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