Walking in Their Footsteps - Part 2

I have an old photo, from 1925 (+/- a year) of 2 of my grandfather's sisters at the grave of their father, Yitzchak ben Shaul HaLevi. The grave is in the old Jewish cemetery in Rokiskis. I know that around 10 years ago, my grandfather returned to Rokiskis but was unsuccessful in finding the particular grave of his father. I had the same quest, but figured it would be nice to find the grave of any one in the Ruch or Bacher family. Apart from the problem I'll mention in a second, I knew this would be hard because firstly the headstones would be engraved in either Yiddish, Russian or Lithuanian. And secondly, many inscriptions would not have family names, but just their Hebrew names (X son of Y). The real problem was the state of the cemetery. I had been warned about it, and a good article I was led to an article turned out to be a very accurate description of the place. Some more information can be found at here and at Shtetlinks (though the photos in those linked sites show the cemetery in a slightly better condition than I found it).

Walking in Their Footsteps - Part 1

For a long, long time, I have wanted to visit the places my family come from. All my direct ancestors left their respective homelands on their own free will, but only when they realised things weren't in their favour, and life would be better elsewhere. A few more years and they would have ben more desperate to leave, or, I shudder to think, would have been caught up in the mess of WWII like so many others were.

My maternal grandfather's family hails from a small town in North-Eastern Lithuania called Rokiskis - it also happens to be the capital of the region by the same name. This is where my grandfather was born and lived until he left for South Arica with his mother and three sisters at the ripe old age of 9, in 1929. His two brothers had already emigrated years earlier, as children.

More Killing Fields

It seems as though Rokiskis (probably like Lithuania as a whole) prefers to forget about its Jewish heritage, and I do wonder whether it is due to a sense of guilt. There is very little commemoration of the Jewish population which was decimated. And I mean that there is nothing around, neither in their memory, nor to commemorate their contributions. When it does come to the massacre sites outside of town, without external help, the lack of signage means it would be practically impossible to locate them.

The Bajorai site from the mosquito infested parking spot.

Paneriai

One of the very few signs leading visitors to the memorial site.

On my way from Vilnius to the northern town of Rokiskis, I took a small detour to the site of the Paneriai massacres. Paneriai can be classified as a suburb of Vilnius - right on the outskirts. In my drive to the site I passed multiple signs telling me I was leaving and then re-entering the city. During pre-Nazi Soviet times, large oil storage facilities were under construction, but the Nazi invasion put a halt to this. When the Germans saw the site, with a bunch of 'pits' already dug out ready for storage tanks, they decided it already fulfilled the criteria of a mass grave. Additionally, there is a railway station right on site, and the whole area was forested in 1940 (and much of it still is today), making a perfect sight and sound barrier from the outside world where executions could take place.

Proud to be Jewish

My brief glimpse of the Jerusalem of Lithuania has made me feel ever so proud to be a Jew, yet ever so ashamed to be a member of the human race. Learning about the Holocaust and WWII is nothing new to me, nor is being in the locations where atrocities took place. But something about my short time in Vilnius has had as much an effect on me as visiting Aushwitz & Birkenau. Maybe it is because I am older and wiser this time around, or maybe because it feels that much closer to home. But why proud to be Jewish? I'm proud to be a part of such a resilient people, and despite the fact that I can't claim any credit for it, part of a people which contributes positively to this world (despite what at times, the world does to it) in unbelievable disproportionate amounts - and it's not just the ~20% of Nobel prize winners who are Jewish, but in the every day things that are done to make this world a tolerable place to live.

No need to read the detail - the overview is clear enough!

Despite various forms of persecution, Jews lived and flourished in Lithuania since the 14th century like in no other European country. The persecution they faced here over the years was probably not nearly as bad as in some of the other European countries, but it seems like for the most part, they were not treated the same as other citizens. Thankfully though, there were times, in the more recent history prior to the Wars, where the Jews were allowed to live fairly independently. This, perhaps, was a priveledge they would have never experienced anywhere else. They were a significant part of the population in nearly every single town throughout the country, and in many, formed the majority of people. An important part of Jewish culture developed here, and now, there remains not but a shadow of what once existed.

~130km by Bicycle in 4 Days

According to Lonely Planet, Bornholm is the sunniest part of Denmark. Not exactly a hard feat to achieve, but impressive none-the-less when our 4 day cycle trip around the island saw nothing but perfect sunny weather!

Bornholm is a Danish island in the Baltic Sea that can be reached by a short 1 hour ferry ride from Ystad, on the Southern coast of Sweden. It's in the middle of the Baltic and its circumference is around 120km. It is a bit different to the rest of Denmark, both in terms of landscape (it actually has hills), architecture (walking through the villages is like stepping back in time) and the people (they are remarkably extroverted towards foreigners - at least compared to the mainlanders).