Epilogue

I wrote this book about the incredibly sad and tragic fate of the Lithuanian Jews on behalf of those who were killed and on behalf of those who survived the Holocaust, as well as for those of my fellow countrymen who were deported to Siberia to face certain death.

The book is intended first of all for the young people who will have to pass the torch of remembrance to future generations.

Time flies very fast. And unfortunately people, on whose shoulders fell all the terrible ordeals and who know very well that tragic past, are growing old and passing away. Therefore, it is very important to pass on the memories of live witnesses to the extermination of the Lithuanian Jews, to pass on the recollection of the Jews of their experiences in the ghettos, Nazi concentration camps, labor camps of Stalin’s GULAG, and Siberian exile. Such memories and documents about the tragedy of the Holocaust and Stalin’s repressions are foundation of this book.

There were 250,000 Jews in Lithuania (including Vilno and surrounding area) before the war. In I. Altman’s book "The Victims of Hate" it is reported that about 95 percent of all Jews who lived in prewar Lithuania were killed in the Holocaust. This data, made on basis of SS officers’ reports and other official correspondence, shows that among all former Soviet republics and European countries (in prewar boundaries) the highest percentage of Jewish population killed in the Holocaust was in Lithuania. The Nazis and their allies executed more than 6 million Jews, nearly one-third of our nation. And their unborn posterity did not come into the world.

Everyone should keep alive the memory of the Holocaust and the knowledge of Stalin’s repressions in the former Soviet Union. This memory should be passed from generation to generation. As a matter of fact, Lithuanian Jewry, as well as Jewish communities in Poland, Estonia, and Latvia were almost completely wiped off the face of the Earth during World War II. Knowledge about one’s own roots, family history, and respectful attitude toward them are the most important parts of the education, and the best antidote to assimilation and indifference. Moreover, that knowledge binds together people of different generations, and serves as a firm foundation for strong family relationships.

There is the concise and wise opinion of the well-known Jewish singer Nehama Lifshitsaite on this subject, "If our children and grandchildren do not know what happened to the Jewry of the Soviet Union, we will stop being the Jewish people." Nehama is an amazing singer, who sings in Yiddish with an extraordinarily beautiful voice. Her concert halls and auditoriums in the former Soviet Union were always overcrowded. Her audiences consisted not only of old Yiddish speakers, but also young people, many of whom did not speak Yiddish. Nehama Lifshitsaite threw down a challenge to the ruling communist bureaucracy and played an important role in inspiring the national consciousness of "silent Jews" by giving her performances. Since 1969 she lives in Israel and has put a lot of work into the development of singing in Yiddish and Hebrew, and by doing so has preserved the memory of the unprecedented tragedy of the Holocaust.

I would like to remind our descendants not to remain indifferent to the tragedy of our nation, to the grief, pain, and suffering of people who miraculously survived despite everything just as the mythological bird Phoenix managed to be "reborn from ashes."

I am very thankful to my relatives and all my fellow countrymen for sharing with me and the world their interesting memories. I completely understand how hard it was for them to stir up the memories of the cruel past. I have precisely and thoroughly tried to set out in writing the facts and stories that were told to me, but sometimes I lacked details. Therefore, I would like to apologize for the limited description of some events and possible insignificant inaccuracies.

I would also like to thank those who helped me write and publish this book. Just like my other books, it was posted on my website www.rykliansky.com

This book could not have appeared in its present form without the active and constructive participation of all my helpers. I am especially grateful to my son Leonid Rykliansky, who provided computer support, typed my handwritten text, and took part in translation, editing of both Russian and English variants of book. I am also thankful to my daughter Ella Kulinsky and her husband Lawrence Kulinsky for their helpful advice and remarks on the Russian and English text. I would also like to extend my personal thanks to Mr. Martin Kanes for his valuable comments and remarks on the English text of this book.

I hope my book "Sketches of the Fate of the Lithuanian Jews" will please and enlighten many of readers, especially the young people. And so, I would also like to have my other books translated into English, French, and Hebrew, languages that our children, grandchildren, their friends, and relatives understand better.

I would also like to share with the readers my thoughts about predecessors and followers of the Hitlerite fascism. I found out that there is a connection between them during my trip to Spain in October 2005.

I also was convinced that Hitler’s Nazism, which the German Evangelical Church had supported, is similar to the oppression, robbery, and extermination of the Jewry of Spain in the Middle Ages.

During that period, persecution and murder of the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula turned into an almost day-to-day activity of the Catholic clergy, monarchs, and their governments. An anti-Jewish riot provoked by Dominican preachers occurred in Seville in 1391 and spread rapidly throughout many cities in Spain. The Jews were beaten and many of them killed by religious fanatics and others who were just taking advantage of the rioting to rob the Jews. The streets flowed with Jewish blood; synagogues, homes and businesses were destroyed or expropriated. (Confiscated synagogues later were converted into Catholic churches.) After that, the Jewish population was expelled from the cities where the riots occurred. Many Jews were forced to "convert to Christianity," though many of them secretly kept practicing Judaism. The Catholic clergy spread lies and slander against the Jewish people, accusing them of ritual murders and witchcraft. Therefore, the medieval Spanish Inquisition burned so-called "New Christians" (the Jewish converts to Christianity) at the stake in an auto-da-fe (an act of faith) as "heretics" or executed them by other means. Ruinous exactions were imposed on the Jews of Spain. With time, the Spanish Christians banned the Jews from commerce and the money lending business after getting their skills in those areas.

In 1492, the Catholic Church and government, provoked by their greedy surroundings, got rid of Jews in Spain with one stroke of the pen. The Catholic monarchs, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, signed the Edict of Expulsion of the Spanish Jews (the Sephardim) from Spain. That edict decreed all Jews had to leave the country forever within four months under pain of torture and death for refusal. All those Jews were robbed and expelled. Following the Inquisition and the Edict of Expulsion of 1492, Spain remained without the Jews until 1869.

Adolf Hitler, just like the Catholic monarchs of Spain, decided to carry out "the final solution of the Jewish question," but throughout all Europe. And the Nazis of the 20th century even surpassed their predecessors of the Middle Ages in murderous deeds.

There is a small Jewish community in Spain nowadays. The vast majority of present-day Spanish Jews are not descendants of those who were expelled from the country in the Middle Ages. Also there is not much evidence of the existence of a large, flourishing and highly educated medieval Jewish community in Spain. Only a few former synagogues have been restored and turned into museums where wall inscriptions in Classical Hebrew were discovered under layers of plaster. In some cities the areas where the Jews had lived in the Middle Ages are still called "Jewish" by the locals; although there is nothing Jewish remaining there.

Not far from Madrid, in the Valley of the Fallen, there is a grand memorial erected to fascism (many Spaniards think so). A vast underground basilica was carved inside the granite mountain. On the top of this mountain there is a monument with huge 150 meters (492 feet) high granite cross. That memorial was built between 1939 and 1959 on the order of the dictator of Spain, General Franco. The basilica, sanctified by the Vatican, has only two graves – Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the fascist Spanish Falange (who was reburied in 1959), and Spanish dictator Francisco Franco (who was buried in 1975). The Valley of the Fallen has been turned into a pilgrimage destination for neo-Fascists and racists from all over the world. (By the way, Francisco Franco did not persecute the Jews.) Nazism did not disappear and it has many followers. This is extremely dangerous! The Spanish authorities have designated the Valley of the Fallen as a memorial to all Spaniards who perished in the Civil War in Spain (1936-1939), regardless of their political choices. However, nothing reminds people of the Republican soldiers killed during the war and the prisoners of war who died in slave-labor conditions during construction of that colossal memorial.

There are still many disagreements among the Spaniards as to their attitude towards this memorial.