Litvak Civilization – Yizkor Books and Other Materials

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHAIM ARONSON, 1825-1888

Remembering Litvaks, Inc., is working with the JewishGen Press and Hon. Skirmantas Mockevičius, the mayor the regional municipality of Jurbarkas, Lithuania, on several projects related to the 1983 book, A Jewish Life Under The Tsars: The Autobiography of Chaim Aronson, 1825-1888, by Dr. Norman Marsden.

Chaim Aronson was a Jew who was born in the village of Serednik / Seredžius, Lithuania.  He initially worked as a teacher of Hebrew subjects in various towns in central Lithuania.  He then became a clockmaker and inventor who lived for several year in Telshe / Telšiai, Lithuania.  In 1888, he emigrated to New York and died there in 1892.

Aronson left a manuscript, written in classical Hebrew, that recounted the details of daily experiences in Lithuania in the mid-19^th Century.  It is thus a first-hand account of life in that era.  In the late 1970s Aronson’s granddaughter, Helen Aronson Perlman, brought the manuscript to the attention of Oxford University’s Centre for Hebrew and Judaic Studies, which asked one its graduate students, Norman Marsden, to translate the memoir into English.  Marsden not only created an easily readable translation, but his also devoted considerable effort to researching and explaining many aspects of everyday life that otherwise might not be understood by readers.

With the permission of Dr. Marsden’s widow and son, Ruth and David Marsden, the full text of the 1983 book can be seen here.  In 2024 JewishGen Press began offering hard-cover reprinted copies of the book upon demand. https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/ybip/YBIP_JewishLife.html.  In addition, JewishGen has been given permission by the Aronson descendants to post the original Hebrew manuscript on-line, https://www.jewishgen.org/press/aronson-chaim.pdf.

Further, Jurbarkas Mayor Mockevičius hopes that funds can be raised for the translation of memoir into the Lithuanian language so that present and future generations of Lithuanians can know more about what Aronson observed in Lithuania in the mid-19th Century.

The Samogitian Museum “Alka” Project to Create A Lithuanian Translation of the Telshe Yizkor Book

The Samogitian Museum “Alka” / Žemaičių muziejus “Alka” (“ZMA”) is the national museum for the Lithuania’s western region. It is based in Telšiai / Telshe. Several years ago, we learned that the ZMA, on its own initiative, and without specific funding, had begun a project to translate the entirety of 505-page yizkor (memorial) book for the Jewish community of Telshe into the Lithuanian language. The book was published in Tel-Aviv in 1984 with Hebrew and Yiddish sections and volunteers working under the auspices of JewishGen have working on a parallel project to translate the book into English, see here.

An original copy of the Memorial Book for the Jewish community of Telshe “Telshe Book” displayed by the ZMA. 

RLI provided assistance to the ZMA in several ways. First, we attempted to identify individuals who could competently translate Hebrew or Yiddish text directly into the Lithuanian language. Second, we contacted the leader of JewishGen’s English-translation project so that the parallel efforts could be coordinated. Finally, RLI donated funds to the ZMA’s project. With this help, the ZMA was able to complete its project by the end of 2021. A printed version of the Lithuanian translation of the Telshe yizkor book was published in December 2022.  The American non-profit organization JewishGen has posted the Lithuanian translation on its website at https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Telsiai/files/Telsiai_Lithuanian.pdf.

On September 24, 2020, the ZMA hosted a scientific conference on the Telshe yizkor book and Jewish community and yeshiva of Telshe and RLI’s Phil Shapiro was invited to submit an article about this Jewish community and about his grandfather, who attended the yeshiva before emigrating to Baltimore in 1903.

The ZMA recently completed another project to entirely renovate the building that once served as the home of the Telshe yeshiva. The ZMA has invited RLI to be part of an advisory committee to provide guidance regarding the decoration and possible uses of the building.

The “Zachor — Atsimink” (“Remember”) Series of Television Programs About the Jewish Communities of Lithuanian Towns

In the summer and fall of 2020, the Lithuanian national radio and television network, LRT, broadcast a series of 15, one-hour programs that profiled the Jewish communities of individual towns in Lithuania. Since each program is in the Lithuanian language, its content is not readily accessible to English- and Hebrew-speaking audiences. In December 2021, RLI entered into an agreement with LRT under which RLI received permission to create versions of these episodes for English- and Hebrew-speaking audiences. This will be done using either voice-overs, sub-titles, or both.

LRT has posted each episode on its website. They can be seen at their respective links indicated here:

Zachor-Atsimink Series Announcement.

Kaunas / Kovna (August 31, 2020)

Telšiai / Telshe (September 7, 2020)

Pakruojis (September 14, 2020)

Plungė (September 21, 2020).  Same episode with English sub-titles, created by the Jakovas Bunka Charitable Fund and posted with permission.

Ukmergė (October 9, 2020)

Kupiškis / Kupisik (October 12, 2020)

Molėtai / Malat (October 19, 2020)

Panevėžys / Ponevizh (October 26, 2020)

Joniškis and Žagarė (November 9, 2020)

Jonava (November 16, 2020)

Jurbarkas / Yurburg  (November 23, 2020)

Kėdainiai / Kaidan (November 30, 2020).  Same episode with English voice-overs, created by English-language students at Kėdainiai’s Atžalynas Gimnazjia (advanced high school) and posted with permission, https://youtu.be/Hv0X25bOJ4Y.  

Širvintos and Želva (December 7, 2020)

Šauliai / Shavel (December 14, 2020)

Rokiškis (December 21, 2020) 

DISTRIBUTION OF “IN-PRINT” TRANSLATIONS OF YIZKOR BOOKS

Shortly after the Second World War, former residents of individual towns in Eastern and Central Europe wrote and published yizkor (memorial) books as a record of and tribute to the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.  In most cases these books are in Yiddish or Hebrew.  As a result, the vast amount of historical information in these books was not accessible to most English-speaking readers.

In 1994 volunteers with the New York-based, non-profit organization JewishGen began a program to reliably translate into English the text of yizkor books and post the translations on-line.  Thus began JewishGen’s Yizkor Book Project (“YBP”). Today, the YBP has also posted on-line yizkor book material that has been reliably translated into Spanish, Lithuanian, and other languages

As a general rule, individual chapters of a yizkor book are translated as and when resources become available.  The translations of an entire book can take more than a decade.  When a book has been completely translated, JewishGen publishes an “in-print” version of the English translation, see, https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/ybip.html

Very few Jews survived the Holocaust in Lithuania and Belarus, and most of the survivors did not return to their native communities.  Even though Jews often constituted a majority of the population of many towns and villages in these countries, no effort was made during the Soviet era to collect and preserve in the centuries of history of local Jewish communities.  Indeed, official Soviet policy mandated that the victims of the Nazis and their collaborators be characterized only as indistinguishable “Soviet citizens.”

For several years Remembering Litvaks has been purchasing copies of “in print” English translations of yizkor books for towns in modern-day Lithuania and Belarus that once were in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania – the Litvak heartland – and distributing these books to relevant state and local libraries and museums.  It has been encouraging to see that the translations, which were done primarily for Jewish historians and genealogists, have attracted the interest of non-Jewish historians in Lithuania and Belarus who seek to fill in the informational gaps in local history that were left in the wake of the Holocaust and the Soviet regime.

In the summer of 2018, the editors of the YBP notified Remembering Litvaks that JewishGen would support this initiative by donating copies of “in-print” yizkor books to institutions in Lithuania, Belarus, and Latvia designated by the Remembering Litvaks.  In 2019, 29 books will be donated, including 12 that will be presented to the Belarus National Library in Minsk.

From left to right, RLI’s Phil and Aldona Shapiro and members of the staff of the Panevėžys County Public Library, Jurgita Bugailiškienė (director), Loreta Dundulienė, Audronė Palionienė, and Monika Banelytė.

The American historian, author, and scholar, Prof. Yaffa Sonenson Eliach (1935-2016), was a native of Ejszyszki, Poland (today, Eišiškės, Šalčininkai region, Lithuania).  Then, and today, the majority of the population was Polish-speaking.  In 1941, when most of the town’s Jews were rounded up and murdered, Yaffa and her family were sheltered by two Poles, a landowner and a farmer.  Yaffa later came to the US, where she earned a doctorate in history.  In memory of her native town, she published, There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok (1998).  In May 2022, RLI donated first-edition copies to Eliach’s book to the Šalčininkai / Soleczniki regional library and to the Eišiškės / Ejszyszki local library.  

Aldona Shapiro with at the Šalčininkai regional library with staff members Olga Mažeiko and Olga Kijakovskaja. 

he poster is the background was given by RLI to the Šalčininkai / Soleczniki regional library.  This region is only a few kilometers north of the boundary between Lithuania and Belarus.  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the centuries-old ties between towns that today are on the Lithuanian side of the border, such as Eišiškės / Ejszyszki, and the towns that today are on the Belarusian side of the border, such as Radun, have been disrupted.  To help library visitors visualize the relative proximity of towns described in Prof. Eliach’s book, RLI created several posters with the image of a 1903 Russian geophysical map of the area between Minsk and Druskininkai.  Copies of the poster were given to the regional library as well as the public libraries of Eišiškės / Ejszyszki and Dieveniškės / Dziewieniszki.

From left:  Barbara Vodeika of the Eišiškės / Ejszyszki public library; Olga Kijakovskaja of the Šalčininkai / Soleczniki regional library, Olga Sventoslavskaja of the Eišiškės / Ejszyszki public library; Aldona and Phil Shapiro; and Barbara Mickevič, the director of the Eišiškės recreation and business center, which houses the town’s library and museum.

With the assistance of Frank and Galina Schwartz in Minsk, Belarus, we distribute copies of the English translations of the yizkor books for towns that today are in Belarus to institutions in those towns and to the Belarusian national library.

Like the yizkor books for the destroyed communities of Lithuania, these books are also valued for providing the history of towns in Belarus, where the loss of the Jewish population and the ensuing years of Soviet distortion of history has left little local history.  For example, here is the English translation of the letter from the local library in Svir regarding the importance of receiving the English translation of the Svir yizkor book: 

Seal of the Municipal Library of Svir,

Molodeczna Region, Minsk Oblast [Belarus]

Good Day

Honorable Phil Shapiro

The staff of the Svir town library are sincerely grateful to You for the book that we received.  The book is a great contribution to the history of our town, which we must study so that we may remember.

With great thanks to You [and to] those who produced such a valuable work!

[Unsigned]