Vilna/Vilnius

Vilna/Vilnius  

I definitely had mixed feelings as the plane approached the Vilnius airport.  I had thought so long about Lithuania, had wondered what my ancestors’ homeland must be like, and wanted to see the country for myself.  And yet I felt a certain uneasiness, knowing the fate of Lithuania’s Jews during World War II.  If I’d lived during that time in history, I very likely would have not survived.  Would I be welcome here now?  What reminders would I find of the once thriving Jewish community?  I looked out the window of the plane and saw the swathes of deep green forest.  It was beautiful.  But at the same time, I couldn’t stop thinking of the horrendous acts of murder that took place in those very forests. 

  

The plane touched down and interrupted my reverie.  My friend Sharyn and I had traveled together from Virginia, and we were both glad we had brought along our winter coats.  Although it was late April, the low temperatures and overcast skies made it feel more like winter.  The drive from the airport into Vilnius (Vilna is the Yiddish name) revealed what seemed to be a relatively modern European city, not the overgrown shtetl that I was somehow expecting. And silly as it sounds, I had been picturing everything in black and white, like in old photographs. 

To our delight, we found that our hotel, the Astoria, was a historic property located right in the heart of the picturesque Old Town.  Our spirits were further buoyed when the clouds temporarily lifted, revealing a beautiful blue sky. From the balcony of our room, we had a view of a broad plaza lined with shops, restaurants and the imposing Church of St. Casimir.  We later learned that construction of the Baroque structure began in 1604.  The onion-shaped domes date from the 1860s when the building was adapted for use by the Russian Orthodox Church.  During Soviet times, it was turned into the Museum of Atheism. 

On the plaza, near our hotel

Church of St. Casimir, seen from our hotel room balcony

We were both starving after the all-night flight, so we immediately headed out in search of a Lithuanian lunch.  But before we cleared the lobby door, the concierge stepped forward and insisted that we take along an umbrella.  We were skeptical, but we accepted the umbrella he offered and started scouting out nearby restaurants.  It’s a good thing we took the umbrella along because within minutes, dark clouds had rolled in and the sky opened up.  We quickly hurried into a French café and satisfied our hunger with well-prepared salads and crepes. 

By the time we finished eating, the rain had stopped and we set off once again to explore the Old Town on foot.  In every direction, church spires and domes rose into the air.  While I appreciated their striking beauty of the churches, I felt a visceral sense of loss.  At one time, there must have been nearly an equal number of synagogues in Vilnius.  We walked down one the most popular streets for tourists, stopping to browse in shops that sold amber and linen, and noting the variety of restaurants.  Bypassing establishments that served Argentine steaks, sushi, and the ubiquitous pasta and pizza, I studied the menus of the restaurants featuring Lithuanian.  A few items were familiar to me, such as beet soup, potato pancakes and poppy seed cakes, but most of the dishes on the menu featured pork, beef and wild game, and lots of potatoes.

Although I would have tried a Lithuanian restaurant that first evening, our tour leader had made arrangements at the local Chabad house for the group’s welcome dinner.  A light drizzle was falling as we set out from the hotel for a ten-minute walk through the Old Town.  I admit that I wasn’t expecting a very exciting meal, but I was pleasantly surprised by the tasty vegetable soup, delicious salads, roasted chicken and well-seasoned potatoes and vegetables.  As we sat enjoying fruit and dessert, our tour leader, Claire Simmons, shared some facts about the complex history of Lithuania.  This, in addition to the reading I had done prior to the trip, provided me with at least a modicum of background knowledge.

Below are some highlights of Lithuanian history that help place the Jewish experience in a broader context. 

• ·      The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was independent for several centuries, starting around the 13^th century.  
• ·      The Lithuanians accepted Christianity (late 14^th/early 15^th century), the last group of Europeans to do so.
• ·      Jews first arrived in Lithuania about 700-800 years ago, fleeing Western Europe in the wake of the crusades and expulsion orders.
• ·      Lithuania and Poland formed an alliance that lasted 400 years, until the late 1700s.  Poland eventually became the dominant partner. 
• ·      In 1795, Russia, Prussia and Austria partitioned Poland and most of Lithuania fell under Russian rule.  Russia suppressed the Lithuanian language. 
• ·      Vilnius became a major center of Jewish learning and was called the Jerusalem of the North.
• ·      Late 19^th and early 20^th century pogroms caused many Jews to emigrate. 
• ·      Germany occupied Lithuania during World War I.
• ·      Lithuania was independent from 1920 to 1940 but had an authoritarian pro-Russian government.
• ·      Before World War II, Jews made up 45% of the population of Vilnius.
• ·      Germany occupied Lithuania in 1941 as part of its plan to invade the Soviet Union. 
• ·      During World War II, over 90% of Lithuania’s quarter of a million Jews were murdered.  Large numbers of Lithuanians were also killed. 
• ·      At the end of World War II, Lithuania became a Soviet republic.  Many Lithuanians were killed or deported by the Soviet regime. 
• ·      Lithuania finally gained its independence in 1991.  It is now a member of the European Union. 

With that information as background knowledge, we started our exploration of Jewish Vilnius (known as Vilna in Yiddish) the following morning.  Under gray skies threatening rain, we began with a walk to Vilnius University, founded in 1579.  The university is home to the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, one of the few places where you can study the Yiddish language and literature.  It houses a large collection of Yiddish writings.  In the library of the institute, we met with Fania Brantsovsky, a survivor of the Vilna Ghetto.  Now in her nineties, Fania is a white-haired dynamo and she shared her story of life in Vilnius before, during and after the war.  Since she spoke to us in Yiddish, the language of Vilna’s Jewish community, Claire translated her commentary into English.  I was actually pleasantly surprised that I could understand a fair amount of what Fania was saying.  Without realizing it, I must have absorbed a lot of Yiddish listening to my parents and grandparents during my childhood. 

Listening to Fanta at the Yiddish Institute

Sitting at a big wooden table, surrounded by shelves holding Yiddish books, Fania explained that, during the period between the two world wars, it was common for Jews in Vilna to receive a secular education.  At her school, all subjects were taught in Yiddish, but she also studied Hebrew, English and Polish.  Jews living in enjoyed a rich cultural life.  Yiddish libraries and theaters abounded.  Of course, all of this ended when the Germans invaded Lithuania in 1941 and forced the entire Jewish community to move into ghettoes (a large ghetto and a smaller one, both in the Old Town).

Fania described the horrendous living conditions in the ghettoes – crowding, filth, disease, hunger, etc.  She also stressed that ghetto residents tried to set up schools to continue educating the children.  They had brought over 100,000 books from the Yiddish library into the ghetto.  Many people kept diaries, in the hope that, someday, the world would know their story. 

The Nazis were not interested in keeping the Jews alive.  However, the Jews provided a needed source of labor.  The Nazis issued work permits to healthy individuals on a monthly basis.  Without a work permit, your fate was death.  The Nazis began taking people out of the ghetto on a regular basis and transporting them by train to the Ponar (Paneriai in Lithuanian) forest, about 25 minutes from the ghetto, where they would be lined up at the edge of an enormous pit and shot by Nazi soldiers and Lithuanian militiamen.

Since Fania was a young and strong woman at the time, she was able to get a work permit.  She immediately joined a Jewish resistance group inside the ghetto. By the summer of 1943, the Jews remaining in the ghetto learned that the Germans were facing military losses and planned to liquidate the ghetto in September.  All who remained would be killed.  Resistance members started escaping from the ghetto to join partisan groups in the nearby forests.  Fania stressed that girls in the resistance played an important role, as they were usually sent out to establish contacts with the partisan groups. 

Fortunately, Fania managed to escape before the ghetto was liquidated.  She went from village to village until she found a group of partisans.  Although they had few weapons, they engaged in a variety of activities designed to thwart the Nazis, such as poisoning their water.  At the conclusion of the war, Fania was alive, but of her entire family, she was the only survivor. 

We were mesmerized, listening to Fania speak for nearly an hour.  I think we were all asking ourselves what we would have done in her situation.  It’s impossible to know.  She ended with this clear directive: Don’t forget what happened in Ponar.  Before we left the institute, Claire reminded us that we don’t find buildings, but we find stories.  And we are the last generation to get stories from the survivors.  These stories are our precious artifacts.  It’s now our responsibility to carry Fania’s story to others, to family members, to strangers, to the whole world, so such stories are never forgotten. 

We left the university in a somber state of mind and walked a short distance to the site of the Great Synagogue of Vilnius, the grandest in the city.  There is no synagogue on the site today.  Before World War II, this complex was the center of Jewish life in the city.  It included a social center, a mikve (ritual bath), kosher butcher, and more.  The buildings were bombed during the war and the remains were demolished by the Soviets.  Today, a new building, serving as a nursery school, stands on the site.  However, archaeologists have been excavating the area around the current building and have recently discovered the ruins of synagogue’s mikve.  

Later in the afternoon, Simon, our local guide, brought us to part of the Vilna Gaon* State Jewish Museum.  In a small green building tucked away on a quiet side street, we found an exhibit devoted to the Holocaust in Lithuania.  In one of the books on display, I found a reference to a cousin, the head of a prestigious yeshiva in Telz, who had remained in Lithuania and perished in the Holocaust.  I’m certain I have more relatives who were murdered, but I don’t know their names. 

*(A note about the Vilna Gaon:  During the Jewish Enlightenment of the 18^th century, he was a very important scholar who developed and promoted an intellectually rigorous approach to Judaism, as opposed to the more emotional and democratic Hasidic approach espoused by the Baal Shem Tov.)

At the nearby Jewish Community Center, we learned about today’s Jewish community.  Of the 5000 Jews who live in Lithuania now, most are Russian-speakers from the former Soviet Union.  The center, which is open to the public, operates primarily as a social and cultural organization.  It provides information, exhibits, programs and classes about Jewish history and culture.  We met with the director and other members of the staff and were impressed by their efforts.  They told us that because of the Soviet suppression of religion and the many mixed marriages, many Lithuanians are unaware of their Jewish background.  Nowadays, there is a high level of interest in exploring Jewish identity.  I was pleased to notice a bagel shop on the ground floor of the JCC.  Before we left, I had to stop in for a snack.  It reminded me of home. 

Plenty of choices in the Bagel shop

Sharyn and I, along with friends Sarah and Bruce, continued exploring the city on our own at dinnertime.  We took an ambitious walk to a section of town called Uzupis, on the other side of the Vilnia River, to try a fish restaurant mentioned in a local guidebook.  But when we got to the un-touristy neighborhood and located the restaurant, one glance at the menu convinced us to look for another option.  Since we were all ravenous by this point, we didn’t want to go far.  Fortunately, the owner/chef of a nearby Moroccan restaurant (Maghrib) gave us a warm welcome and served us a wonderful dinner consisting bourekas, lentil soup, salad, couscous, tagines, breads, wine, and homemade desserts, including a halvah superior to any I’ve ever tasted.  It’s not what I expected to find in Lithuania, but it was perfect on a cold, rainy night. 

That was a lot for one day (our first full day in Vilnius) and as soon as we got back to the hotel (via taxi), we fell into bed.  Fortunately, our hotel provided a lavish breakfast buffet each morning, so we could fortify ourselves before the next day’s activities.  When I say lavish, I mean this would qualify as three meals rolled into one.  The choices were overwhelming.  For example, I wanted a simple glass of water but first I had to decide – still or sparkling mineral water?  cucumber or lemon infused water?  I was confronted with at least four varieties of eggs, the usual bacon and sausages, an endless array of breads and pastries, cheeses and cold cuts, cereals, yogurt, and fruit, jams and spreads.  Those breads were delicious and I immediately vowed to stop worrying about my carb consumption for the duration of the trip.  Did I mention the coffee machine that let you make your own cappuccino or latte?  Or perhaps you’d prefer a nice pot of tea – choose from several green, black, white and herbal options.  Breakfast was easily my favorite meal of the day.  I’m so glad I brought along a special set of “breakfast clothes” that I could slip into as soon as I awoke.  I’d rush down to breakfast and linger for at least an hour.  Only after I’d fully satisfied my hunger did I go back up to my room to change into “real” clothes. 

Wednesday proved to be another day of non-stop activities.  We continued our exploration of the ghetto area right after breakfast.  Simon led us down a small alleyway just beside our hotel to the site in the Vilna ghetto theater.  Presenting plays and concerts was an act of defiance on the part of the Jews.  While they couldn’t fight the Nazis with guns, they could exercise choice.  In the midst of conditions designed to dehumanize them, they chose to preserve their culture, to educate their children, and to maintain their community services to the extent possible.  In essence, this was a form of spiritual resistance to the Nazis.  Simon related one particularly disturbing anecdote.  He reminded us that the Germans were big fans of music.  There were many talented Jewish musicians living in the ghetto.  It wasn’t unusual for Nazi officers to attend a concert in the evening, and then to take the musicians out to the Ponar forest to shoot them the next morning.

Yiddish writing still visible on storefronts in the Old Town

From the former ghetto theater, we walked through the quiet streets where many Jews lived, worked and prayed prior to World War II.  Some storefronts still bear faded signs in Yiddish.  There is even a street that is called Jew Street, indicating that this neighborhood once had a strong Jewish presence.  Of course, seeing the sign just made the absence of the Jews that much more painful for me.  I wonder, though, if it has the same effect on the many Vilnius residents who walk down this street everyday.  I’m especially curious about the younger generation.  They’ve never known the city when Jews made up a large percentage of the population.  It’s doubtful that they realize how a vibrant Jewish culture enriched the city.  Furthermore, Lithuanians growing up during Soviet times learned little of the fate of Lithuania’s Jews, as these facts weren’t officially acknowledged.  Nowadays, however, Lithuania is examining its past, including the role it played in the Holocaust, and young people are beginning to gain a fuller understanding of their history.  

The street sign for Jew Street

A highlight of the morning walk was a visit to the Choral Synagogue, the only functioning synagogue in Vilnius today, with the exception of the Chabad shul.  At one time prior to World War II, there were over a hundred synagogues in the city.  The Choral Synagogue holds services on the Sabbath and holidays. Russian-Hebrew prayer books are available in the sanctuary, reflecting the mother tongue of most congregants.  This imposing structure is nothing like the small places of worship found in the many shtetls.  It was built in 1903 and decorated in the Oriental style fashionable throughout Europe at the time.  Women didn’t mingle with the men during prayers but were confined to a balcony overlooking the sanctuary. 

Interior of the Choral Synagogue

Our next stop was the largest branch of the State Jewish Museum, called the Tolerance Center, where we were impressed with the exhibits tracing the history of Jewish life in Lithuania.  A comprehensive exhibit called “The Lost World” explained key aspects of the pre-war Jewish experience and displayed numerous examples of traditional Jewish art, including interior elements and ritual objects rescued from the Great Synagogue. Artwork created by modern Jewish artists from Lithuania and Israel occupied another section of the museum. 

By chance, we happened to be in Vilnius on a day when Lithuania was marking Holocaust remembrance, and we were able to participate in an event called the March of the Living.  In the late afternoon, we joined a group gathered at the Ponar train station for a solemn procession to the killing sites in the forest.  While waiting for the march to begin, we met the U.S. ambassador to Lithuania as well as the Israeli ambassador.  The participants included local people of all ages.  Many were school children.  A few men wore kippot, identifying themselves as Jews, but the overwhelming majority of marchers were non-Jews.  A teenaged boy handed me a flag, Lithuanian on one side and Israeli on the other. 

The March of the Living

When we arrived at a clearing surrounding the stone memorial, we stood for an hour-long ceremony, conducted in Lithuanian that was translated into English.  The Prime Minister of Lithuania spoke, as did the two ambassadors.  Fania, the survivor and partisan we had previously met, addressed the crowd in Yiddish.  A Lithuanian Jewish tenor chanted the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the departed.  There were a few musical performances, including one jarring note, the singing of Ave Maria by a school choir.  Our group had mixed opinions about the choice.  Was it appropriate to sing a clearly Christian song at an event remembering murdered Jews?  I chose to believe that it was not intended to upset us.  For these non-Jews, it was the most meaningful way they knew of to express their pain and sympathy.  

The memorial at Ponar forest

After the speeches and the music and the flower-laying at the base of the memorial, I wanted to be alone to ponder what happened in this now-peaceful place.  I wandered off to one of the deep pits and stared into the void.  I stood there, knowing that I was standing in the very spot where a mother may have stood, holding her baby tightly in her arms. It could easily have been my own mother standing there.  Graphic images flooded my mind, images that I will carry with me always.  A drunken soldier, or perhaps a civilian, aims his gun at them, shouts at the mother to shift the baby slightly so he can kill them both with a single bullet.  My mind cannot conceive of how it happened again and again, day after day. 

The pit was much deeper at the time the Nazis used it.

Claire gathered our group at the edge of one of the pits.  What she said was difficult to listen to, and none of us were able to contain our emotions.  She described how the Nazi officers would turn the killings into a celebratory event, setting out bottles of liquor and encouraging the soldiers and militiamen to get drunk before they shot the Jews.  Tables of food were arranged nearby so that the soldiers could gorge themselves after the killings.  This was at a time when most of the population faced food shortages.

The killings in Ponar began almost immediately after the ghetto was established in Vilnius in 1941.  Between 70,000 and 100,000 Jews were murdered here over the course of several months.  Soon, however, the leaders of the Nazi army became concerned about how this method of killing was affecting the soldiers.  When the war was over, what would they do with these murderous beasts they had created?   Would they be too psychologically damaged to ever fit back into society?  In addition, the Nazi military leaders realized that this manner of killing used too many resources, i.e. it required too many killers and too many bullets.  There must be a more efficient way to murder the Jews. It was not long afterwards that the Nazi elite met at Wannsee and worked out the plans for a method of industrialized, impersonalized killing known as the Final Solution. 

Incidentally, a few days before this trip began, I watched a documentary about the Ponar forest on PBS.  The film focused on the discovery of an escape tunnel dug by a small group of Jewish prisoners who were forced by the Nazis to drag bodies out of the pit and burn them.  The Jews realized that once their task was completed, they too would be killed.  In order to avoid this fate, they dug a tunnel from one on the pits so that they could escape.  Only a few actually managed to survive in this way.  Rumors of the tunnel had persisted ever since the end of the war, but it was only with the aid of new technology that the entrance and exit to the tunnel were discovered.  Ongoing work is being done to excavate more of the tunnel. 

Needless to say, I felt numb on the bus ride back from Ponar to Vilnius.  For me, this was the most difficult experience of the trip.  I’m sorry if it has disturbed you, but as Fania said, we must tell the story of what happened in the Ponar forest.

Burial place of the Vilna Gaon

The following morning, we drove away from the Old Town and made our final stops in Vilnius:  at a housing complex built for needy Jews by Baron Hirsch in 1898 (the residents of the buildings were killed in Ponar in 1941) and at a Jewish cemetery where we saw the mausoleum built over the burial place of the Vilna Gaon.  And then we were back on the road, headed to Kaunas.  But that’s another story.