the partisans before the ghetto was liquidated. Velvl fought ferociously against the Hitlerites there and was awarded many orders and medals.

I will tell more about the partisan’s movement in further chapters of the book.

Israel Mirkin and his daughter Leah met the tragic end of their life. As it became known later, not fully recovered from a heart attack, Israel and Leah ran to Shirvint after the occupation of Vilnius by the Germans. They looked for a hide-out from the Polish and Lithuanian pogrom-makers who hunted down the Jews to lynch them.

However, they could not survive even in their home town. All Jews of Ukmerge Uyezd were locked up behind a barbed wire fence of the Ukmerge Ghetto in August 1941. Some of our fellow countrymen from Shirvint and other shtetls were executed on the spot by the Lithuanian neighbors.

The Ukmerge Ghetto was set up in the area behind the bridge across the river Shventa, on the far river-bank. That area had a Yiddish name "Untern Vaser" ("Under Water"). It is a mystery why people would have named it so, and nobody knows the answer now.

Shortly after setting up the Ukmerge Ghetto, the Germans started "actions" of torturing and executing ghetto prisoners. Jews were shot in the Pivonija forest, the so-called "the Switzerland Valley." This wonderful pine forest was turned into "hell on the earth," with soil stained with the blood of innocent people. The killers were not so much the Germans themselves as the local Lithuanian fascist volunteers. Gestapo officer Deveikis, a miller’s son from Ukmerge, was in charge of executions. The biggest murderous deed took place on September 5, 1941, when 4,709 Jews were killed, including 1,737 children. The Ukmerge Ghetto existed untill the end of September 1941 by which time all Jews from Ukmerge and the surrounding shtetls had been murdered.

One of the Nazi documents describing dastardly acts of mass murder and other atrocities in Lithuania, "The Jaeger Report," provides evidence of the participation of Lithuanian nationalists in killing the Jews. That report was written and sent to Berlin by SS Standartenfuehrer (Colonel) Karl Jaeger, Commander of Einsatzgruppe 3 of the Special Security Force and contains 317 names of the most "outstanding" Lithuanian killers from Ukmerge Uyezd.

About 20,000 Jews were tortured and executed in the Pivonija forest, including Israel Mirkin and other relatives and friends of that family. My elder brother Isaac Rykliansky, grandfather Hirshl Zeldov, grandmother Sheynl-Golde Zeldov, aunts Rachel Zeldov, Ghanna Rykliansky and her family were killed there also.

May the memory of all the Lithuanian Jews who were murdered in the pine forest of Pivonija live forever!

Hirshl Mirkin told me what he saw in the pine forest of Pivonija when he visited that place in 1947. There were shovels lying next to the ditches where the Jews were buried. Marauders used those shovels to dig out ditches and then searched victims’ bodies for possible hidden jewels. They extracted with pliers and knives gold teeth, crowns and bridges from the mouths of the vanished people. The place of execution was surrounded by collapsed trenches. The German and Lithuanian killers were shooting from concrete machine-gun nests during the execution and closely watching the Jews so that they could not escape. Indeed, no one did escape.

The Mirkins were sure that Leah had been killed with her father and other Jews in the pine forest of Pivonija. However, one day in 1956 two Polish friends came to the Mirkin’s apartment in Vilnius. One of them was living in Shirvint during the Nazi occupation. He said that 20-year-old daughter of Rachel and Israel hid in a Lithuanian neighbor’s shed even before the Jews of Shirvint were settled in the Ukmerge Ghetto. After only a few weeks she "was ratted out" by someone. That Pole witnessed two Lithuanians with white armbands taking Leah out of the shed and shooting her down not far away from the shtetl. The eyewitness who witnessed Leah’s execution did not know where her body was buried.

Hirshl Mirkin is in correspondence now with the Lithuanian ambassador to Israel. That ambassador has asked the Lithuanian Jews to provide all the information they have about the bandits who killed the Jews during the Holocaust to the Lithuanian General Public Prosecutor’s Office. Hirshl put in his statement all the facts known to him about the five Lithuanian murderers from Shirvint. He asked about finding the remains of his sister so he could rebury them next to his mother’s grave in Vilnius. (His mother Rachel passed away in 1974.) In ten days he received a response from the General Public Prosecutor’s Office that based on his written statement a pretrial criminal investigation had been initiated.

Can modern-day Lithuanian Pinkertons find anything? I have my doubts about that happening. But hope dies last, and I could be wrong.

Let’s return now to Lithuania to a period before the end of the war with Germany.

After liberation of Lithuania from the German occupation, Velvl Mirkin began to look for a way to bring his mother and brother back from exile. He managed to get an appointment with a former leader of partisan movement Mikhail Suslov, who was the Chairman of the All-Union Communist Party Central Committee Bureau for Lithuanian affairs at that time. That Bureau was the highest seat of power in the Republic. Mikhail Suslov heard out the former partisan, took his written statement, and promised to look into the matter. Rachel and Hirshl received a letter from the MGB at the end of 1946. They were informed that the MGB gave an order, according to which the Mirkins were no longer considered to be "socially dangerous elements." They were permitted to have passports and return to Lithuania with the right to settle in the capital of the Republic Vilnius.

Rachel and Hirshl Mirkin came to Vilnius on February 10, 1947. Hirshl was working and studying at that time. After graduating from the Vilnius branch of Kaunas Polytechnic Institute he was appointed shop superintendent in a radio plant.

Velvl graduated from Moscow Polygraph Institute. His great interest and love for fine arts has made Velvl a talented artist.

Rachel Mirkin and her sons initiated the idea of building a monument at the place of the mass murder of the Jews of the Ukmerge Ghetto in the pine forest of Pivonija. Fellow countrymen who survived the war gave a large amount of money, and the monument was erected in 1948. The monument has inscriptions in Yiddish, Lithuanian, and Russian, stating that it was built at the place of execution of the Soviet citizens, but there are no words which state that the victims were specifically Jewish. That text was ordered by leaders of the Communist Party of Lithuanian SSR. This is only one example of how the Soviet government ignored everything related to Jews, hid their tragedy and ignored their participation in the resistance and fight against the Nazis.

There is another memorable obelisk in the Pivonija forest, made by Lithuanian students of the city of Ukmerge (Vilkomir). They put stones together in the shape of a truncated cone. People light the torch on top of the obelisk during a remembrance ceremony in memory of all the murdered Jews of Ukmerge Uyezd.

The Mirkins also initiated the building a monument to our ancestors in the old Jewish cemetery of the city of Ukmerge. That monument was erected in 1990. The cemetery has existed for many centuries. It is closed now and has fallen into ruin. (New construction was started on that terrain.) The stone monument commemorating our ancestors is engraved with the words in Yiddish and Lithuanian, "The old Jewish cemetery. Memory of the dead is sacred."

Hirshl Mirkin married Nelly, a young woman from Gomel (Byelorussia), in 1957. Nelly studied piano at Vilnius Conservatory and after graduation she worked as a teacher at the National M. K. Churlenis School of Art named after the famous Lithuanian composer and painter Mikalous Churlenis. Hirshl and Nelly have two daughters. Rina, the younger one, following the example of her mother, graduated from Vilnius Conservatory and worked as a piano teacher at the same National M. K. Churlenis School of Art.

Velvl Mirkin repatriated to Israel in 1972. A short time after his arrival he started working as a teacher. He taught descriptive geometry and drawing at various colleges and schools of the Israel ORT education system for many years before retirement. Velvl inculcated in the children a fine appreciation of the arts. He now lives in Holon.

The Mirkins got an inheritance from their dead relatives from South Africa in 1967. It helped them to improve their life conditions. However, Hirshl Mirkin and his family repatriated to Israel in 1990 despite their material comfort. They now live in Rehovot.

Their elder daughter Izana lives with her parents. She has had problems with her legs since childhood. However, this has not embittered her. Izana works for a manufacturing firm where she is doing light assembly work and has many friends there. She knows Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Lithuanian, and some English and Polish. Izana is currently mastering her English and computer skills. The life of her family, the safety and well being of her country, and love for the whole world are the greatest values in her own life.

After arriving in Israel, Rina gave private piano lessons and then later went to college to study nursing. She successfully completed the examination for her license to practice and now she works as a head nurse and loves her job. Rina has two children. Her son is a student at Tel Aviv University, and her daughter is a schoolgirl. Rina’s husband is a software developer.

Hirshl Mirkin had a stroke in 1992. He suffers from paralysis on his left side. Now he walks with a cane and limps slightly. However, he has adapted himself to the conditions that surround him and his interest in life has not abated a jot. He pays special attention to political and economic processes and events in Israel and other countries. He worries that Israeli Jewish society is disunited, and that repatriates from different world regions often are not able to find common ground. He regrets that Israelis with different political views are aggressively opposed to one another all the time, that there is growing tension between religious and secular Jews, and that there is tension even between religious Jews of the different streams in Judaism. Hirshl is upset that Yiddish is obliged to struggle for survival in Israel, and that the rich universal Yiddish culture is falling into oblivion without sufficient support from the government. It really disturbs him that many competent and hard-working, intelligent repatriates live poorly in Israel because they cannot find worth-while employment. He does not like the many alcoholics, idlers, and dishonest people who come to Israel. They are not interested in Jewish culture, customs, history, or even the Israelis. There are also anti-Semites in Israel though many of them have Jewish roots. He understands that without national unity it is impossible to fight Arab terrorism, Islamic extremism, and anti-Semitism in the world. He is confident that it is also impossible to improve the life of repatriates to Israel without rational social politics. Hirshl is angry at the fact that nowadays Lithuanian authorities call bandits who during the Holocaust voluntarily helped the Nazis to kill their Jewish neighbors "fighters for freedom."

Hirshl Mirkin is a man of high principles. He is not an indifferent person. His active attitude to life and high sense of civic responsibility deserves recognition and respect.