Connection and Division

My husband and I are both introverts. Unnlike some of my more extroverted friends we can go an entire trip without speaking with anyone but each other, waitresses and hotel clerks. This trip has been quite different so far. As we sat in the Amsterdam airport, my husband was approached by an airport representative who was doing a survey on airport experiences. Two brothers in a nearby area had a chance to hear his replies and posed a question to him on what they heard. We had picked up a bit on them as well,  eavesdropping on their conversation. We may be quiet, but we are curious. Turned out we were all heading to Lithuania, them on a bit of a roots trip, something I know quite a bit about because of my involvement in genealogy. We conversed further and found them to be interesting people, continuing our new friendship one night over dinner.

We were emboldened by this satisfying connection. At a subsequent dinner we overheard someone at another table mention Minnesota, the state in which we live. As he exited the restaurant, we asked if he was from there. Indeed he was. The innocent question of what brought him to Lithuania took us down an unexpected road. He noted that he thought Western Europe was being destroyed by immigration and was doing a bit of a farewell tour. That led into a political discussion that was disturbing to say the least. 

When he noted that he considered the Kavanaugh hearing to be a travesty, it occurred to me that we might be coming to that conclusion from quite opposing philosophies. It reminded me of the time I was confused by a reference to Lithuanian partisans. I was most familiar with the Jewish partisans who fought with the Soviets against the Nazis. The Lithuanian partisans did exactly the opposite. Duh (head slap!), partisans can be on either side! As I expected, his travesty assessment was on “poor” Judge Kavanaugh.  Mine was on the Senate’s plan to vote immediately after going through the motions of hearing Ford’s testimony.

 I am not one to stand down in such conversations. Even as I have little desire to engage in pointless political discussions, I feel it important to state I do not share their view. I did so politely keeping my voice low, hoping to signal to him to do likewise. Did I mention that he was loud and opinionated? My husband and I caught each other’s eye with a mutual plea of “Get us out of this!” Hints to wind up were not working. The most cringe-worthy moment was when the Italian co-owner poked his head in nervously wondering if everything was ok. Our new acquaintance in the middle of an anti-immigration rant replied, “We were just talking about you.”

So did this encounter serve to reinforce our desire for insularity? Quite the opposite as the story continued to unfold. After he departed and we heaved a sigh of mutual relief, the restaurant owner joined us in conversation. We quickly disassociated ourselves from the prior gentleman’s views. There was no “we” involved. I mentioned to the owner that I had fond memories of his restaurant from when I was there almost ten years ago to attend the Vilnius Yiddish Institute. I still remember our very international group singing Happy Birthday in a multitude of languages to a good friend in their open courtyard where we frequently gathered. 

He told us that he was a filmmaker and for a film he is working on he had interviewed Fanya, a much treasured survivor who had taken us around the Jewish quarter and to the bunker in the forest where she was a Jewish partisan. He too had gone to the forest as part of their interview. He had also spoken with the artist Samuel Bak who was a child in Vilnius during the war and paints extraordinary work out of that experience. We had just visited a large exhibition of his work at the Vilnius Tolerance Center and had seen his work in Massachusetts, where he now lives.  Our new friend told us that after the war, those who survived found temporary shelter in the courtyard behind the restaurant where the arches of the loggia were then divided into rooms. He told us the story of a woman with whom he spoke who told him her grandfather while living there had planted a large tree that remains today. I recognized a fellow storyteller who builds connection through his stories, a welcome antidote to that earlier discussion so focused on division.

Recommended Reading I: Jews of Eastern Europe

You may have noticed an addition to this blog.  On the right of the page you will find a list of books that I’ve read in the past few years with Jewish content.  They cover a wide range of subject matter, but all have been helpful to me in expanding my understanding.  Many of them are nonfiction although there is also some fiction among them and some of them I’ve written about in these pages.  I find that many of the ones I enjoy the most are written by journalists as they seem to have a unique talent for taking real events and crafting them into a rather gripping story.  As my discussions of recommended books have become buried in these pages, I thought I’d cull them out and in subsequent entries provide brief comments on some of those I haven’t previously discussed.

In this blog entry I’ll focus on the ones I’ve discussed within the blog already and where you can find them.  While I’ve included the books with Jewish content on this list, they provide interesting reading for a broad range of readers, Jewish ancestry not required.

You will find discussion of Masha Gessen’s book Ester & Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler’s War and Stalin’s Peace in Jewish Life in the Soviet Union.  This book provided insight into both the war time and post war period and its impact on Jews in the Soviet Union.  A good companion book on this topic is A Hole in the Heart of the World by Jonathan Kaufman which follows the life of five Jews from the war to post-war in Eastern Europe.  You will find some discussion of it in my entry Readings on the Jews of Eastern Europe.  I found these books both very readable and very important in increasing my understanding of Jewish life in Eastern Europe post-war. 

Also in Readings on the Jews of Eastern Europe is The Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe by Eli Valley, a must read prior to visiting Budapest, Warsaw, Cracow or Prague, unfortunately too big to easily carry on your travels.  Filled with historical anecdotes it brings color and context to your travels. 

The Kati Marton books on Budapest are discussed in the The Budapest Brain Drain and I highly recommend all of her work for both insights into post-war experience and the many influences of Budapest Jews on the United States. My favorite book was The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World. 

 In Favorite Travel Tools and Books you will find discussion of The Zookeeper’s Wife that I suggest you read prior to visiting Warsaw or to learn more about the Warsaw ghetto.  It is based on actual people and events and we were delighted to find references to the people of whom we read at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. Also in that entry you will find discussion of Not Me, a fictional story that was interesting reading that also touched on Madjanek. 

Anton, the Dove Fancier is discussed in How They Lived, short stories based on Radom, Poland by a survivor.  These are beautifully written with a photographer’s eye for detail.  In A Contact, A Book and An Interview you will find mention of Everything is Illuminated and The Heavens are Empty, books based on the virtually all Jewish town of Trochenbrod.

In Across the Pond you will find discussion of the Ponary Diary which I often reference when I speak about my Lithuanian based artwork as it recounts the story of the Vilnius Jews murdered in Ponar.  As background on Vilnius you may also want to read Lucy Davidowicz's From That Time and Place which is discussed in Jewish Ghetto Walk.  While not easy reading and filled with names, it is a first person account of Vilnius in the pre-war period and a sad recounting of the fate of many of Davidowicz's friends.

In addition to these books I also wrote of The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson in the entry The Great Migration.  While not Jewish in content so not on this list, it sparks insights for anyone with an interest in immigration and certainly made me think of Nazi Germany in its description of the South at the time of the Jim Crow laws.

In subsequent entries I will address some of the other readings that have informed my search, deepened my understanding and provided context for much of what I've observed.

Farewell Vilnius

Friday was our graduation from the Vilnius Yiddish Institute and our last day in Vilnius. We have grown attached to our friends, our apartment and the many cafes which we frequent as well as the wait staff whom we have gotten to know well. At one of the restaurants which we go to often, I was reading aloud to my companions from a book of Lithuanian folk tales. Our waitress listened in until she had to attend to other customers. The next time we were in she stopped by our table to see how the story ended. We learned a little of her story as well and Fran stopped back with a gift of a children’s book for her daughter. She was very surprised and touched and shared a picture of her daughter.

As yesterday was Shabbat we decided we should attend the synagogue before departing the city. We arrived at the synagogue where other congregants had gathered and greeted them with a Shabbat Shalom. They responded in Russian and Hebrew and that was the end of that conversation.

It is an orthodox synagogue where the women sit separately from the men. Women have two choices where they sit. There is an area on the ground floor cordoned off by curtains. Alternatively there is the balcony where one has a good view of the activities, but it feels very isolated from the proceedings below. It felt very exclusionary to both of us coming from a Reform Jewish background. We headed up the stairs to the balcony where we saw Ruta, the woman who had shown us around the synagogue earlier in the week. It felt like being greeted by a warm friend.

Once Shabbat starts you are not supposed to take photographs, but as we had arrived early, we had a short window for our usual picture taking. The cantor from the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in New York was the special guest. There is a Litvak conference beginning next week which is what brought him to Vilnius.

The service seemed somewhat incoherent to us. Several different people spoke or chanted, but with their back to the congregation most of the time. From the balcony I could easily count the number of people and saw 29 men and 14 women. I was curious as to what proportion of the men were elderly. My very scientific test determined that seventy percent of the men had grey hair. Finally the guest cantor went through the ritual of arranging his tallis. After the ritual prayer, he pulled it completely over his head, then he expertly flipped a portion on each side over his shoulder. It made me think of a bullfighter with his cape. He stood in the center of the synagogue facing the front and began to sing the prayers in a beautiful voice. Much of it seemed very foreign to us. I leafed through the prayer book with Russian on one side and Hebrew on the other. With my limited grasp of Russian I determined that the Hebrew was actually translated into Russian, not transliterated. Interestingly it was not in Lithuanian. I assume with an older congregation, Russian was their second language outside of Yiddish. I was pleased when I found the Sh’ma in the prayer book. Of the prayers, the only ones I recognized were the Sh’ma, the Kiddish and the Kaddish. There was no blessing of the Sabbath lights, most likely because a woman usually performs that ritual.

We had heard that the service would be about 45 minutes, leaving us time to attend the alternative Shabbat Tish ( a gathering at one of our classmate’s apartment). After about an hour, we decided to quietly exit and go on our way. I was grateful for the anonymity of being in the balcony to facilitate our departure. However, we were surprised to discover that the gate which was locked from the outside for security was also locked from the inside. Luckily the service soon concluded and we were released.

We found our friend’s location and joined the party in progress. We always find it interesting to see the apartments of other students. While smaller than ours it seemed more modern and very comfortable. It was a festive and friendly atmosphere and a little bit sad as we thought about how we would soon be leaving our friends. We had missed the lighting of the Shabbat candles, but a beautiful array had been created and was still burning brightly.

It was a very poignant ending to a wonderful experience. We hugged our friends goodbye with promises to stay connected and meet again in the future.
We walked down our familiar streets one last time and I took a picture of each of the five streets that radiate out from in front of our apartment.

Further Explorations

As we near the end of our time in Vilnius we are trying to squeeze in the remaining things we hoped to see. This morning we skipped one of our classes in order to see the synagogue which closes at 2:00. Early in our visit to Vilnius we saw it from the outside on a walking tour, but had not yet seen the inside.

The synagogue is behind a locked gate so we had to ring a bell to gain entrance. We thought we would just be looking around on our own, but were fortunate to have the assistance of a young woman who works at the synagogue. She happily told us the story of the synagogue. It had survived the war as it was used for storage for the former Jewish hospital across the street which had been converted to a German military facility. She pointed out the hospital and the windows which were in the shape of the tablets of the ten commandments, a common feature in Jewish buildings.

She talked about how some people went to Russia before WWII as they anticipated that their young daughters would be conscripted for forced labor. By taking this precaution, they survived the war and they subsequently returned to Vilnius. After the war the synagogue became a gathering point as survivors connected with each other to find out if family and friends had also survived. When they celebrated the High Holy Days the crowd overflowed into the streets and the police cordoned off the street. During the Soviet times they had a clandestine matzo bakery and a shochet (kosher butcher) hidden within the synagogue. We were able to peer into a closed off curtained area which contained the remnants of the matzo bakery. When the Soviets loosened up immigration, many families immigrated to other countries around the world.

The synagogue was quite striking in a Moorish style with dominant colors of blue and white. A large Star of David was at the top of the domed ceiling surrounded by clouds against a blue background. As an orthodox synagogue it had a separate area above for the women to sit.

This is the Choral Synagogue and has an area, now closed off, where the men and boys' choir once sang. We learned that this Friday, our last day in Vilnius, a noted cantor will be participating in the service which we plan to attend. We also observed that the Hebrew prayer book was translated into Russian.

They hold daily morning services as well as on Shabbat. They are able to obtain a minyan (10 men required in order to conduct services), but there is concern that as members age it will become increasingly difficult and services may become more infrequent.

While this is a concern for the Jewish community, we were encouraged to see signs of a younger generation’s involvement in Jewish life. Children's drawings were posted on a wall and on the way out of the synagogue we saw a young woman with a very young toddler wearing a yarmulke. There is also a thriving Jewish school as well as summer camps for the children in the community.

After our visit to the synagogue we walked to the market which is housed in a large building with an adjacent outdoor area. They sold a wide variety of products, including food, clothing and toiletries. We noted that some of the merchants were elderly women selling their meager produce to eke out a living.

We found a local restaurant that was out of the main tourist area. The menu was handwritten on a chalkboard, all in Lithuanian. We asked a waitress to translate each item and we ordered more typical Lithuanian fare. Everything we have eaten has been excellent, even this little café.

From there we headed to the train station to purchase our insurance for our trip to Belarus. We had to provide our passports and they checked to verify that we had visas before issuing the insurance.

On the way back, I stopped at the Tolerance Center to see the exhibits. While we had gone to the opening of the Bulgarian Jewish exhibit, we had not seen the rest of the museum’s offering. The Tolerance Center is impressive and had a large exhibit of drawings from Gerardas Badgonavicius, a Lithuanian artist who lived from 1901-1986. His drawings were of the synagogues and people prior to WWII and as such represented a historical view of communities prior to their destruction. Also contained in the Tolerance Center are some important artifacts from the Great Synagogue of Vilnius including the doors of the Aron Kodesh and a cartouche with the Ten Commandments. There was a sizeable art exhibit which included drawings by two artists who created artwork in the Vilna and Kovno ghettos.

We ended our day at one of our usual haunts for dinner. The restaurant began to fill up with college students as they are beginning to return for the start of a new school year. It feels a bit like a changing of the guard as we prepare to leave our program even as they begin anew.

Riga to Vilnius

We didn’t think we’d have much to report in our blog as we spent almost five hours on a bus today. It was a rainy day in Riga and we needed to get our bags across trolley lines and a busy street to get to the bus station. We successfully navigated those obstacles and boarded our bus, a very modern vehicle. It provided comfortable seats, air conditioning and a cappuccino dispenser. The countryside could as easily have been in the Midwest and there was little that made it distinctively Latvian or Lithuanian. It was a little disappointing that there was nothing that marked the entry into Lithuanian and we never knew when that transition had actually taken place.

Upon arriving in Vilnius we looked around for our landlady Gaiva who had e-mailed us that she would be there to meet us at the station. We realized that we did not know what she looked like and we saw no welcoming signs upon our arrival. As we waited we simultaneously commented about the differences in appearance between the Latvians and the Lithuanians. While the Latvians had a rather Nordic appearance with a disproportionate number of slender, long legged blondes, the Lithuanians had darker hair and were often shorter.

When we failed to locate Gaiva, Fran turned to the local policija who loaned us the use of their cell phone to contact her. When we finally met her, we immediately felt comfortable as she was very open and friendly. As she drove us to the apartment, she shared that her husband was a professional artist. They had a summer home and rented out their apartment while they lived in their other home. As we neared the apartment we took a circuitous route through the quaint streets of the old part of Vilnius.

At the apartment we had an opportunity to see a wide variety of her husband’s work. Most paintings were quite large and had some figurative aspects, but also elements that reminded us of Paul Klee. If you want to see examples of Vytenis Lingys’work go to http://www.lingys.lt/en/. We feel fortunate to be able to live for a month surrounded by his artwork.

The apartment is located on 10 Gaona which is in the area that was once the Jewish ghetto and is named after a famous rabbi of Vilnius. It is located across from the well- known hotel Stikliu and surrounded by open air restaurants and cafes.
Unlike Riga, cars are allowed in the old part of the city. Our apartment is two blocks from the University where we will go for our language classes. The first meeting will be on Sunday, so we will leisurely explore the city tomorrow to get our bearings.

We walked around a bit last evening looking for traces of what used to be here. The Austrian Embassy is down the street in what used to be an old prayer house. There is a plaque that tells the history. There is also a sculpture of the Vilna Gaon, the famous Rabbi for whom our street was named. Aside from that there are few traces of the community that once lived here.

Gaiva showed us several areas throughout the apartment where when they redid the walls, they found layers of what used to be here. Being artists, they left them intact so they appear like paintings on the walls throughout the apartment, ghost-like images of the prior residents. One spot appeared to have some Hebrew lettering. Gaiva noted that there was a lot of blue in the prior wall coverings as the residents had been Jewish and blue was an important color. It is chilling to think that those residents were deported and murdered.

The area now consists of galleries and charming restaurants, all very gentrified. As we walked around last evening we found ourselves wondering about the stories behind each building.

A little history lesson on Vilnius….Once referred to as the Jerusalem of Lithuania, Vilnius was home to 100,000 Jews who made up 45% of the population. There were a total of 240,000 Jews in Lithuania and 90% died in the Holocaust. Today Vilnius is home to 5,000 of the 6,500 Jews remaining in Lithuania. The 105 synagogues that existed prior to WWII have been reduced to one. During the German and Soviet occupations virtually every trace of Jewish life was removed. Blocks were razed and cemetery tombstones were used to pave sidewalks. A sports stadium sits atop what was once a Jewish cemetery.

It is hard to walk these charming streets without thinking about its past inhabitants.