The Annual Memorial Ceremony for Holocaust Victims in Lithuania; and Talks about the Fate of the Lithuanian Jews

On October 29, 2004, the author of this book, along with Rachel and Shmuel Tsveigorn, attended the annual memorial ceremony (including the "Yizkor" prayers) for the Lithuanian Jews who perished during the Holocaust.

Before the ceremony began, I had time in the lobby to watch how old friends, who miraculously survived the Nazi ghettos and concentration camps, Stalin’s camps of Kraslag (the Soviet forced labor camps in Krasnoyarsk Territory), Siberian exile, and afterwards found refuge in Israel, greet one another. Everyone around me spoke Yiddish and it sounded to me like the beautiful Yiddish folk music of my childhood. I felt as if I was among my nearest and dearest relatives and friends, though I knew only a few people at the memorial ceremony.

I remembered my brother Isaac, grandfather Hirshl, grandmother Sheynl-Golde, my aunts and uncles, other relatives who were killed in different ghettos, the Ninth Fort, Pivonija forest, Kuziai forest (near the city of Siauliai), Pajuoste forest (near the city of Panevezys), Ponary forest, in the Nazi concentration camps in Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and other known and unknown places of mass murder of the Jews. About 200 such places were discovered in Lithuania, but many of them do not have even a modest monument or memorial plaque, because nobody survived from the Jewish communities which were completely wiped out. And, of course, there are no eyewitnesses to the deaths of the martyrs.

May their memory live on in our hearts and minds… now and forever!

Many speeches and prayers were solemnly made that night in the memory of all the murdered Lithuanian Jews.

Not only old people, but also youth – the children and descendants of those who had been killed during the war – listened to the speakers and the rabbi’s prayers with great attention and interest. I found that to be very symbolic. To understand fully the present and think about the future you must know the past.

I was seized by a storm of emotions that is almost impossible to describe – sadness, anger, hatred, and desire to remember and tell about the suffering and the resistance of the Jews during the Holocaust, about their revival after the war to spite all anti-Semites.

I met many relatives, friends, and acquaintances during my visit to Israel. All of those meetings were touching and emotional, and I was very happy to see everybody. I talked on the phone with those friends whom I could not visit, and those who could not come to see me in Tel Aviv. Among those whom I called was Mulya Mashansky, cousin of my friend David London, who recently passed away in Novosibirsk. Mulya is now living in Herzliya. He shared our conversation with his neighbor Shmuel Green, and as it turned out, Shmuel remembered my parents very well. Mulya gave him my phone number in California, and Shmuel called me a short time after my return home. We had a touching conversation. He also gave me the phone numbers of many Lithuanian Jews who remembered me and my family very well.

Shmuel Green shared with me his memories of my father Tsemakh with whom his father Yoel had business relations. He told me that in Ukmerge and other Lithuanian cities and shtetls (small towns) my father was known as a kind, honest, unselfish, and just man who always helped others; and who knew Jewish history and literature very well. Shmuel also told me about his very difficult life in Siberian exile. I have recently found out that the Greens are distant relatives on my father’s side.

Later I got through on the phone to some of my fellow countrymen who reminded me about the store in the center of the city of Ukmerge that my parents owned before the establishment of the Soviet power in Lithuania. Not long before Lithuania was incorporated into the Soviet Union, my parents remodeled and renovated their store, and replaced old windows with wider and larger ones. They also extended the range of goods sold in the store.

After the establishment of the Soviet government in Lithuania in 1940, all stores, banks, privately owned enterprises, large agricultural farmsteads, apartment houses, restaurants, other estates, and financial capital were nationalized.

The Lithuanian Jews suffered in particular because they owned 80 percent of all private businesses, 60 percent of all industrial manufacturing enterprises, most tenement houses, and considerable financial assets. The Communists destroyed the century-long economic position of the Lithuanian Jews.

My parents’ store was nationalized. All businesses of our friends families (the Levins, the Mendelevskies, the Koltuns, the Levits, the Khaet brothers, the Yanovskies, the Rezniks, the Zaks, the Greens, the Mirkins, the Graches, the Paletzes, the Nedelfines and many others) were taken away as well. The Mirkin family owned a few houses in the city of Ukmerge and the shtetl of Shirvint. They were allowed to live only in one small room of their former house in Shirvint after nationalization.

It was the first, but not the last time, that the Soviet authorities robbed us. Time and again all kinds of monetary reforms and inflation depleted our savings. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the government of independent Uzbekistan kept on looting. Our saving deposits in the banks depreciated. And soon it was not allowed to withdraw money from bank saving accounts. (There were no checking accounts in the banks at all.) A similar situation existed in other independent states of the former Soviet Union.

Let’s return to prewar Lithuania.

The Stalin regime declared as "socially dangerous elements," "unreliable citizens," "class alien people," and "agents of western imperialism" thousands of former property owners; political, public, and religious figures; activists of Jewish organizations; large parts of the Intelligentsia; and, by the way, future Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin, who escaped to Lithuania from occupied Poland. After that, of course, those people and their families were subject to repressions and deported from Lithuania.

The fellow countrymen whom I called told me about their fates, typical for the surviving Lithuanian Jews. Many of them went through all the circles of hell in ghettos and Nazi concentration camps where every day they lost their relatives and friends and where every minute the threat of death hovered over them. Those people miraculously survived, but unfortunately very few of such survivors remain today.

After the war ended, the survivors of the Holocaust started taking up their residence only in Vilnius and Kaunas, and decided not to return to other cities and towns.

A hard postwar life began for our fellow countrymen who have returned home. People were slowly getting back to normal life after the tragedy of the Holocaust they have endured. Every day there were new uncountable difficulties and hardships. They all had to start from zero, but our fellow countrymen did not lose their presence of mind. Their faith, willpower, resourcefulness, and eager wish and effort not to be victims helped them to survive; and all this gave them new hope. The Lithuanian Jews who survived, "remnants" of the former large and prosperous Jewish community, started rising from the ashes little by little. They were working hard rebuilding cities; studying and teaching; conducting research; caring for people; creating families and bearing children; and dreaming of leaving Lithuania to repatriate to the Holy Land or emigrate to civilized Western nations.

Others of my fellow countrymen were subjected to horrible inhumane repressions and most of those died in Stalin’s camps of Kraslag and during the Siberian exile. The Lithuanian Jews who were subjected to violent repressions by the Soviet authorities also found strength to revive and aspire to a happy life for themselves, their children and grandchildren despite the difficulties, incredibly harsh ordeals, grief, humiliation and destitution.

Years have passed. Under the pressure of world public opinion and the struggle of the Soviet dissidents for the right to repatriate to their historical homeland, the Soviet government gradually started opening up the borders for the Jews to leave for Israel. By that time, many Lithuanian Jews were financially secure, but did not want to live among those who had possible hand in killing their families. They finally realized their old dream of repatriation to the Holy Land at the first opportunity. For them Israel became their homeland.