Vilne, Vilna, Wilno, Vilnius

When I was a child, if ever the origins of the family were mentioned in conversation, and that wasn't often, I heard a different country named each time. The one time we came from Russia, they next we were from Poland and yet another time our family came from Lithuania. Rather confusing for a youngster growing up in Scotland. My family came from a number of places in modern-day Lithuania and Belarus but nowhere are the above claims more true than with regards to Vilnius. Vilnius was a prized and heavily disputed city of the Baltics. For the Lithuanians, Vilnius is the historical seat of their ancient kings. The Germans referred to it as "the jewel of the Polish crown". For the Jews, Vilnius was an important spiritual centre of Rabbinical Judaism which earned it the title Yerushalayim de Lite (Jerusalem of Lithuania). 'Jerusalem of Lithuania' has a strange ring to it in the context of modern-day Lithuania. However one has to realise that this was a term coined when Vilnius was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, an empire stretching all the way from Estonia almost to the Black Sea coast of modern-day Ukraine, a territory of more than 1million square kilometres.

Betty's sister, Esther, with Esther's husband, Sam. This photo was taken around the turn of the century when Vilnius was part of the Russian Empire. In Cyrillic the name of the photographer, A. Tsinovets, Vilna [collection Diana Esptein]

Here is an historical timeline of the city of Vilnius charting its turbulent history.

Period	Rule	Event
6th July 1253	Grand Dutchy of Lithuania	Crowning of King Mindaugas
1st July 1569	Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth	Treaty of Lublin
24th October 1795	Russian Empire	Third partition of Poland
1915	German Empire	First World War
16th February 1918	Independant State of Lithuania	Act of Independance of Lithuania
5th January 1919	Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic	Soviet Army captures Vilnius
27th February 1919	Lithuanian–Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic	A merge by Soviet authorities to strengthen the two Soviet Republics
21st April 1919	Second Polish Republic	Wilno offensive during the Polish-Soviet War
12th July 1920	Independant State of Lithuania	Soviet-Lithuanian Peace Treaty
9th October 1920	Republic of Central Lithuania	Formation of a state controlled by the Second Polish Republic
20th February 1922	Second Polish Republic	Vilnius Sejm vote for Polish annexation
19th September 1939	Soviet Union	Invasion of Poland after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact
28th October 1939	Independant State of Lithuania	Soviet Army withdrawal from Vilnius
21st July 1940	Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic	Vote by pro-Soviet Seimas to become LSSR
24th June 1941	German Reich	Operation Barbarossa
13th July 1944	Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic	Capture of Vilnius by the Soviet Army
6th September 1991	Republic of Lithuania	Lithuania ceded by the Soviet Union

[Source: Wikipedia, compiled by author]

New information on Betty's nieces

Which minimum set of personal details are appropriate for remembering the deceased? This is a question which has driven me in my search for more information about the family members who were killed during the Second World War. Perhaps a name is sufficient? On the other hand a gravestone usually has a family name, a surname, a date and place of birth and a date and place of death.

When I started researching this project I discovered that many in the family had been named after Betty's two sisters, Dvora and Faigel, who perished in Lithuania. They don't have gravestones on which their names are chiselled. In a way however they do have living memorials embodied in the family members who are named after them.

I don't know what made Aunty Betty submit her testimony in 1977. Yad Vashem started collecting names of victims in the 50s. Perhaps it was an advert in the local Jewish newspaper. In any case when she filled in the forms she didn't know when her sister, Faigel's, daughters died. Moreover she didn't know exactly when they were born and she didn't know or remember their names.

The Lithuanian State Historical Archives got back to me on my search queries which I had submitted during my previous visit. They have found the birth records of Betty's nieces. The spelling of the names is in Polish because Vilnius, or in Polish Wilno, was part of Poland at the time:

Basia daughter of Lejb and Fejga (nee Lulinska) Dajches was born on 28th February 1928 in Wilno
Raisa daughter of Lejb and Fejga (nee Lulinska) Dajches was born on 31st December 1929 in Wilno

Raisa would have been 83 and Basia would have been 85 if they were still alive today. They both lie in mass graves: the one in Ponar, Lithuania; the other in Klooga, Estonia. They have no individual gravestone. I hope with this weblog to create a more personal memorial spot for them.

Fania Brancovskaja 91 today

Today it's Vilna Ghetto survivor and former partisan, Fania Brancovskaja's birthday. She has turned 91. At the risk of repeating myself I'll say once again how much it is a great privilege to have interviewed this extraordinary woman (see Second Visit To Lithuania and Third Visit To Vilnius). She has enriched my life with her positive outlook on her's, despite everything she has been through. If you are curious to know more about Fania's story, here is a link to her biography.

Fania Brancovskaja interviewed at the office of the Union of Vilna Ghetto Survivors

Third visit to Vilnius

Like a fragment of a Chagall painting the wintry Lithuanian countryside approached at breakneck speed as my flight descended on the capital city. My third trip to Vilnius was a two-day visit with the aim of recording more interview material, filming city sights and doing archival research.

Day 1

The Gediminas Tower

In the morning I walked around the centre of Vilnius filming the highlights of this beautiful city. These sites were and are dear to all the ethnic groups who lived as neighbours for hundreds of years in relative harmony. One of the most noteworthy sights is the Gediminas Tower. Once part of a medieval castle complex, the tower, an important symbol of Lithuanian identity, is perched on a hill which rises dramatically out of the city. Dina Abramowicz, the daughter of Hirsz Abramowicz, director of the Hilf Durkh Arbet institute (see "Second visit to Lithuania" for more about Hilf Durkh Arbet) wrote: "As schoolchildren we loved to climb the hill and look down at the panoramic view. Vilna was our city; we loved it and felt at home there." [1] And curiously enough, this in some way mirrors how I felt last year when I visited the Hilf Durkh Arbet building in the Subačiaus Street and looked out over the city.

The Vilnia River

I'm very grateful to my interpreter and good friend, Judita Gliauberzonaite, for taking me in the afternoon to a number of Jewish sites in the suburbs of Vilnius. First of all we went to the Sudervės Jewish cemetery, the current active Jewish cemetery, in the Šeškinė district. Within the bare concrete walls marking the perimeter lies a beautiful cemetery full of tall pine trees, squirrels and woodpeckers. It currently contains about 6,500 graves [2].

Sudervės Jewish cemetery

There one can find the mausoleum in which the remains of the Vilna Gaon, a highly-revered and widely influential rabbi of 18th Century, are kept. There is also a monument to the victims of the Vilna Ghetto. Of the 70,000 Jews of Vilna only 2,500 to 3000 survived the war, between 3 and 4 percent [3].

Monument to the victims of the ghetto

When the old cemetery at Šnipiškės (Yiddish: Shnipishok) was closed by Tsarist authorities a new cemetery was opened at Užupis in 1828. This was our next stop. Both cemeteries were destroyed by the Soviets after the Second World War. The gravestones were used to pave staircases. The monument symbolising the entrance to the Užupis cemetery is made of a number of recovered gravestones.

Monument at the entrance to the former Užupis cemetery

Lastly we visited the Bilike Hayzer (Cheap Houses), a Jewish social housing scheme of the early 20th Century. During the war these blocks of apartments were transformed into the HKP (Heeres Kraftfahrpark) factory, a repair factory for German military vehicles. Here about 3,000 prisoners from the Vilna Ghetto were put to work [4].

Bilike Hayzer flats with the monument to Major Plagge in the foreground

The commanding officer of HKP, Major Karl Plagge has been awarded the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" for his efforts to save Jews. Around 150 to 200 men, women and children managed to survive thanks to his efforts [5].

Day 2

The first part of the day was dedicated to a visit to the Lithuanian State Historical Archives on the aptly named Gerosios Vilties (Of Good Hope) Street, number 10.

Lithuanian State Historical Archives

There I very coincidentally met a man who shares the same surname as Leib Daiches, Aunty Betty's brother-in-law, albeit with a very different spelling. He explained the origins of the name, which he was researching, and it's many spellings. Leib Daiches was a tinsmith. This man explained that his father was also a tinsmith and that he worked on roofs. If he is related to Leib Daiches in any way still remains to be seen. However, he very kindly offered his help to find out more about my family. The Archives are also carrying out research for me. Of course any results will be posted on this weblog.

How wonderful it was to see the 90-year-old Fania Brancovskaja that afternoon. It was once again a privilege to interview this former partisan for a second time. The first interview (see "Second visit to Lithuania") had as main theme the forming of and life in the Vilna Ghetto. This second interview had a very different character than the first.

Fania Brancovskaja

I wanted to know more about Vilna before the Second World War. I learnt from Mrs Brancovskaja about the myriad of Jewish educational, spiritual, artistic and social welfare organisations, about specific Vilna aspects of the Yiddish language, and about the Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) kitchen. In a one and three quarter hour interview one can only scratch the surface of these subjects, but Mrs Brancovskaja's eyes glittered as she, vivaciously and often humorously, talked about the past that clearly is so dear to her. With this documentary film I want to convey to the public at least a glimmer of the richness and complexity of the Jewish civilization that was built up in difficult times during the interbellum, against the current of history.

I took some photographs and books to the interview to show Mrs Brancovskaja. Two of the books, Dos Geystike Ponem Fun Geto (The Spiritual Face of the Ghetto) and Mentshn Fun Geto: Dertseylungen Fun Der Daytsher Okupatsye (People of the Ghetto: Stories of the German Occupation), written by Abraham Ajzen and published in 1949 and 1950, particularly interested her.

These were books that a friend of mine ordered for me from the Cyco (Central Yiddish Cultural Organisation) Bookstore and Publishing House in New York. Mrs Brancovskaja brought to my attention that the book, People of the Ghetto, was originally published during the war by the Vilna publishing house of Boris Kletzkin which continued publishing until the last years of the war. Seeing how interested she was in the books I gave them to her as a donation to the library of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute where she works as a librarian. Via a roundtrip across the globe, in a way these books had returned perhaps not to their spiritual home but without doubt to their intellectual home.

[1] The World Of My Parents: Reminiscences, Dina Abramowicz, Yivo Annual Volume 23
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_cemeteries_of_Vilnius
[3] http://www.untilourlastbreath.com/Bart4liberationfacts.html
[4] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0020_0_20424.html
[5] http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/plagge.asp