Jews in the Former Grand Duchy of Lithuania Since 1772 9781904113942, 9781904113935

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Note on Place Names (page xv)
Note on Transliteration (page xvii)
PART I: JEWS IN THE FORMER GRAND DUCHY OF LITHUANIA SINCE 1772
Introduction (ŠARŪNAS LIEKIS AND ANTONY POLONSKY, page 3)
Lithuanian Jewry and the Concept of 'East European Jewry' (MORDECHAI ZALKIN, page 57)
Economic Relations between Jewish Traders and Christian Farmers in the Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Provinces (AELITA AMBRULEVIČIŪTĖ, page 71)
The War of Lyady Succession: R. Aaron Halevi versus R. Dov Baer (IMMANUEL ETKES, page 93)
Lithuanian Antisemitism in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (DARIUS STALIŪNAS, page 135)
'I Have Chosen the Belarusian Word...': On the Life and Creative Career of Zmitrok Byadulya (ANDREY KROTAU, page 151)
Authentic and National: Some Lithuanian-Jewish Correlations in the Search for 'Folk Culture' in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (LARISA LEMPERTIENĖ, page 165)
Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 (AUŠRA PAŽĖRAITĖ, page 183)
Walking a Thin Line: The Successes and Failures of Socialist Zionism in Lithuania (EGLĖ BENDIKAITĖ, page 207)
Jewish Converts in Independent Lithuania, 1918-1940: An Attempt at a Case Analysis (SAULIS KAUBRYS, page 229)
'A Close, but Very Suspicious and Dangerous Neighbour': Outbreaks of Antisemitism in Inter-War Lithuania (VLADAS SIRUTAVIČIUS, page 245)
The Bund in Vilna, 1918-1939 (JACK JACOBS, page 263)
The Lithuanian-Language Jewish Periodicals Mūsų garsas (1924-1925) and Apžvalga (1935-1940): A Sociolinguistic Evolution (ANNA VERSCHIK, page 293)
'Listen, the Jews are Ruling Us Now': Antisemitism and National Conflict during the First Soviet Occupation of Lithuania, 1940-1941 (SAULIUS SUŽIEDĖLIS, page 305)
Soviet Resistance and Jewish Partisans in Lithuania (ŠARŪNAS LIEKIS, page 331)
The Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and the Fate of Lithuanian Jewry, 1941-1945 (THEODORE R. WEEKS, page 357)
'To Transform Ourselves': Lithuania Looks at the Holocaust (ELLEN CASSEDY, page 379)
The Problem of Jewish National Symbols in Vilnius (DAVID E. FISHMAN, page 395)
Some Remarks on the History of the New Lithuanian Jewish Community: The Road Travelled in Establishing a Litvak Identity (VYTAUTAS TOLEIKIS, page 405)
The Recent Works of Grigory Kanovich (ANNA P. RONELL, page 417)
The Dream of a Vanished Jerusalem (GRIGORY KANOVICH, page 427)
REVIEWS
Aušra Paulauskienė, Lost and Found: The Discovery of Lithuania in American Fiction (MICHAEL CASPER, page 439)
Tomas Venclova, Vilnius: A Personal History (MICHAEL CASPER, page 443)
PART II: JEWS IN POLISH MEDICINE
Dr Gershon Lewin (1868-1940): Pioneer of Public Health and Promoter of Jewish Culture in Poland (KARIN OHRY-KOSSOY AND AVI OHRY, page 449)
Dedicated Physicians in the Face of Adversity: The Association of Jewish Physicians (ZLRP) and The Jewish Health Organization (TOZ) in Poland, 1921-1942 (KARIN OHRY-KOSSOY AND AVI OHRY, page 455)
The Medical School in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1941-1942 (MARTA ALEKSANDRA BALINSKA, page 463)
Ethical Dilemmas in the Work of Doctors and Nurses in the Warsaw Ghetto (MIRIAM OFFER, page 467)
Notes on the Contributors (page 493)
Index (page 499)

Citation preview

THE INSTITUTE FOR POLISH—JEWISH STUDIES The Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies in Oxford and its sister organization, the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies, which publish Po/in, are learned societies that were established in 1984, following the International Conference on Polish—Jewish Studies, held

in Oxford. The Institute is an associate institute of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and the American Association is linked with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. Both the Institute and the American Association aim to promote understanding of the Polish Jewish past. They have no building or library of their own and no paid staff; they achieve their aims by encouraging scholarly research and facilitating its publication, and by creating forums for people with a scholarly interest in Polish Jewish topics, both past and present.

To this end the Institute and the American Association help organize lectures and international conferences. Venues for these activities have included Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Institute for the Study of Human Sciences in Vienna, King’s College in London, the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, the University of Lodz, University College London, and the Polish Cultural Institute and the Polish embassy in London. They have encouraged academic exchanges between Israel, Poland, the United States, and western Europe. In particular they seek to help train a new generation of scholars, in Poland and elsewhere, to study the culture and history of the Jews in Poland.

Each year since 1987 the Institute has published a volume of scholarly papers in the series Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry under the general editorship of Professor Antony Polonsky of Brandeis University. Since 1994 the series has been published on its behalf by the Littman

Library of Jewish Civilization, and since 1998 the publication has been linked with the American Association as well. In March 2000 the entire series was honoured with a National Jewish Book Award from the Jewish Book Council in the United States. More than twenty other works on Polish Jewish topics have also been published with the Institute’s assistance.

Further information on the Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies can be found on their website, , For the website of the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies, see .

THE LITTMAN LIBRARY OF JEWISH CIVILIZATION

Dedicated to the memory of

Louis THOMAS SIDNEY LITTMAN who founded the Littman Library for the love of God and as an act of charity in memory of his father

| JosEPH AARON LITTMAN 3172 D721 NP

‘Get wisdom, get understanding: Forsake her not and she shall preserve thee’ PROV. 4:5

The Littman Library of fewish Civilization 1s a registered UK charity Registered charity no. 1000784

STUDIES IN POLISH JEWRY

VOLUME TWENTY-FIVE

Fews in the Former Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1772 Edited by

SARUNAS LIEKIS, ANTONY POLONSKY and

CHAERAN FREEZE

Published for

The Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies and The American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies

Oxford - Portland, Oregon

The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization 2013

The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization Chief Executive Officer: Ludo Craddock Managing Editor: Connie Webber PO Box 645, Oxford Ox2 oUJ, UK

www.littman.co.uk

Published tn the United States and Canada by The Littman Library of fewish Civilization c/o ISBS, 920 NE 58th Avenue, Suite 300 Portland, Oregon 97213-3786 © Institute for Polish—fewish Studies 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of

The Littman Library of fewish Civilization The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it 1s published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

A catalogue record for this book 1s available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data applied for

ISSN 0268 1056 : ISBN 978—1-9041 13-93—-5

ISBN 97&—-1-904113-94-2 (pbk)

Publishing co-ordinator: fanet Moth Production: John Saunders

Copy-editing: George Tulloch

Proof-reading: Bonnie Blackburn and Joyce Rappoport Index: Bonnie Blackburn

Design: Pete Russell, Faringdon, Oxon. Typeset by: Fohn Saunders Design & Production, Eastbourne Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by

TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

Articles appearing in this publication are abstracted and indexed in EMstorical Abstracts and America: History and Life

This volume of Polin ts dedicated to the memory of

AVROM SUTZKEVER 1913-2010 eminent Yiddish poet and exemplary Litvak

This volume benefited from grants from

THE MIRISCH AND LEBENHEIM CHARITABLE FOUNDATION THE LUCIUS N. LITTAUER FOUNDATION

Editors and Advisers EDITORS

Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Lublin Israel Bartal, Jerusalem Antony Polonsky (Chair), Waltham, Mass. Michael Steinlauf, Philadelphia Jerzy ‘Tomaszewski, Warsaw Jonathan Webber, Krakow EDITORIAL BOARD

David Assaf, Tel Aviv Jehuda Reinharz, Waltham, Mass. Wladyslaw T. Bartoszewski, Warsaw Moshe Rosman, Tel Aviv

Glenn Dynner, Bronxville, NY Szymon Rudnicki, Warsaw David Engel, New York Henryk Samsonowicz, Warsaw David Fishman, New York Robert Shapiro, New York ChaeRan Freeze, Waltham, Mass. Adam Teller, Providence, RI Yisrael Gutman, Jerusalem Magdalena ‘Teter, Middletown, Conn.

Francois Guesnet, London Daniel Tollet, Paris Jerzy Kloczowski, Lublin Piotr S. Wandycz, New Haven, Conn. Ezra Mendelsohn, Jerusalem Joshua Zimmerman, New York Joanna Michlic, Waltham, Mass. Steven Zipperstein, Stanford, Calif. Elchanan Reiner, 7e/ Aviv

ADVISORY BOARD

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, Warsaw Emanuel Melzer, Tel Aviv

Andrzej Chojnowski, Warsaw Shlomo Netzer, Te/ Aviv Andrzej Ciechanowiecki, London Zbigniew Pelczynski, Oxford Norman Davies, London Alexander Schenker, New Haven, Conn.

Frank Golczewski, Hamburg David Sorkin, Madison, Wis. Olga Goldberg, Jerusalem Edward Stankiewicz, New Haven, Conn.

Jerzy Jedlicki, Warsaw Norman Stone, Ankara Andrzej Kaminski, Washington Shmuel Werses, Jerusalem

Hillel Levine, Boston Piotr Wrobel, Toronto

Heinz-Dietrich Lowe, Heidelberg

Preface THIS VOLUME OF Polin is the first to contain a core of articles devoted to the history of the Jews in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (in Yiddish, Lite) in the modern period. The chapters it contains reflect the research on this topic which has become possible since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of Lithuania in 1991. They deal with a range of themes: the specific character of Lithuanian Jewry; the way in which relations between Jews and Lithuanians developed in the years after 1772, first under tsarist rule and then in independent Lithuania; the devastating impact on the Jewish community and on Lithuanian— Jewish relations of the Soviet and Nazi occupations of the country between 1940 and 1944; the further negative consequences for Jewish life of the reoccupation of the

country by the Soviets between 1944 and 1990; and, finally, the slow revival of Jewish life since independence and the attempts that have been made since then both

to investigate the Lithuanian Jewish past and to come to terms with the difficult legacy of the Holocaust. The volume also includes a special section on aspects of the role of Jews in Polish medicine. Polin is sponsored by the Institute of Polish—Jewish Studies, which is an associ-

ated institute of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and by the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies, which is linked with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University. As with earlier issues, this volume could not have appeared without the untiring assistance

of many individuals. In particular, we should like to express our gratitude to Professor Frederick Lawrence, President of Brandeis University, and to Mrs Irene Pipes, President of the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies. Both institutions made a substantial contribution to the cost of producing the volume. A particularly important contribution was that made by the Mirisch and Lebenheim Foundation, and the volume also benefited from a grant from the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation. As was the case with earlier volumes, this one could not have been published without the constant assistance and supervision of Connie Webber, managing editor of the Littman Library, Ludo Craddock, chief executive officer, Janet Moth, publishing co-ordinator, Pete Russell, designer, and the tireless copy-editing of George ‘Tulloch and Joyce Rappoport. Plans for future volumes of Po/in are well advanced. Volume 26 will be devoted to the history of Jews in Ukraine, volume 27 will investigate the situation of the Jews in the Kingdom of Poland between 1815 and 1918, and volume 28 will analyse aspects of Jewish writing in Poland. Future volumes are planned on on the historiography of Jews in the Polish lands, on Jewish education in eastern Europe, and on a comparison of the situation over the /ongue durée of Jews in Poland and Hungary.

Vill Preface We should welcome articles for these issues. We should also welcome any suggestions or criticisms. In particular, we are always grateful for assistance in extending the geographical range of our journal to Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, both in

the period in which these countries were part of the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth and subsequently. We have long felt concerned at how long it takes to publish reviews in an annual publication. We have now therefore decided to post all our reviews on the website of the American Association for Polish Jewish Studies (aapjstudies.org) instead of publishing them in hard copy, which will enable us to discuss new works much nearer to their date of publication. We welcome the submission of reviews of any book or books connected with the history of the Jews in Poland—Lithuania or on Polish—Jewish relations. We are happy to translate reviews submitted in Polish,

Russian, Hebrew, or German into English. ‘They should be sent to one of the following: Dr Wladyslaw T. Bartoszewski, Forteczna 1A, 01-540, Warsaw, Poland (email: [email protected]); Professor ChaeRan Freeze, Department of Near

Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass. 02254-9110 (email: [email protected]); Professor Antony Polonsky, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass. 02254-9110 (email: [email protected]); Professor Joshua Zimmerman, Yeshiva University, Department of History, 500 West 185th Street, New York, NY 10033-3201 (email: [email protected]).

We note with sadness the deaths of the following colleagues: Professor Jacob Goldberg, a great historian of Polish Jewry and a long-standing member of our editorial board; Professor Paula Hyman, one of the pioneers of Jewish women’s history and an editor of Polin 18, devoted to the history of Jewish women in eastern Europe;

Dr Mendel Piekarz, a great scholar of hasidism; Dr Jana Prot, a long-standing member of the board of the American Association of Polish—Jewish Studies; and Vitka Kempner-Kovner, life partner and soulmate of Abba Kovner and one of the last surviving Jewish partisans.

POLIN

Merete Cambs

HRN HOOT O KR

We did not know, but our fathers told us how the exiles of Israel came to the land of Polin (Poland).

When Israel saw how its sufferings were constantly renewed, oppressions increased, persecutions multiplied, and how the evil authorities piled decree on decree and followed expulsion with expulsion, so that there was no way to escape the enemies of Israel, they went out on the road and sought an answer from the paths of the wide world: which is the correct road to traverse to find rest for their soul? Then a piece of paper fell from heaven, and on it the words: Go to Polaniya (Poland)!

So they came to the land of Polin and they gave a mountain of gold to the king,

and he received them with great honour. And God had mercy on them, so that they found favour from the king and the nobles. And the king gave them permission to reside in all the lands of his kingdom, to trade over its length and breadth, and to serve God according to the precepts of their religion. And the king protected them against every foe and enemy.

And Israel lived in Polin in tranquillity for a long time. ‘They devoted themselves to trade and handicrafts. And God sent a blessing on them so that they were blessed in the land, and their name was exalted among the peoples. And they traded with the surrounding countries and they also struck coins with inscriptions in the holy language and the language of the country. ‘These are the coins which have on them a lion rampant from the right facing left. And on the coins are the words ‘Mieszko, King of Poland’ or ‘Mieszko, Krol of Poland’. The Poles call their king ‘Krol’. And those who delve into the Scriptures say: “This is why it is called Polin. For

thus spoke Israel when they came to the land, “Here rest for the night [Po /in].” And this means that we shall rest here until we are all gathered into the Land of Israel.’ Since this is the tradition, we accept it as such. S. Y. AGNON, 1916

POLIN Studies in Polish Jewry VOLUME I Poles and fews: Renewing the Dialogue (1986) VOLUME 2. Jews and the Emerging Polish State (1987) VOLUME 3. The fews of Warsaw (1988) VOLUME 4 Poles and Jews: Perceptions and Misperceptions (1989) VOLUME 5 New Research, New Views (1990)

VOLUME 6 Jems in Lodz, 1520-1939 (1991) VOLUME 7 Jewish Life in Nazi-Occupied Warsaw (1992) From Shtetl to Socialism (1993): selected articles from volumes 1-7

VOLUME 8 Jews in Independent Poland, 1915-1939 (1994) VOLUME g_ fewws, Poles, Socialists: The Failure of an Ideal (1996)

VOLUME 10 fews in Early Modern Poland (1997) VOLUME I1_ Aspects and Experiences of Religion (1998)

VOLUME 12 Galicia: Fews, Poles, and Ukrainians, 1772-1918 (1999) Index to Volumes 1-12 (2000)

VOLUME 13. The Holocaust and tts Aftermath (2000) VOLUME 14 Jews in the Polish Borderlands (2001) VOLUME 15 Jewish Religious Life, 1500-1900 (2002) VOLUME 16 femish Popular Culture and its Afterlife (2003)

VOLUME 17. The Shtetl: Myth and Reality (2004) VOLUME 18 Jewish Women in Eastern Europe (2005) VOLUME 19 Polish—fFewish Relations in North America (2007)

VOLUME 20 Making Holocaust Memory (2008)

, VOLUME 21 1968: Forty Years After (2009) VOLUME 22. Social and Cultural Boundaries in Pre-Modern Poland (2010)

VOLUME 23 Jews in Krakow (2011) VOLUME 24 Jews and their Neighbours in Eastern Europe since 1750 (2012) VOLUME 25 Jews in the Former Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1772

VOLUME 26 fews and Ukrainians VOLUME 27 Jews inthe Kingdom of Poland, 1815-1914

, VOLUME 28 Jewish Writing in Poland VOLUME 29 Writing East European Jewish Mistory

Contents

Note on Place Names XV Note on Transliteration XVii PART I

JEWS IN THE FORMER GRAND DUCHY OF LITHUANIA SINCE 1772

Introduction 3 SARUNAS LIEKIS AND ANTONY POLONSKY

Lithuanian Jewry and the Concept of ‘East European Jewry’ 57 MORDECHAI ZALKIN

Economic Relations between Jewish Traders and Christian Farmers

in the Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Provinces 71

AELITA AMBRULEVICIUTE

The War of Lyady Succession: R. Aaron Halevi versus R. Dov Baer 93 IMMANUEL ETKES

‘Twentieth Centuries , 135

Lithuanian Antisemitism in the Late Nineteenth and Early DARIUS STALIUNAS

‘I Have Chosen the Belarusian Word .. .’: On the Life and

Creative Career of Zmitrok Byadulya I51

ANDREY KROTAU

Authentic and National: Some Lithuanian—Jewish Correlations in the Search for ‘Folk Culture’ in the First Half of the

Twentieth Century 165

LARISA LEMPERTIENE

Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 183 AUSRA PAZERAITE

Xi | Contents Zionism in Lithuania 207

Walking a Thin Line: ‘The Successes and Failures of Socialist EGLE BENDIKAITE

Jewish Converts in Independent Lithuania, 1918—1940:

An Attempt at a Case Analysis 229 SAULIUS KAUBRYS

‘A Close, but Very Suspicious and Dangerous Neighbour’:

Outbreaks of Antisemitism in Inter-War Lithuania 245

VLADAS SIRUTAVICIUS

The Bund in Vilna, 1918-1939 263 JACK JACOBS

The Lithuanian-Language Jewish Periodicals Masy garsas (1924-1925)

and Apzvalga (1935-1940): A Sociolinguistic Evolution 293 ANNA VERSCHIK

‘Listen, the Jews are Ruling Us Now’: Antisemitism and National Conflict

during the First Soviet Occupation of Lithuania, 1940-1941 305 SAULIUS SUZIEDELIS

Soviet Resistance and Jewish Partisans in Lithuania 331 SARUNAS LIEKIS

IQ41—1945 357

The Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and the Fate of Lithuanian Jewry, THEODORE R. WEEKS

“To Transform Ourselves’: Lithuania Looks at the Holocaust 379 ELLEN CASSEDY

The Problem of Jewish National Symbols in Vilnius 395 DAVID E. FISHMAN

Some Remarks on the History of the New Lithuanian Jewish Community: The Road Travelled in Establishing a Litvak Identity 405 VYTAUTAS TOLEIKIS

Contents Xi The Recent Works of Grigory Kanovich AI7 ANNA P. RONELL

The Dream of a Vanished Jerusalem 427 GRIGORY KANOVICH

REVIEWS

Ausra Paulauskiene, Lost and Found: The Discovery of

Lithuania in American Fiction 439

MICHAEL CASPER

‘Tomas Venclova, Vilnius: A Personal History 443 MICHAEL CASPER

PART II

JEWS IN POLISH MEDICINE Dr Gershon Lewin (1868-1940): Pioneer of Public Health and

Promoter of Jewish Culture in Poland A4Q KARIN OHRY-KOSSOY AND AVI OHRY

Dedicated Physicians in the Face of Adversity: The Association of Jewish Physicians (ZLRP) and

the Jewish Health Organization (TOZ) in Poland, 1921-1942 455 KARIN OHRY-KOSSOY AND AVI OHRY

The Medical School in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1941-1942 463 MARTA ALEKSANDRA BALINSKA

Warsaw Ghetto 467

Ethical Dilemmas in the Work of Doctors and Nurses in the

Index 499 MIRIAM OFFER

Notes on the Contributors 493

BLANK PAGE

Note on Place Names POLITICAL connotations accrue to words, names, and spellings with an alacrity unfortunate for those who would like to maintain neutrality. It seems reasonable to honour the choices of a population on the name of its city or town, but what is one to do when the people have no consensus on their name, or when the town changes its name, and the name its spelling, again and again over time? The politician may always opt for the latest version, but the hapless historian must reckon with them all. This note, then, will be our brief reckoning. There 1s no problem with places that have accepted English names, such as Warsaw. But every other place name in east-central Europe raises serious problems. A good example is Wilno, Vilna, Vilnius. There are clear objections to all of these. Until 1944 the majority of the population was Polish. The city is today in Lithuania. ‘Vilna’, though raising the fewest problems, is an artificial construct. In this volume we have adopted the following guidelines, although we are aware that they are not wholly consistent.

1. Towns that have a form which is acceptable in English are given in that form. Some examples are Warsaw, Kiev, Moscow, St Petersburg, Munich. 2. Towns that until 1939 were clearly part of a particular state and shared the majority nationality of that state are given in a form which reflects that situation. Some examples are Breslau, Danzig, Rzeszow, Przemysl. In Polish, Krakow has always been spelled as such. In English it has more often appeared as Cracow, but the current trend of English follows the local language as much as possible. In keeping with this trend to local determination, then, we Shall maintain the Polish spelling.

3. Towns that are in mixed areas take the form in which they are known today and which reflects their present situation. Examples are Poznan, Torun, and Kaunas. This applies also to bibliographical references. We have made one major exception to this rule, using the common English form for Vilna until its first incorporation into Lithuania in October 1939 and using Vilnius thereafter. Galicia’s most diversely named city, and one of its most important, boasts four variants: the Polish Lwow, the German Lemberg, the Russian Lvov, and the Ukrainian Lviv. As this city currently lives under Ukrainian rule, and most of its current residents speak Ukrainian, we shall follow the Ukrainian spelling. 4. Some place names have different forms in Yiddish. Occasionally the subject matter dictates that the Yiddish place name should be the prime form, in which case the corresponding

Polish (Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian) name is given in parentheses at first mention.

BLANK PAGE

Note on Transhteration HEBREW An attempt has been made to achieve consistency in the transliteration of Hebrew words. The following are the key distinguishing features of the system that has been adopted: 1. No distinction is made between the a/efand ayin; both are represented by an apostrophe, and only when they appear in an intervocalic position. 2. Veitis written v; het is written h; yod is written y when it functions as a consonant and i when it occurs as a vowel; khafis written kh; tsadi is written ts; kof is written k. 3. The dagesh hazak, represented in some transliteration systems by doubling the letter, is not represented, except in words that have more or less acquired normative English spellings that include doublings, such as Hallel, kabbalah, Kaddish, rabbi, Sukkot, and Yom Kippur.

4. The sheva na is represented by ane. 5. Hebrew prefixes, prepositions, and conjunctions are not followed by a hyphen when they are transliterated; thus betoledot ha’am hayehudi.

6. Capital letters are not used in the transliteration of Hebrew except for the first word in the titles of books and the names of people, places, institutions, and generally as in the conventions of the English language. 7. ‘The names of individuals are transliterated following the above rules unless the individual concerned followed a different usage.

YIDDISH Transliteration follows the YIVO system except for the names of people, where the spellings they themselves used have been retained.

RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN The system used is that of British Standard 2979:1958, without diacritics. Except in bibliographical and other strictly rendered matter, soft and hard signs are omitted and wordfinal -f, -u1, -bI1, -1 in names are simplified to -y.

BLANK PAGE

PART I

Jews in the Former Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1772

BLANK PAGE

Introduction SARUNAS LIEKIS and ANTONY POLONSKY Shmerel, then, the melamed, raised his loud voice, saying (being Lithuanian, he was learned in Torah, though also a radical): ‘Listen, my friends, to the words of a Lithuanian melamed"’ Thus did Shmerel begin, and then gave a brief review of proletarian hardships as revealed in history: straits and famine and bitterness of hopeless oppression, the workers harder than rock, however, their many trials surviving; looking for help to the people, all Israel everywhere. SHAUL TCHERNICHOWSKY The Circumcision

Tuts volume of Po/in is the first to contain a core of articles devoted to the history

of the Jews in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (in Yiddish, Lite) in the modern period. That this is now possible is the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the re-emergence of an independent Lithuania, which was followed by a revival of many disciplines in the social sciences and humanities that had languished in the conditions of Soviet censorship. One of the areas which benefited from the new freedom was the study of the Lithuanian Jewish past. The Holocaust and Soviet rule completely destroyed earlier Jewish creativity. During the entire Soviet period between 1940 and 1990, Jewish studies did not exist as an academic subject in Lithuania, nor indeed anywhere elsewhere in the Soviet Union. There was one exception to the neglect of Jewish topics: the research carried out on Yiddish dialects by Chackelis Lemchenas, which since it was simply a by-product of his academic interests escaped official condemnation. ! The revived interest in the Jewish past of the country not only evoked scholarly

interest but also presented Lithuanian society with a challenge. Jewish studies in Lithuania is a central topic in the difficult conversation on the history of Jewish— Lithuanian relations and is closely linked to the broader transformation of historical memory in the post-Soviet era. Given the narrow academic specialization of most Lithuanian historians and the fact that most of them did not know Jewish languages, the beginnings of Jewish studies were admittedly modest. In October 1990 the first conference on Vilnius as an important Jewish cultural centre was held in New York, attended by Jewish and Lithuanian historians. This first encounter revealed the ‘ C. Lemchenas, Lietuviy kalbos itaka Lietuvos Zydy tarmei (Vilnius, 1970).

4 Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky differences in priorities and demonstrated how Lithuanian scholars were far behind the dominant discourses in the West. The painful issues of local collaboration in

Lithuania during the Holocaust were not even perceived as problematic by Lithuanian scholars. In October 1993 a conference organized by the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, together with the Lithuanian Jewish community, on the fiftieth anniversary of the destruction of the Vilna ghetto provided an opportunity for Lithuanian and international scholars to address publicly issues of Jewish history in Lithuania. A bilingual publication from the conference with over forty articles included sharp exchanges and conflicting points of view. Also in October 1993 a Centre for Judaic Studies, led by Professor Meyer Shub, was established in Vilnius University, the first attempt to institutionalize Jewish studies at a Lithuanian university. The centre was slow to take up research because of the lack of qualified teachers and of students. At the same time, the existence of the centre facilitated contacts with other Jewish studies centres, mainly in the West. All those who in one capacity or another had studied in the West and wished to be active in the Jewish studies field attended courses here and used the centre’s institutional resources. The new opportunities resulting from Lithuania’s independence started to bear fruit in the form of books and articles published in the 1ggos and 2000s. Many of these, above all documents and memoirs, were produced by the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum. They were of varying quality and were strongly concentrated on the Holocaust, as was also other material on Jewish topics produced in Lithuania.®

This was an inevitably controversial area, since critical research into the Holocaust was difficult to reconcile with the romantic vision of the past that pre-

vailed in public life in the first years of Lithuania’s renewed independence. According to Professor Liudas ‘Truska, at this stage in the development of Holocaust studies, it was easy to see two approches: the traditional and the critical. The tradi-

tional approach maintained the position prevailing among historians within the Lithuanian émigré community, where the dominant discourse sought to reduce the scope of local collaboration in the Holocaust and sometimes even to find justification for it. The critical school sought rather to evaluate anew this earlier research and to approach Holocaust history objectively.* From the end of the 1990s, critical scholars

came to dominate the field. The impact of Saulius Suziedelis of Millersville 2 E. Zingeris (ed.), Atmuinties dienos / The Days of Memory (Vilnius, 1995). ; 3 T. Guzenberg (ed.), Vilniaus getas: Kaliniy sarasat, 2 vols. (Vilnius, 1996-8); J. Ceitlinas (ed.), Zydy muziejus (Vilnius, 1994), 360; G. Suras, UZrasai: Vilniaus geto kronika, 1941-1944 (Vilnius, 1997); M.

Erenburg and V. Sakaite (eds.), Gyvybe ir duona nesanétos rankos, 1 (Vilnius, 1997); J. Levinsonas [Levinson] (ed.), Skausmo knyga (Vilnius, 1997); D. Epsteinaite and V. Sakaite (eds.), Gyvybe ir duong

nesanctos rankos, ii (Vilnius, 1999); J. Levinsonas [Levinson] (ed.), Soa (Holokaustas) Lietuvoje: Skaitiniat, 1 (Vilnius, 2001). 4 L. Truska, ‘Lietuviskoji holokausto Lietuvoje istoriografija’, in K. Fuchs and R. Keturakis (eds.), Holokausto tstoryos tyrimai ir tauty kolektyvine atmintis Baltijos regione (Kaunas, 2002), 95.

Introduction 5 University, one of the contributors to this volume, who played a major role in Westernizing Holocaust discourse in Lithuania, should be singled out. An important stage in this process occurred in January 1995 when Valentinas Brandisauskas, a young researcher at the Lithuanian Institute of History in Vilnius, defended his dissertation on the anti-Soviet Lithuanian underground of 1940-1, which included an evaluation of events surrounding the first weeks of the Nazi occupation. This punctured the myths surrounding the anti-Soviet uprising of June 1941 and noted the antisemitic policies of the Provisional Government established in the summer of that year. Virtually unnoticed outside Lithuania, this work, while modest in scope compared with studies that have appeared since, was a significant step. Brandisauskas was also one of the few historians who studied the role and position

of the Roman Catholic Church in Lithuania in the events of the Holocaust. He studied in detail the antisemitic stereotypes of the Church, its passivity and fear of political repressions from the Nazis, and its willingness to help only those Jews who were baptized.° In September 1997 an academic conference on the history of the Jews and the Holocaust was held in the seaside resort of Nida—the first such gathering convened on the initiative of Lithuanians and including the internationally recognized scholars

Jonathan Steinberg, Ezra Mendelsohn, and Dina Porat. This was followed on 23 April 1999 by a major discussion on the Holocaust in the Lithuanian Seimas (parliament), in which politicians, historians, archival researchers, and jurists all participated. Serious Lithuanian-language scholarship on the Holocaust ceased to be a novelty. Not everyone welcomed this development. As could have been expected, many Lithuanians instinctively resisted ‘outsiders’ interfering with their exclusivist nationalist narrative. Outside Lithuania, this indigenous scholarship had little impact. The reasons for its international marginality are linguistic and ideological. Language 1s still an obstacle for the older generation of Western scholars who do not know Lithuanian. The ideological reluctance of some Israeli scholars to use the new studies based on archival sources now available, which shed new light on a number of issues, especially native collaboration, as well as an ignorance of the basic facts of the history of east-central Europe were also significant.

The discussions about the Holocaust had a beneficial effect on the study of Lithuanian—Jewish relations generally, as younger scholars in particular, some of whom also studied Yiddish and Hebrew, began to take an interest in the history of this largely vanished community. New works appeared on the anti-Judaic policies of the Catholic Church and the emergence of modern Lithuanian antisemitism,® the 5 V. Brandigauskas, ‘Holokaustas Lietuvoje: Istoriografiné situacija ir pagrindinés problemos’, Lietuviy katalhiky mokslo akademiyos metrastis, 14 (1999), 151.

6 See J. Boruta, ‘Kataliky bazny¢ia ir lietuviu—zydu santykiai XIX—XX a.’, Lietuviy kataliky mokslo akademuyos metrastis, 14 (1999), 1-23; cf. V. Vareikis, ‘Tarp Valanciaus ir Kudirkos: Zydu ir lietuviy

santykiai katalikiskos kulttros kontekste’, ibid. 81-2. See also L. Truska and V. Vareikis, The Preconditions for the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism in Lithuania, Second Half of the rgth Century—June 1941 / Holokausto prielaidos: Antisemitizmas Lietuvoje XTX a. antrogt puse—1941 m. birgelis (Vilnius, 2004).

6 Sariinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky development of Jewish—Lithuanian relations between the wars, and the social and political impact of the crises which led to foreign occupations in the 1940s.‘ The years of the First Republic (1918-40) came to be seen as a significant period of transforma-

tion: the first modern polity dominated by ethnic Lithuanians decisively impacted inter-communal relations, especially those between Lithuanians and Jews.® A very important general study on Jewish history introducing new approaches and making use of newly opened archival material was published by Solomonas Atamukas in 1998.” His book showed how complex problems could be examined in a dispassionate manner and has established a model, as well as a structure, for the study of Jewish history in Lithuania.

The chapters in this volume reflect this new research and deal with a number of different themes—the specific character of Lithuanian Jewry; the way relations between Jews and Lithuanians developed in the years after 1772, first under tsarist rule and then in independent Lithuania; the devastating impact on the Jewish community and on Lithuanian—Jewish relations of the Soviet and Nazi occupations of the country between 1940 and 1944; the further negative consequences on Jewish life of the reoccupation of the country by the Soviets between 1944 and 1990; and finally the slow revival of Jewish life since independence and the attempts which have been made since then both to investigate the Lithuanian Jewish past and to come to: terms with the difficult legacy of the Holocaust. The concept of the ‘Litvak’, the Jew from Lite, had by the late nineteenth century ’ The Lithuanian Institute of History (Lietuvos istorijos institutas) has considerably expanded the research on the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century context of Jewish social life and Jewish— Lithuanian relations: V. Sirutavitius and D. Stalitinas (eds.), ‘Zydy klausimas’ Lietuvoje XIX a. viduryje

(Vilnius, 2004); see also the collection edited by the same authors, Kai ksenofobya virsta prievarta: Lietuviy ir Zydu santykiy dinamika XIX a—XX a. pirmojoje puséje (Vilnius, 2005) and their Zydai Lietuvos ekonominéje-socialinéje strukturoje: Tarp tarpininko ir konkurento (Vilnius, 2006). See further Boruta, ‘Kataliky baznyéia ir lietuviy—zydy santykiai XTX—XX a.’; cf. Vareikis, “Tarp Valan¢iaus ir Kudirkos’, 81-2, and V. Vareikis and L. Truska, ‘Holokausto prielaidos: Antisemitizmas Lietuvoje XIX a. antroji puseé—1941 birzelis’, in Truska and Vareikis, Preconditions for the Holocaust. The new research

has highlighted the importance of Catholic anti-Judaism in promoting harmful stereotypes as well as the importance of modern economic and racial antisemitism. 8 G. Gustaité, ‘Vyskupas Jurgis Matulaitis ir zydai Vilniaus vyskupijoje, 1918-1925’, Lietuviy kataliky mokslo akademijos metrastis, 14 (1999), 105-13; S. Suziedélis, “The Historical Sources for Antisemitism in Lithuania and Jewish—Lithuanian Relations during the 1930s’, in A. Nikzentaitis, S. Schreiner, and D. Stalitinas (eds.), The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews (Amsterdam, 2004), 119-54; R. Valkauskas, ‘Zydu tautines autonomijos klausimas Lietuvoje 1919—1926 metais’, Lietuvos istoriyos studyos, 3 (1996), 64-71; also the essay by S. Liekis, ‘Zydai: “kaimynai” ar “svetimieji”? Etniniy mazumu problematika Lietuvos istorijos moksle’, Genocidas ir rezistencya, 12 (2002), 114-20. Cf. E. Bendikaite,

‘Dvi ideologijos — vienas judéjimas: Sionistinis socializmas Nepriklausomoje Lietuvoje’, Darbaz ir dienos, 34: Lietuvos tautines mazumos: Lenkat, rusat, Zydai (2003), 255-71. Bendikaite’s most recent publication on the Zionist movement in Lithuania is Siomistinis sqjiidis Lietuvoje (Vilnius, 2006). The most

recent general study of the autonomy issue is the analysis by S. Liekis, 4 State within a State? Jewish Autonomy in Lithuania, 1915—1925 (Vilnius, 2003). 9 S. Atamukas, Lietuvos Zydy kelias: Nuo XIV amZiaus iki XX a. pabaigos (Vilnius, 1998).

Introduction 7 become well established in the Jewish world. In one of his ‘hasidic tales’, “T'svishn tsvey berg’ (“Between Two Mountains’), the Yiddish writer Yitshak Leibush Peretz describes the conflict between the hasidim and their mitnagdic opponents. ‘The story recounts the clash between the Brisker Rov and his best pupil, now the hasidic Bialer Rebbe, who has left him to found a hasidic court. He explains why: ‘Your Torah, Rabbi, is nothing but law. It is without pity. Your Torah contains not a spark of compassion. And that is why it is without joy, without air to breathe. It is nothing but steel and iron—iron commandments, copper laws. It is a very refined Torah, suitable for scholars, for the select few.’ The Brisker rov was silent, so the rebbe continued: “Tell me, Rabbi, what have you got for ordinary people? For the woodchopper, the butcher, the tradesman, the simple man? And, most especially for the sinful man? What do you have to offer those who are not scholars? . . .’

To persuade the Brisker Rov, the Bialer Rebbe takes him to see his followers on Simhat ‘Torah, when they are transformed by the festival. This does not convince the Brisker Rov: ‘We must say the afternoon prayer’, the Brisker vov suddenly announced in his harsh voice— and everything vanished.

Silence fell. The curtain closed again before my eyes. Above me, an ordinary sky, and below, ordinary pasture; ordinary hasidim in torn caftans murmuring old tattered fragments of song. The flames were extinguished. I looked at the rebbe. His face too was somber. They did not reach an understanding. The Brisker rov remained a misnaged, just as before. And that was how he left Biala.

Yet their meeting did have some effect. The vov never again persecuted Hasidim. !°

A similar view of what it was to be a Litvak is given by the Israeli writer Amos Oz

in his recent autobiography. His father was for most of his life an unreconstructed rationalist: My father had a distinctly ‘Lithuanian temperament’... He was a sentimental enthusiastic man, but for most of his life he loathed all forms of mysticism and magic. He considered the supernatural to be the domain of charlatans and tricksters. He thought the tales of the Hasidim to be mere folklore, a word which he always pronounced with the same grimace that accompanied his use of such words as ‘jargon’, ‘ecstasy’, ‘hashish’ or ‘intuition’. +!

A number of different elements are to be found here. ‘The Litvak as a rigorous opponent of mysticism, a rationalist, a radical, an exponent of Yiddish, a person who spoke Yiddish 1n a specific way, and the inhabitant of a cold, northern, impoverished

country. George Orwell said that a cliché was the easiest way to convey complex

information in a condensed manner. In this sense, all these characterizations, however clichéd, do have an element of reality. When did they emerge and how did they become established? 10 Y.L. Peretz, The I. L. Peretz Reader, ed. with intro. R. R. Wisse (New Haven, 2002), 194—5. 11 A. Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness, trans. N. de Lange (London, 2004), 36.

§ Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky The fact that the Grand Duchy retained many specific legal and constitutional features after the Union of Lublin in 1569 is now well established among historians. What is less clear is whether the position of the Jews in the Grand Duchy differed significantly from that in the Korona. Certainly if we look at the legal position of the Jews and the nature of Jewish autonomous institutions we see very similar situations prevailing in the two areas. This is apparent, first, in the general charters granted to the Jews. The earliest primary source confirming the presence of a Jewish community in the Grand Duchy was the privilege for the Jews of Brest granted by Vytautas (Witold) the Great in 1388, which was modelled on that issued by Boleslaw the Pious of Kalisz

in 1264.!* It was confirmed in Lithuania by Grand Duke Zygmunt in 1507 and formed the basis for other guarantees of specific Jewish rights, such as those contained in the Lithuanian Statutes and the laws of the Sejm. In this respect, the legal position of the Jews in the two parts of the Commonwealth did not differ significantly.+°

A similar situation can be found in relation to Jewish autonomous institutions,

both the central institutions—the Council of Four Lands and the Council of Lithuania—and the local keAilot and provincial councils. The relationship between the two general councils is not entirely clear. Before the formal establishment of the Council of Lithuania, the Lithuanian delegates usually held preliminary meetings at Brest before taking part in the deliberations of the Council of the Lands, but the decisions taken there may not have been binding. There are also cases where the Lithuanian delegates did not feel themselves bound by the decisions of the Council of the Lands. After 1623 the Council of Lithuania soon established its full independence but also seems to have accepted a subordinate position to the Council of Four Lands, and where differences occurred the authority of the latter appears to have prevailed. However, there seems to be very little difference in the way the two coun-

cils functioned, as is evident from their minute books; that of the Council of Lithuania survived into the modern period and that of the Korona has been reconstructed by Israel Halpern and Israel Bartal.!4 There is also considerable similarity in the locations of Jewish life in the two areas, 12 The charter of 1264 has not been preserved, but the introduction to the privilege granted by Kazimierz the Great in 1334 states that it is a confirmation of the earlier document: B. Weinryb, Jems of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800 (Philadelphia, 1976), 339 n. 1. The privileges were collected by the Polish chancellor Jan Laski in 1506. For these general charters, see M. Schorr, ‘Krakovskii svod statutov i privilegii’, Evreiskaya starina, 1-2 (1909), no. 2, pp. 247-64; no. 3, pp. 76-100; no. 4, pp. 223-453 id., ‘Zasadnicze prawa Zydow w Polsce przedrozbiorowe;j’, in I. Schiper, A. Tartakower, and A. Hafftka (eds.), Zydzi w Polsce Odrodzoney, 2 vols. (Warsaw, 1932-3), 1. 191-9; M. Balaban, ‘Pravovoi stroi evreev v Pol’she v srednie i novye veka’, Evreiskaya starina, 3 (1910), no. 1, pp. 39—69; no. 2, pp. 161-91; no. 3, pp. 324-45; and 4 (1911), no. 1, pp. 40-54; L. Gumplowicz, Prawodawstwo polskie wzgledem Zydow (Krakow, 1867); and P. Bloch, Die General-Privilegien der polnischen fudenschaft (Poznan, 1892). 13 For this, see S. Lazutka and E. Gudavitius, Privilege to Jews Granted by Vytautas the Great in 1388 (Moscow, 1993).

14 Pinkas va’ad arba aratsot: likutei takanot, ketavim ureshumot, comp. I. Halpern, rev. I. Bartal (Jerusalem, 1990).

Introduction 9 above all in the royal towns, both larger ones such as Krakow, Vilna, Poznan, and Lviv, which were under the jurisdiction of the king or his governor, and smaller ones, under the jurisdiction of a starosta. This was also true of the noble towns, in which from the late sixteenth century the majority of Jews lived, which became the shtetls (small towns) of Jewish popular memory. In both the Korona and the Grand Duchy

of Lithuania they were the product of the ‘marriage of convenience’ between the nobility and the Jews which developed from the mid-seventeenth century in prepartition Poland—Lithuania. Jews began to manage the estates of the nobility through the arenda system of leasing and became the indispensable traders and craftsmen of the rural economy, locating themselves in the small towns and villages of the noble

estates. By the middle of the eighteenth century less than a quarter of the 750,000 Jews in Poland—Lithuania lived in towns under royal authority. The remainder lived in towns and villages controlled by the local nobleman. The work of Adam Teller on the towns of the Radziwill estate has demonstrated that the situation of the Jews in the Grand Duchy was very similar to that on the Czartoryski entail, mostly in the Korona, as examined by Gershon Hundert and Moshe Rosman.?° Finally, there was little difference in the relations between Jews and non-Jews over the Commonwealth as a whole. In Poland and Lithuania, Jews were tolerated in an inferior position in order to confirm the truth of Christianity, as was the case everywhere in western Christendom. At the same time, they constituted here a separate estate with guaranteed rights and performed specific economic functions which gave them an assured and fairly secure position. After 1648, their situation deteriorated in both the Korona and the Grand Duchy, as the Commonwealth fell prey to increasing domestic unrest, foreign violence, and the growth of religious intolerance. The situation in the Grand Duchy was not, in this respect, different from that in the

Korona. The sense of being under pressure here gave rise to the legend of the convert Walentyn Potocki, or Graf Potocki, of Vilna.!® He is supposed to have converted to Judaism along with a noble friend, Zaremba, in Amsterdam. He eventually returned to Vilna, where he was ultimately recognized and arrested. He refused to renounce Judaism, and in 1749, on the second day of the festival of Shavuot, was 15 A. Teller, ‘Radziwill, Rabinowicz and the Rabbi of Swierz: The Magnates’ Attitude towards Jewish Regional Autonomy in 18th Century Poland—Lithuania’, in id. (ed.), Studies in the History of the Jews in

Old Poland: In Honor of Facob Goldberg (Jerusalem, 1998), 246-76; id., ‘The Legal Status of the Jews on the Magnate Estates of Poland—Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century’, Ga/-ed, 15—16 (2000), 41-63;

id., ‘General Arenda and the General Arendarz in Eighteenth Century Lithuania’, in R. Aharonsohn and S. Stampfer (eds.), Yozmut yehudit ba’et hahadashah: mizrah eiropah ve’erets yisra’el (Jerusalem, 2000), 48-78; M. J. Rosman, The Lords’ fews: Magnate—fewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1990); G. Hundert, The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatow in the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, 1992). The most recent publi-

cation in Lithuanian dealing with many issues of Jewish status in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is J. Siaucitinaite-Verbickiene, Zydai Lietuvos DidZiosios Kunigatkstystes visuomeneje: Sambuvio aspektar (Vilnius, 2009).

16 Qn this, see M. Teter, ‘The Legend of Ger Zedek of Wilno as Polemic and Reassurance’, A7S Review, 29 (2005), 237-63.

10 Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky burned at the stake after his tongue had been ripped out, and his ashes were scattered in the area. Those who took part in his execution were said to have suffered divine

punishment, and Potocki was received into heaven by angels, Abraham, and the righteous. His ‘remains’ were re-interred in the mausoleum of the Vilna Gaon in the new Jewish cemetery in SeSkiné when his grave was among those destroyed by the closing of the old Jewish cemetery in Shnipishok (today Snipiskés) in 1948—so. There is no historical basis for the story, although it does echo the actual persecution

of several converts to Judaism, most notably the burning of Rafal Sentimani for apostasy in 1753. What it does reflect is increased Jewish insecurity in the face of the intensified Catholic conversionary effort which occurred 1n the eighteenth century. It does not suggest significant differences from the rest of the Commonwealth. What really led to the emergence of a specific and distinctive ‘Litvak’ identity were the religious conflicts engendered by the rise of hasidism. On his death in 1760 the Ba’al Shem Tov (Israel ben Eliezer; the Besht) left behind what was not yet a movement but rather a circle of devoted followers. Immediately after the death of the Besht, his disciple Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezhirech, assumed the leadership of the movement and began its institutionalization. Hasidism now became “a typical revival or revitalization movement, marked primarily by its charismatic leadership’,

similar in character to the Great Awakening, Methodism, and southern United States revivalism after Reconstruction.!” The disciples of Dov Baer spread out all ~ over Poland—Lithuania, diffusing the message of the movement, above all through preaching and through the conquest of local kehi/ot. As a consequence, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries hasidism expanded rapidly into the rest of Ukraine and, more slowly, into Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland. It proved somewhat difficult to establish hasidism in Lithuania, where resistance to the movement was more effective than in the other areas of the former Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth, with the exception of Wielkopolska. | The conflicts caused by the attempts to establish hasidism in Lithuania had two consequences. The first of these was the emergence of a specifically Lithuanian version of hasidism, and the second the establishment of a new form of Jewish religiosity

among those who resisted the expansion of hasidism, who were known as mitnagedim (opposers). The main centre of the specifically Lithuanian form of hasidism was the province of Polotsk, an area where the hasidim were already well established in 1772. Here Shneur Zalman of Lyady was persuaded to accept the leadership of the local hasidim and establish his court in Liozno in 1786 and to create what came to be known as Lubavitch hasidism. This was much more moderate than its Ukrainian counterpart and R. Shneur Zalman made a determined if unsuccessful attempt to persuade the rabbinic establishment of his orthodoxy. The problems of the succession to his leadership are discussed in the chapter by Immanuel Etkes. 17 A. Green, ‘Early Hasidism: Some Old/New Questions’, in A. Rapoport-Albert (ed.), Hasidism Reappraised (London, 1996), 443.

Introduction II ~The moderation of Shneur Zalman did not convince his opponents, the most important of whom was the Vilna Gaon, Elijah ben Solomon Zalman. In the eyes of its critics, the similarities between the burgeoning hasidic movement and the heresies and antinomian tendencies of Sabbatianism and Frankism were all too apparent. The practices to which they objected are also clear: the new emphasis on prayer, new methods of kosher slaughtering, somersaults during prayer, and neglect of ‘Torah study. All of these must have seemed, in the eyes of the mitnagedim, to link the new movement with the radical religious manifestations in Jewish life in the past three generations, whose remnants were still to be found. They also strongly objected to the movement’s secessionist impulses, which involved separate prayer halls and the rejection of the communal slaughterer. !® Soon, however, it became apparent that it was not sufficient simply to oppose the new movement. The reasons for its attractiveness would have to be recognized and countered. The nineteenth century thus saw a very significant evolution in the character of the mitnagdic opposition to hasidism. In many respects this was a mirror image of the transformation of the hasidic movement. Whereas the hasidim now moved away from stress on the importance of the individual believer establishing a personal rapport with God through cleaving to him and showed more concern for religious observance and talmudic argument, the later mitnagedim began to stress moral attitudes and meditative techniques, while still insisting on the centrality of halakhah. Key figures in the development of this specifically Litvak religious movement were the Vilna Gaon himself and his most important disciple, Hayim ben Isaac of Volozhin (the Volozhiner). It was from the work of the Gaon and the Volozhiner that the Musar movement emerged (musar means ‘ethics’, ‘instruction’, as in Prov. 1: 8: ‘Hear my son the instruction [musar] of your father and do not forsake the

teaching [torah] of your mother’). The Volozhiner’s pupil Joseph Zundel ben Benjamin Benish Salant did not remain long in Lithuania. He refused to accept a rabbinic position and moved to Jerusalem in 1837. Before he did so, he inspired his student Israel ben Ze’ev Wolf Lipkin (Salanter), the founder of the Musar movement, with his ideals of humility and scholarship.+? In this way he sowed the seeds for its further expansion and the strong position it established in Lithuania. A second factor which contributed to the development of the Litvak identity was the specific character of the Haskalah in Lithuania. Vilna remained a centre of traditional Jewish scholarship throughout the nineteenth century and it was at this time that it came to be described as the ‘Jerusalem of Lithuania’. The Haskalah here was rather conservative and saw its goal as the reform of Jewish life through a modernized 18 On this, see M. Wilensky, ‘Hasidic-Mitnaggedic Polemics in the Jewish Communities of Eastern Europe: The Hostile Phase’, in G. Hundert (ed.), Essential Papers on Hasidism (New York, 1991), 244-71; M. Wilensky, Hasidim umitnagedim: letoledot hapolmos shebeinethem bashanim 5532-5575, 2 vols.

(Jerusalem, 1970); and E. J. Schochet, The Hasidic Movement and the Gaon of Vilna (Northvale, NJ, 1994).

19 On Salanter, see I. Etkes, Rabbi Israel Salanter and the Musar Movement: Seeking the Torah of Truth, trans. J. Chipman (Philadelphia, 1993).

12 Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky version of the Hebrew language. It was also more closely linked, as Mordechai Zalkin demonstrates in his chapter, with the German Haskalah because of the geographical proximity of Lithuania to East Prussia. When the government created two rabbinical schools in the tsarist empire in 1844 in order to create a rabbinate capable of carrying

out its agenda of ‘reforming’ the Jewish community (a goal which these schools proved quite incapable of fulfilling), one of them was set up in Vilna. Like its counterpart in Zhitomir, it provided employment for the cream of the Russian Haskalah.

The poet Abraham Dov Lebensohn taught Hebrew here; Wolf Tugendhold, who had also been associated with the Warsaw Rabbinical School, taught Jewish history; Samuel Joseph Fuenn and Judah Behak taught the Jewish religion; while Samuel ben Joseph Strashun (Zaskovitzer) and Hirsh Kliaczko taught Mishnah and ‘Talmud. Hirsh Kliaczko’s son, Julian Klaczko, was to be one of the few exponents of a Polish orientation among the Jews of the area.

Abraham Dov Lebensohn (Adam Hakohen) was not the only Hebrew poet to establish himself in Vilna. It was also the home of his son Micah Joseph Lebensohn,

a more significant talent, and of the most important of the Hebrew poets of the Haskalah, Judah Leib Gordon.?° The most important of the Hebrew novelists of this period, Abraham Mapu, also made his home in Vilna. ‘The city was also the seat

of one of the most important of the Hebrew weeklies established in the 1860s, Hakarmel (“Mount Carmel’), which appeared from 1860 and was edited by Samuel Joseph Fuenn. Hakarmel expressed in somewhat platitudinous language the principal ideas of the first generation of Russian maskilim: the importance of education in the vernacular of the country, the value of secular culture, and the need for moderate Jewish religious reform. The city was also the birthplace of the first major Russian Jewish novelist, Lev Levanda, whose novel Goryachee vremya (‘Seething Times’, 1871) describes the conflict between the Polish and Russian orientations among the local Jewish elite in Vilna and Minsk. The moderate character of the Haskalah meant that it was able to coexist with the dominant mitnagdic religious culture without the bitter conflicts which were found elsewhere. As a result, there was a large group of men in the area who had both some religious and some secular education, which is one of the factors that explain why so many Lithuanian emigrants worked as melamedim or religious functionaries. As Mordechai Zalkin also demonstrates in his chapter, emigration was a further factor in the establishment of the concept of the Litvak both within the tsarist empire and beyond. The nineteenth century was marked by migration of Jews on an enormous scale both beyond the empire’s borders and within it. Between 1880 and 1930 a total of 1,749,000 Jews left Russia for the United States alone, while the total number of Jewish emigrants from the tsarist empire in this period reached nearly 2,285,000. As significant was internal migration within the empire, which began to expand greatly from the first half of the nineteenth century and led to the movement 20 On Gordon, see M. Stanislawski, For Whom Do I Toil? Judah Leth Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry (New York, 1988).

Introduction 13 of tens of thousands of Jews to southern Ukraine, to benefit from the economic upswing there, or, on a much smaller scale, to participate in government schemes to settle them on the land. The number of Jews in the south-western provinces of the empire increased from around 100,000 in the middle of the nineteenth century to nearly a million on the eve of the First World War, and major Jewish settlements emerged here, above all in Odessa. As the industrial revolution began to take off in the Kingdom of Poland in the second half of the century, large numbers of Jews also moved to the rapidly growing industrial centres there, above all Warsaw and Lodz, both from the Kingdom of Poland itself and from the areas which had been part of

the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in particular the provinces of Kaunas, Vilna, Vitebsk, Mogilev, and Minsk, which saw relatively little industrial development in the nineteenth century and were one of the main sources of both internal and overseas emigration.*! This made the rest of the Jewish world much more conscious of the existence and characteristics of the Litvak.

A second major theme in this volume is the way relations between Jews and Lithuanians developed in the years after 1772. This is not to ignore the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional character of the area. The Polish-speaking Lithuanian nobility remained the dominant social stratum in the countryside until the ill-fated 1863 uprising and even beyond, and Polish-speakers were an important part of the urban population, particularly in Vilna and Kaunas. Russian officials and settlers came to

play an increasingly significant role in the years before the First World War. Belarusians, whose national consciousness was also slowly emerging in these years, made up a significant proportion of the population in the eastern parts of the former Grand Duchy. The volume includes a chapter on Zmitrok Byadulya, a Belarusian poet of Jewish origin who was already active before 1914 and who played an important role in the cultural life of Soviet Belarus. Until the late nineteenth century, the overwhelming majority of Lithuanians were

peasants and they lived alongside the Jews, as they did everywhere in the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth, in what has been described as a ‘pattern of “distant proximity” based on continued economic exchange and mutual disdain’. Most Jews were economic middlemen—‘pariah capitalists’ filling a necessary but unpopular position between the two major strata in the Commonwealth, the peasantry and the nobility.2? Contact between Jews and peasants was primarily economic. On market days in the shtetls and during the week as travellers in the countryside, the Jews purchased agricultural produce from the peasants and sold them goods produced in the towns. In these circumstances other forms of contact which developed from this economic nexus persisted into the nineteenth century, 21S. D. Corrsin, Warsaw before the First World War: Poles and Jews in the Third City of the Russian Empire, r8S8o—1914 (Boulder, Colo., 1989). For more discussion of the ‘Litvak invasion’ and references,

see B. Garncarska-Kadary, Helkam shel hayehudim behitpatehut hata’astyah shel varshah bashanim 1816/20-1914 (Tel Aviv, 1985), 292; S. Ury, ‘The Lodz Jewish Community’, unpublished. 22 FE. Morawska, ‘Polish—Jewish Relations in America, 1880-1940: Old Elements, New Configurations’, Polin, 19 (2006), 72.

14 Sarunas Liekis and Antony Polonsky including consultation on medical matters, the role played by Christian servants in Jewish homes, and the mutual influences of the folk music of the two groups. This interaction led to the creation of deep-rooted prejudices on both sides. ‘The attitude of the Lithuanian peasant to the local Jews is summed up by the ethnographer Ignas Kon¢ius (his description is of Samogitians—Lithuanian lowlanders— but it applies equally to the rest of the country). The Jew was seen as separate: The Jew has a beard, he prays in a particular way . . . he eats from his own dishes, he washes his hands before eating, has too much respect for Saturday . . . ‘The Jews are noticed by the people because of their strange behaviour. The Jews follow their oldest traditions . . . [They] don’t have church bells. On Fridays, at the end of the market day, an old Jew goes into the middle of the street and shouts in Yiddish: ‘Gez shule arein!’ (Come to the Synagogue!)

The peasants despised the Jews for their lack of connection to the land: The Jew is disliked because of his occupation. The job of artisan or trader is not respected and a man who does this job is not respected as well. The honorable job is a productive job. But not the occupation of pauper, exploiter, middleman. He [the Jew] manages to live by not working, eats good food and is dressed in clean clothes . . . The most respected occupations are the dirtiest, hardest jobs, the job of farmer, agricultural worker. Those who do these jobs are respected. They produce. They earn bread themselves.??

This contempt was reciprocated by the Jews, who saw the Lithuanian peasants as ignorant, impoverished, and prone to violence. In their view, the peasants, to whom they felt greatly superior, were uncivilized and uncultured, primarily a source of material livelihood. The term ‘goy’, which literally meant merely ‘non-Jew’, was taken to signify a peasant and was used to denote a person who was ignorant and driven by crude emotional urges, the antithesis of what a Jew should aspire to be. At the same time, a certain compassion was felt for the impoverished conditions in which the peasants lived, which in many cases was significantly worse than the Jews’

own situation.2* The relationship between Jewish traders and farmers in the Lithuanian provinces forms the subject of the chapter by Aelita Ambruleviciute. The religious divide reinforced the wide gap between the two groups. ‘The peasants saw the Jews as adherents of a religion which was not only false but deicidal and found Jewish religious practice bizarre and incomprehensible. Their attitudes were reinforced by the supersessionist attitude to Judaism which was the official doctrine

of the Roman Catholic Church. To the Jews Christianity was both idolatrous and hypocritical, since in their eyes it combined a call to ‘turn the other cheek’ with encouragement of violent antisemitism. The role of religious Judaeophobia in the Lithuanian antisemitic discourse is discussed in the chapter by Darius Staliiinas. The beginnings of modern nationalism in the years before and after the Polish uprising of 1863-4 strengthened these attitudes and also fostered the development 23 T. Konéius, Zemaicio snekos (Vilnius, 1996), 65-6, quoted in Liekis, A State within a State?, 35-6.

24 Ibid.

Introduction 15 of new forms of hostility. Traditional anti-Judaic sentiments were found widely among the nationally minded Catholic clergy. Thus Motiejus Valancius, bishop of Samogitia between 1850 and 1875, called on peasants to avoid Jewish innkeepers in his temperance campaign which began in 1858. In his admonition Paaugusiy Zmoniy knygele (‘Little Book for Grown-Up Folks’, 1868) he warned his followers that Jews

in general sought only material advantage for themselves and that extreme care should be taken in any dealings with them. However, in line with the Church’s teaching he also made it clear that violence should not be used against ‘God’s children’. Vincas Kudirka, one of the founders of modern Lithuanian nationalism, articulated a more modern form of antisemitism, arguing not only that Jews were ‘our most terrible enemies . . . the most vicious wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing’ who used their cunning to entice peasants into taverns, but also that this was a product of their inner nature which could not be modified by education or assimilation.?° In

addition, antisemitic stereotypes can frequently be found in articles in early Lithuanian nationalist periodicals printed in East Prussia and smuggled into the tsarist empire, such as Ausra (‘Dawn’) and Varpas (“The Bell’). As early as 1899 an issue of Varpas called on Lithuanians to ‘engage in industry, undertake trading, and oust the foreigners’.*° Similar views are also to be found in the Lithuanian Catholic periodical Zemaiciy ir Lietuvos ap&valga (‘The Samogitian and Lithuanian Review’),

which appeared between 1890 and 1896 and was edited by Fr. Kazimieras Pakalniskis. According to him, ‘Everyone who loves God has to help us to save our nation and Motherland from the Jews.’*’ One motif in the attack on Jews, as in Poland, was hostility to Russian-speaking Jews, who were seen as agents of Russification. Anti-Jewish violence in the period after the assassination of Alexander IT in 1881 was on a relatively small scale, and the only incident which could be classed as a fullscale pogrom took place in Prienai (Suwatki province) on 3 August 1882 after an altercation at the market. In the ensuing violence, between fifteen and twenty Jews were wounded and much property destroyed.2® There was a further upsurge of vio-

lence after 1900 and over twenty incidents in northern Lithuania (the districts of Panevezys and Siauliai) are recorded in tsarist records. These generally took place on Sundays, church holidays, or market days, or during fairs when people gathered from the neighbouring and more distant villages and towns. During the 1905 revolution violent clashes between Lithuanians and Jews took place in Dusetai and later in Buivydiskeés. Violence also erupted after a blood libel accusation in 1908 in the 25 Suziedélis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 121-2. On Kudirka, see also V. Sirutavicius, ‘Vincas Kudirka’s Programme for Modernizing Society and the Problems of Forming a National Intelligentsia’, Lithuanian Historical Studies, 5 (2000), 109-12.

26 Quoted in A. Eidintas, Jems, Lithuanians and the Holocaust, trans. V. Arbas and E. Tuskenis (Vilnius, 2003), 37 (translation modified). 27 Zemaiciy ir Lietuvos apzvalga, 1892, no. 17, p. 13, quoted in Liekis, A State within a State?, 38. 28 D. Stalitinas, ‘Anti-Jewish Disturbances in the North-Western Provinces in the Early 1880s’, East European Fewish Affairs, 34/2 (2004), 126.

16 Sariinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky small town of Buivydziai, near Vilna, following the disappearance of a Christian child.?9 At the same time, in the years before the First World War antisemitic views had been rather marginal, and the attempt in late 1905 by the Lithuanian Christian

Democrat Antanas Staugaitis to create a Lithuanian antisemitic newspaper to counter Jewish ‘economic and social domination’, modelled on papers like Ro/a in Poland, proved vain.*° In 1912 the nationalist leader Antanas Smetona wrote that,

although there were no close links between Lithuanians and Jews, who lived a ‘closed’ life and ‘only pursue their own interests’, both Lithuanian and Jewish political movements were founded on ‘democratic principles’. Lithuanians should seek

to develop themselves rather than ‘restrict’ others.?+ There seemed to be no fundamental economic conflict between the emerging Lithuanian intelligentsia and Jews, and the Lithuanian nationalists were more comfortable with specifically Jewish cultural manifestations than with Jewish acculturation to Russian, Polish, or German

culture. Jews and Lithuanians co-operated in elections to the Duma in order to counteract the bias in the electoral system in favour of Russians and landowners. In the elections to the first and second Dumas, the Lithuanian Jewish bloc won seven

seats, and in those to the third and fourth Dumas, four. In the short-lived first Duma, the Lithuanian Jewish politician Leon Bramson delivered a strong speech against the tsarist attempts to suppress the Lithuanian language, while in the second Duma a Lithuanian socialist deputy, Andrius Bulota, spoke out against the persecution of the Jews. In the spring of 1913, in response to the Polish boycott of Jewish

trade, the brothers Lurya and Saul Katzenelenbogen, together with Nathan Birnbaum, attempted to publish a periodical advocating Jewish co-operation with the Lithuanians and Belarusians as a counterweight to Polish influence in the area. The periodical collapsed because of a lack of financial resources, but the group did manage to publish a book in Yiddish, Lite (Vilna, 1913), which included articles on the Lithuanian and Belarusian national movements. Lithuanian—Jewish contacts were also fostered through the masonic lodge Jednosé which was established in Vilna

in 1909 and the lodge Litwa which seceded from it.°? The significance of modern antisemitism in Lithuanian political discourse is also discussed in Darius Stalitinas’s chapter, while the similarities between Jews and Lithuanians in the search for an authentic ‘folk culture’ is examined by Larisa Lempertiené.

The emergence of an independent Lithuanian state after the First World War transformed the relationship between Jews and Lithuanians. Although the history of this state reveals many political failures, it is also clear that, even during the 29 T). Stalitinas, ‘Was Lithuania a Pogrom-Free Zone?’, unpublished. See also V. Zaltauskaité, ‘Smurtas pries zydus Siaures Lietuvoje 1900 metais: [vykiai ir interpretacijos’, in Sirutavicius and Stalitinas (eds.), Kai ksenofobya virsta prievarta, 79-88 (Eng. summary p. 263).

30 V. Sirutavicius, ‘Notes on the Origin and Development of Modern Lithuanian Antisemitism in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century’, in Nikzentaitis, Schreiner, and Staliiinas (eds.), Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews, 63-4.

31 Tbid. 64—5. 32 On this, see Liekis, 4 State within a State?, 43-4.

Introduction 17 authoritarian period after the coup by Antanas Smetona in December 19206, civil society continued to develop. Illiteracy was largely eradicated and impressive advances were also made in social and intellectual life. In addition, the land reform created a prosperous farming community whose products made up the bulk of the country’s exports. The Lithuanian language was unified and became an effective tool of administration, while Lithuanian national consciousness was much more firmly established on the eve of the first Soviet occupation than in 1918. Kaunas erew from a relatively small town and Russian frontier fortress with a population of 70,000 in 1914, toa modern capital with 154,000 inhabitants in 1939, housing government offices, museums, and the University of Lithuania. Lithuanians, who had made up only 17.6 per cent of the town’s population in 1910, now constituted over 60 per cent. The town also remained a major Jewish cultural centre, with six Yiddish daily newspapers, two Yiddish theatres, forty synagogues, and four Hebrew high schools. Inevitably, these new conditions created a very different relationship between Jews and Lithuanians from that which had existed for most of the nineteenth century. In the first place, the Lithuanian government in the early years of independence agreed to the establishment of a far-reaching system of Jewish autonomy. Given the very specific character of Lithuania, derived from the mitnagdic and musar tradition, the absence of much acculturation, whether of the Polish or the Russian variety, and the strength in the area of a Hebrew-based Haskalah and of Zionism, the country seemed the ideal soil on which to establish a system of Jewish autonomy on the lines advocated by the followers of Simon Dubnow and the Folkist party and which was adopted as official policy for large Jewish communities by the Twelfth Zionist Congress in Karlsbad in September 1921. This also seemed to be in the interests of both Jews and Lithuanians. As we have seen, the two groups had co-operated before the war in elections to the Duma, and the Lithuanian political leaders hoped that the Jews would support their claims to Vilna. Given the mixed character of the area, Jewish national autonomy would also make the state more attractive to Belarusians and Germans who might be incorporated into it. The importance of Vilna for the Jewish world is highlighted in the chapter by Ausra Pazeraité on the large number of Jewish prayer halls and synagogues in the city at the end of the First World War. The origins of the autonomous system lay in the period of the emergence of Lithuania. In September 1918, as German rule in the area was collapsing, a Zionist Central Committee was established in Vilna which supported the Lithuanian claims to the city. Shortly afterwards, the German authorities set up a Lithuanian parliament (taryba) and called on it to respect minority rights. Three Jews represented the Jewish community in the new Lithuanian government: Dr Simon Rosenbaum, viceminister for foreign affairs; Dr Nakhman Rakhmilevich, vice-minister for trade and industry; and Dr Jacob Wygodzki, minister for Jewish affairs. ‘This government was forced to move to Kaunas just prior to the Polish capture of Vilna on 1 January 1919; the Poles were themselves displaced five days later by the Bolsheviks, who were in

18 Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky turn to be expelled by the Polish legionaries on 19 April. Dr Max Soloveitchik replaced Wygodzki in the Lithuanian government. What the Jews understood by autonomy was clearly set out in Point 5 of the memorandum submitted by the Committee of Jewish Delegations to the Paris Peace

Conference, which demanded that the Jewish minority be recognized as an autonomous and independent organization with the right to direct its own religious, cultural, philanthropic, and social institutions. In relation to Lithuania, the Jews asked for full rights in the spheres of politics, economics, and language; for representation in parliament, administrative bodies, and courts to be based on the Jewish proportion of the population; and for autonomy to be based on three sets of institutions: local kehilot, a National Jewish Council, and a Ministry for Jewish Affairs. As is well known this experiment failed. The reasons are clear and have been fully examined by Sariinas Liekis in his monograph on the subject, A State within a State? The two sides had unrealistic expectations of each other. ‘The Lithuanians believed

that the Jews would aid them in acquiring Vilna and Memel and in attracting Belarusians to a multinational Lithuania. They had much less need of the Jews in the fairly homogeneous Lithuania which actually emerged, while it soon became clear that Jewish support would not be a significant factor in acquiring Vilna. The Jews, for their part, took too seriously assurances made by the leading Lithuanian politicians, whose commitment to Jewish autonomy was always dependent on their larger goals. There were other reasons for the failure of the experiment too. It fell prey to the Lithuanian party conflict, and the degree of consensus necessary for its success was absent in the Jewish community, where there were bitter conflicts between the Zionists, the Orthodox, the Folkists, and the Bundists. It may be, too, that there is an inherent contradiction between the basic principles of the liberal state and the guaranteeing of group rights. The struggle for the control of the Jewish street continued after the establishment of the Smetona regime. As in Poland, the Folkists declined in significance with the collapse of the autonomist experiment. The Bund, lacking a large working-class Jewish base outside Vilna, which was now under Polish rule, failed to exhibit the same dynamism as in Poland. This history of the Bund in inter-war Vilna is the subject of the chapter by Jack Jacobs. Communism, though very much a minority movement, was also able to attract some radical young people in a period marked by the rise of fascism and few economic opportunities. The two main groupings in the community remained the Orthodox and the Zionists. It was Zionism, 1n its various forms, which seemed in the 1930s to be the more dynamic.*? Zionist youth movements expanded rapidly during this period. At this time, Hashomer Hatsa’ir had around 4,500 members, while Gordonia and Betar also expanded rapidly. So too did the Hehaluts (Pioneer) movement, which prepared young men and women for agricultural settlement in Palestine. The development of socialist Zionism in Lithuania is the theme of the chapter by Egle Bendikaite. 33 ‘Zionism in Lithuania’, in Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel, 2 vols. (New York, 1971), 11. 726-67.

Introduction 19 Lithuania was also a stronghold of the religious Zionist movement Mizrahi. Contributions to the Zionist movement in the form of shekels sold to supporters (the ‘coin’ representing membership in the Zionist organization) were also very high.°* The Orthodox retained considerable influence and the major Lithuanian yeshivas in TelSiai, Panevezys, and Slobodka (in Lithuanian, Vilijampole, a part of Kaunas) all flourished in the 1930s. On the eve of the Second World War, that in TelSiai had over five hundred students.*° At the same time, they were seen as compromised in many parts of Jewish society because of their close links with the increasingly unpopular Smetona regime. The large number of private Jewish schools survived the collapse of the system of

autonomy, and, by contrast with the situation in Poland, Jewish primary and toa lesser extent secondary schools were given considerable state financial support.®© As in Poland, there were three main school systems: the Zionist Tarbut network, which

used Hebrew as the language of instruction, with which was linked the Hebrewlanguage Zionist-Orthodox school system Pshore (Compromise); the Orthodox Yavneh network; and the leftist Yiddish network of the Kulturlige (Culture League). In 1925, 93 per cent of Jewish children of primary-school age attended Jewish primary schools and 80 per cent of those of secondary-school age attended Jewish secondary schools. This percentage diminished slightly, but in 1935, 80 per cent of all Jewish children of school-going age attended Jewish schools.

| Most successful were the Tarbut schools, which in the academic year 1930/1 had a network of eighteen kindergartens, eighty-one primary schools, and eleven secondary schools (more than in Poland). In all there were 15,446 pupils and 542 teachers. The expansion of the Tarbut system was one of the main reasons for the strength of Zionism in Lithuania. It was partly the result of Lithuanian government support. In the academic year 1936/7, nearly half the Tarbut budget was provided by the government, which made itself responsible for almost all primary-school financing.?/ The Yavneh religious school network, which also used Hebrew as the language of instruction and was not programmatically anti-Zionist, comprised about a third

of the Jewish schools in the country. The smallest network was the secular Yiddishist system, supported by both the Folkists and the Bund, which in the interwar period had between fifteen and twenty primary schools and two high schools (in Kaunas and Ukmergée).?® 34 On these movements, see Y. Amit, ‘“Hashomer hatsa’ir”’, Yahadut lita, 2 (1972), 203-6; P. Rudnik, ‘“Gordoniyah”’, ibid. 211-14; M. Kats, ‘Hatenuah hareviziyonistit belita’, ibid. 222; M. Elyashiv, “Tenuat “hehaluts” belita’, ibid. 236-9; D. Reznik, ‘Ha“mizrahi” utenuat “torah va’avodah” belita’, ibid. 215-17. 35 E. M. Blokh, ‘Di telzer yeshive’, in M. Sudarski, U. Katsenelenbogen, and Y. Kissin (eds.), Lite, i (New York, 1951), 483—690; G. Alon, ‘Yeshivot lita’, in Kehilot yisra’el sheneheravu (Tel Aviv, 1944),

QI-9. 86 Liekis, A State within a State?, 142-4. 37 TD. Lipets, ‘Hahinukh ha’ivri vehatenuah ha’ivrit belita ha’atsma’it’, Yahadut lita, 2 (1972), 113-29.

38 Y.-R. Halevi Etsion, ‘Hazerem hahinukhi “yavneh” belita’, Yahadut lita, 2, (1972), 160-5; Y. Mark, ‘Beit hasefer hayidish belita ha’atsma’it’, ibid. 166-96. See also E. Shulman, ‘Di yidishe veltlekhe shuln in lite’, in H. Laykovich (ed.), Lite, ii (Tel Aviv, 1965), 323—50.

20 Sariinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky Some Jews attended the Russian-language private school system but increasingly

Jewish parents began to send their children to the state system, partly because of reductions in the amount of state funding to Jewish private schools in the 1930s. By 1935/6, the number of Jewish children attending state primary schools had risen to 3,483 (over a fifth of all Jewish children of school-going age).*° In addition, a private

Jewish Lithuanian-language secondary school was established in Kaunas, partly because of the advantage this gave to those who wished to attend university. Here there was less discrimination than in Poland. When the University of Lithuania was established in Kaunas in 1922, Jews constituted about a third of the student body and were particularly concentrated in the law and medical faculties. Calls for a numerus clausus were not heeded, but by 1935 the percentage of Jewish students had fallen to 15 per cent (486 of 3,223).*° The inter-war years saw the slow acculturation of Lithuanian Jewry, although as late as 1937, 98 per cent of those who declared themselves as ‘Jews by religion’ also

described themselves as ‘Jews by nationality’, and less than 1 per cent as of ‘Lithuanian nationality’.4! Intermarriage with Lithuanians was also rare: in 1922 only 0.8 per cent of Jewish marriages were with a partner of a different nationality. The extent of intermarriage and conversion is examined in the chapter by Saulius Kaubrys. One sign of change was the establishment in June 1935 of a Lithuanianlanguage weekly, Apzvalga (‘Review’), by the Union of Jewish Soldiers (Zydu kariu sajunga). A second Jewish weekly, Miasy garsas (“Our Voice’), a supplement to Di yidishe shtime (‘The Jewish Voice’), existed briefly in the 1920s. The character of these periodicals is the subject of the chapter by Anna Verschik. In November 1937

Jewish organizations in Kaunas called a meeting which adopted a resolution condemning the use of Russian in public places on the grounds that this ‘intensely irritates Lithuanians’.42 The growth of a group of Lithuanian-speaking Jews led the nationalist daily Lietuvos aidas to comment on 20 August 19290: A few years ago it was difficult to find a Jew who could speak fine Lithuanian and was acquainted with Lithuanian literature, but now we can see among the Jews young philologists who easily compete with young Lithuanian linguists. This is a sign that the Lithuanian Jews will go in the same direction as the Jews of other civilized countries, contributing their part to the cultural treasures of those nations in whose states they live.

One important phenomenon of the inter-war period was the social advance of Lithuanians, and their movement into new occupations, a natural and inevitable consequence of the establishment of a Lithuanian state. This often meant competing

with and sometimes displacing Jews (and also Poles and Germans). In the early twentieth century, the overwhelming majority of Lithuanians had been small 39 Lipets, ‘Hahinukh ha’ivri’, 115-17. 40 Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Baltic States (London, 1938), 31. 41 T_. Hersh, ‘Tsu der demografye fun der yidisher bafelkerung in kovner lite erev der tsveyter velt-

milkhome’, Y/VO-bleter, 34 (1950), 274. | 42 Suziedeélis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 129.

Introduction 21 farmers. According to the Russian census of 1897, in the province of Kaunas, and the districts of the Suwatki and Vilna provinces in which Lithuanians were a majority, 93 per cent of those who described themselves as Lithuanian were peasants, 4 per cent city-dwellers, and 3 per cent landowners. Only fourteen Lithuanians described themselves as merchants.*? At this time Lithuanians made up only a very small proportion of town-dwellers: 2.1 per cent of those in Vilna province, 8.9 per cent of those in Kaunas province, and 17.5 per cent of those in Suwatki province. However, in response to falling agricultural prices in the last decades of the nineteenth century some Lithuanians were moving off the land and, according to the 1897 census, Lithuanians constituted some 14 per cent of traders in the Lithuanian lands.

The economy remained agricultural throughout the inter-war period and expanded moderately, above all through the export of agricultural products. It was still one of the poorest countries in Europe. During these years there was a substantial development of co-operatives, which had begun to emerge under the German occupation. By 1939 there were some 2,000 of these, of which 640 were consumer co-operatives, 473 dairy co-operatives, and 587 credit co-operatives.** Several, such as Linas, the flax producers’ and exporters’ co-operative, Pienocentras, which dealt

with dairy produce, Lietuvos cukrus for sugar, and the general agricultural cooperatives Maistas and Lietiikis, grew into very large enterprises and established a

monopolistic position in foreign trade, controlling 77 per cent of the country’s exports in 1939. Liettikis was responsible for all the fertilizer and half the oil and cement imports into the country, while Linas, founded in 1935, was responsible for 58 per cent of the exports of flax products, an area previously mainly in the hands of Jewish middlemen. In addition, the state owned an important share of the national

economy, amounting to just under 40 per cent of the joint-stock capital in the country. Much less effort was devoted to non-agricultural industry, which remained on a small scale and was still largely in German and Jewish hands. This also reflected gov-

ernment policy. In the words of Domas Cesevicius, general secretary of the Lithuanian Nationalist Union (Lietuviy tautininky sajunga), “The aim of the government became clear: the economy would be national and Lithuanian only when agricultural industries led by Lithuanians would grow to such an extent that they would naturally dominate non-agricultural, i.e. non-Lithuanian industries.’4° Lithuanians also began to move into small trading, a sector previously dominated by Jews. In 1923 Jews constituted over three-quarters of those involved in this sector, in which 32 per cent of economically active Jews found employment. By 1936, the number of commercial enterprises owned by ethnic Lithuanians had 43 A Fidintas, ‘Restoration of the State’, in A. Eidintas, V. Zalys, and A. E. Senn, Lithuania in European Politics: The Years of the First Republic, 1915~1940, ed. E. Tuskenis (New York, 1999), 16.

Polhttics, 117. 45 Quoted ibid. 119. 44 A. Eidintas, ‘The Presidential Republic’, in Eidintas, Zalys, and Senn, Lithuania in European

22 Sartinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky trebled and those in Jewish hands had diminished by about a tenth. The number of shops owned by Lithuanians had increased from one-tenth to one-half of the total.*© Lithuanians were certainly now much better established in trade and industry. When in 1936 a Chamber for Trade, Industry, and Crafts was established under government auspices to represent all owners of trading and industrial enterprises, Lithuanians made up 63 per cent of its members and Jews 28 per cent.*’ Jews attempted to protect their economic position by establishing co-operative banks to provide cheap credit. The first two such banks were established in Kaunas and Radviliskis in January 1920, and by October of that year seventy-five such banks were in existence with a capital of 30 million marks. Their primary function was to assist small traders and artisans but they also on occasion financed schools. Their attempts to settle Jews on the land were, however, largely unsuccessful, in contrast to those undertaken in the Soviet Union. Much of their initial capital came from

the Jewish National Council. A central body, the Central Bank, and a Central Association of People’s Banks were also created.*® Economic conflict was an important source of antisemitism, which is described

in the chapter by Vladas Sirutavicius. One reflection of this was the attempt to increase the number of Lithuanians in the towns, for example in the capital Kaunas, which had previously been dominated by Poles and Jews. Thus in 1926 a memorandum was submitted to the authorities asking the president to assist in establishing ‘Lithuanian neighbourhoods’ in the city, since Jews were charging lower rents to their co-religionists and thus preventing the influx of Lithuanians. This issue would have to be dealt with by the national government, because ‘nothing positive [can be expected] from the local bodies of self-government since the dominant element in the City Council is composed of non-Lithuanians, who had, have, and will have a negative attitude on the question of strengthening the Lithuanian element’.*? One organization which articulated the demands for a larger Lithuanian share in

the economy was the Lithuanian Businessmen’s Union (Lietuviy verslininky sajunga), established in 1930. Although initially it attacked German economic influ-

ence, claiming in its weekly, Vers/as (‘Business’), on 31 March 1932 that “he Germans have long been and, perhaps, have remained the most malevolent of our nation’s enemies because they are the most clever’, it soon came to see the Jews as its primary target. When it attacked the government for favouring Jews over native Lithuanians, several leading politicians, including the mayor of Kaunas, Antanas Merkys, who became prime minister in November 1939, responded by criticizing the association and reaffirming the government’s commitment to protect minorities. For several years, the antisemitic tone of Vers/as was moderated, but its attacks on Jews resurfaced in its issue of 16 December 1938, when it called for ‘laws which 46 Fidintas, ‘The Presidential Republic’, 134.

47 Thid. 134-5. 48 Liekis, A State within a State?, 141-2. 49 Lietuvos centrinis valstybés archyvas, Vilnius (hereafter LCVA), f. 922, ap. 1, b. 13, fos. 57-9, 723, quoted in Suziedélis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 126.

Introduction 23 would regulate the Jewish question’ and specifically for the establishment of quotas

in employment and business ‘until such time as the majority percentage of Lithuanians is also reflected in commerce’.°? It is difficult to assess how seriously these initiatives undermined the economic position of the Jewish community. Certainly Jews continued to emigrate when this was possible. Between 1920 and 1940 some 30,000 Lithuanian Jews left the country, most moving to South Africa and Palestine, and the Jewish population fell to around 150,000.°! Over 9,000 of those who left went to Palestine, another indication of the strength of Zionism in Lithuania. Outside obsevers often commented on the decline of the Lithuanian shtetl. The statistician Jacob Lestchinsky has given a description of the situation in Balbieriskis, a small town near Kaunas: During the past 3 years about 10 Jewish stores have closed down here and the rest, their shelves empty, are deserted for weeks at a stretch . .. How does one really earn a living here? There are very few artisans, less than half of the number before the war. Certain trades that were once monopolized by Jews are now Judenrein. There is not a single Jewish blacksmith in town, not a house-painter, tinsmith or shoemaker (except for one cobbler). ‘Their place had been taken in recent years by Lithuanians . . . The few Jewish carpenters in town have been unemployed for years and have had to accept work as day-laborers in a factory. One Jewish carpenter, who was too proud to ask for a job in the gentile factory or whose health perhaps doesn’t permit him, would long ago have forgotten how a plane or saw looks, if it were not for occasionally shaping a board for a coffin at some funeral.°?

At the same time, the overall Jewish share in economic life remained considerable. In 1939 Jews controlled an estimated 20 per cent of Lithuania’s export trade and 40

per cent of its import trade. Jews were still well represented in the professions, making up more than 40 per cent of the country’s doctors and lawyers in 1937. The largest leather-processing plant in the country in Siauliai was owned by a Jew, and other Jewish-owned firms included a major linen-trading company, a major brick factory, a brewery producing a third of the beer in the country, and cotton and wool mills. There were also some firms jointly owned by Jews and Lithuanians, including the main insurance company in the country and the most important construction company.°?

Antisemitism did not play an important role in the political posture of the Smetona regime, as is clear from the chapter by Vladas Sirutavicius. Although Smetona and his supporters had no interest in re-establishing the system of Jewish autonomy, they regarded the Jews as less dangerous to the state than the Polish and German minorities. A Nationalist memorandum prepared during the crisis which led to the coup of December 1926 stressed the need for an ‘ethnic national state’. 50 Quoted in Suziedélis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 128. °l Hersh, “Tsu der demografye fun der yidisher bafelkerung’, 276. 52 J. Lestchinsky, ‘The Economic Struggle of the Jews in Independent Lithuania’, femish Social

Studies, 8/4 (1946), 276. 53 Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust, 107-8.

24 Sariinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky Yet it conceded that Jews were the only minority which could be allowed to ‘participate in the government . . . without harm to the state’s independence’, since, unlike the Poles and Germans, they had neither dangerous foreign backers nor irredentist claims.°* Antisemitic activity was also suppressed by law. In January 1934, the minister of national defence, Balys Giedraitis, issued an order to local government officials calling on them to prosecute those responsible for organizing actions against Jews.°° Smetona himself condemned antisemitism on several occasions. At a conference of the Lithuanian Nationalist Union in the same year, he asserted: ‘The Egyptians were not Aryans, yet no one can deny their great culture. The Japanese are a yellowskinned race, yet their power today is undeniable. The Jews are Semites . . . and how

great has been their impact on mankind. They gave us the Bible.’ The national minorities were not foreigners, but fellow citizens. Minority cultures should be respected.°© In a speech given in January 1935 he attacked the racial theories of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, arguing that it was not possible to ‘speak seriously about national or racial purity, when science and technology have so facilitated and speeded communications’. The United States was an example of a ‘first-rate power’ which had assimilated many nations. While he rejected the ‘other extreme’ of ‘indiscriminate nation-mixing’, he stressed that there were no good or bad nations. Ina speech on 5 January 1938 he argued that for the nationalist ideal to remain alive, it must include ‘a basis in universal human values’ and that it would be ‘impoverished by narrow nationalism’. He also claimed proudly that ‘in our country we do not have such antisemitism as in other states’.°/ The older generation of nationalists were suspicious of Germany and Nazism and were also sympathetic to Zionism and to Jewish aspirations in Palestine. In response to the riots of 1929, Lietuvos aidas wrote on 3 September: Every day terrible news flows from Palestine. Fired by religious and nationalistic fanaticism, the Arabs are attacking and murdering the unfortunate Jewish colonists ... The Zionist idea cannot be unattractive to any person who loves his own country. Formerly it was said that the Jews are a parasitic, purely cosmopolitan nation without any noble ideals and whose messiah is money. The Zionist movement has proven that this is not true.°®

In addition, the antisemitic excesses of Polish university students in Vilna gave the Lithuanians the opportunity both to vaunt their moral superiority and to assert their claim to the city. Thus, after the violence in November 1931, the nationalist Lietuvos aidas asserted on the 14th of that month that ‘Independent Lithuania cannot forget that all of the inhabitants of the occupied Vilnius district, without regard to religious, national or other differences, are her children.’ On the following day the Jews of Kaunas petitioned the government ‘to intervene and take steps to ensure the 54 LCVA, f. 1557, ap. 1, b. 208, fos. 1-2, quoted in SuZiedélis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’,

148. 55 LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 23, fo. 100, cited in Eidintas, ‘Presidential Republic’, 135. 56 Fidintas, ‘Presidential Republic’, 135-6.

°7 Quoted in Suziedeélis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 140. ©8 Quoted ibid. 132.

Introduction 25 lives of our brothers in Lithuanian Vilnius, the Jerusalem of Lithuania’. On 18 November, prominent Lithuanians and Jews spoke at a large demonstration organized by the Jewish—Lithuanian Association for Cultural Co-operation (Zydu lietuviy kultirinio bendradarbiavimo sajyunga). They included Juozas Purickis, who had

been foreign minister between December 1920 and December 1921 and who asserted that ‘Until now Lithuania has not been soiled with the blood of Jews.’°* The 1930s saw an increase in antisemitism, partly the result of the impact of the Great Depression. In October 1931 four youths vandalized a Jewish cemetery in Klaipeda, while in the following month in a small town near Kaunas the police had to intervene when ‘three hooligans began to smash Jewish windows and tried to beat a Jewish woman’. There were a number of clashes between Lithuanian and Jewish university students, and ritual murder accusations in Varniai and Telsiai in late 1935 and in Kretinga in the summer of 1936 led to anti-Jewish violence. In none of these were there fatalities and the police ultimately intervened to protect the Jews.©° The fact that the police regularly intervened to curb anti-Jewish violence led to antisemites referring to Smetona as ‘king of the Jews’. Clashes of this sort became considerably more frequent in the late 1930s as the international position of Lithuania became increasingly insecure. Police reports record cases of vandalism against Jewish institutions and the distribution of antiJewish leaflets by unidentified groups of ‘patriots’.©! They became more frequent after the Nazi seizure of Klaipeda (Memel). In late April 1939 agitators called on refugees from the town who had moved to nearby Kretinga (in all, some 10,000 people had left the town after the German takeover) to demonstrate ‘because the Jewish [exiles] have occupied most of the apartments, while the Lithuanian refugees have to live in schools’. On this occasion no demonstration occurred because, as the police reported, ‘the [Lithuanian] refugees did not approve the [proposed] action’.©? On 18 June, the small and rather isolated town of Leipalingis south of Kaunas was the scene of the most serious outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in independent Lithuania, which also had an anti-government character. On market day, a brawl between a Lithuanian and a Jewish shopkeeper in which the former’s hand was cut by broken glass provoked a riot, led by the head of the local nationalist Riflemen’s Union (Sauliu sajunga), in which much property was damaged, although no one was killed. The background to the riot was the growing economic tension in the area caused by the impact of the Great Depression, as a result of which the price of agricultural goods fell in relation to the products of industry, and conflicts over the movement of Lithuanians into the town and the expansion of the local Lithuanian

59 Tbid. 133-5. 6° On these incidents, see ibid. 130-1. 61 Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, California, Edvardas Turauskas papers, box 7: Lithuanian State Security Department Report no. 313, 13 Dec. 1939, quoted in SuZiedélis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 130. 62 LCVA, f. 378, ap. 11, b. 214, fo. 1: report of 5 June 1939, quoted in Suziedélis, ‘Historical Sources

for Antisemitism’, 139. A large number of antisemitic incidents is documented in Ejidintas, Jews, Lithuamans and the Holocaust, 87-110.

26 Sariinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky co-operative. The police report claimed that the riot had universal support and that rumours circulated among the peasantry that Hitler, impressed by the anti-Jewish actions of the locals, “had presented to Lithuania, as a gift, some kind of expensive airplane’ .°?

As in Poland, while opposing violence, the Catholic hierarchy attacked the Jews

for their allegedly unprincipled pursuit of economic gain at the expense of the general welfare and for their support for secularization and communism. According to one prominent younger Catholic philosopher, to deal with bourgeois decadence an ‘organic state’ should be established in which non-Lithuanians would be ‘guests’

rather than citizens. More significantly, as in Poland a new generation of nationalists challenged their elders and were eager to emulate what had been achieved in Italy and Germany. One of the most significant of their organizations, the Iron Wolf association (Gelezinis vilkas), called for Lithuanians to free themselves from ‘Jewish economic slavery’:

‘The year 1929 should mark the beginning of-a new antisemitic movement. Of course, excesses will not serve our final goal, but will only postpone its achievement.

The anti-Jewish action initiated by us must flow into entirely different, cultural forms, which do not violate the principles of ethics and humanity.’©4 The radical nationalists became more aggressive in the late 1930s. In March 1938 there were disturbances at the University of Kaunas, marked by attacks on Jewish students and distribution of Der Sturmer. Although they were strongly condemned

by the rector, Mykolas Romeris, they recurred in November 1939. In December 1938 a Lithuanian Activist Union (Lietuviy aktyvisty sayunga) was established, made up of some radical members of the Christian Democrats and Populists and followers of Voldemaras, which advocated a close alliance with Germany and declared

that Jews and Poles were the nation’s enemies, under the slogan ‘Lithuania for Lithuanians’ (“Lietuva — lietuviams’). In January 1939 a prominent young nationalist historian, Zenonas Ivinskis, praised Hitler’s ‘decisive rule’ in Germany, which by annexing Austria had ‘liberated the country from a parasitic minority . . . a positive aspect of racism’. In the spring of 1940 nationalists in Siauliai called on the gOVernment to ‘solve’ the Jewish question by establishing a ‘reservation’ for Jews.© Jews were also attacked for their susceptibility to communism and revolution. Jews did constitute a significant proportion of the very small Lithuanian Communist Party (Lietuvos komunistu partiya). According to the Lithuanian police, there were 1,004 members of the illegal communist party in the country 1n 1938, of whom 598 were Lithuanian, 303 Jewish, 88 Russian, and 13 German. Jews were a somewhat 63 An extensive file on the events in Leipalingis is to be found in LCVA, f. 378, ap. 11, b. 206; quo-

tation in Suziedelis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 139-40. On this, see also D. Maciulis, ‘Zvilgsnis | vieno pogromo anatomya tarpukario Lietuvoje’, in Sirutavicius and Stalitinas (eds.), Kaz

ksenofobya virsta prievarta, 181—-go (Eng. summary pp. 267-8). | 64 LCVA, f. 563, ap. 1, b. 1, fo. 115, quoted in Suziedeélis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 131. 65 LCVA, f. 563, ap. 10, b. 186, fos. 7-8, quoted in Suziedeélis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 138.

Introduction 27 higher proportion of the Communist Youth League (Komunistinio jaunimo sajunga) and the International Organization for Aid to Revolutionaries (Mezhdunarodnaya organizatsiya pomoshchi bortsam revolyutsii; MOPR), 165 out of 263 youth activists and 141 of 234 MOPR members in 1939.°° The security police were convinced that these figures understated the extent of communist activity and of Jewish participation in it, and that in Kaunas in particular, Jews were the dominant force in the communist movement. As the figures reveal, most Jews in Lithuania were not communists and the majority of communists were not of Jewish origin.

This did not of course prevent the antisemites from conflating communists and Jews. This attitude was particularly pronounced within the security apparatus and the police generally. As early as 1 August 1929, a group of off-duty policemen and security men, with the help of some sympathetic members of the public, rounded up eighty-one participants in a ‘Red day’ meeting organized in the largely Jewish Vilijampole district of Kaunas to oppose ‘militarism’. The ringleaders were tried. In court it was revealed that groups of men, some in civilian clothes, others in the uniform of the Riflemen’s Union, had rounded up Jews in the street, beaten them, and forced them to perform callisthenics. According to the judges, ‘the reason for the excesses was that the hooligans had for a long time been full of hatred for the

Jewish nationality, since [according to them] among the Jews there are many Communists, |and they believed] that at least g5 percent of Lithuania’s Communists are Jews’. One policeman was sentenced for failing to protect the victims, and twelve of the accused were classed as ‘participants’, but not sentenced. Some were subsequently dismissed from their employment by the minister of the interior. A suit for civil damages by some of those affected was also dismissed.°/ The conclusion of the mutual defence pact with the Soviet Union on 10 October 1939 strengthened the belief in the Jewish link with Bolshevism. On 11-12 October

a mainly Jewish pro-Soviet leftist demonstration took place outside the Soviet mission in Kaunas, ostensibly to thank the Soviets for their ‘gift’ of Vilna, which led to clashes with police and anti-communist bystanders. Although Kazys Skuéas, the minister of the interior, attempted to calm the atmosphere, arguing that ‘the excesses

of certain Jewish young people cannot be allowed to harm and disturb good Lithuanian—Jewish mutual relations’, this did not prevent the Catholic daily XX amzwus (“Twentieth Century’) from calling on Jewish society to ‘discipline its own’.©®

Skuéas’s action strengthened the belief of most Lithuanian Jews that Smetona

and his government constituted a barrier to the growth of antisemitism in the country. According to police reports from the Marijampole district in April 1936, 66 Ejidintas, ‘Presidential Republic’, 129. 67 LCVA, f. 394, ap. 15, b. 138; f. 922, ap. 1, b. 3, fos. 3-8; f. 394, ap. 15, b. 138, fos. 273-359, all cited in Suziedelis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 149. 68 LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 187, fos. 232—46: Bulletins of the State Security Department, 12-15 Oct. 1939, quoted in Suziedelis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 141. See also S. Liekis, 1939: The Year that Changed Everything in Lithuantia’s History (Amsterdam, 2010).

28 Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky , Jews ‘holding rightist opinions’ in the face of the agrarian unrest in the country were urging their co-religionists to support the president, since ‘Jews can never expect

another president like Smetona and one must fight for him’. According to one report, the belief of local Jews was that ‘the present government stands [. . .] like [an] iron wall against all sorts of persecutions’. According to another police report, from November 1938, “The Jews were encouraged by the re-election of Mr. Smetona, because the Jews are convinced that as long as he is at the helm of the state, conditions for them in Lithuania will not worsen.’ According to the same police office, in June 1940, shortly before the Soviet occupation, a rabbi in a local synagogue had strongly attacked those Jews who supported the communists: ‘President Smetona

is our father and as long as he remains we will not be harmed . . . Obey the Lithuanian government and support it.’©? The incorporation of the Vilna area increased the Jewish population of Lithuania

from around 153,000 (6.4 per cent) to 241,600 (8.4 per cent) as well as greatly increasing the number of the Poles. Lithuanian policy sought to Lithuanianize the incorporated areas as rapidly as possible, only granting citizenship to those Poles who could prove they had lived in the area before the First World War and had resided there in the inter-war period. ‘The Jewish issue was seen above all as economic. The Lithuanian authorities concluded that of the go,o00 Jews in the new territories, 36,000 (40 per cent) were traders. Since the area could only support 20,000 traders, the remaining Jews should be relocated to villages where they could work

as artisans. The justification was brutal: “These measures would serve a double purpose: the Jews would be pushed into leading a passive life without any perspectives, and thus be placed on the pathway to extinction.’”? The Polish defeat led to the flight to Lithuania of a large number of Polish citizens. On 2 December 19309, the Lithuanian authorities registered 18,311 refugees from

Poland, of whom 7,728 were Poles, 6,860 Jews, and 3,723 Lithuanians.’+ These figures do not include the many who did not register, and by the end of the winter the figure of those registered had risen to 25,139. The total number of refugees was probably over 30,000, including some 14,000 Jews. Among the Jews were many political and religious leaders, including Moshe Kleinbaum, leader of the General Zionists

in Poland, the Folkist politician Noah Prylucki, and the Bundist Herman Kruk, as well as over 2,000 yeshiva students and 2,000 leading figures in the Zionist youth movements.’* They were given material support by the American Jewish Joint 69 LCVA, f. 378, ap. 3, b. 4849, fos. 5 and 8, quoted in SuZiedélis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 136, and LCVA, f. 378, ap. 5, b. 3381, fo. 66, quoted in Eidintas, ‘Presidential Republic’, 130.

0 LCVA, f. 317, ap. 1, b. 17, fo. 179: ‘Zydu problema naujojoj Lietuvoj’, quoted in Liekis, 1939: The Year that Changed Everything, 222.

“LR. Zepkaité, Vilniaus istorijos atkarpa, 1939-1940 (Vilnius, 1990), 49, cited in Liekis, 1939: The Year that Changed Everything, 222. “2 On these, see E. Zuroff, The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust: The Activities of the Vaad ha-Hatzala Rescue Committee, 1939-1945 (New York, 2000), 30, 33, 47, 48, 56.

Introduction 29 Distribution Committee and the Red Cross, which also gave aid to the existing Jewish

community. The refugees, who were concentrated in Vilna, were, in general, well treated by the Lithuanian authorities, as was recognized by Kleinbaum in his report to the Jewish Agency in Geneva on 12 March 1940. At the same time the influx of this large group of people did create tension. On 31 October 1939, less than three days after the Soviets handed Vilna over to the Lithuanians, serious rioting broke out in

the city. These disturbances had a double character. Partly they were provoked among local Poles by the Lithuanian authorities setting an unfavourable exchange rate for the Polish zloty, which was to be withdrawn from circulation. This caused rapid inflation and led to rumours that Jews were hoarding flour, resulting in antiJewish violence. At the same time disorderly, largely Jewish, pro-Soviet groups assembled to protest at the departure of the Soviets. Both groups found themselves

in conflict with the Lithuanian police and army brought in from Kaunas, who did not know the local conditions. Although no deaths resulted, Jewish shops were

destroyed and scores of people were injured. The authorities eventually reestablished order and arrested sixty-six rioters, among whom the police listed forty-

four Poles and twenty Jews.’? One man, an ethnic Russian, Boris Filipov, was executed for his part in the rioting. ‘The view that the anti-Jewish violence was initiated by the Lithuanian authorities is not convincing, but there may be some basis to the argument that the Lithuanian forces first attacked Jewish pro-communists, which led to an outbreak of anti-Jewish violence among the local Poles.“4 Smaller anti-Jewish demonstrations took place the following day at the Rossa cemetery and

subsequently in a number of small towns, including Maisiagala, Pabradé, and Valkininkai.’° The riots increased hostility to Jews among the military. According to a report of the Counter-Intelligence Department of the Ministry of Defence on 7 November, some soldiers approved of the violence and said that similar methods should be employed in Kaunas. ’© At the end of November, reservists in Kédainiai were responsible for a series of attacks on Jews. The Lithuanian authorities attempted to move the Jewish refugees out of Vilna, | where there was a housing shortage, exacerbated by the government’s needs as it planned to move the capital from Kaunas. This effort was not very successful, and in early 1940 only 3,500 had left. Some, with the help of the Japanese and Dutch consuls to Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara and Jan Zwartendijk, were able to proceed 73 For these events, see LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 187, fos. 349 ff.: Bulletin of the State Security Department, 2 Nov. 1939, cited in Suziedelis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 141-2; see also Liekis, 1939: The Year that Changed Everything, 268. ‘4 Asis claimed, for instance, by K. Stang, Kollaboration und Massenmord: Die litauische Hilfspolizei, das Rollkommando Hamann und die Ermordung der litauischen Juden (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), 77, and D. Levin, ‘Lithuania’, in D. S. Wyman (ed.), The World Reacts to the Holocaust (Baltimore, 1996), 3209. See Liekis, 1939: The Year that Changed Everything, 271-5. * LCVA, f. 401, ap. 6, b. 4, fo. 23: Vilna District Security Police Bulletin no. 8, 4 Nov. 1939; ibid., fo. 33: Vilna District Security Police Bulletin no. 12, 6 Nov. 1939; both cited in Liekis, 1939: The Year

that Changed Everything, 270. 6 Liekis, 1939: The Year that Changed Everything, 274-6.

30 Sarunas Liekis and Antony Polonsky to third countries, including Palestine and Sweden. The presence of the Jewish refugees, who were more prosperous than most locals and in receipt of foreign funds, aroused considerable resentment, as is confirmed in the reports of the State Security Department from Siauliai and other municipalites in May 1940.77 The perilous neutrality of Lithuania led to a difference between the ways in which most Jews and most Lithuanians saw the situation. A report of the State Security Department and Criminal Police in Siauliai from 30 May shows how deeply rooted was the equation of Jews and communists in the eyes of the security service: The mood of everyone, except the Jews, is very depressed today; the talk is mostly that if occupation is bound to come, it would be better if it were the Germans rather than the Russians. The Jews are just the opposite; today they are very happy, they are in a great mood and amongst themselves they rejoice that at long last the Soviet government they have longed for will be established. “®

In fact, most Jews were well aware of the defects of the Soviet system and saw the Soviets only as a lesser evil. According to the journalist Joktibas Josade, Everywhere I saw an ever more marked distancing and estrangement between Jews and Lithuanians; the economic and political interests of the two groups became ever more opposed, as did their view on future developments . . . I, a Jew, could understand the evil that Hitler would inflict on my co-nationalists and me, whereas the Lithuanians, as Aryans, were filled with the hope that it would be possible to reach agreement with Hitler. I looked with hope towards the Soviet Union where Jews were considered equal citizens. ”?

If the choice was between brutal persecution at the hands of the Nazis and forced assimilation under the Soviets, it was obvious that the vast majority of Jews would look to the latter. As we have seen, antisemitism had not played a central role in Lithuanian political discourse before 1939. The conditions of the late 1930s did, however, begin a process of undermining of the Lithuanian—Jewish symbiosis. Among younger nationalists, integral nationalism, right radicalism on the Italian or German model, and antisemitism became increasingly popular. The loss of Klaipeda in March 1939 para-

doxically reduced the area of conflict between Lithuania and Germany, while anti-Polish sentiment was diminished when Vilna returned to Lithuania in October 1939. The debacles of Lithuanian foreign policy were seen as the result of an international Jewish plot. According to a contemporary leaflet, ‘Because of the devious policy of the Jews abroad, we had to forswear Vilnius and abandon Klaipeda, since they know that an economically pressured nation is good soil for their dark affairs.’©° In these circumstances the Jewish community became more vulnerable, particularly 77 For these, see LCVA, f. 378, ap. 12, b. 296, fo. 67, cited in Eidintas, Jems, Lithuanians and the Holocaust, 119. 78 LCVA, f. 378, ap. 12, b. 296, fo. 58, quoted in Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust, 119. 79 J. Josadé, ‘Laiskai dukrai j Izraelj’, Lietuvos rytas, 3 Nov. 1993, quoted in Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians

and the Holocaust, 121. 80 Quoted in Stalitinas, ‘Was Lithuania a Pogrom-Free Zone?’

Introduction 31 because of the tendency of Lithuanian ethno-nationalists to equate Jews with communism. In addition, the large-scale social engineering involved in the Lithuanianization

of the area incorporated into Lithuania in October 1939 led many Lithuanians to accept radical solutions to ethnic problems. The period between the Nazi invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and the beginning on 22 June 1941 of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi plan to conquer the Soviet Union, saw a transformation of the situation in eastern Europe and a serious

deterioration in the position of the Jews everywhere in the region. The defeat of Poland resulted in the partition of that country between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which also made further territorial acquisitions at the expense of Finland in early 1940 and annexed the Baltic States, northern Bukovina, and Bessarabia in June of that year. Both the Nazis and the Soviets acted with great determination and brutality to incorporate the areas they now controlled. The position of the Jews was very different in the two occupation zones. Whereas the Nazis proceeded to terrorize, ghettoize, and persecute the Jews under their rule, the Soviets, while destroying all independent Jewish political parties and social organizations, abolished all anti-Jewish restrictions and encouraged large-scale Jewish participation in the new political order they established, as had occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. This inevitably caused a serious deterioration in the relations

between the Jews and their neighbours. Whereas most Poles, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians and a significant number of Belarusians saw both the Nazis and the Soviets as enemies, the Jews were well aware that the Nazis posed a much greater threat to their existence. This different perception, along with Nazi encouragement of local antisemitism, which had increased significantly everywhere in the area in the late 1930s, enormously widened the gap between Jews and non-Jews even before the Nazis embarked on their anti-Jewish genocide.

These developments inevitably had an extremely deleterious effect on Lithuanian—Jewish relations. The Soviets were anxious to avoid the mistakes they had made earlier in the Sovietization of eastern Poland and hoped to win over the population. As Saulius Suziedelis shows in his chapter, they were also well aware of the strength of antisemitism in Lithuania and were not eager to entrust many important positions to Jews. For an important section of the Lithuanian elite, including President Smetona, the status of a Soviet satellite seemed preferable to incorporation in the Nazi New Order. The government he headed accepted the Soviet ultimatum

of 15 June 1940 unconditionally and without protest. After Smetona fled the country, acting president Antanas Merkys repeatedly stated that the army of a friendly state had entered Lithuania in the interests of both the Soviet Union and Lithuania, and that its goal was the preservation of peace and security in this area of

Europe. When on 15 June he approved the establishment of a ‘People’s Government’ and resigned, Justas Paleckis, the prime minister, a journalist with close links to the Populists, became acting president in accordance with the constitution. Juozas UrbSys, the foreign minister, who was in Moscow at the time,

32 Sarunas Liekis and Antony Polonsky instructed his subordinates to explain to the rest of the world that the Soviet demands were not an ultimatum but were merely requests, while General Vincas Vitkauskas, the commander of the army, and General Stasys Pundzevicius, its chief of staff, ordered Lithuania’s soldiers to greet the Red Army as a friendly force. Colonel Pranas Saladzius, the head of the paramilitary Riflemen’s Union, did the same.?1

In fact, as Suziedelis demonstrates, real power in Lithuania lay in the hands of

two key Soviet figures, Vladimir Dekanozov, special representative of the Communist Party Central Committee and the Soviet of People’s Commissars, and Nikolay Pozdnyakov, the Soviet ambassador in Kaunas. Their aim was to give the regime a Lithuanian character and they had no difficulty in finding local collabora-

tors. The new government included prominent public figures, among them the patriotic writer Vincas Kreve-Mickevicius, who held the post of acting prime min-

ister, Ernestas Galvanauskas, a professor at Vytautas Magnus University and a former prime minister, and General Vincas Vitkauskas. It had widespread backing and was recognized as legitimate by the leaders of the Christian Democratic and Populist parties. ‘The new elections to the Seimas which took place on 14—15 July were marked by a degree of fraud and manipulation, particularly in the dominant position given to the newly created communist-controlled Lithuanian Union of Labour (Lietuvos darbo sajunga; the ‘communist and non-party’ bloc). At the same time, according to Liudas Truska, ‘many people did in fact attend the rallies organized by communists in the summer of 1940, and many people did come to the ballot boxes on July 14—15”.5 There was no call for a boycott, and popular dailies, including the Christian Democratic XX amZius and the Populist Lretuvos Zinios (“News of

Lithuania’), urged their readers to vote. Many writers and artists came out in support of the ‘new road’ that Lithuania had taken.

By the autumn of 1940, disillusion with the new regime began to grow. Repression was increasing and the hoped-for economic revival had not occurred. The regime became even more repressive as the possibility of a Nazi—Soviet war increased. In the run-up to the war, the Soviets rounded up and deported some 18,000 men, women, and children in Lithuania, among whom 2,600 were Jews. Most Lithuanian Jews in the summer of 1940 regarded the Soviets as a lesser evil than the Nazis. They were well aware of the character of Nazi rule. On 2 June 1940, 81 On the Sovietization of Lithuania, see A. Jakubdionis, S. Knezys, and A. Streikus, The First Soviet Occupation: Occupation and Annexation (Vilnius, 2006); A. Anusauskas, The First Soviet Occupation: Terror and Crimes against Humanity (Vilnius, 2006); N. Maslauskiené and I. Petravicitite, The First Soviet

Occupation: Occupants and Collaborators (Vilnius, 2007); L. Truska, ‘The Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations (June 1940—June 1941)’, in Truska and Vareikis, Preconditions for the Holocaust; D. Levin, ‘The Jews and the Socio-Economic Sovietization of Lithuania, 1940-1941’, Soviet Jewish Affairs, 17/2 (1987), 17-30, and 17/3 (1987), 25-38; id., Baltic Jews under the Soviets, 1940-1946 (Jerusalem,

1994). The large amount of research on this topic in Lithuanian is reviewed in Truska, ‘Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations’, 173-6. 82 'Truska, ‘Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations’, 205.

Introduction 33 the Lithuanian Security Service in Panevezys county reported that German military victories in the West were of great concern to the Jews because they were aware of what awaited them in the event of German victory.°° There were also those within the Lithuanian Jewish community, concentrated as it was in small towns and for the most part conservative and religious, who opposed a Bolshevik takeover. Thus in late May 1940 the chief rabbi urged Lithuania’s rabbis to support the Lithuanian government and to denounce the Jews siding with the Communist Party. On 6 June, as tension between Lithuania and the Soviet Union

grew, the rabbis of Vilna and the neighbouring districts gathered at the Great Synagogue to pray that a Soviet occupation might not take place. At this time, discussing such an occupation, the Vilna county State Security Police reported that ‘The Jews are not overjoyed at this prospect.’°+ At the same time, as Suziedelis shows, while Soviet occupation was certainly greeted by the Jews with some relief, expressions of joy were for the most part confined to younger and more radical parts of the community. The role of people of Jewish origin in the Sovietization of Lithuania is fully examined by Suziedelis. As he shows, although Jews had constituted a significant proportion of the very small Communist Party of Lithuania, they played a relatively small role in the first crucial stage of Sovietization. The eight members of the State Land Commission that carried out the reform were all Lithuanian. ‘The more than 1,500 members of regional and county commissions included local Russians and Poles, but no Jews. No Jews received land under the redistribution. Lithuanians also constituted a majority on the workers’ commissions set up to organize the nationalization

of banks, industry, and commerce. There were no Jews on the Chief Electoral Commission that ‘organized’ the elections to the ‘People’s’ Seimas, whose members (sixty-seven Lithuanians, four Jews, three Poles, two Belarusians, one Russian, and one Latvian) voted on 21 July to accede to the Soviet Union. There was only one Jew in the twenty-member delegation appointed by the Seimas that went to Moscow

on 30 July to request accession to the Soviet Union. | Jews were certainly a significant part of the communist apparatus. However,

given their urban character and the part they had played in the Lithuanian Communist Party, their role in the new regime was smaller than one would have expected, the result of both the beginning of the purge of Jewish communists 1n the Soviet Union and the need to give the regime a ‘national’ and Lithuanian character. The Jewish community as a whole here quickly lost most of its illusions about communism, except for the conviction that Soviet rule was, even at its worst, preferable to life under the Nazis. The new regime repressed manifestations of anti-

semitism, Soviet-style Yiddish theatres were established, access to university 83 LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 688, fo. 118, cited in Truska, ‘Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations’, 177.

4 LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 611, fo. 187; b. 225, fo. 695; b. 699, fo. 556, quoted in Truska, ‘Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations’, 178.

34 Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky became easier as the number of students was increased, and job opportunities also increased. ‘hese developments did not compensate for the large-scale nationalization of Jewish property and the repression of all non-communist Jewish political groupings. In early July 1940 the Soviets stopped the publication of all ‘bourgeois’ newspapers and magazines, in both Lithuanian and Yiddish, and closed ‘bourgeois’

organizations and societies. Only two Yiddish papers were now allowed, the Folksblat (‘People’s Paper’), which on 1 December 1940 was transformed into Der emes (“The Truth’), and a youth magazine, D: shtraln (‘Rays’). Many Hebrew schools were closed or converted to Yiddish. Jews also constituted a high proportion of those arrested by the new authorities and made up at least 13.5 per cent of those deported in June 1941. Attempts were made on the Soviet pattern to discourage religious observance and to convert synagogues to ‘more social’ uses. In the spring of 1941,

the Soviets began liquidating the YIVO Institute and took over the Museum of Jewish History and Ethnography and the Strashun Library in Vilna. This was not how most Lithuanians saw the situation. As we have seen, the late 1930s had brought a significant increase in hostility towards the Jews in Lithuania, where the German example proved even attractive to some younger nationalists, and the temptation to embark on radical solutions to ethnic problems was strengthened by the discrediting of the authoritarian Smetona regime after the loss of Klaipeda and by the imperatives of Lithuanianizing the Vilna region.

The gulf between Jews and Lithuanians was widened by the experience of Sovietization. Resentment was provoked not so much by the role of the Jews 1n the Sovietization process as by their appearance in government positions from which they had previously been barred, and the belief that the Jews saw in the Soviet government a protector against rising Lithuanian antisemitism. This was seen as an overturning of the natural order, and explains the frequent references to Jewish ‘arrogance’. In addition, the fact that the Soviet takeover had occurred with the support of the official organs of Lithuanian society and had enjoyed considerable support provoked a feeling of shame which led to a desire to blame the Jews for the misfortunes of Lithuania and for its Sovietization. From the earliest days of the Soviet occupation the new regime was seen as controlled by Jews. According to the historian Zenonas Ivinskis, as early as the end of June 1940, among his acquaintances, principally the Christian Democratic intelligentsia of Kaunas, ‘Most of the people (at least those whom I meet) are simply longing for the Germans to come.

And then the real slaughtering of Jews will begin. Fury at the Jews for their outrageous sympathies to the Bolsheviks, for their internationalism, and for their

arrogance is enormous.’®° ,

Such views were particularly strong among those who hoped to regain the independence of Lithuania with the help of Nazi Germany. Within the country there emerged a plethora of underground groups with a strongly nationalist and anti, 85 Martynas Mazvydas National Library of Lithuania, Vilnius, Manuscripts Division, f. 29, 14/ 1-2: diary of Zenonas Ivinskis, 559, quoted in Truska, ‘Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations’, 191.

Introduction 35 semitic character, among them the New Volunteers, the Fighters, the Iron Wolf, and the Sons of the People. According to a leaflet of late May 1941 issued by one of them, the Union for the Liberation of Lithuania (Lietuvos iSlaisvinimo sajyunga), Under Smetona’s rule it was easy for the Jews to feel as if they owned our country, to live in [the] centre of our cities and to exploit Lithuanians. ‘Today they have an even better chance for exploitation and dishonesty . .. Soon the hour will come when the Lithuanian nation will not only will wipe the Jews from its face but will also punish severely its own traitors.°©

Those Lithuanian groups who had fled the country after the imposition of Soviet rule and claimed to speak for their people were extremely hostile to the Jews. In the

second half of November 1940, the Front of Lithuanian Activists (Lietuviu aktyvisty frontas; LAF) was established in Berlin, to which a number of Lithuanian politicians and high-ranking security officials had fled after the Soviet occupation. Headed by Kazys Skirpa, who had participated in the struggles for Lithuanian independence and who in the late 1930s had become pro-German and pro-Nazi, it was dominated by three radical and antisemitic groups: the voldemarininkai (followers

of former prime minister Augustinas Voldemaras), the tautininka1 (Young Nationalists), and young Christian Democrats. In its pamphlets it called for the expulsion of the Jews from Lithuania and the expropriation of their property. According to the ‘Instructions for the Liberation of Lithuania’ which it issued on 24 March 1941, during the expulsion of the Red Army It will be very important to take advantage of this occasion to get rid of the Jews, too. Therefore, there must be such an anti-Jewish climate in the country that not a single Jew would even dare imagine that the Jews would have any minimal rights or any chance for subsistence in the new Lithuania. Our aim is to compel the Jews to flee Lithuania together with [the] Red Army troops and Russians. The more Jews abandon Lithuania under these circumstances, the easier it will be later to achieve complete liberation from the Jews. The hospitality that Vytautas the Great offered to the Jews in Lithuania has been revoked for all times because of their continuing betrayal of the Lithuanian nation.®”

The Front of Lithuanian Activists was able to create a significant network of followers in occupied Lithuania and its pamphlets and instructions were reproduced and distributed there. They sometimes exhibited an even more extreme cast. When a LAF leaflet of 19 March 1941, Dear Brothers in Slavery, which had called on those under Soviet occupation ‘to [inform] the Jews that their fate has been sealed and that those who are able to flee should start leaving Lithuania now to avoid unnecessary harm’, was reprinted in Lithuania, a sentence was added: “Traitors will be pardoned only if they prove that they each have liquidated at least one Jew.’®® 86 Proclamation ‘Lietuva — lietuviams! Broliai ir sesés!’: Lietuvos ypatingasis archyvas, Vilnius (hereafter LYA), LKP, f. 3377, ap. 55, b. 50, fos. 227-8. 87 Hoover Institution Archives, Edvardas Turauskas papers, quoted in Truska, ‘Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations’, 194. The appeals issued by the Front of Lithuanian Activists are also reproduced in J. Levinson (ed.), The Shoah (Holocaust) in Lithuania (Vilnius, 2006), 163-9. 88 This issue is discussed in Truska, ‘Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations’, 200-1.

36 Saritnas Liekis and Antony Polonsky The growing rift between the Jews of the area and their neighbours created an explosive mix, which was to be brutally and cynically exploited by the Germans after their invasion of the Soviet Union on Sunday, 22 June 1941. This invasion, carried

out by German forces supported by troops from Finland, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and Slovakia, made possible the implementation of a policy of genocide by the Germans against the Jews. The involvement of Lithuanians in the genocide is certainly the most controversial topic in Lithuanian Jewish history. The different situation of Jews in the ghettos of Vilna and Kaunas is discussed in this volume by Theodore Weeks. During the first phase of the genocide, it seems clear that the SS, the body entrusted with carrying out Nazi policy towards the Jews, was not sure how to proceed. In the period after September 1939, it had experienced a number of failures, most notably the scheme for a Jewish reservation around Nisko, near Lublin, to which by March 1940 nearly 95,000 Jews had been expelled, but which was abandoned in April of that year, and the attempt to send Jews to Madagascar, to which a great deal of effort had been devoted. Its leaders were eager to exploit anti-Jewish resentment among the local populations and to see whether it could be harnessed to

their purposes. On 29 June 1941 Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office, wrote to the Einsatzgruppen commanders drawing their attention to ‘the verbal instructions already issued in Berlin on 17 June’ and reminding them that The self-cleansing attempts of local anti-communist and anti-Jewish circles within the newly occupied territories should in no way be hindered. On the contrary, they must be encouraged, of course without leaving a trace, and even intensified, and when necessary, directed onto the right path, but in such a way that the local ‘self-defence units’ could not later refer to orders or openly proclaimed political goals . . . Initially the creation of permanent self-defence units under a centralized leadership must be avoided; instead it 1s advisable, as noted before, to encourage local pogroms.®?

Similarly, in his report of 15 October, Franz Walter Stahlecker, the commander of Einsatzgruppe A, wrote: It was unwelcome that the Sicherheitspolizei [Security Police] should be seen to be involved with actions which were in fact exceptionally harsh and which were bound to create shock in German circles. It was necessary to demonstrate that the indigenous population had taken the first measures on its own initiative as a national reaction to decades of Jewish oppression and communist terror.?°

The fateful combination of local anti-Jewish hatred and Nazi incitement led to a wave of massacres from Lithuania in the north to Romania in the south in the weeks 89 Heydrich to the Einsatzgruppen commanders, Einsatzbefehl Nr. 1, repr. in P. Longerich (ed.), Die Ermordung der europaischen Juden: Eine umfassende Dokumentation des Holocaust, 1941-1945 (Munich, 198Q), 118 ff.

90 International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, xxxvii (Nuremberg, 1949), 180-L, p. 672, quoted in C. Streit, ‘Wehrmacht, Einsatzgruppen and Anti-Bolshevism’, in D. Cesarani (ed.), The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation (London, 1994), 104-5.

Introduction 37 after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. These were overwhelmingly carried out by the local populations with the encouragement and sometimes the participation of the invading German troops. In some cases—as in Biatystok on 27 June 1941, where over 2,000 Jews were murdered, 700 of them burned to death in the city’s main synagogue—the violence was carried out by German forces, in this case Police

Battalion 309 and members of the 221st Security Division, and reinforced the message that the Jews no longer enjoyed any protection from the authorities.?! However, for the most part the murders were carried out by locals. Around 16,000

people were killed in this way in Lithuania, several thousand in north-eastern Poland, and perhaps 35,000 in Ukraine, including 12,000 in the formerly Polishruled areas.?? These murders and the violence which accompanied them, sometimes sexual in nature, became a form of ritual signalling the end of ‘Judaeo-Bolshevism’ and the inauguration of a new order. Everywhere the killings were watched by large crowds assembled to witness the symbolic humiliation of Jews. Thus in Kaunas, Jews were forced to sing popular Soviet songs and compelled to collect excrement and manure with their bare hands, in Jedwabne and Radzilow they were made to demolish statues of Lenin erected in the Soviet period, and in east Galicia to clean streets with their bare hands or with toothbrushes and to clean the bodies of those recently executed by the Soviets.?? In the case of Lithuania, German military intelligence had from the turn of the year been in conversation with Lithuanian émigrés in Berlin, whom it wanted to make use of in organizing an anti-communist revolt to facilitate the German army’s advance. The retreat of the Red Army and the anti-Soviet rebellion organized by the Front of Lithuanian Activists created conditions of chaos and lawlessness in which there was considerable anti-Jewish violence even before the arrival of the

Germans, often perpetrated by Lithuanian insurgents acting in support of the Lithuanian Provisional Government proclaimed on 23 June.?4 The violence was further incited by an announcement on the radio by the military commander of Kaunas, Colonel Jurgis Bobelis, that the advancing German troops had been fired on by Jews and that one hundred Jews would be shot for every German soldier killed. In the resulting acts of revenge many Lithuanian communists and Jews lost their lives. The Provisional Government sought to establish a one-party regime of an antisemitic character dependent on Nazi Germany. Jews were viciously attacked 91 P. Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich, 1998), 345-8.

92 F, Golczewski, ‘Shades of Grey: Reflections on Jewish—Ukrainian and German—Ukrainian Relations in Galicia’, in R. Brandon and W. Lower (eds.), The Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memoriahzation (Bloomington, Ind., 2008), 130-1. 93 T. Szarota, U progu zaglady: Zajscia antyzydowskie 1 pogromy w okupowane) Europie. Warszawa, Pary, Amsterdam, Antwerpia, Kowno (Warsaw, 2000), 305, 307, 308; P. Machcewicz and K. Persak (eds.), Wokot fedwabnego, 2 vols. (Warsaw, 2002), 1. 46.

94 For one such case, see the document reprinted in Levinson (ed.), The Shoah (Holocaust) in Lithuania, 34.

38 Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky in the newspapers created under its auspices, above all J /aisve (“Towards Freedom’) in Kaunas, Naujojt Lieutuva (“New Lithuania’) in Vilna, and Tévyné (‘Homeland’) in Siauliai.95 J /aisve, in its first issue on 24 June, proclaimed ‘Jews and Bolshevism are one and the same’, and on 29 June announced: ‘We have risen to the struggle with our enemies, our Russian oppressors, and with the despicable Jews, parasites who have long sapped our country. They have eaten the richest morsels, they have built themselves mansions, in many places they have killed us.’ As elsewhere, the worst violence at this stage occurred shortly after the arrival of the German military and the Nazi Security Police. The antisemitic atmosphere was intensified by the revelation that before their retreat the Soviets had murdered over a thousand prisoners held in their jails. Systematically organized shootings occurred

in towns on the German—Lithuanian border, in Gargzdai, Kretinga, Palanga, Skuodas, ‘Taurage, Jurbarkas, Marijampole, and many smaller villages, and were carried out by the German Security Police with the assistance of locals and Lithuanian auxiliary police formations. Large-scale anti-Jewish violence occurred on 25~—26 June in Kaunas in the largely Jewish area of Vilijampolé, and the brutal murders of between fifty and sixty Jews accompanied by bestial maltreatment of the victims also occurred in the Liettkis garage in Kaunas on 27 June. These acts were

carried out predominantly by Lithuanian irregulars, of which some, like the Klimaitis gang, were not officially recognized by the LAF, with the encouragement of the German Security Police. Kidnapping and killing on a smaller scale took place

in Vilna, where the perpetrators were also Lithuanian, with the incitement of . Sonderkommando 7a and Einsatzkommando 3. In addition, several hundred Jews

were murdered in the region of Samogitia, mainly in the town of Siauliai by Einsatzkommando B and local Lithuanian partisans. According to the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation

Regimes in Lithuania, ‘During the first two weeks of the German occupation approximately 6,000 Jews were killed in Kaunas. Adding the victims of the early killings in the border areas, in Siauliai and other places, an estimate of 8,000 to 10,000 victims, mostly Jewish men, seems appropriate.’?° Massacres took place in a more organized fashion after the formation of the Lithuanian auxiliary police under the restored Lithuanian Ministry of Internal Affairs. They were now carried out by militarized police units, formally reporting to the Lithuanian commandant of Kaunas but under the command of the German Security Police, particularly Einsatzkommando C. ‘The worst of these massacres, in which perhaps 5,000 Jewish men, women, and children perished after brutal mistreatment, took place on 4 and 6 July 1941 at the Seventh Fort in Kaunas. Women %5 On this, see A. Kasparavicius, ‘From the Lithuanian Press about the Jews during the Nazi Occupation’, in Levinson (ed.), The Shoah (Holocaust) in Lithuania, 225-8. %6 International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, ‘Conclusions’, in C. Dieckmann and S. Suziedelis, The Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jews during Summer and Fall of 1941 / Lietuvos zydy persekiojimas ir masines Zudynes 1941 m. vasarg ir rudent (Vilnius, 2006), 279.

Introduction 39 were also raped by the Lithuanian guards. The International Commission concludes that, although it is impossible to provide exact figures, ‘Until the middle of August 1941, that is, before the murder of whole communities commenced, the estimate of 15,000 Jewish men and 1,000 Jewish women seems reasonable.’?’ Lithuania was the first area in which the policy of sporadic killings was expanded into mass murder. There from early August 1941 the Nazis and their Lithuanian allies began an escalating campaign of mass detentions and shootings as a result of which the bulk of the Lithuanian Jewish community perished. ‘The Germans wanted

these killings to be more organized and to avoid the brutal violence which had characterized the earlier massacres. The meticulous care with which they were carried out is revealed in the reports prepared by Karl Jager, commander of Einsatzkommando 3.°° The campaign started with the isolation, concentration, and expropriation of the victims carried out jointly by the German and Lithuanian civilian and ~ police administrations. Selective killing operations took place from early July to midAugust, when they were replaced by organized mass murder which continued until late November 1941. Although the Lithuanian Provisional Government, which was increasingly marginalized by the Germans, dissolved itself in August, the security forces it had established continued to operate. The actual killings were organized by the head of the SS and police in occupied Lithuania (SS- und Polizeifthrer Litauen) and were for the most part carried out by two Einsatzkommandos (numbers 2 and 3), with ‘extensive support from the headquarters of the Lithuanian Police Department

in Kaunas, local precincts, German and Lithuanian police personnel and local volunteers’.??

The International Commission has estimated ‘the number of Jewish victims between August and December 1941 to be about 130,000 to 140,000’.!99 By December 1941 approximately 40,000 Lithuanian Jews survived in ghettos and work camps, and from then until September 1943 a degree of stability was established in the ghettos of Kaunas, Vilna, Siauliai, and A&mena (Oszmiana), although there were periodic selections and murders. (A slightly higher death figure was given at the time by the German civilian administration, which estimated the number of murdered Jews on the eve of the destruction of the Vilna ghetto in September 1943 as 156,000.) After September 1943 the ghettos and work camps were liquidated. Many of their inhabitants were murdered, while others were deported to Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Germany, where most of them perished. In all, between 200,000 and 206,000 Jews perished in Lithuania. Of these, approximately 190,000 were Lithuanian Jews, 8,000 to 10,000 Jewish refugees from Poland, and nearly 6,000 Jews from Austria, Germany, and France. Around 9,000 Lithuanian Jews survived the war. The International Commission listed the agencies and institutions responsible for 97 Tbid.

98 On this, see Dieckmann and SuZiedélis, Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jews, 170 ff.

99 International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation

Regimes in Lithuania, ‘Conclusions’, 279. 100 Tbid.

AO Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky the ‘definition (marking), expropriation, concentration and, finally, the extermination

of the victims’. The most important German agencies involved in the process of destruction were the German Security Police and Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst;

SD) structures, which we have already described; the Wehrmacht, principally a number of its Security Divisions; a number of German police battalions; and the German Civilian Administration (Zivilverwaltung), including the political and economic departments as well as the labour department (Arbeitsamt). The German agencies, which controlled the scale and pace of the genocide, made use of a number of Lithuanian paramilitary, police, and administrative organizations in the persecution and extermination of the Jews, among them irregular forces which had emerged at the beginning of the war—units of the Guard for the National Cause

(Tautinio darbo apsauga; TDA), later termed the Self-Defence Battalions and known in the literature as Schutzmannschaften, which were involved in the killings of Jews not only in Lithuania, but also elsewhere, especially in Belarus and Ukraine. Other Lithuanian forces involved in the murder of Jews were the police department in Kaunas commanded by Colonel Vytautas Reivytis, who from the late 1930s had

been working for the Abwehr,'°! and much of the local constabulary across the country; agents and officers of the Lithuanian Security Police; and a significant part of the Lithuanian civilian authorities left in place by the Nazis. Among those units which played a particularly large role in mass executions were the German-organized Rollkommando (flying squad) centred in Kaunas and headed by SS First Lieutenant Joachim Hamann, made up of about a dozen Germans and sixty Lithuanians commanded by Lieutenant Bronius Norkus, and the Ypatingasis burys (Special Squad), a Lithuanian unit under the command of the SD which operated in the Vilna region. At the same time a considerably larger number of local aux-

iliaries took part in sporadic actions and served in secondary roles—guarding detainees, securing the perimeters of killing operations, and hunting Jews in hiding. The International Commission also concluded that ‘the attitude and mind-set of the population at large towards the murder of the Jews was an important factor in the progress of the genocide’. However, in the words of Dieckmann and Suziedelis: ‘While useful in understanding the perpetrators’ systematic approach to their task, no account of the police operations which corralled the victims of the summer and fall of 1941 can capture the horror, the sights and sounds of this unprecedented massacre which took place in Lithuania’s cities, towns and villages during the summer

and autumn of 1941.’! The Lithuanians had hoped to establish a collaborationist government allied to the Germans. ‘There was little basis for these hopes. Operation Barbarossa envisaged 101 Reivytis kept a full record of the involvement of his subordinates in the detention of Jews prior to their murder, which documents the extensive participation of the Lithuanian police in the concentration and expropriation of the local Jews in preparation for their murder: LCVA, f. R-683, ap. 2, b. 2. The record is used extensively in Dieckmann and Suziedelis, Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian

Jews. 102 Dieckmann and SuZiedeélis, Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian fews, 156.

Introduction AI large-scale German colonization in the East and the reduction of the local Untermenschen to rightless slaves.1°° Initially there was some dispute among Nazi bureaucrats about how the locals should be treated before the final victory, with

Alfred Rosenberg, Minister for the Occupied Eastern ‘Territories, arguing that ceiving non-Russians some degree of self-government would make it possible for them to be enlisted for the anti-Bolshevik crusade, while Ernst Koch, Reichskommissar for Ukraine, was against any such concessions. As early as 16 July 1941, the highest party leadership rejected Rosenberg’s proposals and incorporated East Galicia into the Generalgouvernement.!°4 In September 1941 the issue was finally decided by Hitler. He told his inner circle, ‘In 1918 we created the Baltic states and the Ukraine. But now we have no interest in the continued existence of the Eastern Baltic states and a free Ukraine.’!°°

As a result the Lithuanian Provisional Government was soon stripped of all authority and on 26—27 July a German civilian administration was established. On 5 August the Provisional Government disbanded itself after a public statement that

it had been prevented from carrying out its functions. The Lithuanian Security Police, the Saugumas, which included both security and criminal police, was kept in being, as was a rudimentary local administration. ‘The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania gives a damning assessment of the role of the Provisional Government in the first weeks of the Nazi—Soviet war. This body had been in a difficult position, since its claims to sovereignty were not recognized by the Germans. At a cabinet meeting of 27 June 1941 it dissociated itself from the massacre at the Lietikis garage, resolving that ‘Notwithstanding all the measures which must be taken against the Jews because of their Communist activity and harm to the German Army, partisans and individuals should avoid public executions of Jews.’!°° While refraining from explicitly endorsing the killings, it did endorse the expropriation and segregation of the Jews. At the same time, while it ‘claimed to speak on behalf of the nation and more than once insisted on its own moral authority, it did not publicly disassociate itself from the murder of Lithuania’s Jewish citizens’.!°7 Only one member of the

eovernment, the historian Zenonas Ivinskis, is on record as having suggested a specific and public condemnation of anti-Jewish violence. On 5 August 1941, Juozas Ambrazevicius, who headed the Provisional Government, in a meeting with Adrian Renteln, Reichskommissar for Lithuania, had attempted to distance his government 103 On Nazi views on the Ukrainians, see R. A. Mark, ‘The Ukrainians as Seen by Hitler, Rosenberg and Koch’, in T. Hunczak and D. Shtohryn (eds.), Ukraine: The Challenges of World War II (Lanham, Md., 2003), 23-36. 104 Qn this meeting, see ‘Introduction’, in Brandon and Lower (eds.), The Shoah in Ukraine, 18. 105 A. Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945: A Study of Occupation Policies, 2nd, rev., edn. (Boulder, Colo., 1981), 56—7.

106 Quoted in Dieckmann and SuZiedélis, Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jews, 135. 107 JTnternational Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, ‘Conclusions’, 279-80.

42 Sariinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky from the murders, claiming that its authority had been restricted and that it ‘had not had the means to restrain excesses, for example, the executions being carried out in Kaunas and in the countryside’.!°° This should be regarded as merely a ham-fisted attempt at ex post facto exculpation. ‘The same judgement applies to the memorandum prepared at the end of 1941 by the Lithuanian National Party for submission to the German authorities, which read: The Lithuanian people have no liking for the Jews; however, the liquidation of the Jews on Lithuanian territory has provoked feelings of shock and revulsion among the Lithuanian people... The Lithuanians thought that the Jews who had not emigrated from Lithuania would be used as a labour force for reconstruction projects in devastated Belarus and Russia. The Lithuanians also thought that the property of the Jews who had left Lithuania should be transferred to the disposition of the Lithuanian people.!°?

Throughout the first weeks of the Nazi occupation of Lithuania the Lithuanian Provisional Government failed to issue a single directive against the slaughter. Neither did the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, which was strongly identified with the Christian Democrats, who had become increasingly hostile to the Jews in the second half of the 1930s. Their views seem to have been shared by the metropolitan of Kaunas, Archbishop Juozapas Skvireckas, who like many others was of the opinion that the Jews had taken advantage of the Soviet occupation to advance into positions previously barred to them: he wrote 1n his diary in the spring of 1941 that when war broke out, the Jews who ‘had pushed their way into Lithuanian offices that had previously been closed to them’ would be the first to be arrested and even killed. When the killing started, he wrote on 24 June 1941 that ‘Apparently many Jews are being arrested in Kaunas. German soldiers are rounding them up. Clearly worked out criteria to sort them out have been established. First of all, all Jews who under the Bolsheviks had made their way into Lithuanian institutions that had previously been closed to them are being arrested.’ On 27 June, when large numbers of

innocent men, women, and children were being slaughtered, he felt no remorse, writing in his diary: ‘All family members, young and old, are being killed. But their alleged crimes were horrible: they drafted and compiled lists of Lithuanians who were to be shot or killed in other ways. Sadism is quite common among the Jews.’!!° He also issued a statement, along with Bishop Vincentas Brizgys, auxiliary bishop of Kaunas, condemning Bolshevik crimes and expressing gratitude to the German

, army that had liberated the country. A similar telegram was sent to Hitler himself 108 LCVA, f. R-496, ap. 1, b. 5, fos. 2-4, 200, quoted in Truska, ‘Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations’, 201. 109 LYA, LKP, f. 3377, ap. 58, b. 271, fos. 40-1, quoted in Truska, ‘Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations’, 201. 110 This diary was published as 1941 m. birgelio sukilimas: Dokumenty rinkynis, ed. V. Brandisauskas

(Vilnius, 2000). Extensive extracts from the diary, as well as the minutes of the Lithuanian Bishops’ Conference, were published in V. Brandisauskas, ‘The Position of the Hierarchy of the Lithuanian Catholic Church Regarding the Jews’, in Levinson (ed.), The Shoah (Holocaust) in Lithuania, 231-7. The quotations are taken from Truska, ‘Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations’, 174, 202, 203.

Introduction 43 on 7 July. Archbishop Skvireckas was the second to sign it after the former president Kazys Grinius.1!! He also furnished chaplains for Lithuanian-manned Nazi auxillary units. Neither he, nor Bishop Brizgys, who was more sympathetic towards Jews, nor the bishop of Vilna made any statement in their defence. On 28 June 1941, after a military doctor, Colonel Balys Matulionis, and Fr. Simonas Morkiinas went to his summer residence to inform him of the massacre at the Liettkis garage, Archbishop

Skvireckas assigned Fr. Saulys to protest to Colonel Jurgis Bobelis, the military commander of Kaunas, about the excesses in the treatment of Jews. Fr. Saulys was only able to see an assistant of Colonel Bobelis, who promised to ‘report to the Commander what he had heard’. On 1 July Skvireckas noted in his diary that ‘the intervention concerning the Jews did not, perhaps, find great support, but we did what our humanity demanded’.!!? The antisemitic frenzy which marked this period subsided by the autumn and some Lithuanians began to fear for the consequences of what they had done both individually and collectively. There were also those who now felt remorse and shame. In a sermon delivered on 14 September 1941 in Varena in southern Lithuania (an area which had been part of Poland in the inter-war period), Fr. Jonas Gilys castigated the Lithuanian police formations who had participated in mass murder: | Lithuanians in uniform beat innocent people, pushed around elderly and pregnant women, and in addition watered the Varena forest with the blood of the innocent. Those people suffered in the same way that Christ suffered from the Judases. In addition, and even before the blood was dry, they were out there stealing these people’s property.+!*

A similar position was taken by a number of other parish priests. Such attitudes

are also reflected in the terms that were then widely used to describe those Lithuanians who participated in mass murder: Zydsaudys ‘Jew shooter’, Zydmusis ‘Jew beater’, Zydsmaugis ‘Jew strangler’, and Zmogzudys ‘murderer’. Some political figures also began to speak out. In mid-November 1942, Kazys Grintus, a Populist politician who had been prime minister in the 1920s and briefly held the office of president until he was forced out by the Smetona coup, together with two other prominent Populist politicians, Fr. Mykolas Krupavicius and Jonas

Aleksa, delivered a memorandum to Adrian Renteln, Reichskommissar for Lithuania, which was widely circulated. As noted above, Grinius had initially signed a telegram to Hitler welcoming German ‘liberation’. Now he and his two colleagues

criticized German policy and asserted that the country ‘does not approve of the 't1 A. Streikus, ‘Church Institution during the Period of Nazi Occupation in Lithuania’, on the website of the International Commision for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania: . 112 Tbid. 113 Quoted in Masinés Zudynes Lietuvoje, 1941-1944: Dokumenty rinkinys, ed. G. Erslavaité and K. Ruksenas, 2 vols. (Vilnius, 1965-73), ii. 113-14, cited in Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust, 320.

A4 Sariinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky policies being applied to the Jews of Lithuania’. Fr. Krupavicius and Aleksa were exiled to Germany but because of his age Grinius was confined near Marijampole. 11+ Even stronger opposition to German policy was expressed by Antanas Valiukenas, one of those who had formed the Front of Lithuanian Activists and had remained in Berlin. He passed on information about the murder of the Jews to the Swedish military attaché in Berlin, Colonel Carl Julin Danfelt, on 7 August 1941. In a subsequent report dated December 1941—March 1942 he wrote of the mass murder of the Jews: This is the most vicious of matters. The mind of a healthy person cannot comprehend what is happening in Lithuania to the Jews. Not a single person could have earlier believed that something like this could occur in the twentieth century . . . The behaviour of Germans towards the Jews of Lithuania is indescribable by any of the usual meanings of words in our daily language. It is more vicious than the most vicious. It is more shameful than the most shameful.!1°

From the second half of 1941 relations between the Nazi occupation authorities and the Lithuanian Church were marked by increasing strain. Bishop Brizgys has claimed that from October 1941 the Lithuanian bishops began to encourage their followers to hide Jews. In fact on 20 March 1942 the vicar general of the curia of the archdiocese of Kaunas wrote to parish priests and rectors of the archdiocese reminding them that “There are decrees of the civil government that prohibit the population—thus also clergymen—from associating with Jews.’ On 8 April a further letter

called on the clergy to obey the prohibition forbidding the civil population from | associating with prisoners of war or ‘persons of Jewish nationality’.11© It was only in 1943 that anything concrete was done, when a group of Catholics in Kaunas began

to hide Jews, and Bishop Brizgys gave a sermon condemning the persecution of them. By now, Archbishop Skvireckas as well as Bishop Mecislovas Reinys of Vilna (who had taken over the diocese after the arrest of Archbishop Romuald Jatbrzykowski by the Nazis for Polish patriotic activity) and Bishop Vincentas Borisevicius of TelSiai seem to have been involved in organizing Jewish rescue. Bishop Reinys had before the war written a book supporting the anti-racist views of Pope Pius XI. One matter against which the Church in Lithuania spoke out was the looting of Jewish property, which was condemned in a joint bishops’ pastoral letter in January 1943, but in this case what the bishops were primarily concerned with was the demoralizing effect of such looting on those participating in it.11” As Artinas Streikas has pointed out, in spite of apologetic claims to the contrary, ‘at present it

is impossible to provide documentary proof of protests by the bishops against the persecution of the Jews’.11®

114 FEidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust, 323. 115 Tbid. 323-4. 116 For these letters, see BrandiSauskas, ‘Position of the Hierarchy of the Lithuanian Catholic Church Regarding the Jews’, 236. 11” ‘This issue is discussed in V. Brandigauskas, ‘The Position of the Lithuanian Catholic Church on the Restitution of Jewish Property’, in Levinson (ed.), The Shoah (Holocaust) in Lithuania, 238—41. For the bishops’ letter, see LCVA, f. 671, ap. 5, b. 65, fo. 74. 118 Streikus, ‘Church Institution’ (translation modified).

Introduction 45 Part of the growing opposition to the Nazi persecution of the Jews derived from the view, by then increasingly widespread in Lithuanian political circles, that the goal of the Germans was to colonize Lithuania and that the Lithuanian intelligentsia would be the next to be targeted. Some Lithuanians also resented the fact that they had done the Germans’ dirty work. Asa result, the Nazis’ attempt in February 1943 to recruit a Lithuanian Waffen-SS division failed because of popular opposition coordinated by the various underground political groups and by the Church.!!9 The

Nazis responded by closing all Lithuanian institutions of higher learning and sending forty-six Lithuanian intellectuals to Stutthof concentration camp. The Church then made some efforts to improve its relations with the German authori-

ties, but they were only partly successful. It has been estimated by Dov Levin that around 3,000 Jews survived in hiding in Lithuania. A similar figure of 2,000—3,000 is given by Alfonsas Eidintas, while the Department for the Rescue of the Jews and the Preservation of their Memory at the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum claims to have registered some 3,000 cases of Jews who survived in this way. ‘This constitutes between 0.9 per cent and 1.4 per cent of the pre-1941 Jewish population of 220,000, somewhat lower than in Poland, which reflects the smaller proportion of Lithuanianized Jews than Polonized Jews and the greater social distance between most Jews and Lithuanians.!2° Some of those who sheltered Jews, particularly in towns like Vilna with a large Polish population, were Poles, as was the case with Rachel Margolis before she returned to the Vilna ghetto.!2! Although some of those on the ‘Aryan side’ were given refuge in nunneries, organized help such as that provided by Zegota did not exist in Lithuania and most of the rescuers were

private individuals. One of the most heroic of these individuals is Fr. Bronius PauksStys, the parish priest of the Holy Trinity Church in Kaunas, who sheltered a large number of Jews. After the war he was arrested and spent ten years in Soviet labour camps before being released, his health ruined, in 1956. Over seven hundred Lithuanians have been recognized by Yad Vashem, and the true number of rescuers may be as high as a thousand. Eidintas enumerates at least fifty Lithuanians who were imprisoned and, in some cases, executed for saving Jews. 27 Those Jews who escaped to the forests or who wished to take part in armed resistance there found themselves caught up in the bitter three-way conflict waged there between the Soviet partisans, the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa), which laid 119M. Mackevitius, ‘Lithuanian Resistance to German Mobilization Attempts, 1941-1944’, Lituanus, 32/4 (1986): . 120 On rescue in Lithuania, see D. Kuodyté and R. Stankevicius, Whoever Saves One Life. ..: The Efforts to Save Jews in Lithuania between 1941 and 1944, trans. L. Juneviciené and A. Matulyté (Vilnius, 2002); D. Levin, Trumpa &ydy istorija Lietuvoje (Vilnius, 2000), 187-8; Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust, 312-35. 121 R, Margolis, Wspomnienia wilenskie (Warsaw, 2005).

122 Yad Vashem, “The “Righteous among the Nations”’, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs: ; Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust, 326-7.

46 Sartinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky claim to the area around Vilna, and the Lithuanian local police force and their German protectors. The complexities of this situation are set out in the chapter by Sartinas Liekis. There was very little armed resistance during the war by Lithuanian

nationalist guerrillas. In 1943 several underground political groups united in the anti-Nazi Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania (Vyriausias Lietuvos iSlaisvinimo komitetas), which issued a declaration of independence. Its influence was relatively small, and although it established contacts in the West, it was unable to organize any effective resistance.!?? The main armed Lithuanian force was the Security Police, which was under effective Nazi control. In 1944 it was supplemented by the creation of a Lithuanian Territorial Defence Force (Lietuvos vietine rinktine) but this was soon dissolved because of its refusal to comply with German orders. Under these circumstances the main armed resistance groups were the proSoviet Lithuanian partisans under the command of Antanas Snieckus, the secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party, and the Polish Home Army. The Lithuanian Headquarters of the Partisan Movement (Lietuvos partizaninio judeéjimo stabas), with Snieckus as commander, had been created in Moscow at the

end of 1942 and was subordinated to the Central Command of the Partisan Movement of the USSR. Soviet partisan activity had begun in the Lithuanian region in the Naroch forest 60 miles east of Vilna earlier in 1942, under the command of

Fedor Markov. The first Jewish partisans to reach this group were led by Jozef Glazman. Initially Markov had allowed the establishment of separate Jewish units, such as the Nekamah (Revenge) unit, but this was opposed by Klimov, secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Vileika, on the grounds that partisan formations should be organized on a territorial and not an ethnic basis, and consequently the Jewish partisans were merged with local units. In summer 1943, the

activity of the partisans in the Naroch forest was strengthened by the arrival of Genrikas Zimanas (‘Jurgis’) and Motiejus Sumauskas, who were parachuted in from the Soviet Union. In the autumn of 1943, Zimanas moved to the Rudniki forest some

25 miles south of Vilna to start partisan activity there. | From early 1943, the Polish Home Army was involved in clashes with Soviet partisans, which it was able to pursue with weapons furnished by the Germans. In the autumn of 1943, it also began to retaliate against the Lithuanian police units, challenging their claim to the area west of Vilna. Hundreds were killed in the ensuing conflict. Guerrilla war intensified from the end of 1943, when there was an increase in the fighting between Soviet partisans and village self-defence units set up by the

| German and Lithuanian police in eastern Lithuania. During this period there were many encounters between them, marked by the arbitrary killing on both sides of innocent or suspect civilians. One such episode was the attack by Soviet partisan units on Koniuchy (Kanitkai), a village south of Vilna, largely inhabited by Poles. At the time of this attack the 123 On this, see D. J. Kaszeta, ‘Lithuanian Resistance to Foreign Occupation, 1940-1952’, Lituanus, 34/3 (1988): .

Introduction 47 Soviet partisans were in a critical position and were being harassed by the local police force and its German superiors. A radio message from Zimanas admitted that “These are difficult days.’!*4* Snieckus reported in a radio message of 29 January 1944: ‘The self-defense forces are getting stronger all around us. One of the main reasons is the inadequate response from our side, which cannot be undertaken because of the lack of arms, and, more particularly, of ammunition.’!2°

It was therefore decided to attack Koniuchy, whose inhabitants, according to Zimanas’s report to Snieckus, ‘not only objected to the Soviet partisans entering the village’ but were continually organizing ambushes on the roads, attacking villages friendly to the partisans, and forcing villages which were neutral to take up arms against the partisans.!*° According to the report of the local police commander, in the

early morning of 29 January ‘150 bandits (Jews and Russians)’ attacked the village, killing thirty-five people, including two policemen.*’ According to the diary of the 253rd Police Battalion, Soviet partisans also confiscated arms in the nearby Lithuanian villages of Klepociai, Butrimonys, Jononiai, Sauliai, and Pasalis. In addition, partisans

attacked the village of Kiemeliskes, where they requisitioned provisions. , All the Soviet partisan groups in the Rudniki forest participated in these attacks.

Although subsequently ethno-nationalists in both Lithuania and Poland have claimed that the attack on Koniuchy was a ‘Jewish’ action, it is not possible to determine definitively the ethnicity of those who participated, though a rough estimate can be obtained from the personnel files which have survived. From them it is clear | that Jews were a minority in these formations and that the majority of the partisans, who numbered in all around 400, were Russians. Jews probably amounted to fewer than a hundred. Clearly what was involved was an attack ona village which was harbouring collaborationist police and was hampering partisan activity. As so often happened in such cases, there were also many innocent victims. The end of the wartime Grand Alliance and the increasingly repressive character of the regimes in the Soviet Union and in Poland form the background against which attempts were made to rebuild the war-torn societies of eastern Europe and to recre-

ate Jewish life. The Nazi occupation left a landscape devastated by the effort to impose a racially structured New Order and the violent and often fratricidal resistance which it elicited. ‘The departure of the Germans did not lead to the end of hos-

tilities, and guerrilla war against the communist authorities continued in Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania. According to the Lithuanian American historian Saulius Suziedelis, “My father’s younger brother lived near a forest where anti-Soviet guerrillas were active between late 1944 and the early 1950s. He summed up the period by saying, “all hell broke loose after the war”.’!28 124 Lietuvos visuomenés organizaciju archyvas, Vilnius (hereafter LVOA), f. 40, ap. 1, b. 25, fo. 7.

125 LVOA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 410, fo. 152. 126 Tbid. 173. 127 LCVA, f. R-666, ap. 1, b. 7, fo. 29: Report no. 53 from the commander of the Baltininkai Lithuanian police defence station to the commander of the 253rd Lithuanian Police Battalion, Vladas Zibas, 31 Jan. 1944.

128 S. Suziedélis, ‘Memories of Destruction: Soviet Icons, Nationalist Mythology, and the Genocide

48 Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky The Jews who returned to their former homes found their world totally devastated. Although the Nazis had not succeeded in their goal of annihilation, population losses were on a scale that was difficult to grasp. ‘Two-thirds of the Jews of the area had been murdered. In Lithuania barely 15,000—20,000 Jews re-established them, selves in what was now again a republic of the Soviet Union. Here there does not - seem to have been any violence on the scale of Kielce in Poland. However, Jewish

memoirs and testimonies mention individual attacks on Jews after 1944. The Lithuanian anti-Soviet guerrillas were to a considerable degree affected by the Judaeo-Bolshevik myth. In their accounts the killing of Soviet officials was described as ‘sending someone to Abraham’. There are also well-documented accounts of the Polish Home Army attacking Jews in E:siskes (Polish Eyszyszk1). The attempt to revive Jewish life in Lithuania took place against the background first of the Soviet campaign against ‘cosmopolitanism’, and then of the suppression

of Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union and the execution of the leading Yiddish writers. A Jewish museum had been set up in Vilnius by returning survivors shortly after the city’s liberation in July 1944, the only such institution in the Soviet Union.

It attempted to retrieve and preserve the cultural legacy of the Jews of the town,

which had been collected in YIVO, the Strashun Library, and the An-sky Historical-Ethnographic Society. It also sought to preserve the documentation of the holocaust from the Vilna and Kaunas ghettos. As part of this activity it organized the first post-war exhibition on the Holocaust, “The Brutal Destruction of the Jews during the German Occupation’. As its work encountered increasing obstacles from

the Soviet authorities, its two leading figures, Abraham Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginski, left Lithuania, the former for Israel and the latter for Argentina. It was at this time, as Grigory Kanovich relates in his story “Che Dream of a Vanished

Jerusalem’, that the decision was taken to demolish the remains of the Great Synagogue. A degree of stability was achieved in the museum under the new director, Yank] Gutkowitz, who was able to create a permanent exhibition devoted to the Holocaust, the first of its kind anywhere. An attempt was also made to create a scholarly body to document the Jewish past in Lithuania. However, this period of activity proved to be only a short respite, and the museum was closed down in July 1949 during the purge of Yiddish cultural organizations. In the following year the Yiddish school in Vilnius, the last in the country, was closed.!#9 It has only been in the last years of the Soviet Union and after the establishment of Lithuania independence that some vestiges of Jewish life have revived. According to the Jewish population survey, in 2005 there were barely 3,300 Jews in Lithuania, mostly living in Vilnius but also in Kaunas, Siauliai, and Klaipéda and in a number of the Jews as Warring Narratives in Lithuania’, paper presented at the International Conference ‘Soviet

Jewish Soldiers, Jewish Resistance, and Jews in the USSR during the Holocaust’, New York, 16-17 Nov. 2008. 129 T). E. Fishman, Shaytlekh aroysgerisn fun fayer: dos oprateven yidishe kultur-oytsres in vilne / Embers Plucked from the Fire: The Rescue of Fewish Cultural Treasures in Vilna (New York, 2009); B. Wasserstein, Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe since 1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), 56.

Introduction AQ of smaller towns, down from 6,500 in 1992. ‘The main local Jewish communal body gives a significantly higher estimate of 5,000. There are functioning synagogues in

Vilnius and Kaunas. This is a classic caretaker community made up elderly survivors, Lithuanianized intellectuals, and people involved in Jewish communal activities of all sorts. Its importance lies in the fact that it is the last outpost of one of the great centres of Jewish life. Its evolution since the end of communism is examined in the chapter by Vytautas Toleikis. The first steps to recreate a communal organization were taken in 1988, with calls

for the establishment of a Lithuanian Jewish Cultural Society (Lietuvos zydu kulttros draugiya), which was formally incorporated in March 1990. In November 1991, the Jewish Community of Lithuania (Lietuvos zydy bendruomene; LZB) was established to represent the interests of the Jews in the country and to counter antisemitism. Theoretically all Jews in Lithuania are members and a chairman is elected at its conference held every three years. This office was held by Emanuelis Zingeris, an important figure in Lithuanian public life, who had been the most prominent Jew in Sajidis, the movement for Lithuanian independence, and who had held the post of chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the first sovereign Lithuanian parliament. He eventually left the LZB after an acrimonious dispute in which he accused its members of taking too confrontational a stand on Holocaust and restitution issues. He was ultimately succeeded as chairman by Dr Simonas Alperavicius. Zingeris succeeded in establishing a state-supported Jewish State Museum, which in 1997 was renamed the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum of Lithuania.

In addition, the LZB has sponsored a kindergarten and school. It also has an extensive system of welfare provision for the largely elderly community. Holocaust commemoration is one of its preoccupations and it holds annual ceremonies on 23 September, the Day of Holocaust Remembrance in Lithuania, at the Ninth Fort in

Kaunas and at Paneriai (Ponary). It also publishes a newspaper, The ferusalem of Lithuama, in Lithuanian, Russian, English, and Yiddish. Religious affairs are con-

trolled by the Association of Jewish Religious Communities (Zydu religiniy | bendruomene-asociacija), which has branches in Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipeda, and Plunge.

Ambitious plans have been made to preserve and reconstruct historic Jewish buildings. In 2000 Zingeris persuaded the Lithuanian parliament to rebuild parts of the Jewish quarter in Vilnius and to reconstruct the Great Synagogue. However, it seems very doubtful whether these plans will ever be realized. The small size of the community has not prevented conflict. When in 1994 it was decided that a local resident rabbi was necessary, the LZB invited a Habad rabbi,

Sholom-Ber Krinsky, nephew of Yehuda Krinsky, the secretary of the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, to hold this office. For nearly a decade he officiated at the one surviving pre-war synagogue, the Khor-shul or Choral Synagogue, in addition to creating his own Habad house for sabbath and other meals, educational activities, and Jewish holiday celebrations. However, relations between Habad and the LZB

50 Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky deteriorated and in 2003 the latter invited to Vilnius a new part-time rabbi from Israel, Chaim Burstein, to whom they gave the title ‘chief rabbi of Lithuania’. There

ensued an acrimonious battle for control of the synagogue (which has important implications for rights to communal property restitution under Lithuanian law). After a physical confrontation on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot in 2004, the synagogue was closed for a year and a half. The Choral Synagogue is now open and is administered by the LZB, while the Habad house also holds regular services elsewhere. In Kaunas, Habad has gained control of the local synagogue. There has also been a further development of Jewish studies. In 1998 an attempt was made to transform the Centre for Judaic Studies at Vilnius University into an institution which could co-ordinate Jewish studies in the country. With assistance from the Open Society Fund—Lithuania (OSFL), Dr Dovid Katz, formerly of Oxford University, was brought in to replace Professor Meyer Shub. The transformed centre, known as the Center for Stateless Cultures, sought to revamp the Jewish studies programme established by Professor Shub. It concentrated its efforts on multi-disciplinary research into the history in Lithuania of stateless minority cultures such as Jews, Karaites, Russian Old Believers, and the Roma. However, in the period when it was supported by the OSFL, the centre failed to become a focal point

for training future scholars and specialists in the minorities field. The situation improved with the founding of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute in summer 2001. Generous support from Menachem Cahan, later continued by Dr Richard Maullin, made possible its stable existence. The institute became associated with the History Faculty of Vilnius University and was intended to cover Jewish studies subjects for trainee historians. However, it was only partially succesful in attracting scholars on Jewish topics who had been trained abroad and from 2004 underwent a major crisis. One sign of hope was the creation in that same year of the Centre for Studies of the Culture and History of East European Jews, which has become a key element in the effort to create a Jewish studies of international quality in Lithuania. Though donor support has diminished, the centre’s academic conferences, publications, and academic periodical of Jewish studies Pinkas,!°° and its stipends and finanicial support for projects, have contributed enormously to the visibility of the Lithuanian Jewish studies field internationally. In addition, the first decade of the present century has seen the emergence of important dissertations, monographs, and collective works, synthesizing diverse aspects of Jewish history.1?! Jewish studies are also being inte-

grated into new research on the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. !° 130 Pinkas: Annual of the Culture and History of East European Jewry (Vilnius, 2006— ). 131 |, Lempertiene, Rabinistiné egzegezé LDK tradicinio zydy mokymo kontekste: Disertacyos autoreferatas (Vilnius, 2000); Siauciinaite-Verbickiene, Lydat Lietuvos DidZtosios Kunigatkstystes visuomeneje; L. Lempertiene and J. Siaucitinaite-Verbickiene (eds.), Zydai Lietuvoje: Istorya, kultura, paveldas (Vilnius,

2009); Liekis, 7939: The Year that Changed Everything. 132 A. Bumblauskas, S. Liekis, and G. PotasSenko (eds.), Lietuvos DidZiosios Kunigaikstijos tradicija ir

paveldo ‘dalybos’ (Vilnius, 2008); A. Bumblauskas and G. Potasenko (eds.), Lietuvos DidZtostos Kunigatkstyos tradicya wr tautinat naratyvat (Vilnius, 2009).

Introduction 51 Given the extensive complicity of Lithuanians in the mass murder of Jews 1n 1941, the traumatic effect of the two Soviet occupations of Lithuania, the second of which lasted nearly half a century, and the unstable nature of the Lithuanian political scene, with the temptation this offers to demagogic politicians to engage in populist rhetoric, it is not surprising that the discussion of wartime issues has proved difficult and painful and should have been marked by charges and counter-charges of mass crimes and collaboration. Ellen Cassedy in her chapter examines how this process has developed. It has been complicated by the fact that two separate issues are involved: the establishment of an accurate and fully documented record of what occurred during the Nazi

occupation, and the call to prosecute Lithuanians who committed crimes against humanity. It may also be the case that to see Lithuanian Jewish history solely through the prism of the Holocaust 1s to neglect the more complex and long-term aspects of Lithuanian—Jewish relations and the rich and diversified Lithuanian Jewish heritage.

As we have seen, some progress was made in the early 1ggos in examining the problems of Lithuanian complicity in the Holocaust. Reflection about the ‘dark past’ in Lithuania has also been stimulated by Lithuanian Jewish writing. The early 1990s saw a much wider distribution of the works of Grigory Kanovich, whose novels were now available in Lithuanian translation, and the emergence of new Lithuanian Jewish writers, of whom the most important is Markas Zingeris. In this issue we print a translation of a short story by Kanovich and an analysis of his most recent work by Anna Petrov Ronell. The need to consolidate independence and to ease Lithuania’s entry into NATO and the European Union made imperative the establishment of better relations with the Jewish world. From the first days of independence, a series of public statements by Lithuanian leaders expressed regret at the participation of Lithuanians in the Holocaust and condemned the genocide. The culminating point was the visit of President Algirdas Brazauskas to Israel, during which, in his address to the Knesset in March 1995, he publicly asked forgiveness ‘for [the actions of] those Lithuanians who mercilessly murdered, shot, deported, and robbed Jews’.!3? This was not universally well received in Lithuania, and led to calls for the Jews to respond by apologizing for their ‘crimes’ against the Lithuanian nation during the Soviet occupation.!34

The growing mood of self-criticism in the Roman Catholic Church also had an impact. On 13 March 2000 the Bishops’ Conference of the Lithuanian Catholic Church expressed its regret that during the Nazi period ‘a portion of the faithful failed to demonstrate charity to the persecuted Jews, did not grasp any opportunity to defend them and lacked the determination to influence those who aided the Nazis’.1?° 133 As quoted in A. Eidintas, Zydai, lietuviai ir holokaustas (Vilnius, 2002), 402. 134 One of the most egregious manifestations of this was a work by a prominent and award-winning writer who recycled the antisemitic canard that many Nazis, including Eichmann, were ‘full-blooded Jews’; this was published in a respected literary journal: see J. Mikelinskas, “Teise likti nesuprastam,

arba Mes ir jie, jie ir mes’, Metat, 8—9 (1996), 126-63. :

135 Levinsonas (ed.), Soa (Holokaustos) Lietuvoje, 231—2, as translated in Suziedélis, ‘Memories of Destruction’.

52 Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky The prosecution of war crimes created much more difficulty and mutual antag, onism. Thus in March 1997 ninety-two members of the Knesset sent a letter to the Lithuanian president, Algirdas Brazauskas, calling on him to arrest Aleksandras Lileikis, who had been in charge of the wartime Vilna Security Police and was allegedly involved in the murder of thousands of Jews in the Vilna ghetto. (Lileikis was eventually put on trial but died in 2000 before the trial was concluded.) Only two other individuals, Kazys Gimzauskas, deputy commander of the Lithuanian Security Police in the Vilna district, and Algimantas Dailideé, an officer in the same force, both of whom had been deported from the United States, were put on trial. Gimzauskas was convicted but never punished, since he was suffering from senile dementia. Dailide was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison, but the sentence was never carried out because of his age. Lithuanian resentment at demands for war criminals to be tried led Rimantas Smetona, a member of parliament and chairman of the Lithuanian Nationalist Union Party (Lietuviu tautininky sajunga), to call on the Lithuanian prosecutor general in August 1997 to institute defamation proceedings against Efraim Zuroff, the Israeli representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who had complained about delays in taking action on this issue. There were also complaints that among the nearly 50,000 people convicted of crimes against the Soviet state who had been pardoned after 1990 there were some who had been involved in complicity in the Nazi anti-Jewish genocide. Some progress was made on this last issue. In September 1997, the Supreme Court revoked the 1991

rehabilitation of Petras Kriscitinas, who had allegedly participated in the killing of unarmed people in Vilnius during the Nazi occupation. Subsequently the pardons of an additional twenty-two individuals who had collaborated with the Nazis were abrogated. However, the authorities have remained extremely reluctant to undertake new war crimes prosecutions. It was in at attempt to lay these issues to rest that in May 1998 the three Baltic presidents, including President Valdas Adamkus of Lithuania, approved the creation of international commissions to investigate the Soviet and Nazi occupations and publish their findings. The new body in Vilnius, with its rather cumbersome title of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania (for short, ‘the Commission’), was established by presidential decree on 7 September of that year. Emanuelis Zingeris, the only Jewish member of the Seimas, was named chairman of the group, which initially included Lithuanian, American, German, and Russian scholars and community leaders. The Commission was immediately attacked by groups in Israel, including the _ Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, for its alleged conflation of Nazism and Communism and for being a cynical ‘face-saving’ gambit intended to facilitate Lithuania’s entry into the European Union and NATO. On the other side, some Lithuanian émigrés, suspecting that the Commission would undertake an investigation of native collaboration in the Holocaust, made the charge

Introduction 53 that the president’s initiative was a Jewish-financed plot, or, at best, a sop to the West under American pressure. In fact, the third plenary meeting held on 29 August 1999

committed the Commission, as both a practical matter and a point of principle, to handle research on the Nazi and Soviet periods separately by creating two distinct working groups, in order ‘to clearly distinguish between the crimes committed by the two occupation regimes and to avoid superficial analogies during their analysis and evaluation’. Following extensive negotiations, a preliminary working arrangement was initiated with representatives of Yad Vashem, with Dr Yitshak Arad and Dr Dov Levin participating in the Commission’s meetings and conferences from 2000 to 2005. The Commission’s Nazi crimes panel undertook a number of investigations: antisemitism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (before June 1941); the mass

murder of Jews during the summer and autumn of 1941, as well as the role of Lithuanian police battalions in the Holocaust; the looting of Jewish assets and property; the persecution and murder of Gypsies; the mass murder of Soviet prisoners

of war; and Nazi persecution and murder of non-Jews. Further research was to include the problems of forced labour, Lithuania’s ghettos, and other aspects of the

German occupation. The Commission published important syntheses and new research on the Holocaust in Lithuania in three volumes, which substantially improved the factual basis of discussions on the Holocaust. +%©

It did not lead to closure, since at the more popular level, Lithuania’s national communities have been emotionally committed to what are often irreconcilable Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, and Jewish versions of the war’s meaning and impact. The assertion that the genocide of Jews in the East could not have been carried out without the participation of indigenous killers is, at best, an unproven hypothesis but still is often repeated. There are also differences of generation, competence, lan-

cuage, and ideology that obstruct the synthesis of the scholarship produced in Lithuania with more popular versions in historical representations from the West. Uninformed Western narratives can lead to a ‘German-less’ Holocaust, confusion concerning the nature and extent of collaboration, and even misstatements of fact about numbers and chronology.

The work of the Commission expanded to a programme of conferences, Holocaust education, and commemoration, as well as developing school curricula on inter-ethnic tolerance. Several international conferences have been convened,

most notably ‘The Holocaust in Lithuania in the Focus of Modern History, Education and Justice’ in Vilnius on 23-25 September 2002, the largest such scholarly gathering ever held in the Baltic, which included delegates and scholars from Israel (including the pre-eminent authority on the Holocaust, Yehuda Bauer), the

United States, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and other countries. The 1386 'Truska and Vareikis, Preconditions for the Holocaust; C. Dieckmann, V. Toleikis, and R. Zizas, Murders of Prisoners of War and of Civilian Population in Iithuania in 1941-1944 / Karo belaisviy iw civiliy gyventojy Zudynes Lietuvoje, 1941-1944 (Vilnius, 2005); Dieckmann and Suziedelis, Persecution and Mass

Murder of Lithuanian fews.

54 Sarinas Liekis and Antony Polonsky Commission has initiated a number of agreements with Lithuanian government agencies and higher educational institutions, including the military academies and police academies, to facilitate instructional programmes on the Holocaust and Soviet crimes committed on Lithuanian soil.

Another institution which has dealt with the Holocaust is the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania (Lietuvos gyventojy genocido ir rezistencijos tyrimo centras). While some have criticized this well-financed government institution for focusing primarily on Soviet crimes and the post-war partisan struggle, the centre has nonetheless published a number of studies on the Holocaust and sponsors a separate department to conduct Holocaust research, whose books have dealt with Nazi concentration camp survivors, the killings in Paneriai, and stories of rescue. The centre’s journal focuses mainly on the 1940—1 and post-war Soviet occupations but has also published a number of articles on Lithuanian police battalions, the 1941 Holocaust in the provinces, and problems of Holocaust remembrance, mainly by Valentinas Brandisauskas, Artinas Bubnys, and Alfredas RukSénas.!°" 137 VY, Sakaité, ‘Zydy gelbéjimas’, Genocidas ir rezistencija, 4 (1998), 81-103; 1941 m. birgelio sukilimas,

ed. BrandiSauskas; S. Knezys, ‘Kauno karo komendantitros Tautinio darbo batalionas 1941 m.’, Genocidas ir rezistencyja, 7 (2000), 122-68; A. Bubnys, ‘Lietuviu policijos 2-asis (Vilniaus) ir 252-asis batalionai (1941-1944)’, Genocidas ir rezistencija, 8 (2000), 42-55; D. Kuodyté and R. Stankevidius (eds.), Isgelbéje pasauli...: Zydy gelbéjimas Lietuvoje ( 1941-1944) (Vilnius, 2001); Lietuvos laikinoji vyriausybe: Posedziy protokola, 1941 birzelio 24 d. — rugpjucio 4 d., ed. A. Anusauskas (Vilnius, 2001); A. Bubnys, ‘Holokaustas Lietuvos provincijoje 1941 m.: Zydu zudynes Kauno apskrityje’, Genocidas ir rezistencija, 12 (2002), 81-103; V. Brandisauskas, ‘Zydu nuosavybes bei turto konfiskavimas ir naikinimas Lietuvoje

Antrojo pasaulinio karo metais’, Genocidas ir rezistencyja, 12 (2002), 104-13; A. Bubnys, ‘Lietuviu saugumo policiya ir holokaustas (1941-1944), Genocidas ir rezistencija, 13 (2003), 22-40; A. Bubnys, ‘Vilniaus zydy zudynes ir Vilniaus getas (1941-1944), Genocidas ir rezistencija, 14 (2003), 7-43; Su adata sirdyje: Gety ir koncentracipos stovykly kaliniy atsiminimai (Vilnius, 2003); V. Brandisgauskas, ‘Lietuvos

zydy turto likimas Antrojo pasaulinio karo metais’, Genocidas ir rezistencija, 15 (2004), 86-107; A. Bubnys, ‘Kauno getas (1941-1944 m.)’, Genocidas ir rezistenciyja, 16 (2004), 8-40; H. Kruk, Paskutines Lietuvos feruzales dienos: Vilniaus geto ir stovykly kronikos, 1939-1944 (Vilnius, 2004); A. Bubnys, The Holocaust in Lithuania between 1941 and 1944 (Vilnius, 2005); H. Vitkus, ‘Istoriné atmintis ir holokaustas: Problemos samprata’, Genocidas ir rezistenctja, 17 (2005), 51-65; A. Bubnys, ‘Kauno ir Vilniaus getu zydy policya (1941-1944 m.)’, Genocidas ir rezistencija, 17 (2005), 66-85; V. Brandisauskas, ‘Holokaustas Kedainiy apskrityje’, Genocidas ir rezistencija, 17 (2005), 87-99; A. Ruksenas, ‘Papiles valscius pirmaisiais vokieciy okupacijos 1941-uju metyu menesiais’, in Papilé, Lietuvos valsciai 11 (Vilnius, 2006), pts. 2-3, pp. 464-504; V. Brandisauskas, ‘Mazeikiy apskrities zydy likimas Antrojo pasaulinio karo metais’, Genocidas ir rezistencya, 20 (2006), 7-30; A. Bubnys, ‘Lietuviu policijos 1 (13)-asis batalionas ir zydy zudynés 1941 m.’, Genocidas ir rezistencija, 20 (2006), 31-52; A. Rukseénas, ‘Kauno 2-asis pagalbinés policijos tarnybos batalionas ir gyventoju zudynes Baltarusijoje, 1941-1943 m.’, Genocidas ir rezistencija, 22 (2007), 25-64; V. BrandiSauskas, ‘Lazdijy apskrities zydy likimas nacistinés okupacijos metais: Nuo teisiy apribojimo iki zities’, Genocidas ir rezistencija, 23 (2008), 58-75; A. Bubnys, ‘Lietuviu policijos 3 (11)-1asis batalionas’, Genocidas ir rezistencyja, 23 (2008), 46-57; A. Bubnys, ‘Lietuviu savisaugos daliniu Vilniaus apygardos batalionai (1941-1944 m.)’, Genocidas ir rezistencija, 24 (2008), 35-61; A. Bubnys, ‘Changes in Holocaust Historiography and Education Programs in Independent Lithuania, 1990—2005’, in Austria’s Unique Approach to Cooperation in Holocaust Research and Education (Vilnius, 2008), 36—46;

A. Tumavicius, ‘Gelvony valsciaus zydy likimas naciu okupacijos (1941-1944 m.) laikotarpiu’, in

Gelvonai, Lietuvos valsciai 15 (Vilnius, 2009), 458-71. |

Introduction 55 Some of the research has been produced outside the framework of these centres. An innovative study on Jewish—Lithuanian relations and the Holocaust, which also came out in an English edition, has been written by Alfonsas Eidintas.13° A history of the German occupation, with the Holocaust as an important part of the narrative, has been published by Aritinas Bubnys.!*? There is a relatively large number of studies on the Holocaust related to topics in modern Jewish history, reflecting the urgent needs of the day to assess current issues in the Jewish and domestic milieu and to position the new state towards them. Regrettably, the contributions of scholars competent in the subject or in general history have lacked the underpinning of a classical education in Jewish studies. An awareness of the cultural roots of Judaism in the ancient Near East and of the development of Jewish civilization could not inform the research of Lithuanian scholars who lacked knowledge of the Jewish languages or familiarity with scholarship in the West and Israel. As we have seen, Christoph Dieckmann and Saulius SuZiedélis’s book The Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jews during Summer and Fall of 1941, produced by the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi

and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, gave a horrific picture of Lithuanian involvement in the mass murder of Jews. ‘These conclusions were anathema to the nationalist elements in Lithuania, who were also unremittingly hostile to the postcommunists who had returned to power in 2001. (They lost power again in the election of October 2008.) They had an important mouthpiece in the conservative daily Respublika, which in 2006 published excerpts from the diary of a member of the Commission, the former head of Yad Vashem, Yitshak Arad, describing his activities as a teenage partisan after his escape from the Sventionys ghetto and his brief service in the NK VD. On the basis of this material, they called on the prosecutor general to investigate Arad for ‘possible war crimes’. The prosecutor general prepared an indictment against Arad and also sought to interrogate several other elderly former parti-

sans, mostly women in their eighties, who had previously been attacked in the nationalist daily Lietuvos aidas. One of them, Fanya Brantsovskaya, was accused of participating in an attack on the village of Kanitikai, on the basis of the memoirs of another partisan, Rachel Margolis. ‘The goal seemed to be to demonstrate the alleged moral equivalence of Lithuanian and Jewish behaviour: Lithuanians behaved badly during the Nazi occupation, but Jews behaved equally reprehensibly during the two Soviet occupations. This was a crude oversimplification, given that the scale and form of collaboration were entirely different and given that the Jews faced the threat of annihilation at the hands of the Nazis and their local collaborators. Faced with a storm of protest, the prosecutor general dropped the prosecution against Arad. Margolis has since confirmed that her statement that Brantsovskaya participated in the attack on Kaniukai was based on hearsay, and it has been accepted that Brantsovskaya did not actually take part in this incident. It is clear that she will not be brought to trial. 138 Ejdintas, Zydai, lietuviat ir holokaustas; id., Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust. 139 A. Bubnys, Vokieciy okupuota Lietuva (1941-1944) (Vilnius, 1998).

56 Sarunas Liekis and Antony Polonsky The dispute has clearly demonstrated how much still needs to be done to overcome the legacy of a shared but deeply divisive past. However, we believe that these obstacles on the path to a better understanding between Jews and Lithuanians will not prove lasting. We are convinced that further scholarly investigation will illuminate this complex past and show how much we share. As this volume makes clear, one thing Jews and Lithuanians (as well as Poles) share is a devotion to the city of Vilnius. David Fishman gives a moving account of the absence in the town landscape of those landmarks which were central to Jewish Vilna—the Great Synagogue, the old Jewish cemetery, the YIVO Institute, and the building of the Jewish community.

The writer Grigory Kanovich articulates how much the ‘Jerusalem of Lithuania’ has meant for him: During my not-so-short life I have been to many cities: New York and Paris, ‘Toronto and Geneva, London and Turin, Prague and Warsaw, but none of them—regal, grand, and unique—ever entered my dreams. I dreamt only of the City, the only one in the world. I dreamt of its streets and alleys, as narrow as the clothes lines where Jewish laundry had been dried for centuries. These clothes never dried of the tears shed on them. They were tinted with the blue dye of unfulfilled hopes, daring and high-flying as morning clouds, and of dreams pouring like summer rain onto the still tender souls of the girls and boys of my courtyard who bore the royal names Judith and Ruth, Solomon and David. I dreamt of the tiled roofs where cats walked like angels and angels like cats. I dreamt of its cobbled streets where every paving stone appeared like a broken piece of Moses’ tablets.

I dreamt of its synagogues and markets—in my nocturnal visions the whisper of a feverish, almost raving, prayer intertwined with frenzied shouting: ‘Kugl! Heyse beygelekh! Frishe fish!’

It is our hope that this volume will make a contribution both to a better understanding of the complex history of the Jews in Lithuania and of Lithuanian—Jewish relations and will be a part of the necessary process of creating a more rounded and inclusive history of Lithuania. We also hope that it will show how much valuable scholarly work is being done in Lithuania. Future progress will depend not only on the efforts of these historians but on closer links with universities in North America, western Europe, and Israel, which will both facilitate closer academic contacts and train a new generation of scholars from a variety of fields and disciplines, extending both the problems investigated and the way this investigation 1s carried out.

¢E)

Lithuanian Jewry and the Concept of ast European Jewry MORDECHAI ZALKIN

These songs were sung by a people in a world that has vanished. It was the world of east European Jewry, which in the last generation before the Second World War comprised the greater part of the Jewish people. ABBA KOVNER

‘The Largest Tribe of Israel’!

FoR THE last two and a half decades I have dedicated most of my research attention to the history of Lithuanian Jewry. Thus, along with my teachers and colleagues,

historians who are interested in the history of Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian, and Russian Jewish communities, I am categorized and classified as a historian of east European Jewry. This categorization is based on the assumption that the Jews who lived in the areas that stretched from the shores of the Black Sea in the south to those of the Baltic Sea in the north, and from the banks of the river Dnieper in the east to those of the river Oder in the west,? constituted a homogeneous religious-cultural commonwealth which differed fundamentally from the world of their co-religionists in Germany, Austria, France, England, and Italy.? This imagined ‘single identity of all East European Jewry’, as it was defined by Brian Horowitz,‘ is portrayed as characterized by several distinctive parameters: an Ashkenazi religious-cultural heritage;° 1 A. Kovner, ‘The Largest Tribe of Israel’, in A. Vinkovetzky, A. Kovner, and S. Leichter (eds.), Anthology of Yiddish Folksongs, i (Jerusalem 1989), p. Xvi.

2 The exact boundaries of ‘Jewish eastern Europe’ were never defined. While some writers refer to Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, and Ukrainian Jews, others include in this term the Jews of Bohemia, Moravia, and Hungary. See e.g. A. Kovner, ‘Between Myth and Reality’, in Vinkovetzky, Kovner, and Leichter (eds.), Anthology of Yiddish Folksongs, vol. 1, p. xvii. For a recent discussion of the historio-

graphical aspects, see A. Teller and M. Teter, ‘Introduction: Borders and Boundaries in the Historiography of the Jews in the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth’, Polin, 22 (2010), 4-7. Fora general discussion, see W. L. Winter, “The Baltics as a Common Frontier of Eastern and Western Europe in the Middle Ages’, Lituanus, 19/4 (1973), 5-39. 3 See e.g. S. Lowenstein, ‘The Shifting Boundary between Eastern and Western Jewry’, Jewish Social Studies, 4 (1997), 60—78. For a different attitude, see J. M. Davis, “The Cultural and Intellectual History of Ashkenazic Jews, 1500-1750’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 38 (1993), 343-86. 4 B. Horowitz, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, in L. J. Greenspoon, R. A. Simkins, and B. Horowitz (eds.), The Jews of Eastern Europe (Omaha, Neb., 2005), p. xv.

© J. Davis, ‘The Reception of the “Shulhan ‘Arukh” and the Formation of Ashkenazic Jewish

58 Mordechai Zalkin a common origin;® a common language (Yiddish); traditional dress;’ a high degree of conservative religious commitment;® a common culture;? an ambivalent attitude towards the Enlightenment and modernity;!° and other features.1 Moreover, the fact that most of the Jews who lived in the eastern parts of the continent were subjects of the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth, !” and since the late eighteenth century of the Russian tsarist regime,!? also contributed to their portrayal as ‘east European Jews’ with all the accompanying stereotypes. Eventually, this concept became fixed in the Jewish popular discourse and later on in the academic narrative, as Bernard Weinryb, himself a member of this milieu, characterized 1t: Eastern Europe, reaching approximately from the Baltic to the Black Sea and from east of the Oder and the Carpathian Mountains to the Urals and the Asiatic mainland, was backward in comparison with western Europe . . . socially they were transformed from a largely static, traditionally bound society, with deep roots in the townlets and villages, into a highly urbanized group. !4

A similar perception was widespread in the American Jewish public discourse, at the beginning mostly among those whose origins were in the German-speaking areas of Europe, and later, to a significant extent, also among Jews who arrived in America from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine.!° The Ostjuden who settled in New Identity’, AZS Review, 26 (2002), 251-76. See also A. Nadler, ‘Holy Kugel: The Sanctification of Ashkenazic Ethnic Foods in Hasidism’, in L. J. Greenspoon, R. A. Simkins, and G. Shapiro (eds.), Food and Judaism (Omaha, Neb., 2005), 193-214; S. M. Lowenstein, ‘Ashkenazic Jewry and the European Marriage Pattern: A Preliminary Survey of Jewish Marriage Age’, Jewish History, 8/ 1-2 (1994), 155-75. 6 A. Oksman, The Jews of Eastern Europe: Where Did They Come From? (Jerusalem, 2001). “ On Jewish clothing in the context of cultural transformation, see S. D. Corrsin, Warsaw before the First World War: Poles and fews in the Third City of the Russian Empire, 1560-1914 (New York, 1989), 32.

8 See A. J. Heschel, The Earth is the Lord’s: The Inner World of the few in Eastern Europe (Woodstock, Vt., 1995). 9 F. Lilienfeld, Die Musik der Juden Osteuropas (Zurich, 2002); D. Schwara, Humor und Toleranz: Ostjtidische Anekdoten als historische Quelle (Cologne, 2001). 10 FE. Lederhendler, Jewish Responses to Modernity: New Voices in America and Eastern Europe (New

York, 1994). 11 FE. Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (Bloomington, Ind., 1983),

6-7. 12 See e.g. G. D. Hundert, Jems in Poland—Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity (Berkeley, 2004). 13 See S. J. Zipperstein, Imagining Russian fewry: Memory, History, Identity (Seattle, 1999). On the impact of the political perspective on the east/west paradigm, see E.. Bojtar, “Where is Central Europer A Comparative Study of the Region’s Literatures’, Lituanus, 52/1 (2006), 17-28.

14 B.D. Weinryb, ‘East European Jewry’, in L. Finkelstein (ed.), The Jews: Their History, Culture and Religion, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1960), 1. 321-3.

15 See e.g. the photo album of R. Vishniac, Polish Jews: A Pictorial Record (New York, 1947); H. Abramowicz, Profiles ofa Lost World: Memoirs of East European Jewish Life before World War LI, ed.

D. Abramowicz and J. Shandler, trans. E. Z. Dobkin (Detroit, 1999).

Lithuanian Jewry and the Concept of ‘East European fewry’ 59 York and Boston were perceived and portrayed as a single all-embracing entity, regardless of their cities and towns of origin, as well as their cultural differences. © Despite the important social and cultural role played by different /andsmanshaftn,*" this attitude became consensual in the American Jewish historical narrative,!> and

was not unconnected to the very existence and the activities of ‘east European’ Jewish institutions, such as YIVO.! The changing political map of inter-war Europe did make a certain impact on the perception evidenced in historical research, as we see, for instance, in Ezra Mendelsohn’s division of inter-war European Jewry into ‘Western’ and ‘EastCentral’.2° The other sporadic attempts to question the dominant concept, such as Steven Lowenstein’s research on the shifting boundary between Jewish western and eastern Europe, did not actually undermine the conventional division of continental Jewry into eastern and western.

Thus, it is there, everywhere—in folklore and poetry,*! in academic conferences,2? in the research literature,?? and in scientific journals.** We, the ‘guild’ of the historians mentioned above, discuss and research subjects such as ‘Jews of 16 See U. D. Herscher (ed.), The East European Jewish Experience in America: A Century of Memories,

1882-1982 (Cincinnati, 1983). 17 See M.R. Weisser, A Brotherhood of Memory: Jewish Landsmanshafin in the New World (Ithaca, NY, 1980). 18 §. Birmingham, ‘The Rest of Us’: The Rise of America’s Eastern European Jews (Syracuse, NY, 1999); H. Markel, Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1592

(Baltimore, 1997); N. M. Cowan, Our Parents’ Lives: The Americanization of Eastern European fews (New York, 1989); M. Meltzer, World of our Fathers: The fews of Eastern Europe (New York, 1976). 19 Seee.g. Z. M. Baker, ‘Bibliography of Eastern European Memorial (Yizkor) Books, Updated and Revised’, Toledot, 3 (1980), 7-22. 20 Mendelsohn, Jems of East Central Europe. See, in particular, his long discussion in regard to the problematics of including areas characterized by ‘enormous diversity, both in general and among the various Jewish communities’ (p. 3). See also the changing maps of eastern Europe in G. D. Hundert (ed.), The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 2 vols. (New Haven, 2008), 11. 2142—7, and T.

Hoskovec, ‘Lithuania as Paradigm: A Central European Destiny’, Lituanus, 51/1 (2005). 21 See Der Tunkeler [Yosef Tunkel], Der seyfer fun humoreskes un literarishe parodyes: an opklayb fun humoristishe shriftn vegn di mizrekh-eyropeishe yidn un zayer kultur in poyln tsvishn beyde velt-milkhomes,

ed. Y. Szeintuch (Jerusalem, 1990); C. Goldman, ‘Shteiger “ahavah rabah” benushei tefilot, behazanut, beshirei hasidim uvezemer am etsel yehudei mizrah eiropah’, MA thesis (Tel Aviv University, 1991); J. Stutchewsky, Folklor musikal shel yehudet mizrah eiropah (Tel Aviv, 1958); C. Vinaver (ed.), Anthology of Jewish Music: Sacred Chant and Religious Folk Song of the Eastern European Jews (New York, 1953). 22 See e.g. Greenspoon, Simkins, and Horowitz (eds.), Jews of Eastern Europe. 23 See e.g. I. Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772-1881, trans. C. Naor (Philadelphia, 2005); Polin, 18 (2005), devoted to ‘Jewish Women in Eastern Europe’; H. Haumann, 4 History of East European Jews (Budapest, 2002); D. Assaf and A. Rapoport-Albert (eds.), Let the Old Make Way for the New: Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Eastern European fewry, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 2009); D. Dash Moore, East European Jews in Two Worlds (Evanston, IIl., 1990). 24 Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe; Shvut: Studies in Russian and East European fewish History and Culture; East European Jewish Affairs, Pinkas: Annual of the Culture and History of East European Jewry.

60 Mordechai Zalkin Eastern Europe’, ‘East European Haskalah’,?° ‘East European Jewish Education’,?° ‘Family and Childhood in Eastern Europe’,?/ and the like. And finally, this concept was recently ‘canonized’ with the publication of the YIVO Encyclopedia of fews in Eastern Europe.?®

Nonetheless, any historian familiar with Jewish life in Poland, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic region before the First World War has to ask himself two inevitable questions. First, while using the term ‘east European Jewry’ can we ignore the wide variety of inherent fundamental and substantial differences that existed between local social and religious groups, as well as between different Jewish communities? Second, apart from the geographical perspective, did the Jews who lived east of the Oder really consider themselves as sharing a significant set of common cultural characteristics which constituted a virtual ‘commonwealth of east European Jews’? K

In order to address these questions let us examine, as a test case, the Litvaks of the period before the First World War,?? that is, the Jews who lived in the area known as Litvakland (present-day Lithuania, south-east Latvia, north-east Poland, and most parts of Belarus).?° On the face of it, one might argue, as many do, that the Jews who lived in Minsk, Vilna, Bialystok, and the surrounding areas were, culturally speaking, very close to their Polish and Ukrainian brethren. They spoke Yiddish (though in their own unique dialect), they attached a high priority to the study of the canonic texts,?! and many of them, even the enlightened ones, were basically observant Jews.°? However, attentive listening to contemporary Jewish public discourse reveals a much more complicated picture. One of the main leitmotifs of this discourse was the inherent division of Jewish society according to the collective cul-

tural identities of different regional subgroups. ‘This tendency was extensively expressed in a series of articles published from the beginning of the 1860s in the 25 See I. Barzilay, Manasseh of Ilya: Precursor of Modernity among the Jews of Eastern Europe (Jerusalem, 1999); N. B. Sinkoff, Tradition and Transition: Mendel Lefin of Satanow and the Beginnings of Fewish Enlightenment in Eastern Europe, 1749-1526 (Ann Arbor, 1996). 26 S. Stampfer, Families, Rabbis and Education: Traditional fewish Society in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe (Oxford, 2010). 27 T). Schwara, ‘Ojfn weg schtejt a bojm’: Fiidische Kindheit und Jugend in Galizien, Kongresspolen, Litauen und Russland, 1881-1939 (Cologne, 1999). 28 Hundert (ed.), YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. 29 See Y. Plasseraud, ‘Litvak Legacy’, in I. Lempertas (ed.), The Gaon of Vilnius and the Annals of Jewish Culture (Vilnius, 1998).

30 On the origin of this term, see D. Katz, ‘Jewish Cultural Correlates of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’, in A. Bumblauskas, S. Liekis, and G. PotaSenko (eds.), Lietuvos Didziosios Kunigatkstijos tradicija ir paveldo ‘dalybos’ (Vilnius, 2008); see also R. Perlman, From Shietl to Milltown: Litvaks, Hungarians, and Galizianers in Western Pennsylvania, 1875-1925 (Pittsburgh, 2001), 20—1. 31 See I. Etkes, Lita biyerushalayim (Jerusalem, 1991). 32 See M. Zalkin, Ba’alot hashahar: hahaskalah hayehudit ba’tmpertyah harusit bame’ah hatesha esreh (Jerusalem, 2000), 262-8.

Lithuanian fewry and the Concept of ‘East European Jewry’ 61 newly formed public arena—the Jewish press. ‘Thus, for instance, in a long, detailed essay published in 1866 in the Hebrew weekly Hamelits, the publisher and editor Alexander Zederbaum discussed a wide variety of cultural and behavioural elements, _ as well as the collective self-perception and self-determination of different regional

subgroups, of contemporary Jewish society.*? It seems that, apart from his most interesting general observations in regard to these groups, of special importance 1s his opening remark that ‘just as no twin brothers are equal, so our brethren living in Lithuania and White Russia are different in their characteristics, temperament, and talents from the Jews of Volhynia, Podolia, and Kiev’. A similar example of the perception of contemporary Jewish society as a coalition of regional subgroups, essentially differing from each other in a whole set of collective characteristics, is a series

of three articles published by T'sevi Hirsch Shershevsky in the Hebrew weekly Hatsefirah.?* Following his preliminary assumption that ‘there is a fundamental dif-

ference between our brethren of Lithuania and our brethren of New Russia’, Shershevsky attributes a wide set of inherent characteristics to the Litvaks (mainly of a negative nature), as well as to the Jews of south Russia (mainly of a positive nature). The common denominator of these two writers is that they both accept the premise of the existence of unique characteristic delineations of regional subgroups in contemporary Jewish society. Moreover, while the responses to these articles focused on the accuracy of the features attributed by the authors to each of these subgroups, no one questioned the very concept which served as the basis for this discussion.®° Thus, a closer examination of a wide variety of cultural and behavioural elements of these people, as well as of their own collective self-perception and selfdetermination, reveals a unique picture.

Let us begin our journey to the world of the Litvaks with their best-known common characteristic—rationalism. ‘The Litvaks were considered, both by themselves and by other Jews, as people who were totally preoccupied—in any aspect of their lives, be it the personal, the communal, the religious, the economic, or the political—by an uncontrollable compulsion to reject any type of mysticism or irrational considerations. They were committed to reason, and in their world realism was the name of the game, as was colourfully illustrated in the following lines: ‘What is Lithuania? One said: Lithuania is dryness; the second argued: Lithuania is emptiness; the third one answered—boredom; the fourth—a yawn; then the fifth concluded—Lithuania 1s calculation. Calculation is the only parameter according to which they eat and drink, sell and buy, love, be loved, and even procreate.’8° The 33 A. Zederbaum, ‘Memshelet hakohanim’, Hamelits, 6/44 (1866), 2. 34 Y. Y. Sar Esek (pseud. of Tsevi Hirsch Shershevsky), ‘Al aheinu benei lita uvenei gelil rusiyah hahadashah’, Hatsefirah, 2/40 (1875), 2-4; 2/41 (1875), 4-5; 2/42 (1875), 4-5. 35 See e.g. P. Smolenskin, ‘Kevod hamol’, Hamelits, 6/50 (1866), 3; Yaha”s Mezah (pseud. of Joshua Segal), ‘Ha’emet, hadin vehashalom’, Hakarmel (1876), 404-9; 494-5. 36 Ra’anan, ‘Lita veyosheveiha’, Hatsofeh, 5 Nov. 1922. See also J. Klauzner, ‘Hahidah lita’, in N. Goren et al. (eds.), Yahadut lta, 1 (Tel Aviv, 1959), 17; P. Chura, ‘Abraham Cahan’s “Vilna” and the Roots of “Litvak” Realism’, Lituanus, 52/4 (2006), 46-69.

62 Mordecha Zalkin Litvaks’ unique rationalism and realistic world view were manifested, first and foremost, in the literary sphere. For centuries literacy as well as erudition were accorded

the highest importance,?’ and this was the main reason for the high demand for Litvak melamedim and community rabbis in Jewish communities all over Europe.?°

The rationalistic attitude which was so dominant in the study house of the Vilna Gaon served as a platform for the unique phenomenon of the Lithuanian yeshivas established by his disciple R. Hayim of Volozhin.*° The subjects studied and the methods prevalent in these yeshivas were rationalistic in nature, reflecting the significant presence of this attitude in the consciousness of the local Jewish society, while interest in mystic and kabbalistic subjects was limited and even rare.*° Thus, Jewish Lithuania was known as ‘the Land of Torah’, and the number of scholars in this relatively small group of people was proportionately among the highest in Jewish

Europe.*! Likewise, as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century Lithuania was the cradle and the main stronghold of Jewish enlightenment east of the Germanspeaking area.*? This ideology, heavily based on rationalistic principles, served as the main path along which the local traditional, conservative Jewish society moved towards modernity. The channelling of a considerable part of the unique local intellectual energy and thirst for knowledge towards the establishment of modern school networks is just one example of this process.*° Another feature exemplifying the Litvaks’ unique rationalistic character 1s their attitude towards the concept of death and to all the customs related to death. The entire death cult, with all its accompanying aspects, was alien to the Litvaks.44 They drew a clear and unequivocal line between life and death. To begin with, participation in funerals, a religious obligation (mitzvah) which is considered of high impor-

tance, was hardly observed by many Litvaks. So much so, that the rabbinical leadership of the Jewish community of Vilna complained (in a notice published in 1859) that in recent years the mitzvah of escorting the dead had been almost forgotten. According to this source, hardly anybody participated in funerals since most local Jews were busy enough looking after their livelihood.+° As opposed to those in other areas of Europe, Litvak cemeteries were characterized mainly by simplicity 37 See e.g. A. Kahan, ‘Vilna’, in id., Essays in Jewish Social and Economic History (Chicago, 1986), 157-8.

38 Y.L. Peretz, ‘Halomo shel melamed lita’i’, in Kol kitvei y. 1. perets,i(Tel Aviv, 1963), 131-43; Klauzner, ‘Hahidah lita’, 17. 39 For a comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon, see S. Stampfer, Hayeshivah halita’it behithavutah (Jerusalem, 2005). 40 N. Solomon, The Analytic Movement: Hayyim Soloveitchik and his Circle (Atlanta, 1993). 41 For the presence of this perception in contemporary Jewish consciousness, see N. M. Shaikewitz, Der litvak oder der talmed-hokhem (Odessa, 1883); E. Levinski, ‘Mehalon hamerkavah’, Hamelits, 32/65

(1892), 2. 42 Zalkin, Ba’alot hashahar, 62-75.

43° M. Zalkin, El hetkhal hahaskalah: tahalikhet modernizatsiyah bahinukh hayehudi bemizrah eiropah bame’ah hatesha-esreh (Tel Aviv, 2008). 44 On the halakhic perspective, see Y. M. Epstein, Arukh hashulhan, ‘Yoreh de’ah’, 364. 45 J], Epstein (ed.), Dinim uminhagim (Vilna, 1882), 22.

Lithuanian Fewry and the Concept of ‘East European fewry’ 63 and modesty. Unlike typical Jewish cemeteries in Poland and Ukraine, the vast majority of Litvaks’ gravestones were made of simple tablets of stone, the epitaphs were functionally informative, and ornaments of any type were scarcely to be seen.*°

Even the tombstone of the most famous Litvak, the Vilna Gaon, was much less adorned than a typical tombstone of a Jewish craftsman in Ukraine, not to speak of the huge fancy gravestones and obelisks so common in the Jewish cemeteries in Warsaw, L6dz, Krakow, Czernowitz, and Breslau.*’ Likewise, Litvaks hardly ever made visits to cemeteries, and even during yortsayt (private memorial day) they spent the minimum necessary time there. This unique rationalistic world view had significant implications for the Litvaks’ attitude towards contemporary public religious and cultural issues. Thus, for instance, it played a focal role in their bitter struggle against hasidism, as well as in their rejection of the Hungarian Jewish ultra-Orthodoxy. Likewise, as a result of a rational analysis of the soncionolitical reality, the Litvaks’ involvement in modern ideological—not to mention revolutionary—-movements, such as the Bund and Zionism, exceeded significantly that of their southern and western co-religionists.*°

Rationalism was by no means the only unique common characteristic of the Litvaks. Another feature which differentiated them from most other Jewish societies in Europe was their distinctive occupational profile. Traditionally, European Jews were not engaged directly in agriculture, although many Jews played an important role in farming as suppliers of raw materials and work tools, as well as wholesalers, buying and marketing agricultural crops and products.*9 In Litvakland, however, the situation was fundamentally different. Farming was considered by many local Jews as a ‘legitimate’ profession, a respected source of livelihood. A Jewish farmer

was not a rare phenomenon in the towns and shtetls throughout the regions of Auk&taitija, Zemaitija (Samogitia), and Suvalkija.5° In fact, the percentage of Jewish farmers in Lithuania was proportionally one of the highest in all of Jewish Europe.°!

The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, constituted a relatively small sector of this society, certainly in comparison to other central European Jewish centres.

What made the Litvaks so distinct in the context of what is known as ‘east European Jewry’? It seems that the answer to this question can be found in two 46 See L. Ran (ed.), Jerusalem of Lithuania: Illustrated and Documented, 3 vols. (New York, 1974), i.

too—2. On the halakhic perspective on this custom, see Y. M. Tokachinsky, Gesher hahayim, 1

(Jerusalem, 1947), 234-5. 47 Seee.g. M. Lagiewski, Macewy mémia (Wroclaw, 1991). 48 On the high percentage of Zionists in Lithuania, see Mendelsohn, Jews of East Central Europe, 231— 2. On the hegemony of Lithuania in the Jewish labour movement, see M. Mishkinsky, ‘Regional Factors in the Formation of the Jewish Labour Movement in Czarist Russia’, YIVO Annual of Fewish Social Science, 14 (1969), 29-34. 49 J. Przedpelski, ‘Jewish Pioneers of Mechanization of Agriculture in Mazovia’, Biuletyn Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, 85 (1973), 79-83. See also G. Dynner, ‘Legal Fictions: The Survival of Rural Jewish ‘Tavernkeeping in the Kingdom of Poland’, Jewish Social Studies, 16 (2010), 28-66. 50 See e.g. William Coxe, Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden and Denmark, 5 vols. (London, 1802), i. 237.

ol M. Weller, Der landarbeter luekh far kolonistn un gartner (Vilna, 1902), 238.

64 Mordechai Zalkin different human environments: the local Lithuanian non-Jewish society and the neighbouring East Prussian Jewish society. At the basic level, most of the abovementioned characteristics which were attributed to the Litvaks were inherent in the local non-Jewish Lithuanian society, more pronouncedly in Zemaitija, the northwestern lowland region close to East Prussia, but also considerably in the rest of the area under discussion. However, as in many similar cases, social and cultural uniqueness 1s explicitly expressed and gets a clearer meaning from a remote observation point, social or geographic. Thus, for instance, the unique characteristics mentioned were So ingrained in the collective identity and the self-awareness of Lithuanian society that they served as a key element in the way that the image of historical

autochthonic Lithuanian society was shaped among the second generation of Lithuanian immigrants in North America. Daiva Markelis, who grew up in America in a family of Lithuanian immigrants, points out that among other unique characteristics, ‘Lowlanders have a reputation for being opinionated and stubborn, idiosyncratic in both speech and action.’©* The similarities between the surrounding society and the Litvaks may also be exemplified from the linguistic perspective. Even though the level of knowledge of the other group’s spoken language was limited on both sides, it 1s evident that the Litvaks’ pronunciation was heavily influenced by the speech habits of the majority. The most noticeable element was the frequent use of ‘s’ instead of ‘sh’ in both groups. However, the linguistic influence was not limited to this phonetic level, and can be traced in more complicated configurations. Thus, for instance, as Juozas Tininis has shown, the Lithuanian simile 1s characterized by its simplicity and the high frequency of its usage;°? an examination of the syntax of the common /itvishe proverb indicates a very similar structure.°4 In regard to the second social environment, east Prussian Jewish society, any preliminary examination of the basic character of these two Jewish groups, the Litvaks and the Prussian Jews, would also indicate a wide set of similar characteristics— rationalism, stubbornness, modesty, frugality, miserliness, a high commitment to order and discipline, an orthopractical approach to religious rituals, and marginality

of the concept of death, to mention but a few. These similarities were developed against the background of the constant presence of Germans and German culture in the north-western provinces of the tsarist empire; the close commercial connections between Prussia and Lithuania, maintained mainly by Jewish merchants; Prussia as the source of inspiration for most Lithuanian maskilim; wandering - German Jewish doctors looking for a livelihood in the eastern Baltic regions; and last, but not least, Prussia as a popular destination for most important Lithuanian rabbis, such as the Vilna Gaon and R. Israel Salanter, the founder of the movement 52 1D. Markelis, White Field, Black Sheep: A Lithuanian-American Life (Chicago, 2010), 4; see also T. D. Clark, ‘Lithuania’, in R. Frucht (ed.), Eastern Europe: An Introduction to the People, Lands, and Culture, 3 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2005), 1. 188. °3 J. Tininis, ‘Similes in Lithuanian Folk Proverbs’, Lituanus, 17/2 (1971), 48-54.

54 For many examples, see Y. Gutparshtein, ‘Folklor yehudei lita’, in Goren et al. (eds.), Yahadut lita, 1. 583-610.

Lithuanian Jewry and the Concept of ‘East European fewry’ 65 which sought to inculcate strict ethical behaviour known as the Musar movement. Thus, the fact that from the beginning of the twentieth century the Jewish bourgeois streets of Kaunas were much more ‘Prussian’ than ‘Lithuanian’°® should come as no surprise. East Prussia served, simultaneously, as a cultural prototype as well as a source of cultural inspiration and influence for the people of Litvakland. As for the similarities and possible influence of the local Lithuanian population, the fact that most of the above-mentioned characteristics were inherent in this society as well might be understood in the light of the common origin of the Prussian and the Lithuanian tribes.°° oS

The unique character of Litvaks was noticed and discussed both by them and by other European Jews. This uniqueness, however, was not interpreted and portrayed as representing just a minor cultural difference, a common phenomenon among groups of the same origin and cultural background. The Litvaks were considered by Polish and Galician Jews as ‘others’, and this perception dominated mainly from the mid-nineteenth century, when Polish cities witnessed an influx of tens of thousands of Jews, migrating mostly from Litvakland and seeking new commercial and eco-

nomic opportunities.°’ Most of these Litvaks were either not welcomed by any section of the local Jewish society and were treated as personae non gratae, or were actually rejected. This rejection, characterized in contemporary sources mostly by the term ‘hatred’,°® was manifested in all aspects of private and public life. In the local popular discourse the common Litvak was portrayed as dishonest and unreliable;>9 a person who easily divorces his wife and abandons his children;©° is unsociable owing to his alleged stubbornness and miserliness;°' is religiously suspect as

being a potential maskil or even a convert,°* and politically suspect as being a 5° R. Leiserowitz, ‘The Traders of Wystiten: The Border as a Modernization Factor for Litvaks in Transnational Space in rgth Century’, in J. Siaucitinaite-Verbickiené and L. Lempertiene (eds.), Central and East European fews at the Crossroads of Tradition and Modernity (Vilnius, 2006), 319-31; W. W. Mishell, Kaddish for Kovno: Life and Death in a Lithuanian Ghetto, 1941-1945 (Chicago, 1988), 3. 56 On the common origin and the cultural closeness of these two ethnic groups, see N. Strakauskaite, ‘Mazosios Lietuvos elito identiteto problema: Kultiirinis diskursas’, Socioligija, 5/ 1-2 (2001), 66-76. For typical non-Jewish Lithuanian characteristics, see J. Vaizgantas, Sin at Easter (New York, 1971), 71-94; see also J. Lingys, “The National Character of Lithuanian People’, Baltic Review, 1 (1945). 57 Corrsin, Warsaw before the First World War, 34. °8 For different perspectives on this phenomenon, see J. Shatzky, Geshikhte fun yidn in varshe, 3 vols. (New York, 1947-53), 111. 184-5; A. Levinsohn, Toledot yehudei varshah (Tel Aviv, 1953), 186; F. Guesnet, Polnische Juden im 19. FJahrhundert: Lebensbedingungen, Rechtsnormen und Organisation 1m

Wandel (Cologne, 1998), 61—4. 59 See e.g. Sh. Paltiel, ‘Halita’i’, Hashahar, 10 (1880), 670-83. 60 Klauzner, ‘Hahidah lita’, 17; Kol kitvei sh. ben tstyon (Tel Aviv, 1949), p. XxVv.

61 A. Kariv, ‘Lita mekhorati’, in Y. D. Kamzon (ed.), Yahadut hia: temunot vetstyunim (Jerusalem, 1959), 16.

62 T. Katsovits, Shishim shenot hayim (Berlin, 1923), 138-9; Klauzner, ‘Hahidah lita’, 17; A. Druyanow, Sefer habedihah vehahidud, 3 vols. (Jerusalem, 1963), 111. 182.

66 Mordechai Zalkin devoted Zionist or socialist.©? The following text, taken from Yitshak Leibush Peretz’s story “The Funeral’, illustrates the general atmosphere that dominated the turn-of-the-century Jewish public sphere in Warsaw: Passover evening. The local congregants leave the synagogue. Everybody knows what has to be said, but not how to express it. The Polish version of the Jewish holiday’s greetings has not yet been formed. The Litvaks, on the other hand, leave the synagogue greeting each other with the traditional blessing ‘Happy holiday! Happy holiday!’ [ Gut yontef! Gut yontef!]. The local crowd mutters with impatience: ‘Why are they so noisy? It’s a disgrace!’ Suddenly, one of the Litvaks announces loudly: ‘Next year in Jerusalem!’ This is the last straw. “They’ve gained control of everything,’ complains one of the locals in Polish, ‘beginning with the prayer houses in Nalewki, and now—the central synagogue.’ “They’ve even dominated the main boulevard of the Jewish cemetery,’ complains someone else; ‘I went to the cemetery to visit my father’s grave. And you wouldn’t believe what I saw—a Litvak alongside a Litvak!’

And from the synagogue to the streets. It was not just that Polish Jews used to frighten their children by mentioning the word ‘Litvak’—when Polish Jewish children actually saw a Litvak they used to call him ‘Lekhem’, the Yiddish acronym of litvak, hazer (pig), mamzer (bastard).°° This hostility was not limited, however, to the hasidic environment but was widespread in different local social groups. Rabbis, for instance, were very much involved in the subject under discussion, as we learn from an article published in 1871 1n the Orthodox periodical Hayare’ah (“The Moon’). In this article the author laments that, despite the rabbis’ basic religious and moral duty to promote among their congregants moral and social values such as brotherhood and kindness, as well as to take advantage of their respected status and supreme influence to eradicate the traditional hatred of the Litvaks by their Polish brethren, many rabbis take an active part in further fanning the flames of this hatred and disgust.°° And finally, the unique character of the Litvak was also echoed in the collective nickname applied to the Lithuanian Jew—tseylem kop (‘cross-head’ in Yiddish), a person who examines every subject horizontally and vertically before making any decisions.®” The following popular tale best exemplifies the social background and _ the significance of this nickname: A Jewish boy and his father take a shabes-afternoon walk in Nalewki Street, Warsaw. Suddenly the father points at a Jewish passer-by and says: ‘You see, my son, that is a Litvak.’ ‘A Litvak?’, wonders the child. ‘What does that mean, father?’ “This guy 1s not one of us [fun unzere|’, answers the father; ‘he recently came here from Lite, like too many other tseylem kops.’ ‘Aha,’ says the boy, ‘now I understand what a Litvak means, but why do you nickname 63 FE. Tzur, ‘Habund vehaPPS’, in id. (ed.), Olam yashan—adam hadash: kehilot yisra’el be’idan hamodernizatstyah (Be’er Sheva, 2005), 121. 64 Kol kitvei yehudah leib perets, viii (Tel Aviv, 1961), 388-9. 65 J, Bernstein (ed.), Judische Sprichworter und Redensarten (Warsaw, 1908), 142. See also Y. Kotik, Na venad (Tel Aviv, 2005), 25; Druyanow, Sefer habedihah vehahidud, i111. 183. 66 ‘Nivrei shalom ve’emet’, Hayare’ah, 2 (Shevat 5631 [1871]), ro.

67 Kotik, Na venad, 74-5; Gutparshtein, ‘Folklor yehudei lita’, 583-627; D. Levin, ‘Yahadut lita’, Gesher, 132 (1996), 135.

Lithuanian Jewry and the Concept of ‘East European fewry’ 67 him tseylem kop?’ “That is the point, son. The Litvak, besides being dirty and dishonest, has a cross hidden in his head.’ ‘Are you sure, father? How do you know that?’ ‘Yes, of course I’m sure, just open his head and you will see it for yourself.’ ‘And what if I don’t find any cross there?’, asks the child. ‘Oh, in that case at least you’ve smashed in a Litvak’s head.’©®

This unusual hostility was noticed by contemporary Litvaks who either lived in Polish cities or frequented Polish towns and cities for various purposes. Solomon Zaltsman, a Litvak from Seltz (Selets), wrote in his memoirs that, in his own experience, the vast majority of Polish Jews hated the Litvaks and considered them epicureans.©? A similar observation dominates Ezekiel Kotik’s account of his visit to Warsaw: During my stay in Warsaw I became aware of Polish Jews’ hatred of the Litvaks, a hatred which usually characterizes two hostile nations fighting each other. The abhorrence Polish Jews felt towards this poor piece of land known as Lithuania is inconceivable .. . Even though there were very few Litvaks in Poland, Polish Jews hated them and found no better nickname for them than ‘Litvak pigs’. Why was the Litvak known as a pig and not as a ‘fraudster’, ‘thief’, or any other ‘flattering’ nickname? It is quite simple. Lithuania 1s a very poor country. The Litvaks who immigrated to Warsaw lived in very poor conditions. They used to eat bread with onion, garlic, or radish, and drank cold water. This is the reason why Polish Jews nicknamed their Lithuanian brethren Litvak pigs. “°

A similar, albeit less explicit, feeling was expressed by R. Eliyahu David Rabinowitch-Teomim, the rabbi of the Jewish community of Panevézys, during his visit to Warsaw in 1871, at a time when, as he correctly noted, there were still very

few Litvaks in this city.“1 A year later, the author and journalist Eliezer Isaac Shapira published an article in the Hebrew newspaper Hamagid in which he presented a long vox-populi type of list of the Litvaks’ negative characteristics, empha-

sizing their cultural, economic, linguistic, and professional difference and backwardness. ’* Against this background, Litvaks in Polish towns and cities had no other choice

but to form new and separated sub-communities and philanthropic associations of their own. Thus, for instance, as early as 1846 a separate study group known as the Litvishe Hevrah Shas (Association of Talmud Studies) was established in Warsaw, followed by a Litvisher Yeshiva that was opened in 1880, a soup kitchen, an association for visiting the sick, and an orphanage.‘ It goes without saying that local Litvaks had their own prayer houses. “4 One might argue that the hostility towards the Litvaks in Poland originated from some basic and fundamental differences between them and their Polish co-religionists. However, by the late nineteenth century Litvaks could be found almost everywhere 68 Druyanow, Sefer habedihah vehahidud, iii. 182. See also Corrsin, Warsaw before the First World

War, 34. 69 §. Zaltsman, Ayarati (Tel Aviv, 1947), 28. 70 Kotik, Na vanad, 73-4. “1 E. D. Rabinowitch-Teomim, Seder eliyahu (Jerusalem, 1984), 39.

72° Hamagid, 13 Nov. 1872. 73 Seee.g. E. I. Shapira, ‘Varsha’, Hayom, 1886, no. 160. 74 See Z. Gloskin, Zikhronot (Tel Aviv, 1946), 34.

68 Mordechai Zalkin in Europe, for instance in East Prussia and in western Galicia. Their negative image was not limited to the Polish region alone and was widespread in these areas as well.

Thus, in his autobiography, the author S. Ben-Zion (Simhah Alter Gutmann) describes the image of the Litvaks prevalent in late nineteenth-century Bessarabia: ‘A

Lithuanian Jew was easily noticed, like a white crow that everybody despises and ridicules. A typical Litvak most probably abandoned his wife and children, and was a potential convert.’’° And yet, despite sporadic mockery of the Litvak melamed as being

hot-tempered, impatient, and lacking any sense of humour, in the various sources dealing with the encounters of Litvaks with local Jews in these areas, I found no expressions of hatred whatsoever. How can we explain such deep hostility in Poland, which, in Jacob Shatzky’s words, made the Litvaks feel like an extraterritorial social element, a unique type of landsmanshaft?’© The hatred of the Litvaks and their total rejection in the Jewish Polish cultural arena was undoubtedly connected, to a significant extent, to the bitter conflict between the hasidim and their opponents, the mitnagedim. Nevertheless, the present ‘conflict’ was different in two major and essential aspects. First, there was the high frequency of use of the word ‘hatred’. Scarcely any of the sources referring to the subject of the Litvaks in Poland make use of less radical terms, such as ‘disagreement’ and the like. ‘The word ‘hatred’ dominates memoirs, newspaper articles, and most other contemporary sources. As far as I recall, neither in the late eighteenth-century hasidic controversy, nor in other inter-Jewish conflicts (Sabbatianism, Frankism, the Reform/Orthodoxy conflict), was the term ‘hatred’ used so frequently and intensively. Second, while in the above-mentioned conflicts the disagreements were focused on clear and understandable issues, here, besides a wide set of prejudices and stereotypes, no reasonable argument was presented. The Litvaks were simply the object of ridicule, derision, and hatred.“ Contemporary writers provide some possible explanations for this phenomenon. According to the famous Warsaw bookseller Eliezer Isaac Shapira, the public discourse in Warsaw’s streets emphasized the economic aspect by arguing that the massive invasion of Litvaks caused a dramatic increase in the prices of basic products

and of housing in Warsaw’s Jewish streets.’® Ezekiel Kotik, on the other hand, argued that Polish Jews were troubled by the possible maskilic and heretic influence of the Litvaks.’? In an article published on 31 January 1892 in the Hebrew newspaper Hamelits, an anonymous writer refers to this conflict as an eternal, unresolved phenomenon: ‘You, reader, do not wonder why brothers of the same father broke up into two different parties? This is an ancient disease and neither party will ever co-operate with the other. In fact, it is not a real hatred but a certain type of hidden subterranean antagonism, known to everybody.’ > Kol kitvei sh. ben tsiyon, p. xxv. 76 Shatzky, Geshikhte fun yidn in varshe, iii. 185. “7 See e.g. S. Aleichem, ‘Habedikah’, in Kol kitvei shalom aleikhem, v (Tel Aviv, 1955), 109-20. “8 ‘Rusland’, Hamagid, 13 Nov. 1872. See also Levinsohn, Toledot yehudei varshah, 186.

Kotik, Na vanad, 75.

Lithuanian Jewry and the Concept of ‘East European fewry’ 69 Needless to say, while Shapira functions here, though indirectly, as an advocate

for Warsaw’s Jews, Kotik’s attempt to anchor the phenomenon in a reasonable context (and let us not forget that he was a Litvak) might, at most, justify the use of the term tseylem kop, but obviously not the deep hatred that I have described above. The anonymous writer, however, did not really offer any reasonable explanation but

rather suggested that it be accepted as a natural phenomenon. In fact, though acknowledging this deep abhorrence of the Litvaks, none of the writers cited above provided a comprehensive, significant explanation of the phenomenon. It seems that the otherness attributed to the Litvaks by certain strata of Polish Jewry resulted from the different answers that the two groups gave to the question regarding the hostility that the Litvaks faced in Polish towns and cities. From the mid-nineteenth century, the progressive elements in Polish Jewish urban society underwent a continuous process of cultural transformation. They adopted certain cultural and behavioural elements of the bourgeoisie, both German-speaking and Polish, a process which had a crucial effect on their definition of themselves. To a significant extent, their sense of belonging to traditional Jewish society weakened in favour of some undefined new cultural identity. As in other similar cases, the ‘other’ played a major role in the process of establishing this new identity. In the case of Polish Jews, this otherness was represented first and foremost by the ultimate relieiously and culturally conservative Jewish group—the hasidim. The clear religious and cultural demarcation lines between these two groups enabled the progressives to formulate their own new collective identity. And then, when this process of sociocultural transformation seemed to have become legitimate, the Litvaks appeared en masse. These were largely non-hasidic people, who on the one hand preserved the old, traditional religious way of life, but were on the other hand open to the ‘new winds’ and tried, albeit to a limited extent, to take advantage of almost everything modernity could offer. They represented the old, maskilic, moderate integrative option which was already neglected by both the hasidim and the progressive elements. ‘Thus, it is quite reasonable that some locals even perceived the presence of

the Litvaks as an existential threat. This unexpected disruption of the expected sociocultural order could be answered in different ways. However, the easiest and in fact the most natural reaction was to portray these newcomers as the ultimate ‘others’, who did not belong, in any way, to the local Jewish society. Thus, the answer to the question whether the Litvaks considered themselves as members of an ‘east European Jewish commonwealth’ is most probably in the negative. This sense of non-belonging, as well as their own unique collective narrative, was expressed in a series of contemporary publications such as .4 Litvak in Poland,®© The Litvak in Volhynia,®! The Litvak,®? The Lithuanian Boy,®? and The Lithuanian Rascal.®* Naturally, within this narrative some attention was devoted to their ‘Polish 80 PD. Chorny, A litvak in poyln (New York, 1955). 81 A.M. Dik, Der litvak in vohlynen (Vilna, 1870).

82M. Hirshfeld, Der lituak (Warsaw, 1918).

83 |. Katsovits, Der litvisher yingl (New York, 1912). 84 Der litvisher kundes (Kaunas, 1924).

70 Mordecha Zalkin brethren’, albeit in a much less hostile approach than that of the Polish side.®° The extent to which the sense of uniqueness, or otherness, was and still is anchored in the Litvaks’ consciousness 1s well expressed in a long list of local-patriotic articles

and essays, all written by Litvaks proudly emphasizing the uniqueness of Litvakism.°° This sense also reverberates in the following lines, written by Yoram Taharlev, an Israeli poet born to a family of Litvaks, more than fifty years after their home-town Jews in Kaunas were exterminated: Their restraint has nothing to do with personal character. It is basically of a genetic and anthropological nature. They belong to a realistic and a logical race of people who are all potential philosophers, the upper tenth of the Jewish intelligentsia. A race of people detached from kabbalah, messianism, and mysticism. They always rely only upon peshat [the literal meaning of the text], logic, and even statistics, and never trust to miracle, luck, or the horoscope—a healthy head [a gezunten kop |!®"

From a broader perspective, the very concept of ‘east European Jewry’ represents, first and foremost, a typical west European patronizing standpoint, attributing to the eastern parts of the continent all types of backwardness, primitivism, cultural inferiority, and the like. Such an attitude was widely prevalent in Jewish society in

the German-speaking regions, as well as in England, intellectuals included.** Moreover, modern Jewish intellectualism and the writing of history had their origin

in central Europe. German Jews, as well as German Jewish historians (such as Heinrich Graetz), considered themselves as the ‘centre’, while all other Jews were considered ‘peripheral’ and ‘others’. This might also be the reason why I can hardly recall any research regarding ‘west European Jewry’ as a collective entity. In his book Jewish History and Jewish Destiny, Gerson D. Cohen wrote: ‘when we speak of the Jewish culture of eastern Europe, we are not speaking of a monolith; we are speaking of a multifaceted people that produced a variety of cultures, lasting monuments to a variety of worldviews. It is time these cultures receive the attention

and the study they merit.’° 85 M. Breuer, ‘Rabanim-doktorim bepolin-lita biyemei hakibush hagermani (1914—1918)’, Bar-ilan, 24-5 (1989), 139.

86 See e.g. M. Sudarski, U. Katsenelenbogen, and Y. Kissin (eds.), Lite, i (New York, 1951); A. Kariv, ‘Vos iz a litvak?’, in B. Kagan (ed.), Yidishe shtet, shtetlekh un dorfishe yishuvim in lite biz 1918 (New York, 1991), 703-17; D. Katz, Lithuanian Jewish Culture (Vilnius, 2004); I. Lempertas, Litvakes, trans. V. Urbonavicius-Watkins (Vilnius, 2005).

87 . 88 See e.g. J. Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers: East European fews in Imperial Germany (New York, 1987); A. Zweig, The Face of East European fewry (Berkeley, 2004). See further S. E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European few in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800-1923 (Madison,

1982). See also S. C. Berrol, East Side/East End: Eastern European fews in London and New York, 1870-1920 (Westport, Conn., 1994); D. Schonebohm, Ostjuden in London: Der fewish Chronicle und die Arbeiterbewegung der jiidischen Immigranten im Londoner East End, 1881-1900 (Frankfurt am Main, 1987); L. Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, Calif., 1994). 89 G. D. Cohen, femish History and Jewish Destiny (New York, 1997), 227.

Economic Relations between Jewish ‘Traders and Christian Farmers in the Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Provinces AELITA AMBRULEVICIUTE | AFTER the partition of Poland—Lithuania in 1795, the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania was absorbed into the Russian empire. Incorporated into Russia’s imperial system, the area was subjected to the administrative institutions of that empire, which had an impact on all aspects of public affairs, including the economy. The empire’s economic backwardness in relation to the countries of western Europe could not ensure adequate conditions for economic development. After the partitions, economic modernization, already lagging behind that of the more advanced West, slowed down still further, and declined even more after the reforms of 1861, above all the abolition of serfdom. The geographical boundaries of the Lithuanian provinces (in Russian, gubernit) were established in the nineteenth century. There were three such provinces— Vilna, Kaunas, and Grodno—which, after a series of revisions and boundary changes, were combined into one administrative unit in the late 1860s. This unit was

under the jurisdiction of the Vilna Governor-General. In examining the question of the relationship of the Jewish and Christian communities in the Lithuanian provinces in the nineteenth century, particularly in regard to their close ties in the area of trade, I shall describe the commercial relations between Jewish traders and Christian farmers, explaining the reasons for the prereform marginalization of traders by farmers (often mistaken for antisemitism) and the new attitudes towards traders in the post-reform period.! This formulation of 1 Professional traders in Lithuania had traditionally always been Jews (distinguished in society both as a class group and as an ethnic religious group). Jewish predominance in the economic life of Russia’s

western provinces is often considered a factor behind the appearance of antisemitism. However, in Lithuania antisemitism did not expand far beyond its earlier, traditional, level among the broad layers

of society, as Jews (traders) and Lithuanians (peasants) had traditionally coexisted peacefully. Antisemitism was more characteristic among some of the rising class of Lithuania’s nationalistic elite. In the post-reform period, with the growing importance of domestic and international trade, the intensifying commercialization of agriculture, and the formation of ideas of a national commerce, society’s

72 Aelita Ambrulevictiite the issue leads to a primary hypothesis that the historically determined domination of the trading sector by Jews, and their well-organized retail network, completely satisfied the needs of the country’s inhabitants, but may have inhibited entrepreneurial activity by the Christian majority of farmers; such activity developed later than in the provinces of Russian Poland or central Russia. However, with changes in economic relations, the prevailing attitudes towards trade might also be expected to change.

The research, conducted empirically, examines economic relations between Jewish traders and farmers, with the aim of explaining whether the active role of Jews in trade in the Lithuanian provinces could have had an impact on the new structures of business for reasons to do with ethnicity, or whether other factors could also have been influential.

JEWS IN THE TRADE SECTOR OF THE LITHUANIAN PROVINCES After the final annexation of Poland and Lithuania by Russia, and the gradual institution of laws of the Russian empire in the territories of Poland and Lithuania from the end of the eighteenth century, the legislative order of earlier times was changed, creating certain obstacles to Jewish activity in many areas of public life.” As a result of the tsarist administration’s establishment of the Pale of Settlement, Jews became particularly concentrated in the Lithuanian provinces, and by the midnineteenth century, because of the laws applied by the state (for example, the Jewish Statute of 1804, and the categorization of Jews in 1844 into ‘useful’ or ‘useless’ groups),

Jews constituted the majority of urban dwellers. Approximately half lived in cities, most of the others in towns, and very few in villages.? Most earned a living from crafts attitudes towards the trader also changed. Gradually, more and more non-Jewish inhabitants became involved in the trading business. 2 After the third partition of Poland and Lithuania, the government of the Russian empire had to deal with the large numbers of Jews who lived in these newly annexed territories, who, according to the laws

of the empire, were forbidden to live on its lands. The government had to familiarize itself with the social, economic, and political situation of this large concentration of Jewish communities, and find a way of regulating their social, economic, and political life. The establishment of the Pale of Settlement in the lands near the empire’s western border resulted in this territory having the largest concentration of Russian Jews. From 1804 (with the promulgation of the Statute Concerning the Organization of the Jews), Jews were forbidden to live in villages, rent estates, keep inns or taverns, and so on. Somewhat more lenient conditions were applied to Jewish manufacturers and traders, but Jews from other classes also continued to engage in their traditional trade activities and crafts: see S. Atamukas, Lietuvos Zydy kelias nuo XIV amZiaus iki XX a. pabaigos (Vilnius, 1998), 39; J. D. Klier, Rosstya sobiraet svotkh evreev: Protskhozhdente evreiskogo voprosa v Rossi, 1772-1825 (Moscow, 2000).

3 Jewish domination among the urban-dwelling class has been discussed in R. Civinskas, ‘Rusijos politikos itaka zydy, miestieciu ekonominei veiklai XIX a. pirmojoje puseje’, in V. Sirutavicius and D. Stalitinas (eds.), Zydai Lietuvos ekonomineje-socialinee struktiroje: Tarp tarpininko ir konkurento (Vilnius,

2006), 51-78; V. Merkys, ‘Lietuvos miestu gyventoju tautybés XIX a. pabaigoje—XX a. pradzioje

Economic Relations between Fewish Traders and Christian Farmers 73 and trade.* In the period under discussion, only a very small number of people who were not of Jewish origin engaged in trade (or in other non-agricultural businesses). Jews transported goods to surrounding villages, bought up agricultural produce, owned and ran shops in the cities and towns, and kept inns in villages. Jews engaged in intensive development of trade, and thus constituted a large part of the trading class in Poland and Lithuania.° Alongside this, in the early nineteenth century the Christian trading class consisted mostly of foreign and Russian traders who took

advantage of the new markets that had opened up to them.® Traders from St Petersburg, Moscow, Riga, and other cities of the Russian empire and the Kingdom of Poland played an important role in the trade sector of the Lithuanian provinces; these foreign traders often had an office and intermediaries in Vilna as well as in other cities of the Lithuanian provinces.’ This background leads to the question: just how active were local Christians in the trade sector? It is known that in early nineteenth-century Vilna there were fewer Jewish than Christian traders: in 1806, there were 42 Christians registered in Vilna as traders, and | only 12 Jews; in 1809, the corresponding figures were 37 and 18; in 1810-38 and 27; in 1811-36 and 27; in 1812-35 and 28; in 1813-36 and 30; and in 1814—38 and 37.° This proportion changed after the Napoleonic wars. In 1815, the numbers of registered Christian and Jewish traders were equal (36 of each), while from the mid-1820s Jewish traders took the lead and dominated: in 1826 there were 39 Christians and 95 Jews; by 1836 there were 32 and 88, respectively, and in 1846 there were 39 and 70.”

The domination of Jewish traders in the trade sector is also illustrated by an account of the markets of the town of Siluva in Kaunas province given by Liudvikas klausimu’, Lietuvos TSR moksly akademyos darbat, ser. A, 2 (5) (1958), 86—7; L. Truska, Lietuviai ir gyda nuo X1X a. pabaigos tki 1941 m. birgelio: Antisemitizmo Lietuvoje raida (Vilnius, 2005), 18; R. Kolodziejczyk, ‘Image przedsiebiorcy gospodarczego w Polsce: Proba nakreslenia problematyki badawczej oraz miejsce tematu w naszej historiografii’, in id. (ed.), Image przedsigbiorcy gospodarczego w Polsce w XIX1XX mieku (Warsaw, 1993), 41; P. V. Tereshkovich, Etnicheskaya istoriya Belarusi XIX—nachala XX v. v kontekste Tsentral’no-Vostochnoi Evropy (Minsk, 2004), 95; H. Moscicki, Pod berlem caréw (Warsaw, 1924), 27. The composition of the population of cities and towns and their occupations were

discussed by E. Stankiiniene, ‘Lietuvos gyventojai pagal 1897 m. suraSymo duomenis’, Geografinis

metrastis, 11 (1971), 21-8.

4 Jewish integration into the urban-dwelling classes (traders and craftsmen) and the issues relating to Jewish farmers at the beginning of the nineteenth century have been discussed by Remigijus Civinskas: see R. Civinskas, ‘Kauno zydy integracija i miestieciu luoma’, Darbai ir dienos, 28 (2001), 51-66; id., Zydy miestieciy luominis statusas ir jo kaita XTX a. viduryje’, in V. Sirutavicius and D. Stalitinas (eds.), Lydy klausimas’ Lietuvoje XIX a. viduryje (Vilnius, 2004), 33—52; id., ‘Rusijos politikos jtaka zydu miestieciu ekonominei veiklat’. > D. Stone, ‘Jews and the Urban Question in Late Eighteenth Century Poland’, S/avic Review, 50 (1991), 533-4. © T. BairaSauskaité, ‘Vilniaus pirkliai XVIII a. pabaigoje—XIX a. ketvirtojo desimtmecio viduryje: Judejy ir krikScioniy padeties palyginimas’, in Sirutavicius and Stalitinas (eds.), Zydai Lietuvos ekonomineje-socialineje strukturoje, 41. 7 K. MeSkauskas et al., Lietuvos pramone ikisocialistiniu laikotarpiu (Vilnius, 1976), 106.

° Pamyatnaya knizhka Vilenskoi gubernii na 1853 god (Vilna), 190. 2 Ibid.

74 Aelita Ambruleviciiite Adomas Jucevicius, a prominent Lithuanian writer and ethnographer, in the first half of the nineteenth century: ‘But more than any other, there were Jewish shops: ... there was a long row of shops where our simple, dear little Jews, dirty, noisy, and always annoying, had their area of activity all set out. Further ahead, more Jewish shops, and further still . .. more Jews with their goods.’!° A similar situation existed in other towns of the Kaunas province: ‘Although there are plenty of shops in Jonava, there are only four traders who pay the guild tax— three Jews and a Russian . .. In the end it is mostly Jews who run the retail stores— they trade in timber, grain, and other products.’!? According to witnesses at the time, ‘at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the Grodno province, all trade was in Jewish hands, and across the entire province there could hardly have been more than ten Christian traders. Meanwhile, several

decades ago, in Grodno alone, Christian traders owned many, many trading places.’ In the late 1840s and early 1850s, Jews had assumed the dominant position among traders in the Grodno province: in 1847 there were 13 Christians and 141 Jews, in 1850 there were 14 and 141, respectively, and in 1852 there were 18 and 139.18

Obviously, our sources do not allow us to revise the opinion established in the historiography regarding Jewish domination of trade in the Lithuanian provinces, but they do allow us reasonably to raise another question: why was the number of Christian traders participating in the trade sector in the Lithuanian provinces relatively small? We cannot dismiss the hypothesis that Christians did not want to become involved in trade, as according to traditional Lithuanian cultural attitudes, only farming was considered to be a worthwhile means of earning a living.!* In this respect, comments made by tsarist officials are noteworthy: Constant wars with neighbouring states reduced the number of foreign traders, and removed or limited the opportunities for the local population to engage in trade themselves. Owing to the nature of their [restricted] civil rights, Jews did not participate in the political life of the state, and as such were free to concentrate on trade, manage their capital, and, later, master all branches of business. In other words, it was not any innate characteristics that distanced local people from trade, but historical events. Force of habit ingrained the conviction in the minds of the local people that only Jews were capable of trading, while Jews got used to the idea that their only calling was trade . . . So having divided these activities amongst themselves, each side established its own monopoly: some in the agricultural sector, the others in

the trade sector.15 |

10 L. A. Jucevicius, Zemaitiy Zemés prisiminimat (1842), inid., Rastat (Vilnius, 1959), 371-2. 11 K. Tiskevitius, Neris ir jos krantai: Hidrografo, istoriko, archeologo ir etnografo akimis, trans. V. Buda (Vilnius, 1992), 281. 12 J. E. Lachnicki, Statystyka gubernii Litewsko-Grodzienskiey (Vilna, 1817), 66. 13° Materialy dlya geografii i statistiki Rossii: Grodnenskaya guberniya, pt. ii (St Petersburg, 1863), 116. 14 L. Truska and V. Vareikis, Holokausto prielaidos: Antisemitizmas Lietuvoje XIX a. antrojt pusé-1g941 m. birgelis (Vilnius, 2004), 23. 15 Materialy dlya geografii i statistiki Rossi: Vilenskaya guberniya (St Petersburg, 1861), 513.

Economic Relations between Jewish Traders and Christian Farmers 75 Table 1. Merchants in the towns of Vilna province, by confession, 1870—1894 (five-year averages)

Confession 1870-4 1875-9 1880-84 1885-90 1891-4 No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) Orthodox 2.0 (11.9) 26 (106) 32 (143) 3.6 (13.3) 3.75 (10.9)

Catholic 0.2 (12) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0)

Jewish 13.2 (78.6) 20.7 (84.5) 18.2 (81.2) 21.4 (79.3) 27.75 (80.4)

Lutheran 14 (8.3) = «0.8 ~~ (3.3) 10 (4.5) 20 (74) 3.0 (8.7)

Other 0 (0) 04 (16) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) Total 16.8 (100.0) 24.5 (100.0) 22.4 (100.0) 27.0 (100.0) 34.5 (100.0)

Sources: Pamyatnaya knizhka Vilenskoi guberni: na 1872 god, sect. ii, p. viii; na 1873 god, sect. ii, pp. vii—viii; na 1874 god, sect. 11, p. x; na 1875 god, sect. i1, p. v; na 1876 god, sect. ii, p. xiii; na 1877 god, sect. ti, p. xi; na 1878 god, sect. 1, p. x11; na 1879 god, sect. ii, p. xit; na 1880 god, sect. ii, p. xii; na 1881 god, sect. ii, p. xi; na 1882 god, sect. 11, p. x1; na 1883 god, sect. ii, p. xii; na 1584 god, sect. ii, p. vii; na 1885 god, sect. ii, p. vii; na 1586 god, sect. u, p. 12; na 1889 god, sect. 11, p. 162; na 1893 god, sect. ii, p. 89; na 1894 god, sect. ii, p. 102; na 1895 god, sect. 1, p. 115; Obzor Vilenskoi gubernu na 1894 god, 27.

Table 2. Merchants in the towns of Kaunas province, by confession, 1879-1911

Confession 1879 1897 1899 190] 1905 191] No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) Christianand 23 (7.9) 72 (10.8) 7 (20) 13 (3.9) 15 (47) ll (3.5) other

Jewish 268 (92.1) 593 (89.2) 337 (98.0) 318 (96.1) 304 (95.3) 303 (96.5) ‘Total 291 (100.0) 665 (100.0) 334 (100.0) 331 (100.0) 319 (100.0) 314 (100.0) Obzor Kovenskot guberni: na 1897 god, 18; na 1899 god, 26; na 1901 god, 28; na 1905 god, 27.

This was clearly reflected in the professional trade sector in the Lithuanian provinces, where during the entire nineteenth century only a very few non-Jewish inhabitants engaged in trade. In the Grodno province, ‘trade is on a small scale, and is mostly concentrated in the hands of the Jews’;!® in the Vilna province, ‘trade is mostly concentrated in the hands of the Jews, and up until recently, their numbers accounted for as much as 75 per cent of all traders’.!’ This information is supplemented by statistics on the religious affiliations of the trading classes of the cities and towns of the Vilna and Kaunas provinces, presented in Tables 1 and 2, which illustrate the predominant roles that Jews maintained in trade. The data from the census of the Russian empire conducted in 1897 show the total number of individuals who listed their occupation as traders. According to these data, there were 56,405 self-employed individuals (excluding family members) 16 Pamyatnaya knizhka Grodnenskoi gubernit na 1895—1908 gody, pt. it (Grodno), 513. 1” Obzor Vilenskoi gubernti za 1894 god (Vilna), 26.

76 Aelita Ambruleviciiite Table 3. Traders in the Lithuanian provinces, by nationality, 1897

Nationality Vilna province Kaunas province Grodno province

No. (%) No. (%) No. (%)

Russians, Ukrainians, 658 (3.9) 511 (2.6) 549 (2.8) Belarusians

Poles 872 (5.1) 442 (2.2) 1,044 (5.4) Lithuanians 100 (0.6) 1,585 (7.9) 2 (0) Jews 15,179 (39.4) ‘17,161 (35.9) 17,679 (91.0) Other 175 (1.0) 286 (1.4) 162 (0.8) Total 16,984 (100.0) 19,985 (100.0) 19,436 (100.0)

Note: The table shows the number of individuals who listed their occupations as ‘trader’ in the 1897 census of the Russian empire. Sources: Pervaya vseobshchaya perepis' naseleniya Rossuskot imperit 1897 goda, ed. N. A. Troinitsky, 89 vols. (Moscow, 1899-1905), vol. iv: Vilenskaya guberniya, 110-13; vol. xi: Grodnenskaya gubermya, 202-7; vol. xlu: Kovenskaya guberniya, 150-5.

engaged in trade in the Lithuanian provinces. The breakdown of the data by nation-

ality is given in ‘Table 3, from which it is clear that even in the late nineteenth century Jews still occupied dominant positions in the trade sector of the Lithuanian provinces. Generally speaking, in the provinces of the Pale of Settlement, among traders there were more Jews than members of any other ethnic group. The census data from 1897 show that Jewish traders dominated in the provinces of Volhynia (89.2 per cent), Podolia (87.5 per cent), Minsk (93.6 per cent), Mogilev (89.1 per cent), and Vitebsk (85.5 per cent). The same data also show that Jewish traders in the Kingdom of Poland occupied similarly dominant positions in the trade sector in the provinces of Siedlce (89.9 per cent), Suwalki (85.5 per cent), Radom (88.1 per cent), Plock (77.8 per cent), Lublin (87.5 per cent), Lomza (84.9 per cent), and Kielce (85.3 per cent).

There was a somewhat smaller proportion of Jewish traders in the provinces of Piotrkow (69.4 per cent), Kalisz (64.7 per cent), and Warsaw (62.2 per cent). It should be noted that even in the Pale of Settlement there were provinces in which Jews were less active in trade;® indeed, there were some provinces in the Pale and elsewhere in which Jewish traders constituted a minority.!9 In other words, there must have been some factors that determined why the peasantry did not wish to seek the status of professional traders. This situation raises yet another question: why, in the Lithuanian provinces, did the division of economic activities in effect match ethnic group boundaries (which also happened to match social class boundaries), and why was an ethnically differentiated labour market maintained for such a long time? This situation demands closer attention. 18 The percentages of traders made up by Jews in these provinces were: Bessarabia 76.5, Kiev 72.4, Chernigov 60.8, and Kherson 60.0. 19 The percentages in these provinces were: Ekaterinoslav 45.3, Courland 37.1, Tavrida 23.6, Poltava 17.5, and Livonia 11.5.

Economic Relations between fewish Traders and Christian Farmers 77 First of all, it should be emphasized that during the mid-nineteenth century 1t was not believed that the high percentage of Jews in trade (and other businesses) was the result of Polish—Lithuanian or Russian laws, or the empire’s internal policy that

restricted Jewish economic activity. It was said that Jews were drawn to trade because of their alleged laziness, and that they avoided demanding, physical labour and preferred trade and the role of intermediaries.7° In attempting to explain this situation, attention should be given not only to societal stereotypes, but also to the links between official government fiscal policy and economic circumstances. A part of the Russian political elite believed that the ‘isolation’ of Jews, their ‘harmful’ economic activities, and other evils had appeared because the government had for cen-

turies discriminated against them, even though there had been attempts to encourage Jews to take up ‘useful’ public activities such as farming or industrial manufacturing and to reject the ‘parasitic’ way of life.74 Some thus believed that because of the laws of the Russian empire, Jews might have been pushed into a certain economic framework, which might have accordingly reinforced their position in trade. In addition, the government aimed to integrate Jews into the urban-dwelling class by forcing them into larger towns: ‘in the first decade of the nineteenth century this was just encouraged, but by the 1820s—1830s the government was forcing Jews out of small towns and into cities’.2* The prohibition on the purchase of land by Jews and their constant fear of being placed in the ‘useless’ category could have been a stimulus to them to take up crafts and trading, in which they increasingly dominated; the position of Christians in the agricultural sector was correspondingly strengthened.?? 20 Z. Medisauskiené, ‘Atkarus, bet butinas: Zydai ir bajoriskoji Lietuvos visuomene (XIX a. vidurys)’, in Sirutavicius and Stalitinas (eds.), ‘Zydy klausimas’ Lietuvoje XIX a. viduryye, 94. 21 J). Stalitinas, ‘Rusijos politika zydy atzvilgiu XIX a.: Istoriografinis aspektas’, Lietuvos istorijos metrastis, 2001, nO. I, pp. 140-1. 22 Civinskas, ‘Rusijos politikos jitaka zydy miestieciy ekonominei veiklai’, 64.

23 Civinskas’s research shows that the act passed in 1804—the Jewish Statute—was designed to regulate the status of Jews in society. According to its classification system, Jews had to belong to one of four categories: farmers, craftsmen, traders, or urban dwellers. However, it was only the Jews’ economic activities in the small towns that were legalized and regulated, and only the status of craftsman that had a detailed outline. Similarly, the rights of Jewish farmers were not clearly outlined either in 1804, or in 1844 when Count Pavel Kiselev’s programme was introduced, whereby Jews were meant to be turned into farmers and given allocated plots on state land. According to Civinskas, the reaction that this offer by the Russian government provoked was unexpected, even to its creators. By the spring of 1845, thousands of Lithuanian Jews had already asked for permission to become farmers and receive a plot of land. However, these requests were mainly due to the fear of being categorized in the non-settled urban dwellers group. For the same reasons, many poorer Jews sought protection in the newly established Jewish guilds. To avoid being classified as ‘useless’, one could register as a small-scale trader, as the Russian government allowed Jewish urban dwellers engaged in trade to belong to the settled urban dwellers group: see Civinskas, ‘Rusijos politikos itaka zydu miestieciu ekonominei veiklai’, 56—9, 64—5,

70, and id., ‘Zydu miestieciu luominis statusas ir jo kaita XIX a. viduryje’, 35-43.

78 Aehta Ambruleviciiite Table 4. Self-employed individuals engaged in farming and trade, by confession, 1897 (%)

Confession Vilna province Kaunas province Grodno province Farmers ‘Traders Farmers ‘Traders Farmers Traders

Christian? 99.0 9.6 94.7 12.6 99.2 8.2 Jewish Other?0.9 0.189.4 1.01.3 4.086.0 1.4 0.7 0.191.0 0.8

Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

faiths. |

4 In the census statistics, those ethnic groups that were traditionally of the Christian faith—Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, and Lithuanians—were considered to be ‘Christians’. b The category ‘other’ may have included Karaites, Tatars, and other ethnic minorities professing different Sources: As for Table 3.

Table 5. Self-employed individuals engaged in farming, by nationality, 1897

Nationality Vilna province Kaunas province Grodno province

No. (%) No. (%) No. (%)

Russian 5,492 (2.5) 5,936 (2.4) 2,297 (1.2)

Ukrainian 21 (0) 9 (0) 58,410 (29.4) Belarusian 147,314 (67.8) 6,276 (2.6) 113,109 (57.0)

Polish 11,713 (5.4) 21,948 (9.0) 22,369 ~~ (11.3) Lithuanian 50,722 (23.3) 196,453 (80.8) 538 (0.3)

Jewish 1,974 (0.9) 3,062 (1.3) 1,349 (0.7)

Other 199 (0.1) 9,471 (3.9) 235 (0.1)

Total 217,435 (100.0) 243,155 (100.0) 198,307 _—-(100.0) Sources: As for Table 3.

This situation is reflected in the statistics from the 1897 census, which allow us to compare the proportions of Jews and Christians engaged in farming and trade: see Table 4. Table 5 shows the breakdown of farmers in the Lithuanian provinces

by nationality. ,

THE PEASANTRY’S TRADING SITUATION It was rare to find farmers engaged in professional trading, even though it was also rare to find a craftsman or farmer who did not sell his own products from his work-

shop or property, or at local town fairs or markets, a practice which had a long history. However, for village-dwellers, this informal trade was a secondary activity alongside a main occupation such as farming or the practice of a craft. This situation was influenced by several factors.

Economic Relations between fewish Traders and Christian Farmers 79 Inhabitants of settlements where trading was banned often suffered the inconvenience of having to travel to faraway cities and towns to trade. Lack of markets and fairs, poor transport conditions (rough roads), and long distances restricted the possibilities for trade. One must also keep in mind the speed of the transport available and the small number of villagers who had access to harnessed horses. For example, until the middle of the nineteenth century the inhabitants of the town of Alytus had to travel to Butrimonys for supplies, 24 km away, or to Merkine, 34 km away.*4 In practice it was difficult to cover more than 10-15 km altogether on the same day,”° so a distance of 24 or 34 km was inconvenient, especially when seasonal work had to be done, as both men and horses needed to be taken away from the farm. , In addition, having arrived at the market or fair, a farmer could never be sure if his products would sell for more than his local purchaser’s prices, or whether he could acquire products more cheaply than from the delivery salesmen. Hence, until the 1861 reforms, village-dwellers must have felt more confident selling their produce locally via intermediaries who regularly visited the villages, and purchasing other necessary items from salesmen who delivered goods to their door. However, services had a price: the cost of delivered goods had to be lower than in the inns (which in the nineteenth century functioned also as retail outlets) and the small shops, but higher than in the markets, while procurers bought up produce at prices greater than those set by the landlords, but lower than at the markets. So as not to lose some of their profits or so as to improve their economic situation, villagers were often inclined to take the associated risks and engaged in trade themselves.*© Sidestepping the rules and provisions set out by landlords, farmers would travel to

city and town markets and annual fairs to buy goods as well as to sell their own 24 Document of the State Property Board of the Trakai District, 22 Nov. 1849, confirming the operation of weekly markets in Alytus: Lietuvos valstybés istorijos archyvas, Vilnius (hereafter LVIA), f. 525, ap. 13, b. 447, fo. 5.

25 B.N. Mironov, Sotsial’naya istoriya Rossii perioda imperii (XVI1I-nachalo XX v.): Genezis lichnostt, demokraticheskoi sem 1, grazhdanskogo obshchestva i pravovogo gosudarstva, 2 vols. (St Petersburg, 19QQ), 1. 286.

26 Research conducted by Juozas Jurginis provides indirect evidence of the differences in buying and

selling prices, and of the differences between landlords’ and procurers’ prices. Using the Rémeriai estates as an example, he shows that the estate landlords tried to usurp the sales of flax, a very profitable crop. The instructions of the Remeriai estates proclaim: ‘I recommend and insist that all dwellers plant as much flax as possible, as it is a crop of cardinal importance to everyone’s welfare, while the vaztai [serf supervisors] and desimtininkat [similar to foremen] must know the amount of flax sown by each peasant and how much was threshed, and report this to the estate . . . All without exception who produce flax for sale have no right to sell it anywhere else but to the estate; anyone going against these rules will be required to do labour for three weeks. The estate pays the advertised market price; the vaztai must act as supervisors.’ From this Jurginis concludes that if the true market price really had been offered for all produce, it would not have made sense to ban the peasantry from selling the produce themselves. The bans were avoidable: flax was transported to the larger cities, especially Riga, with farmers operating not individually but in co-operation with several others, so that it was impossible to trace which load belonged to whom. See J. Jurginis, Lietuvos valstieciy istorija (nuo seniausiy laiky iki baudziavos panaikinimo ) (Vilnius, 1978), 196.

30 Aelita Ambruleviciiite produce. The farmers who transported their own produce to Riga more than covered their travel expenses and time, as they eliminated the use of intermediaries, who took a greater profit margin.*” However, this method of selling could not always

be justified. A greater volume of goods had to be transported so that it would be worthwhile travelling to a distant market; this meant that co-operation was necessary, as it was unlikely that one farm could produce enough goods by itself to justify travel to a distant market. In addition, the journey to the market, especially a more distant one, always posed some risks. These risks were justified when, because of the change of seasons, the condition of the roads worsened or most farmers were busy with farm work and related activities. Then, at a small market the prices would rise, and farmers would be able to sell

their produce at favourable prices.2° Having successfully sold his produce, the farmer would be likely to go to the same market again. Some years brought less success, however. For example, on 30 November 1802 the roads were impassable and marketplaces in Vilna were closed.?? Of course, in similar situations some farmers might ignore the difficulties and nevertheless take their goods to the city. But if, after a difficult and tiring journey, they missed the market, they would be forced to sell their produce cheaply to intermediaries. In addition, according to the official Pawel Bobrowski, it was fairly common for farmers to leave much of their market earnings at the inns, in which case ‘the village, contrary to the theory proposed by Adam Smith, could only lose out when trading with the city’.°° There were also cases when, during a particularly bountiful year or at a large market, procurers would beat down the farmers’ prices: not hurrying to buy up their produce, a procurer would offer minimal prices and wait until the dismayed farmer agreed to sell his goods at the procurer’s set price, if only to avoid returning home with a full wagon.*! The next time, the farmer would have to decide if it was worth taking the risk of setting out on a one- or two-day journey without guarantee of success. That is why when dealing with a procurer, even though he would get a

smaller profit, any farmer could sell even a small quantity of produce without needing to travel or take risks. -On the other hand, from 1824, after the introduction of new legislation, farmers

were allowed to trade after receiving permission from a landlord or official.°? 27 Materialy dlya geografii 1 statistiki Rossi: Vilenskaya guberniya, 524. 28 Thid. 523. 29 V. Pugaciauskas, ‘Vilniaus turgtis X VIII-XIX a. sandiiroje’, in Z. Kiaupa et al. (eds.), Lietuvos Didziont Kunigaikstystée XVIL amziuye: Miesto erdve (Kaunas, 2007), 106. 30 Materialy dlya geografii 1 statistiki Rossi: Grodnenskaya guberniya, pt. ii, p. 384. 31 Materialy dlya geografit i statistiki Rossii: Vilenskaya guberniya, 524.

32 Even though, in accordance with the 1812 law, trading certificates for the peasantry of private estates were issued only to the landlords, and to state peasants only with the permission of the local official, a certain degree of freedom to engage in trading activities was nonetheless granted: under the 1812 law, state peasants could engage in ‘businesses proper to the peasantry’ without any trading activity certificates or permission from their landlords or officials. ‘Businesses proper to the peasantry’ included transportation of agricultural goods for sale from carts or boats; sale and transportation of food and food

Economic Relations between Fewish Traders and Christian Farmers 81 However, such permits were not always issued.?° Hence, the peasantry’s economic activities became increasingly dependent on landlords. Seeking greater profits, land-

lords forced the peasantry to pay high prices for the most necessary items, and instead of paying in money, they had to exchange their own produce at belowmarket prices, a practice that often restricted free trade for them.?4 Earlier research shows that in the eighteenth century farmers also worked as procurers and agents for wholesale traders, and would often travel to port cities with

their own produce, thereby flouting the landlords’ monopolistic trade laws.°° However, in the first half of the nineteenth century the peasantry’s trade activities developed poorly, especially as local town procurers were also intermediaries for larger seaport traders and product manufacturers.°© In addition, the peasantry had to deal with competition from other procurers and the city-dwellers who handled almost all foreign and domestic trade.?“ According to Tamara Bairasauskaité, from the end of the eighteenth century to the mid-1830s there are scarcely any records of products in cities and their outskirts; maintenance of postal horses, inns, and public courtyards in villages; various types of crafts; transportation and sale of timber, clay, and other building materials; and gardening (park and vegetable/floral) services. Also included were trading on the roads; stationary trading in villages if selling farm produce, food products, and some goods bought in cities or fairs; and permission to trade at fairs up to the value of 2,000 roubles: Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rosstskot Imperit, ist collection, 45 vols. (St Petersburg, 1830-43) (hereafter PSZ1), vol. xxxu, 29 Dec. 1812, nos. 25302, 25304, 35303. However, the introduction of compulsory trade certificates in 1824 affected the peas-

antry’s opportunities to engage in trade. The government law of 14 Nov. 1824 on the Founding of Additional Guilds and Other Forms of Trade stipulated that all forms of trading activity by the peasantry now had to be authorized by a compulsory certificate permitting the holder to engage in a particular type of trade. Instead of four categories of trade, now there were six, but the certificates cost more than one received for selling one’s production. The annual cost of a certificate in each of the six categories was: first category (domestic and foreign wholesale trade, and retail trade in one’s own town) 2,600

roubles; second category (as first category but with a limited annual turnover) 1,100 roubles; third category (retail trade in one’s own town and district) 400 roubles; fourth category (small-scale retail trade) 150 roubles; fifth category (granting the right to trade in small items) 40 roubles; sixth category (smallscale trade but not in the capital) 25 roubles. PS'Z1, vol. xxxix, 14 Nov. 1824, no. 30115; /storichesku ocherk oblozheniya torgovl1 promyslov v Rossi, s prilozheniem matertalov po torgovo-promyshlennot statistike (St Petersburg, 1893), 126. In fact, the laws of 1824—6 set uniform prices for the peasantry’s firstand second-category certificates and the procurers’ first- and second-category trade certificates (firstcategory guild procurers paid 2,200 roubles, second-category guild procurers 880 roubles); the cost of third- and fourth-category trade certificates was decreased: the third to 300 roubles, and the fourth to 80 roubles in the capitals of the provinces, 60 roubles in the chief towns of districts, and 40 roubles in other towns and villages. From 1825, residents of the outskirts and peasants living there were allowed

to operate businesses from their homes without a trade certificate. PSZ1, vol. xl, 31 Aug. 1825, no. 30468; Polnoe sobrante zakonov Rossuskot Imperu, 2nd collection, 62 vols. (St Petersburg, 1830—84) (here-

after PSZ2), vol. i, 11 July 1826, no. 458; PSZ2, vol. ii, 21 Dec. 1827, no. 1631. 33M. Jucas, BaudZiavos irimas Lietuvoje (Vilnius, 1972), 149—52. 34 T. Mulevicius, Kaimas ir dvaras Lietuvoje XIX amZiuje (Vilnius, 2003), 374.

35 M. Juéas, ‘Prekyba Lietuvos kaime XVIII amZiuje’, in A. VySniauskaité et al. (eds.), Is letuviy

kultiros istorijos, iv (Vilnius, 1964), 109-22. 36 Jucas, Baudziavos irimas Lietuvoje, 148. 37 7. Mulyavichyus and M. Yuchas [L. Mulevicius and M. Juéas], Nekotorye voprosy genezisa kapitahzma v Litve (Vilnius, 1968), 34.

82 Aelita Ambruleviciite traders of free peasantry origin.?° We can preliminarily state that even in later decades the situation remained much the same; for example, in 1847 in the Kaunas province 7.1 per cent of the peasantry, and in 1851 some 5.8 per cent of the peasantry, declared their capital as being equal to that of traders,®° and it is likely that they engaged in trade professionally. Such a situation in the trade sector may have made the peasantry passive participants in the economy, in private estates dependent on landlords and in the state-owned realm dependent on officials who suppressed

their business independence and left them with almost no other option but to farm.

This was especially so since the peasantry’s economic activities generally involved farm work. Measures for controlling these activities were stepped up: there is no single inventory of an estate’s income that shows supplementary income from free business or trade conducted by the peasantry, as there were practically no such cases in this period; it is doubtful that they existed at all, given that leasehold agreements were not in the peasantry’s favour.*° Most likely, under the prevailing conditions of serfdom, in which peasants worked as unfree cultivators, landlords had more to gain by acquiring the peasantry’s produce, which the estate could sell on to the procurers (mostly Jews), a situation that would explain why landlords did not encourage free trade amongst the peasantry and were happy to use the services of the procurers.

Jews travelled around the villages and towns buying up produce from farms. They would then attend fairs and markets with the aim of buying goods, and farmers from the Lithuanian provinces would be sure to receive regular visits from them. This well-established and well-organized trade system, arranged by Jews, was more of an obstacle to the peasantry’s aims of business development than a stimulus. For example, under serfdom in Russia trade in the villages was affected by weak ties between the cities and the villages, due to poor roads and great distances between

settlements. Villagers could wait almost the entire year for a trader to sell the produce of their farms. ‘They were thus forced to take the initiative and sell their produce themselves by travelling around the district, and if, according to the Russian official Iosif Kulisher, only traders had the right to sell in those districts, the villages would fall into poverty.4! The huge expanses of countryside, with the greatest distances in all Europe between settlements, as well as poor road conditions, prevented inter-regional contacts from being formed before the introduction of the railway, forcing the peasantry to engage in trade. That is why a strong, small-scale trading class was formed in Russia relatively early on, represented by the peasantry. In Russia, the peasantry also represented wholesale trade capital. According to Fernand 38 BairaSauskaité, ‘Vilniaus pirkliai X VIII a. pabaigoje—XIX a. ketvirtojo deSimtmecio viduryje’, 41. 39 Mulyavichyus and Yuchas, Nekotorye voprosy genezisa kapitalizma v Litve, 34. 40 §. Pamerneckis, Agrariniy santykiy raida ir dinamika Lietuvoje: XVIII a. pabaiga—XIX a. pirmoji puse (statistine analize) (Vilnius, 2004), 120. 41 JT, Kulisher, /storiya russkoi torgovli do devyatnadtsatogo veka vklyuchitel’no (Petrograd, 1923), 250.

Economic Relations between Ffewish Traders and Christian Farmers 83 Braudel, in the mid-eighteenth century Count Minich, speaking on behalf of the Russian government, stated that, irrespective of prohibitions, the peasantry had for centuries engaged in trade and had made great investments for its continuation; accordingly, large-scale trade had developed thanks to the efforts of the peasantry.** Thus, in the Russian provinces, where the same social-class model was in place as in the Lithuanian provinces and basically the same legal order was enforced, there were nevertheless farmers who professionally engaged in trade. ‘There were even some well-known trading figures who were originally members of the peasantry, such as the members of the Ryabushkinsky family and Nikita Demidov. Yet in the Lithuanian provinces, by contrast, there were few professional traders amongst the peasantry. In other words, apart from the ‘status’ factor that determined the function of each class, there had to be another, not necessarily economic, factor to account for the difference between the Russian and Lithuanian provinces. It may have been a combination of social and economic details. The integration of the Jewish communities, first into the urban dwellers’ class, encouraged them to act out this group’s function: to manufacture or to trade. For a community of restricted opportunities, this meant joining one particular sphere, especially because in the Lithuanian provinces, owing to the undeveloped class of Christian urban dwellers, the Jewish community had little competition. It appears that, because of the landlords’ ban on engaging in trade and the (relatively) weak trade network, peasants did not have the opportunity to trade freely and seek professional trader status, and because of the existence of a well-organized trade system maintained by Jews,*? peasants did not have a major reason to become professional traders: if it were not for the Jews the farmer would not know who would buy his meagre products— a swathe of cloth, or a skein of thread; the estate-holder would not know who... would rent his inn or mill, whom to see about borrowing money, or where to acquire certain products. The Jew is needed everywhere; he pays in cash for weighed products, and cheaply and efficiently intermediates, as if he were the only link between the various social classes. And that is why, if the Jews are hunted down and not replaced with another business class, this act would bring more harm to the state than good, as the economic situation of the peasantry and the landlords would become even more difficult . . .44

It was felt that, were such circumstances to unfold, and with the existence of strong Jewish competition in the Lithuanian provinces and an absence of large-scale 42 F. Braudel, Material’naya tsivilizatsiya, ekonomika 1 kapitalizm, XV-XVIII vv., 3 vols. (Moscow, 1986-92), vol. 11: Vremya mira, 463. 43 ‘The positive impact of Jews on the country’s economic development is discussed in Kolodziejczyk, ‘Image przedsiebiorcy gospodarczego w Polsce’, 41.

44 Order of the Second Department of State Property, with G. Siyalsky’s note on Samogitians, forests, contraband, Jews, Prussians, clerks, and administrators, 7—13 Sept. 1839: LVIA, f. 525, ap. 13, b. 54, fos. 3%—4.

84 Aehta Ambrulevictitte procurers with capital stemming from the peasantry, only a rare farmer or craftsman would professionally engage in trade. In addition, entrepreneurship among the peasants (mostly Christians) emerged later than in the central Russian provinces of the empire.

JEWS AND FARMERS UNDER CHANGING TRADE CONDITIONS In the Lithuanian provinces, ‘two nationalities, Lithuanians and Jews, living alongside one another since time immemorial, created two separate worlds, two isolated communities that had relations with one another only sporadically, to settle this or that affair, but were divided in every other sense’.+° With this background to everyday life, and with self-identification made on the basis of one’s religion, farmers regarded the Jew as a completely foreign element, with a different language, differ-

ent customs, and a different religion. These traditions influenced the economic sphere, where the areas of activity of ‘our own’ people and ‘the others’ were also separated, and because of the role of Jews in trade in the Lithuanian provinces, this sep-

aration could have been transmitted into the trade sector as well. ‘Thus we cannot dismiss the idea that trade—like business, and the division of the sphere of work according to religion—was marginalized by the peasantry (and the landlords). In addition, trade might have been regarded as an immoral field of activity, like business, and thus be foreign to the Catholic mindset. Given the widespread practice of cheating in trade under competitive circumstances and an absence of strict laws regulating relations between buyers and sellers, the conditions were just right for business. In the opinion of the historian Andrey Polovnikov, the conditions of industrial capitalism enabled the most brutal means of trade to develop. Seeking profits was not considered to be dishonourable, and driving the hardest possible bargain was commonplace, whether by charging excessively or by cheating through false calculation, inaccurate weighing of goods, and various other means. For example, a

buyer would often be shown a quality product that was then underhandedly swapped for a poorer-quality version when sold.4© Another example of trickery is described in the Kaunas province’s statistical records.*/ 45 'Truska and Vareikis, Holokausto prielaidos, 23. 46 A. Polovnikov, Torgovlya v staroi Rossii (Moscow, 1958), 69-70; see also Truska and Vareikis, Holokausto prielaidos, 24. 47 ‘The producer transports his produce to the market to the procurer, always a Jew, who by paying I or 2 roubles more, and selling at a lower price, aims to cheat the producer [usually a peasant farmer] by weighing the flax on a balance which is fixed to give an erroneous reading. Having weighed his flax

at home, upon re-weighing it on location the producer is surprised that the weight of the flax has decreased. He thus refuses to sell his flax. He is then approached by other similar procurers, who weigh his flax and find that it is the same as the first procurer claimed. In the end, the producer is convinced

the announced weight is correct after all, and sells his goods. But the next time he takes his flax to market, he no longer trusts either his own balance or the procurers’ ones, and tries himself to cheat the

Economic Relations between Jewish Traders and Chnistian Farmers 85 Cautionary tales on this subject were frequently recounted 1n periodical publications as well: The objective of trade, as we have seen, is to be the intermediary . . . the trader, without regard for the buyers, tries to earn as much for himself as possible. As 1f it were not enough ‘for him to buy goods at the lowest price, and sell them at the highest, he also often cheats by substituting old, poor-quality products for the new, quality products one sees; fabricates copies of factory-produced brands; changes the prices; and fabricates products to the extent that they may endanger the buyer’s health or life.4®

Even though society in the first half of the nineteenth century was prepared to find rational explanations for Jewish traders’ practices, consumers had to deal with cheating in trade so often that they developed a negative image of traders.*? As Jews constituted the majority of those engaged in trade (and other businesses) in the Lithuanian provinces, and as Christians dominated agriculture, ‘Christian’ and ‘farmer’ easily became synonymous terms, as did ‘Jew’ and ‘trader’, while the negative image of traders and the negative attitude towards them might have reinforced the negative image of Jews in general, and Jewish traders in particular. These assumptions can also be substantiated in many periodicals when a ‘trader’ is mentioned.°° Most often in these publications it is a Jew who is accused of or is the embodiment of immoral behaviour, or is held to be a spreader of sin. Jews are cited in crimes such as stealing, or dishonest sale or trade in horses, or the falsification of goods.°! The negative image of the Jewish trader also appears in the records procurer by dampening the flax or inserting a 5 pound [approx. 2 kg] lump of clay into the middle of the bundle of flax. The procurer, a Jew, having overpaid for the dirkavas [a measure of weight equal to 10 pidas, or 163 kg| of flax by 2 roubles, and wanting to recoup that difference and earn something on top, ties a thicker rope around the bundle and dampens it again before selling the flax. By selling at 4 roubles per pudas he earns 44 roubles instead of the 40 he has paid; in other words, he gets back the 2 roubles overpaid, and earns the same amount on top.’ Pamyatnaya knizhka Kovenskoi gubernii na 1895 god (Kaunas), 227. 48 P. Bulovicius, ‘Riipinkimés daugiau prekyba’, Saltinis, 1911, no. 13, p. 146. 49 One landlord, Vladimiras Gadonas, saw the root of the problem in the very customs of the Jewish

community. First and foremost, the division of objects and food into clean and unclean (kosher and treyf) made some things too dear for the poorer Jewish classes to acquire and thus they were demoralized as a result of the strict customary requirements. They were then forced either to cheat in order to earn

money for the clean objects, or to deceive the community in failing to abide by this custom: see T. BairaSauskaité, ‘Vladimiras Gadonas (XIX a. I pusés Zemaiciu bajoro sociokultirinis portretas)’, Lietuvos istoryjos metrastis, 1997, pp. 143-63. 50 See Ausra, Sviesa, V arpas, Tevynes sargas, Saltinis, Ukininkas, and other periodicals from the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many such articles are mentioned in works by Liudas Truska and Linas Venclauskas, e.g. Truska, Lietuviat ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos iki 1941 m. birzelio, and L. Venclauskas, ‘Moderniojo lietuvisko antisemitizmo genezé ir raida (1883—1940 m.)’, Ph.D. diss. (Vytautas Magnus Univ., Kaunas, 2008). °1 Leading article, ‘Zydai ir mes’, Sa/tinis, 1914, no. 29, p. 433.

86 Aehta Ambruleviciiité of the tsarist administration;°? the same source mentions the ‘Christian’ trader too, presenting him in a more positive light.°°

In the context of values, the virtuous Christian, especially the God-fearing farming peasant raised according to Christian village traditions, was supposed to need protection from such foreign, ‘dishonourable’, and dishonest ‘Jewish’ activities, and needed to avoid all business apart from that which was ‘Christian’—that is, farming: ‘and what is more, not so long ago there was a time a Lithuanian wouldn’t dare to take up trading, considering it immoral work; it appeared to him that this work was suited only to Jews’.°* Mikalojus Katkus, an enthnographer of the midnineteenth century, wrote a story about a strange farmer, Karoliukas, who would carve spoons and pipes, or collect nuts to sell while the other workers took a break from gathering hay: “There were more of these Karoliukas fellows, but the village did not understand them.”°° It appears that someone who worked on a farm, and who saw himself only as a farmer, dissociated himself from everything that was not farm-related (or Catholic). In addition, Jews were very astute traders, with wide networks. Because of the competition that this could pose, a non-Jewish newcomer would have found it extremely difficult to start a business—and all the more so since Jews were free, while the peasantry was in bondage up until 1863-4, and estate instructions often stipulated that it was forbidden for peasantry to trade beyond their landlords’ boundaries. °2 “Traders constitute the highest class amongst the Jewish community, which itself can be divided into three classes: the first—educated; the second—partly educated; and the third—uneducated. The existence of the first class proves that Vilna’s Jews can become useful members of society and that their nature or faith does not impede their ability to be honest and useful people . . . unfortunately, there are not many such Jewish citizens and, worst of all, their influence is usually weakened by the richer fanatics

... Jewish traders have had some bold aims, but the excessively great desire to get rich quickly takes them beyond reasonable limits, and so there are often cases of rapid wealth, and just as rapid decline . . . It is not easy for a small-scale trader to become a millionaire: one needs credit, an education, and many other conditions that a partly educated Jew does not have. But instead of these qualities, he has the innate ability not to be limited by external factors. This awareness of free scope often delivers wealth into their

hands that, under the circumstances of honest trading, would not be possible... A Jew, with less than a hundred roubles, starts to engage in trade which allows him to earn a simple living; this poor way of earning a living forces the trader to ensure there is a high turnover, as goods that do not sell for a long time reduce the Jew’s means of subsistence; that is why a specific feature of the small-scale trader is his hastiness, importunity, and the unavoidable urge to cheat others. “Testing” the buyer, he first raises prices and then hastens to drop them to a certain lower limit, just so that the goods will not remain unsold too long.’ Matertaly dlya geografit 1 statistiki Rossi: Vilenskaya guberniya, 411.

°3 ‘Tn terms of its mentality, the Christian trading class can probably be associated with the educated class of the Vilna province; however, the fruits of this education have had little significance for the development of trade in the country. The shortage of capital and entrepreneurship, as well as the lack of will, affect the trader’s routine: buy for less—sell for more, and this constitutes a specific characteristic of Jewish traders (and also brings the Christian trader closer to the level of the Jew), the only difference being that in Christian shops, the buyer is less likely to be cheated on the quality of the product or its price, as is frequently the case in Jewish shops.’ Ibid. 386.

54 K. Arpietis, ‘Ripinkimés pirklyba ir pramone’, Lietuvos Z1nios, 23 May (5 June) 1914, p. I. , 55 M. Katkus, Balanos gadyné, in id., Rastai (Vilnius, 1965), 42.

Economic Relations between Jewish Traders and Christian Farmers 87 While the religious peasantry looked upon trade as a business unsuitable for Christians, the ideologues of nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries aimed to reinterpret entrepreneurship as a new type of economic activity suited to a nation being ‘reborn’: ‘Lithuania’s people, having for a long time engaged only in outdoor work, have become used to doing only such work and have become unaccustomed to other types of work. We think that we are incapable of taking up one or another craft, especially trade, but we must take up these other activities.’° The Christian section of society had to overcome more than one stereotype: first, to change the prevailing attitude towards trade as a dishonest activity in itself, and second, to see trade as a business suitable for Catholics as well. That is why the peasantry’s apathetic approach to business, its inability to compete, and its lack of entre-

preneurial skills are often noted, along with motifs of social criticism, urging a modernizing society to shake off its bondage-era passivity. One writer commented on the small size of farm carts: With one person already seated, there’s no room left for a second. This type of cart came about because of serfdom, because they were careful not to strain their horses too much. Now that serfdom is gone, they need to start using their brains, and make larger carts, with a shaft, pulled by two horses. It’s a shame, as a strong man could carry as much as can be loaded onto one of those old carts.°”

Also noticeable is the ambition to rid people of their preconceived notions about the supremacy of other ethnic groups in business and their own self-doubts: Many Lithuanians are fleeing to foreign lands in search of happiness, while Jews, Germans, and other foreigners come here and accumulate their wealth in Lithuania. Wouldn’t it be better if, instead of running somewhere else, the smarter Lithuanians could work out how those foreigners amass wealth across our homeland, Lithuania, and learn from those foreigners? ... then our homeland would find benefit, and they would find happiness.®®

However, as far as the encouragement of their own businesses and their own warehouses, and support for their own consumer society is concerned, these ideas of co-

operative trade were based on co-operation against Jews and other ethnic groups regarded as economic opponents: ‘No, this [trade and industry] we cannot leave to the Latvians, nor the Jews, nor the Poles, nor any other nation’;°? ‘Let’s support Polish, Christian trade and industry!’©° Such arguments were intended to present the construction of their own warehouses as a necessity, or as one of the ways to withstand foreign, especially Jewish, competition. Discussions of the Jew as the main economic opponent further show that the figure of the Jew as an immoral businessman 56 P, Lititas [P. Leonas], ‘Keli zodziai apie prekyste (kupéyste) ir amatus’, Sviesa, 2 (1887), 49. &7 M. Valancius, Palangos Fuze, in id., Rastai (Vilnius, 1977), 251. 58 Pauk&cius, ‘Vienybéje mazi daiktai auga’, Sa/tinis, 1911, no. 26, p. 302. °9 Arpietis, ‘Riipinkimés pirklyba ir pramone’, 1. 60 A slogan printed in the newspaper Gazeta Codzienna, 23 Apr. (6 May) 1912, p. I.

88 Aehta Ambruleviciiite has its origin in traditional folklore,°+ and stress the division of business between ‘our own’ and ‘foreigners’. At the same time, the emphasis on the negative image of Jews further stimulated economic antisemitism, chiefly by attributing to Jews as a group the role of a collective opponent in business.©* The ‘boycott of Jews’ and various stratagems employed to support ‘our own’ businesses were, it seems, predicated on the perceived growing threat from the Jews as economic opponents: ‘today, Jewish

intermediation is not necessary, and conversely, we are all under the obligation to ensure that national industry and trade become more and more independent and stronger, and to support any Polish enterprises—this is also the duty of every Pole’.©? However, articles were also published in which the aim of pushing Jews out of their dominant positions in business was not argued for on the basis of ethno-cultural distinction or ethno-cultural opposition, but was related to their professional activities: we do not have our own manufacturers, apart from home-made handicrafts. Nor do we have our own traders: all trade is in the hands of the Jews. That is why, when there 1s a struggle against the established traders, here in Lithuania, it becomes a struggle against the Jews, and not because the Jew is any different from a Lithuanian, Pole, Belarusian, or anyone else, but because Jews have the whole trade sector in their hands.®4

Despite the fact that Jews were targeted because of the way trade was organized in the Lithuanian provinces, and that to create the foundation of a national economy involved eliminating Jews from the trade sector (and other businesses) as they were the main economic competition, there were also some positive assessments of the Jews’ economic activities: Prices here are reasonable because there are many Jewish traders, not like in Russia, where trade was in the hands of bourgeois monopolists. Russian newspapers and the public complained that there were few markets, and that there was a bourgeois procurer in every village who would buy up [produce] from the peasantry at any price he wanted, and would sell [goods] to the peasantry at any price he wanted .. . We are writing this in the name of justice, and everyone who says that they don’t like Jews but stops to think, will nevertheless admit that that is the truth [that trade is well organized under the Jews, and acknowledge their economic superiority and positive impact on the country’s trade].°° 61 According to Laima Anglickiené, religious, class, and ethnic insularity, echoing back to the Middle Ages, is reflected in Lithuanian folklore in references to Jews, as well as in responses to differences in customs and psychology, and in cases showing disagreements between the peasantry and traders and innkeepers. The Jew is visualized precisely as a trader or innkeeper. Aspects of his character that are the subject of ridicule include greed, wiliness, selfishness, importunity, and feebleness. See L. Anglickiene, Kitatauciy tvaizdis hetuviy folklore (Vilnius, 2006), 165-6. 62 Vladas Sirutavicius notes that the ideologues of the central and east European national movements began to consider Jews a very clever collective opponent that had to be overcome competitively in order to guarantee the establishment of the nation. See V. Sirutavicius, ‘Kataliky Bazny¢cia ir modernaus lietuviu antisemitizmo geneze’, Lietuviy kataliky mokslo akademyos metrastis, 14 (1999), 70. 63 AP. ‘Emigracija Zydéw’, Gazeta Codzienna, 1 (14) Feb. 1912, p. 2. 64 Bulovicius, ‘Ripinkimés daugiau prekyba’, 146. 65 A.U., ‘Valasnoe zemstva i zhydy’, Nasha niva, 1911, no. 14, p. 196.

Economic Relations between fewish Traders and Christian Farmers 89 The different attitudes towards Jewish economic activity and the varied assessments of it are noted in the historiography too. Jews engaging in trade, industry, and banking were viewed in two ways: some welcomed their activities and valued their noble-

minded behaviour with clients, their orientation towards service, and their high morals, while others condemned them, seeing only the ‘evil’ side to their nature— their ‘miserliness’, ‘wiliness’, and ‘lack of care and attention’.°© Some believed that Jews did not consider it a sin to fool and cheat people, that to cheat a ‘goy’ or gentile brought respect, whereas according to another view, there were few thieves among Jews, as stealing was forbidden; rather, Jews merely had good bargaining skills.°7 Under the conditions of the new competition, and acknowledging the lack of business experience of the local non-Jewish population, society came to appreciate the Jews’ aptitude for business: ‘everything is done so nicely in Mr Ivanaitis’s shop, just like at the Jews’.©® Even the Catholic Church, with its huge influence on the peasantry and the attempts it made to limit all forms of contact between Christians and Jews (which in the practicalities of social life was impossible to achieve), had to acknowledge that there was an advantage to the Jews: they were dangerous, but one could certainly learn something useful from them.®°? With the modernization of society and the commercialization of agriculture, other upheavals were also taking place: changes in the economy, wider opportunities for different classes to engage in economic activities through the introduction of new laws,/° and changing attitudes towards trade itself are all factors that could have encouraged Christians to start out in businesses that had up until then not been characteristic for them. From the second half of the nineteenth century, the traditionally agricultural Lithuanian and Belarusian ethno-cultural groups started to enter the trade sector. Country-dwellers gradually developed trading skills and, refusing the services of intermediaries, began independent engagement in trade. Recalling men such as the fictitious Karoliukas, who started his ‘business’ career when it was still socially unacceptable in village communities, actors in the national revival movement were spurred on by such types of ‘neo-merchants’, and forged ahead in business with new-found self-confidence. With the forces of commercialization in action, the rise of entrepreneurship based on a foundation of nationalism changed commonly held 66 S. Kowalska-Glikman, ‘Wizerunek ludzi srednich fortun w publicystyce, satyrze i przystowiach w drugiej polowie XIX w.’, in Kolodziejczyk (ed.), Image przedsightorcy gospodarczego w Polsce, 61-2. 67 Anglickiené, Kitatauciy ivaizdis lietuviy folklore, 134. 68 V.D., ‘IS Lietuvos: Raseiniai’, Ausra, 2/3 (1885), 61.

69 V. Sirutavicius, ‘Kataliky Baznyéia ir modernaus lietuviskojo antisemitizmo geneze’, Kultiros barat, 1998, no. I1, pp. 36—7.

7 Tn 1861, after the review of laws on industry, trade, and taxes (amended in 1863 and 186s), all the empire’s inhabitants, including foreigners but excluding ministers of religion and soldiers, were granted the right to engage in industrial and commercial activities. Instead of three guilds, the laws of 1863 and

1865 made provision for two to remain: the first served all forms of foreign and domestic trade; the second—foreign and domestic retail trade. Individuals engaging in commerce but who did not belong to either of the guilds were identified as small-scale domestic traders. PSZ2, vol. xl, 9 Feb. 1865, no. 41779.

Qo Aelita Ambruleviciiite Table 6. Individuals engaged in business or trade in Kaunas province, by category, 1905-1911

Category 1905 1906 1908 1909 1910 1911 No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) No. (%) Urban dwellers 9,760 (83.5) 9,427 (82.4) 9,538 (78.3) 9,860 (78.7) 9,953 (77.8) 9,969 (77.4) Farming peasants 1,092 (9.3) 1,174 (10.3) 1,558 (12.8) 1,574 (12.6) 1,745 (13.6) 1,794 (13.9)

Landlords 453 (3.9) 459 (4.0) 562 (46) 561 (45) 591 (46) 585 (4.5) Traders 344 (2.9) 325. (2.8) 344 (2.8) 339s (2.7) +339 (2.6) 344 (2.7)

Foreigners 38 (0.3) 35 (0.3) 23 (0.2) 22 (02) 27 (02) 31 (0.2)

Other 26 (0.2) 153 (1.3) 168 (1.3) 140° (1.1) 165 (1.3) Total 11,687 (100.0) 11,446 (100.0) 12,178 (100.0) 12,524 (100.0) 12,795 (100.0) 12,888 (100.0) Sources: Pamyatnaya knizhka Kovenskoi gubernit: na 1907 god, sect. iii, p. 33; na 1908 god, sect. ili, p. 33; na 1910 god, sect. iii, p. 6; na 1911 god, sect. iti, p. 58; na 1912 god, sect. iti, p. 10; na 1913 god, sect. iii, p. 9.

attitudes towards all the Karoliukas-type men, who no longer had to feel ashamed of engaging in trade or shopkeeping, and towards businessmen ‘who were one’s own kin and were naturally supported more by the people than was the Jew’.’1 However, the number of farmers professionally engaged in trade remained small. At the beginning of the twentieth century in Kaunas province, just over Io per cent of farmers (and around 5 per cent of landlords) were considered professional traders. The breakdown of categories of individuals engaged in business or trade is shown in Table 6. According to Ludvikas ‘Truska’s calculations, at that time approximately 74 per cent of traders and some 53 per cent of industrialists were Jews. ’7 The slow rise of the non-Jewish trading class is related to internal economic circumstances. According to Solomonas Atamukas, the formation of the Lithuanian (and, I might add, the Belarusian) commercial, industrial, and financial bourgeoisie at the end of the nineteenth century clashed with the roles of the Polish and Russian landlords who were dominant in the villages, and with Polish, German, and espe-

cially Jewish businessmen in the cities.“? However, with the modernization of society and upheavals in the economy, the changed conditions for economic activity

provided a new impulse. Traditional attitudes towards trade (and other nonagricultural businesses) changed, and the outdated approach to business met with harsher criticism: and our people... not only do they not know how to improve their lot and are too lazy to do so, they want everyone else to remain in the dark as well . . . it is out of jealousy that they mock him [the non-Jewish trader] or try to set some trap for him, just so that he will fail. . . They must think that only Jews, those Jewish upstarts, are capable of trading and that’s why they sell their grain to them, rather than to the Lithuanian. No, brothers, trade is right for anyone and is useful for everyone, not just Jews. 4 71 M. Saléius, Desimt mety tautiniai-kultirinio darbo Lietuvoje (1905-1915) (Chicago, 1917), 44. “2 L.. Truska, ‘Lietuvos nezemdirbinés burzuazijos skaicius, tautiné sudeétis ir iSsimokslinimas pries Pirmaji pasaulinj kara’, Lietuvos TSR moksly akademyos darbat, ser. A, 1 (50) (1975), 88.

73 Atamukas, Lietuvos Zydy kelias, 64. ; “4 A. Kalinys, ‘Kas girdéti. Korespondencijos. Vilkaviskis’, Sa/tinis, 1906, no. 36, p. 572.

Economic Relations between Fewish Traders and Christian Farmers gI

A breakthrough, related to the beginning of socio-economic modernization, occurred around the late 1880s, when customs and norms of economic behaviour began to alter and the greater part of Christian society changed its preconceptions about trade by gradually becoming more entrepreneurial. Yet the inadequate business experience of the non-Jewish population, the limited opportunities in the domestic market, and the unexpectedly strong competitive advantage held by Jews in business retarded the entrepreneurship of non-Jewish ethnic groups on the one hand, and on the other encouraged the newly forming eroups of businessmen who were of non-Jewish origin to search for alternative business channels.

CONCLUSION In the period under discussion, the traditionally developed structure of ethnic divisions of labour in the Lithuanian provinces endured, and trade remained the specialized domain of the Jewish ethno-confessional minority. However, the ethnic structure of the trading class did gradually begin to change after the introduction of reforms in 1861, and alongside professional (mostly Jewish) traders, the numbers of other traders from the non-Jewish population started to grow. Further, by the late nineteenth century there were many calls from the ideologues of Lithuanian nationalism urging the creation of nationalized business. The difficulties experienced by ‘newcomers’ in the competitive battle against Jewish businessmen in the trade sector was one factor that led to a rise in the antisemitic mood of society. Jews were seen as the main economic opponents, and the emphasis placed on the activities that secured them their dominant positions in the economy served to continue the tradition of dividing the business sphere into ‘our own’ and ‘foreigners’. However, with the growth of commercialization, the lack of business aptitude among ‘our own’ and their lack of entrepreneurial skills enabled Jewish businesses to maintain their advantages. But with changes in the ways that economic activities could be carried out, new opportunities opening up as a result of revised legislation on economic activities, and the commercialization of agriculture, social attitudes towards non-agricultural business gradually started to change as well, and traditionally farming-oriented Lithuanians (and Belarusians) began to break into the trade sector. However, the number of local non-Jewish traders was slow to rise, and Jews continued to hold on to their dominant positions. The insignificant participation of the peasantry in trade may have been determined by the slow change in traditional attitudes towards trade, the attachment to agriculture (which had become traditional), and the inadequate

business experience of the non-Jewish population. Translated from the Lithuanian by Albina Strunga

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The War of Lyady Succession R. Aaron Halevi versus R. Dov Baer IMMANUEL ETKES WHO IS THE RIGHTFUL HEIR: THE SON

, OR THE DISCIPLE?

THE DEATH of R. Shneur Zalman of Lyady in the winter of 1812-13 left a huge vacuum in the lives of his hasidim. Some thought it simply impossible to find a replacement of his stature and that his demise accordingly foretold the end of Habad hasidism. “They roamed around their towns, crying “Woe, woe, we have no rabbi and hasidism has breathed its last”.’+ Others wondered who would be worthy of leading the hasidim of Belarus in the post-Shneur Zalman era. The two natural candidates for the role were R. Aaron Halevi, R. Shneur Zalman’s leading disciple, and R. Dov Baer, his eldest son.* They were the two who had been closest to R. Shneur Zalman; both had played key parts in running his court; and, before long, a fullblown succession war had broken out between them. In this chapter, I want to examine the course of that war and consider its significance. The questions on which This article, translated from the Hebrew by Joel Linsider, is a chapter of my Ba’al hatanya: rabi shne’ur zalman miliadt veretshito shel hasidut habad (Jerusalem, 2011). Translations of Hebrew primary sources

are by the present translator. The author’s clarifying inserts in quotations from primary sources are shown in square brackets [ ]; those by the translator are shown in braces { }. 1 H. M. Heilmann, Beit rabi (Berdichev, 1902), pt. 2, p. 7. 2 Rachel Elior believes that ‘there were three claimants for the succession to R. Shneur Zalman’s office: his eldest son, R. Dov Baer; his third son, R. Moshe; and his outstanding student, R. Aaron of Staroselye’: R. Elior, ‘Hamahaloket al moreshet habad’, Tarbiz, 49 (1980), 1. Her position was also adopted by Moshe Rosman in his Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov (Berkeley, 1996), 191. But the notion that R. Shneur Zalman’s son R. Moshe also competed for the leadership is only an intellectual will-o’-the-wisp, invented to explain R. Moshe’s motivation in converting to Christianity. It was first suggested in a letter written in 1821 by R. Isaac Baer Levinsohn to Joseph Perl. Levinsohn, and the maskilim (Jews pursuing secular learning) who followed his lead, erroneously

believed that R. Moshe was R. Shneur Zalman’s firstborn son; his displacement from the throne by R. Dov Baer, they believed, moved him to convert. That determination, however, has no support in contemporaneous documents. Nor is it at all reasonable that R. Shneur Zalman’s third son would challenge his firstborn brother. For a comprehensive examination of the narrative of the maskilim regarding

R. Moshe’s conversion, see D. Assaf, Ne’ehaz basevakh (Jerusalem, 2006), 76 ff. For the text of Levinsohn’s letter to Perl, see ibid. 77, and cf. ibid. 67 n. 60.

Q4 Immanuel Etkes the inquiry will be centred include the following. What arguments were advanced by the competing claimants to the legacy? How did the conflict between them play out in practice? Who else played a role in the battle? How was their theoretical dispute over the question of ‘spiritual ecstasy’ (Aitpa’alut) resolved and what role did it play in the battle for leadership? Which of the two prevailed? What are the longterm consequences of the struggler We begin with the Habad dynasty’s ‘official’ version of events, as formulated by Hayim Meir Heilmann, the author of Beit rabi. He describes the early stages of the succession struggle as follows: Now, after the death of his [R. Dov Baer’s] father, our great rabbi, may his rest be in Eden, most of his followers looked to the son to succeed his father, for it is the norm that a son take his father’s place—particularly because that was the opinion of our great rabbi. But a certain portion of our brothers turned away from our rabbi’s family and looked to the holy rabbi R. Aaron Halevi, may his rest be in Eden, who likewise turned away from our rabbi, his longbeloved friend; and their love, which had been as great as that between brothers, was replaced by a great divide between them. The divide had already begun to appear towards the end of our great rabbi’s life, when a dispute arose between R. Aaron Halevi and our rabbi’s family and many of our leading figures. R. Aaron Halevi had to sell his house in Lyady and take up residence in his birthplace, Oseve, coming to Lyady only occasionally. From that time, a barrier arose between him and our rabbi, and they even differed in their ways of worship—our rabbi’s way was not followed by R. Aaron Halevi; that is, it did not seem reasonable to him. Accordingly, after the death of our great rabbi, when his son, our rabbi, had not yet come to our district, R. Aaron wrote to some of our followers, telling them to come to him for instruction regarding the way [of worship]. And there were many who accepted the words of his missive with favour, turning away from our rabbi’s family. Moreover, even among the great disciples of our great rabbi, may his rest be in Eden, there were to be found some who turned away from our rabbi’s family and stood as adversaries.®

| A critical reading of this passage from Beit rahi reveals some facts and raises some questions. First, the facts. Soon after R. Shneur Zalman’s death, R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer began to solicit support among the hasidim. Many sided with R. Dov Baer, but a sizeable portion, including some of R. Shneur Zalman’s leading disciples, favoured R. Aaron. In fact, the conflict between the two contenders for the crown began a few years before R. Shneur Zalman’s death. The author of Beit rabi does not disclose the nature of that conflict, but he knows that it resulted in R. Aaron being

compelled to leave Lyady and move elsewhere. He also tells that one aspect the struggle between the contenders involved a matter of principle—they disagreed on the right way to worship God. As a loyal disciple of the Habad dynasty, the author of Bett rab: portrays the turn to R. Dov Baer as only natural. He cites two reasons: first, it is proper in general that the son succeed his father; and, second, R. Shneur Zalman himself wanted his son

| 3 Beit rabi, pt. 2, pp. 6-7.

The War of Lyady Succession 95 Dov Baer to succeed him as leader. But these conclusions raise two questions. By the time of R. Shneur Zalman’s death, had hasidim already adopted the view that the mantle of leadership should pass dynastically, from father to son? And is there any basis for the claim that R. Shneur Zalman himself directed that R. Dov Baer take his place? An answer to the first question is offered by the author of Beit rabi himself. That many of the hasidim connected to R. Shneur Zalman, including some of his greatest disciples, chose to take R. Aaron’s side shows they did not adhere to the view that

the son was destined to succeed his father. ‘The author of Beit rabi even notes the factors that led them to their position: ‘Some of them said that just as the Besht [R. Israel Ba’al Shem Tov] and the rabbi, the Maggid [of Mezhirech], may their rest be in Eden, were succeeded, after their deaths, by their disciples, so should happen now as well.’* Clearly, R. Aaron’s supporters relied on the precedent established at the earlier stages of hasidic history. ‘(The Besht bequeathed no leadership position to his son, nor did R. Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezhirech; their work was carried on by their leading disciples. It is fair to infer that this argument carried considerable weight, for R. Shneur Zalman himself attained his leadership position by virtue of being a disciple of the Maggid and not on account of his ancestry. To be sure, R. Dov Baer and his supporters could point to some renowned hasidic

leaders who attained leadership by virtue of their lineage. Among them were R. Barukh of Mezhbizh (Medzhybizh), the Besht’s grandson, and R. Nahman of Bratslav, the Besht’s great-grandson. But even they did not succeed their fathers, who had not presided over hasidic courts. Still, there were active hasidic leaders whose ascent to leadership had been premised on the principle of filial succession. Among them were R. Samuel, son of R. Hayim of Amdor (Indura), who assumed his father’s throne in 1787, R. Mordecai, son of Nahum of Chernobyl, who did the same in 1797, and R. Abraham bar Shalom Shakhne of Pohrebyshche, who succeeded his father in 1802. On the other hand, several prominent tsadikim of the time did not bequeath their leadership roles to their sons; they include R. Elimelekh of Lizhinsk (Lezajsk, d. 1786) and R. Levi Isaac of Berdichev (d. 1809). Moreover, there were great hasidic leaders in Poland who had not attained their positions by dint of ancestry; among the most prominent were Jacob Isaac, ‘the Seer of Lublin’, who began to lead a community during the 1780s, and his disciple Jacob Isaac, ‘the Holy Jew’ of Peshishkha (Przysucha). As a general matter, then, the practice of filial succession to hasidic leadership had already begun to spread by the time of the succession war between R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer, but it had not yet become the exclusive model.° It follows that the question confronted by the hasidim of Belarus was whether the principle of * Ibid. 7. ° For a similar assessment, see N. Polin, ‘Rebbezin, Wonder-Children, and the Emergence of the Dynastic Principle in Hasidism’, in S. T. Katz (ed.), The Shtetl: New Evaluations (New York, 2007), 53-84: 55.

96 Immanuel Etkes filial succession should be adopted or whether it was preferable to maintain the earlier model, in which leadership was passed from master to disciple. Naturally enough, this question was bound up with another: which of the two competitors for R. Shneur Zalman’s mantle possessed the qualities needed to lead the Belarusian hasidim?

R. DOV BAER’S SUPPORTERS If the hasidim overall were divided between supporters of R. Dov Baer and supporters of R. Aaron, the members of R. Dov Baer’s family stood behind him to a man. When all was said and done, there were weighty advantages to keeping the mantle of leadership within the family. For one thing, the members of R. Shneur Zalman’s family had been supported for many years by the donations made by his hasidim to his court. Nor should one understate the immense prestige and social power enjoyed

by the members of the family. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that one of the figures who did battle on behalf of R. Dov Baer was his uncle, R. Judah Leib of Yanovitz—a brother of R. Shneur Zalman and someone who had been involved in running his court. Soon after the outbreak of the succession war, R. Judah Leib wrote to R. Aaron Halevi, attacking him for presuming to exercise leadership. He wrote as follows: My eyes have now seen the letter he wrote to some of our associates, and I cannot restrain myself from [speaking] words of open admonition, which is better than love .. . For from his words it is evident that he perceives here a debtor [wanting]... to reclaim the crown... Why should that go forth from him, increasing dissension within Israel? And the excuse he gave in his letter—that he intended only to avoid being persecuted, God forbid—makes no sense. On the contrary; he is the persecutor, speaking misleadingly against the honour of my master, my nephew the rabbi, may he live long, and coming to contradict his words, holy words... . And as is known, during the life of my brother, teacher, and master, may his rest be in Eden, he fully agreed that it was his son—his honour our teacher and rabbi, R. Dov Baer—who should preach; and he preached even before him, in his presence. Even when his son, the rabbi, our teacher, R. Dov Baer, may he live long, expounded, against [R. Shneur Zalman’s] will, on the most exalted of matters—matters which our holy rabbi, may his rest be in Eden, declined to reveal to all—he said ‘What shall I do? “Each age has its expounders” [BT San. 386)... From this, one with understanding will infer the full extent of the matter, for he held his son to be the expounder of the age. He [R. Aaron, the addressee of the letter] has much honour and greatness and 1s held in higher esteem than any other disciple of the rabbi, may his rest be in Eden. But my nephew, the rabbi, may he live long, is even more exalted. And if you [R. Aaron] are the first, he [R. Dov Baer] is first of the first; as his honour himself has acknowledged in saying that he probes deeply into hasidic teachings . . . Likewise with respect to worship of God, that is, prayer, I heard in the name of your exalted Torah honour that your worship is not as perfect and pure, as devoted, as that of my nephew, the rabbi, may he live long. Moreover, it is the norm that the son takes his father’s place. And with respect to the one who takes his father’s place, Rashi

The War of Lyady Succession Q7 comments ‘that is when none amongst his brothers is greater than he’. How much more is that so when there is none in all the land greater than he!®

The document before us is a polemical response to a letter sent by R. Aaron to the hasidim soon after R. Shneur Zalman’s death. R. Aaron’s letter has not survived, but it echoes in the counter-arguments advanced by R. Judah Leib, and I shall return to those echoes later. For now, let us consider the rationales offered in support of R. Dov Baer’s authority to act as his father’s successor. R. Judah Leib notes that R. Shneur Zalman authorized his son to expound publicly on hasidic teachings, even tolerating R. Dov Baer’s divulging, in his discourses, mysteries that his father chose to conceal. ‘The important role R. Shneur Zalman assigned to his son, and his acquiescence, at least after the fact, in his disclosure of the mysteries, show that he sought to regard him as his successor. ‘To this, R. Judah Leib adds the argument from principle: ‘It is the norm that the son takes his father’s place.’ In relying on Rashi’s comment, however, R. Judah Leib adds a qualification: filial succession (by the eldest son) applies only ‘when none amongst his brothers is greater than he’. In R. Dov Baer’s case, argues his uncle, the condition is more than met, for there is none greater than he among all the hasidim of Belarus. From here, R. Judah Leib moves to a more personal sort of argument. Why 1s R. Aaron not satisfied with being universally recognized as first among R. Shneur Zalman’s disciples? The hasidic public, which recognizes his standing as such,

nevertheless considers R. Dov Baer to be still greater, and R. Aaron himself acknowledged that R. Dov Baer ‘probes deeply’ into hasidic doctrine and that his prayer was of ‘wondrous quality’. It is doubtful that R. Judah Leib was naive enough to think that these and similar arguments would persuade R. Aaron to trim his sails and yield to R. Dov Baer. It therefore appears that the letter in question was meant to be widely disseminated among the hasidim in order to solicit support for R. Dov Baer. It is fair to assume that other members of R. Shneur Zalman’s family also attempted, each in his own way, to bolster R. Dov Baer’s standing as his father’s agreed-upon successor. But that leaves unanswered the question of whether R. Shneur Zalman in fact left instructions that his son succeed him. In making that claim, the author of Beit rai

relies on a letter by R. Pinhas Schick of Shklov, one of the hasidim closest to R. Shneur Zalman. The main elements of that letter are as follows: Hear me, good-hearted men; I have a secret, and I will publicly reveal what I have... I will tell you what transpired in the last days of his holy honour the admor, whose soul is in the supernal treasure house. In the year 5571 [1810—11], on the occasion of the wedding of the daughter of the admor, our master R. Dov Baer, to the son of the Rabbi of Chernobyl, I was called, together with his son, the admor, and he [R. Shneur Zalman] closed the door behind us... I will report in brief the substance of his holy words, as follows: Inasmuch as it is his son’s good nature to do good, and his wellsprings burst forth with the words of the living © Beit rabi, pt. 2, pp. 9-10.

98 Immanuel Etkes God, and it is his wish and desire as well as his inclination to teach God’s word to his coneregation, setting his eye and his heart on nothing else—to that end, he commanded me that after he departs for the heavenly academy, I should ensure that financial gifts (pidyonot) be administered by him [R. Dov Baer] and not by anyone else, for the reason concealed within him.”

Having thus concluded his account of R. Shneur Zalman’s oral will, R. Pinhas Schick goes on to advance other claims in support of R. Dov Baer. He argues that R. Dov Baer’s role in his father’s court during his father’s lifetime attests to his leadership skills and experience. Moreover, the fact that R. Shneur Zalman assigned him various leadership tasks shows that he saw him as his heir and successor. R. Pinhas then recounts the course of events from the perspective of R. Dov Baer’s supporters: When the admor, whose soul is in the supernal treasure house, and his aforesaid son were away from our land, everyone did what was fit in his own eyes... Asa result, there are to be found certain men whose hearts today turn away from the family of the admor, whose soul is in the supernal treasure house, and his descendants after him; for they were fed up with having the aforesaid admor as their shepherd . . . and [meant to] place over themselves an outsider, not of the progeny of the admor, whose soul is in the supernal treasure house. Of that I said: I cannot be silent or restrain myself, lest I sin by my silence. And the others who remain will hear and see so as not to transgress the holy words of the admor, whose soul is in the supernal treasure house, who directed that specifically he [R. Dov Baer] and none other shepherd the children of Israel; for he has been given abundant insight to understand, to act wisely, to hear, to learn, and to teach, and his words are the words of the living God, flowing from the source of life, the mighty wellspring, the source of wisdom; and his Torah is the holy Torah of the admor, whose soul is in the supernal treasure house.®

R. Pinhas thus blames R. Aaron for taking advantage of the departure of R. Shneur Zalman and his son from Belarus in the wake of the war and, during their absence, enticing his hasidim to follow him. On that account, R. Pinhas continues, he saw himself obligated to proclaim publicly what R. Shneur Zalman had declared to him to be his will. He concludes by claiming that the hasidic teachings preached by R. Dov Baer to the congregation are derived from his father’s ‘Torah. In sum, R. Dov Baer is worthy, as R. Shneur Zalman’s son, student, and loyal follower, to assume his father’s throne—which was, moreover, the express desire of R. Shneur Zalman himself. How much weight should be assigned to R. Pinhas Schick’s account in his letter? First of all, it is evident that, in writing the letter, he was acting with an agenda and not simply reporting information. As he himself acknowledges, he concluded it would be proper to publicize ‘R. Shneur Zalman’s will’ only after some of the hasidim had already been drawn to R. Aaron. Moreover, the claims added by R. Pinhas in support of R. Dov Baer show the letter to be an exercise in propaganda. For one thing, the

accusation levelled against R. Aaron—that he took advantage of the absence of 7 Beit rabi, pt. 2, p. 8. S Ibid. 8-9.

The War of Lyady Succession 99 R. Shneur Zalman and his son ‘from our land’ and began to attract followers while R. Shneur Zalman was still alive—does not appear reliable. No other document confirms the claim, and it is difficult to imagine that R. Aaron, who held R. Shneur Zalman in high esteem, would dare to challenge him while he was still alive. But the principal obstacle to literal acceptance of R. Pinhas’s account lies in its very substance. Why would R. Shneur Zalman choose to reveal his wishes regarding so fateful a matter only to a single individual and only in deep secrecy? Why not announce it publicly? Why not express that desire on his deathbed, surrounded by his family? If R. Shneur Zalman expressly directed that his son succeed him as leader, why does his brother’s letter, quoted earlier, say nothing of that? And why does R. Dov Baer himself not rely on such a ‘will’ when he later seeks to enlist

support among the hasidim? Moreover, if R. Shneur Zalman had directed that R. Dov Baer take his place, it is doubtful that R. Aaron would have dared to defy him. One’s scepticism about the reliability of R. Pinhas’s account only grows when one considers the nature of his ties to R. Dov Baer. When the struggle over succession broke out, R. Pinhas Schick of Shklov opted to support R. Dov Baer. Regardless of whether he did so because he considered R. Dov Baer a virtuous and worthy heir to

his father or simply to protect his own position within the court, he became, in the wake of his decision, R. Dov Baer’s close confidant. R. Dov Baer sent R. Pinhas a confidential letter in which he complained of R. Aaron Halevi’s propaganda attacks against him,? and he put R. Pinhas in charge of distributing the funds he had raised in his effort to restore the court following his father’s death. At stake here was the sizeable sum of 35,000 roubles, and R. Dov Baer provided guidance to R. Pinhas as to the amount to be allocated to each member of R. Shneur Zalman’s family.!° The letter in which R. Dov Baer offers that guidance casts even further doubt on R. Pinhas’s account. It is, in effect, an admission that discloses a bit of what went on behind the scenes in R. Shneur Zalman’s court. R. Dov Baer tells R. Pinhas that when he visited his father’s grave for the first time, he vowed that he would thenceforth see to the support of all the members of his father’s family. He did so ‘in order to escape the burden of the displeasure shown by his father at several points in his life on account of the grief he had been caused in hidden circumstances . . . and to be cleansed and to atone for all his sins, so that his soul might be bound with the soul and holy spirit of his father’. In reading this, one gets the impression that when he first visited his father’s grave, R. Dov Baer entered into an agreement with the members of his family: in exchange for their supporting his claim to be his father’s successor, he undertook to support them financially through the funds he was able to raise for the restoration of the court. As noted, this undertaking was meant to atone for whatever it was that had impaired his relations with his father. What had been R. Dov Baer’s offence? How did he anger his father? What are the ‘hidden circumstances’ that aggrieved his father? Could he be referring to improper

10 Thid. 13-20. 11 Tbid. rq. 9 See Ma’asar uge’ulat admor ha’emtsa’1, ed. S. D. B. Levin (New York, 1997), 25-7.

100 Immanuel Etkes use of funds that had been raised for the court? Could R. Shneur Zalman have been angry with his son for causing his beloved disciple R. Aaron to leave Lyady and move to another town? We have no way to answer these questions, but whatever R. Dov Baer’s offences against his father might have been, his confession that there

was tension between them casts grave doubt on the likelihood that R. Shneur Zalman chose him, and no other, to succeed him. In sum, I see no real basis for the claim that R. Shneur Zalman left a directive that his son take his place. I do not mean by that to argue that R. Pinhas invented the idea of R. Shneur Zalman’s ‘will’ ex nthilo. It is entirely possible, even likely, that he heard R. Shneur Zalman express this sort of praise for his son. Nor is it inconceivable that R. Shneur Zalman meant to assign to R. Dov Baer the task of administering pidyonot, seeing in that a possible source of support for his family after his death.!? But it cannot be inferred on that basis that R. Shneur Zalman meant to leave a directive that this son take his place as leader of all the hasidim in Belarus. What kept R. Shneur Zalman from designating his successor? He was certainly aware that R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer would compete for the position of leader. Both of them played key roles within the court, and they had already come into conflict

with each other a few years before R. Shneur Zalman’s death. Did R. Shneur Zalman find it difficult to choose between them? Might he have considered it proper

that the hasidim choose their leader themselves? Either way, it was R. Shneur Zalman’s failure to decide between them that allowed them both to claim to be the right man to lead his hasidim.

R. DOV BAER CALLS ON HIS HASIDIM FOR SUPPORT Soon after R. Shneur Zalman’s death, R. Dov Baer, as already noted, turned for support to the general community of hasidim in Belarus. One of his letters to them has survived.t? Sent during the second half of 1813, it deals with two matters: renewed financial support for the court and recognition of R. Dov Baer’s authority as his father’s successor. As a practical matter, they represent two sides of the same coin, for both requests—for contributions and for political backing—rested on the principle of continuity. R. Dov Baer represents himself as one continuing along his father’s path, and he calls for loyalty to the dynasty: I come now to invoke and recall the kindness they have already shown to the holy light of God and light of Israel, their father, namely, my master, father, teacher, and rabbi, may his memory be for a blessing . . . whose light was a divine light illuminating the souls of great and lowly alike throughout the long time he acted as their faithful shepherd . . . ‘(heir souls were bound up with and tied to his holy spirit, may his memory be for a blessing, particularly in 12 A full discussion of the meaning of pidyonot within R. Shneur Zalman’s court can be found in Etkes, Ba’al hatanya, 67-70. 13 Igerot kodesh: me’et admor hazaken, admor ha’emtsa’1, admor ha ‘tsemah tsedek’, 2 vols. (New York, 1980-2002), 11. 73-9.

The War of Lyady Succession IOI their constant striving, beyond their ability, to support his household in comfort... And I have come now only to bolster you and renew past practice, lest it be forgotten from among you, God forbid, or you sever your connection, even ever so slightly . .. and so you recall the kindnesses of the fathers to the sons at all times. !#

From what follows, it appears that each of the hasidim to whom the letter was sent had the practice of contributing a set sum of money. R. Dov Baer urges them not to reduce their past giving and, indeed, to increase it in view of the increased cost of living. He later claims that his father, while still alive, asked the hasidim of Shklov to ‘enter into a covenant’; that is, to undertake to continue to support his family members after his death.®° In response, the hasidim of Shklov sent R. Shneur Zalman a document confirming their acceptance of that request. Now, R. Dov Baer adds, all the hasidim in Belarus have undertaken a similar obligation, as attested by the letters reaching him from various towns. The letter before us thus reflects a comprehensive and ongoing effort on R. Dov Baer’s part to enlist the overall community of hasidim in the financial support of R. Shneur Zalman’s family members. This was a vital component of the drive to renew the court under his leadership. It should be emphasized that the letter written by R. Dov Baer was borne to the hasidim by his loyal followers, who presumably supplemented it orally and reported to R. Dov Baer on who had agreed to follow him. As expected, R. Dov Baer later in the letter asks the hasidim to recognize him as his father’s successor. He begins with a reference to the role he played in the court even while his father was alive: To fulfil their request and restore their souls with the light of the true Torah, which regularly emerged, every sabbath and New Moon, from the mouth of his holy spirit, may his memory be for a blessing, I have worked with all my might, for more than fifteen years, doing honest and pure work. [I did so] not to aggrandize myself or assume the name of my master nor for any monetary benefit whatsoever, but only because of my soul’s love, which cherished the heart of each and every one in accord with his measure, [acting out of] a precious and beloved light, a great treasure trove of Torah and fear of God, to draw the heart of Israel closer to their father in heaven, in true intimacy.!°

R. Dov Baer thus claims credit for his efforts, over the course of many years, to guide the hasidim and explicate his father’s hasidic teachings to them. In doing so, he mentions his duty to help the hasidim draw closer to ‘their father in heaven’-— a duty that undergirds his desire to continue to lead them now: I accordingly decided to give faithful notice that as I was able to do then, I am able to do now ... to promote the good of each and every soul, with all my heart to the extent I can. In truth, I know my worth and recognize my place better than in my youth, for I was a youngster, etc., and who I am to have reached this point, etc. And all know me since my youth, recognizing

, that I have not haughtily presumed to pursue great marvels in the manner of tsadikim, with signs and wonders, for they are not what I craved, etc. On the contrary; my soul despised

14 Tbid. 74. 15 Tbid. 75. 16 Tbid. 76-7.

102 Immanuel Etkes [them], etc. And [am confident that all who taste the taste of the tree of life through the light

of the teaching and the true holy work of my master, father, teacher, and rabbi, may his memory be for a blessing, [likewise] will not want such things. Rather, what they crave— each man whose heart has been touched by fear of God—is only what the light of the world has taught us of the true light of Torah and worship . . . and what he has instilled within us

for what is now thirty years, wanting only to draw Israel closer to their heavenly father through the light of Torah and worship. And any thing that is alien to him will not appeal to them—even a scintilla will not be seen or found—so they not become distant from the true ways of God, pursuing vanity, empty visions, and delusions. !“

This passage is a sort of declaration of intent, encompassing also an indirect critique of the conduct of some hasidic leaders. R. Dov Baer announces that he does not mean to adopt the style of wonder-working tsadikim; on the contrary, he is no more enamoured of that style of leadership than his father was. He is convinced too that the hasidim who were privileged to hear R. Shneur Zalman’s teachings have no interest in signs and wonders. It is worth noting in this context that R. Aaron Halevi had gained a reputation as a wonder-worker; accordingly, it is quite likely that R. Dov Baer’s disdainful reference to wonder-workers was meant as a barb to his rival. Be that as 1t may, R. Dov Baer makes it clear that his primary concern, like that of his father, will be to guide the hasidim in matters of divine worship: Now hear this, my brothers and friends, all who are near to the words of the living God of my master, father, and teacher. To them I give steadfast notice that my love is engraved and set in all [of you] and ceaselessly maintained, so I may fulfil your requests for words of hasidism to the extent that may be necessary in so far as I am able—just as I have been with you in loyalty for many years, without any change . . . And especially now, after the departure of the light of Israel, the breath of our nostrils, my father, the crowning glory of our might, to whom among the holy ones can they turn to be instructed in God’s true ways, in the manner [of the instruction] we have received these several years? . . . I therefore said to myself that Iam obligated to pursue their welfare with all my heart and soul. Particularly [is that so] because I have seen, as I traversed nearly all the land, that most if not all of them are exceedingly steadfast in their connectedness and [in their desire to] enter into a covenant in all matters, as our aforesaid emissary can recount. !®

The polemical nature of this passage is obvious. Because ‘nearly all the land’ have already put their trust in him, R. Dov Baer claims, the recipients of the letter have no alternative but to join with them. R. Dov Baer concludes the letter with a promise that he will do well by the hasidim who are loyal to him: But if they observe their faithful covenant, never forgetting nor abandoning it, then we, for our part, will not withhold any good from them . . . Let them notify me through our aforesaid emissary whether these true words have been accepted, so it may be a witness, a true remembrance, for all time. Dov Baer, son of my master, father, teacher, and rabbi, may his memory be for a blessing, whose soul is in the supernal treasure house, I am the atonement for his dwelling place. +°

1” Iverot kodesh, 77-8. 18 Tbid. 78. 19 Thid. 79.

The War of Lyady Succession 103 As noted, R. Dov Baer’s demand that all the hasidim of Belarus recognize him as

his father’s successor was based on the principle of continuity. ‘The hasidim are called upon to carry on as they did during R. Shneur Zalman’s life, contributing to the maintenance of the court and the support of R. Shneur Zalman’s family; R. Dov Baer wants to continue to guide the hasidim in the service of God, just as his father did and as he himself did even while his father was still alive; and R. Dov Baer 1s not only his father’s flesh and blood but also his student and the authorized interpreter of his teachings. Given all of that, the question ‘to whom among the holy ones can [the hasidim] turn to be instructed in God’s ways?’ has but one, self-evident answer.

R. AARON HALEVI’S CLAIM TO THE SUCCESSION As noted, R. Aaron Halevi likewise turned to the hasidim soon after R. Shneur Zalman’s death and called on them to recognize him as their leader. His letter to the hasidim has not survived, but its salient points can be reconstructed on the basis of

their echoes in the response to it written by R. Judah Leib, R. Shneur Zalman’s brother. Three claims advanced by R. Aaron are reflected in R. Judah Leib’s letter, two of them in the following passage: My eyes have now seen the letter he wrote to some of our associates, and I cannot restrain myself from [speaking] words of open admonition, which is better than love... For from his words it is evident that he perceives here a debtor [wanting]... to reclaim the crown... Why should that go forth from him, increasing dissension within Israel? And the excuse he gave in his letter—that he intended only to avoid being persecuted, God forbid—makes no sense. On the contrary; he is the persecutor, speaking misleadingly against the honour of my master, my nephew the rabbi, may he live long, and coming to contradict his words, holy words.”°

Why did R. Aaron consider R. Dov Baer a ‘debtor’? What did he mean in claiming that R. Dov Baer meant to reclaim the ‘crown’ for himself, and why did he see himself as persecuted? He is no doubt referring to the conflict that erupted between him and R. Dov Baer a few years before R. Shneur Zalman’s death. What was the substance of that conflict and what ignited it? In trying to answer those questions, I shall have recourse to the Habad tradition as reflected in Beit rabi: Some years before the death of our rabbi [R. Shneur Zalman], a great accusation was brought against him [against R. Aaron]. He was denounced before our rabbi, and despaired greatly on that account. He therefore sold his house and moved to his home town of Oseve, engaging there in Torah and in divine worship and coming to our rabbi only from time to time. Since then, there has been a divide between the connected, that is, between him and our aforesaid

rabbi [R. Dov Baer].

What was the ‘accusation’ against R. Aaron that had been brought before R. Shneur Zalman? How did the accusers slander him to the point that he felt compelled to leave Lyady? The author of Bezt radi does not say, and we can only try to 20 Beit rabt, pt. 2, p. 9. 21 Tbid., pt. 1, p. 134.

104 Immanuel Etkes answer these questions by drawing inferences from the available information. The history of hasidism includes several instances in which tension arose between a rebbe and a disciple because the disciple began to take on the rebbe’s manner while the rebbe was still alive, and it is entirely possible that an accusation of this sort was brought against R. Aaron as well.?* That seems especially likely given that R. Aaron served for many years as R. Shneur Zalman’s right-hand man and played an important part in running the court. The line between acting on the authority of one’s master and acting on one’s own authority is not always clear, and it would have been easy to accuse R. Aaron of presuming to take control even while R. Shneur Zalman was still alive.23

It remains to identify R. Aaron’s accusers. Who would have wanted to turn R. Shneur Zalman against him and undermine his position in the court? The juxtaposition of the ‘accusation’ against R. Aaron and the outbreak of his conflict with R. Dov Baer suggests that R. Dov Baer was involved in the process and may even have initiated it. In the absence of additional documentation, we can only suggest

a reconstruction of the course of events, one based on reasonable inferences from known circumstances. To begin with, we know that R. Aaron was beloved of R. Shneur Zalman and enjoyed his trust. Accordingly, he was assigned extremely important roles in the court. To the hasidim, R. Aaron seemed to enjoy the exalted status of R. Shneur Zalman’s leading disciple, thoroughly versed in his master’s most esoteric teachings and authorized to interpret them to the hasidim. The author of Beit rabi makes the following observations on the relations between R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer before the outbreak of the conflict between them: ‘And our master [R. Shneur Zalman] drew him [R. Aaron] close and loved him greatly, seating him to learn together with his son, the Middle Admor [R. Dov Baer], may his rest be in Eden. They would together study both revealed matters and hasidic teachings, and they loved each other mightily, as actual brothers.’** That is as far as Beit rabi goes in describing the situation, and we must still ask about the nature of the learning shared by the two ‘brothers’. R. Aaron was about eight years older than — R. Dov Baer; it follows that he had already immersed himself in talmudic learning

and probed hasidic doctrines in depth while R. Dov Baer was still a youth. Might not that be why R. Shneur Zalman asked R. Aaron to study with his son? It seems likely that this was not collegial study by two scholars having roughly equal know-

ledge and skills, but study by a young novice with a much more mature and

advanced teacher-colleague. | Telling evidence that this was, in fact, the case appears in several letters written

22, My thanks to Dr Tzvi Mark, who suggested this line of thought to me and directed me to the materials that lend support to it. 23 A similar incident involved R. Isaac Meir Alter of Gur (Gora Kalwaria), the author of Hidushet harim, who was accused of beginning to act as rebbe during a time when R. Menahem Mendel of Kotsk had secluded himself and withdrawn from his hasidim. See Sefer me’ir einet hagolah (n.p., 2003), 119-20.

See also A. Escoly, Hahasidut bepolin (Jerusalem, 1999), 41. 24 Beit rabi, pt. 1, p. 134.

The War of Lyady Succession 105 by R. Aaron to R. Dov Baer in 1796—7.2° Written in a blend of Hebrew and Yiddish,

the letters offer detailed guidance on how to apply R. Shneur Zalman’s guidelines for worship; the recourse to Yiddish—a living language more supple for the writer

than Hebrew—seems to have resulted from the effort to explain R. Shneur Zalman’s manner of worship, including all its spiritual nuances. The letters give the

impression that they represent the continuation of an oral discussion between R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer. What is important for our purposes is the tone of the letters and the ways in which the writer refers to the addressee. R. Aaron addresses

R. Dov Baer as ‘my beloved brother, my true friend’, ‘my dear Berel’, ‘dear brother’. [The first term is in Hebrew, the others in Yiddish—trans/ator.] These and similar terms of endearment strengthen the evidence that the two men were as close as actual brothers. At the same time, the wording of the letters reflects R. Aaron’s seniority. He guides the young Dov Baer through the details of worship and prods him to overcome the obstacles in his path. Given that, it is hardly surprising that Dov Baer developed a sense of dependency on R. Aaron—something clearly reflected in the following lines written to him by R. Aaron: ‘My beloved brother, do not be annoyed at me because I am distancing myself from you, for that is not the case. [am truly seeking your welfare, and, consistent with my judgement, I am treating you harshly for your own good, to beat the coarse Litvak, which is emptiness and lies.’*© Not only is R. Aaron providing guidance and direction to

young Dov Baer; he is also using pedagogical tactics. But it also appears that _ R. Aaron was holding R. Dov Baer at a distance. In 1797, the year these letters were written, R. Dov Baer was about 23 years old and R. Aaron was already in his early thirties. At that time, there could be no doubt

which of the two occupied a higher rank with respect to worship of God in the manner taught by R. Shneur Zalman. In that very year, moreover, something else _ took place that helps us understand the balance of power between them. In 1797, R. Abraham of Kalisk (Kolyshki), the leader of the hasidic community in Tiberias,

issued a biting condemnation of R. Shneur Zalman.*’ Among other things, he attacked him for having appointed his son to help him in leading the court. R. Abraham claimed that R. Dov Baer was too young and unqualified to take on that

sort of role. It is almost certain that the accusations levelled against R. Shneur Zalman by R. Abraham of Kalisk reflected complaints that had reached him from the hasidim of Belarus. If so, it is of interest that the assignment of a leadership role to young R. Dov Baer was something the hasidim found distressing, even while R. Aaron’s involvement in leadership, which had begun several years earlier, was not at all criticized. The hasidic community thus seems to have regarded R. Aaron’s 25 ‘The letters were published from manuscript by Joshua Mondschain in Kerem habad, pamphlet 4, pt. 1 (Kefar Habad, 1992), 97-101. 26 Ibid. gg. [“To beat the coarse Litvak’ appears in the original in Yiddish and seems to reflect a hasidic view of anti-hasidic Lithuanian Jews; the remainder of the quotation is in Hebrew—+translator. | 27 ‘This episode is considered in detail in Etkes, Ba’al hatanya, 317-85.

106 Immanuel Etkes | activities as altogether fitting and proper, but at least some of its members were displeased by the assignment of a leadership role to R. Dov Baer. When the conflict between R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer broke out—in 1809,7° a few years before R. Shneur Zalman’s death—R. Dov Baer was already 35 years old and had been involved in the court’s leadership for some years. R. Shneur Zalman at the time was about 62, and it is only reasonable to assume that R. Dov Baer saw himself as worthy of stepping into his father’s shoes when the time came. The only person who stood between him and the fulfilment of that goal was R. Aaron—R. Shneur Zalman’s greatest disciple, R. Dov Baer’s mentor in his youth, and one who had long played a role in the leadership of the court. Driving a wedge between R. Aaron and R. Shneur Zalman and ousting R. Aaron from the court would leave R. Dov Baer the sole candidate for leadership of the hasidim after his father’s death. This appears to be the background for the ‘denunciation’ of R. Aaron before R. Shneur Zalman. The plot almost certainly was joined in by other members of R. Shneur Zalman’s family, for it 1s easy to understand that they did not look favourably on R. Aaron, an ‘outsider’, occupying so exalted a position within ‘their’ court. Moreover, R. Dov Baer’s ascent to the throne would ensure their economic and social position for many years

to come. Indeed, the emergency fund drive conducted by R. Dov Baer after his father’s death succeeded in raising 35,000 roubles, substantial amounts of which were allocated to each member of the family.?° A person likely to have played an active role in banishing R. Aaron from the court was Shterna, R. Shneur Zalman’s wife. The few extant accounts of her suggest she was a strong woman, opinionated and involved in the affairs of the court, albeit from

behind the scenes. One can easily imagine how she yearned for her eldest son to succeed her husband when the time came. As a woman, she had no other way to protect her position within the court.°° The ejection of R. Aaron from the court a few years before R. Shneur Zalman’s death eliminated any possibility that he would be seen as his master’s ‘natural’ suc-

| cessor, but it did not keep him from claiming the ‘crown’ that they were trying to wrest from him. In his letter to the hasidim, he referred to R. Dov Baer as a ‘debtor’, for R. Aaron had been his teacher and guide in matters related to worship of God. Instead of responding with gratitude, R. Dov Baer had persecuted him to the point that he was compelled to leave Lyady and move elsewhere. R. Aaron supplemented these charges with a complaint that 1s clearly reflected in R. Judah Leib’s letter in response: everyone knows and acknowledges that he, R. Aaron, was first and foremost among R. Shneur Zalman’s disciples and, accordingly, is entitled to the ‘birthright’. 28 Beit rabi, pt. 1, p. 134, reports that R. Aaron lived in Lyady for about eight years, from the end of 5561 (summer—autumn 1801) to 5569 (1808-9).

29 See the letter from R. Dov Baer to R. Pinhas Schick, in Ma’asar uge’ulat admor ha’emtsa’i, ed. Levin, 13-19.

30 Cf. Polin, ‘Rebbezin, Wonder-Children, and the Emergence of the Dynastic Principle in Hasidism’. He suggests a convincing reconstruction of the role played by widows in their sons’ ascent to leadership.

The War of Lyady Succession 107 R. Aaron presented these claims to the hasidic community as a whole and added another that resonates in R. Judah Leib’s response, namely, that R. Dov Baer errs in his practice of the manner of worship taught by R. Shneur Zalman and provides misleading guidance with respect to it. R. Aaron, meanwhile, knows and understands his teacher’s doctrines in all their profundity and he, accordingly, is the one who is worthy of interpreting them for the hasidim. R. Aaron’s claim to be the authoritative interpreter of R. Shneur Zalman’s teachings and therefore the man most fit to lead the Habad community 1s reiterated in the introductions to two of his books. In the preface to Sha’aret avodah: hanikra beshem avodat habeinonim, he writes as follows: I can perceive, and my eyes see, the great effort he put into writing his holy book, in which he clarifies, through his profound wisdom and understanding, all the holy things that are set out in Ets hayim and Peri ets hayim.*! And he wrote his holy treatise in accord with these matters—in accord with the detailed emanations and intentions explained in the foregoing holy books. And so... I girded my loins and outdid myself, to explain and reveal the hidden things, which he hid in his holy books, and to explain them clearly, as God’s good hand enables me to do. And with God’s help and salvation I will begin to explain the principles of these things, as I received them from his holy mouth, may his memory be for a blessing. This entire treatise is based on his holy book Likutei amarim, which is also known as Sefer shel beinonim, so I have called this book Avodat habeinonim.®?

R. Aaron makes two complementary arguments, first explaining why R. Shneur Zalman’s words require explication and then explaining why it is he who should provide that explication. R. Shneur Zalman’s book is based on the fundaments of Lurianic kabbalah, as conveyed in the writings of R. Hayim Vital, but R. Shneur Zalman concealed those kabbalistic roots. What R. Shneur Zalman withheld from his readers, however, he revealed to his devoted disciple R. Aaron, who was by his side as he wrote, and R. Aaron therefore is in a position to interpret R. Shneur Zalman’s book. It is worth noting that R. Aaron repeatedly emphasizes that he does not presume to add anything original, and that all he is doing is interpreting the teachings of his master: During the nearly thirty years that I sat in the dust at his feet and served him, I did not comprehend what I heard from his holy mouth until after I had expended great effort over each and every word that I heard from his holy mouth, to the point that I ascertained its roots. And if I did not understand it the first time, I understood it the second; but I did not rely in this on my reasoning or knowledge, nor did I reach conclusions on the basis of my own intellect.?°

31 These are works by R. Hayim Vital, the disciple of the sixteenth-century kabbalist R. Isaac Luria and the disseminator of his teachings. 32 R. Aaron Halevi, Sefer sha’arei avodah: hanikra beshem avodat habeinonim (Shklov, 1821), introduction, s.v. ‘et zeh natati et libi’. 33 R. Aaron Halevi, Sefer sha’aret hayihud ve’emunah (Shklov, 1820), introduction, s.v. ‘vehineh lo mehokhmah’.

108 Immanuel Etkes These claims, included in the letters R. Aaron sent to the hasidim, in fact provide erounding for his claim to take his master’s place. But they raise a troublesome question: if R. Shneur Zalman chose to conceal the kabbalistic sources on which his book drew, why did R. Aaron consider it proper to disclose them? The answer may be found in the introduction to R. Aaron’s book Sha’arei hayithud ve’emunah. R. Aaron there considers the significance of the disclosure of kabbalistic mysteries in recent generations. From his perspective, it is precisely in such times of decline that revelation of the ‘Torah’s secrets—which provide the underpinnings for a Jew’s divine

worship—acquires immense importance. The process is an ongoing one, which began with the revelation of Lurianic kabbalah and continued with the revelation of the Torah’s mysteries by the Besht and the Maggid of Mezhirech. The final link in that chain of revelation was R. Shneur Zalman, who was a student of the Maggid and, like his predecessors, had mysteries revealed to him from the heavens. From that perspective, R. Aaron’s interpretative enterprise is depicted as an additional link in the process of revelation and as a desired continuation of R. Shneur Zalman’s work. He writes: And so I beseech the helpful and merciful God to provide assistance, absolution, forgiveness, and atonement for my having intruded beyond my limits by explaining and revealing concealed and hidden matters that lie at the mystertum of the world. For my heart’s intention 1s revealed and known to Him, may He be blessed, and it was not for my own honour or for any other extraneous reason, God forbid, that I composed this treatise; rather, I intended to reveal in truth His unity, may He be blessed, and the knowledge of His great Name, in order to instil His unity, love, and fear within the hearts of all who wish to seek God and to worship Him wholeheartedly. [I intended] also to explain truthfully the desire and intention of my master, teacher, and holy rabbi, may his rest be in Eden, in revealing his holy teachings. For that tsadik, may his rest be in Eden, dedicated himself all his days to instil [God’s] unity, may He be blessed, His love, and His fear in the heart of every Jew.°*4

Underlying these comments, then, is a premise that played a decisive part in R. Shneur Zalman’s teachings: if the hasidim are to worship God properly, it is necessary to reveal to them the mysteries of the Torah. In uncovering the kabbalistic roots of R. Shneur Zalman’s doctrines, R. Aaron simply took another step along the path cleared by his teacher.

TWO STYLES OF PRAYER As noted, the author of Beit radi, in describing the succession struggle between R. Dov Baer and R. Aaron, maintained that there was an aspect of principle involved in their clash. Specifically, the claimants to succeed R. Shneur Zalman differed on matters related to divine worship. On the face of it, this seems surprising; what could they have differed over? R. Shneur Zalman left an orderly set of teachings, both in his book Tanya (Likutet amarim) and in various discourses that circulated among the 34 Halevi, Sefer sha’arei , s.v. ‘vehineh im kol zeh muvan lekhol maskil’.

The War of Lyady Succession 10g hasidim in manuscript. How could his greatest disciple and his eldest son differ on the meaning of his doctrines? To begin our inquiry into that question, we may consider how Beit rahi describes the two men’s styles of worship: [R. Dov Baer’s] worship was extremely wondrous. He prayed in silence with no movement, not moving a single limb. Within him, his fervour burned like an intense flame, but it could not be recognized nor was it revealed outwardly at all.°° [R. Aaron’s] style of worship was extremely terrifying, with great noise and powerful ecstasy, to the point that all who saw or heard it became extremely fervid. And all who were connected to him [likewise] worshipped with ecstasy and fervour.°°

Even if we assume that Habad tradition accentuated somewhat the descriptions of how the two men worshipped, there is no reason not to credit the account in principle, and it thus appears that the two rivals differed in their style of prayer. R. Dov Baer acted with extreme restraint, confining his raging spirit in his innermost being and allowing it no external manifestation. R. Aaron’s prayers, in contrast, were accompanied by vigorous bodily movements and a raised voice, similar to the ecstatic worship of early hasidism. The author of Beit rabi adds that the hasidim who followed R. Aaron acted as he did. It seems likely that each of these leaders sought to mould the style of worship of the hasidim who were loyal to him in the spirit of his

own worship. That inference is supported by a letter from R. Dov Baer to the hasidim, in which he sharply criticizes their conduct during prayer: I have sometimes seen how a bad and unsound custom has spread among the masses of our people, from high to low . . . to the point that it is taken to be a widespread hasidic rule that it is impossible to attain profound contemplation in prayer without acting in the following manner: walking to and fro while praying, from corner to corner, running energetically, as if occupied and burdened by contemplation. {It is as} if, were he not to move but simply stand at his place, his efforts to attain profound knowledge and insights would be in vain.”

Later in the letter, R. Dov Baer acknowledges that this model of behaviour 1s rooted in imitation of the practice of the ‘great worthies’ who lived in ‘the early times’, that is, the founders of hasidism.?° What was suitable for those ‘great worthies’ then, however, is not suitable for us now; and R. Dov Baer presents various arguments for rejecting the practice. Among other things, he writes: This, too, is an imaginary power, but God does not, in truth, want such things. For, in truth, if someone has the capacity to probe deeply, what he should do is stay in his place and turn 35 Beit rabi, pt. 2, p. 4. 36 Tbid., pt. 1, pp. 133-4. 37 Tgerot kodesh, vol. i, letter 36, p. 310. 38 The physical manifestations of ecstatic prayer that were typical of early hasidism were the target

of criticism by the mitnagedim. In his polemical letter to R. Levi Isaac of Berdichev, R. Abraham Katzenellenbogen says: ‘And especially in that they act madly and rowdily in their movements, pacing, dancing, and leaping like rams, turning left and right. They bow with their faces down, descending to

the depths and ascending on high, mounting the heavens and plumbing the depths’: M. Wilensky, Hasidim umitnagedim (Jerusalem, 1970), pt. 1, pp. 125-6. Wilensky dates the letter quoted from to 1784.

TIO Immanuel Etkes to God with a humble spirit, knowing before Whom he stands. As is known, the whole concept of prayer 1s fundamentally based specifically on standing. And it is referred to as having a fixed place for one’s prayer . . . and the mystery of the matter is known to the cognoscenti, that standing entails nullification of the externality of his body, which is more exalted than nullification of what is inward in his mind and heart.??

The term ‘imaginary’ here conveys a tone of disparagement. He is referring to a specific way of acting while worshipping God, one that entails self-deception. In other words, those who act in this way make the mistake of thinking that it is the path to concentration and depth in prayer. But what is really required during prayer is Standing in a restrained manner, in one place; doing so expresses humbleness before God and allows the worshipper to achieve ‘nullification’ of the body—something even more valuable than ‘nullification’ of thought or emotion.*° R. Dov Baer concludes his letter with remarks that are both a plea and a threat: And so, if my beloved brethren truly seek closeness to God, they will not heed the voice of charmers who mumble vain incantations and will [instead] please believe all that I write; for the {other} path is one only of foolishness . . . Let them inform me from every town and prayer quorum that they accept these words of truth, and then I will know that you are faithful to hasidic doctrine. And let them do this: the sexton should loudly declare before prayer that silence is appropriate in prayer and should admonish them to so act.*!

R. Dov Baer thus attempted to impose his own more reserved style of prayer on the hasidic prayer quorums subject to his authority. Moreover, he treated responsiveness to his request in that regard as an indicator of loyalty; it followed that any hasidim who did not adopt his guidance could be presumed to identify with the rival camp. A clear allusion to what inspired the erroneous practice appears in R. Dov Baer’s call not to heed ‘the voice of charmers’#? (that is, of faith healers); the reference, of course, is to R. Aaron, who had become known as a wonder-worker. It thus appears that the leadership struggle between R. Dov Baer and R. Aaron was waged, in part, through the efforts by each of them to instil in their loyalists the style of prayer he himself had adopted. Accordingly, we should try to ascertain the theoretical basis for each of those modes of worship, and information useful in that effort is embodied in writings disseminated among the hasidim by the two rivals. Before we turn to those writings, however, it will be helpful to clarify the fundamental concepts they employed and present, in effect, a brief glossary of those concepts. Naturally enough, R. Dov Baer and R. Aaron saw no need to explain these concepts to their readers, and the interpretations proposed here are accordingly grounded on inferences from the context in which the terms appear in their writings. We begin with devekut (literally ‘bonding’ or ‘communion’). The term is used by R. Dov Baer and R. Aaron—as it was widely but by no means exclusively used in

early hasidism—to refer to a mystical connection between man and the divine. 39 Iverot kodesh, vol. i, letter 36, p. 310. 40 The meaning of these terms is explained below.

41 Tgerot kodesh, vol. i, letter 36, pp. 311-12. 42 Cf. Ps. 58: 6.

The War of Lyady Succession III While devekut denotes the metaphysical dimension of the mystical connection, the term hitpa’alut (literally ‘excitement’, ‘enthusiasm’, or ‘ecstasy’; in general, ‘ecstasy’ will be used here) refers to the experiential dimension of that connection. But /ztpa’alut precedes hitbonenut (‘contemplation’). R. Shneur Zalman led his hasidim to intellectual contemplation of the greatness of the Creator, contemplation that is effectuated by means of the three cognitive aspects of the godly soul—hokhmah (‘wisdom’), binah (‘understanding’), and da’at (‘knowledge’). Hitpa’alut bamo’ah (‘ecstasy of the mind’) is the experience of intellectual internalization of the Creator’s greatness; that is, the immanent image of God that negates the existence of any substance other than Him. Aitpa’alut balev (‘ecstasy of the heart’) is the emotional dimension of the mystical experience. In the wake of contemplation, there arise within the soul powerful feelings of love and fear of God. These feelings are accompanied by a mighty yearning to bond with Him (that 1s, to achieve devekut). Bitul (‘nullification’) is the highest purpose of devekut: “The soul

of man... by its very nature craves separation and departure from the body and devekut with its root and source in God, the life of the living, may He be blessed. | That is so] even though it entails becoming nothing and being entirely nullified in the world, leaving nothing of its original essence and identity.’4? ‘Nullification’ thus

denotes total personal internalization of God’s immanent image, to the point of losing all self-awareness.*4 The meaning of dimyon (‘imagining’) can be ascertained in light of the following sentence in 7 anya: ‘If he does not connect his knowledge and insert it in his thought with might and diligence, he will not generate true love and fear within his soul, but only vain imaginings.’ These and similar statements suggest that R. Dov Baer uses the term dimyon to denote self-deception in the worship of God. Last, we must consider the term yesh (literally ‘being’, ‘existence’). ‘The term denotes the opposite of hitul. If bitul is based on the recognition that there is nothing but God, yesh conveys

a personal stance that is alienated from God. More specifically, in the debate between R. Dov Baer and R. Aaron, yesh denotes a personal state in which the hasid continues to be conscious of himself during ecstasy. Finally, it should be noted that all of these terms relate primarily to states of mind during prayer.

KUNTERES HAHITPA’ALUT In 1814 R. Dov Baer wrote his Kunteres hahitpa’alut (“Tract on Ecstasy’) and disseminated it among the hasidim throughout Belarus.*° In two ensuing letters to the 43 Shneur Zalman of Lyady, Likutei amarim, pt. 1: Sefer shel beinonim (Vilna, 1900), ch. 19. 44 Tn the Maggid’s study hall, this situation was described in terms of bitul hayesh (‘nullification of

the self’; ‘annihilation’) or hafikhat ha’ani le’ayin (‘transforming the ego into nothingness’). See R. Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth-Century Hasidic Thought, trans. J. Chipman (Princeton and Jerusalem, 1993), 67—79.

49 Kunteres hahitpa’alut circulated among the hasidim in numerous manuscript copies. The first

II2 Immanuel Etkes hasidim, he explained the subject of the composition and why he came to write it. He begins the first of those letters by arguing that the hasidim had suffered a terrible spiritual decline. Many were so preoccupied with earning a living that their minds and hearts had been emptied of God’s light. He vividly describes the severity of the situation by arguing that ‘many had backslid ten levels from where they had been in earlier times with respect to arousal by words of hasidism’.*© Had there in fact been so serious a deterioration among the hasidim of Belarus? Could the writer have been engaging only in routine admonition, grounded in the always unbridgeable gap between real and ideal? Either way, R. Dov Baer appends two declarations to his description of the spiritual decline of the hasidim. First, he feels obligated to guide the hasidim and lead them ‘in matters on which the fundamental ideas of hasidism depend’.*’ Second, he is the man equipped to remedy their malaise, for his father over the years had prepared him to do so: As I received from my beloved master, father, teacher, and rabbi, may his memory be for a blessing, may his rest be in Eden, whose words of affection were with me almost daily for many years with respect to the nature and essence of the words of the living God within our associates, regarding all the details and all the counsel that each and every one must know so that he might not err nor mislead himself.*®

The spiritual decline of the hasidim and R. Dov Baer’s readiness and ability to guide them are thus two sides of the same coin. But while he begins the letter by speaking of the spiritual decline in general terms, he then goes on to note its more specific manifestations. For one thing, even hasidim who had been exposed to R. Shneur Zalman’s hasidic teachings were having difficulty applying them while praying, for the burdens of earning a living kept those teachings from being taken into their souls ‘in the most exalted way, in accord with their most profound truths’. Worse, ‘even those who know how to engage in them err and mislead themselves in

various sorts of error and foolishness, to the point of leaving the path of truth entirely’.49 In the second letter written soon after Kunteres hahitpa’alut, R. Dov Baer offers

a further account of the perplexity and bewilderment that had taken over the hasidim: Many of our associates, old-timers as well as novices, are perplexed and misled in several ways with respect to receiving the words of the living God through the light of the Torah and [with respect to] divine service through one’s attributes and thought. They have things edition is dated 1831 on the title page but does not indicate the place of publication. Rachel Elior examined the question and concluded that it was published in Konigsberg during the period of strict censorship in Russia, actually appearing in 1838 or 1848. See R. Elior, ‘“Kunteres hahitpa’alut” lerabi dov ber

shneerson’, Kiryat sefer, 54 (1979), 384-91, esp. 384-6. A new edition of the tract, including variant readings based on manuscripts, was published in Ma’amaret admor ha’emtsa’i: kunteresim (New York, 1991). The quotations here are translated from the Hebrew of that edition. 46 Kunteres hahitpa’alut, in Ma’amarei admor ha’emtsa’1, 39.

47 Thid. 51. 48 Tbid. 41. 49 Tbid. 41-2.

The War of Lyady Succession 113 entirely backwards, calling light darkness and darkness light, doing so because of their limited

knowledge and limited regular practice. The primary [perplexity and bewilderment] is on account of the spreading of corruption by numerous sermonizers who fancy themselves wise and praiseworthy and say ‘I have my mystery, etc., for there are secrets to true worship’. They mislead themselves and others, to the point that total error arises, with things entirely backwards. This is extremely difficult for me, for everything is blamed on me and many of our followers ask me about these things; and it is impossible to tolerate and take in their lowly words, which are treated as if they were established halakhah. And that is on account of students who have not adequately apprenticed, who have gone forth to drink foul waters that kill and destroy the soul, moving them from light to darkness . . . I therefore resolved that I am commanded and bound to properly interpret and explain each and every disputed detail

regarding the ways of worship in the mind and in the heart, everything 1n its place, on its level, and in accord with its qualities in precise detail.°°

Although these words shed no light on the substance of the confusion, they leave no doubt as to its severity. Moreover, they encompass a clear allusion to its source, namely, the ‘sermonizers who fancy themselves wise and praiseworthy and say “I have my mystery, etc., for there are secrets to true worship”’. The use of the plural is meant to soften the impact of the words, but the hasidim of Belarus readily understood that the letter was referring to R. Aaron Halevi. It was R. Aaron who maintained that there was a concealed layer to Tanya and that he was the one authorized to reveal and interpret it. The term ‘sermonizers’ (darshanim) alludes to the fact that R. Aaron had begun to expound on matters of hasidism in public. For the hasidim

who read the letter, however, the term had disparaging overtones, for one who expounds on matters of hasidism before the congregation is not a mere ‘sermonizer’. And it goes without saying that R. Dov Baer’s reference to ‘students who have not adequately apprenticed’ was a pointed barb directed at R. Aaron. Given the perplexity and bewilderment that prevailed among the hasidim, R. Dov Baer saw a need to jump into the breach and teach them ‘the ways of worship’. Where R. Aaron and his followers had spoiled things, R. Dov Baer would set them right, restoring the structure of divine worship as taught by R. Shneur Zalman to its former glory. To the sceptic who might doubt the need to explain and interpret R. Shneur Zalman’s teachings, which he himself had set down in readily available writings, R. Dov Baer responded with the following allegory: It is like [a person presented with] a bow] filled with all manner of delicacies that restore the soul but lacking a spoon with which to place them in his mouth. He will die yearning, only because he lacks a utensil with which to receive [the delicacy]. So, too, all the true teachings regarding contemplation and knowledge of God bestowed on us—each in accord with his own measure—by my honoured lord, father, master, and teacher, may his memory be for a blessing, may his rest be in Eden. Although it comes readily to the lips [of each person], people lack knowledge of how to receive it in their souls; accordingly, they are hungry and thirsty, having no light or inner vitality at all.°!

50 Tbid. 51. 51 Thid.

114 Immanuel Etkes The difficulty, then, lies in ‘lack {of} knowledge of how to receive it in their souls’; that is, of how to apply the spiritual aspects of the way taught by R. Shneur Zalman. R. Dov Baer does not presume to innovate or to provide new direction on his own; rather, he means only ‘to establish and carry out the principal substance and inten-

tion of the holy will of my honoured lord, father, master, and teacher, may his memory be for a blessing, may his rest be in Eden’.°? But the precise nature of the perplexity and bewilderment that have spread among the hasidim remains unclear. Of that, R. Dov Baer writes as follows: ‘For villainy has been done in Israel, to become ecstatic and have something desirable within one’s heart, to the point of suddenly crying out, whether bitterly or joyfully. All will see it and wonder, and young men will laugh at it, until he becomes embarrassed and repents fully, restraining his spirit and not sounding his voice.’°? He is speaking here of a hasid who, in the course of his prayer, attains a state of powerful emotional ecstasy to the point of emitting a sudden shout. The shout may express bitterness over his distance from God; alternatively, it may express joy over his love for Him. Either way, the hasid who so acts is exposed to the mockery of his fellow hasidim. R. Dov Baer explains the source of that erroneous reaction as follows: “The factors causing this error affect those who lack intellect and are foolish about hasidic teachings. Because of their limited knowledge, they come to accept the idea, spread by word of mouth, that physical ecstasy felt within the heart is one of the old hasidic ways that have been totally forbidden, an abomination, not pleasing.’°4 That explanation raises another question: what is meant by the term ‘old hasidic ways’ and why they are considered ‘an abomination’? The key to understanding this can be found in the following passage: Now at the outset I distinguish between the old hasidic ways and the hasidic ways that have

been bestowed on us and illuminated for us by my master, father, and teacher, may his memory be for a blessing, may his rest be in Eden, with the light of his teaching. For his primary purpose, from the beginning of his holy work, and which I heard more than once or twice from the mouth of his holy spirit, may his memory be for a blessing—his primary

purpose in dedicating himself to his followers was to instil in them a divine revelation, namely, that the ecstasy of their souls should be a specifically godly ecstasy, not an ecstasy of the life of the flesh, which is not at all a godly ecstasy. And that, in brief, is what he intended, and it is the distinction between those who serve God with their souls and those who serve God with their bodies.°°

What is the nature of the ‘old hasidic ways’ and why did R. Shneur Zalman have reservations about them? Clearly, he was not referring to the ways of the Besht, the Maggid of Mezhirech, and their leading disciples, for R. Shneur Zalman saw himself as their student and follower. More likely, R. Shneur Zalman used the term ‘old hasidic ways’ to refer to certain developments that emerged in the hasidic way of life during the 1770s and 1780s. The thousands of people who enlisted in hasidic courts

92 Kunteres hahitpa’alut, 52. 53 Tbid. 43. 54 Thid. 44. 55 Tbid. 52-3.

The War of Lyady Succession 115 during those years must have included many who adopted the external mannerisms

| of hasidic prayer without internalizing its spiritual dimensions. R. Shneur Zalman regarded these external manifestations—that is, shrieks and bodily motions—as ‘ecstasy of the life of the flesh, which is not at all a godly ecstasy’. In contrast to this superficial, external ecstasy—forms of conduct that had become routine—R. Shneur Zalman sought to instil in the hasidim a form of divine service based on inwardness and depth. That, then, is the significance of the ‘old hasidic ways’ as a term of opprobrium. In addition, R. Shneur Zalman harshly rebuked those hasidim who used wild or buffoonish behaviour as a means to arouse a sense of joy while at prayer.°© In speaking of the ‘old hasidic ways’ that troubled R. Shneur Zalman, R. Dov Baer may have been referring to that phenomenon as well. It thus appears, ironically enough, that the call to shy away from the ‘old hasidic ways’ is what caused the perplexity and bewilderment. ‘The view had spread among the hasidim that it was proper to renounce any manifestation whatsoever of emotional ecstasy, and certainly any physical manifestation of that ecstasy. R. Dov Baer, however, repeatedly and sharply attacks that position. He calls on the hasidim to take account of the substantive difference between emotional and physical ecstasy that results from contemplation and inwardness, which is proper and desirable, and ‘ecstasy felt in the heart through physical shouting having no purpose whatsoever except to raise one’s voice... for his heart is not with him in any way in that shouting’. The latter, of course, is deplorable and unworthy. Still to be explained is R. Dov Baer’s complaint in his letter that ‘this is extremely difficult for me, for everything is blamed on me’. The complaint 1s reiterated in different words in the body of the tract: ‘It is therefore necessary to explain everything, so they do not blame me for this nonsense.’ Who 1s blaming R. Dov Baer for nonsense? What accusations are they levelling against him? The answer becomes clear when we consider R. Dov Baer’s complaint in its full context: The primary [perplexity and bewilderment] is on account of the spreading of corruption by numerous sermonizers who fancy themselves wise and praiseworthy and say ‘I have my mystery, etc., for there are secrets to true worship’. They mislead themselves and others, to the point that total error arises, with things entirely backwards. This is extremely difficult for me, for everything is blamed on me.°4

The passage hints transparently that the parties blaming R. Dov Baer for the bewilderment prevalent among the hasidim are none other than R. Aaron and his followers. In light of that finding, we may suggest a possible reconstruction of the course of events. It was R. Dov Baer who exhorted the hasidim to keep their distance from the ‘old hasidic ways’. In taking that stance, he positioned himself as following in his father’s path. Moreover, the exhortation against the ‘old hasidic ways’ was meant as a gibe against R. Aaron and his followers, whose style of prayer was ecstatic. As we 56 That subject is considered in Etkes, Ba’al hatanya, 108-9. 57 Kunteres hahitpa’alut, in Ma’amarei admor ha’emtsa’i, 51.

116 Immanuel Etkes have seen, R. Dov Baer sought to convey to his loyalists a more restrained style of prayer. As he himself acknowledged, however, many of them took his guidance to

an undue extreme, to the point of forbidding any manifestation of emotional or physical ecstasy. It is therefore hardly surprising that R. Aaron and his followers blamed R. Dov Baer for teaching the hasidim to pray without any ecstasy whatsoever. [hat accusation hurt R. Dov Baer deeply, and he sought to refute it: As God lives and as my soul lives, all who know me and have known me from my youth, in whose souls hasidic teachings are instilled as second nature and who are most practised in them... Have they ever seen or heard from my mouth something so evil and ruinous to all? On the contrary; my entire heartfelt purpose has been to establish the words of the living God specifically in ecstasy of the heart, which is the principal aspect of divine revelation within the congregation of Israel.°®

While denying that it was he who caused the hasidim associated with him to shun ecstasy of the heart, R. Dov Baer nevertheless pleads guilty to part of the accusation—the hasidim loyal to him are, indeed, bewildered. Some interpreted his exhor-

tation to turn away from the ‘old hasidic ways’ to imply avoidance of any manifestation of emotional or physical ecstasy. Accordingly, there is need for detailed guidance regarding the distinction between desirable and improper forms of ecstasy. At the beginning of Kunteres hahitpa’alut, R. Dov Baer reiterates his assertion that

a central concern of R. Shneur Zalman was the distinction between desirable ecstasy—the sort that reflects the appearance of a godly element within the worshipper’s soul—and improper ecstasy, which is limited to man’s physical dimensions. In guiding the hasidim in this area, therefore, he is carrying out his father’s spiritual will. The urgency and importance he assigns to that effort are evident in the following comments: Asa practical matter, it appears that most of the masses (rov hahamon) experience only external ecstasy, a false imagining in their souls and hearts during prayer, expressed through exter-

nal shouting with the heart of flesh but lacking all inner light and vitality and not at all pertaining to God... And though all refer to this as devekut or hitlahavut (enthusiasm), it is, in fact, entirely false devekut, the very opposite of the true devekut that is called godly enthusiasm, as discussed above. It looks very much like true devekut, but it is not at all devekut with God; and any devekut that is not with God is worthless.°°

The passage paints an extremely gloomy picture: most of the hasidim engage in a seriously flawed form of ecstasy. Worse, they are unaware of their failing, for their improper ecstasy resembles, in its external manifestations, the proper sort. But even though their error is unintentional, R. Dov Baer speaks harshly to them: And that is what is called self-worship . . . and in no way is it worship of God .. . It is a matter of ecstasy of the external flesh; the burning (/zt/ahavut) of alien [fire], coming only from hotbloodedness but not at all from the divine fire. It is the exposure of his heart and flesh to the

©8 Kunteres hahitpa’alut, 44. °9 Tbid. 61-2.

The War of Lyady Succession 117 warmth of fiery sparks so that he warms himself with what he feels to be ecstasy; but it is very much in error.©°

R. Dov Baer’s comments have a decidedly elitist tone. Recall that in the social milieu of eastern European Jewry, the term ‘masses’ (hamon) denoted the lowest, uneducated class. That raises the question of whether Kunteres hahitpa’alut, in offering the judgement that ‘most of the masses’ of hasidim engaged in a form of ecstasy that lacked any godly component and sought merely to produce a pleasurable experience, was directed solely to ‘the masses’ among the hasidim. What of those hasidim

who were learned in R. Shneur Zalman’s teachings? R. Dov Baer responds in the following passage: Now the distinction here between two diametric opposites 1s understood by all who are famil-

iar with hasidim, but the many details that are involved are hidden from most of those who are knowledgeable, even the great among them, to the point that they consider dark to be light and light to be dark; and it is clear to me that there are many who mislead themselves.®!

And so it is not only the ‘masses’ of the hasidim but also the ‘knowledgeable’ and the ‘great’ who often err with regard to ecstasy. But there remains a surprising contradiction between the beginning and the end of his statement. If everyone exposed to

hasidic teachings readily understands the difference between proper and improper forms of ecstasy, why do even the ‘great’ nevertheless trip up? The answer lies in the ‘many details that are involved’; that is, the matter entails numerous fine nuances of which many are unaware. Accordingly, even those who know R. Shneur Zalman’s teachings well need R. Dov Baer’s guidance in the matter of ecstasy. Before beginning his detailed consideration of the various sorts of ecstasy, R. Dov Baer tries to help his readers overcome the seeming internal contradiction within the very demand to pursue ‘the absence of any sense of oneself, in godly ecstasy felt in one’s heart’.°? How can the ecstatic experience—an experience that is very taneible—be free of any self-awareness? To explain, R. Dov Baer offers a musical example: To begin with, it is necessary to understand the ecstasy of a melody (nigun), which 1s a sort of sudden ecstasy that is neither chosen nor intellectually willed. It is an ecstasy that is both felt and not felt by the person [experiencing it], for it does not come from his own intention to become ecstatic; rather, it comes automatically, without his being aware of it.©°

And another example meant to resolve the anomaly: For we see the sudden ecstasy that a person experiences with great [joy] when he learns of some good news. In such a case, he certainly feels that ecstasy in his heart, to the point that he unwittingly exhibits strong movement, such as clapping his hands. But he does so without at all choosing or willing it, and he claps automatically. And that is a sign that he does not

60 Tbid. 62-3. 61 Thid. 63. 62 Tbid. 6s. 63 Thid. 66-7.

118 Immanuel Etkes sense himself at all even though he is ecstatic and feels it in his heart; but it is as if he knows nothing of it at all.©4

The common thread shared by the two examples is that the ecstasy—that is, the experience of being enchanted by the melody or of feeling great joy over the good news—1s generated automatically, unintentionally. Because the person in question did not act deliberately to achieve an ecstatic state, and because he is totally swept away by the ecstatic experience itself, he experiences it in its pure state, with no admixture of any ‘sense of oneself’. That is the quality that is desired in the ecstasy properly aroused during prayer. The body of Kunteres hahitpa’alut distinguishes in detail between five degrees of ecstasy in the bestial soul and five levels of ecstasy in the godly soul. These degrees are described in ascending order; and each description is centred on the psychological aspects of the experience and its various components—contemplation, ecstasy of the ‘mind’ (that is, in the cognitive realm), and ecstasy of the ‘heart’ (in the emo-

tional realm). In describing the degrees of ecstasy, R. Dov Baer refers to various groupings of hasidim, defined with reference to the depth with which they understand and apply R. Shneur Zalman’s teachings. Among other things, he distineuishes between hasidim of long standing and those who have only recently joined. Detailed consideration of the degrees of ecstasy described by R. Dov Baer would take us beyond the scope of this chapter. But it is worth noting what appears to be the principal lesson R. Dov Baer means to leave with his readers. He is less interested in guiding them on the ascent from one level to the next than he 1s in offering them the tools they need for self-assessment, so they do not go astray in evaluating themselves. He writes: _ After all this . . —all the differences that exist and are understood by anyone who has begun to taste the taste of the words of the living God, each in accord with his intellect, knowledge, and heart, and in accord with his practice since his youth of the service of the heart—[each one] will recognize and find his place and level and will discern within his soul every one of the errors to which he has succumbed. And if his soul is perfected and his heart truly holds fast to God, he will clearly perceive his essence through his mind’s eye, so he will not mislead himself. For it appears that the primary corruption, through diminished light of Torah and worship—even for those who seek and crave nearness to God—is the error with which one misleads oneself on account of too feeble an effort to seek God in whole-hearted perfection.®

R. Dov Baer’s detailed mapping of the degrees of ecstasy, as set forth in his tract, thus © seems meant to allow every hasid to situate himself within it and to recognize ‘his place and level’. This self-perception is a vital step towards avoiding self-deception with respect to the quality of one’s ecstasy. A similar message, reflecting a stratified view of the hasidic community, appears towards the end of the tract: After all these words of truth regarding the various sorts [of people] to be found among our community, everyone will come to recognize his own place and level and will monitor himself 64 Kunteres hahitpa’alut, 67. 65 Tbid. 162.

The War of Lyady Succession 11g so as not to err by acting in a way more exalted than his own... . And no man will think ill of his fellow nor envy his status or wellbeing, for each has his special place and jealousy introduces a harsh admixture into all his ways. Rather, each one should act in accord with his essential quality.©

Previously, R. Dov Baer had attributed self-deception in the worship of God to inadequate personal effort. Here, he teaches that envy of others’ spiritual status is the source of failure. ‘The idea that different individuals’ souls are on different levels,

and the premise that each individual will merit divine illumination in accord with his rank, appear often in R. Shneur Zalman’s writings. R. Dov Baer bases himself on these premises but takes a further step when he calls on each individual to refrain from any attempt to go beyond his station. Incisive self-assessment that leads to recognizing each person’s ‘special place’, and acceptance of that place to the exclusion of efforts to exceed it, will prevent error and self-deception in the worship of God. R. Dov Baer concludes the tract with a polemical barb: Now, my beloved brethren and friends, all who stand firmly with me and who hear and heed the words of the living God in truth and loyalty, having in their hearts no roots bearing gall [and wormwood; cf. Deut. 29: 17] that look with an evil eye, God forbid; and particularly those who know me from my youth. Let them all believe all these words of mine, which come

unchanged from the core of my heart, being like my heart and soul, my very nature and essence, as I have become accustomed to them from my youth, in accord with the guidance of my master, father, teacher, and rabbi, may his memory be for a blessing, on a daily basis. And let them not say that there remain here things that are concealed, to be revealed only to the inner circle... For that is the slander [spoken] by men who want to be proud and acquire a name for themselves by saying ‘I have a secret, etc., that not everyone knows’.©4

With these words, R. Dov Baer directly addresses the hasidic community loyal to him and declares that he has disclosed to them everything he had to say on the subject of ecstasy. If R. Aaron Halevi and his supporters are pretentious enough to say they possess secrets that may be revealed only to a select few, R. Dov Baer proclaims that he is withholding nothing from those faithful to him. Moreover, the guidance provided by the tract with regard to ecstasy is based on what R. Dov Baer learned from his father, beginning in his youth. Accordingly, Kunteres hahitpa’alut

constitutes an authorized interpretation of R. Shneur Zalman’s teachings and demonstrates concretely R. Dov Baer’s status as his father’s heir and successor.

R. AARON HALEVI’S RESPONSE R. Aaron Halevi’s principal response to Kunteres hahitpa’alut appears in the introduction to his book Sha’arei avodah, published in Shklov in 1821. Following R. Shneur Zalman’s lead, R. Aaron determines that the godly soul requires no repair, for by its very nature it is connected to the divine. It follows that the worshipper’s challenge is

66 Ibid. 184. 67 Tbid. 185.

120 Immanuel Etkes to work on the bestial soul, which includes a blend of good and evil—an evil that 1s separated from God. The goal of divine worship 1s to bring about the nullification of the bestial soul before God. Later, R. Aaron adds another important determination: the bestial soul comprises, in essence, the ‘attributes’ (mdot), that is, the emotional leanings. To be sure, it also includes knowledge (da’at), that is, cognitive capability; but that intelligence is meant primarily to serve the attributes, such as by knowing what is pleasing to a man, what is harmful to him, and so forth. From these premises, R. Aaron draws the conclusion that the highest purpose of divine worship is focused on the ‘attributes’ of the bestial soul: Of this it is said ‘[Who knows] the spirit of man whether it goes upward’ [Eccl. 3: 21]; that is, raising them to the mover and cause of the worlds from which they came. For with the appearance of wisdom in the attributes—all of it through His power, may He be blessed— the attributes of the bestial soul are transformed and purified so they may cling to Him, may He be blessed, and be incorporated in His unity, may He be blessed, through the aspect of the attributes, that is, to love God and fear Him.®®

The process here described corresponds to what R. Shneur Zalman repeatedly taught in his book. Intellectual contemplation of God’s greatness—that is, delving deeply into the immanent image of God—should arouse feelings of love and fear of God, which lead, in turn, to the highest goal of devekut and incorporation into God, that is, self-nullification. R. Aaron’s innovation appears in the argument that this process is meant to be centred specifically on the emotional inclinations of the bestial soul. This is where the concept of ‘clarification of the attributes’ fits in, that is, the process of overcoming the emotional inclinations through love and fear of God and thereby purifying them of their worldly elements. The question, of course, is whether this process must be cleansed of any ‘sense of being’, as R. Dov Baer taught. Ifa person during the course of ecstasy is conscious of his own experience, is the ecstasy necessarily flawed? Must one reject out of hand any ecstasy that is born of a conscious, intentional effort to bring about an ecstatic experience? As might be expected, R. Aaron’s position regarding these questions 1s radically different from R. Dov Baer’s. He develops his primary argument on the matter by means of an analogy dealing with the process of mining and refining silver ore: It is like silver, which originates in dust, and in order to extract it from the dust it is necessary to take dust containing silver within it and melt it in a furnace . . . Previously, the silver was mixed with the dust and was neither recognizable nor evident. But when it is melted in the furnace, the dust is separated and the silver remains. And when one wants to refine the silver further, making it into pure silver, it is melted in a furnace once again, to remove the dross that is mixed in with it and separate it from the silver. And that is repeated several times. And so at the outset, it is necessary to extract the dust in which the silver is mixed, and it is impossible to extract the silver alone. If the dust were not extracted with the silver, the silver would never be extracted and would remain in the dust.®

68 R. Aaron Halevi, Sha’arei avodah, introduction (unpaginated). 69 bid.

The War of Lyady Succession 121 He goes on to explain the analogy: Precisely so with respect to worship. For the godly soul comes garbed in the bestial soul and mixed with it, to the point that only the bestial soul is manifest; yet within it is concealed the power of the godly soul. For we have already explained that the godly soul has no manifestation whatsoever except through the attributes of the bestial soul, that is, such attributes as

love within the physical heart . . . But within that love is concealed a divine force .. . Accordingly, when one worships, the main thing is to expose the divine force and clarify it so one is nullified with respect to Him, may He be blessed, with respect to His divinity . . . And the beginning of that arousal is through being garbed in the attributes that are garbed in the bestial soul... And this love includes a sense of oneself; but once the love is aroused, then through intelligence he separates it, that is, he removes his self-awareness and feels the love that can bond with Him, may He be blessed. And the more that love is strengthened, the more he separates it, until the love is left pure, with no admixture. And so the ecstasy indeed begins with being. °

In light of R. Aaron’s understanding of ecstasy as a gradual process of purification and ascent, it is inconceivable that the process would not contain, at least at its outset,

‘the sense of being’, that is, self-awareness. That the effort to achieve ecstasy is focused on the bestial soul’s emotional inclinations necessarily implies that the worshipper begin the process with an awareness of his own experience. Only gradually, as the bestial soul is overcome by feelings of love and fear of God, will self-awareness be cast aside and left behind. What ensures the initiation of the gradual process is da’at (‘knowledge’), the third of the soul’s three cognitive aspects; the other two are hokhmah (‘wisdom’) and binah (‘understanding’). Da’at embodies the soul’s firm bond to the insights attained through hokhmah and binah. By means of da’at, which encompasses the essential awareness of God’s greatness, the worshipper can ‘isolate’ and purify the ecstatic experience from its elements of self-awareness. Armed with these ideas, R. Aaron directly attacks R. Dov Baer and his followers: You will thus understand how great the error and ignorance of those who reject ecstasy of the heart with feeling, saying that if the heart has emotions during worship, it entails a sense of being. But in fact it is the opposite; for when the heart is not at all ecstatic, there remain attributes of the bestial soul in all their force, a bad sense of being, and the godly soul will never reveal itself, as in the foregoing parable of the dust. But if the heart is ecstatic through love of God, then even if he has a sense of being through that love, da’at will be the separator within his feelings that will allow him to be nullified and integrated within His unity, and it will remove the sense of himself. 74

The insistence of R. Dov Baer and his supporters on avoiding ‘ecstasy of the heart with feeling’—that is, emotional ecstasy accompanied by consciousness of the experience itself—results in missing the essence of worship. Without that sort of ecstasy, it is impossible to influence the qualities of the bestial soul, and they will therefore

70 Tbid. “1 Tbid.

122 : Immanuel Etkes remain subject to the evil impulse. R. Aaron attributes the error on the part of R. Dov Baer and his followers to their erroneous interpretation of R. Shneur Zalman’s teachings. It is certainly true that R. Shneur Zalman wanted to lead his hasidim to an ecstasy purged of ‘being’ and given over entirely to self-nullification

before God. But R. Shneur Zalman also understood that such a state could be attained only through a gradual process that could not begin without a sensation of ‘being’. Indeed, R. Aaron further argues, that process of purifying the soul from the sense of ‘being’ is the essence of divine worship: And that is the principal war to be waged in worship, and of this it was said “the time of prayer

is a time of battle’. Middling people (beinonim) wage this war throughout their lives, and tsadikim do so as needed, in accord with each one’s worship; they thereby nullify their sense of being, removing the admixture. And in that way, they differ in the ranks they attain, for one who is able to nullify more of his being, such that his love, his bonding, and his selfnullification are purer, attains a more separated [that is, higher] rank. And every tsadik wages a war. As I wrote in this treatise in the name of the holy admor, may his rest be in Eden, on ‘I shall remove illness from among you’—there is no one who can remove it; only the Holy One, blessed be He, can remove it. And so a person must die in order to remove being in its entirety ... And no man merited that except Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, and the exalted

souls who attained his rank in some respect through total self-nullification ... And all this worship and battle are specifically associated with ecstasy. But if he is not ecstatic, how can he wage {this} war?—for he will remain entirely hidden within the bestial soul, a bad thing.”

“The principal war’—that is the image used by R. Aaron to describe the spiritual effort needed during worship to attain nullification. The image illustrates the argument that one cannot insist on nullification from the outset, for it can be achieved only through a struggle. Middling people must engage in that struggle throughout their lives, and even tsadikim are equipped to attain nullification only to a certain degree but no further, for total nullification is not within the realm of the possible. It follows that nullification 1s something relative, which each person will be able to attain only in accord with his rank. In light of all this, R. Dov Baer’s position—that is, that all spiritual ecstasy be pure of any sense of ‘being’—1s depicted as something that makes no sense whatsoever and is entirely removed from the real spiritual arena in which worship of God takes place. Here R. Aaron seasons his polemic with a touch of sarcasm: “The heavens are desolate because in all matters of this world, and [human] wants and desires, man 1s entirely a feeling, individuated being . . . yet feeling in worship 1s to be forbidden? They are the ones who extinguish the lamp of worship!’ “? In all the details of daily life, there is an element of self-awareness to which no one objects. Why, then, forbid it specifically in worshipping God? As expected, R. Aaron relies for support on his teacher, R. Shneur Zalman, and recounts the following: Throughout the life of that tsadik, his teachings pertained specifically to the technique of ecstasy. Yet it was his regular practice that when he would explain some aspect of his holy 72 R. Aaron Halevi, Sha’arei avodah, introduction (unpaginated). 73 Tbid.

The War of Lyady Succession 123 teaching, he would begin with several introductions and prefatory comments to the effect that all the holy words he was explaining were to be a technique for arousing the heart to burn with desire and yearning for God through integration of the soul. And if the heart were not thereby aroused, the words he was speaking would be in vain. ‘4

That statement, to be sure, does not directly pertain to the question of ‘the sense of being’ while in a state of ecstasy. But the very fact that R. Shneur Zalman made an effort to arouse spiritual ecstasy 1n the hearts of his listeners and expressed no reservations about it tends to support R. Aaron’s position. R. Aaron sums up his polemic against R. Dov Baer’s position by describing the proper ordering of the process of worship: And so to contemplate His unity, may He be blessed, and His connection to the worlds, so that one’s soul may yearn to bond with Him and to draw the light of God and His unity into it, so as to be integrated into His unity and be nullified in relation to Him and to do His will— it is first necessary that there be contemplation solely to gaze on the glory of the King. [At that stage] he will want nothing other than to uncover His exaltedness, may He be blessed, for the sake of the revealed being, and to divest himself of the corporeality of being. There follows contemplation of His unity, to arouse love and to be bound to Him, may He be blessed, and to enter into His chambers and be nullified [in relation] to His will, may He be blessed, and to perform His commandments, for that is the essence. ’°

In other words: one who wishes to bond with God must first focus his contemplation on God’s greatness, with no accompanying effort to be purified of ‘being’. Only at the ensuing stage, after recognition of God’s greatness has aroused within his soul feelings of love and fear, can he purify them of ‘the corporeality of being’. Only now can he progress towards the higher goal of integration into God and self-nullification before Him. That is the proper sequence of events; and R. Aaron, of course, sees them as based on R. Shneur Zalman’s teaching: ‘I heard all this from the holy mouth of the admor, may his rest be in Eden, and I have treated this at length because many have strayed from the path of reason and learned from this that the essence should be contemplation alone, without any arousal of the heart, and they have attributed this nonsense to the admor, may God protect us.’ “©

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS What role did the dispute over ecstasy play in the succession war? Did this theoretical dispute underlie the succession war and motivate the parties? Or did it develop only after the fact, as a way of turning an existing conflict into one of principle? While neither of those alternatives seems to represent the whole truth, the second

is closer to the mark. The surviving accounts of the conflict between the two claimants show that their personal rivalry played a decisive part from the outset. The

conspiracy of silence regarding the substance of the ‘accusation’ that compelled

“4 Tbid. 7 Tbid. 76 Tbid.

124 Immanuel Etkes R. Aaron to leave Lyady leads to the conclusion that the dispute was not a theoretical one. Had it been a debate over doctrine—such as that over ecstasy—it presumably would have become public. In that event, moreover, the two sides would have asked R. Shneur Zalman to decide the matter. It is therefore hard to escape the conclusion

that the dispute that arose between the two would-be heirs a few years before R. Shneur Zalman’s death was a personal one. One may reasonably assume that R. Shneur Zalman grew weak in his last years, requiring R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer to become more involved in the running of the court, and it is hardly surprising that that would give rise to disputes between them over their respective authorities. And, as already argued, the ouster of R. Aaron from the court was meant to pave the way for R. Dov Baer to assume his father’s throne when the time came. But though the theoretical dispute neither underlay nor drove the succession war in the first instance, it acquired great importance after the fact. Once the personal conflict had broken out, the theoretical debate formed the rampart behind which

each of the competitors fortified himself. To put it differently, the dispute over ecstasy allowed each side to illustrate its claim to be the authorized interpreter of R. Shneur Zalman’s teachings. In addition, it opened an opportunity for the hasidim to choose between two styles of worship, not merely between two individual leaders. Even those hasidim whose choice was based simply on a preference for one contender or the other—and that may well have been a majority of them—could still cite a substantive basis for the choice. And it is only natural that the distinctive style of worship that characterized each of the rival camps contributed to the formation of its communal identity and to the sharpening of the boundaries between them. It is noteworthy that the theoretical dispute between R. Dov Baer and R. Aaron pertained entirely to one narrow area of R. Shneur Zalman’s teachings. One may argue, of course, that the question at issue—the validity or invalidity of ecstasy accompanied by self-awareness—is one on which the entire structure of divine worship stands or falls. But that sort of question, even if welcome in the academic discussions of theoreticians, is not well suited to communal leaders. R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer could be expected to know that the nature of ecstasy was not an issue of pressing concern to most of the hasidim, and the thousands of hasidim spread

throughout the expanses of Belarus no doubt included many who had enough difficulty in carrying out the more basic elements of hasidic worship. It is impossible,

therefore, to escape the conclusion that the dispute over ecstasy came to be blown out of all proportion, and we may say that the dispute served the needs of the two contenders for leadership even more than it served the needs of the hasidim. And, as noted, the two contenders needed the dispute in order to illustrate their respective

ways of interpreting R. Shneur Zalman’s teachings. , As far as we can tell, the dispute seems to have been initiated by R. Dov Baer. When he first moved to gather the ranks of his father’s followers under his leadership, he called on them to avoid the ‘old hasidic ways’ and to adopt a more restrained style of prayer. In so doing, he saw himself to be guiding the hasidim along his

The War of Lyady Succession 125 father’s path. At the same time, though, he was making a personal statement, for the restrained style of prayer that he was promoting was itself a sort of innovation. Most

of the hasidim associated with R. Shneur Zalman presumably worshipped in a manner inclined to fiery enthusiasm, along the lines of the ecstatic prayer typical of

early hasidism. Moreover, R. Shneur Zalman’s own prayer had an enthusiastic quality.“” And it is worth noting that when he was being investigated by the government, R. Shneur Zalman found it proper to defend that style of prayer.“ In calling on hasidim to avoid the old hasidic ways, R. Dov Baer directly attacked R. Aaron and his disciples, who adhered to the ecstatic style of worship. But R. Dov

_ Baer’s gambit produced unintended consequences. As he himself acknowledged, many hasidim misinterpreted his words as a call to shun any sort of emotional or physical ecstasy whatsoever. As a result, R. Dov Baer opened himself to sharp criticism by R. Aaron and his disciples. Kunteres hahitpa’alut, which deals principally with the distinction between desirable and improper forms of ecstasy, was therefore meant to confront the bewilderment that had spread among hasidim and to dismiss the attack by R. Aaron and his followers.

The texts in which R. Dov Baer and R. Aaron declared their positions also provide some insights into their personalities. R. Dov Baer gives the impression of being a young leader, short on self-confidence. Seemingly fearful that his birthright will be taken from him, he speaks harshly against his rival. But his words also strike an apologetic note. He resents being blamed for the confusion that has spread among the hasidim and vehemently denies having made the statements attributed to him. He shows a striking tendency to reiterate things, evidently hoping to persuade his readers that he is right. R. Aaron, in contrast, conveys the image of a more mature and experienced leader, speaking of his rival in a more restrained manner. He is less given over to personal pronouncements and focuses on the substance of the question at issue. It seems too that R. Aaron—like R. Shneur Zalman himself and perhaps thanks to his influence—had a strong pedagogic sense and tended towards lengthy explanations meant to give the reader a complete understanding of what he was saying.

Three scholars, each in his or her own way, have treated the succession war between R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer. In her book on R. Aaron Halevi’s teachings, Rachel Elior devotes a chapter to the dispute over ecstasy. Elior 1s interested primarily in hasidic thought, and her study is focused on the dispute’s theoretical aspects. She cites lengthy extracts from their writings, and though the texts are difficult, she

occasionally leaves them unexplicated. Her interpretative discussion appears between the extracts; in my view, it is sometimes on the mark and useful, sometimes fanciful. An example of the latter is the following: It was not the question of devekut that took centre stage in R. Aaron’s thought; on the contrary, his predominantly theocentric teaching, which placed man at the service of God’s will, 17 See Beit rahi, pt. 1, p. 31 n. 2. 78 See Igerot kodesh, ii. 27.

126 Immanuel Etkes required relinquishing any conscious personal religious aspiration whatsoever. Devekut is conceived as self-evident, given the divine element within the human soul—an element that ] allows him, as the result ofa religious and spiritual journey, to realize himself in an encounter with the All. It is not the purpose of worship so much as its side effect, forcefully imposed on a person possessed of a godly soul and a low level of consciousness: [it is] in the realm of the ‘inner light’ bounded by human consciousness, whose apprehension does not exceed the bounds of human intellect in its encounter with the all-encompassing light. ”?

It seems to me that this sweeping conclusion has no basis in R. Aaron’s writings. Like R. Shneur Zalman and true to him, R. Aaron ascribed great importance to a Jew’s aspiration to fulfil his destiny and to bond—that 1s, achieve devekut—with the Creator. Realizing that ideal is bound up with an intense, ongoing effort, namely, the middling person’s constant struggle against the evil impulse. Accordingly, the question of devekut and how to attain it certainly stood at the centre of R. Aaron’s interests. Nor am I persuaded by Elior’s effort to tie the dispute over ecstasy between R. Dov Baer and R. Aaron to some more substantive and profound disagreement between them: R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer differed in the religious interests that moved them—the one focused on the theocentric interest; the other on the anthropocentric interest. R. Aaron was rather apathetic about human achievements; his cosmic mode of thinking, which denied any value whatsoever to the world of being, led him to regard them as substantively trivial. His interest was centred on the two-pronged divine intention and man’s place within it, as realizing its various tendencies. R. Dov Baer, in contrast, assigned central importance to man’s spiritual accomplishments, and his principal interest was in human thought processes and emotions and their authentication within the religious hierarchy of achievement that he estab-

lished in accord with a precise set of criteria.°° ,

It seems to me that throughout the dispute over ecstasy, what both R. Dov Baer and R. Aaron had in mind was the hasid grappling with the impediments to his efforts

to escape the bonds of terrestrial existence and connect with God. As explained earlier, the dispute was centred on whether it was possible to demand of this hasid that his ecstasy be purged from the outset of any ‘sense of being’, as R. Dov Baer believed, or whether ecstasy should be regarded as a gradual process that will always have, at least to begin with, an element of self-awareness. These different assessments of the spiritual aspects of ecstasy’s course form the axis on which the dispute revolves, and there is no reason to tie it to more comprehensive subjects. Naftali Loewenthal likewise devoted a chapter of his book on Habad hasidim to the rivalry between R. Dov Baer and R. Aaron.®! The chapter includes both a historical reconstruction of the episode and a discussion of the dispute over ecstasy. In 79 R. Elior, Torat ha’elohut bador hasheni shel hasidut habad (Jerusalem, 1982), 307. 80 Thid. 324-5. Sl N. Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite: The Emergence of the Habad School (Chicago and London, 1990), 100-38.

The War of Lyady Succession 127 recounting the course of events, Loewenthal follows the Habad tradition as presented in Beit rai. To his credit, he sets that tradition in its broader context; but he does not adopt a sufficiently critical view of Beit rabi even when it is warranted. For

example, he writes, following Heilmann (the author of Bert raz), that R. Shneur Zalman drew R. Aaron to him as one of his sons; that R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer studied both esoteric and exoteric matters together; and that R. Shneur Zalman called on both of them to help him run the court.®* But even though Loewenthal notes that R. Aaron was seven years older than R. Dov Baer, he does not even raise the question of the balance of power between them. The naive reader can form the impression that he is speaking of two youngsters at the same point in their studies and having the same status within the court. As discussed earlier, that does not accurately describe the situation. Another instance of this appears in Loewenthal’s treatment of R. Pinhas Schick’s letter in support of R. Dov Raer. Loewenthal describes the content of the letter as written, without asking whether R. Shneur Zalman actually had asked that his son, R. Dov Baer, succeed him.®? Particularly troublesome is Loewenthal’s acceptance of a late Habad tradition, attributed in Bezt rad: to ‘one of our rabbi’s grandchildren’, that conflates the dispute between R. Dov Baer and R. Aaron with the intense struggle between R. Shneur Zalman and R. Abraham of Kalisk. According to that tradition, R. Aaron tended to support R. Abraham of Kalisk’s position on one of the issues

in dispute between the latter and R. Shneur Zalman—something that fanned the flames of his disagreement with R. Dov Baer.°* But this Habad tradition has no grounding in reality and is meant solely to discredit R. Aaron. The numerous reliable

sources in our possession leave no room for doubt that R. Aaron held R. Shneur Zalman in high esteem and was devoted to him with all his heart. Is it conceivable, therefore, that he could support R. Shneur Zalman’s most bitter rival? Moreover, a key point on which R. Abraham of Kalisk criticized R. Shneur Zalman was the latter’s divulging of kabbalistic mysteries to his hasidim; yet no one outdid R. Aaron in supporting R. Shneur Zalman’s position on the matter and continuing along his path. Loewenthal provides an expansive analysis of the ecstasy issue and clearly and fluently presents each side’s essential position.®° But he does not stop there; rather, he goes on to argue that the dispute over ecstasy encompasses an additional dispute having far-reaching social aspects. He argues that R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer held different views of the target audience within which hasidic modes of worship should be disseminated. R. Aaron tended to direct his efforts toward a narrow, spiritually sensitive elite. R. Dov Baer, in contrast, believed that the hasidic gospel should be spread within a broader community of learned men. Seen in this perspective, R. Dov Baer was a link in the chain of Habad’s efforts to disseminate hasidism within the public at large. Loewenthal acknowledges that this dispute is nowhere made explicit, but he believes it is evident from reading between the lines.°°

82 Tbid. ror. 83 Tbid. 106. 84 Ibid. 117-10.

85 Thid. 119-35. 86 Tbid. 100-1 and passim. ,

128 Immanuel Etkes Although Loewenthal’s thesis is interesting and innovative, it lacks, so far as I can tell, any documentary support. As a general matter, I do not believe that the dispute over ecstasy reflects the parties’ divergent views of the target community. And even if such a connection were to be drawn, I believe the conclusion would be the opposite. R. Dov Baer’s sweepingly purist insistence that all ecstasy be purged of the ‘sense of being’ is suited to a select few. In contrast, R. Aaron’s concept of ecstasy as a path along which each person progresses at his own pace, consistent with his personal qualities, opens the door to a broader public. One should also note R. Dov Baer’s

scathing dismissal of the ecstasy experienced by the hasidic ‘masses’ as well as his insistence that each hasid recognize his rank and not attempt to go beyond it. R. Aaron, meanwhile, follows in R. Shneur Zalman’s footsteps when he draws back

from the demand ‘to purge the sense of being from himself’—that is, to aim for an ecstatic experience having no self-awareness—and writes: “That said, all his [R. Shneur Zalman’s]| holy words were always meant to draw the heart and validate the ecstasy of each individual in accord with his own measure.’®’ We have here a clear statement meant to include within the circle of hasidim even those who have difficulty in attaining the highest degree of ecstasy. As I have said, I see no reason to burden the dispute over ecstasy with matters extraneous to it. Moreover, the contemporaneous documents provide no basis whatsoever for the claim that R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer disagreed over the target audi-

ence to be addressed. It seems reasonable that each of the contenders to succeed R. Shneur Zalman would attempt to enlist the support of as many hasidim as possible. And by the time R. Shneur Zalman had died, Habad already numbered among its adherents a diverse group of people from diverse social strata. Another student of the succession war is Moshe Rosman.®® Rosman does not enter into the thicket of the dispute over ecstasy, deferring on that to his predecessors. He is interested primarily in reconstructing the processes through which each

of the competitors developed his case to be the heir. He depicts R. Aaron, with justification, as claiming the title on the ground that he was another link in the chain

of leaders who disseminated the Torah’s secrets. Rosman is also persuasive in finding that because the principle of filial succession had not yet been established, R. Dov Baer could not base his claim solely on being R. Shneur Zalman’s son and had to demonstrate as well that he was his father’s student and an authoritative interpreter of his teachings. Apropos his analysis of the various ways in which R. Dov Baer grounded his claim, Rosman notes the initiative to publish new editions of R. Shneur Zalman’s writings—editions that were accompanied by letters of approbation from his sons and, later, from R. Dov Baer alone. Tying that initiative to the struggle for leadership certainly seems reasonable to me. Still, I find it hard to agree with Rosman’s argument that the printing of Peri ha’arets (Kopys, 1814)—a book that included letters and discourses by R. Menahem 87 R. Aaron Halevi, Sha’arei avodah, introduction, s.v. ‘vehineh hagam shekatavti’. 88 See Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, 189-211.

The War of Lyady Succession 129 Mendel of Vitebsk, R. Abraham of Kalisk, and R. Abraham Hamalakh—was likewise connected to the succession struggle. Relying on the work of Nahum Carlinsky, Rosman determines that the contents of this book appear to support R. Dov Baer’s leadership claim. But that finding strikes me as untenable, and the example from the book cited by Rosman is far from persuasive; indeed, a creative reader of this anthology of letters and discourses would be equally able to uncover within it ‘proofs’ that justify R. Aaron’s position. As a general matter, a mode of thinking that looks for these sorts of hidden motivations behind the publication of every book will end up

building castles in the air. Is 1t not enough of an explanation that thousands of hasidim considered the writers of these letters and discourses to be leaders possessed

of the holy spirit and therefore wanted to immerse themselves in their writings? , Things become even more questionable when Rosman goes on to connect even the publication of Shivhei habesht to the struggle between R. Dov Baer and R. Aaron. He writes in that regard that the compilation of Shivhet habesht ‘had great polemical

potential for the cause of Dov Ber of Lubavitch’.°? The supposed reason is that R. Dov Baer could cite the figure of the Besht as the model after which he himself was fashioned.

But it is hard to imagine two figures more different from each other than the Besht and R. Dov Baer. The former was a ‘master of the name’, a mystic, and a first-

rank charismatic personality. The latter was a middling leader, using his father’s image as a talisman with which to justify his claim to leadership. Accordingly, all the

examples Rosman cites to illustrate the supposed resemblance between the two strike me as contrived and unfounded. In fact, if either of the contenders could invoke the Besht’s mighty image, it would be R. Aaron, for he was known as a mystic who prayed ecstatically as did the Besht and who was said to work wonders. But I see no reason at all to associate the publication of Shivhei habesht with the struggle

to succeed R. Shneur Zalman. Israel Jaffe, the so-called ‘printer’ who published Shivhet habesht, had a simple motive for doing so. He regarded the Besht as the founder of hasidism, and when he came into possession of a manuscript containing more than two hundred tales about the Besht and his associates, he had no doubt that it deserved to be published. *

It remains for us to consider the consequences of the succession war. In doing so, we should distinguish between short-term and long-term consequences. By ‘shortterm’ I mean within the lifetimes of the two contenders. The immediate effect of the succession war was a schism in the community of

Habad hasidim. During the approximately fifteen years that elapsed between R. Shneur Zalman’s death in 1812 and that of R. Aaron in 1828, the latter stood at the head of a group of hasidim centred in his town of residence, Staroselye. R. Dov Baer, though a few years younger than R. Aaron, died some ten months earlier. Until 89 Tbid. 205.

130 Immanuel Etkes his death, he led a group of hasidim centred in the town of Lubavitch (Lyubavichi). From their respective courts, R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer engaged in an ongoing struggle for the hearts and loyalty of the hasidim and for the course of hasidism. Their efforts to enlist the support of the hasidim were expressed in letters distributed among them by emissaries. In a letter to his confidant R. Pinhas Schick, R. Dov Baer writes of ‘the dissemi-

nation of letters to nearly all the good young men, laden with the venom of the known sly serpent’.?° The continuation of the letter shows it was written about three years after R. Shneur Zalman’s death. That R. Aaron directed his polemical effort primarily to the young is not surprising. It seems likely that since the older hasidim had already decided between the two contenders, the battle to be waged was for the souls of the young. It is self-evident that the competition was also expressed in the publication of writings presenting each side’s interpretation of R. Shneur Zalman’s

hasidic teachings. As noted, R. Dov Baer’s Kunteres hahitpa’alut was circulated among the hasidim in manuscript as early as 1814, though it was printed only a number of years later.24 Meanwhile, R. Aaron’s two books noted earlier were printed in 1820 and 1821.°

The schism within Habad hasidism—the first of many in the history of hasidism—showed the voluntary nature of the tie between the hasidim and the tsadtk. Just as the hasid needed a rebbe and leader to help him in matters spiritual and temporal, so too did the hasidic leader need a community of hasidim who recognized

evident. :

his authority, obeyed him, and provided him a livelihood. When two leaders com-

peted to head a community, their dependence on the hasidim became readily

The author of Beit rabi enumerates the prominent hasidim who had been connected to R. Shneur Zalman and who transferred their loyalty to his son as well as those who chose to affiliate with R. Aaron.?? According to these lists, a large majority

supported R. Dov Baer. Those lists are limited to the prominent hasidim; with respect to the rank and file, the author writes that ‘a large portion of our associates joined with the holy rabbi Rabbenu Aaron, may his rest be in Eden. . . but most of our associates who were loyal to the family of our great rabbi [R. Shneur Zalman], may his rest be in Eden, joined with his son, our holy rabbi [R. Dov Baer], may his rest be in Eden’.?4 That account of the balance of power, of course, embodies the internal traditions of the Habad dynasty; how accurately it reflects the complete picture is subject to question. In any event, at this stage of the succession war, each side attained its desires in part. Both R. Aaron and R. Dov Baer managed to attract large numbers of hasidim, 90 Ma’asar uge’ulat admor ha’emtsa’1, ed. Levin, 26.

91 For a comprehensive treatment of R. Dov Baer’s literary oeuvre and teachings, see Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite.

%2 On the teachings of R. Aaron Halevi, see Elior, Torat ha’elohut.

93 Beit rabi, pt. 1, pp. 136-54. 94 Ibid., pt. 2, p. 10.

The War of Lyady Succession 131 though neither was able to succeed R. Shneur Zalman as the overall leader of the hasidim in Belarus. We have no documents that reflect the factors taken into account by individual hasidim in deciding between the contenders. Still, it 1s fair to assume that many who were drawn to R. Aaron were attracted by his personal qualities, while many drawn to R. Dov Baer acted out of loyalty to R. Shneur Zalman’s family. To put it differently, the hasidim were faced with a choice between the charisma of

R. Aaron and the continuity within R. Shneur Zalman’s court embodied in the figure of R. Dov Baer. In addition to being R. Shneur Zalman’s flesh and blood, R. Dov Baer took advantage of R. Aaron’s many-year absence from the court to cement relationships with eminent and influential hasidim. At this stage, then, this clash between charisma and continuity remained unresolved. In the long term, however, there is no doubt that the dynasty prevailed. When

R. Dov Baer died in 1827, R. Menahem Mendel, later known by the sobriquet | Tsemah Tsedek, was the sole heir, accepted by all.9° R. Menahem Mendel was R. Dov Baer’s son-in-law; more importantly, he was R. Shneur Zalman’s grandson. In addition, his mother—R. Shneur Zalman’s daughter, Deborah Leah—had died

when he was only two, and R. Shneur Zalman took the child into his home and raised him as his son. Later, it was R. Shneur Zalman who gave him his granddaughter, R. Dov Baer’s daughter, in marriage. The Habad tradition tells that R. Menahem Mendel was a prodigy, recognized

as a scholar while still a lad and embarking on the study of mystical teachings when he turned 13. This blend of honoured lineage and personal excellence made R. Menahem Mendel the natural heir. His training for his expected role began in his grandfather’s court. During R. Shneur Zalman’s last years, R. Menahem Mendel

began to show his skill at recounting R. Shneur Zalman’s hasidic teachings, and R. Dov Baer enlisted his help in the running of the court. When weakened by illness in his last days, R. Dov Baer assigned broad leadership roles to his brother, R. Hayim

Abraham, and to his son-in-law, R. Menahem Mendel. Given all that, the Habad community’s choice of R. Menahem Mendel as the man fit to assume the throne of his grandfather and his uncle/father-in-law was self-evident. It is likewise clear that not one of R. Dov Baer’s close disciples even thought of claiming to be his teacher’s successor. From that point on, only descendants of R. Shneur Zalman would lead

the Habad hasidim. Even when a succession battle erupted after the death of R. Menahem Mendel, it was waged between his sons—that is, within the dynasty. When R. Aaron died in 1828, he was succeeded, ironically enough, by his son, R. Hayim Raphael. When the latter died only a few years later, his hasidim dispersed

in all directions.?® -

The Habad dynasty was wise enough to be generous in victory to the memory of

its great rival, R. Aaron Halevi. The author of Beit radi, which represents the dynasty’s tradition, takes pains to refer to him as ‘the holy rabbi’, a sobriquet that reflects recognition of his personal virtue. R. Dov Baer, meanwhile, is referred to in %5 See ibid., pt. 3, pp. 3-7. °6 Tbid., pt. 1, p. 135.

132 Immanuel Etkes Habad terminology as ‘the Middle Admor’ (ha’admor ha’emtsa’1) a designation that speaks of his place in the dynasty. The author of Beit radi recounts anecdotes that

example:

reflect the effort by the Habad admorim to defend the honour of R. Aaron. For One of the rabbis, a grandson of our master [R. Menahem Mendel], may his rest be in Eden, told that he had once entered the chamber of his grandfather, the admor, the author of Tsemah tsedek, may his rest be in Eden, and found among the writings of the aforesaid admor a brief manuscript in the holy handwriting of our master [R. Shneur Zalman], which forcefully spurned ecstasy. After that, there was written, in the holy handwriting of the admor, the author of 7semah tsedek, that what our master had written was a temporary, emergency enactment, needed to squelch some hasid who was accustomed to excess ecstasy. And the grandson of the aforesaid admor believed that the hasid to whom his grandfather was referring was the holy rabbi |[R. Aaron] of Staroselye. He asked his aforesaid grandfather about that, and his grandfather, the aforesaid admor, replied: ‘Heaven forbid; I was not referring to him, for in his case, the ecstasy was godly. Moreover, was he not greatly devoted to our master, as discussed above?’?’

The devotion referred to here comprised R. Aaron’s efforts to free R. Shneur Zalman from prison. The image of R. Aaron as R. Shneur Zalman’s faithful disciple, ready to give his life for his master, appears in the following anecdote, likewise cited by the author of Bert radi in the name of the grandson of the ‘l’semah Tsedek: He also told that after the death of our master [R. Shneur Zalman], the holy rabbi came to Hadyach to pray at the grave of our master, may his rest be in Eden. He was persecuted by the townspeople, who had taken the side of the Middle Admor, may his rest be in Eden, and they refused to give him the key to the chapel at our master’s grave-site. But he was so devoted that he entered on a ladder through a very high window, jumping in while crying out ‘Ay, rebe!’ When he needed to leave, he could not, because the window was very high and he had no ladder inside. He pounded on the door for a long time, until a blacksmith from among our Jewish brethren broke the lock so he could leave. ‘The Holy Rabbi blessed the aforesaid man with wealth all his life, for him and his descendants, and so it was. And to the townspeople he said: ‘Just as you wanted to sow division between me and my master and teacher, so shall you always be divided among yourselves.’ And so it came to pass, for there was always strife within that town. Later, the Middle Admor, may his rest be in Eden, came to Hadyach, heard about these events, and rebuked them sharply.?°

It is noteworthy that in this story, R. Dov Baer was displeased by his supporters’ hostility towards his rival and ‘rebuked them’. And the anecdote incidentally reflects an interesting perspective on the figure of R. Aaron: he is depicted as graced with the powers of a wonder-worker.?° We may conclude with another Habad tradition pertaining to R. Aaron, also cited by the author of Beit rabi: 97 Beit rabi, pt. 1, 134 N. 2. 98 Tbid. 134-5 n. 3. 99 See, on that, ibid. 135.

The War of Lyady Succession 133 About ten months after the death of the Middle Admor [R. Dov Baer], may his rest be in Eden, and half a vear before [R. Aaron’s] death, our hasidim appointed the admor, the author of Tsemah tsedek, to be rabbi, replacing his father-in-law, the \liddle Admor. The Holv Rabbi [R. Aaron] heard about this and was greatly pleased. He said: ‘Blessed be God, Who has not abandoned his kindness to the family of our master, so that his descendant is seated on his

throne after him.’!°°

The Sages teach that a litigant’s acknowledgement is worth the testimony of one hundred witnesses. It was R. Aaron Halevi, R. Shneur Zalman’s disciple, who challenged R. Dov Baer when the latter sought to inherit his father’s throne. But if the same R. Aaron 1s pleased that a descendant of R. Shneur Zalman has been seated on his throne, the dynasty’s victory—at least from the perspective of the Habad tradition—1is complete. Translated from the Hebrew by Joel Linsider 100 Tbid. 135 n. 1.

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Lithuanian Antisemitism in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries DARIUS STALIUNAS LITHUANIAN antisemitism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has received significant scholarly attention.' While some studies have taken the form of narratives that are valuable in their own right, there are also analytical papers (most notably by Vladas Sirutavicius and Nerijus Udrénas, amongst others) that reveal the differences between the image of Jews in the mid-nineteenth century in the fiction of Bishop Motiejus Valan¢cius of Telsiai in Samogitia and the antisemitic portrayals of the latter part of the century, propagated by certain Lithuanian nationalist leaders and imbued with racial undertones. ‘The research shows how the objective of mod-

ernizing Lithuanian society encouraged opposition to Jews, and indicates which factors promoted this stance, by contrast with those that subdued anti-Jewish sentiments. My own findings are based on this historiography; however, my analysis of primary sources aims particularly to present the main elements of Lithuanian antisemitism and to show the significance of different aspects of it in the ideologies of the main Lithuanian political movements, as well as to reveal the dynamics of Lithuanian antisemitism. Antisemitism will be analysed in close relation to Lithuanian nationalism. 1 V. Berenis, ‘XIX a. nacionalinis judéjimas: Lietuviai ir zydai’, Metai, 1997, no. 6, pp. 99-106; id., ‘BaznyC¢ia ir Lietuvos zydai — sugyvenimo, priesiskumo ir supratimo istoriniai aspekta1’, Lietuviy kataliky mokslo akademijos metrastis, 14 (1999), 61-8; L. Truska, Lietuviai ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos tk1 1941 m. birgelio: Antisemitizmo Lietuvoje raida (Vilnius, 2005); L. Truska and V. Vareikis, Holokausto

prielaidos: Antisemitizmas Lietuvoje XIX a. antroji puse—1941 m. birgelis (Vilnius, 2004); V. Vareikis, “Tarp Valanciaus ir Kudirkos: Zydu ir lietuviu santykiai katalikiskos kulttiros kontekste’, Lietuviy kataliky mokslo akademyos metrastis, 14 (1999), 79-96; L.. Venclauskas, ‘Moderniojo lietuvisko antisemitizmo genezeé ir raida (1883-1940 m.)’, Ph.D. diss. (Vytautas Magnus Univ., Kaunas, 2008); V. Sirutavicius, ‘Lietuvos zydy bendruomenés integracijos problemos XIX—XX a.’, Kultiros barai, 1992, no. 2, pp. 83-

7; id., ‘Kataliky Bazny¢ia ir modernaus lietuviy antisemitizmo geneze’, Lietuviy kataliky mokslo akademijos metrastis, 14 (1999), 69-77; id., “‘Koscidt katolicki a geneza nowozytnego antysemityzmu litewskiego’, in K. Jasiewicz (ed.), Swiat Niepozegnany: Zydzi na dawnych ziemiach wschodnich Rzeczypospohite) w XVITI-XX mwieku / A World We Bade No Farewell: Fews in the Eastern Territories of

the Polish Republic from 13th to 20th Century (Warsaw and London, 2004), 614-20; N. Udrenas, ‘Book,

Bread, Cross, and Whip: the Construction of Lithuanian Identity in Imperial Russia’, Ph.D. diss. (Brandeis University, 2000).

136 Darius Stahiinas Antisemitism in this chapter is understood in two ways. First, it is a political movement with a clear ideology that holds Jews responsible for the downfall of nations or races. In this view, Jewish characteristics cannot be altered through education or other means, and are considered harmful to anyone exposed to Jews within

any field (in the political, economic, or cultural spheres). The aim of such antisemitism is to minimize or completely eliminate the influence of Jews in public (state) life. Second, the less articulated forms of opposition to Jews—those forms that lack a substantial ideological structure and are not organized in political movements-——function rather as a certain latent ‘cultural code’,* but can also be articulated in public discourse. Several elements dominated the Lithuanian antisemitic narrative: the religious (and moral), the economic, the cultural, and the political. ‘Though these were closely and often directly interrelated (for example, the explanation for the allegedly detrimental economic activities of Jews singled out their religious beliefs), by revealing the range of ‘reproaches’ levelled at Jews, we can arrive at a better understanding of the structure of Lithuanian antisemitism. It is precisely the content and popularity of these elements within separate Lithuanian socio-political ideological streams that will be discussed here.

ANTI-JUDAISM Of all the themes I have mentioned, religious Judaeophobia is the oldest in the Lithuanian discourse, as is the case elsewhere too. Jews had been persecuted since medieval times for having rejected the ‘true’ faith, and were collectively blamed for the murder of Christ. As much in the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as in the nineteenth century, Jews were accused of using the blood of Christians for ritual purposes.* These and similar anti-Judaic beliefs were quite popular among the masses, and even penetrated the more educated layers of society, sometimes provoking pogroms.°

Probably the most radical and undoubtedly the best-known figure behind Lithuanian religious Judaeophobia is Justinas Bonaventtira Pranaitis, whose book Christianus in Talmude Iudaeorum; sive, Rabbinicae doctrinae de christiants secreta 2 R. S. Wistrich, Between Redemption and Perdition: Modern Anti-Semitism and fewish Identity (London and New York, 1990), 31. 3 Tt is likely that children were introduced to such images in preparation for their confirmation: V. Vareikis, ‘Antisemitizmas Lietuvoje (XIX a. antroji puseé-XX a. pirmoji puse)’, in Truska and Vareikis,

Holokausto prielaidos, 27. ;

(Vilnius, 2009), 246-69. ; ;

4 J. Siauditinaite-Verbickiené, Zydai Lietuvos DidZiosios Kunigaikstystés visuomeneje: Sambuvio aspektat

5 See Udrénas, ‘Book, Bread, Cross, and Whip’, 351; V. Zaltauskaite, ‘Smurtas pries zydus Siaurés Lietuvoje 1900 metais: [vykiai ir interpretacijos’, in V. Sirutavicius and D. Stalitinas (eds.), Kaz ksenofobija virsta prievarta: Lietuviy ir Zydy santykiy dinamika XIX a.—XX a. pirmojoge puseje (Vilnius, 2005), 79-88.

Lithuanian Antisemitism 137 (“The Christian in the Talmud of the Jews; or, The Secrets of the Rabbinical Teaching Concerning Christians’) was first published in Latin in 1892 and later translated into other languages, including German, Russian, Italian, and Polish, as well as Lithuanian.® Pranaitis believed that the Talmud was the source of Jewish wrongdoing and that from it Jews derived their contempt for Christianity. The Talmud was held to allow Jews to kill Christians. However, texts such as his, with such radical anti-Judaic content, were rarely published in Lithuanian. In addition, it is important to note that Pranaitis wrote his book in Latin. This circumstance suggests that he most likely considered his book an academic work with no direct links to specific social situations. Equally significant is the fact that this work did not appear in Lithuanian until twenty years after its first publication, another factor that suggests that there was no special ‘need’ for such books in Lithuanian society at that point. Sometimes works of an anti-Jewish nature were simply translations from other languages.’ Thus, while it may be felt that Pranaitis’s treatise and similar texts were not suited to the newspaper format by reason of their content and alleged academic nature, it appears that there were other important reasons why texts similar to his were not printed in Lithuanian periodicals. Although Pranaitis’s book was well received even in the liberal press,® it is likely that the editorial boards of Lithuanian newspapers, even those of a clerical bent, did not find radical religious Judaeophobia acceptable. ‘his hypothesis seems to be borne out by the fact that it was rather in the Polish antisemitic newspaper Ro/a that Pranaitis published his writings.? One particular situation that arose towards the end of the Romanov dynasty highlights the diverse attitudes of the Lithuanian periodical press towards antisemitism. © J.B. Pranaitis, Krikscionis Zydy talmude; arba, Slaptingas rabiny mokslas apie kriksctonybe (Seiniai, 1912). Pranaitis himself alleged that this publication provoked great dissatisfaction amongst Jews. It is true that some of them believed the author to be Professor Pranciskus Karevicius of the St Petersburg Catholic Academy: J. B. Pranaitis, letter to A. Dambrauskas, 25 Mar. 1894: Vilnius University Library, Manuscript Section, F'1 D309, letter no. 3. Incidentally, in this letter Pranaitis also makes negative comments about Jews, referring to them as ‘stinkers’. ” eg. V. Gruseckis, Talmudas Zydy, pt. 1 (Riga, 1905), translated from Polish. 8 Kelmelis [?], ‘Ko galime tikétis nuo naujojo caro Mikalojaus II?’, Ukininkas, 1895, no. 14. Here and below, pseudonyms whose bearers have not been identified are indicated with ‘[?]’. 9 In these writings Pranaitis devoted much attention to discussing the Polish-language newspaper Izraeltta, which spoke out in favour of Jewish integration into Polish society. When defending his book’s depiction of Christians in the Talmud, Pranaitis continued to emphasize most of all his claim that the Talmud encouraged intolerance of Christians by Jews: Ks. J. B. Pranajtis [Pranaitis], ‘Z tajemnic talmudycznych (Odpowiedz na odpowiedz)’, Rola, 1892, no. 12, pp. 177-9; id., ‘Wyjasnienie artykulu “Izraelity” p. t. “W formie ksiazkr”’, Rola, 1893, no. 3, pp. 39-40; no. 4, pp. 55-6; no. 5, pp. 71-2; no. 6, pp. 87-8; id., ‘Judaica: Ciekawa historya “spalonego obrazka”, czyliszlachetny cel i szlachetne srodki’, Rola, 1894, no. 17, pp. 275—6, and continued in nos. 18, 19, 20, 25, and 26; id., ‘W sprawie rewelacy} ex-masonskich’, Rola, 1896, no. 48, pp. 770-2; no. 82, pp. 851-3. The publisher of Rola, Jan Jelenski, was one of the main proponents of Polish clerical antisemitism: T. R. Weeks, From Assimilation to Antisemitism: The ‘fewish Question’ in Poland, 1850-1914 (DeKalb, Ill., 2006), 68-70; W. Benz (ed.), Handbuch des Antisemitismus: Fudenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ii/ 1: Personen (Berlin, 2009),

entry on J. Jelenski by M. Moszynski, 407-8.

138 Daruus Stahiinas In 1911 Menahem Mendel Beilis was accused in Kiev of murdering Andrey Yushchinsky. The prosecutors alleged that the crime was carried out for religious purposes: they believed that Beilis needed Christian blood to conduct his religious rituals. The trial, held in 1913, was covered in detail in the many languages of the empire’s periodicals, and was closely followed in the main Lithuanian publications, where it drew particularly great interest because Pranaitis was one of the prosecution’s expert witnesses. In this role, Pranaitis asserted that Jewish religious literature did in fact condone the use of Christian blood for religious purposes. ‘The liberal Lithuanian press (Lietuvos ukininkas, “Uhe Lithuanian Farmer’, and Lietuvos Zinios, ‘Lithuanian News’) condemned the trial, which in their view was contrived by the

authorities, and denounced Pranaitis for spreading medieval prejudices.!° At the Same time, though the nationalist Vz/tis ((Hope’) failed to articulate its position, the clerical press stood up to defend Pranaitis, and, indirectly, welcomed the accusation

and used the reports on the trial to strengthen the claim that Jews controlled the international press.!4 Lithuanian periodicals rarely employed sophisticated reasoning to discuss the possible religious roots of ‘evil’ Jewish behaviour. Correspondents often publicized stories that attempted to illustrate Jewish disrespect for Christianity. This type of story most often referred to Jews’ ‘inappropriate behaviour’ in the vicinity of Catholic churches: in Visakio Rtda, ‘during the blessing in the church, those Jewish

bastards would always loiter around the square, always peering in through the entrance with their greasy noses while waiting for people to begin leaving the church’, at which point the Jews would immediately start to peddle their wares; !* in Tryskiai, a Jew was said to have started trading near the church; Jews showed no respect for Catholic processions, and ‘he relieved himself right there, as is usually the case with Jews’;!? while in Sakiai, Jews allegedly set up near the church an outdoor toilet which emitted the most terrible odour;!4 and so on. The volume of such descriptions of everyday behaviour in a sense served to give credence to the claims of educated antisemites about Jews’ disrespect for Christianity. As stated, the accusation that Jews corrupted the morals of their neighbours, primarily the peasantry, was a feature of anti-Judaism. In the late nineteenth century, periodicals of all ideological streams (e.g. Ausra, ‘Dawn’, Ukininkas, ‘The Farmer’, and Tevynes sargas, ‘Watchman of the Fatherland’)—and after the revolution in 10 J. Bkp. [J. Saulys?], ‘Kun. Pranaitis ir jo kvalifikacijos eksperto role’, Lietuvos Zinios, 1913, no. 118; P. Leonas, ‘Zydo Beilio byla ir kunigo Pranaidcio niektikejimas’, Lietuvos akininkas, 1913, no. 45, pp.

462-3; id., ‘Kunigo Pranai¢io niektikejimas’, Lietuvos ukininkas, 1913, no. 46, pp. 474-6. Il “Zydo Beilio byla’, Ausra, 1913, NO. 22, pp. 344-5; ‘Garsiai bylai pasibaigus’, Rygos Sarsas, 1913, no. 84; Plunksnius [?], ‘Zydy galybe’, Sa/tinis, 1913, no. 42, pp. 641-2; “Bylos atbalsiai’, Sa/tinis, 1913, no. 42; Pr. Dovydaitis, ‘Keli zodziai apie kun. Pranaiti, zydija ir “pirmeivija”’, Sa/tinis, 1913, no. 47,

Pp. 740-2. 7

12 Jau Zenotas isz Skriaudziy [?], ‘Viszakio-Ruda’, Ukininkas, 1893, no. 12, pp. 94-5.

13 Kurmis isz K. sodos [?], ‘Isz Tryszkiy’, Tevynes sargas, 1899, no. 10. 14 Cilvakas [?], ‘Sakiai’, Vi/niaus Zinios, 1905, no. 100.

Lithuanian Antisemitism 139 1905 the clerical press too (e.g. Saltinis, ‘The Fountainhead’)—often contained articles that claimed to report actual events illustrating how Jews sought to corrupt the peasantry: ‘Wherever a Jew appears, there immediately follows a decline in faith, goodness, and national consciousness; in other words, demoralization grows.’!° This ‘aim’ of Jews to spread depravity was sometimes directly attributed to the Talmud.!® In addition, Jews were accused of caring only about profit and were said to encourage

peasants to become drunk or to steal, so that they would be more likely to spend money—naturally—in inns.!” Thus, both in Motiejus Valancius’s fiction and in the illegal Lithuanian press of the late nineteenth century,'® the peasantry was often warned to be cautious in the presence of Jews, not only because Jews would trick them, but also because Jews aimed to corrupt the morals of those around them.

ECONOMIC COMPETITION Major economic and social changes took place in Lithuania in the second half of the

nineteenth century. With the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and the growth of favourable market conditions, spurred on by rich grain harvests in Lithuania and an increase in demand from western Europe, the agrarian sector experienced rapid development in the 1870s. This was accompanied by the rise of a number of peasants with additional capital who were inclined to invest in other ventures. However, an agricultural crisis began in the 1880s, which was worsened by differential tariffs that boosted grain export from the provinces of Russia’s interior but did not apply to Lithuania.!° All these circumstances caused some Lithuanians to see Jews no longer as intermediaries but as competitors. As noted above, Jews were accused of corrupting the morals of the peasantry for personal profit. And it is precisely economic arguments that are most often mentioned in antisemitic texts. The palette of economic antisemitism categorized Jews as exploiters of Lithuanians and as dishonest traders. Lithuanians were urged to engage in trade and crafts themselves, to boycott Jewish stores, and to buy only from

‘their own kind’. The significance and frequency of such arguments varied in Lithuanian press publications representing the different ideological streams. 15 Mokytojas G. Tautius, ‘Izraeliaus valdzioje’, Saltinis, 1912, no. 47. 16 S. L. KuSeliauskas, Talmudas Zydy (Tilzé, 1906). M Eketis [J. Jazbutis?], ‘Mauszos aimana’, 7évynes sargas, 1898, no. 8, pp. 8-10; v.k. [V. Kudirka], ‘Zinios isz Lietuvos’, Ukininkas, 1890, no. 2, pp. 29-30; An. St. [A. Staugaitis], ‘Prie zydy klausimo’, Lietuviy laikrastis, 1905, nos. 44-5. 18 The ban on printing Lithuanian in the Latin alphabet was introduced in the Russian empire in 1865 and lasted until 1904, so during that period Lithuanian newspapers were published in East Prussia and smuggled into the empire from there. 19 §. Matulaitis, Atsiminimai ir kiti kuriniai (Vilnius, 1957), 30; V. Sirutavicius, ‘Notes on the Origin and Development of Modern Lithuanian Antisemitism in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

and at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century’, in A. Nikzentaitis, S. Schreiner, and D. Stalitinas (eds.), The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews (Amsterdam, 2004), 61-72.

140 Darius Stahiinas The Few as Exploiter

This theme appeared both in Lithuanian publications of the mid-nineteenth century”? and in the first illegal Lithuanian newspaper, Ausra (1883—6).21 Later, at

the very end of the century, the topic was discussed in both the clerical and the liberal press, and after the 1905 revolution it was prevalent in the clerical publication Saltinis.22 The image of the Jew as a trader, a moneylender, or an innkeeper exploiting the peasantry was easily accepted in a peasant-oriented agrarian society where a farmer’s work was highly valued, whilst profits earned from trade, lending, or similar

activities were viewed with less favour, as they did not involve physical labour. Epithets commonly used to describe Jews—bloodsuckers, leeches, fleas, ticks, spiders waiting to trap flies (i.e. peasants) in their webs—arose precisely from this attitude towards the honest, but hard, work of a farmer and the seemingly devious, easy activities of a middleman. It was also sometimes stated that the Jews were a wealthy people.?°

The Jew as Swindler

Even though Lithuanian publications sometimes printed stories in which a Lithuanian outsmarted a Jew, the opposite trend was obviously more dominant.7# In his Paaugusiy Zmoniy knygele (‘Little Book for Adults’), Motieyus Valancius warned the peasantry that Jews did their work dismissively, without care for quality and only for profit, and that in any co-operative undertaking or even in a friendship, ‘in the end the Jew always cheats the other man’.*° Jews were often accused of tampering with products, for example by mixing quality goods with ‘seconds’; wrapping cheap goods in packaging materials taken from expensive products; selling factory rejects as quality goods; and cheating in measurement (usually when weighing).*° It was stated that the adulteration of various products has become so widespread today that you can’t tell what you’re eating, or drinking, or sowing, or what fertilizer you’re using on the fields. You buy 20 Vareikis, ‘Antisemitizmas Lietuvoje’, 23. 21 We must admittedly agree with Linas Venclauskas that little attention was given to this Jewish topic in Ausra, because according to the vision of its publishers, Lithuania was first and foremost a ‘cultural and linguistic phenomenon’: Venclauskas, ‘Moderniojo lietuvisko antisemitizmo genezé ir raida’, 24. In other words, the publishers of the first illegal newspaper were primarily oriented towards the cultural needs of the modern Lithuanian nation, and in this context the Jewish factor was unimportant.

22 _j-a- [J. Adomaitis], ‘Mokintis reikia’, Ukininkas, 1891, no. 6, pp. 242-7; PaSeimenis [Br. Prapuolenis], ‘Is ju vaisiu pazisti juos’, Saltints, 1906, no. 18, pp. 274-5. 23 A. Domeika, ‘Saves gailékimes’, Sa/tinis, 1906, no. 36, pp. 562-4. 24 See LVIA, f. 1215, ap.1, b. 85, fos. g2—4: notice no. 61. 6 For more on the nature and activities of the T’sedakah Gedolah before the First World War, see M. Zalkin, ‘XTX amziaus pradzios Vilniaus zydu bendruomenes socialines paramos struktury apibudinimas ir veiklos kryptys’, in id., Naujos Lietuvos Zydy istoryos perspektyvos (Vilnius, 2009), 30—44.

7 Mordechai Zalkin identifies the following as the main financial sources of the Tsedakah Gedolah from the seventeenth century: ‘rent from properties owned by the community, the lease of slaughterhouses and community-owned food stores’, and various forms of taxation (direct taxation for the needs of the kehilah, and indirect collections for religious or economic matters, such as burials, animal slaughter, trade in kosher meat, matzah flour milling, etc.): see Zalkin, Nauwjos Lietuvos Zydy istoriyjos perspektyvos, 34. The board of the Tsedakah Gedolah, through its elder, S. E. Levin, in one of its requests from

July 1917 (LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 85, fo. 43) stated that earlier the board had managed to make ends meet as it had received regular income from its houses, which, as can be discerned from the report on their economic situation of 1 Apr. 1916 (ibid. 98), was significantly more than what slaughterhouses or stores could yield, namely: ‘Real estate properties: bathhouse (4,000 roubles annually during peacetime), butcher’s (7,800 roubles annually during peacetime), 219 Gaono Street (2,800 roubles annually during peacetime), 202 Stikliu Street (2,100 roubles annually), 683 Sy. Ignoto Street (Ignat’ evskii pereulok) (3,000 roubles annually), 545 Maironio Street (1,000 roubles annually), Ariova’s house on Zemaitijos Street (3,900 roubles annually), 340 Zemaitijos Street (2,800 roubles annually), stores on Zydu Street (grain) (1,350 roubles annually), divided lots: no. 236/7 (115 roubles annually) and no. 244/8 (400 roubles annually), the store in the synagogue’s courtyard (24 roubles annually), smaller divided lots on Zydu Street (1,400 roubles annually). A total of 30,689 roubles annually. At present, all of this real estate yields approximately Io—15 per cent.’

Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 185 it operated as an organization for the distribution of charity. One of the more important organizations that sent funds to the Vilna Jewish community was the Jewish

Committee for the Aid of War Victims (Evreiskii komitet pomoshchi zhertvam voiny), formed in St Petersburg in 1915, whose contributions at the beginning of the

occupation were nevertheless insufficient. Another important international relief organization was the Aid Association of German Jews (Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden), founded in Berlin in 1g01, whose aid reached Vilna in 1916 and was especially significant in 1917. The funds were centrally distributed by a special commission of the Vilna Jewish Community Council, which took into consideration the most urgent of needs. Prayer halls and synagogues did not receive these funds, with the exception of the Vilna Old Prayer Hall and the Main Synagogue. Dr Nakhman Rakhmilevich served as a board member at each of these institutions; he, like Shaul Levin, joined the Committee for Aid to Jews during the German Occupation.® On the basis of an analysis of files from the Vilna Jewish Community Council col-

lections in the Lithuanian State Historical Archive from the period of the First World War, in this chapter I shall review the general economic situation of Vilna’s Jewish prayer halls (shu/n) and synagogues. I present a list of prayer halls and synagogues (see the Appendix to the chapter), review the data on these institutions, and reveal their dynamics and specific problems, summarizing existing research and information. An important source for my own list is the list drawn up at the behest of the German authorities (hereafter ‘the German list’), first compiled in 1915-17 but incorporating revisions up to 1925.”

THE GEOGRAPHY OF PRAYER HALLS AND SYNAGOGUES IN VILNA A major part of the research on synagogues in Lithuania focuses on the discussion, analysis, and interpretation of decorative elements of their architecture!” or the

circumstances of their establishment and construction.!! Comments on former & The committee’s members were Shaul Levin, Dr Tsemakh Szabad, Dr N. Rakhmilevich, Dr J. Wygodzki, attorney S. Rosenbaum, A. Sheskin, Dr A. Alshvanger, I. Izbitsky, M. Gordon, M. Maze, Dr A. Kan, Dr Potshter, and A. Abramovich. See Y. Vigodski [ J. Wygodzki], In shturm (zikhroynes fun di okupatsye-tsayin) (Vilna, 1926). 9 The German list occupies fos. 1-16¥ of LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. t00, and a summary with addresses appears on fos. 17-18%. Revisions were made between 1921 and 1925 under the Polish regime. 10 See most recently G. Mickiinaité and V. Levin (eds.), Synagogues in Lithuania: A Catalogue (A—M)

(Vilnius, 2010). Also, M. Rupeikiene, ‘Sinagogos’, in L. Lempertiené and J. Siaucitinaité- Verbickiené (eds.), Zydai Lietuvoje: Istorija, kultura, paveldas (Vilnius, 2009), 173~—82, gives a short historical overview and description of synagogues, before naming and describing their architectural styles. 11 Mostly researched in Lithuania by Jurgita Siaucitinaitée-Verbickiené, focusing on the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, who seeks to explain the specific provisions by which the creation of Jewish communities was regulated, their transformation into kehilot, and the establishment of cemeteries, synagogues, and the like; and also by Aiste Niunkaité-Ra¢itinieneé, whose research examines the provisions for assembling halakhic synagogues.

186 Ausra Pazeraité synagogues and prayer halls in Vilna are usually limited to assertions that they numbered about one hundred, and a few of the more famous ones are named. Genrikh Agranovsky and Irina Guzenberg have carried out valuable research on several synagogues and have identified their locations.!* However, many names and addresses remain a mystery. The best-known topography of Vilna’s synagogues, reprinted on more than one occasion,!° is found in David Magid’s map of 1909, which appears in the Russian Jewish encyclopedia accompanying the entry on Vilna.1+ This map shows the locations of just a few synagogues and other establishments of the Vilna Jewish community (for example the community bathhouse and mkveh (ritual bath)) in the very heart of the city, in one of its oldest Jewish quarters.1° But some inconsistencies are apparent, which I shall attempt to resolve below. Even though researchers who comment on Vilna’s prayer halls and synagogues do not usually distinguish between the two types of establishment, an analysis of the archival files makes certain differences evident. In the files, eleven shuln identify

themselves as synagogues. They are Synagogue no. 1 (20 Ukmerges Street), Synagogue no. 2 (20 Ukmerges Street), 41 Naugarduko Street (a synagogue and prayer hall), the Antokolsky Synagogue (6 Sausoji Street), the Poplavskaya Street Synagogue (19 Paupio Street), the Lukiskes Synagogue (Segalovich, 12 Ankstoj1 Street), the Apatov Hasidic Synagogue (21 Vilniaus Street), ‘Taharat Hakodesh (35 Pylimo Street), the Main Synagogue (6 Zydu Street), the Gordon Synagogue (9 Subaciaus Street), and the Uzupis Synagogue (36 Uzupio Street). On Magid’s map, the Hevra Kadisha Synagogue is mentioned among the synagogues (corresponding, it appears, to the Shivo-Kruim Prayer Hall in the archives); however, it unequivocally classifies itself as a Bethaus (prayer house), even in documents bearing the German stamp, though many prayer halls which had identified themselves as such under the Russian regime and in the 1915—16 reports came to style themselves as synagogues. Among them, Grushkin’s Russian and Yiddish shu/ had been noted as a kloyz, while in the new German registration it is a synagogue; ‘© the same applies to the Butchers’ shu/ (4 Mésiniy Street).1” Another prayer hall classified as a synagogue on Magid’s map is that of the Vilna Gaon. In the archival file, it is identified not as a synagogue but as a prayer hall, and yet the registration says ‘beit ulpana rabta’ (great study house) in Hebrew,!® thus offering an alternative title referring to the great yeshivas. 12 G. Agranovsky and I. Guzenberg, Litovskii Ierusalim: Kratkti putevoditel’ po pamyatnym mestam evreiskoi istorii 1 kul’tury v Vil’nyuse (Vilnius, 1992); G. Agranovsky and I. Guzenberg, Vilnius: 100 Memorable Sites of Jewish History and Culture, 3rd, rev., edn. (Vilnius, 2008); G. Agranovsky, Pamyatniki evreiskot istori 1 kul ‘tury v Vil ’nyuse (Moscow, 1997): .

13 e.g. M. Sudarski et al. (eds.), Lite, 2 vols. (New York and Tel Aviv, 1951—65), i. 1127-8; Agranovsky and Guzenberg, Litovski Ierusalim, 19. 14 D. Magid, Yu. Gessen, and A. Ginzburg, ‘Vil’na’, in L. Katsenelson et al. (eds.), Evreiskaya entstklopediya, 16 vols. (St Petersburg, 1906—13), Vv. 572-97.

19 Tbid. 581-2. 16 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 60. 1” LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 77. 18 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 68.

Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 187 Another prayer hall is given the rather strange title of ‘sub-prayer hall’ (Russian

prishkola): R. Israel Ginzburg’s prayer hall,!? in existence since 1825. There, a curious custom had been introduced during the war: the collection of money for turning on electric lights during the prayers for the dead.?° A prayer hall (called a kloyz, beit midrash, or shul) was, by tradition, a house for

studying Talmud, and prayers were of secondary importance. In tsarist Russia, however, they had become almost identical to synagogues. In tsarist decrees, the organizational structure of Jewish prayer communities was defined by reference to the Statute on the Jews of 13 April 1835. According to this decree, the sole difference between prayer halls and synagogues lay in the number of Jewish houses located in

a given city or town. In accordance with the Law on the Spiritual Affairs of NonOrthodox Believers?! and the Law on Buildings,?? the establishment of one Jewish | prayer hall was allowed for every thirty houses. Houses in this case were not actual buildings, but households whose head participated in community meetings, distributed charity, and was responsible for carrying out community duties.2° When the number of houses reached or exceeded eighty, either one prayer hall for every thirty houses was allowed, or one synagogue for every eighty houses.24 However, in the German list,?° all halls without exception were called synagogues.

SYNAGOGUES One difference between prayer halls and synagogues that is consistently apparent in the files is that only a few synagogues cited funds allocated from the levy known as

the korobochnyi shor (the so-called ‘basket collection’) amongst their sources of 19 TVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 98. 20 Electricity had been installed in several prayer halls before the war, while others installed it during the war, despite the rather high associated costs (including the meter, usually more than 100 roubles), especially when compared with the salaries being received, the highest of which, for some talmudists and shameses (sextons), would barely reach 15 roubles a month. In some prayer halls, funds for the installation of electricity were raised through special collections from those attending. However, many prayer

halls did not have electricity at all. The Leib-Leizer Prayer Hall had even written a request to the Tsedakah Gedolah, noting that the prayer hall had existed for over a century and that it was famous for great scholars who studied the Talmud and other texts. Their current material situation was so poor that there was not even enough money for kerosene, making it impossible to study or pray in the evenings. It was said that the prayer hall had never asked for money before, and that the rental earnings from the divided plots that Leib-Leizer had bequeathed, on which they used to get by, were no longer forthcoming. That was why they were requesting a grant of 200 roubles to install electricity: LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 24, fo. 7. The list of all the prayer halls and synagogues given in the Appendix indicates where electricity had already been installed, and where it was installed during the war. 21 Svod zakonov Rosstiskoi Imperii, xi, pt. 1 (St Petersburg, 1896), art. 1302. 22 Tbid. xii, pt. 1 (St Petersburg, 1900), art. 152. 23 See Zakony o evreyakh: Sistematichesku obzor deistuuyushchikh zakonopolozhenu o evreyakh s razyasnentyami Pravitel’stuuyushchego Senata1 Tsentral'nykh pravitel’stvennykh ustanovleni, ed. Ya. I. Gimpelson, 2 vols. (Petrograd, 1914-15), 11. 726-7.

24 Tbid. 25 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 100.

188 Ausra Pazeéraite income: the Main Synagogue, Synagogue no. 1 (20 Ukmergés Street), Synagogue no. 2 (20 Ukmerges Street), 41 Naugarduko Street (with both a synagogue and a prayer hall), and the Antokolsky Synagogue (6 Sausoji Street). The Main Synagogue specified that such income was received from the Department of Production and Economy;7° other synagogues indicated the Vilna city korobochnyi sbor as their source. Despite the korobochnyi sbor being equated with the kruzhechnyi sbor (“cup collection’) in tsarist legislation,?’ the archival files reveal that the prayer halls and synagogues drew a distinction between the two. ‘The main difference was that the korobochny1 sbor was considered to be a general collection, while the kruzhechnyt sbor

was for the immediate maintenance of local halls and synagogues. Prayer halls collected specifically the kruzhechnyi sbor, while synagogues were allocated a certain sum from the korobochnyi shor. Incidentally, the synagogues mentioned above, with the exception of the Main Synagogue, received funds from the korobochnyi sbor only until the end of December 1915. By 1917, the levy was no longer taking place. Another difference between the two types of institution related to prestige. One can discern from the records of the synagogue at 41 Naugarduko Street that there were different levels of salaries between the synagogue and the prayer hall (though not consistently for all employees, and not for every month).7° In September 1915, the synagogue’s cantor received 80 roubles, the hall’s cantor 78; the synagogue’s Torah reader received 45 roubles, and the hall’s Torah reader 4o. At the Main Synagogue in Vilna, where the ‘T'sedakah Gedolah functioned, the financial revenues and expenditures were enormous by comparison with those of ordinary synagogues and prayer halls, which collected on average no more than a few roubles—if anything at all—during ordinary months, and about 100 roubles

during festivals. Thousands of roubles circulated through the Main Synagogue every month. Expenses included maintenance costs of the property itself and the cemetery (about 2,000—3,000 roubles), with the upkeep of the cemetery horses alone

costing significantly more each month (about 200-300 roubles) than an ordinary synagogue or prayer hall could allow itself over a year. Sums in the thousands went towards aid to the poor, in the form of firewood, bread, monthly allowances (about 100 roubles), one-off grants (3,000—4,000 roubles), and clerical expenses. The Religious Board of the Main Synagogue received some of its income from traditional

sources, mentioned earlier, but during the period of the occupation these did not suffice, as real estate brought in a mere 10—15 per cent of earlier income (in line with

most other synagogues and prayer halls that owned real estate), while the number of impoverished people grew at an unprecedentedly catastrophic rate. In addition, there was a fivefold increase in the cost of food products. Accordingly, the synagogue 26 Specifically, in Jan.—Apr. and Sept.—Nov. 1916: LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 85, fos. 56, 73”, 77, 80%, 82”, 88”, 94.

27 “‘Obshchee polozhenie o korobochnom sbore s evreev’ (annexe to art. 816), in Svod zakonov Rosstiskoi Imperii, ix: Zakon o sostoyaniyakh (St Petersburg, 1899); see also Zakony o evreyakh, ed.

Gimpelson, 11. 764-8. 28 See LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 41. j

Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 189 was forced to seek assistance from the CRC. In a request made on 28 February 1916 to the Central Committee of the Vilna Jewish Communal Institutions, Shaul Levin, on behalf of the board, explained the situation of the Tsedakah Gedolah:?° in the beginning, the funds received had been of great assistance, but the totals were now dwindling, and there were almost no other sources of income. ‘To give an indication of the board’s expenses, the following figures (in roubles) were presented for the period from October 1915 to February 1916: 546.47. monthly allowances (pensions) 15,656.34 one-off grants 381.49 care for orphans 744.00 allowances for discounted meat sales 1,000.00 grants to the Mishmeres Choilim (Care for the Sick) community 50.00 agrant to the Rodtine Yeshiva 150.00 a grant to prisoners of war 18,528.30 TOTAL

At the end of the request it is stated that the hardship is so severe that former con-

tributors are now seeking aid themselves. To save many families from dying of hunger, the funds received from the Hilfsverein and subsidies to the Religious Board needed to be increased significantly from the amounts received in February.

It is unfortunate that there are no such comprehensive records from 1915. However, from the 1916 and 1917 records we can see that funds were received from the Hilfsverein (through the CRC) only in September and November 1916 (9,415.79 and 7,894.74 roubles, respectively) and in January, March, April, and August 1917 (7,653.95; 9,000.00; 8,000.00; 1,750 roubles). Funds were received from the CRC via the board’s representatives V. Epstein and Shaul Levin in April, May, July, and October 1916 (2,857.14; 11,428.56; 7,937.14; 7,894.74 roubles), and in June, July, October, November, and December 1917 (13,500; 750; 7,500; 5,000; 4,539 roubles), plus an advance of 7,200 roubles for May 1917. It appears that 7,092.86 roubles was received from the Spanish embassy in Poland in February 1917 through the CRC, but the writing is difficult to decipher.°° The data from September 1916 show a clear difference in income by comparison with the preceding months. From September onwards, the CRC donated funds to

provide the poor with bread and firewood,?! granted general funds, and even set

29 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 85, fo. 95, 95’. 30 Thid. 10’. 31 Yet in the Religious Board’s letter to the CRC, written on 29 Nov. 1917 and signed by S. Levin, N. Rakhmilevich, and V. Epstein, it is stated that the board considers itself responsible for drawing the executive committee’s attention to the fact that the CRC’s regular monthly grant of 15,000 marks to the Religious Board is distributed by the latter as follows: (a4) employees’ salaries: 4,050 marks for the rabbinate, 2,780 marks to the butchers, 686 marks to the cantor and choir, and 2,800 marks to the employees of the synagogue, office, cemetery, and community library, and to the slaughterhouse supervisor (10,316 marks in total); (b) which leaves 4,684 marks for aid to the poor. The letter continues: ‘As the income of the Religious Board that goes towards aid to the poor fluctuates so widely, and very often depends on chance events, while the needs of the city are growing, and accordingly the contingent of those seeking

190 Ausra Pazeratte aside funds for ensuring the existence of the CRC itself (437.50; 300; 400; 400; 400; and 500 roubles were received from January to June, respectively, while 426.75; 362.95; 401.73; 444.38; 462.23; and 520.70 roubles were spent). The line separating

the ‘Tsedakah Gedolah and the CRC by this stage had almost disappeared, most likely because the same individuals made up the two organizations. The archive also contains a request addressed to the Zionist leader in Vilna during the war, Simon (Shimshon) Rosenbaum,** to allocate 2,700 marks*® for reserve soldiers’ allowances. The request, submitted on 22 July 1917 and addressed this time

to the Central Committee of the Vilna Jewish Charitable Institutions,°* states that the synagogue’s board had been receiving 15,000 marks monthly, plus 2,700 marks for the families of reservists. However, in July they had not received anything, and their doors were closed, ‘a denial of compassion that has raised strong feelings of dis-

content among our poor fellow brothers and resentment from the impoverished inhabitants of Vilna’. ‘They made a plea for an advance of 10,000 marks for July to distribute to the poor, as well as to the families of reserve soldiers who subsisted only on the Religious Board’s allowances and from daily grants from the city council. The request was signed by Shaul Levin and six wardens (in Russian dezhurnye). A postscript, signed by Levin, described the 250-year history of the Tsedakah Gedolah,

highlighting its exceptional nature in the Russian context and the constant aid it offered to the severely impoverished, the families of reserve soldiers (about 3,000 people), and the sick who had the good fortune to receive hospital treatment through

its efforts. It also mentions the boots bought for labourers who could not afford them, the matzah they distributed for Passover and the firewood, and the various sums of money they donated to small enterprises so that they could purchase goods to sell. Noted also was the fact that they supported the entire rabbinate, the kosher butchers, the Great Synagogue, and the cemetery. During peacetime, when the levels of poverty were somewhat lower, the board managed to operate on the regular income from its real estate. Now, however, the letter continued, the number of poor was at a maximum, and the board had reached such a critical situation that if help was not forthcoming, its doors would have to close, which would be an enormous aid from the Religious Board is also growing, we respectfully ask the executive committee to review the sum that should be allocated to the Religious Board, which should be divided thus: salaries and aid to the poor, with an increase in the allocation to the second, 1.e. aid to the poor, up to at least 10,000 marks a month.’ There is an added handwritten note: ‘We also ask, in addition to the above-mentioned sums for salaries and aid, for a one-off grant of 2,000 marks for the repair of the cemetery gate.’ LVIA, f. 1215,

ap. 1, b. 85, fo. 41. This means that it was not the CRC that had distributed the funds received up to this month specifically for the needs of the poor, but the synagogue board itself. 32 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 85, fo. 22: letter to Mr S. J. Rosenbaum, 18 July 1917, Vilna. In 1915-19 Rosenbaum was the leader of the Vilna Jewish Zionist organization, having arrived in Vilna at the start of the war. In addition, he was a member of the aforementioned aid committee for Vilna’s Jews, along

with S. Levin, Dr N. Rakhmilevich, Rabbi Y. Rubinstein, and others. The request on behalf of the Tsedakah Gedolah was signed by Levin. 33 At this time there were approximately 2 marks to the rouble. 34 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 85, fo. 42.

Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 IQ] misfortune for all of Vilna’s poor. The letter appealed to the CRC not to look upon the Religious Board as a separate institution that operated within a wider charity

framework, as a// forms of charity were concentrated in its hands: ‘monetary allowances, the hospital, care for the aged, pension funds, the bad loans of small enterprises, and so on. It has responded to the call to extinguish the flames of people’s brutal sufferings at all levels of society, irrespective of their faith.’?° And it

can indeed be seen from the records that the board had allocated some funds to Christian Orthodox believers, in September, October, and November 1916 (89.95;

28; and 25.26 roubles, respectively). |

Among the regular expenses of the Main Synagogue was the salary paid each month to the cantor, about 144 roubles on average in 1916 and 171 in I917—an exceptional allocation, as other cantors were almost invariably paid only during festivals in the months of Tishrei and sometimes Nisan, and even then earned only 25— 30 roubles, or occasionally un to 79, The choir also received a monthly payment (on average 160 roubles, more during festivals), which was not the case in other synagogues or prayer halls, with the possible exception of the choral synagogue Taharat Hakodesh, though since it did not indicate its income or the details of its expenses in the reports, this is impossible to confirm. There were also the regular expenses for the rabbinate (all the spiritual rabbis and the government-appointed Vilna rabbi, Yitshak Rubinstein) and the kosher butchers. Shaul Levin had appealed to the CRC

regarding the spiritual rabbis on 10 May 1916, arguing that many inhabitants of Vilna had expressed their concern, both in writing and in person, over these rabbis’ material circumstances, which were deplorable, as they hardly had enough money for bread, not to mention clothing or shoes, and that the board’s limited funds meant there was not enough money for higher salaries; hence, they were requesting addi-

tional subsidies in order to raise them.°© The letter states that a list of rabbis is attached. There is indeed some sort of list on the next sheet, but the writing is neither in Russian nor in ink, as is the letter, and consists merely of some pencil scribbles in Hebrew on a piece of scrap paper. It is indeed, however, a list of rabbis, with some numerals written to the left and the right. On the right, one may surmise, are their salaries, while the purpose of the figures on the left 1s not clear. ‘There 1s a total of twenty-two rabbis on the list, whose salaries range from Io to 100 roubles, totalling 1,049.91 roubles. In January to March 1916, R. Yitshak Rubinstein received a salary of 233 roubles; later, his salary appears to have been included in the total sum for the rabbinate, as from April onwards the records show that amount added to the sums paid to the kosher butchers (in April 2,114 roubles, in May 2,487.57). In the first three months of 1916 the members of the rabbinical board are identified as religious observers (supervisors), and their wages are listed as 1,388 roubles in January, 1,531 in February, and 1,681 in March. Beginning in July, the amounts rise

considerably: July 3,486.43 roubles; September 3,596.58; October 3,511.33; November 3,491.32. These data suggest that the CRC acknowledged the letter and 35 Tbid. 43, 43”. 36 Tbid. go.

192 Ausra Pazeraité allocated subsidies to the rabbis. Separate regular payments went towards the maintenance of the community library (on average, 120-150 roubles per month). Part of the board’s regular expenses included aid for caring for orphans, and one-off grants and monthly allowances (pensions) for the poor. In the period January—October 1917 the board received a total of 248,357.44 marks, including 169,993.36 marks from the CRC. General expenses accounted for

187,657.26 marks, and 237,693.54 marks went to the poor. Thus, a total of 425,350.80 marks was spent, of which 40.0 per cent came from the CRC.?” The income and expenditure for June were well above the figures for other months, because of special receipts from Passover collections (Passover flour and so on) and additional festival grants to the poor. A separate report shows the income and dis-

tribution for Passover.?° Expenditure over those ten months was well above income—by 176,993.36 marks, or 41.6 per cent. ‘The deficit was enormous, and, as in the case of other synagogues and prayer halls, attempts were usually made to cover the deficit through interest-free loans from members of prayer-hall and synagogue

boards, and in the case of the I’sedakah Gedolah, from the CRC members themselves. ‘There is hardly any mention of the return of these loans, and it appears that repayment was postponed indefinitely. The elders and treasurers of prayer halls and synagogues were often selected from the economic elite, and it was usually their help which saved these institutions from financial ruin. Under better economic circumstances there were also synagogues and prayer halls that thrived even without relying on real estate properties. However, during the occupation, rental income dropped catastrophically for most.

The economic situation at synagogues other than the Main Synagogue was similar to that at the prayer halls. The synagogue at 41 Naugarduko Street and the Apatov Hasidic Synagogue, which managed to make ends meet despite their great deficits, paid salaries relatively often, both to the prayer leaders (on average 10-11

roubles per month at the Naugarduko Synagogue) and to the talmudists. At the Apatov Hasidic Synagogue, the salaries paid to five talmudists from September 1915

to August 1916 amounted to 463.14 roubles (though they were not paid every month), approximately 7.72 roubles each per month. This income was of course very

scant compared with that of a senior shames (14 roubles, although the youngest shames earned just 4 roubles), or compared with the 12 roubles paid for the nightwarden’s post in the Naugarduko Street Synagogue. Other synagogues were simply left to struggle. Each month, the Antokolsky Synagogue paid its Torah reader 3 roubles, its shames 4 roubles, and its warden 3 roubles. At Synagogue no. 2 on Ukmerges Street, only the warden received a regular salary (5 roubles), whilst at Synagogue no. 1 there were no regular payments. Receiving practically no income except for the festival donations during September, the Lukiskes Synagogue paid a regular salary to the senior shames (an average of 16 roubles per month), the shames’s assistant (6 roubles), and the warden (5 roubles). 37 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 85, fo. 1. 38 Ibid. 60-1.

Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 193 The Apatov Hasidic Synagogue had premises on Vokieciy Street, ‘in the prayerhall yard, where the Lubavitch hasidic prayer hall had stood. These facilities had been bequeathed: they were maintained by the Tiferet Bahurim community, paying 150 roubles a year, but the lease has not been paid since the beginning of the war.’?? It also had premises at 21 Vilniaus Street: The house was purchased [by mortgage] in 1908 for 42,000 roubles . . . Now the bank has valued the house at 36,000 roubles. Payments to the bank for the purchase of the synagogue are 2,500 roubles annually. During peacetime, the house gave a yield of about 4,000 roubles. Now it is difficult to say, as the apartments are mostly empty, while the inhabitants of those that are occupied pay inconsistently, and significantly less.4°

Seventy-nine people regularly attended the synagogue. In the year from September Ig15 to August 1916 it received 2,785.54 roubles in rent and 645.28 roubles from voluntary donations, and 333.03 roubles was borrowed from the elder Globus, making 3,763.85 roubles in total. In the same period, 589.60 roubles was spent on renovations, the warden’s salary, and other maintenance works; 340.69 on firewood; go.03 on electricity; 481.14 on the talmudists’ salaries; 1,227.17 for the builder Kobrinsky; 106 on half'a year’s taxes; 284 on the senior shames’s salary; 76 on the assistant shames’s salary;

50.5 for the cantors and Torah readers; and 669.03 on miscellaneous items (lighting, heating, and so on), making a total of 3,914.16 roubles. Obviously, this synagogue was one of the few that managed to support itself financially, even if it borrowed funds.

PRAYER HALLS The situation of prayer halls was comparable. As with the synagogues, those prayer halls that could rent out property were more likely to survive, even if during the occupation these properties did not produce great profit. One of the more fortunate halls was the Butchers’ Prayer Hall at 4 Mesiniy Street, which earned additional funds from the slaughter of cattle and fowl. The festival of Sukkot took place in October 1917, and as in September 1915 and September—October 1916, the funds of prayer halls and synagogues at this time were significantly greater, mostly through receipts from seat-holders. During the month of ‘Tishrei, cantors usually received their annual salaries, although in some instances they were paid more frequently. The festival of September—October 1916 stood out in that in most records, in contrast to 1915, the list of expenses contained amounts for items needed for Sukkot— esrogim (also referred to in the files as etrogim, apples of Paradise, or apples of Jerusalem), palm fronds, and so on—for which 10-15 roubles was allocated. During this month, the synagogue and prayer hall granted salary bonuses (‘rewards’) to employees, at times almost doubling their salaries.

Other holidays that required a somewhat greater income were Purim and Passover, yet it more often happened that for these the board members would either 39 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 63, fo. 5. 40 Tbid.

194 Ausra Pazeratte lend money themselves or find other lenders, so as to reward their employees in one

way or another, thus spending more than would be collected from donations and creating even larger deficits. As noted, the Main Synagogue attracted the most funds at Passover and, it appears, held a monopoly over the matzah industry. As the scope of this chapter does not allow for comprehensive analysis of circumstances in all the prayer halls, I shall limit myself to an overview of just some of the halls from the old Jewish quarter that are characterized by certain inconsistencies.

THE YESOD (NEW) PRAYER HALL A discrepancy appears in the encyclopedia article mentioned earlier between text and map. Whereas the map equates the Yesod Kloyz (‘Klaus Jesod’) with the Old Kloyz, in the text the two are distinct. In another place in the same article, however,

the Yesod’s history is recalled in the same terms as the history of the Old Synagogue.*! The title ‘Yesod’ is a reference to the initials of the famous and wealthy social activist of the Vilna Jewish community in the first half of the eighteenth century, the talmudist, scribe, and sometime rabbi Judah ben Eliezer (d. 1762), ‘Yesod’ being an acronym of yehudah safra vedayan (‘Yehudah scribe and judge’). Thanks to his efforts, in 1747 the Jewish community succeeded in overturn-

ing a contract made in 1742 with the Vilna city magistrate that had markedly restricted their trading rights, and they extracted at the same time a new privilege from the king:4? ‘With funds donated by him, a dome was constructed in the Hevra Kadisha Synagogue, an a/memar |reader’s platform] in the Great Synagogue, a synagogue in his name, called the Old Prayer Hall [‘Der alte Klaus’], the top floors of the Main Synagogue’s annexes, and much more.’*? In the list of synagogues and prayer halls of the Vilna Jewish Community Council collection in the archive,*4 the Old and Yesod prayer halls are noted separately. This list includes the names of the institutions, their addresses, and the members of the board (scholar (Gelehrte), elder, and treasurer) and their deputies, as well as the dates of their elections to these posts.*° Even though the record bears some retrospective marginal annotations relating to the years 1911-14, the list itself was started only during the war, and was last reviewed, it appears, around 1925. In the file of the Yesod

41 Magid, Gessen, and Ginzburg, ‘Vil’na’, 590, 581-2. 42 Thid. 583—4.

43 Thid. 584. 44 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. roo. 45 ‘Tsarist laws required every religious community that comprised members of one or another prayer hall or synagogue to elect a religious board for a term of three years, which had to have at least three members: a scholar (ucheny1), whose task was to ‘explain doubts, worship, or perform the appropriate rituals’, an elder, and a treasurer: ‘Ustavy dukhovnykh del inostrannykh ispovedani’ (art. 1309), in Svod zakonov Rossuskoi Imperit, xi, pt. 1 (see Zakony o evreyakh, ed. Gimpelson, ii. 711-18). However, with the coming of the war, new elections every three years were difficult to organize, as can be seen from the list of synagogues (LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 100), in which the structure of the boards remained almost unchanged until the end of 1923. The scholar did not have to be a rabbi, but a rabbi could be elected as the scholar.

Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 195 Prayer Hall itself it is identified as the New Prayer Hall;*® the same is inscribed on its stamp. The file contains an explanation that at the time of writing, in May 1916, twenty-four people regularly attended, but up to seventy during peacetime.*’ Several sites in Vilna belonged to the prayer hall, among them the hall itself,4® and it also owned some state shares.49 On 1 January 1916 the prayer hall had a deficit of 100 roubles.

The Old Prayer Hall The board of the Old Prayer Hall (6 Zydy Street/6 Vokieciu Street)®° consisted of the scholar Abram-Jiidel Alperowitz (the file has a note in Yiddish stating his absence), his deputy Feiwusch Jedwabnik (also absent), the elder Michael Feigenberg, his deputy Jacob Rubinovich (absent), the treasurer Salomon Eliason (absent), and his deputy Nakhman Rakhmilevich.°! Feigenberg and Rakhmilevich, the only ones of the entire board who were present, were still members 1n 1916, as is evidenced by reports from that year with their signatures.°* However, in 1917 Alperowitz was already a member of the Main Synagogue’s administrative committee, as evidenced by documents he signed on its behalf.°°

The prayer hall had twenty-seven ‘parishioners’.°* It owned the building at 248/14 Vokieciy Street (in the 6th Police Division), where there was “One room with two windows on the second floor. Under the prayer hall, there was one room on the right with two windows, and on the left, another room with one window. Above the prayer hall there were seven small rooms.’°°

46 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 96. 47 Tbid., fos. 1-2. 48 Two lots on Meésiniy Street, no. 8/235 (annual profit go roubles), two lots on Mésiniy Street, no. 6/236 (profit of 60 roubles, but none during the war), two lots on Zydy Street, no. 9/243 (‘one of which is covered in ruins, while the other yields an income of 40 roubles a year, but is not profitable now’), and one which was the property of the synagogue (no. 248/4), which returned an annual profit of 100 roubles. 49 Two ‘Regular profit-bearing 4% state certificates’, one being of 100 roubles in value, the other 500, kept by elder Berel Meisel, and one 4% state share to the value of 100 roubles kept in the state bank.

°9 The files vary as to 6 Zydy Street or 6 Vokieciu Street as the address, but its stamp shows the former. ol LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 100, fo. 8. The last-mentioned is without a doubt the same Jewish com-

munity activist, Dr Nakhman Rakhmilevich, who was the vice-president of the Central Jewish Deportees Committee, a member of the Vilna City Council in 1916-18, a member of the Lithuanian State Council from 11 Dec. 1918, and vice-minister of trade and industry from 26 Dec. 1918 to 22 Apr. 1920. According to the directory Vsya Vil’na, in 1912 he lived at 1 Naujoji Street (present-day Islandyos Street), in Kamenetsky’s house, along with Dr Jacob Wygodzki: T. Tasselkraut, Vsya Vil’na: Adresnaya i spravochnaya kniga, 1912 (Vilna, 1912), sect. 7, col. 151. In 1916-18 he lived at 27 Vilniaus Street, where a plaque now hangs. The reports show that the synagogue borrowed large sums from him to cover its deficits—303.18 roubles from Mar. to Aug. 1916 (inclusive). In Mar. 1916, prayers were held at the synagogue to mark the anniversary of his son’s death: LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 84, fo. 27.

52 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 84. 53 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 85, fo. 41. 54 Despite the strangeness of the notion of ‘parish’ in a Jewish context, ‘parishioners’ is used here and below to reflect the Russian prikhozhane that is used in the documents. 55 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 84, fo. 28.

196 Ausra Pazeraité In 1917 reports were presented to the Central Committee of the Vilna Jewish Charitable Institutions, and it was expected that this committee would grant the required funds. ‘The documents from this year were signed by a new board, consisting of A. I. Kagan, N. Dubinsky, and Z. Koldobsky.°® Elections to the board took place again in December 1917, and Mordukh Persky was elected 1n place of the outgoing N. Dubinsky (though in fact Persky had already been signing the reports in

the previous month). The central committee was informed of his election on Io December 1917, and was also asked to provide aid 1n the form of a subsidy. ‘The doc-

ument was signed by M. Persky, A. I. Kagan, and Z. Koldobsky. The name of N. Makhzyk, in his role as teacher of ‘Torah, was included in brackets. ‘The 1917 reports are quite different from those of 1916. In 1916 expenditure was mostly on salaries for the shames Editsh (who received, on average, 24 roubles per month), his assistant Fuchman (an average of 9 roubles), the Torah reader Wolf Meisels (also an average

of g roubles), and the warden who extinguished the lamps (apparently during the sabbath),°’ and on repairs, cleaning, washing, firewood, kerosene, prayers for the deceased, clothes for the warden (a certain Karaulnik), and even biscuits for the eve of Yom Kippur. In 1917, by contrast, the only salaries paid, according to reports for several months, were for five talmudists (15 roubles each), totalling 75 roubles. Among the income indicated is aid from the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden in Berlin: 59.50 roubles in 1916; 81 marks (40.50 roubles) in January 1917; and 75 marks (37.50 roubles) in March 1917. As the same type of report was presented for July 1916, even

though other data were submitted in the general report to the Vilna Jewish Community Council, it may mean that alternative sources for the salaries of these

five talmudists/rabbis were sought, one of them being the Berlin Hilfsverein. However, these funds were also insufficient for the talmudists’ salaries, necessitating the borrowing of money from another member of the synagogue’s administrative

board, Feigenberg: 59.50 roubles in July 1916; 80 marks (40 roubles) in January 1917; and 75 marks in March 1917. Donations were received in June, October, and November (173, 46.50, and 20 marks, respectively). The fourth source of income was a grant from the CRC in June, October, and November (100, 70, and 65 marks, respectively). In these three months, the talmudists received 159, 320, and 98.50 marks, respectively (regardless of the fluctuations in the mark’s value). The shames Editsh received slightly more than the talmudists.

The Dvotre-Ester Prayer Hall There is a slight discrepancy in the address of the prayer hall named after the famous nineteenth-century charitable activist of the Vilna Jewish community, Dvoire-Ester 56 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 84, fo. 7. 57 Many prayer halls and synagogues paid such wardens a miserly salary for this modest service: from 15 copecks a month (the cost of a loaf of bread during wartime) up to 1 rouble (probably for additional services).

Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 197 Helfer (1817—1907):°8 in an earlier list it is given as 5 Zydy Street, while later it is 7 Zydy Street. The address is not identified at all on Magid’s map, even though it was

meant to be in the Great Synagogue’s courtyard, near the Old, Vilna Gaon, and Painters’ synagogues. Yet the map does show the New Synagogue, which is not found in the archival list. This synagogue’s small community was inspired to collect funds for the poor, and although it was initially called Pikuekh Nefoshes (Save a Life), or Ezer Dalim (Aid for the Poor), in the end it took the name of its founder.°® The prayer hall’s file°° shows that twenty-four ‘parishioners’ were in attendance, and that it owned the building at 5 Zydu Street, which usually yielded a profit (240 roubles), except in wartime. During the year from September 1915 to August 1916,

130.04 roubles was collected from individuals, while 129.81 roubles was spent, mostly on the predicant (an average of 4 roubles per month), the attendant (4 roubles per month), and an additional amount for candles and cleaning.

The Ramailes Prayer Hall Inconsistencies are also found in the address of the renowned Ramailes Prayer Hall. According to Magid’s sketch, this prayer hall (k/oyz) was located in the Old Quarter on the other side of Zydu Street from the Main Synagogue complex, in front of the Vilna Gaon Synagogue, with the Bookbinders’ Synagogue diagonally adjacent to it.

The address of the Bookbinders’ Synagogue, however, is given in both Russianlanguage files and the German list as 6 Mésiniy Street (currently M. Antokolskio

Street). A shop in the former Ramailes Prayer Hall building belonged to the Ginzburg Prayer Hall, whose address was 5 Zydu Street—the same address as is given for the Dvoire-Ester Prayer Hall. The Ramailes Prayer Hall existed in this location from 1825 until 1909.°! In its archival file for 1915—16 its address appears as 5 Naugarduko Street,°? but in the German list as 5 Kaukazo Street (currently Mundaugo Street), which crosses Naugarduko Street; the list also indicates that the prayer hall is next to the ‘Tauber Yeshiva, on which no data are available. A Tauber Prayer Hall existed in the Uzupis district, at 19 Paupio Street, which appeared in the wartime files as a nameless synagogue. Its board was elected on 5 February 1913.

It may be surmised that at about the start of the war, both the Tauber Yeshiva (or prayer hall) in Uzupis and the Ramailes Prayer Hall in Saviciaus Street moved to 5 Naugarduko Street,°? but this is only an assumption. There used to be a horse stud farm at 3—5 Kaukazo Street (now Mindaugo Street), which is why it is very unlikely that a prayer hall existed there. It is often the case in these files that buildings near °8 For more on Helfer, see D. Katz, Lithuanian Jewish Culture (Vilnius, 2004), 185-6.

°9 Tbid. 60 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 18, fo. 3. 61 See Agranovsky and Guzenberg, Vilnius, 7. 62 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 49.

63 Agranovsky and Guzenberg, identifying yeshiva with prayer hall, claim that the Ramailes Yeshiva existed in this building until the Second World War, after which it was occupied by a railway engineers’ technical school, and that in the rg60s the old building was demolished and replaced with a new, modern

school building, 7 Naugarduko Street: see Agranovsky and Guzenberg, Vilnius, 15. They do not mention the yeshiva’s earlier establishment on Saviciaus Street.

198 Ausra Pazeéraite street intersections are sometimes shown as being on the one and sometimes on the other, even though the same location 1s being discussed. Problems of classification also arise: is it a prayer hall (beit midrash, kloyz) or a yeshiva? It is most commonly identified as a yeshiva, yet both on Magid’s map and in the file it is called a prayer hall (k/oyz). Ramailes is mentioned 1n the 1912 directory Vsya Vil’na as one of two yeshivas, the other being Trotsky’s on Siauliy Street or Mésiniu Street®* in Levin’s house®° (director: Trotsky; teachers of general subjects: Solomon Abram Khaskin, Abram Leib Maizel, and Saul Sem. Kaplan). ‘The

directory gives the address of the Ramailes Yeshiva as 16 Saviciaus Street (Andreevskaya), on the corner of Boksto Street,°© and the address list shows that this house belonged to Abram Gur and P. Segal. G. D. Rozin was the institution’s director, M. I. Naftulovich and M. F. Turets were the teachers of general subjects, and H. O. Grodzinski, M. M. Kozlovsky, and M. I. Sadovsky were the Talmud teachers. This listing of teachers parallels the description of the Trotsky Yeshiva, whereas the listing of board members in the archival files (see below) implicitly relates to a prayer hall. It may thus be surmised that a prayer hall existed parallel to the yeshiva, and both were united by one individual, R. Hayim Ozer Grodzinski (1863-1940), in his role as talmudist/scholar. This conjecture 1s strengthened by the following evidence: in the Main Synagogue’s archival file, among the expenses from February and May 1916 there is mention of the Ramailes Yeshiva, to which g roubles was allocated each

month in that period,®/ and yet this is not reflected in the Ramailes Prayer Hall’s file concerning funds received, even though other income 1s identified, such as sums of 3—5 roubles from various individuals.°* This would appear to confirm that the Ramailes Yeshiva existed independently of the Ramailes Prayer Hall. The Trotsky Yeshiva is also mentioned, which was allocated g roubles for each of the months of April and September 1916 and March 1917. Funds may have been allocated to the Ramailes or Trotsky yeshivas in June, August, and December of 1916 as well, but , as there are no data for those months, it 1s difficult to say. The file shows that the number of the prayer hall’s ‘parishioners’ reached one hundred, that it owned no real estate, and that during 1916 it had amassed a deficit of 305.32 roubles. The main sources of income were donations made by various individuals, money collected from those present before the reading of the Torah during festivals and payments for reserved places at the synagogue during Tishrei,°? and loans (in this case, specifically from the elder Yosel Asinovsky).’° According to the data in the German list, the synagogue’s board comprised scholar Hayim Ozer 64 Tasselkraut, Vsya Vil’na, 1912, sect. 2, col. 145; sect. 3, cols. 35-6. 6° Levin’s house is shown as 8 Siauliy Street: ibid., sect. 6, col. 22. 66 Tbid., sect. 2, col. 145; sect. 3, col. 35.

67 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 85, fos. 77%, 60. 68 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 49, fo. 5’. 69 ‘Traditional synagogue collections. Many people wanted to attend during festivals, and if a synagogue was small, reserved places could be purchased during ‘Tishrei (September—October). 70 He owned a house nearby, 32 Algirdo Street (Aleksandrovskii bul’ var).

Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 199 Grodzinski (next to whose name was a note pencilled in Yiddish indicating his absence), ‘1 his assistant Benzion Berkowitz, the elder Yosel Asinovsky, the treasurer

Mordukh Epstein (next to whose name was a note pencilled in Yiddish indicating that he was deceased), and his deputy Salomon-Selmann Benewizch (the surname is unclear).’* Expenses were mostly the salaries of the shames (in Russian shkol’nik; 16 roubles), his assistant (12 roubles), and the warden, and for electricity, cleaning of the toilets, removal of snow and ice from the courtyard during winter, and heating costs. On one occasion g roubles was spent on ‘bread for poor boys’.“? In 1919 Grodzinski had already returned to Vilna in the spring, and a few days before the entry of Pilsudski’s army into the city, Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman came to visit from Kaltinenai, but was sent back immediately after receiving a telegram concerning the death of the head of the Panevézys (Ponevezh) Yeshiva, Itsele Rabinovich. 4 Just a day later, the border with Poland was closed. The report from the Rabbi Katzenellenbogen Synagogue ’® of 6 May 1916 to the Vilna Jewish Community Council mentions that the synagogue owned interestbearing certificates to the value of 1,500 roubles, which were kept with the ‘spiritual rabbi, H. O. Grodzinski, who was then out of town owing to the military situation’.“© Grodzinski was also the custodian of the capital of the Main Synagogue. “” Yet in the same month the report from the Main Synagogue mentions Grodzinski and Stamler among the religious observers (supervisors), for whose salaries the synagogue received bills of 700 and 235 roubles, respectively. ‘®

CONCLUSION What I have tried to do in this chapter is to present information about the Jewish prayer halls and synagogues of Vilna in the years 1915-18, including their board members. Facts are brought to light about some of these who were to be significant “l Tn the 1913 Vsya Vil’na directory, his address is shown as Basanaviciaus Street (Pogulyanka), Bengen’s house: T. Tasselkraut, Vsya Vil’na: Adresnaya1 spravochnaya kniga, 1913 (Vilna, 1913), sect. 5, col. 75. This is the building on the corner of Basanaviciaus and Pylimo streets.

72 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 100, fo. 6. 73 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 49, fos. 4, 6, 8, 10. “4 According to R. Aharon Surasky, Harav miponevezh: toledot hayav shel harav yosef shelomoh kahaneman, rosh yeshivat ponevezh: , accessed 13 July 2010. “> Established in 1825, ‘In memory of the Great Rabbi S. Katzenellenbogen’ (LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 12, fo. 5), yet the synagogue building itself, previously at 5 Siauliu Street (Zhmudskii pereulok), did not belong to the synagogue: 75 roubles in rent had to be paid each year to the owner, Sh. I. Gelpey, who, according to the German list, was the scholar of this synagogue (board elected 26 Mar. 1914): LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 100, fo. 13. According to the ‘parishioners’ book’, some fifty people had regularly

attended, although most had left because of the military situation: LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 12, fo. 5.

76 LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 12, fo. 5. , “7 Regular state income certificates to the value of 5,400 roubles, two lottery tickets at 100 roubles each, three state 4% certificates at 100 roubles each, 5% Vilna city bonds to the value of 2,400 roubles,

and one pledge certificate for 500 roubles: LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 12, fos. 85, 98. “8 Tbid. 67’.

200 Ausra Pazeraité to the post-war history of the Lithuanian state, such as the physician Nakhman Rakhmilevich, the Zionist leader Simon Rosenbaum, and the last rabbi of the city of Vilna, Hayim Ozer Grodzinski. I have also attempted to provide a complete list of prayer halls and synagogues, in which their addresses are identified and comparison is facilitated with the current street names; a review of the owners of the rooms or buildings is included. The main differences between prayer halls and synagogues are identified. Data are also presented about the economic situation of synagogues and prayer halls in Vilna during the First World War, focusing most on the situation of the Main Synagogue, which, as can be seen from the documents, had by 1917 become the largest and most important organization for the distribution of charity, receiving funds both from its traditional sources and from the Central Committee of the Vilna Jewish Communal Institutions that operated under the Vilna Jewish Community Council and received financial aid from international charitable organizations and loans. ‘The ‘T'sedakah Gedolah offered financial aid to a wide spectrum of Vilna’s poor inhabitants, including non-Jews. It was found that during the war the majority of prayer halls and synagogues were kept afloat only through (indefinite) loans from their board members (elders and treasurers), and that salaries, even though minimal, were received relatively regularly by shameses and wardens, and sometimes by ‘talmudists’, but in general by the employees of the Main Synagogue and the personnel who took care of religious affairs (more than twenty rabbis, butchers, cantors, and even the choir), the CRC’s administrative staff, cemetery supervisors, and other members of staff. Translated from the Lithuanian by Albina Strunga

Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 201

APPENDIX Information was collected from the German list (as checked, edited, and confirmed by Polish administrators between 1921 and 1925) and the archival files. On the basis of these data, a list was compiled of the Jewish prayer halls and synagogues that were recorded in Vilna from 1912 to 1925.’ As board elections at most of these prayer halls had already taken place before the war, it may be concluded that the boards remained the same during the war period; however, there exist no confirmatory data. The problematic case of Or-Tora should be noted. In the files there is a prayer hall Toras Emes at 9 Kruopu Street (Griitze Gasse),°° yet from the information given in the reports it becomes clear that it was neither a prayer hall nor a synagogue but an orphanage.®! One prayer hall which has a file but is not mentioned elsewhere is Gamarsky’s Prayer Hall at 104 Kalvarijy Street. Synagogues and prayer halls in Vilna, 1912-1925

Address# Name Ownership? No. of people — Electricity4 attending*

1 A. Volano St. None — No (Pokrovskaya)°

2 12 Ankstoji St. Segalovich/Lukiskes Own property No (2 Tyuremnyi per.)

3. 113 Antakalnio St. Virshubsky Own property 60 No

4 27 Ausros vartu St. None/ Meites _— Yes (Ostrovorotnaya) , 5 2-14 Basanaviciaus St. Bengen — 65 No (Bol’shaya Pogulyanka)

6 8 Belmontas None — No

7 57 Didzioji St. Daiches/ Milliners’ — 30 Yes (Bol'shaya)

8 1 Dziiky St. None Own property 40) No (Shpaklernaya)

79 The starting date is 1912 because, in the German list, some of the prayer hall boards were elected in this year. 8° In the Vsya Vil’na directory for 1912, its address was given as 2 Arkliy Street, apartment 20: Vsya Vil’na, 1912, sect. 3, col. 76. It is likely that this was the address of the board. 81 In the Nov. 1917 report to the executive committee, its total debts are given as: 8,141.09 marks to the school board members, 200 marks for heating, and 2,360.75 marks for food products: LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 101, fo. 1. In addition, the report says that it is necessary to improve the children’s diets (requiring an additional 700 marks), and to raise the deplorable salaries for the service and teaching personnel (another 820 marks).

202 Ausra Pazeéraite Synagogues and prayer halls in Vilna, 1912-1925 (cont.)

Address? Name Ownership” No. of people Electricity“ attending“

9 7Gaono St. Klyachko —- 32 No (Dvortsovaya)

10 14 Gaono St. Preparers’ Own property 37 No (but in the file, (‘zagotovshchikov’),

Dvortsovyi per. ITI) previously Fishermen’s

11 5 Gaono St. Chaja-Odom Own premises 40) No (Dvortsovyi per.)

12 8 Gaono St. Rag-and-bone men’s a 30 No

(Myasnaya) (‘tandetnikov’) 13 5, 6 Geliu St. Germaizée and Levinson/ Own property 120 Yes (Tsvetnoi per.) Zavelis

14 104 Kalvariyuy St. Gamarsky Own property 90 No 15 48 Kalvaryy St. Lemelshtraikh Own property, Yes Lemelshtraikh’s house

16 12 Kauno St. Lombomblat Own property Apr. 1916 (Kievskaya) |

(Kievskaya) now 48 18 12 Liejyklos St. Aron Blyakher, | Blyakher’s house 30 No 17 Kauno St. Mishmeres Choilimf Own property Prev. 150, No (Preobrazhenskaya) formerly Bekker

19 Liepkalnis suburb None Own property 55 No 20 9 Ligoninés St. Gutman and Chaja Kizner Own property 40-50 Yes (Gospital ‘naya)

21 3-5 Lydos St. Musicians’ — 40 No (Lidskii per.)

22 4M. Antokolskio St. Haberdashers’ Own property 41 Yes (Myasnaya)

23. 6M. Antokolskio St. Bookbinders’ Own property 45 No (Myasnaya)

24 1 Maironio St. Ginzburg Own property 80) Yes (Sof’yannaya)

25. 4 Mesiniy St. Butchers’ —- 130 Yes (Myasnaya, Obzhornyi per.)

26 8 Naugarduko St. Lubavitch hasidic Own property 40 No (Soldatskii per.)

Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 203

Address? Name Ownership» No. of people Electricity attending

27 126 Naugarduko St. Chai-Odom/Draymen’s Own property 65 No

28 3-46 Naugarduko St. Menachem Avelim — 38 No 29 41 Naugarduko St. Synagogue and school Own property 300 No

30 5 Naugarduko St./ Ramailes — Yes 5 Mindaugo St.

31 Naujamiestis suburb Stonemasons’ Own property No 32 Naujojo Miesto suburb Soldiers’ Own property 45 No 33 43 Naujojo Miesto suburb Shoemakers’ Own property 45 No (Shkol'nyi per.)

34. 4 Odminiy St. Zaksa-Mikra Own property 70 Yes (Kozhevennaya)

35 7 Pamenkalnio St. I. M. Kamenetsky — Yes (Portovaya)

36 19 Paupio St. None Own property Nov. 1915 (Poplavskaya)

37 35 Pylimo St. Taharat Hakodesh Own property Yes (?)

38 38 Pylimo St./ Valka Own property 45-60 Yes 3 Zemaitijos St.

39 40 Pylimo St. Ehiashberg — 80 Yes

40 60 Pylimo St. Soldiers’ os 49 No 41 66 Pylimo St. Strashun — 45 No 42 68 Pylimo St. None Rottstein’s 30 No

43 1 Platusis Lane Lubavitch hasidic — 75 Nov. 1916 (Shirokii per.)

44 30 (32) Polocko St. Butchers’ — 36 No 45 3-10 Raugyklos St. Saddlers’ — 65 No (Kvasnyi per.)

46 70 Rodiines St. None Own property 40 Yes

47 15 Riidninky St. V. Bloch — No 48 2 Ridninku St. Zalkind — 40 No 49 8 Ridninky St. Zagerov — 50 Yes 50 6 Sausoji St.8 Antokolsky a No

51 6Sniego St. Bonk — 75 No

204 Ausra Pazeraiteé Synagogues and prayer halls in Vilna, 1912-1925 (cont.)

Address® Name Ownership> No. of people — Electricity

| attending‘

52 3 Stikliy St. Tanners’ 65 Aug. 1916 53 8 Stikliy St. Tailor’s apprentices’ Own property 60 No 54 9 Stikliu St. Grushkin — 56 No 55 53 Subaciaus St. None/Jerusalem Own property 61 ? (Sirotskaya)

56 61 Subatiaus St. None? Own property 61 No (Sirotskaya)

Ramuniu St. (Erusalimskaya)

57 9 Subadiaus St. M. J. Gordon — 65 Yes (Sirotskaya)

58 29 Subaciaus St. None oo ? (Sirotskaya)

(Zhmudskii per.) house :

59 Siauliy St. Rabbi Katzenellenbogen Sh. I. Gelpey’s 50 Feb. 1916

60 4 Sv. Mikalojaus St. Braid-makers’ Own property 34 No (Nikolaevskii per.)

61 5 Sv. Mikalojaus St. None Joffe’s house 35 No (Nikolaevsku per.)

62 8 Sv. Stepono St. B. and R. Epstein —— 50 No (Stefanovskaya) Memorial Synagogue

63 15 Sy. Stepono St. None — 43 No (Bol’shaya Stefanovskaya)

64 3and 4 Sv. Stepono St. Strashun Own property 30 Yes (Bol'shaya Stefanovskaya)

65 100 Ukmerges St. None — 45 No 66 20 Ukmerges St. None/Synagogue no. 2 Own property 80 Noy. 1915

67 20 Ukmerges St. None/Synagogue no. | oe 40 Yes

68 58 Ukmerges St. Soldiers’ — 50 No

69 59 Ukmerges St. Hasidic — No 70 +70 Ukmerges St. Beng Own property 70 No

71. 36 Uzupio St. None — 82 Nov. 1915 72 21 Vilniaus St. Apatov (Lubavitch) hasidic Own property 79 Yes

Jewish Prayer Halls and Synagogues in Vilna, 1914-1920 205

Address? Name Ownership» No. of people — Electricity4 attending*

73° 45 Vilniaus St. New Synagogue near Own property Prev. 70, later 20 No

Zaliasis bridge/Scheinjuk paid-up and 35 unable to pay

74. 13 Vytenio St. Gmilus-Chesed Bought withaloan 42 No (Arkhangel’skii per. II) (from Podvinsky), rent paid

75 Vokieciy St. (schoolyard) Brotherhood Own property 90 Oct. 1915

76 = 10 Vokieciy St. Gmilus-Chesed Own property 42 Yes

77. ~—-18 Vokieciy St. Parne — 35 Yes 78 = 19 Vokieciy St. Beys- Yakov! In the building 80 Yes of the Religious Board

79 6 Vokieciy St. Lyakhov hasidic Own property 100 Dec. 1915

80 = 6 Vokieciy St. Chevro Poalim Own property No 81 15 Zemaitijos St. Matskevich Own property Nov. 1915 (Zhmudskaya)

82 10 Zemaitijos St. Ptashkin Own premises 36 Yes (Zhmudskaya)

83 11 Zemaitijos St. Abramson Abramson’s 45 Nov. 1915

(Zhmudskaya) property

84 12 Zemaitijos St. Cholem brothers = 52 Yes (Zhmudskaya)

85 4 Zemaitijos St. Chimney sweepers’ Own property 75 Feb. 1916 (Zhmudskaya)

86 8 Zemaitijos St. Coachmen’s Gurjan’s house 50 July 1916 (Zhmudskaya)

87 1 Zydy St. Carpenters’ Own property 80 Yes

88 11 Zydu St. Tailors’ — 160 No

89 5 Zydy St. Dvoire Helfer/ Own property 24 No Dvoire Ester

90 6 Zydu St. Ehashev/Gaon Own property 50 Yes 91 6 Zydu St. Old Prayer Hall Own property 27 No

92 6 Zydy St. Shivo-Kruim — 32 Yes

93 6 Zydy St. Painters’ — 38 No

206 Ausra Pazeraité Synagogues and prayer halls in Vilna, 1912-1925 (cont.)

Address® , Name Ownership» No. of people —_ Electricity attending

94 6 Zydy St. Main Synagogue Own property No (4 Benediktiniy St., Prokhodnoi per.)

95 8 Zydu St. Shoemakers’ Own property 50 No 96 8 Zydu St. Leib-Leizer Own property 40) ? 97 8 Zydy St. Yesod Own property 26 (prev. 70) ? 98 9 Zydu St. Tinsmiths’ Own premises 58 Dec. 1916 99 9 Zydu St. Glassworkers’ Own property 46 No a Street names are given in their present-day forms, but with the old numeration. The wartime Russian names are given in parentheses, but with the omission of ‘ul.’ (w/itsa, ‘street’); ‘per.’ = pereulok, ‘lane, side-street’. b Indicates whether the prayer hall or synagogue is the owner of its premises, or not. A dash denotes uncertainty regarding ownership, if (a) the file shows that the hall owns no real estate but it nevertheless does not pay any rent; or (4) nothing 1s shown at all. © During the war many prayer halls and synagogues reported that fewer people attended because of the military situation, or because a majority of the ‘parishioners’ (usually the wealthier ones) had left for Russia. 4 The date of installation during the period researched is given if known. © The address in the German list was originally ‘Poplawystr.’ (present-day Paupio Street), but this has been crossed out and ‘Schif[f]stelles’ (present-day Pameénkalnio Street) added; in the appendix where all the synagogues are listed by name, however, the crossed-out ‘Poplawy’ has been replaced with ‘Pokrowsk’ (presentday A. Volano Street). The file does not permit any further clarification: LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 2. f The stamp bears the inscription ‘Jiidischer Hilfsverein ftir arme Kranke’: LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 21. & This street no longer exists. It used to be a lane that ran from Antakalnio Street to the Antakalnis riverbank, where present-day Silo and Jauniaus streets are closest to each other. 4 Tn its own file (LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 53), it is identified as the prayer hall of the Charitable Loan Society of Jerusalem (Erusalimskoe ssudoblagotvoritel’noe obshchestvo), but in all other documents it is unnamed. ‘ It styled itself as the Beys-Yakov Free Loan Society, and its main function was to issue interest-free loans (LVIA, f. 1215, ap. 1, b. 17, fo. 8); yet from its expenses, it is clear that it was also a prayer hall.

Prayer halls and schools that have no files, but which are on the German list

Address Name Date the board Changes after 1921 was elected

4 Barmherzige (?) Solz 24 Oct. 1912 6 M. Antokolskio St. (1 Mesiniy St.) = Or-Tora Address: 6 I. Jatkowa St.

38 Naugarduko St. None 2 Mar. 1914 Lentpjtiviu St. (15 Magasiner St.) Tanners’ 12 Sept. 1914 Address: 15 Magazinowa St. (Haus Epstein)

29 Vokieciy St. None 15 June 1916 1 Siauliy St. Jogiche 15 Jan. 1914

Walking a Thin Line The Successes and Failures of Socialist Zionism in Lithuania EGLE BENDIKAITE JEWISH emigration to the United States and South Africa rose significantly following the worsening of the Jews’ situation in tsarist Russia in the 1880s. Another reaction to the crisis was the renewed involvement of radical Jewish youth in Russia’s revolutionary movement. The socialist movement in Russia and its leaders, with their combative stance and promises of change, naturally attracted those young Jewish people, who not only wanted to be in the midst of these events, but also hoped that their personal input would change the social structure and Jews’ position within it. Attracted by the ideas of socialism, they aligned themselves with pro-revolutionary militant Jewish and non-Jewish labour organizations and were ready to fight for social and civil equality. But, as the experience of history shows, Marxist socialist parties

in Russia were not interested in resolving the ‘Jewish question’, and as long as their Jewish colleagues accentuated matters of specific importance to themselves, the path towards any ideological closeness was closed. Moreover, the absolute monarchical regime in the Russian empire was replaced after the revolution of 1917 witha socialist-communist regime, ‘bypassing’ a liberal period, and the so-called tovarishch

(comrade) majority justified the extremist and radical antisemitic consequences of the increasingly savage class struggle. ! The socialist Zionist orientation, which gradually became an integral and leading

part of world Zionism, was at first viewed sceptically by both the Zionist and the Jewish socialist camps, who believed that such a ‘combination’ of ideologies was impossible. Socialism, according to some, was merely an illusion, while Zionism, according to others, was just an empty dream.” The development of theoretical Zionist thought was reflected in a practical way in Vilna. The environment that made possible the formation of the Zionist Orthodox bloc Mizrahi also produced a whole swathe of other organizations of a socialist orientation, such as Po’alei Tsiyon 1 §. M. Dubnov [Dubnow] and B. Ts. Dinur, Dve kontseptsii evreiskogo natsional ‘nogo vozrozhdeniya (Jerusalem, 1990), 15. 2 N. Syrkin, ‘Natsionalizm na fone klassovoi bor'by’, in Sh. Avineri (ed.), Osnovnye napravleniya v evreiskot politichesko1 mysh (Jerusalem, 1990), 191, 194.

208 Egle Bendikaité (Workers of Zion) and Tse’irei Tsiyon (Youth of Zion), that expressed the awakening Jewish aspirations to nationhood and social liberation.*

No study dedicated to the history of Lithuania’s Jews can avoid a discussion of Jewish political movements. Yet few actually analyse the history of Jewish political organizations or the details of their activities. Scholarship in Israel, North America, and Europe, on all scales from encyclopedias and monographs down to individual articles that investigate different aspects of the world Zionist movement, is rich in terms of chronology, geography, and language. Nevertheless, in this literature the history of Zionism in Lithuania has been left practically untouched.° In an attempt to fill this gap, this chapter, based on archival material, Zionist socialist pamphlets, proclamations, and activity reports, the periodical press of the time, and recent studies of the history of Lithuania’s Jews, will attempt to examine the left wing of the Lithuanian Zionist movement, Zionist socialism—its organizational structure, the scope of its activity in political and social life, its most important fields of activity, and the extent of its influence on the ‘Jewish street’.

A MISSION WITHIN A MISSION After the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, the Zionist movement gradually developed organizational structures with specific programmes and practical objectives. The Jewish nationalist movement, much like other Jewish movements from previous centuries, did not maintain a single line for long, and divided into competing factions-—political, practical, and spiritual Zionism—giving rise to a whole range of liberal, religious, socialist, and revisionist parties, organizations, and societies. All the orientations of the Zionist movement had one goal—to resolve the ‘Jewish question’—but the tactics to be employed in achieving this goal were various. Io many leaders of political Zionism a link between Zionism and socialism appeared utopian, yet the view that these two ideologies could organically combine and be expressed in one movement had already appeared in the minds of individual activists of the Zionist movement.® According to them, the goals of socialism, calling 3 A. Ben Tsvi, Geshikhte fun tsyonizm fun dr. hertsl biz nokh der balfur deklaratsye (Kaunas, 1935), 42—3;

I. Maor, Szonistskoe dvizhenie v Rossi (Jerusalem, 1977), 81, 118. 4 See, however, M. Subas, ‘Sionistu sajtidis Lietuvoje’, Mokslas ir Lietuva, 1992, no. 4, pp. 115—25,

and the separate section in D. Levin, Trumpa Zydy istorija Lietuvoje (Vilnius, 2000), on the political activities of the Jews, including the Zionist wing. ° Brief information on the topic of this chapter can be found in the following works: Maor, Sionistskoe dvizheme v Rossu; E. Mendelsohn, Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years, 1915-1926 (New Haven, 1981); id., On Modern Fewish Politics (New York and Oxford, 1993); J. Reinharz and A. Shapira (eds.), Essential Papers on Zionism (New York, 1996); V. Laker, /storiya stontzma (Moscow, 2000) ; M. Brenner, Geschichte des Ziontsmus (Munich, 2002).

© N. Syrkin, The fewish Problem and the Socialist Jewish State (1898), extracts available at ; B. Borochov, The National Question and the Class Struggle (1905), available at .

Walking a Thin Line: Socialist Zionism in Lithuania 209 for economic and social liberation, and those of Zionism, in the form of national lib-

eration, did not only not contradict one another, but were in fact in complete harmony. Seeing socialism as a necessary component of the national struggle, the Zionist socialists envisaged a unique opportunity for the practical realization of socialist ideals, something that socialists in no other country could boast about. “The Jews had a real opportunity to realize that which was seen as utopia for other nations, thereby carrying out their unique, historical mission.’’ As the Jews found themselves in extreme circumstances and were forced to search for a territory where they could establish their own state, they would also be the first who could seek to realize

socialist ideals. |

Socialist Zionism had a long and winding political road to travel as it tried to establish the legitimacy of its views on how to resolve the question of the Jews’ situation in the diaspora. Even though some Zionist socialist organizations had already existed for three decades by the 1930s and were well represented on the executive committees of world Zionist organizations, Zionist socialist ideologues were still discussing the issue of their multifaceted political mission and its importance in the context of Jewish politics. According to them, socialist Zionism united three key principles: socialism—the aspiration to reform capitalist society through the establishment of the dominance of the working class; Zionism—the aspiration to undo the abnormal situation of the Jewish nation by creating its own national home in the Land of Israel; and emancipation—-striving for full personal, civil, political, and national rights for Jews who continued to live their lives in the diaspora. Each of these principles was a goal in itself as well as an integral part of the general programme.®

Attempts were made to impress upon the activists themselves and on the surrounding populations, Jewish and non-Jewish, not only that Zionist and socialist principles were compatible and their objectives achievable, but also that their priorities did not neglect the main interest of the Jewish nation: to develop the national idea and find a possible way for the nation to have its own state: Weare socialists . . . together with the socialist workers’ movement in all countries we declare a relentless war on capitalist society, in order to destroy the capitalist system, private ownership, and exploitation, and to create a socialist society based on common ownership, sharing the fruits of labour, and voluntary work . .. when the Jewish nation comes to be in an equal situation to that of the other nations of the world, and when our Jewish working class suffers under capitalism to the same extent as do other normal nations, we shall no longer need to be Zionists, we shall only be socialists, just as we are now... We are Zionists . . . let’s say that socialism has been achieved, economic gains are no longer necessary for working people, and the Jews are equal citizens in the new society . . . and if socialism is the highest goal of humanity, then that is not all——first and foremost, the Jewish nation is the only nation in the world without a political home. We must direct all our efforts at creating a national centre in the ’ N. Syrkin, ‘Evreiskii vopros i sotsialisticheskoe evreiskoe gosudarstvo’, in A. Hertzberg (ed.), Stonizm v kontekste istoriu, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1992), i. 122. 8 B. Loker, Vos viln tsyonistn-sotsyalistn (Kaunas, 1930), 3.

210 Egle Bendtkaite Land of Israel. In other words, even if we no longer needed to be socialists, we would still need to be Zionists.?

In this way the objectives of socialism and Zionism were placed on an equal footing. According to Zionist socialists, each principle could only be realized through the realization of the other: ‘Socialism is not our means of realizing Zionism

or the only guarantee for achieving equality for our nation in the diaspora .. . Zionism, in itself, is not our means of achieving the complete realization of socialism in the life of the Jewish nation.”!°

ENEMIES OF THE REGIME AND OF SOCIETY The growing divisions and disagreements on principles within the Russian Zionist camp, especially following the death of Theodor Herzl in 1904, as well as rapidly unfolding events that influenced the political and social life of the empire in general, also affected the socialist Zionists. The intensifying revolutionary mood of the public and the wave of anti-Jewish pogroms did not allow them to remain unresponsive to the problems of Jews or their everyday needs. In order to be able to unite the Jewish community, stand at the forefront of its progressive goals, and guide it in a national direction, the Zionist organization had to ‘cleanse itself of stagnant elements’.+? Only this could guarantee effective action. Under these circumstances, the needs of the Jewish community in the early twentieth century seemed to be most aligned with the parties that accentuated a socialist basis. In the beginning, the tsarist government’s toleration of Zionism was based on the calculation that the ideas of ‘pure Zionism’ which encouraged the concentration of all efforts on the establishment of a new Jewish community in Palestine would not involve activities such as the struggle for Jewish equality that would encompass the wider masses, disorientate the Jewish proletariat, or allow the spread of socialist ideas in their midst.!* However, from official documents on Zionist activities dating from 1902-3, it becomes apparent that secret meetings of Zionist organizations were no longer limiting themselves to discussions of Zionist issues but were also touching on exclusively social problems: ‘Zionism was born as a movement of the Jewish bourgeoisie which, in attempting to gain support among the wider Jewish masses, has become more democratic, allowing other Zionist labour fractions to operate within its realm. Objectives typical of revolutionary party activities have appeared in their programmes.’!® The goal of mass emigration assumed a secondary position, while 9 Loker, Vos viln tsyonistn-sotsyalistn, 5-6.

10 Tbid. 7. 11 [.L.,‘Unzer tseil’, Dos yidishe folk, 15 May 1906. 12 A. Lokshin, ‘V poiskakh modus vivendi: Sionistskoe dvizhenie i tsarskoe pravitel’stvo v kontse XIX~nachale XX vekov’, in Rossiiskit sionizm: Istoriya i kul’tura. Materialy nauchnoi konferentsit (Moscow, 2002), 78-9.

13 Otnoshenie departamenta politsii Ministerstva vnutrennikh del sudebnomu sledovatelyu po vazhnym delam Vilenskogo okruzhnogo suda, undated: Lietuvos valstybes istorijos archyvas, Vilnius (herafter LVIA), f. 668, ap. 1, b. go, fo. 63.

Walking a Thin Line: Socialist Zionism in Lithuania 211 within the borders of the Russian empire the movement threw its efforts behind the realization of a newly modified programme, which was not acceptable to the tsarist government. After the 1905 revolution, the more hostile attitude of the government became apparent. Local administrative and police organs were informed in a government

circular that any type of Zionist activity was illegal and banned in the Russian empire, unless it was related to immediate emigration.'+ An explanatory statement also argued that Zionist activity was clearly ‘inimical to the maintenance of order in the state and public stability’.1° An order of 1 June 1907 again banned all Zionist organizations in Russia on the grounds that their political aspirations were inciting the Jewish community to engage in active struggle against their legal status. 1© On the assumption that Zionist theory did indeed stand apart from its practical application, the authorities made no further attempts to discriminate between the ideologies of the various Zionist organizations, and simply attached a socialist label to all societies or parties sympathizing with or propagating Zionist ideals. On the govern-

ment’s instructions, they were all to be liquidated. | However, tsarist officials did not manage to stamp out completely the smaller Zionist groups in the provinces of Kaunas and Vilna. In addition to the movement’s larger cores in Kaunas and Vilna, smaller centres existed in Panevezys, Marijampole,

Ukmergé, Anyk&¢iai, and Siauliai.17 By the end of 1906, around thirty Zionist groupings could be counted in the Vilna province, four of which were in Vilna itself. 15 Having dispersed the Kaunas Zionist socialist party group in 1907, the gendarmerie notes in its reports that during its existence the organization united up to 400 members and had a small library and a self-defence unit with its own central coordinating body—a district committee consisting of local activists.!? The latter’s social composition was very varied, and included school students, practitioners of the liberal professions, and some members of the middle class. Its illegal nature meant that it was difficult for it to collect funds to enable campaign work and the publication of party literature, or to maintain contact with other Zionist groups, not to mention engage in any co-ordinated or continuous activities. Attempts to make contact with the ‘inconspicuously monitored’ local activists or leaders of Zionist groups by posing as visiting relatives making a short trip to a centre or by giving some other plausible explanation usually meant drawing on oneself the attention of police department agents and being entered on lists of suspects.7° Both 14 Prikaz ministra vnutrennikh del no. 1446, 1906: LVIA, f. 378, ap. 1, b. 40, fo. 16. 19 Otnoshenie Ministerstva vnutrennikh del departamentu obshchikh del, 19 Dec. 1906: ibid. 17. 16 Postanovlenie, 25 June 1912: LVIA, f. 668, ap. 1, b. 166, fo. 28. See also Lokshin, ‘V poiskakh modus vivendt’, 84.

17 Svedenie ot sluchainogo zayavitelya: LVIA, f. 419, ap. 1, b. 214, fos. 55”, 1087. 18 Iz protokola obyska, 16 May 1908: LVIA, f. 668, ap. 1, b. 99, fo. 3.

19 Svodki agenturnykh svedenii po Kovenskoi gubernii po partii sionistov sotsialistov, 1910-11: LVIA, f. 419, ap. 1, b. 214, fo. 1’. 20 Agenturnoe donesenie, 8 June 1908: LVIA, f. 419, ap. 1, b. 146, fos. 10’, 167.

212 Egle Bendikaité drives to recruit new members in order to revitalize waning activity, and assemblies held in new conspiratorial meeting places offered tsarist government informers and secret agents rich opportunities to establish themselves at the heart of the Zionist movement.*! This happened, for example, during the reorganization of the Kaunas

Zionist socialist committee. A certain Yanvarsky (a pseudonym—his real name remains unknown), one of the agents most active in collecting information on the Zionists, was invited to become one of the committee’s new members, and had to try to avoid accepting until he had received permission from the commandant of the local gendarmerie.?? At the beginning of the twentieth century, Zionist ideologies were still only taking shape, which explains the rather frequent cases in which Zionist-oriented activists turned to the territorialist camp and later to the Bund or Po’alei Tsiyon, or vice versa, or belonged to two or three different camps at the same time.*° Their attempts to strengthen their position by uniting and searching for a common ideological platform often had no realistic foundation, yet the emergence of Zionist socialist groupings outside the tsarist empire did attract the attention of some activists.2+ In order for the content of the potential common programme to appeal strongly to both Jewish socialists and nationalists, they limited themselves to the search for general guidelines (for example on the resolution of the Jews’ territorial issue, emigration, education), the possibilities and realization of which could be discussed further.?°

As the Zionist socialist organizations sought to realize their ideas among the wider Jewish masses and to react to the counter-revolutionary forces brewing in Russia, a leftist political line prevailed in them, and their leaders felt a greater solidarity with Russia’s proletarian parties than with their local Zionists. For the sake of being able to participate in the creation of the ‘great socialist future’ and because of its Marxist orientation, the Po’alei T’styon movement demonstrated its independence and aimed to distance itself from the official political line of the international Zionist Organization.”© Yet in practice its supporters engaged in Zionist activities,

sending their delegates to the Zionist Congresses and collecting money for the Jewish National Fund.*’ Although the struggle for the class interests of Jewish workers was one of the prioritized fields of activity of the Zionist socialists, socialist parties propagating the ‘pure ideals of socialism’ suspected them of being an outpost of the bourgeoisie, the greatest class enemies, who, once the opportunity presented 21 Otchet za 1909 noyabr’ agenta Ioselya Lidskogo: ibid. 65’. 22 Svedenie ot sotrudnika Yanvarskogo, 14 July 1910: LVIA, f. 419, ap. 1, b. 214, fos. 357, 36. 23 Agenturnoe donesenie, 21 Aug. 1gto: ibid. 64”.

24 In 1908-9 a series of conferences took place in Chicago, Antwerp, and Amsterdam at which discussions took place about making an attempt to unite the Jewish socialist, social democratic, and nationalist organizations. 25 Agenturnoe donesenie nachal'niku zhandarmerii Vilenskoi gubernii, undated: LVIA, f. 419, ap.

1, b. 151, fos. 36, 367, 37. 26 Laker, Istoriya sionizma, 417.

27 Otnoshenie departamenta politsii Ministerstva vnutrennikh del sudebnomu sledovatelyu po vazhnym delam Vilenskogo okruzhnogo suda, 6 June 1908: LVIA, f. 668, ap. 1, b. gg, fos. 637, 64.

Walking a Thin Line: Sociahst Zionism in Lithuania 213 itself, would rise to defend their class interests, going so far as to side with antisemitic forces.2° In 1908-9, following the political intrigues of the Bundists behind the scenes, who stressed the bourgeois character of Zionism and its ideological incompatibility with the development of socialist thought and politics, the Zionist socialist representatives of the Vilna and Kaunas provinces, like those elsewhere in Russia, were excluded from International Socialist Congresses.2° In turn, Zionist socialists accused other Jewish parties, whose socialist, autonomust, and other ideas were placed higher than their national interests, of engaging in a policy of assimilation, and of trying to deny their Jewishness in exchange for rights in the Russian or Polish environment. Declaring that they were capable of resolving both the temporary social and political difficulties as well as other Jewish problems, the Zionist socialists emphasized that they were the first to raise the flag for social

and national equality, and that only they could bring the Jewish nation to real

freedom, which was what distinguished them from other parties.°° , “UNRELIABLE IN BOTH A POLITICAL AND A CIVIC SENSE’ Lithuania’s Jewish community was concentrated mostly in trade and in the liberal professions. ‘The working class, which was relatively small in size, mostly comprised

those who produced consumer products.*! They could hardly serve as the mouthpiece for the will of the world proletariat or as activists of the socialist revolution. Zionism in the diaspora, however, as it was envisaged by Zionist socialist ideologues,

could give rise to a Jewish proletariat which, having grown into a core socialist society in its new national home, could lead the struggle towards political liberation. This is why, in their view, Zionism meant first of all a socialist revolution within the

Jewish nation itself.° Following the First World War and their forced evacuation from Russia, along with other Jews, representatives of the new generation of Zionism began to return to Lithuania. Many of them had studied in Russian universities and brought back with them the fighting spirit of the Russian revolution and its ideas, reviving the local Zionists’ activities and acting as a breath of fresh air, thereby impressing Jewish

youth yet also raising internal conflicts within the Zionist environment. Simon Rosenbaum, one of the most prominent leaders of Lithuania’s Zionist organization,

describing the situation of Zionism in Lithuania at the end of 1918, noted that through the efforts of the returning activists, the Zionist movement had been 28 Jz proklamatsii pervogo Maya 1913 g.: LVIA, f. 419, ap. 1, b. gto, fo. 8. 29 Jz doneseniya predstavitelei Vilenskogo raiona tsentral’nomu komitetu partii, undated: LVIA, f. 419, ap. 1, b. 214, fo. 64”. 30 [.L., ‘Di tsvey punkten fun der tsyonistisher arbeyt’, Dos yidishe folk, 31 May 1906. 31 According to statistics from the 1923 census of the Lithuanian population, only 7% of Jews were workers, the smallest occupational category among them with the exception of farmers. See Lietuvos gyventojat: Pirmojo 1923 m. rugseéjo 17 d. visuotino gyventojy surasymo duomenys (Kaunas, 1925), 295. 32 Loker, Vos viln tsyonistn-sotsyalistn, 9.

214 Egle Bendtkatte strengthened in an ideological and a material sense. The ‘older Zionist commanders’ lost the initiative, and along with it, influence on the Jewish community. They began to distance themselves from the new forces propagating socialist Zionism and flirting with the Jewish political left wing.?? The first local supporter of socialist Zionism in independent Lithuania was the Tse’irei T'siyon organization. Its statutes were promulgated on 1 October 1920 in Vilna, and were certified by the then head of the Vilna Jewish community, Jacob Wygodzki.** Its territory was not only Vilna, but the entire Republic of Lithuania. The organization’s goal was to consolidate and unite the Jewish working masses there. By announcing measures for attaining this goal, in effect it set out guidelines for action which were followed by all left-wing Zionist organizations in inter-war Lithuania. They included carrying out cultural and educational work such as establishing schools and libraries and arranging courses for adults, lectures, agitational

meetings, and concerts; improving the economic situation of Jewish workers by establishing consumer and credit co-operatives, unions, and trade schools; establishing training centres and popularizing agricultural activity among Jews; and preparing groups from their midst for emigration, which would establish themselves in Palestine and continue the work already started, applying the knowledge they had gained in the diaspora.?°

In 1921 the Lithuanian Zionist Organization (Hahistadrut Hatsiyonit Belita), whose central committee was based in Kaunas, declared 1n its statutes that T’se’irei Tsiyon would operate as a separate faction within the organization.*© The initiators of this renewed Zionist socialist organization in Kaunas were activists who had withdrawn from Vilna, Yeruhim Levin and Efraim Beloglavsky. They were later joined

by the so-called ‘Russian group’, returnees from Russia, who included Nathan Grinblat, Isaac Brudny, Abraham Zabarsky, E:zriel Volk, Mordechai Fridman, and

others.?/ The programmatic postulates of the Zionist socialists, which expressed concern for the welfare of the working class and promoted economic and social equality and guarantees for all citizens, appealed to the large Jewish middle class. On the other

hand, it was clear that in order to strengthen their position and expand their numbers among the shtetl communities, drawing in Jews from a variety of age groups, levels of education, and social circumstances, the Zionist socialist movement could not orient itself solely on the Jewish proletariat. As a result, alongside this movement the League for the Working Erets Yisra’el (Di Lige farn Arbetndn Erets Yisroel) was founded, which united Jews of various standpoints and political 33 Bericht des Herrn Rechtsanwalt Rosenbaum aus Wilna, iiber Litauen: Central Zionist Archives,

Jerusalem, Z3, file 510.

34 Ustavy partii “Tseirei Tsion’: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, Archives (hereafer

YIVO Archives), RG 29, folder 284. 35 Tbid. 36 Statutes of the Lithuanian Zionist Organization, undated: YIVO Archives, RG 2, folder 1098. 37 §. Fridman, ‘Di tsyonistishe sotsyalistishe bavegung in lite’, in H. Laykovich (ed.), Lite, ii (Tel Aviv, 1965), 69.

Walking a Thin Line: Sociahst Zionism in Lithuania 215 orientations who sympathized with the workers’ movement, but did not necessarily want to see themselves under the banner of the Zionist socialists.?° From its inception the Lithuanian Zionist Organization proclaimed that it was an integral part of the worldwide Zionist movement, accepting the rulings of the Zionist Congresses; any new developments and trends in the wider movement would find support in Lithuania too. Disagreements within the Lithuanian Zionist socialist movement were minor, and more tactical than ideological. However, in 1923, after

two years of activity, the Tse’irei Tsiyon faction of the Lithuanian Zionist Organization followed the example of processes taking place in the worldwide move-

ment and split into two separate parties: the Zionist Socialist Party and Tse’irei Tsiyon—Hitahadut (Unity).°? Evidence that even after this split the ideological divide was not fundamental can be seen in the fact that the parties co-ordinated their activ-

ities on a practical political level, voicing their support for the creation of a united political Jewish front. They formed blocs in parliamentary and community council elections, though by contrast in elections to the Zionist Congresses they participated on separate lists. Hitahadut considered itself to be on the right of the Zionist socialist movement and was more oriented towards the service-providing sector, while the Zionist Socialist Party, adopting an ‘internationalist socialist spirit’, maintained a leftist political line that had more support among the Jewish workers and craftsmen, yet did not ignore either the Lithuanian Social Democrats or the Marxist Po’alei Tsiyon in Lithuania.4° The latter, operating in only a semi-legal underground manner, brought government suspicion not only on themselves but also on members of the Zionist Socialist Party, whose branches were consequently restricted in their activity and were under constant surveillance. After the coup of 17 December 1926, because State Security Department agents believed that the Zionist Socialist Party was spreading communist ideas many branches had to be refounded, registered under new names, or combined with societies engaging in ‘neutral’ activities, in order to avoid being closed down. To rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of the Lithuanian government, in 1928 these Zionist Socialists registered the Nachman Syrkin Educational

Organization (Bildungs-Gezelshaft oyfn Nomen fun Dr. N. Sirkin in Lite), named in honour of the famous activist of the Zionist movement who was the ideologue of their orientation. This was essentially the same old organization under a new name.*! Indeed, the State Security Department was convinced that the organization had simply been re-created by this ploy: ‘the central committee and review commission consist exclusively of leftist Zionist socialists . .. they are members of a former communist organization, who in their beliefs remain communists even now’.** Around 38 Tbid. 66. 39 Ibid. 69-70; Barikht fun der tsveyter tseyre-tsyonistisher landes-konferents in lite (1921 12 27-1922

or 02) (Kaunas, 1922), pp. 1-1. 40 Levin, Trumpa Zydy istorya Lietuvoje, 119. 41 Dr N. Syrkin on behalf of the Lithuanian Jewish Educational Society: Lietuvos centrinis valstybés archyvas, Vilnius (hereafter LCVA), f. 402, ap. 4, b. 572, fos. 1-34. 42 Notice from the Commander of the State Security Police, 17 Aug. 1937: LCVA, f. 438, ap. 1, b. 1032, fo. 19.

216 Egle Bendikaiteé 1930, the splintered Zionist Socialist and T'se’irei T’styon—Hitahadut organizations once again started to unite, and finally combined in 1932 to form the United Zionist Socialist Party (Fareynikte Tsyonistishe Sotsyalistishe Partey in Lite).*°

The transformations of the Zionist socialist organizations did not in any way reduce the attention paid to them by state security agents, and personal files on the Zionist socialist leaders were kept in the operational information division of the Criminal Police.4+ The activities of these ‘individuals ill disposed to the existing order’ were under constant surveillance. Operational information concerning their milieu and their former links with Russian socialist revolutionary organizations was also collected. The circumstances of the Zionist socialist organizations in independ-

ent Lithuania ended up being little different from those obtaining in the tsarist Russian empire. Having come under the watchful gaze of security and government organs because of the socialist component of their political programme, the Zionist socialists were identified as ‘communist-leaning’, engaging in ‘hostile activity in Lithuania’ and therefore ‘unreliable in both a political and a civic sense’.4°

ACHIEVEMENTS ON THE JEWISH STREET Pamphlets issued during elections to Zionist Congresses explaining why Lithuanian Jews should support the Zionist socialist candidates stressed the movement’s value to the Jewish nation on a worldwide basis and attacked their opponents’ failures: Every friend of the workers, every conscious Zionist, and every true friend of the entire nation must vote for the Zionist socialist list and thereby ensure their majority at the World Zionist Congress. Regardless of the difficulty of the Zionist situation, they are the only ones who have not strayed from the path they have chosen, and have tried to uphold unity in the movement... Whoever wants a healthy, democratic, and lively Zionist movement with concrete actions must vote for the ambassadors of socialist Zionism to be sent to the congress, the loyal friends of workers of the Land of Israel.4®

Lithuania’s Zionist socialists also relied on the merits of world socialist Zionism during electoral campaigning for Jewish councils or municipal councils,*’ but it is very hard to say just how much influence this may have had on the political con~ sciousness of the organization’s members or supporters, or on their sense that they were a part of a world movement. However, Zionist socialist leaders were certainly inspired by the belief that they were links in a much larger chain. In December 1921, when opening Lithuania’s Tse’ire1 Tsiyon conference, its influential leader Shmuel Fridman declared that only by strengthening its position 43 ‘Excerpts from the Zionist Socialist Party Program’: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 886, fos. 39—40; see also L. Chain-Shimoni, Nekhin (Buenos Aires, 1959), 250. 44 See the personal files in LCVA, f. 438, ap. 1-3. 45 Report to the Minister of Internal Affairs, 21 Dec. 1928: LCVA, f. 438, ap. 1, b. 1032, fo. 9. 46 Proclamation to the Jewish community about the 18th Zionist Congress: YIVO Archives, RG 2, folder 1453, fo. 66178.

47 Proclamation to the Jewish community, undated: YIVO Archives, RG 10, box 108, folder 111.

Walking a Thin Line: Socialist Zionism in Lithuania 217 in the diaspora could the Jewish nation expect to strive successfully for its goals and needs.*8 Zionist socialists were strong supporters of Jewish national autonomy in Lithuania and defenders of its institutions. Leib Garfunkel, the long-serving leader of Hitahadut, who was a well-known community activist, Lithuanian parliamentary deputy, general secretary and vice-chairman of the Jewish National Council, chairman of the Jewish Folksbank in Lithuania, and member of the Kaunas City Council, published a separate study on this issue.*° He also tried on many occasions to defend his position at the highest levels of government. In deliberations on the draft law on Jewish national communities in the spring of 1925, Garfunkel tried to convince a majority of parliament that the law being discussed would only deepen the divide

between the government and the Jewish minority and threaten the autonomous status of Lithuanian Jews.°° The promulgation of the new Law on Societies at the beginning of 1936°! and the beginning of their re-registration gave rise to fresh discussions on the Jewish street about the renewal of projects for the establishment of Jewish communities. At the same time, while right-wing Jewish political forces, including some Zionist organizations, were proponents of national religious communities, the Zionist socialist representatives with Garfunkel at their head appealed

for tight restrictions on Orthodox influence and the reduction of the powers of rabbis in the preparation of the draft law on the establishment of Jewish communities.°? Lithuanian Zionist socialist organizations aimed to have their representatives in all the executive government organs so that they could properly uphold the goals of their movement, as well as defend the Jews’ national, political, and civic rights. Zionist socialists defended the interests of the Jewish community in the Lithuanian Seimas (parliament), initiating discussion on and seeking resolutions to everyday problems, for example laws concerning the Jewish community, compulsory Sunday rest, the rules for using minority languages on signs, the founding of schools, matters of financing, and so on.°® Zionist socialists were also active in municipal elections. Some were elected to city and town councils several times over, holding positions of considerable responsibility in these bodies: Shmuel Petukhovsky and Meyer Varshavsky were the vice-mayors of Siauliai and Vilkavi8kis, respectively, for a number of years.°4 On 20 June 191g the Ministry of Jewish Affairs announced the provisions regulating elections to the Jewish community councils, which were to be direct, equal, 48° Barikht fun der tsveyter tseyre-tsyonistisher landes-konferents in lite, 3.

49 L. Garfunkelis, Zydy tautiné autonomiya Lietuvoje (Kaunas, 1920).

60 FE. Bendikaité, ‘Garfunkelis Levas’, in Didysis Lietuvos parlamentary Zodynas, iii: Lietuvos Respublikos Seimy nariy biografinis Zodynas (Vilnius, 2007), 262—7.

°1 Law on Societies, Vyriausybes Zinios, no. 522, 1 Feb. 1936, item 3626. 52 Meeting of representatives of Jewish organizations, 3 Feb. 1937: LCVA, f. 438, ap. 1, b. 1103, fo. 7. °3 For more on this, see E. Bendikaité, ‘Bergeris Joselis’, ‘Brudnis Aizikas’, ‘Garfunkelis Levas’, and ‘Roginskis Joselis’, in Didysis Lietuvos parlamentary Zodynas, iii. 205, 219, 262—7, 449-51. ©4 Fridman, ‘Di tsyonistishe sotsyalistishe bavegung in lite’, 69.

218 Egle Bendtkaité and general.°° The earliest community council elections had in fact already taken place between 24 and 26 December 1918, and the Lithuanian Zionist Organization had actively urged Jews to take part in them, stressing that the more voters that came forward, the more significance the councils would have, and the better voter representation they could offer.°© In the elections the Zionist camp won 37 per cent of the votes.°’ The Zionist socialists had to share the potential number of votes not only with other Zionist parties, but with other Jewish socialist organizations too. As a rule, in locations where a greater number of Tse’irei Tsiyon representatives were elected to the Jewish community councils, Jewish socialist representatives lost out; conversely, where T'se’irei Tsiyon did not win any seats on the council, the number of socialist representatives increased. The Zionist socialists only won an absolute majority of Jewish council members in two shtetls, Vainutas and Pilviskiai.°® The executive committees of councils, which consisted of three to five individuals depending on the number of people in the community, usually had a Zionist socialist representative along with representatives of the General Zionist orientation and the Orthodox or Folkist wings.°? The performance of the Zionist socialists was no less significant in congresses of community council representatives held in 1920-3 and in elections to the highest executive bodies of Jewish national autonomy. At the congress of Jewish community representatives in 1923 1t was decided to convoke Lithuanian Jewish national assemblies regularly, delegates to which would be chosen through general elections. The 1923 National Assembly elected a new National Council, on which there were 11 General Zionists, 11 Zionist socialists, 1o Mizrahi representatives, 4 representatives of craftsmen’s unions, 2 Po’alei Tsiyon representatives, and 2 Folkist representatives. T’se’irei ['siyon was pleased with the results it had achieved 1n the early stages of its existence: ‘In the last year, the central committee has carried out important political agitation work. During the elections to the Jewish council, we were the second most popular. ‘The branches that stood for the city councils on separate lists repre-

sented the party well... In the provincial areas, we are almost the only active party °> Tsirkular briv nr. 1: LCVA, f. 1129, ap. 1, b. 3, fos. 18-19. °6 ‘Vidn, mener un froyen!’, undated: YIVO Archives, RG 10, box 10, folder 108, fo. 18244. °7 Throughout the period 1919—21, representatives of Zionist organizations elected to Jewish com-

munity councils were on aggregate 52% General Zionists, 40% Tse’irei Tsiyon socialists, and 8% members of Mizrahi. These figures combine the results from forty-six Jewish communities from all over Lithuania. There were initially two Jewish communities registered in Alytus because of old administrative boundaries that divided the town into two parts. The calculations do not include the results from the Kaunas city Jewish council, where Zionist socialists participated in the elections on a common list with the General Zionists and won 13 out of 41 seats. he data were derived from LCVA, f. 11209, ap. 1, b. 16, fos. 1-283. 58 Results of the elections to the Jewish community councils: LCVA, f. 1129, ap. 1, b. 16, fos. 1-283. °9 M. Friedman, “The Jewish Communities in Lithuania, 1919—1926: A Study Based on the Kehillot of Panevezys and Vilkomir/Ukmerge’, graduation thesis (New York, 1975), 30—41. 60 S. Levenberg, ‘Lithuania, Zionism’, in R. Patai (ed.), Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel (New York, 1971), 726.

Walking a Thin Line: Soctahst Zionism in Lithuania 219 in individual institutions.’°! The Zionist socialists devoted much attention to establishing and developing institutional branches of the world Zionist movement in Lithuania that were broad-ranging in scope and unquestionably important to all ori-

entations of Zionism. The activities of the national foundation funds (Keren Hayesod and Keren Kayemet Leyisra’el) and the League for the Working Erets Yisra’el in the 1920s were maintained almost exclusively by the personal initiative of the Zionist socialists. In the inter-war period, the principal Palestinian foundation

fund, Keren Hayesod, was headed by Leib Garfunkel, whom I have mentioned above. The Jewish Agency/Palestinian Department was associated with the names of Shmuel Fridman and Efraim Grinberg, who were members of the first generation

of Zionist socialists in independent Lithuania.° Consumer and credit co-operatives, which became the backbone of economic and social life for Jews in inter-war Lithuania, were an inseparable part of the Jewish Folksbank network. The central Jewish bank was headed for more than a year by one of the most active Zionist socialist leaders, Isaac Brudny, while the existence of

its branches in even the remotest provincial areas became possible as a result of Tse’irei ‘T'siyon—Hitahadut’s activists who took up important positions in Jewish economic and political circles: Abraham Zaborsky, Shlomo Kelzon, Tsvi Fort, Azriel Volk, and Yosel Berger.®° An intensive ideological ‘war’ was launched on Jewish communities via educa-

tional institutions and the periodical press. The Tarbut (Education) branch of Jewish schools and education was a part of the Lithuanian Zionist Organization. With its particular focus on Hebrew as the language of instruction and educational content fostering national consciousness, the network of ‘Tarbut institutions spread rapidly. In 1923-4, out of a total of 107 Jewish primary schools, 86 were of a T'arbut orientation, with more than 7,500 pupils in attendance.®4 Zionist organizations that founded schools on the basis of political motives and led by narrow party interests

remained directly responsible for their upkeep. Schools that were maintained by Tse’irei Tsiyon or its followers were to be found in Birzai, Sakiy Naumiestis, AnykS¢iai, and other towns in Lithuania.©° ‘Our [Zionist socialist] cultural work must be carried out through Tarbut, defending our interests and struggling for a school of united “workers of the world’”’, claimed Tse’irei Tsiyon at its annual conference in 1921-2, reiterating the tenets of its programme.®® Yet as the party split up, l'arbut grew into an independent society supported by the Jewish community and receiving financial support from private funds and individuals. Unable to accept

the fact that control of it was slipping out of their hands, the Zionist socialists Sl Barikht fun der tsveyter tseyre-tsyonistisher landes-konferents in lite, 4.

62 Fridman, ‘Di tsyonistishe sotsyalistishe bavegung in lite’, 65. 63 Tbid. 67. 64 Der renesans fun hebreish in lite (Kaunas, 1929), 7-8. 65 ‘Bendras auk3tesniuju, viduriniy ir specialiniy mokykly saragas’, S'vietimo darbas, 1927, no. 12, pp.

1472-81; To the Anyks¢iai community council: YIVO Archives, RG 2, folder ror. 66 Barikht fun der tsveyter tseyre-tsyonistisher landes-konferents in lite, 4.

220 Egle Bendtkaiteé decided at a general meeting to withdraw from the society.°” Despite having a number of teachers among their members and despite the support and guidance they eave to the schools they had founded, the Zionist socialists could not compete with the already existing educational societies or create a separate network of schools with a suitable curriculum. Another field of cultural activity for Tse’irei T'siyon was the founding of libraries in provincial shtetls. The main problem here was financial. Local Jewish community councils regularly received requests for subsidies for U'se’irei Tsiyon party libraries or to cover annual budget deficits. The requests highlighted the indisputably important role these libraries played in the social life of the Jewish community, and more

often than not the requests were met with funds allocated from the community budget for the continuation of these activities.©° Other means of raising funds for maintaining schools, libraries, or organized courses were explored too. The city or district branches of the Ministry of Education would be approached, or the Ministry of Jewish Affairs, which might either source the requested funds itself or require the local Jewish community councils to do so. Failing these, alternative means of resolving the difficulties would be suggested: unite with an already existing, albeit ideologically different school, or become a part of the main local Jewish library.°° The Zionist socialists, much like the general or religious Zionist movements in Lithuania, had their own press organs. During its early period, the organization’s semi-official publication was the pro-socialist newspaper Erd un arbet (“Land and Work’). Later, once it had split up, each party had its own paper, printed in Yiddish: from 1924 to 1932 the Zionist Socialist Party published the fortnightly Unzer veg (‘Our Way’), while Tse’irei Tsiyon published Unzer vort (Our Word’). When the organizations again united into a common bloc in 1932, the weekly newspaper Di tsayt (‘Time’) appeared, edited by Shmuel Fridman, while later still, in 1934, the same newspaper became a daily and changed its name to Dos vort (“The Word’). ‘The editor, who had been repatriated to Palestine, was replaced in 1936 by a teacher at the Kaunas Jewish gymnasium, Efraim Grinberg.’° The newspapers were highly regarded by the organization’s members (who also happened to be the editors, active collaborators, and contributors of articles), and enjoyed popularity in society at large,

also being quoted by Zionist socialist organizations abroad. However, internal memos show that branch members were continually solicited for ‘a more substantial subvention of its press’, despite the fact that subscription for party members was already mandatory. It was urged that as many subscribers should be enrolled as possible, and that they should pay for distributed issues on time; it was also not to be 67 Fridman, ‘Di tsyonistishe sotsyalistishe bavegung in lite’, 65. 68 To the Marijampolé Jewish community council, 5 Dec. 1922: YIVO Archives, RG 2, folder 656, fos. 28858, 28859; To the Kédainiai community council, 26 June 1921: YIVO Archives, RG 2, folder

"9 An appeal to the Suveniskis Jewish community, 1924: YIVO Archives, RG 2, folder 1303, fo. 60216; To the Anyks¢ciai community council: YTVO Archives, RG 2, folder rot. 70 Fridman, ‘Di tsyonistishe sotsyalistishe bavegung in lite’, 70.

Walking a Thin Line: Sociahst Zionism in Lithuania 221 forgotten that the paper had to seek out its readers in every conceivable location, and

that it must not be in short supply in strategic sales locations such as newspaper kiosks at railway stations. ‘1

The Lithuanian Jewish community enthusiastically supported fund-raising initiated by the Zionist organizations for the support of various foundations, emigrating

Jews, labour federations, and kibbutzim in Palestine. The purchase of Jewish Colonial Trust shares in the form of shekels was one of the most important ways people could show their desire to join and practically support the Zionist movement.

The number of shares purchased determined the number of votes allocated to a given region, hence every Zionist organization was interested in the sale of as many shares as possible, in order to maximize its mandates to the Zionist Congress. The number of these allocated to Lithuania was modest by world standards, even if individual Zionist party candidates were grouped as a whole.’? Nevertheless, election results reflected the general mood of the Lithuanian Jewish community and served as an indicator of the Zionist organizations’ influence. Three thousand shekels sold guaranteed the organization only a few mandates. In 1927 the Zionist socialist bloc

won only half of the potential four mandates, but the number of people buying shekels grew in later years, and by the mid-1930s Lithuania’s Jews could send seventeen deputies to the Zionist Congress. There was a noticeable increase in the influence of the Zionist socialists, who received ten mandates out of the seventeen, while the remaining seven were distributed among the other four Zionist parties. “?

SATELLITE ORGANIZATIONS Zionist socialist ideas in inter-war Lithuania linked a fair number of various organizations that were in one way or another related to the Zionist socialist movement. Some aimed to develop a specific field of socialist Zionism, while others were established to meet cultural or educational needs, or to promote sports or youth develop-

ment. Yet the importance of their political activities, left unrecorded in their statutes, may have increased considerably once the state security agents began to intensify their ‘supervision’ of the activities of the main Zionist socialist organizations. The Zionist socialists reacted in accordance with methods that had been developed in the times of the Russian empire—that is, when their activities had attracted the attention of the state security and had been deemed illegal, they would register a new organization, innocent-looking and apparently apolitical. Socialist-minded young Zionists joined the Hehaluts (Pioneer) movement, and its development was a key field of Zionist socialist activity. The organization’s aim was to foster the spiritual, ideological, physical, and professional preparation needed ‘1 'Tseyre-tsyon tsirkularn, 1923-4: YIVO Archives, RG 2, folder 1456. ?2 FE. Mendelsohn, ‘Zionist Success and Zionist Failure: The Case of East Central Europe between the Wars’, in Reinharz and Shapira (eds.), Essential Papers on Zionism, 181. "3 Levin, Trumpa Zydy istoryja Lietuvoje, 128; Levenberg, ‘Lithuania, Zionism’, 726.

222 Egle Bendikaite to live in Palestine and work on a farm there. Thousands of young halutsim were

sent to various organizations, training centres, and agricultural co-operatives. Lithuania’s young Zionist socialists, mainly school and university students, learnt a particular line of work in these co-operatives and had the opportunity to develop the new skills which they believed would be needed in the historic homeland. The organization also strenuously promoted educational and cultural activities, such as intensive Hebrew language courses, public lectures on the history of Israel, commemoration ceremonies, and marches. /4 There were even attempts at living in tents, imitating the life of new settlers in Palestine. However, these types of youth activities and the way of life in kibbutzim did not always meet with the approval of parents at home: when Chadasa [a halutsah who belonged to the left-wing Zionist youth organizations and took part in programmes to prepare for emigration] left, her mother and father were much saddened. Even though they were Zionists . . . they did not want her to leave. They could not understand why she would want to leave such a comfortable life for manual labour on farms, where she would have to work in the fields, chop firewood, and milk cows.’°

Moreover, to the older generation of Jews, life on a kibbutz separated from one’s

parents was associated with an immoral, non-law-abiding way of living. One member of the inter-war Zionist movement wrote thus about his family in his memortrs: “The hakhsharah movement raised concerns in my father, who believed

that it was insufficiently religious . .. Our mother was worried that in order to receive the certificate needed for departure, my sister would have to marry a stranger.’”©

Nevertheless, many young people had the courage to leave the place of their birth, join Hehaluts, and complete the programme of hakhsharah (preparation), a process that lasted at least a few months, which granted them the opportunity to emigrate. Among the Lithuanian Jewish community, Hehaluts was a veritable beacon, a guar-

antee of a better future for young people. The initially positive attitude of the Lithuanian government towards /alutsim changed in the 1930s, when it was suspected that socialist ideas were being spread in the branches of the organization. Some co-operatives that had belonged to the organization were disbanded under government orders, and could only continue to operate privately. ‘The Avodah (Work) workshops in Kaunas that had belonged to Hehaluts were facing liquidation, while those of its members who were found with communist literature were threatened with criminal proceedings. The state security organs doubted that the organ-

ization was preparing potential emigrants to rebuild their historic homeland, and were instead inclined to believe the accounts of ‘witnesses’ to the effect that Hehaluts 74 Y,. Eliach, There Once Was a World: A Nine-Hundred-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok (Toronto, 1998), 499, 501. 1 N. Kacas, Ismokyk mus skaiciuoti miasy dienas (Kaunas, 2001), 69; see also S. Yarovski, ‘To Riteve with Longing’, in A. Levite (ed.), 4 Yizkor Book to Riteve: A Jewish Shtetl in Lithuama, rev. D. Porat

and R. Stauber (Cape Town, 2000), 75. 76 Kacas, Ismokyk mus skaiciuoti mitsy dienas, 41.

Walking a Thin Line: Soctahst Zionism in Lithuania 223 was secretly harbouring communists and serving as a means to enable young Jewish men to avoid military service, as it could supply them with less than legal documents and send them abroad if the need arose.’ Hehaluts’s central board, among whose members were the leaders of the Zionist Socialist Party, denied these rumours about communists in their midst and had to go to great lengths to avoid the closure of the entire organization. In hindsight, life on the kibbutzim of Hehaluts was more reminiscent of work and leisure camps than of conspiratorial centres propagating ideas opposing the state. Reading the accounts of participants at various levels of the organization’s programmes, one gets the impression that an atmosphere of a large, happy

family prevailed at the centres. Nor was a young person’s support for Hehaluts dependent on the inculcation of ideals of Zionism (emigration and the rebuilding of a national and political home) or socialism (collectivization and the creation of a new society founded on the principles of social equality): the movement became popular among Jewish youth because of the specific activities that it offered and the personal encouragement that it provided to participants. ‘The emphasis was less on the hard and wearying labour than on what would follow it. Most often, young people were attracted to Zionist socialist organizations not for their programmatic goals or collective work, but because of the desire to engage in some kind of social activity, to

spend leisure time in the company of others, and to go to the summer camps: ‘I remember the camp in Citibiai in the Raseiniai district. There were a whole lot of tents. Camp fires burned and we were certain that the food we ate there was the most delicious we had ever tasted. We bought produce from the friendly neighbouring farmers. There was no end to the songs and dances.’ “® The Zionist socialists had several youth organizations in their trust. One of them, which had strong organizational and ideological affiliations with T’se’irei ‘T'styon— Hitahadut, was the Jewish student society Gordonia. Yet in terms of its influence

on young Zionist socialists, it was a secondary organization. It was named after Abraham David Gordon, a known Zionist with Litvak roots whose experiences inspired many followers in various countries.’? He took his motto for life from the statement: ‘Man becomes more evil the further away he drifts from nature, and only a return to a normal way of life can determine a nation’s revival. Physical work can cure Jews of all their ailments and the hate of the nations surrounding them in the diaspora.’®° The League for the Working Erets Yisra’el could not develop its cul-

tural and educational pursuits since the ‘unreliability’ of its president, Efraim Grinberg, meant that any activities that it undertook were interpreted as the nurturing of Jewish working youth in the ‘communist spirit’.2! The organization’s 77 Agency news, 27 June 1937: LCVA, f. 438, ap. 1, b. 1103, fo. 3.

. “8 Yarovski, “To Riteve with Longing’, 74. 73 Die Zionistische Jugendorganisationen: YIVO Archives, RG 2, folder 1462, fo. 66825. 80 Laker, Istoriya sionizma, 395. 81 Report to the Security Agency’s branch commander, 17 Apr. 1934: LCVA, f. 438, ap. 1, b. 1032, fo. 15.

224 Egle Bendtkaite reading rooms and clubs, registered in 1929, came under the banner of Hehaluts after five years of lacklustre performance.® The statutes of the sports organizations Hapo’el (The Worker) and Hako’ah (Power) in Lithuania, which were managed by the Zionist socialists, declared their support for goals typical of such organizations—to engage in all types of sport and to strive towards the physical and spiritual nurturing of young Jewish people, thereby raising a healthy generation of the Jewish nation. The sports clubs were established on the initiative of the Zionist socialists to meet the needs of the members of the League for the Working Erets Yisra’el, which is why the programme of their cultural activities clearly reflected their founders’ party line. According to memoir accounts, Hako’ah, which was the result of the initiative of several individuals, was more of a spontaneous entity than Hapo’el, and because of its disorganization only existed for a few years at the end of the 1920s.°° However, its liquidation was cer-

tainly hastened by the unpopularity of the party ideology of the Zionist socialists with the Lithuanian government. According to information gathered by police agents, the organization, which consisted at the outset of about 500 members of various political orientations, invested little effort in sport and engaged rather in political activities. It grew at the expense of other Zionist socialist youth organizations that had closed down, and attracted into its ranks ‘young students from the provinces’, until in the end, individuals well known to the state security organs took the control of the centre into their own hands and ‘communized’ the sports organization.®* In 1933 Hapo’el was registered afresh, uniting thirteen clubs from across Lithuania, mostly in the larger cities and towns.°° The leaders of Hapo’el were members of the governing body of the Zionist Socialist Party, including individuals such as Efraim Grinberg, Eliahu Valdberg, and Tsvi Brik. In the mid-1930s, the league may have had as many as 2,500 members.®© The leadership of Hapo’el tried to sustain its activism and ideological propaganda through its cultural and educational activities.°”

POLITICAL ALLIES AND OPPONENTS Like many other organizations, the Zionist socialist camp, competing for its ‘own’ space and influence in the political, social, and cultural life of independent Lithuania and within the Jewish community, had its fair share of political allies and opponents. Some of the harshest criticism of Zionist socialism came from within the Zionist 82 The Jewish youth organization Hehaluts in Lithuania, Kaunas branch, 11 June 1934: LCVA, f. 402, ap. 8, b. 153, fo. 6. 83 J. Jozelit, ‘Sport organizatsyes’, in Laykovich (ed.), Lite, ii. 497-8. 84 Agency news, 24 Sept. 1929: LCVA, f. 438, ap. 1, b. 747, fo. 3; Report to the Security Agency’s branch commander, 17 Apr. 1934: LCVA, f. 438, ap. 1, b. 1032, fo. 15. 85 List of Jewish societies and unions registered at the Kaunas city and district commander’s office:

LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 886, fo. 10. 86 Jozelit, ‘Sport organizatsyes’, 408. 87 A-é, ‘Hapoel’, Socialdemokratas, 18 Feb. 1933.

Walking a Thin Line: Socialist Zionism in Lithuania 225 camp, from the Zionist revisionists. ‘he Zionist socialists, as the representatives of the left wing of the Zionist movement, spent much creative energy in an ideological battle with the Zionist revisionist organizations. The Zionist socialist leaders in Lithuania were inclined to accept workers with a Zionist orientation, since they were ‘the only ones who defended themselves and stood up against Revisionism, which is giving rise to a mood of extremism among young people. . . It is Zionist socialists who have won the sympathy of Jewish workers for the movement in the world political arena and in the eyes of the great nations.’88 The avalanche of disputes and mutual accusations intensified particularly during election campaigns to the Zionist Congresses. Lithuania’s Zionist socialists also distributed leaflets urging conflict: Our comrade workers, friends of a free and working Palestine, know this: we are heading into a difficult and fateful battle, a battle between workers’ Zionism and Jewish fascism. This is a battle for the victory of Zionism, for the destiny of Palestine... Itisa life-or-death battle for Zionism, similar to the tragic clash in Germany that ended with defeat by black reaction. Will we also allow the black forces to encroach on the victory of Zionism? ... We must arrive at

the congress as the strongest organized force in Zionism, as the purest contenders for the Zionist movement’s leadership . . . all as one force, take a shekel and deal a fatal blow to Jewish reactionism.®°

In this propaganda battle, the one side’s virtues and the other’s vices were listed: Remember the Jewish [workers’] merits in the Zionist movement . . . Jewish halutsim have revived Galilee and the Emek, have transformed deserts into roads and planted orange groves and vineyards where once there were swamps; Jewish workers have revived a free, modern Hebrew culture; Jewish workers are the brave and strong vanguard of the Jewish nation on the road to freedom and liberation . . . Don’t forget, Jabotinsky’s putschism and dictatorial game is a mark of shame on our liberation movement; the Revisionists are spreading hatred for Jewish falutsim, they are the organized enemy of Jewish workers, sheltering speculators and strike-breakers under their wing. It is time that the tumour in the Zionist movement—

fascist Revisionism—was excised.9° |

Once the British government had set its quota for migration into Palestine in 1925 and started reducing this figure every year thereafter, competition among Zionist organizations for the limited number of immigration permits to the ‘promised land’ grew even fiercer. The leadership of the Palestinian Office in Lithuania that distributed certificates for emigration to Palestine was in the hands of the Zionist socialists.

The Zionist revisionists’ demands that they should receive as many immigration permits as the other Zionist organizations usually ended up in threats, provocations, and physical confrontations that appeared in the local press, as well as becoming 88 Proclamation to the Jewish community about the 18th Zionist Congress: YIVO Archives, RG 2, folder 1453, fo. 66178. 89 'To the Congress. Proclamation of the Palestinian Jewish Workers’ Organization: YIVO Archives,

RG 2, folder 1453. 9° Tbid.

226 Egle Bendtkaite known to the forces of law and order.?! The essence of this conflict lay in a varied understanding by the groups concerned as to how the general vision should be realized, and in competition for influence to be the final decision-maker among the Zionist organizations. The Zionist revisionists were, without reservation, 1n favour of a national home for Jews on both sides of the Jordan. The Zionist socialists maintained that such a goal was insane and could lead to the loss of the gains already made in previous years. That is why their compromising and sometimes passive position in their politics with the Great Powers, above all the United Kingdom, was harshly criticized and became the object of never-ending debates.

Better relations developed between the Zionist socialists and the Lithuanian Social Democrats, whose ideals were also oriented towards socialism. The practical result of this relationship was common work carried out in areas relevant to both organizations. Lithuanian Social Democrats and Zionist socialists together headed

organizations that represented the working class, and they collaborated in coordinating their policies concerning the National Health Insurance Fund. Shmuel Kaplan represented the Zionist socialists on the central committee of the National Health Insurance Fund in Kaunas for a long time, and was also known as a workers’ leader; he was later replaced by Mordechai Fridman and Eliahu Valdberg. Another area in which the Zionist socialists and the Social Democrats co-operated was in the creation of trade unions. Lidija Purieniene of the Lithuanian Social Democrats and Shmuel Fridman of the Zionist socialists were long-standing juridical consultants to the trade unions’ central committee. In honour of Fridman’s repatriation to Palestine in 1934, the Zionist socialist central committee arranged a farewell evening at which a number of colleagues from the Lithuanian Social Democrat organization were present, among them its leader, Steponas Kairys.?? In turn, Lithuanian Zionist socialists joined in the marking of events and festivals important to the Social Democrats, co-operated in arranging cultural and educational events for Lithuanian students, and shared their agitational materials.?°

CONCLUSION The convergence of two ideologies in one movement was achieved without significant conflict. It is true that the Zionist and socialist programmes both had clear goals.

However, what made their co-ordination possible was that this orientation of Zionism offered a path for supporters of socialist transformation to realize their ideals without having to renounce their national identity. Independent Zionist socialist movements started forming in Lithuania at the end of the First World War. As part of the worldwide Zionist movement and the Zionist 91 Agency news, 24 Feb. 1938: LCVA, f. 438, ap. 1, b. 1032, fo. 21. %2 Fridman, ‘Di tsyonistishe sotsyalistishe bavegung in lite’, 68. 93 Agency news, various dates 1928-30: LCVA, f. 438, ap. 1, b. 1032, fos. 2-3, 6, 7-77; f. 438, ap. 1, b. 747, fos. 3-4.

Walking a Thin Line: Soctahst Zionism in Lithuania 227 Organization, Lithuania’s Zionist socialists maintained a common political line, trying to contribute to the realization of their ideals through their practical activities. It should also be noted that the executive organs of the Zionist Organization were in the hands of Zionist socialists. Propaganda throughout all countries spoke widely of their deeds and of the benefits they could bring to the entire Jewish nation. That 1s why support for Zionist socialists on Lithuania’s Jewish street was often identified with support for the Zionist movement in general. Zionist socialists, who through compromises combined their vision for the future with work for the good of the Jews in the Lithuanian state, were active in the social,

economic, and cultural spheres. The progressive growth in influence of socialist Zionism was determined by a whole range of factors: class divisions within the Jewish community, the declining economic position of the Jews and the post-war restrictions on emigration, the weakness of their Jewish opponents, and the calibre of the organization’s leaders, who enjoyed significant respect within the Jewish community and exerted influence on the community’s opinions. Yet in spite of the support that they enjoyed, the Zionist socialists were not short of opponents from either the right or the left wing. It is clear that in walking the thin — jine between the political left and right in the name of their ideological position, and in trying to perform the balancing act of maintaining considerable influence on the

Jewish street while being hampered by the constant supervision of the security organs, the Zionist socialists naturally met with repeated setbacks on the long road towards political success. Everything came to an end with the first Soviet occupation of the Lithuanian Republic, when Zionist organizations in Lithuania were declared reactionary and counter-revolutionary, harmful to the state. In Soviet propaganda Zionists were ‘bourgeois nationalists’ and toadies of ex-president Antanas Smetona. All political, professional, cultural, sports, educational, and social organizations of the Zionists were closed. The teaching of Hebrew was forbidden and the Zionist press banned. In addition, the Zionist leaders were repressed, whether sent to prison or exiled. And the socialist part of the ideology of the Zionist socialists was of little help to them at the end. Translated from the Lithuanian by Albina Strunga

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Jewish Converts in Independent Lithuania, 1918-1940 An Attempt at a Case Analysts SAULIUS KAUBRYS ACCORDING to the first census of the Lithuanian population carried out on 17 September 1923 there were thirty confessional groups of different faiths in the country. It was noted in the summary of the results that ‘almost all Jews in Lithuania are of the Israelite faith, except for thirty-five who do not follow Judaism, of whom fifteen are Evangelical Lutherans, eight Karaites, seven Catholics, three Orthodox

believers, and two Evangelical Reformists’;! according to the census, there were altogether 155,125 individuals of the Jewish faith in Lithuania. At the same time, the neighbouring Polish Jewish community differed from the Jews of Lithuania and Latvia in this respect: in the Polish census of 1921, only 73.8 per cent of all Jews in Poland identified themselves as Jews in terms of religion, suggesting that the Lithuanian Jewish community was significantly more conservative. In the period under discussion, conversion took place on only a small scale in the Jewish community by comparison with other religious groups. In 1929, for instance, in the Panevezys diocese forty-one adherents of the Russian Orthodox faith, eleven Evangelical Lutherans, five Calvinists, four Old Believers, two non-believers, and one Muslim converted to Roman Catholicism, but no Jews did.? An analysis of the periodical press (semi-official and regional) indicates that in 1923 only seven Jews converted to Catholicism in the whole of Lithuania. The principal motive for con-

version among Jews seems to have been the desire to marry a Catholic partner, although other personal factors also sometimes played a role. It is known that in 1937

the ethnic makeup of women in mixed marriages, as a percentage of all married women living in Lithuanian towns, was as follows: 34.1 per cent Russian, 8.5 per cent German, 2.0 per cent Lithuanian, and 0.1 per cent Jewish.? By comparison, in Latvia in the same year the extent of mixed marriages was as follows: 839 Jewish men

had married Jewish women, five had married German women, four had married 1 Lietuvos gyventojat: Pirmojo 1923 m. rugséjo 17 d. visuotino gyventojy surasymo duomenys (Kaunas,

1925), p. xl. ; 2 ‘Panevézys’, Panevezio balsas, 16 Jan. 1930. 3 A. VySniauskaité, P. Kalnius, and R. Paukstyté-Sakniené, Lietuviy seima ir paprociat (Vilnius, 2008), 245.

230 Saulius Kaubrys Latvian women, one had married a Lithuanian woman, and two had married women of other or unknown nationalities; fourteen Jewish women had married Latvians, three had married Russians, one had married a German, one had married a Pole, and one had married a man of unknown nationality.* In Estonia, mixed-marriage data for the early 1930s show that after the E'stonians, the Jews were the most endogamous group; indeed, in the period 1932-5, 93 per cent of Jewish women and 85 per cent of Jewish men had married Jews.° Paragraph 24 of the first constitutional act of independent Lithuania, the provisional constitution of 1918, states that in the field of legal regulation, ‘where no new laws have been published by the Lithuanian state, the laws that existed prior to the war [of 1914] still apply temporarily’, provided they ‘do not contravene the founding principles of the provisional constitution’. This paragraph reflected both the desire of the legislators of the Lithuanian state to adjust to existing circumstances by adapting pre-war laws to the specifications of Lithuanian law, given that ‘there was no one body of pre-war legislation that applied to the entire Lithuanian territory’, and their desire to create a new, national body of legislation.© In most of the territory of the Lithuanian state (the former Vilna and Kaunas provinces of the tsarist period), there was no civil marriage, and the religious form of marriage was determined by the civil laws of the former Russian empire.‘ In the Suvalkija area, which had been part of the Kingdom of Poland, there was also no civil marriage, and the conditions for religious marriage were determined by the 1836 Law on Marriage; in the city and district of Palanga, and in a small part of the Zarasai district (which belonged to the province of Kurland during the tsarist period), there was also no civil marriage, and religious marriage was governed by the Digest of Civil Laws of the Baltic Provinces.® These different laws laid down both requisite conditions for entering into a marriage (age, being physically capable, consensual agreement, and receipt of permission) and disqualifying conditions (partners being of different confessions, already being in

a legally valid marriage, having entered a monastery or convent or having been ordained beyond a certain level of priesthood, having committed a crime, incidence of incest within one’s own family or on the side of the in-laws confirmed by canon law, and violation of any rules of social morality).? The Digest of Laws stipulated that 4 Anon., “The Jews of Latvia, 1919—1940’, in J. Steimanis (ed.), History of Latvian Jews, trans. H. Belova (New York, 2002), 183.

5 T. Parming, ‘The Jewish Community and Inter-Ethnic Relations in Estonia, 1918-1940’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 10 (1979), 253-5. 6 V. Andriulis et al., Lietuvos teisés istorija (Vilnius, 2002), 312-13.

” Svod zakonov Rosstiskoi Imperu, x, pt. 1 (St Petersburg, 1887); ix, bk. 2 (St Petersburg, 1876); x1, pt. 1 (St Petersburg, 1896). See J. Sideravicius, “Teisinis santuokos reguliavimas burzuazinéje Lietuvoje, 2: Religiné santuokos sudarymo forma’, Lietuvos TSR moksly akademios darbat, ser. A, 3 (64) (1978), 2.

8 Svod grazhdanskikh uzakonenii gubernii Pribaltuskikh, pt. 3 (Petrograd, 1915). See Sideravicius,

“Teisinis santuokos reguliavimas burzuazineje Lietuvoje, 2’, 52. , 9 J. Sideravicius, “Teisinis santuokos reguliavimas burZuazineje Lietuvoje, 3: Santuokos sudarymo santykinés materialinés salygos’, Lietuvos TSR moksly akademyos darbat, ser. A, 1 (70) (1980), 47.

Jewish Converts in Independent Lithuania, 1915-1940 231 ‘the marriage of Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholics with non-Christians, and Protestants with pagans, is strictly forbidden’.'° If this was violated, the marriage was declared legally invalid. A similar prohibition existed in the 1836 Law on Marriage. Confessional obstacles to marriage were also regulated by the Code of Canon Law (Codex juris canonict), which likewise resulted in an invalid marriage if violated.!! Similarly, confessional provisions for marriage prohibited the marriage of Jews to individuals who were not of the Judaic faith. !? This conservative system of legislation and canon law took precedence over the modern Lithuanian state’s constitution (in 1922, 1928, and 1938 the constitution of the Lithuanian state recognized freedom of conscience). It created major obstacles to the freedom of individuals in their personal life and did not provide mechanisms to resolve these problems. The purpose of this chapter is to assess the phenomenon of Jewish conversion to Catholicism (aptly named a phenomenon, because of the scarcity of such cases in

Lithuania) and to reveal the reactions of the ‘recipients’ (the Roman Catholic Church community) and the ‘donors’ (the Jewish communities) to this phenome-

non. This will be accomplished through the analysis of the press in inter-war Lithuania, both sem1-official (Lietuva, Lietuvos aidas) and regional (Suvalkietis, Ryty Lietuva, Zemaitiy prietelius, Panevéio balsas). In order to avoid the dangers inherent

in evaluating the information from these sources, which is characterized by onesidedness and preconceived ideas, the study will also adduce information for comparison derived from memoirs and historical works. +

THE CONVERSION OF JEWS TO CATHOLICISM IN THE LITHUANIAN PERIODICAL PRESS: A LIST OF CASES An analysis of the Lithuanian periodical press suggests that reports on the conversion of Jews and on its frequency are most likely accurate: given that such events were exceptional, they were subjected to more scrutiny. In contrast, conversion from Orthodox, Evangelical Lutheran, and other confessions to Catholicism went almost unnoticed. Clearly, in this context Jewish converts stood out. Announcements in the press about Jews who had converted to Catholicism were 10 Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperit, x, pt. 1, art. 85.

11 J. Sideravicius, “Teisinis santuokos reguliavimas burzuazinéje Lietuvoje, 4: Santuokos sudarymo absoliutinés materialines salygos’, Lietuvos TSR moksly akademyos darbat, ser. A, 2 (75) (1981), 36-7. 12 Tbid. 38.

13 Contemporary Lithuanian historiography maintains a code of silence on the sensitive issue of Jewish conversion. By contrast, Western, and particularly English-language, scholarship on this topic appears to be much richer, more interesting, and more comprehensive, as evidenced by the works cited in this chapter alone. See also T. M. Endelmann, ‘Memories of Jewishness: Jewish Converts and their Jewish Pasts, Jewish History and Jewish Memory’, in E. Carlebach, J. M. Efron, and D. N. Myers (eds.), Jewish Mistory and Jewish Memory: Essays in Honor of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (Hanover, NH, and London, 1998), 326.

- 232 Saulius Kaubrys predominantly short. In terms of the way the information was presented, one can make a distinction between those cases in which the structure is inverted (when the beginning of the text is important), and those with the normal structure (when the end of

the text is important).!+ The authors of these announcements are anonymous. The positioning of the text in the publication proved to be of no particular importance.

CASE I On 1 November 1920 in the Skaruliai parish church (Kaunas district), the ‘Roman Catholic baptism of the Jew Fabijonas Klibanskis’ took place, ‘who had served for two years in the state police. The baptized complained that he encountered much disapproval from his former co-believers, as if there were no freedom of conscience in Lithuania.’!®

This announcement in the semi-official newspaper Lietuva soon attracted a _ response: the editorial board of the paper printed a communication from the press division of the Ministry of Jewish Affairs, which was ‘very greatly interested in the issue’, based on an explanation received from the Jonava Jewish community council. According to the latter, in reply to your letter of the 6th inst. [6 August 1921] concerning Pabianas Klibanskis, we wish to inform you that Pabianas Klibanskis worked here as a carpenter before the war, and was married toa local woman, with whom he had four children. Once the war started, he was mobilized to the reserves, while his wife and four children were deported to Russia. Pabianas Klibanskis was in Feiva at the time, but immediately upon his return he entered the police force here, lived in a Christian family, accepted the Christian faith, and, as we heard, married a Christian. This event was of no interest to anyone from our community. There have been no occurrences where local Jews have sought to cause any offence to this man, even though he certainly earned many enemies through his behaviour as a policeman.

The letter goes on to explain how his abandoned wife and children are being supported by the community. As evidence that the community is behaving properly towards the man, it is mentioned that he is currently employed at a Jewish carpenter’s workshop, and an appeal is made to the author of the initial announcement to provide evidence of the ways in which Fabijonas Klibanskis is suffering persecution by the Jews. !®

CASE 2 On 26 August 1928, during the feast of St Bartholemew, the Jew Abromas Joffas (aged 37), his wife (28), and their five children were baptized at Girkalnis church and converted to the Roman Catholic faith. They were baptized by the Girkalnis

| parish priest, Fr. A. Gecius, with the participation of several other priests, twentyeight godparents, and (allegedly) several thousand Catholics. The announcement in Lietuvos aidas also claimed that 14 This classification of announcements is based on R. Marcinkevitiené, Zanro ribos ir paribiai: Spaudos patirtys (Vilnius, 2008), 103-5. 15 ‘Zinios is Lietuvos: Jonava’, Lietuva, 5 July 1921. 16 ‘Zinios i8 Lietuvos: Jonava’, Lietuva, 17 Aug. 1921.

Jewish Converts in Independent Lithuania, 1915-1940 233 Joffas was born in Utena and lived there until 1914. During the war he lived in Russia, and married in 1919. He is a shoemaker by trade, while his wife is a baker. He lived well, but was not happy, as during the Russian revolution he happened to witness many events which stirred up feelings of uncertainty in regard to confession. Joffas got hold of four gospels in the Jewish language and, comparing them with the Jewish Talmud, he found the main differences. All the Catholic rituals and Christian morals have already attracted this man for ten ~ years.17

CASE 3 On 25 May 1930 in the Kaunas suburb of Vilijampole a violent incident took place involving the recently settled Joffas family (husband, wife, and two children), who ‘had last year left the Jews and joined the Catholics and had been baptized . .. Now the Jews have attacked them, smashing their windows and ripping off Mrs Joffas’s scapular. The police have arrested several brawlers.’?®

CASE 4 On 4 October 1930 the 17-year-old Jewish girl Seraité, who had been born in Varniai, was baptized in ‘TelS1a1: The local parish priest and the housekeeper of the priests’ seminary acted as godparents. ‘The girl fell in love with a young man from Varniai and as a result lost her Jewish faith. They were married on 5 October. On the day of her baptism, her parents had arrived from Varniai. ‘They

had intended to stab her to death, but their attempt failed—only the girl’s clothing was ripped. Later, the daughter hid in the priests’ seminary building and did not show herself. 1°

This case was also described in an announcement in Zemaiciy prietelius: ‘She was baptized with a great sense of spiritual elation. She shed tears of happiness and emotion. On 5 October Seraité was married to 21-year-old Julijonas Benulis from the town of Varniai. The young couple appeared happy and content. God bless those taking the path of matrimony.’“° The announcement also states: “The Jews were enraged and were intent on finding a way to kidnap the girl. Her father in particular was furiously angry and even wanted to kill her. He tried to see her for one last time, but the daughter flatly refused, fearing his wrath.’?!

CASE 5

The Jew Estera Milneraité, aged 21, a resident of Krin¢inas (Birzai district), accepted the Catholic faith on 24 April 1931.7”

17 “Septyni zydai peréjo j katalikus’, Lietuvos aidas, 3 Sept. 1928. 18 “Zydai uzpuole persikrikstijusia Seima’, Zemaiciy prietelius, 5 June 1930. 19 ‘ApsikrikStijo zydaite’, Lietuvos aidas, 15 Oct. 1930. 20 ‘Zydé priemé kriksto sakramenta’, Zemaictiy prietelius, g Oct. 1930.

21 bid. 22 ‘Korespondencijos’, PanevéZio balsas, 14 May 1931.

234 Saulius Kaubrys CASE 6 It was most likely in the summer of 1931 (the announcement appeared in the press on 2 August) that a girl from Varniai converted from the Jewish faith to Catholicism. She accepted the Catholic

faith (was baptized) in Vilkaviskis, and has lived in the Alvitas, Lankeliskiai, and other parishes. The father, until lately, was apparently unaware of what had happened with his daughter. It is only in recent days that, with the help of local Jews, he has searched Alvitas and Lankeliskiai, demanding to see his daughter. The convert is aged 17 and does not want to see her father, as she fears his wrath. She says she will meet with him once he too has accepted the Catholic faith. It is said that the father hails from a rabbinic family, and would be severely punished for accepting another faith. He says he has no desire to see his daughter,

but is searching for her under the coercion of other Jews. The daughter understands her father’s unfortunate situation and expresses her sympathy, but at the same time says she could not have acted otherwise, as she had thought about the Catholic faith since she was a young girl and accepted it under no external duress. The girl is very pleasant, speaks Lithuanian fluently, and does not differ in any way from real Lithuanian girls.?°

CASE 7 | On 12 December 1931 in Kaunatavas (‘Telsiai district) ‘a young Jew, M.M.’ was baptized, having previously undertaken study of the catechism. ‘The baptism attracted

ereat interest among the community of believers, drawing even people of the

Orthodox faith: The local priest, dressed in a cape, first prayed at the high altar, then went to the main entrance and for a long time questioned the newcomer, praying for him and often making the sign of the cross. Finally he was led into the church and dressed in a white gown, and given Holy Communion (without confession). Four couples acted as godparents. After the baptism, the priest delivered a sermon to the newcomer and all those present.*#

CASE 8 In 1932 Ryty Lietuva printed an announcement in issue 13-14 about the daughter of a Jewish tailor from Ukmerge who had changed her confession and accepted Catholicism. G. Pekelis, who was a resident of Ukmerge at that time, later commented on the event: That young lady was my neighbour and her real name was Chava Shulman. Having married a Lithuanian man, she accepted Catholicism and was baptized Ieva [Eve]. Then they left to

settle in Giedraiciai. The active Jews denounced this behaviour, while the Lithuanians escorted the young couple to the station from where they departed for their new home. ‘The Catholics exclaimed that at least one had been brought onto the right path. That was the only case, as far as I can remember.?° 23 “Alvitas’, Suvalkietis, 2 Aug. 1931. 24 ‘Priémé katalikybe’, Zemaiciy prietelius, 17 Dec. 1931. 25 Based on an interview by Arkadijus Bliuminas of G. Pekelis, a resident of Ukmerge, 1999 (personal archive).

Jewish Converts in Independent Lithuania, 1915-1940 235 CASE 9 On 30 October 1932 in the Debeikiai Roman Catholic church, in the presence of a large crowd, a young, polite, well-educated Jewish girl was baptized Ona [Anne]. The local priest, Dean K. Mikelinskas, tutored her in religion and performed the baptism. Two coach-loads of people came to attend the baptism ceremony, which attracted many of the intelligentsia from Utena, who participated along with the local intelligentsia. Among the godparents were B. Urbanavicius and O. Baltuskiene, A. Kazlas and J. Barzdiene, J. PruSinskas and B. Kriaucitinaité, P. Mazuronis and S. Juozelskyte, and others. Parishioners both old and young filled the large, beautiful church to capacity. There were also Jews in attendance who followed the sacrament of baptism with interest. Having listened to mass, those who had taken part in the baptism were invited to the parish by the honourable dean for tea. During the festivities, there were many genuine good wishes, congratulations, and

speeches. A heartfelt and touching word of congratulation was spoken by Miss Paule Mazeikaité on behalf of the local Pavasarininkai [members of a Lithuanian Catholic youth organization]. The Pavasarininkai orchestra and choir entertained the newly baptized girl and the godparents with their music and songs. The guests departed late in the evening, but not before organizing a small collection amongst themselves for the Christian’s new start in life.26

CASE 10 On 29 October 1933 the following announcement appeared in Zemaitiy prietelius: A resident of the village of GorisSkes [Siauliai district], the Israelite Naika Leizeris, a 19-yearold male, took an interest in Catholic studies from an early age and made efforts to convert to the Catholic faith. Recently, he fell in love with a young Catholic lady from the village of

Padegliai and they plan to marry. Having found out this news, the Jews are in uproar and have taken to following him day and night. On one occasion he was seized, severely beaten, and locked in a cellar, but the police found out and he was released. Nevertheless, the Jews began to assault him even more often, attacking him both during the day and at night, but he was careful. Recently he travelled to Kurtuvénai to be baptized, but for some unknown reason he could not be baptized that day and was forced to stay overnight. That same night, the Jews captured him to take him home. On Saturday, disregarding the sabbath, they forced him onto a cart and set off for Siauliai. Having found out about this, the police stopped the group in

Siauliai, but after an inquiry, they returned Leizeris to the Jews. Leizeris, being nimble, escaped from them and ran away. On 5 October, Fr. Daukantas baptized him, and it has been heard that he is planning to marry a Catholic.?“

CASE II Most probably in early 1934, “The miller Joselis Tainavicius, a resident of the Zemaitkiemis eldership [Ukmergé district], accepted the Catholic faith. Now he is known as Juozapas Tainavicius. Tainavicius is now aged 70.’7° 26 “Pakrikstyta zydaite’, Ryty Lietuva, 17 Nov. 1932. 27 ‘Pakrik&tijo suaugusi Zyda’, Zemaiciy prietelius, 29 Oct. 1933. 28 ‘Ukmergés zinios’, Ryty Lietuva, 15 Feb. 1934.

236 Saulius Kaubrys CASE 12 On 15 April 1934 in the Krekenava church, after mass at an altar ornately decorated with fir trees and flowers, a public confession of the Roman Catholic faith was pronounced by a young lady of Jewish origin from Panevezys, who was initially of the Hebrew confession. Many had tears 1n their eyes at seeing and hearing the brave, public confession of the Church’s latest member! Her soul was cleansed with holy water from the hands of Fr. J. Nagulevicius. Well-known local individuals acted as her godparents. After the baptism, the same priest bestowed the sacrament of matrimony upon the young lady and a young man. It is noteworthy that during the entire Sunday morning gangs of local Jews protested near the pharmacist IvaSkevicius’s house (where the young lady who

had found the love of Christ was staying), abusing the convert in all manner of ways. Meanwhile, the convert, a true martyr and brave confessor of the faith, made the following response to her obstinate father and the entire crowd of fanatical Jews: ‘I have a Father in God, and I want to serve only Christ.’ The considerate actions of the local police sergeant, Mr Giedraitis, on this occasion cannot be kept a secret, who took the truly Catholic initiative of protecting the new Catholic from the excesses of her aggressors by granting her constitu-

tional immunity. This is the third such conversion in this parish within a thirty-year period.??

CASE 13 Most probably in early 1935, a Jewish girl from the town of UZzventis converted to the Catholic faith: The Jews began to persecute her and tried to dissuade her in all manner of ways, but she was still determined to run away some night. She started to gather her small items of clothing, but her mother noticed, and locked away her coat and shoes. ‘The house was immediately overrun by Jews, who began to discuss what should be done with the girl. She went outside with an escort, but got away and ran off over the gardens to another street, while the Jews gave chase. She hid herself in the dark of night. The Jews ran past her and proceeded to search the whole street. She spent a night in a shed hidden in the hay, and escaped to a safer place the following night, but the Jews came there as well. Then, one dark night, she fled across the fields and marshes to a faraway estate where she asked to be taken to a church and baptized.3°

CASE 14 | On 11 August 1935 the Marijampole newspaper Suvalkietis announced that “the rabbi is calling for criminal proceedings against a young Jewish lady, Levinaite, for deception, claiming that she was baptized without his knowledge when he had given

her as much as 25 litas so that she would not be baptized and would leave Marijampole altogether, but she cheated him’.?? 29 “Krekenavos apylinkeje’, Panevezio balsas, 22 Apr. 1934. 30 “Peréjo i kataliky tikéjima’, Zemaiciy prietelius, 5 Apr. 1935. 31 ‘Marijampole’, Suvalkietis, 11 Aug. 1935.

Jewish Converts in Independent Lithuania, 1915-1940 237 CASE 15 On s November 1937 in Silalé ‘a rare celebration took place—a young Jewish girl converted to the Catholic faith, who was previously a resident of Rietavas. On that day two full coach-loads of Jews from Rietavas arrived, wanting to talk her out of her decision.’?4

JEWS’ CONVERSION TO CATHOLICISM: THE CONTEXT OF THE TRANSITIONS AND THEIR COMPLEXITY The announcements about Jewish converts that appeared in the Lithuanian periodical press have a bipolar construction: they reflect the reactions first of the accepting side (the Roman Catholic Church, parishes, local communities), and then those of the ‘losing’ side (Jewish communities, Jewish families). In the presentation of information the reactions of those who favoured the conversion predominate, although some announcements do include the imagined reactions of both sides. Conversion is presented in a clear and unambiguous manner. The side accepting the converts is described in a positive light, as an open, honest space, filled with expressions of satisfaction and exaltation (‘the . . . choir entertained the newly bap-

tized girl and the godparents with their music and songs’). Jewish converts are described with a preconceived positive characterization (‘she had thought about the Catholic faith since she was a young girl’, ‘a young, polite, well-educated Jewish girl’,

‘Leizeris, being nimble’), and in isolated instances Jews are given marks of Lithuanian identity (the converting girl ‘is very pleasant, speaks Lithuanian fluently, and does not differ in any way from real Lithuanian girls’).

The reactions of the Jewish communities which the converts are leaving are almost always presented in the press in a negative light (‘ripping off Mrs Joffas’s scapular’, ‘the Jews began to persecute her’), and sometimes their behaviour is made | to appear criminal (‘he had earlier been shot at, but they missed, and now they have given him five blows to the head’, ‘the Jews began to assault him even more often’). The objects of the retaliation are the converting Jews themselves—that is, members of the receiving faith appear to avoid direct ‘attacks’. The consistency of the responses to conversion is also confirmed in memoirs. Thus a resident of Uzpalis, V. Meiduviene, recalls her brother’s wedding, which most probably took place in the 1930s: My brother Antanas Rudamina, a Lithuanian Catholic, befriended the beautiful Jewish girl Reiske Sliosbergaite. Their intentions were serious. Yet both of their immediate families and relatives, especially Reiske’s, were very much against marriage. Who knows how everything would have turned out had the young couple not run away during the night from Uzpalis to Utena? A converted Jewish lady lived in Utena who sheltered runaways and made

, 32 ‘Peréjo j kataliky bagnytia’, Zemaitiy prietelius, 18 Nov. 1937.

238 Saulius Kaubrys arrangements with the priest. In the church in Utena, ReisSke was baptized Roze, and their wedding took place on the same day—they wanted to take care of everything quickly.°?

As a comparison, memoirs from Daugavpils and the surrounding area in neighbouring Latvia also confirm the categorical disapproval of similar cases among Jewish communities: an estranged daughter was forbidden from participating 1n her mother’s burial ceremony at the cemetery; a married couple had stones thrown at them; a family was forced to settle elsewhere.** Memoirs acknowledge the existence of mixed marriages and preconceived intolerance, and give negative evaluations of the phenomenon. Thus, in Nemaks¢ciai _ , (Raseiniai district), Masha, the daughter of the Jew Zyvas, married Pranas Sveikauskas, the brother of the Nemaks¢iai school principal. The Jews attempted to obstruct this marriage, but failed.25 In Lyduvénai (Raseiniai district), Altké Smolyté was dating Feliksas Vaisnorius, who intended to marry her, but neither set of parents would give permission.*© The Jewish writer Jokiibas Josadé, recalling his youth and his first love, a Lithuanian girl, states that they avoided appearing tn public: “We had to hide, we were afraid! Not only of our parents and relatives, but of the other

townspeople as well... They made many threats, even physical . . . and only be- | cause I was a Jew, and she was a Lithuanian.’*” According to another memoir, by D. Nanartaviciené of ZieZmariai, ‘This fellow Salkauskas owned a bus with a Jew. He fell in love with that Jew’s daughter, and she was about to convert to Catholicism. Then the Jews took her away to Palestine.’*® The researcher of regional history Staseé Ratkeviciene, who collected the histories of the residents of Zasliai, claims that ‘One Lithuanian girl from the village of Zasliai dated and later married the Jew Dovitka; however, [they] subsequently had to leave, as the marriage angered both families.’*9

These recollections also bear witness to the complexity of converting to Catholicism but remaining unmarried. For example, a resident of the village of Vidukle, J. Stankeviciené, remembers that there was a Jew in the town, HirSovictus,

who had a sister who had converted to Catholicism: ‘She called herself Ona Levickaité. It appears that someone from the Levickis family taught her the Catholic truths. The Jews of Viduklé were very unhappy with her decision, but she ended up living peacefully, and no one bothered her.’*° 33S, Balditinas and V. Kuliesiene, UZpaliai: Miisy svajoniy krastas (Vilnius, 1999), 126. 34 T. Rochko, ‘Kholokost v vospriyatii sovremennikov’, in Vésture: Avots un cilvéki. Starptautiskas konferences ‘XV Zinatniskie lasijumi’ materiah, Vésture g (Daugavpils, 2006), 146-7. 35 A. Girtys, ‘Nemaks¢iu miestelio zydu bendruomenes likimas’, in L. Kantautiené (ed.), Raseiniy krasto Zydai: Dokumenty ir straipsniy rinkinys (Vilnius, 2004), 168. 36 T,. Petrylaité, ‘Lyduveéniskiai mena savo kaimynus Zydus’, in Kantautiené (ed.), Rasemniy krasto

gyda, 173. 37 Cited from L. Truska, Lietuviai ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos tki 1941 m. birgelio: Antisemitizmo

Lietuvoje raida (Vilnius, 2005), 121. | 38 R. Gustaitis, Kaistadoriy regiono Zydat (Kaisiadorys, 2006), 266. 39 Tbid. 40 A. Pocius, ‘Viduklés Zydy bendruomené€ ir jos likimas’, in Kantautiené (ed.), Raseinty krasto Zydat, 220.

Jewish Converts in Independent Lithuania, 1915-1940 239 We cannot discount the possibility that in areas of a lesser concentration of Jews, cases of ‘deciding’ to convert may have taken on a more subtle form. For example,

according to the canon of the Panemune parish (Panevézys diocese, Rokiskis deanery), A. Liepinis, his parish had until the Second World War been purely Lithuanian, except for a few Polish and four Jewish families, and ‘while living among

Lithuanian Catholics, the young Jews would gradually grow up to become Lithuanian and Catholic... and marry Lithuanian girls (e.g. the Poviloniai and Anupraiciai families)’.41 The construction of this statement would appear to suggest a ‘peaceful’ transition. The exceptional character of Jewish conversion, as evidenced in the Lithuanian periodical press (“This 1s the third such conversion in this parish within a thirty-year period’), is also confirmed in contemporary Lithuanian regional historiography. For example, the historian Rytas TamaSauskas, who examined the parish register of the Dotnuva Roman Catholic church for the years 1714-1940, also claims to have found only fifteen cases of Jewish baptism.*? In the inter-war period, it appears that there was only one baptism here: on g August 1940 Fr. Matusevicius baptized Ignacas Girkantas, born in 1906 in the village of Kuliai I (Skuodas eldership, Kretinga district). His parents were the Jews Mausha Presas, then aged 70, son of Beinis, and Rocha Kleinmanaité, aged 75, who were merchants.*? In Nemunaitis (Alytus district), Aizikas Grockis wanted to convert to Catholicism in 1934 and appealed to the bishop of Kaisiadoriai regarding this matter, who instructed the Nemunaitis parish priest: ‘once he has been properly prepared, baptize the suppliant and enter him in the Nemunaitis register of parishioners. While carrying out this matter, please refer

to canon 1220 and the further provisions in order to settle affairs with his wife. I leave it to you to decide whether the suppliant’s intentions are genuine.’*4 This single attempt to convert in the community was considered a major event. In some cases the announcements also served to publish rumour,*° thereby advancing a certain interpretation of events and heightening speculation. The witnesses of collective memory ‘learn to live with’ the history of the rumour and accept

it as fact, gradually recording it as ‘long-term memory’. Thus the present-day witness V. Zemaityté claims in her recollections of the Anyk&¢iai Jews that ‘It appears that the Jews were most afraid that one of their own would be baptized, and 41 Kk. Paltarokas (ed.), Panevézio vyskupija: Istoriniai duomenys, pastoraciné veikla (Vilnius, 1998), 443.

42 R. TamaSauskas, ‘Istoriniai etiudai apie Dotnuvos Zydu bendruomene (X VIII-XX a.)’, Akademija

(Kédainiai, 2005), 25-8. 43 Tbid. 27. 44S. Jegelevitius, Nemunaitis ir jo parapija: Nemunaicio parapijos 380-osioms metinéms, 2 vols. (Vilnius, 2002), 11. 1331-2.

45 A rumour, as one of the elements of informal communication, often arises in situations in which the unfolding events directly affect the interests of an individual (or group) and are characterized by lack of explicit information or cognitive uncertainty. For more on this, see V. Pruskus, Neformalios komunikacyos ritualai: Gando sandara, socialine organizacya ir sklaida (Vilnius, 2007), 7.

240 Saulius Kaubrys those who actually were faced severe punishment: scalding-hot water would be poured down their throats, almost making their eyes pop out.’4© An analysis of the content of the announcements would indicate that mixed marriages always involved the conversion of one spouse (the Jew) to Catholicism. Generally, the legitimacy of such marriages in the period being discussed would most likely have been an object of debate, as the Supreme Tribunal of Lithuania in its annual general meeting on 7 November 1939 ‘deliberated article 91 of the Law on Courts and raised the question: is a marriage of the Jewish confession deemed no

- longer valid without being annulled in accordance with the provisions of that confession, 1f one of the spouses converts to Catholicism and marries a Catholic?’ The meeting confirmed that ‘Marriages performed according to the provisions of the Holy See and article 15 of the Concordat of the Republic of Lithuania, following the guidelines of the Code of Canon Lam, are declared legitimate in the eyes of the State’, and that, “based on these provisions, it must be admitted that even marriages where

one spouse is a Jew who has converted to Catholicism and married a Catholic in accordance with the Code of Canon Law are legitimate in the eyes of the State’.4’ But it also held: however, the question of whether the marriage has been performed following the guidelines of the Code of Canon Law is a matter for Church law, the resolution of which rests with the Church court, and thus until the Church court finds otherwise, it must be held that the marriage has been performed in accordance with the guidelines of the Code of Canon Law. This marriage is declared legitimate in the eyes of the State even if it is no longer deemed so in the provisions of the Jewish confession, since judging by articles 81 and 871, vol. x, pt. 1, of the Civil Law, and article 207 of the 1850 Law on Marriages it must be concluded that a marriage between individuals of the Jewish confession, where one converts to Catholicism, is declared void according to the provisions of the Christian religious court, but not by the provisions of the Jewish confession, as it is obvious that the religious court of the Jewish confession cannot determine whether the spouse who remains of the Jewish confession obstructs the Christian convert spouse from carrying out the duties of their new religion.*®

The Supreme Tribunal accepted the conclusion that ‘in light of what has been said, and based on article g1 of the Law on Courts, the Supreme Tribunal, having listened to the opinion of the procurator [J. Valcys], has decided to respond to the said question in the affirmative’—that is, a marriage of the Jewish confession is deemed invalid, without being declared so by the provisions of that confession, if one of the spouses converts to Catholicism and marries an individual of the Catholic faith. Taking Germany as a point of comparison, the 1874 provisions for civil marriage ceremonies did not oblige newly-weds to convert. For example, in Breslau from the 18gos until the mid-1g20s, the proportion of all Jewish marriages that were mixed grew from g per cent to 39 per cent (reaching 53 per cent during the First World 46 See R. Vanagas, Nenusigrezk nuo saves: Gyvieji tiltai (Vilnius, 1995), 99. 47 Decision of the Supreme Tribunal of Lithuania, 7 Nov. 1939: Lietuvos centrinis valstybés archy-

vas, Vilnius (hereafter LCVA), f. 1422, ap. 1, b. 43, fo. 15. 48 Tbid.

Jewish Converts in Independent Lithuania, 1915-1940 241 War), yet out of ‘approximately 350° mixed marriages recorded in 1905-20, only twenty Jews converted to Christianity. The opposite trend was also observed—for example, in Silesia during the two decades from 1880, forty-six Protestants (men and women) converted to Judaism; in 1900-18 the figure was eighty, and in 1918— 27 it was fifty-two.*? The highest level of conversion in Europe in the early twentieth century was recorded in Vienna, where from 1888 to 1937 altogether 34,455

individuals left the Kultusgemeinde; about three-quarters of them joined the Catholic or Protestant church communities, while most of the remainder chose to be ‘of no confession’.°° Inevitably, some Jewish mixed marriages (which were most probably associated with conversion to Catholicism) followed their own course. For example, 1n 1935 in Marijampole the case of the young Jewish lady FinkelSteinaite attracted much attention. According to a notice published on 17 February, Grineviciené-Finkelsteinaite’s case, which has been the focus of much discussion in the city, will be heard in court on 5 March. The case has been raised over 12,000 litas which her father placed in her name in the bank as a dowry, but as she married a Lithuanian, that money has not been granted to her. By now this case, having reached the level of a sensation, has become of great interest especially among the Jewish population; on the day of the hearing, the court will be packed with curious onlookers.*?

The case was resolved through the father’s reconciliation with his daughter, granting her 9,000 litas.°? It is assumed that Miss Finkelstein’s marriage to a Lithuanian was most likely an unprecedented instance of starting a family not only with a foreigner, but with someone of a different (Catholic?) confession. It is clear that the issue of apostasy in mixed marriages is only one aspect of the general relationship with Catholicism. Consider the rather unusual case reported in 1936 in Lietuvos aidas of Meisha Levinas, a resident of Ukmerge, who before passing away had bequeathed his great wealth to his long-serving maid, Zofia Griskeviciene,

instead of leaving it as an inheritance for his relatives or the Jewish community: M. Levinas had little to do with his co-nationals, the Jews. Returning to Ukmerge after the war, he broke off all ties with the Jewish community and even avoided using the Jewish language. Asa result, in recent times he had come to be known as a ‘pulzydek’—a half-Jew. His will and testament specified that 15,000 litas in hard currency, and promissory notes to the value of 65,000 litas, should be left to his maid of many years, Zofija Griskeviciene, while his relatives inherited his large brick house on the condition that they would honour the promissory notes. Z. Griskeviciené is a widow and had served M.L. for many years. Having formalized the documents, she called a doctor, who issued a certificate attesting that M.L. was fully aware of his actions. Then she claimed from the bank the 15,000 litas bequeathed to her. 49 T. van Rahden, ‘Intermarriages, the “New Woman”, and the Situational Ethnicity of Breslau Jews from the 1870s to the 1920s’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 46 (2001), 130, 147-8. 60 G. Stourzh, ‘An Apogee of Conversions: Gustav Mahler, Karl Kraus and jin de siécle Vienna’, Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, 3 (2004), 50, 68.

ol ‘Marijampole’, Suvalkietis, 17 Feb. 1935. 62 ‘Marijampole’, Suvalkietis, 10 Mar. 1935.

242 Saulius Kaubrys When the Jewish community discovered all this, they were ina grand uproar as to why M.L.

had not left his wealth to the Jews. A telegram was sent to Cuba, urging a relative of M.L. who lived there to come immediately to Ukmerge. Another relative made enquiries with the necessary bodies to allow further consultation with doctors who could give assurance

, that M.L. had not lost his mind. The Jews believe that even if M.L. was fully aware of his actions, his behaviour, leaving his riches to a Catholic, was nevertheless not Jew-like.°?

Later, it was stated that the local Jewish community was not satisfied with Levinas’s

testament and was demanding more than 1,000 litas for his cemetery plot, but GrisSkeviciené did not agree to this, and as no one else took care of the burial, she decided to bury him in the Catholics’ cemetery: ‘In addition to a large crowd of Catholics present at the funeral, there were also many Jews. After the funeral cere| mony, a Jewish funeral carriage arrived at the Catholic burial place. They wanted to re-bury the deceased in the Jewish cemetery, but the gatekeeper did not grant them entry into the Catholic cemetery.’°* The announcements appearing in the pages of the Lithuanian periodical press on conversion cases did not in general reflect the official attitudes of the government, yet isolated cases reveal that these attitudes were not static. ‘Thus it is known that the Department of Internal Security, in its bulletin of 14 February 1928 addressed to district governors, (secretly) noted that ‘the Jews in various districts are performing the play Moshke Khazer. As the play causes Jews to become hostile to Catholics

. . . please stop them from performing it.’°° It appears that this precaution was inspired by information received from agents. Agent ‘Keleivis’, in particular, informed his superiors on 6 February 1928 about this play, stating that it was ‘agitational, and severely embitters Jewish society against Catholics. I happened to overhear some Jews returning from seeing the play, and they were terribly angry at the

“soyim” (non-Jews). The content of this play apparently ridicules the baptized Moshe Khazer (the swine), and the “goyim”.’°® It is also noticeable that information appearing in the press about Jews converting to Catholicism was anonymous, and was silent on the state of the converts after their transition. It is likely that their crises of identity°’ were not immediately and simply resolved following their conversion, while a return to the Jewish existence would have been accompanied by feelings of guilt and doubt.°® In addition, when whole families converted to Catholicism, the upheaval of spiritual transition and the crises brought about by the change will most probably have affected individuals variably: 53 Lietuvos aidas, 1936, no. 250; emphasis original. 54 Lietuvos aidas, 1936, no. 254. 55 Department of Internal Security bulletin to district governors, 14 Feb. 1928: LCVA, f. 377, ap. 5,

b. 170, fo. 123. °6 Report of colleague ‘Keleivis’, 6 Feb. 1928: ibid. 122. 57 For example, it is thought that the increase in the number of mixed marriages and conversions in Weimar Germany correlated with a decrease in religious practice. See A. J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens not Darken? The ‘Final Solution’ in History (London and New York, 1990), 44.

58 For more on the emotions felt by Jewish converts to Christianity, see V. Ariel, ‘Migration and Conversion: Jewish Converts to Christianity in America at the Turn of the 20th Century’, Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, 3 (2004), 71-87.

Jewish Converts in Independent Lithuania, 1915-1940 243 the gradual growth experienced at different rates by different family members may have caused division 1n the converted family unit.

IN PLACE OF A CONCLUSION The Lithuanian periodical press as a source of information on Jewish conversions is rather contradictory, in terms of both form and content. Conversions of females predominate in the writings, which contrast the positive reaction to such events from the Catholic side and the hostile responses of the Jews. Memories of the everyday lives of Jews bear witness to the degree of antipathy between them and their neighbours. The complexity of Jewish conversion to Catholicism is confirmed indirectly by evidence of how Catholics of Jewish and non-Jewish origin coexisted. The analysis of the micro-topic of mixed marriage and the conflicts arising from it is clearly related to the hostile symbiosis of Jews and Lithuanians, above all in smaller towns, in the inter-war period. The phenomenon of conversion sent society a message about the barriers between the two communities, which were not diminished by the individual cases in which they were crossed. The relationship between the state majority (Lithuanians) and the minority Jewish community was fundamentally determined by the conservative legacy of the past, the different historical experiences of the two sides, and differences in the expression of identity. The conditions of independence might have been expected to challenge this conservatism, yet even in this context the phenomenon of Jewish conversion remained static and inherently conservative. Translated from the Lithuanian by Albina Strunga

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‘A Close, but Very Suspicious and Dangerous Neighbour’ 5 Outbreaks of Antisemitism in

Inter-War Lithuama VLADAS SIRUTAVICIUS DESPITE the fact that daily intercourse between Jews and Lithuanians was inescapable in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the mindset of Lithuanian peasants the Jew was part of the foreign, non-Christian world and ought to be avoided. Religious motives (such as the alleged use of Christian blood by Jews) dominated in the formation of this negative image in the peasantry’s imagination. Jews were also disdained by the Lithuanian intelligentsia and were considered to be a factor hindering the emerging modernization of Lithuanian society. The first expressions of modern—racist—antisemitism in Lithuania also date from this time.! It should be noted too that in the period under consideration there were few major anti-Jewish riots in Lithuania, which was almost completely bypassed by the wave of pogroms that flooded the Russian empire in 1881-2. This does not, of course, mean that there were absolutely no outbreaks of violence against Jews.” 1 V. Sirutavicius, ‘Kataliky Bazny¢cia ir modernaus lietuviy antisemitizmo geneze’, Lietuviy kataliky mokslo akademijos metrastis, 14 (1999), 69-77; id., ‘Lietuvos zydy bendruomenés integracijos problemos

XIX—XX a.’, Kultiros barai, 2002, no. 2, pp. 83-7; id., ‘Vincas Kurdirka’s Programme for Modernizing Society and the Problems of Forming a National Intelligentsia’, Lithuanian Historical Studies, 5 (2000), 109—12; id., ‘Notes on the Origin and Development of Modern Lithuanian Antisemitism in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century’, in

A. Nikzentaitis, S. Schreiner, and D. Stalitinas (eds.), The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews (Amsterdam, 2004), 61-72; L. Truska and V. Vareikis, Holokausto prielaidos: Antisemitizmas Lietuvoje

XIX a. antroji puse—1g41 m. birgelis (Vilnius, 2004), 21-68. The phrase quoted in the title of this chapter encapsulates the viewpoint of Bishop Motiejyus Valancius as expressed in his Paaugusiy Zmoniy

knygele (1868), and represents an attitude widespread among the Lithuanian public of the inter-war period. 2 There are records of pogroms taking place in the town of Prienai in the Suwalki province in 1882. In 1900 some twenty violent clashes between Jews and Lithuanians were recorded in the Panevézys and Siauliai districts in the north of Lithuania. Similar events took place in Dusetai during the 1905 revolution, and somewhat later in Buivydiskes. Outbreaks of violence between Lithuanians and Jews also

occurred during the initial stages of the formation of the state, for example in 1919 in Ukmerge and Panevezys. In 1920 in Vabalninkai a crowd of about 800 conscripts looted nine Jewish shops. For more

246 Vladas Strutavicius What trends characterize Lithuanian antisemitism in the period after the establishment of independence? What factors influenced Lithuanian antisemitism in the inter-war period? Before answering these questions, some general observations should first be made that can give insights into them.® First, with the re-establishment of the state after the First World War, Lithuanians became the politically dommant ethnic group, while Jews retained ethnic minority status. But even though Jews were a minority group in the Lithuanian nation state and had only very limited leverage on the country’s politics, they still held relatively important social and economic positions. The Lithuanians, however, were unwilling to accept this situation. As a result, various Lithuanian social organizations were formed that not only actively tried to strengthen ‘national consciousness’ or to nationalize the state, but also aimed to combat ‘foreigners’, opposing the ‘negative’ influences of ethnic minorities. Among these organizations were the paramilitary Riflemen’s Union (Sauliu sayunga) and the Lithuanian Businessmen’s Union (Lietuviy verslininky sajunga), both of which published periodicals featuring anti-Jewish material. Another circumstance that influenced Lithuanian—Jewish relations is also important to note: although Lithuanian culture formally became dominant in the new national state, for the most part it did not appeal to ethnic minorities, Jews among them. This attitude was determined primarily by one factor: the basis of Lithuanian culture was peasantoriented, and being thus primarily a local and provincial culture, it had low prestige in the eyes of the Jewish and Polish minorities. This does not, of course, mean that Lithuanian culture was completely closed off to outsiders or that it was not influenced by general European trends. Nevertheless, to Poles, Jews, and Germans it seemed provincial. It is also no coincidence that in the Lithuanian press Jews were blamed for transmitting foreign culture, as Jews felt more comfortable with the Russian culture and language.* Finally, even before the revival of statehood, Lithuanians’ attitudes towards ethnic minorities, including Jews, were divided; or, put simply, more negative than

positive. Once the state was established, this trend only strengthened. In the Lithuanian public space, it was commonplace to doubt the loyalty of ethnic minorities to the nation state. Minorities were often described as hostile (especially Poles, because of the conflict with Poland) or selfish, conceited, and unconcerned about forming a strong Lithuanian state (this was a more typical description of Jews). It

may thus be said that having fought for and won their political independence, on this, see V. Sirutavicius and D. Staliiinas (eds.), Kai ksenofobya virsta prievarta: Lietuviy ir Zydy santykiy dinamika XIX a.—XX a. pirmojoje puseze (Vilnius, 2005), L. Truska, Lietuviat ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos tki 1941 m. birgelio: Antisemitizmo Lietuvoje raida (Vilnius, 2005), 78.

3 Liudas Truska has written probably the most systematic account of the details of Lithuanian antisemitism from 1918 to 1940. See Truska, Lietuviai ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos tki 1941 m. birzeho, to5—

II, 132-95. 4 The Lithuanian press and the dominant attitudes expressed in it towards Jews are analysed by L. Venclauskas, ‘Moderniojo lietuvisko antisemitizmo genezé ir raida (1883-1940 m.)’, Ph.D. diss. (Vytautas Magnus Univ., Kaunas, 2008).

‘A Close, but Very Suspicious and Dangerous Neighbour’ 247 Lithuanians still had to consolidate their economic and cultural domination within the state. The nurturing of national culture and national consciousness was probably the most important objective of the nation state. Similar trends were common in other central European countries, often referred to as nationalizing states. In Lithuania, in contrast to other new central European nation states, no new laws were introduced that were in any way formally directed against Jews (as, for example, the numerus clausus was in Poland). However, attempts were definitely made to reduce and limit the role and influence of Jews on the economy and state politics. As elsewhere in central Europe, the formation of political and social organizations was based on national principles. Few foreigners or Jews were members of the most important Lithuanian political parties; those who were had insignificant roles.° This

statement does not of course apply to the underground Lithuanian Communist Party (Lietuvos komunistu partija), of which Jews comprised a considerable part of

the membership. Until the coup of December 1926, when Antanas Smetona’s authoritarian regime was introduced, Jews participated in elections to the Seimas (parliament) on separate national lists. During the elections to the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania in 1920, of all the ethnic minority groups, Jews received the most votes—and this was for the only Jewish political organization to take part in the elections, the Jewish Popular Union (Zydu liaudies susivienijimas), which received 44,709 votes; six Jewish deputies were elected.° During the elections to the First Seimas in 1922, even more ballots were cast in favour of the Jewish political

parties (a little over 55,000 votes), but only three Jewish deputies were elected because of the nature of the electoral system.’ Seven Jewish representatives were elected to the Second Seimas in 1923, thanks to the fact that the ethnic minorities (Jews, Germans, Russians, and Belarusians) established a common list that received © During the 1920 elections to the Constituent Assembly, there was one Jew on the party list of National Progress (Tautos pazanga), led by Antanas Smetona. It appears that this was unique in the history of Lithuanian political parties (and, incidentally, the party was not elected to the Seimas). Another example is afforded by the ‘patriotic’ paramilitary Riflemen’s Union. According to its founding statutes of 1919, ‘all Lithuanian citizens’ were able to become members. It admitted non-Lithuanians

too, but required that they have Lithuanian-language skills. However, in 1922 it was announced that the organization was henceforth open only to those of ‘pure Lithuanian blood’. The government’s influence on it also continued to grow, and the union gradually became a structure that united officials across the board. 6 For more on this, see V. Sirutavicius, ‘Lithuanian Administration and the Participation of Jews in

the Elections to the Constituent Seimas’, in V. Sirutavicius and D. Stalitinas (eds.), 4 Pragmatic Alhiance: Jewish—Lithuanian Political Cooperation at the Beginning of the 20th Century (Budapest and New

York, 2011), 181-205.

“ The new electoral law allowed the electoral commission to favour stronger, i.e. Lithuanian, party lists. In fact, it was not only Jews who were losers under the new electoral law: the changes had a much

greater impact on Poles and on smaller Lithuanian parties. See S. Kaubrys, “Tautiniy mazumy dalyvavimas rinkimuose 1 Lietuvos Respublikos Seima 1920-1926 m.: Kiekybiniy charakteristiky projekcija’, Parlamento studios: Mokslo darbai, 2005, no. 4, p. 131; L. Truska, Antanas Smetona tr jo laikai (Vilnius, 1996), 146.

248 Vladas Sirutavictus a majority of the ethnic minority vote (100,480 votes in total);° in the elections to the Third Seimas in 1926, such a broad coalition was not formed, and Jews won mandates for just three deputies. When Smetona dissolved the Seimas in 1927, Jewish politicians in practice lost the opportunity to participate in or at least to try to influence Lithuania’s national politics. It should again be noted that this situation affected not only Jews, but other Lithuanian parties too, except for the nationalists. In the early days of the Lithuanian state, Jews played an active role in local selfgovernment, primarily in the cities. At this time, 1918-20, the percentage of Jews on city councils ranged from about 15 per cent to at least twice that proportion. For example, in 1918 various Jewish parties held twenty-two seats on the Kaunas city council, which amounted to 31 per cent of all council members. Only the Poles held more seats.” Jews usually formed a separate faction on city councils, irrespective of whether there was one or several lists in the elections.‘° This political activity by Jews, based on national principles, frequently met with the opposition of the local Lithuanian population.'! With the changes to the law on municipalities introduced in 1929 and 1931, Jewish representation on local self-governing bodies in city and district councils fell sharply. In 1934, for example, the number of Jews elected to six district councils fell to only forty-six out of a total of 1,929 councillors.!? This does not mean that provisions in the laws directly discriminated against Jews. The new laws simply aimed to reduce the numbers of voters: with the introduction of the property qualification, voting rights existed only for farm and enterprise owners and civil servants of various levels. The more important circumstance to note is that eovernment-appointed administrators—district governors—began to play a much more significant role in elections.!? They had great influence on the selection of candidates, the formation of the local administration, and the appointment of officials. These officials often had autonomous powers and it was in practice their decision that determined whether an individual became a municipal servant or not. This obviously reduced the opportunities for Jews to pursue political careers, since Jews were not favoured by the district governors.

There were in effect no Jews in the executive or bureaucratic apparatus. Lithuanian historiography does record that at the very beginning of the formation _ of the state several Jews were appointed as senior ministerial officials and participated in the preparation of the 1922 Lithuanian constitution or were appointed to sit on various commissions of the Seimas. Yet these were isolated occurrences, and subsequently quite the reverse trend became more and more apparent, with the

m.’, 125—42. ;

8 Kaubrys, “Tautiniy maZumy dalyvavimas rinkimuose j Lietuvos Respublikos Seima 1920-1926 9 A. Morkitinaitée-Lazauskiené, Lietuvos Respublikos savivaldybiy raida 1915-1920 m. (Siauliai, 2007),

265-71. 10 Truska, Lietuviai ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos iki 1941 m. birgelio, 66. 11 A. Morkinaité-Lazauskiené, ‘Interesai ir konfliktai: Vietinés savivaldos kirimas 1918-1919 metais’, Darbai ir dienos, 34 (2003), 20-5; Venclauskas, ‘Moderniojo lietuvisko antisemitizmo geneze ir

raida’, 151-2. 12 Truska, Lietuviat ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos iki 1941 m. birzelio, 106—7. 13 'Truska, Antanas Smetona ir jo latkai, 200-1.

‘A Close, but Very Suspicious and Dangerous Neighbour’ 249 Lithuanian political class and ruling elite dissociating themselves from Jews. In 1934, just 477 of the 35,200 municipal and state civil servants were Jewish, a number that

included 290 teachers from Jewish schools (thus, excluding teachers, Jewish civil servants made up less than 1 per cent of all the civil servants of the state). A similar situation existed in the ministries, the police force, and the military. In the mid1930s, only nine out of 1,800 civil servants in the Ministry of Defence were Jews; in , the Ministry of the Interior, it was only five out of 5,600; in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, just three out of 162; in the police force, two out of 3,600; and in the military, there was only one Jewish officer among 1,300.'* One might suggest that a language

problem discouraged Jews from seeking a civil service career, as the civil service required Lithuanian-language skills. However, the selection of personnel usually rested on political, party, or personal loyalties. Keeping in mind that there were almost no Jews in political or party structures, and that their loyalty to the nation state was questioned, it followed that there were practically no opportunities for them to pursue a career in this field.

Similar trends existed in economic policy. It could be claimed that the Lithuanian government protected—that is, supported—Lithuanian business and tried to build up a class of Lithuanian entrepreneurs. Asa result, economic policies restricted and minimized Jewish influence in business. Both the government and Lithuanian businessmen saw the limitation of Jewish influence in business as a positive move that would strengthen the nation state. Thus, in its economic policies,

the Lithuanian government, ‘in trying to tackle the task of overcoming the backwardness it had inherited from its forefathers, essentially had to manoeuvre between indirect discrimination of Jews and positive support for Lithuanians’.!° Among the examples of this ‘indirect discrimination and positive support’ was the requirement introduced by the government in the mid-1920s that all account-keeping for businesses was to be conducted only in the state language, Lithuanian. However, many

Jewish craftsmen and small-scale traders found it very difficult to adhere to this requirement, as the majority of them had not learnt the language. Such a law created

unequal conditions for businesses, placing Lithuanians at an advantage. In other words, although formally the law did not directly target Jews specifically, preference was nevertheless given to Lithuanian businessmen, and hefty fines were imposed on those who disobeyed the law.!® Further, it should be noted that such instances of 14 Lietuvos statistikos metrastis, vii (Kaunas, 1934), 302-7; Truska, Lietuviat ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos ki 1941 m. birzelio, 107. 1 G. Vaskela, Lietuva 1939-1940 metais: Kursas i valstybes reguliuojama ekonomikg (Vilnius, 2002), 176.

16 PD. Levin, Trumpa Zydy istorija Lietuvoje (Vilnius, 2000), 98-9. To give another example, in 1933 the government introduced a system of permits for enterprises that provided public transport, a field in which Jews had been dominant for a long time. After the introduction of the permit system, the number of Jewish enterprises declined sharply. Later, a semi-governmental Lithuanian capital enterprise called ‘Auto’ was founded, which received the majority of the permits issued for the continued provision of transport services. Uruska, Lietuviai ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos iki 1941 m. birzelio, 110-11.

250 Vladas Sirutavicius the government’s ‘tactical manoeuvring’ in policymaking did not please some radical businessmen, who urged the government to take more drastic legal and administrative measures that would ‘once and for all push out’ Jews from the business sphere. !“ In other words, they demanded direct discrimination against Jews. These trends became especially pronounced in 1938-9, but the government still did not go ahead with the requested discriminatory policies. Thus, the Lithuanian government did not aim to encourage inter-ethnic tensions, and often even tried to damp them. Of course, the government acted in this way for pragmatic reasons: it was concerned not only with social cohesion and good relations between ethnic groups (between the majority—Lithuanians—and the ethnic minorities, among them the Jews), and moreover with their integration into the country’s socio-political life, but also, and most importantly, the government was concerned with the stability of the political system and the state, and ethnic tensions and conflicts only served to threaten this stability. Such were the general socio-cultural and political conditions that influenced relations between Jews and Lithuanians and that formed the background to open man-

ifestations of antisemitism. It is important to note that, in the period under discussion, Lithuanian—Jewish conflicts and acts of violence were also influenced by specific socio-economic circumstances and rising tensions in the state and political system. As socio-economic conditions worsened dramatically, so conflicts between ethnic groups intensified. Lithuanians launched a search for someone to blame, and the scapegoats, because of their position in the socio-economic structure of society, were often Jews. ‘This was exactly what happened in Lithuania between late 1922 and early 1924, when the country experienced an economic crisis (and, in a certain sense, a political crisis). It was precisely then that an increase in antisemitic agitation in the legal press occurred, as well as the distribution of illegal posters. ‘This resulted

in a series of organized actions in the cities, in the course of which public notices written in the languages of the ethnic minorities (above all the Jewish languages) were destroyed. Certainly an important precondition for the appearance of expressions of antisemitism and their intensification was a decline in or complete loss of the government’s political prestige. This was especially obvious at the end of the 1930s, after Poland’s ultimatum to Lithuania in 1938; the loss of the Klaipeda district further ~ mobilized the Lithuanian public, causing various national, often radical, organiza- _ tions to become more active. Criticism of the government increased, not only attack-

ing its passivity and unwillingness to put up a fight, but also pointing to its ‘over-protective’ policies towards ‘disloyal’ ethnic minorities (primarily the Jews). There were accusations that the government was in effect the ‘representative’ of Jewish interests. Most of the criticism was directed at Smetona. The same period 17 “Ko mes norime: Lietuviu verslininky dabartiniai siekiai’, Vers/as, 1938, no. 50, p. 1; A. Gututis, ‘Reikia istatymu, kurie sunormuoty zydy klausima’, ibid. 3; ‘Neatideliokim zydy klausimo sprendimo’, Verslas, 1939, No. 3, p. 4.

‘A Close, but Very Suspicious and Dangerous Neighbour’ 251 saw more instances of violent actions of various kinds (such as the smashing of windows of Jewish houses, schools, and synagogues), and there were some outbreaks of mass violence that had to be controlled by local police.+® Examining more closely the development of antisemitism in Lithuania, one can identify several waves of antagonism to Jews, or periods when antisemitism inten-

sified, was more organized, and, understandably, was more evident in the public space. The first such wave of antisemitism rose in 1922 and lasted until approximately the summer of 1924. The general socio-economic climate at this time was conducive to the growth of inter-ethnic tensions. The country had still not recovered from the war and its struggles against the Bolsheviks and Poles. In the cities, especially in the capital Kaunas, shortages of basic foods were experienced and the public

was concerned about the introduction of the new currency, the litas, which only added to the rise in speculation. In order to stabilize the situation in the capital, the government was forced to take administrative measures, and some shop-owners were driven out of the city for breaking certain of the trading rules.1? The public also prepared itself to do battle with rising prices and speculation. At the beginning of October 1922, as elections to the First Seimas approached, the Riflemen’s Union organized a meeting in Kaunas that was widely publicized in the organization’s pub-

lication Trimitas (‘Trumpet’). It appears that the meeting was predominantly attended by officials. Jews were blamed for most of the period’s socio-economic problems. One of the organizers, Antanas Bruzas, a member of the presidium of the Riflemen’s Union, launched a direct attack on the Jews, saying that all they thought about was how to empty people’s pockets: “The Jews will still have to move to Palestine in the next few years’, he proclaimed at the end of his speech. Other speakers demanded that dishonest traders be deported from Lithuania, and according to one, ‘people can run out of patience over such behaviour’. Some speakers were more careful to avoid openly antisemitic rhetoric. Vincas Kreve-Mickevicius, for example, suggested that all smugelninkat (a colloquial word for ‘traders’), both Lithuanians and Jews, be treated the same. ‘The main means of countering them should be active support for co-operatives. The finance minister Vytautas Petrulis spoke along

similar lines.?° |

Political problems added to the economic and social difficulties. In the spring of 1922, the Lithuanian public experienced a cultural-political trauma when Vilna and the Vilna district were annexed to Poland. On 23 February the Polish Sejm ratified 18 Jews found themselves at the centre of this policy for socio-economic reasons too. In 1938 and early 1939 a number of Jews left Klaipéda and withdrew into Lithuania proper. They began to be blamed for the ever-worsening economic situation in Lithuania. For more information on these ethnic tensions in 1938-9, see D. Maciulis, ‘Zvilgsnis 1 vieno pogromo anatomija tarpukario Lietuvoje’, in Sirutavicius and Staliiinas (eds.), Kai ksenofobya virsta prievarta, 181-96; V. Vareikis, ‘Zydu ir lietuviy susidirimai

bei konfliktai tarpukario Lietuvoje’, ibid. 157—8o. 19 Trimitas, 21 Oct. 1922. 20 Abas, ‘Mitingas Kaune dél brangenybés’, Trimitas, 14 Oct. 1922. Exhortations to support Lithuanian co-operatives and to allow them certain privileges were reiterated, as an effective way of ‘fighting against’ the well-established Jewish domination in trade: Trimitas, 4 Nov. 1922.

252 Vladas Sirutavictus a request of the Sejm of Middle Lithuania (Sejm Litwy Srodkowej) to incorporate these areas into Poland. It is true that at the beginning of 1923 the Klaipeda district was incorporated by force into Lithuania, but the final, formal, legal resolution of the status of this district was long-drawn-out. A no less complex situation unfolded in the country’s internal political life. Elections to the First Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania were to take place in the autumn of 1922. An electoral battle radicalized the public. As part of the agitation conducted by parties and various political (usually right-wing) organizations, ‘national’ aspects did slip out into the public space. Voters were urged not to vote for the ethnic minority lists (Polish, Jewish, and Russian),

while it was alleged that minority representatives who were not loyal to the Lithuanian state were being elected to parliament.?2! As a consequence of the outcome of the election, relations grew even more complicated between the ethnic

minorities (primarily Jews and Poles) and the right-wing factions (Christian Democrats, the Farmers’ Union, and the Labour Federation?7), who essentially won the election and held a fragile majority in parliament. The complication came about

because the Polish and Jewish deputies protested over the results. They believed that the principle of proportional representation had not been followed in the interpretation of the electoral law and in the counting of votes.?° As their complaints were ignored, the Polish and Jewish deputies refused to take part in the activities of parliament, and the Jewish deputies withdrew from the Seimas on 17 November 1922.74 They returned only in March 1923 and joined other Lithuanian leftist 21 ‘Koks turi biti Lietuvos seimas’, Laisvé, 11 Oct. 1922; Trimitas, 23 Sept. 1922; Trimitas, 7 Oct. 1922. Incidentally, just before the elections the Christian Democrat newspaper Laisvé ran an article claiming that Germans and Jews did not like Lithuanian money (4 Oct. 1922). It was also noted that Jews had raised the prices of food products, and that the Germans favoured this move. The article was called “The Struggle with the Forces of Evil’, and Jews were undoubtedly considered to be those ‘forces of evil’. This was emotionally the strongest example of electoral agitation of an antisemitic nature. The content of the posters being spread in the provinces is not known, nor whether they featured anti-Jewish elements. 22 Respectively, Lietuviy krikSCioniy demokraty partija, Lietuvos ikininku sajunga, and Lietuvos darbo federacia. 23 By contrast with the elections to the Constituent Assembly in 1920, when 112 members were chosen, the new electoral law stipulated that seventy-eight members were to be elected to the First Seimas. Jews participated in these elections on three different lists: the Zionists, the Folkspartey, and Agudah. These three Jewish political groups received a total of 55,157 votes, or 6.8% of the total votes for all listed groups. Three Jewish representatives were elected to the Seimas: Leib Garfunkel, Julius Bruckus, and Juozas (Yosel) Berger. It was noted in Jewish political circles that one seat in the Seimas represented 8,971 votes for the Christian Democrats, 7,905 votes for the nationalists, and 6,744 votes for the Social Democrats. For the Jews, however, it took 18,000 votes to account for one seat in the Seimas, and for the Poles—z7,000 votes: see S. Liekis, 4 State within a State? Jewish Autonomy in Lithuania, 1918-1925 (Vilnius, 2003), 182. Contemporary authors cite somewhat different figures, yet

even they depict the disadvantage faced by the ethnic minorities: see Pr. Ysakas, ‘Rinkimu teisé Lietuvoje’, Teise, 8 (1925), 16.

24 Leib Garfunkel, a member of the Seimas, read out a statement claiming that the electoral law had not been followed, that Jews did not have the number of representatives that they legally could, and that

‘A Close, but Very Suspicious and Dangerous Neighbour’ 253 parties in expressing a vote of no confidence in the government led by Ernestas Galvanauskas. After that, the Seimas was dissolved and elections to the Second Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania were announced. These political battles, the governmental crisis, and the dissolution of the Seimas were all widely reported in the Lithuanian press. In the right-wing political press, the blame for the prolonged period of political and parliamentary unrest was laid not only on the left, but also on the ethnic minorities, including the Jews.2° These newspapers claimed that Jews were ‘furious with everyone’ and that Jewish voters were even casting their ballots for Social Democrats and the Bolsheviks. A correspondent from the semi-official Christian Democrat newspaper Laisve exclaimed ironically that ‘the state would not be harmed’ by the non-participation of Jews and Poles in the work of the Seimas, as their salaries would in that case not need to be paid. It was also claimed that the behaviour of Jews was annoying the Lithuanian public, and could ‘result in unfortunate consequences’. In the end, Laisve announced that ‘the

trumpets of Jericho’ would never demolish the Lithuanian state but would only ‘hasten the establishment of Lithuanian fascism’.?° The Riflemen’s Union played a very important part in encouraging antisemitism in late 1922 and early 1923.7/ The organization’s weekly Trimitas regularly featured articles of an antisemitic nature. Generally speaking, by the end of 1922 this publication had become more and more active and aggressive in its anti-Jewish agitation. It did not hesitate to voice assertions about the Jews’ disrespect for the Lithuanian

language and their submission to the influence of ‘Russification’ and to publish claims that a significant proportion of the Jewish community was ‘looking to the east’.2® It was said that the Jews were on the offensive, while Lithuanians were forced to defend themselves. One author writing for 77imitas claimed that Jews had declared economic war against the Lithuanians, which was why it was necessary to boycott Jewish traders. Another tried to prove that Jews usually acted as enemies of

independence. An author calling himself Alf. Pavartonis stated that Lithuanians could never be friendly towards Jews, as Jews feared and respected only physical until the ‘injustices were eliminated’, the Jewish faction would not participate in Seimas proceedings. After this announcement, laughter was heard in the hall. The left deputies supported the demands of the ethnic minorities. The Social Democrat Steponas Kairys, for example, was sympathetic to the claims of the ethnic minorities and those of Antanas Smetona’s National Progress party: the principle of proportionality had not been adhered to, and on the basis of the votes that these groups had received they were under-represented in the Seimas. Sezmo stenogramos, 1st Seimas, 2nd session, 17 Nov. 1922, p. 3; ibid., 6th session, 1 Dec. 1922, p. II. 25 ‘Kas atsitiko’, Laisvé, 26 Oct. 1922; ‘Mazumos ar didumos’, Laisve, 31 Oct. 1922. For more on the election results and the dissolution of the Seimas, see Laisve, 1 Nov. 1922; A. JakStas, ‘Naujasis krasto Sermininkas’, Laisve, 16 Nov. 1922; Ged., ‘Nelipkit ant sprando’, Laisvé, 25 Nov. 1922; D.D., ‘Zydu balsai’, Laisve, 10 Dec. 1922; ‘Socialistai paaiskejo’, Laisve, 14 Mar. 1923; Antropos, ‘Kovo g diena’, Laisve, 17 Mar. 1923; ‘Kodel krikScioniskasai blokas palaike dabartinj Ministeriy kabineta’, Laisve, 21 Mar. 1923; Matas, ‘Ka rinkti Seiman’, Laisve, 24 Mar. 1923.

26 ‘Rinkimu rezultatai’, Laisve, 8 Nov. 1922. 27 On the Riflemen’s Union, see n. 5 above. 28 A. Vaiditinas, ‘Apie zydus’, Trimitas, 14 Oct. 1922.

254 Vladas Sirutavicius force.2° Jews were thus blamed for the various economic and political problems that

had unfolded in Lithuanian society. Doubts grew as to their ‘usefulness’ in the Lithuanian state, and there were calls for Lithuanians to distance themselves from all things Jewish. ‘Our friendly feelings towards Jews are waning’, stated Senas Saulys (‘Senior Rifleman’, a pseudonym), while Pavartonis openly urged that ‘We must be brave and make it clear that they [Jews] are our enemies, and we must deal with them accordingly, as enemies.’°° However, riflemen were warned to be wary of instigating pogroms, the organizers of which would be treated as traitors. The press mentioned the existence of a ‘Secret Committee to Cleanse Lithuania of Jews’, a reference to a poster displayed in the autumn of 1922 titled ‘Citizens’ that was signed by a committee of that name. It urged the destruction of non-Lithuanian shop signage. It was claimed that this committee was possibly ‘the creation of the Bolsheviks and Polonized Jews’; there might even have been one or another ‘misled’ Lithuanian involved, but ‘the money smelt Jewish’.?! Nearly every issue of 7rimitas in November and December 1922 contained antisemitic material, culminating in the series of articles titled ‘Jews—Our “Friends’”’ that appeared in December, signed by Jokiibas Blazitinas.°* Throughout the interwar years, there were probably no articles more antisemitic than these published in the Lithuanian press—they not only had xenophobic and racist overtones, but also were indisputably pathological in nature.°? It was in this context at the beginning of 1923 that a wave of events swept across

Lithuania during which signs written in languages other than Lithuanian (most often Yiddish and Polish) were damaged, besmeared, or vandalized in various other ways, not only in the larger cities (Kaunas, Panevezys, Siauliai, Klaipéda) but in

smaller towns as well. This sort of vandalism, now waning, now waxing, lasted almost up to 1924. Posters also urged Lithuanians to combat Jewish exploitation and domination, to boycott Jewish businesses, and to avoid any sort of relations with Jews. One announced: “The Jews have again drawn their horrible scribbles on their signs, and are even so boastful as to challenge us to conflict... We started with signs and windows, and we will finish with the throats of the Jews and their hangers-on.’

This poster was signed (as was usual) in the name of the Lithuanian Fascist Executive Committee. ?4 The Lithuanian Intelligence Department had information 29 Ad. Noragas, ‘Uz ekonomine nepriklausomybe’, Trimitas, 14 Oct. 1922; Alf. Pavartonis, ‘Zydy

pazinimo klausimu’, Trimitas, 28 Oct. 1922. ; 30 Senas Saulys, ‘Dar apie zydus’, Trimitas, 18 Oct. 1922; Alf. Pavartonis, ‘Zydu pazinimo klausimu’,

Trimitas, 28 Oct. 1922; see also Trimitas, 4 Nov. 1922. 31 Trimitas, 4 Nov. 1922. 32 Trimitas, 2 Dec. 1922; 9 Dec. 1922; 16 Dec. 1922; 23 Dec. 1922. 33 Thoughts such as the following can have no justification: ‘If the Jews were to leave Kaunas, nothing but a pile of shit would remain’, or ‘this breed is in its final days . . . it is in [a state of] degeneration, it cannot think or rule. Jews are not the same type of people as other nationalities. They have been overcome by an incurable, degenerative disease.’ 34 Poster ‘Fellow Countrymen’ (Mar. 1923): Lietuvos centrinis valstybés archyvas, Vilnius (hereafter LCVA), f. 1265, ap. 1, b. 73, fo. 35. Several different versions of the poster were distributed in Lithuania

‘A Close, but Very Suspicious and Dangerous Neighbour’ 255 on the Lithuanian fascists and their activities: a report from the general headquarters of the department states that ‘the fascist organization started operating’ at the beginning of 1923, and that its centre was in Kaunas, but it also had branches 1n other Lithuanian cities. The identities of some of the more active members of the executive committee of this fascist body and of some members of the local branches were also known.*° According to the informants of the Intelligence Department, the fas-

cists were organizing meetings, deciding what action to take against Jews, and preparing posters with headings such as ‘Fellow Countrymen’, ‘Be Aware!’, ‘Once Again’, ‘Let’s Rid Lithuania of the Jews’, and ‘Lithuanians’. Having started out by

creating such posters, the fascists later moved on to vandalize signs and smash windows. Judging by the Intelligence Department report, this was the extent of the Lithuanian fascists’ activities. (Incidentally, the Lithuanian press often reported on the events of 1922 in Italy. The right-wing press was, in effect, supportive of the fascist movement in Italv, as were some students and some of the younger generation of the military.) It thus appears that the government was aware of, or could at least guess at, who was organizing the vandalization of signs and spreading fascist posters. Various exchanges between officials mention that young people (most likely school or university students) and soldiers were taking part in the vandalizing sprees.°° In a note to his superiors in Kaunas, an official of the Siauliai city and district claimed that

approval for the fascists’ posters was evident ‘among the representatives of the leading political groups’. He added that ‘among those spreading the abovementioned posters are individuals who have participated in patriotic acts such as the liberation of the Klaipéda district’.*” In truth, as far as we are aware, police investigation squads never identified the actual perpetrators of the acts of destructiveness or the authors of the posters—perhaps because they never really wanted to find out who was responsible, especially since among the suspects there might have been members of the military or individuals recognized for their ‘patriotic acts’. However, we should not believe that the government took no action against the vandals or fascists. The central government did put pressure on local officials to take at the time, but all were signed in the same way: ‘Lithuanian Fascist Executive Committee’ (Lietuvos faSistu vykdomasis komitetas). See LCVA, f. 378, ap. 2, b. 7247, fos. 42 and 47. 35 According to the intelligence data, the more active members of the fascist executive committee in Kaunas were Baikutenas, deputy editor of the newspaper Darbininkas; P. Butenas, a student; J. Vareikis, head of the Jonava Riflemen’s Union squad; and Gerulis, a National Audit Office inspector. Among the

members of other local branches there were school-age students, civil servants, and priests (as in Ukmerge, for example). See ‘Fascists’, a review prepared by the reconnaissance department of the General Headquarters, Ministry of Defence, undated [Sept. 1923]: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 2, b. 7247, fos. 3-4; I thank my colleague Gediminas Rudys for this reference. 36 Note from the Panevézys district governor, 22 Nov. 1923: LCVA, f. 404, ap. 1, b. 141, fo. 46. See also Truska and Vareikis, Holokausto prielaidos, 47.

37 Note from the Siauliai district governor to the Ministry of the Interior, undated [Mar. 1923]: LCVA, f. 412, ap. 5, b. 262, fo. 4.

256 Vladas Sirutavictus ‘strict measures’ against the offenders. Posters were confiscated and destroyed, their disseminators threatened with prosecution, and locals warned to keep the peace. In

fact, Karolis Zalkauskas, the Minister of the Interior, issued a new order in the autumn of 1923 that was sent out to all district governors. One of its articles dealt with those who damaged signs, stating: ‘Of late there have been many acts of vandalism of signs written in languages other than Lithuanian. Such vandalizing of signs is the greatest expression of a lack of culture, which discredits our state’s position abroad and leads one sector of the population into provoking another.’*® Hence, the order urged city and district governors to take “strict measures against similar outbreaks’. ‘he exact nature of these measures was not specified, and it appears that the choice was left in the hands of the officers themselves. Stricter means of combating various types of ‘antisemitic propaganda’ were also prescribed.*? In the end, on 7 July 1924 the Minister of the Interior promulgated a law stipulating that all signs and posters in public places could be written only in Lithuanian.

Signs in other languages could be displayed only in closed spaces (‘courtyards without an exit into the street’ and within buildings). Those who violated the law were threatened with substantial fines or arrest.4° During the same summer, a ‘patriotic’ Christian Democrat government was formed, which finally laid to rest any ideas of Jewish national autonomy. After this, the wave of antisemitism subsided. A second wave of antisemitism started in the early 1930s, gaining momentum and

intensity in 1938-9. Its beginnings can be traced to the foundation in 1930 of the Union of Lithuanian Tradesmen, Industrialists, and Craftsmen (Lietuviu prekybininky, pramonininku ir amatininky sayunga, often called simply the Lithuanian , Businessmen’s Union). ‘The publicly declared aim of the organization was to protect

Lithuanian producers and liberate them from ‘the slavery imposed by alien merchants’,*! and only Lithuanians could join it. It published a newspaper called Vers/as (‘Business’), which often contained antisemitic articles. Jews were usually depicted

as obstructing Lithuanian enterprises and modernization in Lithuania in general. The government was urged to support Lithuanian business more actively, while the public was encouraged to boycott Jewish traders. Other antisemitic publications also emphasized the necessity of an economic war

against Jews; among those that appeared from the early 1930s were Tevy Zeme (‘Land of our Fathers’), Tautos balsas (‘Voice of the People’), and Tautos Zodis (‘Word of the People’). In its leading article on 15 April 1933, Tautos Zodis urged readers to join the struggle against all foreigners—that is, all national minorities—

b. 57, fo. 18. ;

38 Order no. 3041 of the Minister of the Interior, transcript, 20 Sept. 1923 (?): LCVA, f. 1265, ap. 1,

39 Note from the Civil Security Department of the Ministry of the Interior to the Siauliai city and

district governor, secret, 17 Mar. 1923: LCVA, f. 412, ap. 5, b. 262, fo. 5. 40 The law also banned ‘damage’ to signs written in languages other than the state language: Truska, Lietuviai ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos tki 1941 m. birZelo, 84. See also the order of the Paneveézys district governor, 14 July 1924: LCVA, f. 404, ap. 1, b. 148, fo. 71. 41 Truska and Vareikis, Holokausto prielaidos, 54.

‘A Close, but Very Suspicious and Dangerous Neighbour’ 257 and especially Jews ‘as the greatest economic exploiters of Lithuanians’.*2 It was precisely in such newspapers that the idea was raised in 1933 of creating an ‘antisemitic union’ whose purpose would be to combat Jewish hegemony in Lithuanian society. Usually only a few issues of this type of newspaper would be published before they were closed at the behest of the military commanders, or they would simply ‘die out’, often because of their publishers’ financial problems. Little was made known about who the publishers were, but judging by information collected during official investigations, the publishers of 7autos Zodis seem to have been a few students and an unemployed individual (a former teacher and policeman), who produced the newspaper with their own funds. ‘They were not found to have ties with organizations from abroad, and it was also stated that ‘No ideas from abroad have influenced this newspaper’.*? The circulation of such papers is also not known. It is quite likely that the police were more aware of their existence than was the wider public. This type of press differed from the ‘serious’ newspaper Vers/as.*4 There were also outbreaks of violence, yet these were rare and isolated in the earlier part of the inter-war period, becoming systematic only in the late 1930s. The events of the summer of 1929 in Kaunas are quite comprehensively described in Lithuanian historiography. At the beginning of August, communists organized a demonstration

in which many workers from the city’s businesses participated, including Jews. During the demonstration, several altercations occurred between Lithuanian and Jewish workers. According to historians, members of the Iron Wolf organization (Gelezinis vilkas), who also belonged to the Vilijampolé squad of the Riflemen’s Union, decided to ‘teach the Jewish communists’ a lesson. They checked the documents of people passing by and beat up those that they found to be Jewish (though during later interrogation, the Riflemen’s Union denied that its members had taken part in this event). Criminal proceedings were taken against the rioters, and in 1932 several of them were sentenced to terms in prison, among them a policeman.*° Expressions of antisemitism in public spaces were, however, generally criticized and denounced by the highest government officials. This was especially true of the republic’s president, the authoritarian state leader and ‘commander of the nation’ Antanas Smetona.*° Nor was it only words and proclamations that were used in the 42 “Misu veikimo tikslas, pagrindas ir priemonés’, Tautos Zodis, 15 Apr. 1933, P. I.

#3 Publication of Tautos Zodis was halted ‘for the entire period of the state of war’ by order of the Kaunas city and district commandant. During a search of the publishers’ premises, the police found numerous antisemitic manuscripts and a copy of Der Weltkampf, a newspaper about the ‘Jewish question’ published in Munich. The material collected during the investigation was sent to the Kaunas district court, but there is no further information about the outcome. For more on the publishers of Tautos Zodis—Antanas I$ganaitis, Stasys Kriauciiinas, and Martynas Vabuolas—see LCVA, f. 378, ap. 3, b. 2528, fos. 6-7. 44 The circulation of Vers/as in the mid-1930s was approximately 10,000 copies. #5 Lithuanian scholarship provides no data on the number of people who were injured during the incident: ‘Truska and Vareikis, Holokausto prielaidos, 53; Vareikis, ‘Zydu ir lictuviu susidtirimai bei kon-

fliktai tarpukario Lietuvoje’, 170-1. 46 Smetona was criticized by right-wing radicals (usually followers of the former prime minister Augustinas Voldemaras) for pandering to Jews, and was dubbed ‘king of the Jews’: Truska, Antanas Smetona ir jo latkai, 296—305.

258 Vladas Sirutavicius war against the expression of antisemitism: in accordance with a law proclaimed in 1931, military commanders could fine or even imprison individuals who were found to be setting one nationality against another. ‘The Minister of Defence in 1936 once again obliged district commanders to defend national minorities, including Jews, and to initiate criminal proceedings when a minority group came under ‘organized attack’ and its property was being destroyed.*’ Jews themselves tried to relax interethnic tensions. The Union of Jewish Soldiers (Zydu kariu sajunga) commenced publication of the newspaper Apzvalga (‘Review’) in 1933. Its aim was to familiarize Lithuanians with Jewish culture and to show them that Jewish businesspeople were loyal and were working for the Lithuanian good. However, these ideas encountered opposition, and Apzvalga often entered into debates with Verslas, which only served to increase the anger of the Lithuanian radical right. In 1938, when antagonism to Jews was strengthening, the director of the Lithuanian State Security Department

suggested that the Minister of the Interior close down Apzvalga, as the paper’s ‘defiant tone against Lithuanians is raising even greater animosity in Lithuanian society towards Lithuania’s Jews and is a clear cause of the growth of antisemitism in the country’. Closing down the newspaper would help to ‘calm society vis-a-vis Jews’. However, the minister ignored the official’s suggestion.*° Indeed, the attitudes of the leadership, state bureaucracy, and especially lowerranking officials towards expressions of antisemitism were rather inconsistent. (It is interesting to note that for several years the editor of Vers/as was an official in the Ministry of Finance.) It is not a simple matter to identify the general attitude of the leadership towards the Jews, but probably it did not differ much from the opinions prevailing in society. The State Security Department reported in 1939 that animosity towards Jews was being expressed not only by farmers and labourers, but also by officials. It was doubtful whether administrative or repressive measures could affect such attitudes, so the report suggested that Lithuanian businesses should be supported by the handing over of state contracts to them. “The state has nothing to gain from Jews’ was the author’s closing remark.*9 It could be said that, in general, the Lithuanian business class did receive support from the state bureaucracy and offi-

cials, though the more radical demands made by Lithuanian businessmen that clearly impinged on Jews’ rights were usually ignored by the government.°% At the end of the 1930s antagonism towards Jews in Lithuania became even more intense and was expressed in additional ways. For one thing, there were louder calls 47 Military commanders not only banned the publication of antisemitic newspapers and brochures, but also punished their editors and authors. In 1938-9 several issues of Vers/as were also confiscated, and participants in various anti-Jewish activities were also arrested and fined. Truska, Lietuviai ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos 1ki rg41 m. birzeho, 101-5. 48 'Truska and Vareikis, Holokausto prielaidos, 55. 49 State Security Department Bulletin, 1939: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 5, b. 4421, t. 2, fos. 516-18. 5° Tn 1939 the Palanga city council banned the ritual slaughter of animals (as requested by Lithuanian businessmen), but the district governor overruled it: Truska, Lietuviai ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos tki 1941 m. birgelo, 98.

‘A Close, but Very Suspicious and Dangerous Neighbour’ 259 for discrimination against Jews, as in Poland and Germany. The government was pressed more and more often to pass laws that would limit Jews’ rights, for example by requiring them to obtain permission to purchase real estate, especially in 1939 when Jews from Klaipeda started relocating to ‘Lithuania major’. In 1939 students from Vytautas Magnus University demanded separate seating for Jews, as had been

implemented in Poland, though this demand and others like it were never implemented. Antisemitic posters were disseminated throughout Lithuanian cities, urging Lithuanians not only to stop ‘bearing the Jewish yoke’ and being economically exploited, or to boycott Jewish traders, but also to drive Jews out of the cities as mere ‘transient residents’. Handwritten posters were displayed in Skuodas that urged people to oppose the exploitation at the hands of the Jews that had become established in all towns. Police in the village of Skaudvile in the Taurage district dis-

covered a notice attached to a telegraph pole that said: ‘Jewish Arabs—out of Skaudvile to Palestine to tread dirt.’ There were other posters bearing similar procla-

mations, usually handwritten and distributed only locally. According to Security Department and police data, these were usually the work of senior gymnasium stu-

society. ,

dents. In one way or another, all these occurrences were evidence of a radicalization

and intensification of opposition to Jews by at least a certain part of Lithuanian From approximately the mid-1930s and especially in 1938-9 the State Security Department and the police recorded ever more cases of violence committed against Jews. In January 1936 in Varniai, on market day, some Jews were attacked, several were beaten, and the windows of several houses were smashed; the warden of the Uzventis precinct was also a casualty. A group of soldiers was called in to restore order. It appears that the pretext for this outbreak of violence was a rumour that Jews had kidnapped a

child.° Further aggression was displayed in later years, and Security Department records from 1938 contain numerous accounts of violent incidents between farmers and Jews in towns and villages. Often the pretext for such outbursts was the belief that Jews were using Christian blood. During the altercations, property would be destroyed and the windows of Jewish houses, schools, and synagogues would be smashed.°

These excesses and pogroms require a deeper analysis, however, as the antagonism directed towards Jews was determined not only by the traditional belief that Jews kidnapped children and used Christian blood. Other circumstances were also significant, for example the weakening of the government’s authority and a decline in the public’s trust of it, particularly after Poland’s ultimatum to Lithuania in 1938, © and in the spring of 1939 when Lithuania gave in to pressure from Germany and surrendered the Klaipeda district. In conflicts between Lithuanians and Jews during 51 The police demanded that seven individuals receive punishment for the unrest in Varniai. All seven were to be dealt with according to set administrative procedures, and their case was handed over to the TelSiai commandant, who was to decide on the punishment; exactly what it was remains unknown. State Security Department Bulletins no. 4 (7 Jan. 1936); no. ro (g Jan. 1936); no. 12 (10 Jan. 1936): LCVA,

f. 378, ap. 10, b. 88a, t. 1, fos. 16, 41-2, 49. °2 Truska and Vareikis, Holokausto prielaidos, 60.

260 Vladas Sirutavicius this period, in some cases amounting to pogroms, the local governing bodies were increasingly condemned for their identification with Jews and were seen as their defenders.°? Various economic and social conditions and hardships added to the radicalization of the public. A broader analysis of pogroms in Liepalingis and Kretinga shows that the violence was provoked by a whole complex of factors. Yet it must be noted that during all the excesses and pogroms mentioned above, no fatalities were recorded.°4

The Lithuanian security and police bodies recorded several cases in 1939 that confirm that attempts to spread antisemitic attitudes, and perhaps even incite pogroms, originated in part in National Socialist Germany. Despite the fragmentary nature of the data, it nevertheless permits the supposition that it was in the German government’s interests to stir up ethnic tensions between Lithuanians and Jews; this is true first and foremost of the regions bordering East Prussia. Of course, we cannot say with certainty whether this policy was simply the initiative of the local governing bodies (separate secret services), or whether it was initiated from the ‘centre’. At a fair in the town of Naumiestis in the Taurageé district in May 1939, a quarrel arose between German and Jewish traders which escalated into a brawl in which windows were smashed, including those of the synagogue. ‘The crowd was calmed only when soldiers stepped in. ‘They arrested a man who was taking photographs of the homes of Jews damaged during the pogrom. After his interrogation it came to light that he

was a Gestapo officer.°° |

One feature of the radicalization of Lithuanian society was an increasingly stronger tendency to associate Jews with the communist movement. The first signs of this identification with communists (who were, along with Poles, considered the greatest enemies of the state) were evident even before the coup of 1926, during the © preceding parliamentary elections.°® In these elections, legal Lithuanian left-wing °3 Police in Kelmé who attempted to apprehend individuals suspected of beating up Jews not only received no help from other inhabitants of the town, but were ‘sworn at’ and dubbed ‘Jew boys’. According to the officers, this happened because ‘Generally speaking, the opposition to Jews in Kelme is growing’. State Security Department and Criminal Police Bulletin: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 5, b. 4421, t. 2, fo. 483.

° A good analysis of the pogrom in the village of Liepalingis has been carried out by Maciulis, ‘Zvilgsnis j vieno pogromo anatomija tarpukario Lietuvoje’. He claims that the local Riflemen’s Union

| squad leader played a major role in the escalation of the conflict. During the pogrom, Jews’ property was damaged, but no people were killed.

55 Seventeen people were arrested in connection with these events, including Lithuanians and Germans. State Security Department and Criminal Police Bulletin no. 78 (3 May 1939): LCVA, f. 378, ap. 5, b. 4421, t. 1, fo. 366. There is further information that serves as evidence that antagonism between Lithuanians and Jews may have been encouraged by German official bodies. Temporary labourers from Lithuania working in the Klaipeda district testified to the security police that ‘some of them were being

sent to Lithuania for the purpose of agitating the population against Jews. In Kretinga, German and Lithuanian labourers (who were temporarily working in Klaipeda) spread rumours about Jews and distributed posters which read “if you care about the future, beat up the Jews’”’: ibid., fos. 203, 205. 66 V. Sirutavicius, ‘Rinkimai j Steigiamaji Seima: aktyvumo problema’, Lietuvos istorijos metrastis, 2008, no. 2, pp. 80-2.

‘A Close, but Very Suspicious and Dangerous Neighbour’ 261 parties were often associated with Jews 1n the public space, and their members were

called ‘Jew boys’. In the 1930s the communist Jewish stereotype became more entrenched, and negative perceptions were extended to the entire Jewish community without differentiation and without any deeper awareness of the political streams or

trends within it.°/ It appears that this mindset identifying Jews and communists was typical of many layers of Lithuanian society. Sometimes it was declared openly, but at other times it was more covert. Having already recorded an increase in the intensity of antisemitism in the country in the mid-1930s, the Lithuanian State Security Department concluded that, in seeking to resist outbreaks of antisemitism, Jews would ‘most likely rally alongside the communists, who disregard differences of both nationality and faith’. So that Jews would not increase the numbers and the influence of the Lithuanian Communist Party, it was recommended that their emigration be encouraged and supported, except to the Soviet Union.°® In other words, Jews, who resided primarily in the towns and villages, were believed to make up a significant part of the Lithuanian Communist Party. The repressive structures accordingly saw the communist movement as disproportionately Jewish, often ignoring the fact that Jewish communists made up only a very small part of all Jews living in Lithuania.°? Besides, the proportion of Lithuanians in the Lithuanian Communist Party grew in the late 1930s, so that by 1939 the proportion of Jews in the membership had reduced to about 32 per cent.© It can thus be said that expressions of antisemitism in the late 1930s in Lithuania were characterized by the interweaving of various, often contradictory, elements: 57 The stereotype is well exemplified in the book Komunizmas Lietuvoje (“Communism in Lithuania’) by the priest Stasys Yla, published in 1937. The author argues that communist ideas are close to Jews’ hearts, claiming that this is why it is said that communism protects Jews, the aim of both being control of the world. 58 At the same time it should not be overlooked that both the police and security organs stated that

Jewish organizations and their activities did not pose a threat to the country’s safety, and that in their activities they were loyal to Lithuania: A. Eidintas, Zyda1, hetuviai ir Holokaustas (Vilnius, 2002), 117; see also State Security Department Bulletin, 12 Oct. 1936: LCVA, f. 378, ap. ro, b. 88a, t. 2, fos. 310-11. ©9 According to data from the Security Department, greater efforts by the Lithuanian Communist Party to boost the number of non-Jewish members, in the hope of increasing its popularity and influence, were noticeable from the mid-1930s. 60 According to State Security Department statistics, at the end of 1939 the Lithuanian Communist Party had about 1,120 members, of which 670 (60%) were Lithuanians and 364 (32%) were Jews. At

the same time 280 people were under arrest for ‘communist activities’; the majority of them were members of the Lithuanian Communist Party, and almost half of them were Jews. The proportion of Jewish members in the party was at its greatest in 1932, when they made up almost 54% of all members. See Levin, Trumpa Zydy istorya Lietuvoje, 132; N. Maslauskiené, ‘Lietuvos komunisty tautine ir socialine sudétis 1939 m. pabaigoje—1940 m. rugsejo meén.’, Genocidas ir rezistencya, 5 (1999), 84, 87-8; Truska, Lietuviai ir Zydai nuo XIX a. pabaigos tki 1941 m. birzelio, 129-30. At the same time, we must

remember that Jews were active not only in the party itself, but also in various other pro-communist organizations. In 1939, for instance, out of 234 activists in the International Organization for Aid to Revolutionaries (Mezhdunarodnaya organizatsiya pomoshchi bortsam revolyutsi1), 141 were Jews. Jews also dominated the Lithuanian Komsomol organization.

262 Viadas Strutavicius Jews were accused of not being loyal to the state, they were said to be aligned with

the communist movement, they were reproached for dominating the economic

sphere, and they were considered to be of no social or economic benefit to Lithuanian society. Their safety, in effect, depended more and more on the stability of the regime. One might have thought that the relatively moderate authoritarian regime of Antanas Smetona would have tried to suppress ethnic tensions and stand up against outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence. Yet we should also note that the implementation of such policies usually depended as much on the competence of local governing bodies as on their sympathy with or antipathy towards Jews. That is why policies designed to reduce ethnic tensions were not always successful and antisemitism in Lithuanian society at the end of the 1930s continued to grow. Moreover, the most important conclusion should be that it was precisely the destabilization of the regime and its sudden downfall, and the ensuing radical socio-political transformation of the public, that—alongside the policies of the Nazis—eventually brought Lithuania’s Jews to the tragic events of 1941. Translated from the Lithuanian by Albina Strunga

The Bund in Vilna, 1918-1939 JACK JACOBS VILNa was the cradle of the Jewish socialist movement in eastern Europe, and was linked to Jewish radicalism long before the creation of the Bund. Arkadi Finkelstein disseminated revolutionary literature among those who were studying at the Vilna Rabbinical Seminary in 1872.! After Finkelstein’s activities were discovered, and he was forced to leave Vilna, a radical circle was founded there by Aron Sundelevich (who later went on to become a prominent member of the Russian revolutionary organization Narodnaya Volya). This circle was made up exclusively of Jews, and consisted predominantly of students, or former students, of the rabbinical seminary. Though the Vilna circle created by Sundelevich was broken up by the tsarist police in 1875, radical activity continued sporadically among Jews living in Vilna

throughout the rest of the nineteenth century—initially on an extremely small scale.2 A strike movement, the creation of self-help funds, and a decision to engage actively in agitation, however, eventually brought more of the workers of Vilna into contact with socialist ideas.? The number of organized workers in Vilna grew from 500 in 1895 to 962 a year later, and to 1,500 in 1897.4 Much of the research for this article was conducted while I was serving as a Fulbright Fellow at Vilnius University. My thanks to Professor Sartinas Liekis, my academic host in Vilnius, and to all those on the staff of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, for their support in any number of matters, large and small. My thanks as well to Dr Larisa Lempertiené of the Lithuanian National Library, whose hospitality greatly facilitated my work, to Ms Regina Kopilevich, who served as both my research assistant and my trans-

lator at the Lithuanian Central State Archive, and to Ms Jelena Adamskaja of the Vilnius University

Library, who helped me to locate periodicals to which I would otherwise not have had access. Conversations with Professor Dovid Katz, with Ms Esfir Bramson-Alperniene, and with Mr Genrikh Agranovsky, all of whom have extraordinary expertise on matters related to the history of Jews in Vilna, were consistently illuminating and enormously helpful. I learned a great deal from all of them, and very much appreciate the aid provided to me. 1 FE. Tscherikower, ‘Der onheyb fun der yidisher sotsyalistisher bavegung’, in id. (ed.), Historishe shrifin, i (Warsaw, 1929), 468. 2 In 1888, for example, the Vilna native Leo Jogiches (famous later in life for his connection with Rosa Luxemburg) reported that there was a group of four radical workers in his native city—all of whom, it would appear, were Jewish: N. A. Buchbinder, Di geshikhte fun der yidisher arbeter-bavegung in rusland loyt nt-gedrukte arkhiv-materyaln, trans. D. Roykhel (Vilna, 1931), 53; Z. Reyzen, ‘L. yogikhes-tishka un der baginen fun der yidisher arbeter-bavegung’, Yivo-bleter, 1/5 (1931), 433, 438-9. 3 E. Mendelsohn, Class Struggle in the Pale: The Formative Years of the Jewish Workers’ Movement in Tsarist Russia (Cambridge, 1970), 40-1, 45 ff. 4-H. J. Tobias. The fewish Bund in Russia: From its Origins to rgos5 (Stanford, Calif., 1972), 37.

264 Fack Jacobs When, in 1897, a group of Jewish social democrats living in Vilna hosted a meeting to discuss the formation of a unified Jewish workers’ organization with their counterparts from Warsaw, Minsk, and Bialystok, the Vilna group dominated the proceedings. It should also be noted that ten of the thirteen delegates who attended

this meeting—at which the General Jewish Workers’ Bund was formally established—were Vilna-trained.®

Vilna remained one of the Bund’s strongholds for years thereafter. The Vilna Committee of the Bund published a local organ, Der klasn-kamf, beginning in 1898, and continued to issue this periodical, sporadically, until 1902.6 Though the Vilna Committee rejected the use of assassination as a political tactic, an attempt on the life of the governor of the province in which Vilna was located by Hirsh Lekert, a rank-and-file member of the Vilna Bund, ultimately increased the stature of the local

Bundist organization. ‘ |

During the period of the revolution of 1905, the Vilna Committee of the Bund led a powerful organization. Describing the situation in Vilna in 1905-6, a Bundist source proclaimed: “The prestige of the Bundist organization in Vilna grew to great heights. [The Bundist organization] set the tone and was the leader in all actions which were undertaken. The Bund, at that time, ruled the city. All of its demands were carried out.’> The strength of the Bundist organization in Vilna, and the significance of Vilna for the Bund, help to explain why the Bund’s Central Committee chose to relocate to Vilna during the period of the revolution of 1905.? One indication of the strength of the Bund during that period (made possible, in part, by a short-term liberalization of political conditions) may be gleaned from the fact that, on 28 December 1905, the Bund began to issue, for the first time in its history, a daily newspaper. Published in Vilna, this initially appeared under the name Der veker, and later under other names.'° Der veker was not only the Bund’s

first daily but also the first legal Bundist newspaper in the Russian empire. Exceptionally prominent Bundists closely associated with the Bundist daily and res-

ident in Vilna at one point or another during the years in which the newspaper appeared include Vladimir Medem, Yudin (I. Ayzenshtat), Tsivyon (B. Hofman), Anman (Pavel Rozental) and—beginning from a slightly later time than these— Vladimir Kossovsky. However, the Bund’s attempts to issue a daily newspaper were ultimately quashed by the tsarist regime. The Bundist Hofnung (as the paper was known at that time) issued its final edition in October 1907. The end of Hofnung, moreover, was part and parcel of an end toa revolutionary era, and the beginning of © Tobias, The Jewish Bund in Russia, 65-6. © 25 yor, 1897-1922: Zamlbukh gevidmet dem 25-yorikn yubileum fun der yidisher arbeter-bavegung

(Warsaw, [1922]), 124. 7 J.S. Hertz, Hirsh lekert (New York, 1952). 8 Z. Nanes, ‘Vilne in di revolutsyonere oktober teg fun 1905’, in E. H. Jeshurin (ed.), Vilne: a zamlbukh gevidmet der shtot vilne (New York, 1935), 189.

9 V. Medem, The Life and Soul of a Legendary Jewish Socialist, ed. and trans. S. A. Portnoy (New York, 1979), 364.

10 Tbid. 371-9; Tsivyon [B. Hofman], Far fufisik yor: geklibene shrifin (New York, 1948), 142-6.

The Bund in Vilna, 1915-1939 265 a period of reaction, during which the Bund in Vilna found it necessary to lie low. When, in September 1915, Vilna was occupied by the German army, some Jews initially hoped that the general situation of the Jews in that city would improve.

These hopes proved to be unfounded. ‘The German occupation was ultimately accompanied by food shortages and forced labour. An official request from the Bund in Vilna that it be given permission to open a political club was denied.+! A similar request that Jewish workers be allowed to issue a newspaper of their own was also denied. The Bund, nevertheless, continued to engage in cultural and union-related activities even though it could not legally undertake political work under its own name. It also issued (illegal) proclamations, urging that Jews not be forcibly removed from Vilna in order to engage in forced labour on behalf of the Germans. The overthrow of the tsar, and the creation of anew government in Russia under Kerensky, was greeted enthusiastically by the Bund. The Bundist organization in

Vilna hoped, after February 1917, that the Russian military would drive the Germans from Vilna, and believed that Vilna should remain part of Russia after the war ended. A German-language memorandum by the Bundists in Vilna written in 1917 in conjunction with a proposal to convene an international socialist conference in Stockholm reads in part: As regards our territory of Lithuania, we regard it as an integral part of the Russian state, with which its economic and industrial ties have become extremely close. Particularly now, after the fall of tsarism with its despotic tyranny, our country can attach itself to the great Russian republic, freely and without hindrance to the course of its development, with its territorial autonomy assured. !4

Both the Vilna Bund’s activities and its orientation led the Germans to attempt to take repressive measures against it. An order to arrest Yoysef Izbitski (Beynish Michalewicz)—who served as the de facto leader of the Bund in Vilna during that period! —was issued, and he was eventually deported.!4 But the German revolution of November 1918, which sparked a loosening of the reins by the German military in certain of the areas which it continued to occupy, led indirectly to improved conditions for the Bund in Vilna. On 6 December 1918 the Bund released issue no. 1 of anew, Vilna-based, daily newspaper, Unzer shtime. The creators of this newspaper noted, in their founding issue, that the Russian empire had been replaced by a series of separate lands, including Poland, Lithuania, 11 Sh. Kleyt, ‘Di arbeter bavegung in vilne in der tsayt fun der daytsher okupatsye’, in Jeshurin (ed.), Vilne, 232.

12 “Memorandum der Wilnaer jiidischen sozialdemokratischen Organisation BUND’, pp. 3-4: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, Archives (hereafter YIVO Archives), RG 1400, MG 2-440. The proposal to hold an international socialist conference in Stockholm is discussed in M. Fainsod, International Socialism and the World War (New York, 1973), 124-46. 13 The members of the Vilna Committee of the Bund in 1917 were Shloyme Kleyt, Kozshevnik, Michalewicz, Nisn Pups, Tsipkin, R. Epsztejn, Yedidovitsh, Vera Levin, Yidl Frankfurt, Etel Tobiash, and Sonia Shapiro: Kleyt, ‘Di arbeter bavegung in vilne in der tsayt fun der daytsher okupatsye’, 224. 14 Tbid. 234—5.

266 Jack Jacobs Ukraine, and Belarus, and that in each of these lands the tasks confronting the working class were distinctive. The Bund, therefore, had also found it necessary to create separate organizations in sections of the one-time tsarist empire. Unzer shtime pointed out that Bundists in Poland had established their own central committee and had created their own organ, and that separate Bund committees for Ukraine and Belarus had been founded in the summer of 1918. The Bundists in Lithuania, therefore, had held a conference on 27—30 October 1918, had selected a regional committee, and had resolved to establish an organ of their own based in Vilna.!°

, Unzer shtime—edited first by Max Weinreich (Maks Vaynraykh) and later by Peysakh Novick (Novik)-—was the result of that resolution.!° The Vilna-based Bundists, it was clear, were not enthusiastic about the separation of Lithuania from Russia, and saw the creation of a separate Bundist organization for Lithuania as a necessary reaction to existing political conditions beyond their control, not as desirable in and of itself. They continued to hope that it would be possible for all the

various parts of the Bund to meet and to discuss subjects of mutual interest. However, political conditions made such a meeting difficult if not impossible. Political control over Vilna was hotly contested in the years immediately following the end of the First World War on 11 November 1918. Lithuanians, the Red Army, and Poles all governed the city at various points.!” Within days of the appearance of the inaugural issue of Unzer shtime, elections were held for the Vilna Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. Only those in the trade unions were

permitted to vote.1° On g December 1918—that is, before the German military had withdrawn from Vilna—Unzer shtime reported initial results of the voting within the Jewish sector which suggested an overwhelming victory for the Bund among Jewish workers. ‘Twenty-eight of the deputies selected by Jewish-dominated trade unions and announced in these preliminary results were Bundists, six were Bolsheviks, and two

were from other parties.'? However, the Bolsheviks soon proved to be unwilling to abide by election results which would leave them a minority in the Soviet.2° New 15 Tn “bund”, Unzer shtime, 6 Dec. 1918, p. 6. 16 Kleyt, ‘Di arbeter bavegung in vilne in der tsayt fun der daytsher okupatsye’, 236; E. Nowogrodzki (Novogrudski), ‘Der “bund” in yerushalayim dlite’, Foroys, 18/256 (Oct. 1957), 12-13. Wirgili (Borukh Mordekhay Kahan) was also actively involved in Unzer shtime: J.S. Hertz (ed.), Doyres bundistn, 3 vols. (New York, 1956-68), 1. 396. 1” ‘The complex political history of Vilna during this era is ably reconstructed in T. R. Weeks, ‘From “Russian” to “Polish”: Vilna—Wilno 1922—1925’, a report issued by the National Council for Eurasian

and East European Research, Washington, DC, 2004: . A pre-existing sense among the Vilna Bundists that their interests would be harmed by Polish control was exacerbated by events in the city in early January 1919, when Polish forces briefly seized control. A member of the Vilna Bund was stopped by Polish legionnaires, searched, found to have in his possession a newspaper apparently deemed to be subversive, and promptly executed: ‘Avrom-aba dakhavker’, Unzer shtime, 7 Jan. 1919, pp. 1 ff. 18 J. Nowikow (Y. Novikov), Zikhroynes fun a yidishn arbeter (Tel Aviv, 1967), 77. 19 ‘T)i valn in arbeter-rat’, Unzer shtime, 9 Dec. 1918, p. 3. 20 ‘Umgerikhte gegner’, Unzer shtime, 12 Dec. 1918, p. 3.

The Bund in Vilna, 1915-1939 267 elections were called, and the Bolsheviks obtained the majority they desired. Ninetysix of the members of the first Vilna Soviet as seated (which, of course, included a large number of non-Jews as well as a significant number of Jews) were Bolsheviks. Sixty of the members were Bundists.7+ Bundists played prominent roles in the Soviet. Three of the nine members of the Soviet’s presidium were members of the Bund, as was one of the assistant chairmen

(Yankef Vaynshteyn) and one of the secretaries (Nisn Pups).?? But the Bundists openly opposed specific Bolshevik-supported policies from the Soviet’s very first formal meeting.?° Alongside their activities in the Soviet, the Bundists of Vilna also conducted activities within the organized Jewish Community. When, on 25 December 1918, the Jews of Vilna held kehile elections, the Bundist list did extremely well?4— indeed, far better than would Bundist lists in any subsequent efile election in the city of Vilna. But left-wingers in the Vilna Bund were not eager to work within the kehile (which they considered to be a reactionary institution), and left-wing sentiment increased in Bundist ranks precisely during this period. The left-wingers had a slim majority within the Vilna organization as early as January 1919. At that time, Unzer shtime was, according to its editor, issued and controlled by the Regional Committee of the Bund (presumably responsible for all Bundist activity in Lithuania) and it reflected the Regional Committee’s politics, which were further to the right than were those of a majority of the Bundists in the city of Vilna itself. However, at a general meeting of the Bundist organization of Vilna held on 15 January 1919—at which time the Red Army controlled the city— the Vilna Bund officially demanded that the Regional Committee hand Unzer shtime over to the Vilna Bund’s City Committee.?° Though the vote was close—sixty-eight members voted in favour of the resolution, and sixty-three opposed it—it clearly indicated that the Vilna organization had tipped to the left.2® 21 Weeks, ‘From “Russian” to “Polish”’, 16. Other parties represented in the Soviet included the Menshevik Internationalists, which had twenty-two delegates, and the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, which had fifteen delegates. 22 ‘T)i ershte zitsung fun arbeter-rat’, Unzer shtime, 16 Dec. 1918, p. I. 23 ‘Mir viln nit keyn partey-diktatur’, Unzer shtime, 18 Dec. 1918, p. 2. Cf. Maks, ‘Tifer in di masn!’, Unzer shtime, 20 Dec. 1918, p. 2.

24S. Kassow, ‘Jewish Communal Politics in Transition: The Vilna Kehile, 1919-1920’, YIVO Annual, 20 (1991), 61-91. The Zionist list and the Bundist list each received twenty-four delegates; Orthodox lists received a total of thirteen; the Hantverker Fareyn seven; the Folkspartey five; Po’alei Tsiyon and the Fareynikte three each; while a merchants’ bloc won only one. 25 ‘Ti algemeyne farzamlung fun bund’, Unzer shtime, 19 Jan. 1919, p. 3. The Red Army controlled Vilna from 4 January until 19 April 1919, at which point Polish troops seized the city. 26 It seems likely that the 131 individuals who voted at this meeting constituted virtually all the active members of the Bund in Vilna at that time. The Regional Committee did not immediately accede to the

demand made upon it, and continued to issue Unzer shtime for quite some time. However, the Vilna Committee did in fact eventually obtain control of Unzer shtime, and altered the periodical’s editorial line when it did so, beginning in the spring of 1919: ‘Fun der redaktsye’, Unzer shtime, 7 Apr. 1919, p.

268 — Jack Jacobs The political differences between the Bundist right and the Bundist left were apparent in March 1919 in a debate within the Vilna organization on the issue of international affiliations—an issue of great symbolic significance. In the wake of the discussion, two alternative resolutions were put forth: a ‘left-wing’ resolution, proposed by Spektator (Nokhum Nokhumson), which endorsed the creation of a new, third, international, made up of the communist parties of all lands and of the revolutionary wings of the social democratic parties, and an alternative, ‘centrist’, reso-

lution proposed by Nisn Pups, which condemned the policies which had been | endorsed by Majority Social Democrats during the First World War (that 1s, the policies of the leading parties in the Second International) but which insisted that any international would only have the power to perform the tasks which confronted it if it included all or the greatest part of the world-wide proletariat, and which there- | fore declared that the Bund of Vilna rejected all attempts to split proletarian ranks.*/ Nokhumson’s resolution received sixty-four votes, and the ‘centrist’ one received sixty.27° When, immediately after the vote on the international was taken, the Bundists in Vilna selected delegates to a forthcoming conference of the Bund to be held in Minsk—the Eleventh Conference of the Bund—a decision was made by the Vilna Bund to send three delegates representing the left perspective and two representing the right and centre viewpoints.2° At both the Eleventh Conference of the Bund and the Twelfth (held in the spring of 1920), it became apparent that leftist views were widely accepted not only in the Vilna Bund but also in the Russian Bund as a whole.®° A resolution at the Twelfth 2. Shortly thereafter, Unzer shtime ceased publication, and was not issued for a period of fifteen months. In August 1920 it briefly reappeared, and several numbers were published. Nowikow became its official

editor at that time. However, its actual editor in the final days of its existence was the teacher Elihu Yankef Goldshmidt: Nowikow, Zikhroynes fun a yidishn arbeter, 84. On Goldshmidt, see Kh. Sh. Kazdan (ed.), Lerer yizkor bukh: di umgekumene lerer fun tsysho shuln in poyln (New York, [1954?]), 81-4. Another source indicates that Goldshmidt wrote for Dos fraye vort (1921), Unzer tsayt (1922), and Unzer gedank (1923), which suggests that he must have had a change of heart, and affiliated with the Social Democratic

Bund rather than with the left Bundists after serving as Unzer shtime’s editor: S. Niger and J. Shatzky (eds.), Lekstkon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, 8 vols. (New York, 1956-81), 11. 99.

27 “Fun partey-lebn’, Unzer shtime, 8 Mar. 1919, p. 4. 28 ‘Valn fun delegatn in der vilner organizatsye’, Unzer shtime, 10 Mar. 1919, p. 4.

29 Ibid. The left-wing delegates were Nokhumson, Nowikow, and Yankef Vaynshteyn. The rightwing delegates were Nisn Pups and Shloyme Kleyt. In the course of the Minsk conference, Vaynshteyn declared that he was leaving the Bund and joining the communists. He nevertheless attempted to participate in a meeting of the Vilna Bund which took place after the Minsk conference, at which the decisions of the latter were discussed and debated: G. Aronson, ‘A bazukh in vilne (fun a notits-bukh 1919)’,

Fraye arbeter shtime, 15 Dec. 1960, p. 6. In the later parts of the Minsk conference, following Vaynshteyn’s declaration, his spot was taken by Shmuel Novopliant, who was a teacher in Vilna: Nowogrodzki, ‘Der “bund” in yerushalayim dlite’, 13. 30 Raphael Abramovitch later claimed that the Social Democratic Bundists had greater support than the official votes at the Twelfth Conference might suggest, but that, for a variety of reasons, the balance of power among the various factions was not accurately portrayed by the division of delegates between the left and the right: R. Abramovitch, /n tsvey revolutsyes: di geshikhte fun a dor, 2 vols. (New York,

The Bund in Vilna, 1918-1939 269 Conference supported by the left and calling on the Bund to enter the Russian Communist Party as an autonomous organization was endorsed by a majority of the

delegates.°! But the passing of this resolution led a minority to walk out of the Twelfth Conference, and to create a party of their own, the General Jewish Workers’ Bund (Social Democrats), often known as the Social Democratic Bund. A. Litvak (Khayim Yankef Helfand), who later moved to Vilna, was chosen to be a member of

the Central Committee of this party (though he was not present at the Twelfth Conference).°2 The remaining delegates to the Twelfth Conference, in turn, began to refer to the rump party as the Kombund (Communist Bund). In August 1920 Rakhmiel Vaynshtayn and Alter Rumanov, both of whom were

Kombundists, travelled to Vilna and held a series of meetings with the Bundist organization of that city.°° Though Bundists sympathetic to the perspective of the Social Democratic Bund, including Elie (Yoysef) Chaykind, also addressed these meetings, Vaynshtayn’s opinions were found to be persuasive by most of those who attended. A declaration proclaiming that the Vilna organization of the Bund recognized the resolutions endorsed at the Twelfth Conference, that the Vilna organization submitted to these resolutions, and that the Vilna organization affiliated itself with the Central Committee of the Russian (Communist) Bund, was accepted by seventy of the Bundists present. Forty other Vilna Bundists (who agreed with the social democratic perspective) declined to vote. On the day following this decisive step, it was decided that all those who wished to remain members of the Vilna Bund would need to re-register with the organization, and that those who did not do so would no longer be considered members of the party. Despite the expressed wishes of the Russian Kombundists, a commission of the Comintern refused to endorse the notion that the Kombund be allowed to join the Russian Communist Party as an autonomous organization. Believing that it had no 1944), 11. 316-17. Abramovitch mistakenly claims that Litvak spoke at the Twelfth Conference on behalf

of the Social Democratic Bundists. |

Though the leaders of the Polish Bund knew full well that the Bundists of Vilna identified with Russia rather than with Poland, they invited the Vilna organization of the Bund to take part in a conference of the Polish Bund which took place in Krak6w in April 1920, and the Vilna Bund accepted this invitation. Shloyme Kleyt served as a non-voting delegate of the Vilna Bund to the Krak6éw conference, and gave greetings on behalf of the Vilna Bund during the course of the conference: J. S. Hertz (I. Sh. Herts), ‘Der bund in umophengikn poyln, 1918-1925’, in G. Aronson et al. (eds.), Di geshikhte fun bund, 5 vols. (New York, 1960-81), iv. 36. Nowikow intended to take part in the Twelfth Conference, which was also held in April 1920, but was arrested while travelling to Russia: Nowikow, Zikhroynes fun a yidishn arbeter,

89. In justifying why it chose to send representatives to both the Polish and the Russian conferences, the Vilna Bund noted that it did so in order to symbolize its hope that the Bund would at some point be reunified: Nowogrodzki, ‘Der “bund” in yerushalayim dlite’, 13-14. 31 Z. Y. Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 1917-1930

(Princeton, 1972), 187-97. 32 Kh. Sh. Kazdan, ‘Der lebns-veg fun a. litvak: kemfer, shriftshteler, lerer’, in_4. litvak-bukh (New York, 1945), 116-17. 33 Y-f, ‘Di historishe vokh fun der vilner organizatsye fun “bund”’, Unzer shtime, 13 Aug. 1920, p. 12. Cf. Nowikow, Zikhroynes fun a yidishn arbeter, 92-3.

270 Jack Facobs viable alternative, the successor to the Russian Kombund proclaimed, on 5 March 1921, at yet another conference held in Minsk, that it accepted the decision of the Comintern commission. Those Russian Kombundists willing to do so then applied individually for membership in the Russian Communist Party.

Most Kombundists in Lithuania agreed with the decisions which had been reached in Minsk in 1921.%4 In April 1921, the Kombundists of Kovne (Kaunas) liquidated their organization, and the Bundist groups in other Lithuanian cities and towns did so as well.?° The Kombund of Vilna, on the other hand, ideologically and emotionally committed to the maintenance of a Jewish workers’ movement, resisted implementation

of the resolution which had been adopted in Minsk in 1921. The group of Kombundists unwilling to dissolve their organization was headed by Leyvik Hodes, a member of the Central Committee of the Russian Bund in 1919 and secretary of the Bund in Ukraine 1n 1920, and Morduch (Mordekhay) Joffe. Joel Nowikow, who moved from Kovne to Vilna, joined them, as did Shaul Judidowicz (Yedidovitsh) and Bencel Wajner (Bentsl Vayner).?© The Vilna Kombund engaged in a range of

activities as an independent organization throughout the remainder of 1921 and much of 1922. The group was particularly involved in trade union, school, and cultural affairs.°“ The Workers’ Group of Vilna, as the Vilna Kombund of this period 34 FE. Nowogroédzki, ‘Der “bund” in kovner lite (a fargesn kapitl)’, Foroys, 18/250 (Apr. 1957), 15.

The Kombundists in Kaunas sent a delegation to Minsk to what they referred to as the Thirteenth Conference of the Russian Bund with a mandate to vote for the absorption of the Kombund into the Russian Communist Party: ‘Der kovner “kom. bund” halt unter’, Dos fraye vort, 19 Mar. 1921, p. 3. The members of this delegation were Nowikow, I. Tikotshinski, and Khayim Kolp: Nowikow, ZLikhroynes fun a yidishn arbeter, 102.

35 Tn the period following the end of the First World War and preceding the decision to liquidate the

Bundist party in Lithuania, there were Bundist groups in Ponievitsh (Panevézys), Shavl (Siauliai), Telshe (TelSi1ai), Valkovishki (Vilkaviskis), Vilkomir (Ukmerge), and other towns. The local Bundist groups in many of these places had reading rooms. Some had their own offices, dramatic circles, and libraries: Nowogrodzki, ‘Der “bund” in yerushalayim dlite’, 16. 36 The roles played by Hodes and Joffe are noted in S. Dubnow-Erlich, ‘Dos lebn fun leyvik hodes’, in Leyvik hodes: biografye un shrifin, ed. S. Dubnow-Erlich (New York, 1962), 22-4. Hodes, who had been working closely with the Bundists in Lithuania in the period leading up to the Minsk conference, and who allegedly moved from Kaunas to Vilna at the time of the split in the Vilna Bund, attempted to dissuade his one-time comrades in Kaunas from actualizing the decision reached in Minsk, but was unable to convince them not to abide by it: Nowogrédzki, ‘Der “bund” in yerushalayim dlite’, 14. The roles played by Judidowicz, Wajner, and Nowikow are mentioned by Nowikow, Zikhroynes fun a yidishn

arbeter, 110. For biographical material on Judidowicz (b. 1890), see Kazdan (ed.), Lerer yizkor bukh, 193-4. An informer reported to government authorities—not altogether accurately—on the Bundist left in Vilna, and asserted, in an undated report, that Plaudermacher was chairman and Judidowicz secretary, and that the members of the group’s administrative committee were Imianitow, R. Simchowicz, Bramson, Galpern, and Rywkin: Lietuvos centrinis valstybés archyvas, Vilnius (hereafter LCV A), f. 89, ap. 8, b. 2, item 1. 37 The Left Bundists were in the majority at a general meeting of the Union of Trade Employees in Vilna held in May 1922, though the Right Bundists attributed their defeat to a poor turnout and not to the ideological make-up of the union members: ‘Aleyn shuldik’, Unzer tsayt, 20 May 1922, p. I.

The Bund in Vilna, 1915-1939 271 is referred to by one source, was, to the best of my knowledge, the only organized group of Kombundists in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, or Lithuania which chose to remain outside a communist party following the Minsk decision of March 1921. In 1g21—2, it would appear, the members of the Vilna Kombund were unwilling to allow themselves to be absorbed into either the Polish Bund (the General Jewish Workers’ Bund in Poland)—both because they thought of the Polish Bund as standing to their political right and because they did not think of the future of Vilna as lying within Poland—or a communist party, either in Russia or elsewhere. The Vilna Kombundists continued to believe that they could best serve the interests of Jewish workers by maintaining an autonomous Jewish workers’ organization. However, under the coaxing of Chmurner (Jozef Leszczynski), a member of the Central Committee of the Polish Bund who was a leader of the Polish left-wing Bundists, and who travelled to Vilna in order to meet with the Workers’ Group, the Vilna grouping reassessed its position.?° In September 1922, by which point Vilna was being governed by Poland, the Workers’ Group concluded that there was no longer any reason for it to remain outside the ranks of the Polish Bund.?9 Leyvik Hodes, for one, went on to play a prominent role in the Polish Bund, and became a member of its Central Committee in 1925.4° The right-wing Bundists of Vilna also created and sustained a group of their own in the period following the 1921 Minsk conference (and were joined by some who had earlier been members of the centre faction). Among those affiliated with this organization, the Social Democratic Bund of Vilna, were a number of Bundists who fled to Vilna before or at the time that the Bolsheviks tightened their control over Russia, including relatively prominent figures such as Yitskhok Kharlash, A. Litvak, Yisroyel Okun, Anna Rozental, Pavel Rozental, Wirgili (Boruch (Borukh) Kahan), and Jankiel ZeleZnikéw (Yankl Zheleznikov) and lesser-known figures such as I. Etkin and Sh. Hurvits-Zalkes.4! In addition, some Bundists who had long been resident in Vilna, such as Riwka Epsztejn (Rifke Epshteyn), Ruwim Wajnsztejn (Leybl Vaynshteyn), and Izaak (Yitskhok) Rafes, joined the Social Democratic 38 Nowikow, Zikhroynes fun a yidishn arbeter, 111. 39 J. Ayzerner [J. Zeleznikow], ‘A sheyner toyt’, Unzer gedank, 30 Sept. 1922, pp. 2-3; 15 yor yugntbund ‘tsukunft’ in vilne: yoyvl heft, 1922-1937 (Vilna, 1937), 2; B. Nadel, ‘Di bundishe yugnt-bavegung

in vilne tsvishn beyde velt-milkhomes’, Unzer tsayt, July 1992, p. 29. The Social Democratic Bundists

of Vilna explained the decision taken by the Workers’ Group by insisting that the latter had found that there was not enough political room available between the space occupied by the Social Democratic Bund and that occupied by the communists. 40 Dubnow-Erlich, ‘Dos lebn fun leyvik hodes’, 26. 41 The Russian Social Democratic Bund was hounded in Russia in the course of 1921-2, and those affiliated with that group were subject to arrest. Litvak, for one, was arrested in February 1921 at a | meeting of the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Bund, but released after two days in prison: Kazdan, “Der lebns-veg fun a. litvak’, 117. For biographical data on Kharlash, see Niger and Shatzky (eds.), Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, 1v. 336—go. Biographical information on Okun, P. and A. Rozental, Wirgili, and Zeleznikow may be found in Hertz (ed.), Doyres bundistn, 1. 157-92, 391—401,

439-45, 408-70.

272 Jack Facobs eroup.*? Though it is almost certain that there were more individuals in the Vilna Kombund in 1921 than there were in the Social Democratic Bund of Vilna, the latter had more writers than did the former, and also had a larger number of prominent people with long-term Bundist affiliations.

The political differences separating the Social Democratic Bund of Vilna from their one-time comrades in Russia who had accepted the decisions of the Twelfth Conference were manifest: the Social Democratic Bundists considered the Bolsheviks to be dictatorial, denounced communist terror, and did not have any interest in affiliating with the Russian Communist Party, or, for that matter, any other communist party. But the Social Democratic Bundists of Vilna also perceived substantive political differences between their own perspective and that of the Polish

Bund. : The Polish Bund had gone on record as favouring affiliation with the Comintern

in a convention which took place in 1920. The Comintern, however, insisting on complete control and on ideological purity, declared that there were twenty-one conditions which had to be met by parties desiring admission into its ranks.4? While the Polish Bund remained very much interested in joining the Comintern, it could not 42 Unzer tsayt, 14 Jan. 1922, p. 3; [Y. Kharlash], ‘Forvert’: YIVO Archives, RG 1400, MG 2-127. For biographical data on Epsztejn, see Hertz (ed.), Doyres bundistn, 11. 103-7. Okun arrived in Vilna in 1919, Kharlash in 1920, A. and P. Rozental in 1921, and Litvak at the end of 1921 or the beginning of

1922. Others involved in the Vilna Social Democratic Bund include D. Korb, H. Rabinowicz, and H[elena] Solomonova, who are listed alongside far more prominent individuals as members of an election committee of that group: ‘Val komitet fun bund s.d.’, Unzer gedank, 30 Sept. 1922, p. 4. Sonia Stupel-Kahan (Wirgili’s spouse), in the period immediately following the split in the Vilna Bund, was not active in either of the Bundist groups which emerged from this split. However, she affiliated with the Social Democratic Bund in 1922, and remained in it until her death in March 1923: ‘Sonye stupelkahan’, Unzer gedank, 24 Mar. 1923, p. 2. A picture which is labelled as showing members of a committee of the Social Democratic Bund in Vilna but which was probably taken several years after the initial founding of the group contains images not only of Okun, Litvak, A. Rozental, Zeleznikow, Wajnsztejn, and Epsztejn but also of Jozef (Yoysef) Aronowicz, Grisha Abelovitsh, and Motl Novik: Kleyt, ‘Di arbeter bavegung in vilne in der tsayt fun der daytsher okupatsye’, 235. An undated report on the ‘Bund Right’ written by a government informant and asserting that the organization belonged to the Second International (which was not true), and that the group had approximately 3,000 members (a much higher figure than the actual number of formal members), also claimed that the group’s chairman was Peskes,

that Wajnsztejn was secretary, and that the members of the group’s administrative board were R. Epsztejn, B. Wajner, B. Lubecki, J. Rubin, and Cypkin: LCVA, f. 89, ap. 8, b. 3, item 1. Arkadi Kremer,

often called the founder of the Bund, who had moved to France in 1912, came to Vilna in 1921. However, he did not become a member of the Social Democratic Bund. On the other hand, Kremer was prominently associated with the Vilna Bund during a later period. He joined the party at the end of 1927, served as chairman of the Vilna Bund beginning in 1928, and also served as a representative of the Bund on the Jewish Community Council of Vilna from that same year. He is said to have attended all the meetings of the party and of the Community Council for so long as his health permitted him to do so: Pati [Kremer], ‘Zikhroynes vegn arkadin’, in Arkadi: zamlbukh tsum ondenk fun grinder fun ‘bund’ arkadi kremer (1865-1935) (New York, 1942), 67; A. Rozental, ‘Arkadis letste yorn’, ibid. 256-8. 43 B.K. Johnpoll, The Politics of Futility: The General Jewish Workers Bund of Poland, 1917-1943 (Ithaca, NY, 1967), 104-5.

The Bund in Vilna, 1915-1939 273 bring itself to accept all of the Comintern’s twenty-one points, and made that stance clear at a convention in Danzig in December 1921.44 The decisions made in Danzig, in turn, led a left-wing faction within the Polish

Bund to leave the party, and to create the Jewish Communist Workers’ Bund (Kombund) of Poland (the Polish Kombund). The Polish Kombund accepted all twenty-one of the Comintern’s conditions, and promptly affiliated with the Third International.4° But from the point of view of Vilna’s Social Democratic Bund, both those who had affiliated with the Polish Kombund and those who remained with the Polish Bund were, in principle, in agreement with the Comintern. Litvak, on the other hand, writing in July 1922 in Unzer tsayt, an organ of Vilna’s Social Democratic Bund, proclaimed that we... have remained social democrats; today, as yesterday, principled opponents of the Communist programme. Why does it matter to us if some accept all twenty-one points and the others no more than nineteen and a half? ... We cannot accept the principles of the Comintern, from which all the points are derived . .. We are social democrats of the Viennese type, from the school of Friedrich Adler, Otto Bauer, and Hilferding. And so long as this is what we are, we have nothing to look for either in communist or in practically communist parties . . . Joining means lowering the social democratic flag, the flag of the old Bund.

Litvak was also worried about other matters which would, he feared, result from joining the Polish Bund: ‘We shall receive no guarantees of the freedom to express our point of view. We shall have to close Unzer tsayt or conduct it in the spirit of

Warsaw.’*6 |

Vilna’s Social Democratic Bund believed that the Bund belonged not in the Comintern but rather in the International Working Union of Socialist Parties (also known as the Vienna Union and, tongue in cheek, as the 2’ International), which was founded in February 1921 and which briefly occupied the sliver of political 44 One of the twenty-one conditions issued by the Comintern stated that ‘parties desirous of joining the Communist International must recognize the necessity of a complete and absolute rupture with reformism and the policy of the “centrists” and must advocate the rupture amongst the widest circles of the party membership’. Another of the points declared that ‘those members of the party who reject on principle the conditions and the theses of the Third International are to be excluded from the party’. These two points were both problematic from the perspective of a majority of those in the Polish Bund.

4° For an analysis by a key figure in the Social Democratic Bund of Vilna of the decision by the Comintern to admit the Polish Kombund into its ranks, see A. Litvak, ‘Kombund un komintern’, Unzer gedank, 2 Sept. 1922, p. 2. 46 A. Litvak, ‘Briv tsu a khaver’, Unzer tsayt, 1 July 1922, pp. 2-3. Unzer tsayt, which was a weekly, was first issued in January 1922 and was edited by a board consisting of Litvak, Y. Okun, Y. Kharlash, R. Epsztejn, and P. Rozental: Kazdan, ‘Der lebns-veg fun a. litvak’, 118-19. An informant, reporting to the government on activities in Jewish circles, noted (inaccurately) in January 1922 that Unzer tsayt would be an organ expressing the views of both left- and right-wing Bundists: LCVA, f. 89, ap. 8, b. 1, item 199. Unzer tsayt was closed by order of the government in July 1922, but was promptly replaced

by a ‘new’ periodical, Unzer gedank, of which Litvak was editor-in-chief: Niger and Shatzky (eds.), Lekstkon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, v. 87.

274 Jack Jacobs space between the successor to the pre-war Socialist International (the Second International) and the Comintern (the Third International).4” Litvak proclaimed in August 1922 that the Vienna Union was ‘suitable to the objective conditions of the Jewish working class’.4° During the following year, the Vilna Social Democratic Bund criticized the Polish Bund for its failure to affiliate with a significant international body: “The Social Democrats of all nations hold conferences, meetings. The Communists hold their meetings and conferences. They seek ways and means, they prepare. The organized Jewish working class of Poland goes to no conferences, it doesn’t seek, it doesn’t prepare. As a matter of fact—it criticizes everything and everyone.’*? When, however, the Vienna Union chose in May 1923 to join with the successor to the Second International, thereby creating a new body known as the Labour and Socialist International (which stood politically to the right of the Vienna Union), the Social Democratic Bund of Vilna discouraged those who wanted to form yet another international entity which would have continued along lines similar to those of the Vienna Union.°? The Polish Bund, on the other hand, was quite sympathetic to the new effort, and did in fact affiliate with the International Information Bureau of Revolutionary Socialist Organizations. Despite the differences between the Social Democratic Bund of Vilna and the Polish Bund, the former endorsed the latter’s platform in the period leading up to the Sejm elections of 1922.°! Lingering misgivings as to desirability of Polish control over Vilna notwithstanding, the Social Democratic Bund believed that it was important 47 Among the parties involved with the Vienna Union were the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria, the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, the British Independent Labour Party,

the Mensheviks, and the Russian Social Revolutionaries: G. D. H. Cole, Communism and Social Democracy, 1914-1931, 2 vols. (London, 1958), 1. 337. Raphael Abramovitch, whose political position was identical to that of the Vilna Social Democratic Bund, and who co-operated with the Vilna organization but lived in Berlin in the 1920s, served as a representative of Russian Social Democracy to the Vienna Union: Niger and Shatzky (eds.), Lekstkon fun der nayer yidisher hteratur, 1. 15. 48 A. Litvak, ‘Briv tsu a khaver’, Unzer gedank, 5 Aug. 1922, p. 2. Cf. ‘In viner internatsyonal’, ibid. 4. 49° Unzer gedank, 17 Mar. 1923, as quoted in Johnpoll, Politics of Futility, 134. 50 A. Litvak, ‘Ledebour’s “internatsyonal” un der poylisher “bund””’, Der veker, 18 Aug. 1923, pp. t1—12; L., “['svey mit dray fertl’, Unzer gedank, 1 Dec. 1923, p. 3. Raphael Abramovitch took an active

role in the negotiations which led the Vienna Union to join with the Second International, and was a

representative of the Russian Social Democratic Party to the Labour and Socialist International Hamburg Congress of 1923: Niger and Shatzky (eds.), Lekstkon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, 1. 15. He

remained involved in the Labour and Socialist International in the years thereafter (see e.g. ‘In sotsyalistishn arbeter-internatsyonal’, Unzer gedank, 8 Mar. 1924, p. 3) and described his position in the pages of the Vilna Social Democratic Bund’s organ: R. Abramovitch, ‘Der arbeter-internatsyonal un di marksistishe parteyen’, Unzer gedank, 8 Mar. 1924, p. 4. ot ‘Arum di seym valn’, Unzer gedank, 23 Sept. 1922, p. 4; ‘Mit vos geyen mir tsu di valn?’, Unzer gedank, 30 Sept. 1922, p. 1. Planks in the platform included defence of the eight-hour working day; support for the unemployed; genuine freedom of speech, press, assembly, and of the right to strike; an amnesty for political prisoners; opposition to militarism and imperialism; recognition of the Yiddish language; and development by the state of schools for Jewish children in which Yiddish would be the language of instruction.

The Bund in Vilna, 1915—1939 275 that Vilna’s Jewish workers participate in these elections, and worked actively on behalf of the Bundist list during the electoral campaign.°” The decision made by the Bund in Poland 1n 1924 to participate in ke/ile elections

was also endorsed by the leaders of the Vilna Social Democratic Bund,®? and was taken by the latter as a sign that the Polish Bund was moving in a positive direction. This decision on the part of the Polish Bund seems to have encouraged the perception among the Social Democrats in Vilna that there were no longer good reasons to maintain an independent Bundist movement in Vilna.°4 Moreover, Vilna had been officially incorporated into Poland, and by 1924 it was quite clear that that decision

was not going to be undone in the short term. The members of the Social Democratic Bund of Vilna therefore merged with those who had earlier been in the Vilna Kombund, and joined the Jewish Workers’ Bund of Poland. *K

The Bundist group in Vilna in the wake of the merger lacked some of the firepower which the Social Democratic Bund (and, to a lesser degree, the Vilna Kombund)

had had in earlier years. Leyvik Hodes moved from Vilna to Warsaw, apparently , around 1923. Yitskhok Kharlash lived in Berlin from 1923 to 1925, and in Riga from

August 1925. Pavel Rozental died in March 1924. Yisroyel Okun emigrated to Argentina in 1924. A. Litvak (who remained dissatisfied with the politics of the Polish Bund even when it was clear that the Bund would not join the Comintern) moved to Warsaw, and slightly later to the United States.°° The Vilna Bund in the

latter half of the 1920s had significantly fewer members who were prominent throughout Poland than it had had just a few years earlier.°° The Vilna Bund, nevertheless, conducted a range of activities after it affiliated

with the Polish Bund, and benefited from being a part of a countrywide party. °2 “Tsu di valn’, Unzer gedank, 2 Sept. 1922, p. 1. The Bundist list received 1,397 votes in Vilna: Hertz, ‘Der bund in umophengikn poyln, 1918—1925’, 36. °3 “A guter simen’, Unzer gedank, 5 Apr. 1924, p. 1. Cf. A.L., ‘Vegna may-oyfruf’, Unzer gedank, 20 May 1924, p. 2. ©4 Just as Chmurner had earlier come to Vilna to encourage the Workers’ Group to enter the Polish

Bund, so too did Victor Alter travel from Warsaw to Vilna in 1924 as an emissary of the Central Committee of the Bund in Poland in order to coax the Social Democratic Bund, and to ease the unification of the two groupings in Vilna: Nowikow, Zikhroynes fun a yidishn arbeter, 113. The process of absorbing Vilna’s Social Democratic Bund into the Polish Bund was apparently prolonged by an initial demand on the part of the former that it be admitted to the latter as a formal fraction, and, as such, be entitled to maintain an organ. It was only after the Social Democratic Bund of Vilna gave up this demand that serious negotiations commenced: Arbeter-luekh, 6 (1925), 239. °° Kazdan, ‘Der lebns-veg fun a. litvak’, 121-4.

56 The haemorrhaging continued in later years: Motl Novik, who had been a leading figure among the leather workers, and involved with efforts to support the Yiddish secular schools, died in 1929; Nowikow emigrated to South Africa in 1930; Arkadi Kremer died in 1935, and Wirgili in 1936. Though there were younger Bundists in Vilna who stepped up to leadership roles, the losses noted above were significant.

276 Jack fFacobs Lectures proposed or conducted in 1928 by the Vilna Committee of the Bund— likely quite typical of lectures sponsored by the Vilna Bund throughout the years under discussion—included talks on ‘Eighty Years of Karl Marx’s Manifesto’,°“ ‘Five Years of Italian Fascism’,°® and ‘Jewish Literature in the Years 1906—1907’.°”

Famous figures in the Polish Bund, such as Beynish Michalewicz,®? Vladimir Kossovsky,®! Victor Alter,°? Henryk Erlich,®? Shloyme Mendelson,®4 and Yoysef Brumberg,°° would come to speak in Vilna from time to time, particularly during the course of electoral campaigns. ®©®

In common with the Bund in Warsaw and .6dz—both of which had vastly larger Jewish populations than Vilna—the Vilna Bund fostered a constellation of local organizations which agreed with the Bundist ideology and which served specific con-

stituencies.°’ The Bundist youth movement (Yugnt Bund Tsukunft; for short, Tsukunft), the Bund’s children’s movement (Sotsyalistishe Kinder Farband; SKIF), the Bundist movement for physical education (Arbeter-Gezelshaft far Fizishe Dertsiung ‘Morgnshtern’ in Poyln; Morgnshtern), and the Bundist women’s movement (Yidisher Arbeter Froy; YAF) all had affiliates in Vilna.©° The following paragraphs will examine these organizations in turn. In the period following the adherence of the members of the Workers’ Group to

the Polish Bund but preceding the adherence of the Social Democratic Bund’s members to the Bund in Poland—that is, in 1923—4—-there were two different o7 LCVA, f. 53, ap. 23, b. 2037, item 129.

58 Tbid., item 126. 59 Tbid., item 92. 6° 15 yor yugnt-bund ‘tsukunf?’ in vilne, 5.

61 LCVA, f. 53, ap. 23, b. 2037, item 344. 62 Tbid., items 442, 469. 63 Announcement of talk to be given by Henryk Erlich, 13 May [1939]: YIVO Archives, RG 1400, MG 2-128. 64 Der vilner ekspres, 19 May 1939. This citation, and some citations below of pieces which appeared in other newspapers, including Ovnt kuryer, Tsayt, Undzer tog, Vilner radio, and Vilner tog, is derived from collections of clippings apparently assembled by staff members of the pre-war YIVO and currently in the Lithuanian National Library, rather than from direct examination of copies of the relevant periodicals. For additional detail on these collections of clippings, see E. Bramson-Alperniene, ““Vilbig”—

vilner bildungs-gezelshaft in der vilner prese, 1924-1925’, fiddistik Mittetlungen: fiddistik in deutschsprachigen Landern, 40 (2008), 1-6.

6° L. S. Dawidowicz, From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938-1947 (New York, 1989), 115. 66 Leon Oler, similarly, is listed as a speaker on a flyer announcing an event sponsored by the Vilna Committee of the Yugnt Bund Tsukunft, scheduled for. 11 April 1934 and intended to mark the tenth anniversary of the unification of the Bundist youth groups of Vilna: LCVA, f. 53, ap. 23, b. 2037, item 560.

67 Warsaw’s Jewish population in the years before the Second World War was roughly 350,000, and that of 1.6dz was approximately 200,000. Vilna had a Jewish population of 54,607 in 1931, which made up 28.2% of the city’s total population: ‘Di yidishe vilne un di kehile valn’, Vi/ner tog, 17 Aug. 1936. As this same source makes clear, the proportion of the total population of Vilna which was Jewish dropped

markedly in the period beginning with the year in which the Bund was founded and ending with the last pre-war census. In 1897, at which time there had been 63,841 Jews in Vilna, Jews constituted 41.4% of Vilna’s population.

68 JT have discussed the countrywide development of all these movements in J. Jacobs, Bundist Counterculture in Interwar Poland (Syracuse, NY, 2009).

The Bund in Vilna, 1915-1939 277 Bundist youth groups operating in Vilna, paralleling the two adult Bund groups. The first of these was a youth group which was affiliated with the Social Democratic Bund and consisted primarily of students.°? This group came into being in 1922.

The other Bundist youth group, which was apparently to the political left of the Social Democratic Bund’s youth organization, was established in 1923, with the encouragement of the leadership of the Polish Bund, and adopted the name Yugnt Bund Tsukunft.”° This latter entity attracted Jewish adolescents who were already working rather than those who were still in school. Zalmen Voyland was among its leaders.’+ But the Yugnt Bund Tsukunft, Vilne Organizatsye, reportedly had no more than thirty-eight members in 1924. The unification of the Social Democratic Bund’s youth organization with the Yugnt Bund Tsukunft in the second half of 1924, however, apparently sparked growth. The first annual report of the unified organization noted that the combined group had eighty-eight members.’ Both young working people (especially from the needle trades) and students (from the Yiddish Teachers’ Seminary and, to a lesser degree, from other institutions) affiliated with the Vilna Tsukunft around that time. At the end of 1926, Vilna Tsukunft had 180 members. /? Somewhat later, young Jewish workers from the metal, leather, and other industries also joined. By the end of 1927, membership stood at close to 350. "4

The Vilna Tsukunft, in the wake of the unification, took an activist stance. It con-

sidered the demonstration which it organized in 1927 in conjunction with International Youth Day, and the protest demonstration which it organized in 1929 following the murder of the Warsaw Tsukunftist Shia Grinvald, to be among its proudest moments. ’° In 1931 the government demanded that students who took part in meetings organized by entities of which it did not approve be expelled from the educational institutions in which they were enrolled. The Tsukunft responded by conducting a vigorous protest campaign. ’® It also engaged in cultural work.”” 69 K. Vapner, ‘Tsum 15-yorikn yoyvl fun yugnt-bund “tsukunft” in vilne’, Yugnt-veker, 1 Apr. 1937, ° 70 An indication of the attitude of the Polish Bund may be gleaned from the fact that Yankef Patt trav-

elled from Warsaw to Vilna in order to take part in the event at which the Yugnt Bund Tsukunft, Vilne Organizatsye, was formally created: 15 yor yugnt-bund ‘tsukunft’ in vilne, 3. “1 Nowikow, Zikhroynes fun a yidishn arbeter, 154.

72 These figures are mentioned by Vapner, ‘Tsum 15-yorikn yoyvl fun yugnt-bund “tsukunft” in vilne’, 4. For a report on the impact of the unification written two months after it had taken place, see V. K-t, ‘Vilne’, Yugnt-veker, 18 Nov. 1924, p. 24.

73 rs yor yugnt-bund ‘tsukunft’ in vilne, 5. 74 Tbid. 6. 75 Vapner, ‘Tsum 15-yorikn yoyvl fun yugnt-bund “tsukunft” in vilne’, 4. The murder of Grinvald

is described in J.S. Hertz, Di geshikhte fun a yugnt: der kleyner bund—yugnt-bund tsukunft in poyln (New

York, 1946), 328-9. Cf. the notice issued by the ‘Yugnt-bund “tsukunft” in poyln, vilner organizatsye’, of an event in honour of International Socialist Youth Day, for which a speaker was brought in from

Warsaw: LCVA, f. 53, ap. 23, b. 2037, item 223. “6 Hertz, Di geshikhte fun a yugnt, 350. “7 For one example of cultural work conducted under the auspices of the Vilna Tsukunft, see Lonek, ‘Fun der vilner “tsukunft’”’, Yugnt-veker, 1 Oct. 1938, p. 16.

278 Jack Jacobs Some members (or one-time members) of the Vilna Tsukunft left the city, moving, in two especially significant patterns, either to Warsaw or abroad. Yoshke

Ofman, to take one case in point, who had served as the long-term head of the Tsukunft in Vilna, moved to Warsaw in order to avoid a prison sentence resulting from his political activities on behalf of the Vilna Tsukunft.’° Kalman Wapner (Vapner), a particularly active figure in the Vilna Tsukunft, also lived in Warsaw in the period 1936—9, and served during those years as secretary of the Poland-wide SKIF.“9 The Vilna Tsukunft did not grow continuously. Indeed, membership dropped at one point, beginning in 1928. Disgruntlement within its ranks with the decision made by the Polish Bund in 1930 to enter the Labour and Socialist International, and the closing of the Vilna Yiddish Teachers’ Seminary in 1931, both contributed to losses in membership.®° The pull of the communist youth movement, and of Zionist movements, certainly had an impact on some portions of the potential membership. However, with the aid of the Vilna Bund, the Tsukunft eventually began to attract additional supporters. Fifty new members were reported to have attended a semi-annual general meeting of the Vilna Tsukunft in the summer of 1936.°+ By April 1937 the Vilna branch of the Yugnt Bund T’sukunft in Poyln claimed to have close to 250 members. ®?

The Vilna SKIF was created in 1927.°° Unlike the pattern in certain other cities, the SKIF in Vilna was organized as a result of an initiative undertaken by the local branch of the Tsukunft, not by the Bund per se.®4 In Vilna, SKIF consisted primarily of schoolchildren, rather than of children who were full-time workers. The bulk of its members were between 12 and 15 years old.®° SKIF had only seventy-five members in Vilna in 1930,°° but by the end of 1935 it counted 450 members in its ranks.®” In 1937 a nationally prominent leader of SKIF, who had himself been active in Vilna at an earlier time in his life, claamed that the Vilna SKIF had grown to become ‘the largest children’s organization in the city’.2? A memoir by a one-time Skifist, published sixty years after the beginning of the Second World War, and “® Hertz, Di geshikhte fun a yugnt, 355. 79 Hertz (ed.), Doyres bundistn, i. 483-4. A list of prominent members of the Vilna Tsukunft, including some of those who emigrated, may be found in Nadel, ‘Di bundishe yugnt-bavegung in vilne tsvishn

beyde velt-milkhomes’, 30. 80 rs yor yugnt-bund ‘tsukunft’ in vilne, 7. 51 Lonek, ‘In der vilner “tsukunft”-organizatsye’, Yugnt-veker, 1 July 1936, p. 10. 82 Vapner, “Tsum 15-yorikn yoyvl fun yugnt-bund “tsukunft” in vilne’, 4.

83 5 yor yugnt-bund ‘tsukunft’ in vilne, 5. , 84 The Vilna Tsukunft continued to have the primary responsibility for leading the local SKIF

branch throughout the remaining years of its existence: 15 yor yugnt-bund ‘tsukunft’ in vilne, 10; Nadel, ‘Di bundishe yugnt-bavegung in vilne tsvishn beyde velt-milkhomes’, 31. 85 A. Rozental, ‘Der itstiker tsushtand fun der arbeyter-bavegung in vilne’, in Jeshurin (ed.), Vilne,

241-2. 86 ‘A barikht fun vilne’, Kleyne folkstsaytung, 28 Nov. 1930. 87 “Ayndruksfuler fayerung fun ariberfirn skifistn in der “tsukunft” in vilne’, Kleyne folkstsaytung, 27

Dec. 1935. 88 15 yor yugnt-bund ‘tsukunft’ in vilne, to.

The Bund in Vilna, 1915-1939 279 presumably referring to the late 1930s, asserts that there were 500 SKIF members in Vilna.®? This figure, however, cannot be corroborated.?° A branch of Morgnshtern was founded in Vilna in 1927.%! The group used a subsidy obtained from the city in 1930 to foster not only gymnastics groups but also sections devoted to soccer, hiking, and other specific activities.97 At the beginning of 1936 the Vilna Morgnshtern had fifty male members and 102 female members. It also had sixty-eight members in its children’s group. Unlike such organizations as Maccabi, Vilna Morgnshtern seems to have devoted the bulk of its attention to gymnastics and other activities aimed first and foremost at physical education, rather than to competitive sports. The group also claimed to have a mandolin orchestra,

a choir, and a drama circle, and maintained a reading room and a library.?°? The members of Vilna Morgnshtern tended to be employed as tailors, metalworkers, construction workers, and in other, comparable, working-class jobs. Vilna Morgnshtern obtained funds by charging membership fees, by sponsoring events, and by soliciting donations. Activities were conducted in Yiddish. Morgnshtern boasted, in 1936, that it was growing, that it had rented a large, new, space in the centre of the city in which to conduct its activities, and that the ‘bourgeois’ Jewish

sport clubs in Vilna were shrinking.?* However, Vilna Morgnshtern never did become as large as Vilna Maccabi.?° Y AF, which did not come into being as a countrywide movement until the latter half of the 1920s, had a branch in Vilna as early as 1926. By mid-1927 the Vilna YAF claimed to have nearly 150 members, including working women (that is, women who were employed outside their homes), wives of workers, and women who worked in their homes (khalupnikes).°© Y AF issued appeals to Jewish working women to vote for the Bund list in Vilna’s City Council elections, and engaged in other educational, political, and cultural activities.?” Malke Nowikow (Novikov) served as chair of the 89 P. Wapner-Lewin (Vapner-Levin), Mayn flikht tsu dertseyln: derinerungen fun a lererin in vilner geto (Buenos Aires, 1999), 15. 9° For a sense of the activities of the Vilna SKIF, see Leybl R., ‘Der 3-togiker vinter-lager fun vilner skif’, Kleyne folkstsaytung, 19 Jan. 1934; Leybl, ‘Fun a skif yontef (ayndrukn)’, Kleyne folkstsaytung, 9 Feb. 1934; Leybl, ‘Der vilne skif fayert dem ershtn may’, Kleyne folkstsaytung, 4 May 1934.

°1 Questionnaire submitted by the Vilna Morgnshtern to YIVO’s ‘Optsvayg far der yidisher sportbavegung’, accessioned by YIVO on 19 January 1936: YIVO Archives, RG 1.1, file 600.

92 Arbeter-sportler, 10 June 1930. Cf. a report on the activities of Vilna Morgnshtern published in 1932: Sh. Khaykin, ‘Banayte arbet fun vilner “morgnshtern”’, Naye folkstsaytung, 18 Jan. 1932, p. 5. 93 For an indication of the range of activities not necessarily directly related to physical education or sports proposed or conducted under the auspices of Vilna Morgnshtern, see LCVA, f. 53, ap. 23, b. 1294, items 56 and 76.

94 ‘Ti algemeyne farzamlung fun “morgnshtern” in vilne’, Naye folkstsaytung, 16 Mar. 1936, p. 5. %5 J. Jacobs, ‘Jews and Sport in Interwar Vilna’, in J. Siau¢itinaité-Verbickiené and L. Lempertiené (eds.), Jewish Space in Central and Eastern Europe: Day-to-Day History (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2007),

165-73. 96 VaP, Unzer shtime, 21 May 1927, p. 4. 9” ©Tsu di yidishe arbetndike froyen!’, Unzer shtime, 21 May 1927, p. 4; Gezelshaft yidishe arbetndike

froy ‘yaf? in vilne, ‘Tsu di yidishe arbetndike froyen!’: International Institute of Social History,

280 Jack Facobs Vilna YAF. Basa Mikhtom, a bakery worker, Anna Rozental, and Riwka Epsztejn were also actively engaged with the Vilna YAF.9° However, unlike the Vilna SKIF or the Vilna Morgnshtern, Vilna YAF did not grow significantly. A report on it written by Malke Nowikow and published in 1935 reads as follows: Our YAF now has around a hundred members. It is difficult to organize, because the element is not working women, but poor women who trade in the market, or housewives. Both elements live under very difficult conditions and are so backward that it is not easy to plough through their minds. Meetings take place every two weeks, and discussions are led on various themes. From time to time talks are given on political themes and on the education of children, and they succeed. A certain cosiness is created. The women forget for a few hours their daily troubles. We are now preparing for Women’s Day. Two day-care centres, one named after Anman [Pavel Rozental] and the other after [A.| Litvak, are run under the auspices of YAF. Sixty children—of mothers who go out to work or to trade, or of mothers who are unemployed and who go out to look for a way to earn some money—attend the centres. The children are in the centres from quite early until five in the evening, receive three meals, and spend time playing, singing, and dancing under the supervision of experienced teachers.??

Nowikow’s indication that YAF was encountering difficulties is telling. A lengthy report on all the branches of the Jewish workers’ movement in Vilna written by Anna Rozental during the same period suggests that she too saw the situation confronting

the Vilna Bund in sober terms, noting in the final paragraph of her piece that her conclusion was ‘not a happy one’.!°° The grim economic situation in which Vilna’s Jewish population found itself during this period made it all the more difficult to raise funds or even to obtain payments of dues. However, the data available suggest that the Bundist constellation was doing about as well, relatively speaking, in Vilna as it was in Warsaw, and that some parts of the Bundist movement were much stronger in the former than in the latter, when the numbers of their potential supporters are factored in. The Warsaw YAF did not have as many as 600-700 members in 1935, though the Jewish population of the Polish capital was six to seven times larger than the Jewish population of Vilna. Despite the difficulties it encountered, the Vilna Bund was in fact able, during the inter-war years, to create a constellation of organizations devoted to children, youth, physical education, and women. This constellation contributed to its reach, and to its rise in the latter part of the 1930s. Amsterdam, Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeyter Bund Collection, 324. Cf. Val-komitet fun algemeynem yidishn arbeter “bund” in vilne, “Tsu der yidisher arbetndiker froy!’: YIVO Archives, RG 1400, MG 2-127.

98 ‘Kandidatn-tsetl fun algemeynem yidishn arbeter-“bund” no. 4’, Unger shtime, 18 June 1927, p. 2; ‘Mitingen tsum internatsyonaln froyen tog’, Naye folkstsaytung, 1 Apr. 1932, p. 2; Hertz (ed.), Doyres bundistn, 1. 190, 11. 107.

99 Malke [Nowikow], ‘Vilner yaf’, Naye folkstsaytung, 5 Apr. 1935, p. 7. In 1937 the Vilna YAF opened a third day-care centre, and named it after Arkadi Kremer: ‘Unzer bagrisung’, Naye folkstsaytung, 12 Dec. 1937, p. 6. 100 Rozental, ‘Der itstiker tsushtand fun der arbeyter-bavegung in vilne’, 244.

The Bund in Vilna, 1915-1939 281 K

Those Bundists who remained in Vilna after 1924 devoted themselves not only to party and party-related affairs but also to many other civic matters, which kept them

in the public eye, and which provided them with positions of influence. For example, Bundists played important roles in the Tsentraler Bildungs Komitet (Central Education Committee; TsBK), which ran a network of Yiddish secular schools in Vilna and which had been established in 1919. In 1933 there were 2,200 children in TsBK schools in the city.!°1 A report dating from December 1936 suggests that there were 1,877 children in TsBK schools at that time. 1° Among the Bundists in the first governing committee of the ,TsBK were Max Weinreich, Sofie (Khaye-Sore) Stupel-Kahan, Gerszon Pludermacher (Gershon Pludermakher), and Shloyme Kleyt. At later points in the history of the TsBK, other prominent members of the Bund took on major positions within the organization. Chaim Walt (Khayim Valt), Jozef Tejtel (Yoysef Teytel), Joel Nowikow (Yoyel Novikov), Mordekhay Yevzerov, and Anna Rozental were among those

elected (or re-elected) to the TsBK’s governing committee in 1927.19 Jozef Aronowicz (Yoysef Aronovitsh), one of the leading activists in the Vilna Bund in the

late 1920s and 1930s, was secretary of the TsBK from 1935 to 1938.19* Anna Rozental served as the chair of the TsBK in the years immediately preceding the Second World War, at which time she was also chair of the Vilna Bund.!9 Bundists were visible among the directors of the TsBK schools, among the teachers who worked in these schools, and in the association of parents of children attending TsBK schools.!°° This helps to explain why the Yiddish Teachers’ Association

urged parents of children enrolled in the Yiddish secular schools to vote for the 101 Kh. Pupko, ‘Vilne—dos vigele fun der yidish-veltlekher shul’, in Jeshurin (ed.), Vidne, 308. 102 Kh. Sh. Kazdan, Di geshikhte fun yidishn shulvezn in umophengikn poyln (Mexico City, 1947), 187. 103 ‘Ter nayer komitet fun ts.b.k.’, Vilner tog, 3 Oct. 1927. 104 Hertz (ed.), Doyres bundistn, ii. 120. Cf. LCVA, f. 53, ap. 23, b. 1764, item 12. The government kept tabs on Aronowicz, his activities, his views, and even, in a report dating from 1928, his appearance: LCVA, f. 53, ap. 23, b. 2037, item gr. 105 LCVA, f. 53, ap. 23, b. 1764, item 12; Kazdan (ed.), Lerer yizkor bukh, 497. Dr Tsemakh Szabad and Herts Kovarski, neither of whom were Bundists, had served as chairs of the TsBK before Rozental took on that role. 106 Yankef Grosman, who was elected to the Jewish Community Council in 1936 and to the Vilna City Council in 1939 on Bundist slates, was director of the Sholem Aleichem School in 1926 and was on the managing committee of the Yiddish Teachers’ Association in 1927—8: L. Ran (ed.), Jerusalem of Lithuania: [llustrated and Documented, 3 vols. (New York, 1974), ii. 310. Mordekhay Joffe, who was also elected on the Bundist list to the Vilna City Council in 1939, taught, at an early point in his career, in the Vilna Realgymnasium, was secretary of the TsBK from 1930 to 1934, and from 1935 was the administrator of the Kupershteyn School: Kazdan (ed.), Lerer yizkor bukh, 188—9. Mark Idelson, an active member of the Vilna Committee of the Bund, taught in Vilna’s Jewish Tekhnikum: Kazdan (ed.), Lerer yizkor bukh, 9. Nokhum Vapner, a member of the Bund for many years, was the chairman of the TsBK Parents’ Committee: Hertz (ed.), Doyres bundistn, ii. 483.

282 Jack Jacobs Bund in the City Council elections of 1927.19’ The roles played by Bundists in the TsBK and in its schools extended the influence of the party. Much the same can be said about the roles of Bundists in the trade union movement in Vilna in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the most important Bundists in Vilna who also occupied a key post in the trade union movement was Riwka Epsztejn, who was for many years secretary of the Jewish Printers’ Union in Vilna. She was a member of the Central Council of the Trade Unions, and was a long-term member of the Vilna Committee of the Bund.!°® A sense of the significance of the Jewish trade union movement in Vilna may be gleaned from statistics dealing with the Union of Trade Employees (which was the largest of the primarily Jewish unions). In January 1924 there were 642 individuals in the twenty branches of this union in Vilna, of whom 597 were Jews.!°? This union was led, for an extended period, by the Bundist leader Jankiel Zeleznikow, who served, in the years under discussion, on the Vilna Committee of the Bund and in the nationwide movement of Jewish trade unions. Members of the Vilna Bund clearly had influence not merely in the Printers’ Union and in the Union of Trade Employees but also in specific other trade unions made up largely of Jewish workers. 11° The Yidisher Bildungs-Gezelshaft (known as Vilbig), created in the autumn of 1924—the same period during which the left- and right-wing Bundists in Vilna

unified into one organization—was likewise influenced by Bundist ideas. Aronowicz, Joffe, Judidowicz, Pludermacher, Walt, Weinreich, Wirgili, and Zeleznikéw were among the fifteen individuals elected at the organization’s founding meeting to the committee charged with running the new institution——which is to say that individuals sympathetic to the Bund held a majority stake in Vilbig when it was first established.1+! Vilbig, which was focused on extracurricular and adult education, was aimed primarily at those who wanted to enjoy Jewish culture in Yiddish and those who wanted to help to develop Yiddish culture. By the end of its first eight months of existence, Vilbig reported, it had more than 600 members, and it had sponsored lectures and courses on literary, scientific, and other themes, and had provided a context in which specific groups devoted to Esperanto(!), to children, and to the academic community operated. Vilbig had also sponsored excursions, 107 Farvaltung fun yidishn lerer-fareyn, ‘Tsu ale eltern’: International Institute of Social History, Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund Collection, 325; “Di lerer farn bund’, Unzer shtime, 28 May 1927,

p. 4. 108 Hertz (ed.), Doyres bundistn, ii. 106.

LCVA, f. 1136, ap. 1, b. 56, item 3. , 109 “Bashtand fun mitglider fun profes. fareyn fun handls-ongeshtelte afn 2o0tn yanuar 1924 yor’:

110 Yitskhok Shuster, a member of the administrative body of the leather-workers’ union, and

Beynish Shtamler, a member of the administrative body of the transport workers’ union, were both can-

didates on the Vilna Bund’s electoral list in 1927: ‘Kandidatn-tsetl fun algemeynem yidishn arbeter-

“bund” no. 4’, Unzer shtime, 18 June 1927, p. 2. There were also many Bundists (or Bundist sympathizers) 1n the needle trades.

111 |ilner tog, 25 Sept. 1924. For additional information on Vilbig, see Bramson-Alpernienée, ‘“Vilbig”—-vilner bildungs-gezelshaft in der vilner pres, 1924—1925’, 2-6.

The Bund in Vilna, 1915-1939 283 provided discount tickets to both Yiddish and Polish theatrical productions, and had co-published a brochure on the organizing of a Yiddish scientific institute (which

helped to sow the seeds for the creation of YIVO).+!? In 1927 a Bundist source reported that the youth section of Vilbig was made up in large part of members of the Tsukunft.!!° YIVO, once established, likewise attracted the support and energy of Bundists, including, notably, Wirgili and Pludermacher. It was regularly the case in Vilna that Jewish leaders affiliated with any number of political parties played multiple roles, and that even busy professionals took on positions in a variety of communal, cultural, health-related, or educational organizations. This was true for Bundists as well as for those in other movements. Izaak Rafes, to take one such example, who was a doctor and who was elected as a member of the Bundist list to the Vilna City Council both in 1927 and in 1934, also

served, for some of the relevant period, as Secretary of the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population.!++ Wirgili, a long-term member of the Vilna Committee of the Bund, had been a co-founder of the Vilna EKOPO, a Jewish relief committee which aimed to provide aid and support to those who had suffered as a result of the First World War, had also been a founder of the Central Jewish People’s Bank, and had played significant roles in the vocational training organization ORT, as well as in the TsBK and in YIVO.!!° Though the number of prominent Bundists in Vilna remained small throughout the inter-war years, the most notable Bundists living in Vilna generally stepped up to the tasks confronting them. The Bundists, it must be underscored, were by no means the only political tendency evident in organizations like Vilbig, YIVO, or the TsBK. Adherents of the ideology of the Folkspartey such as Tsemakh Szabad, Borukh Lubotski, and Dovid

Kaplan-Kaplanski (who were non-Zionist, non-observant, and pro-Yiddish but who, unlike the Bundists, were not socialists) were also very visible in the public life of Jewish Vilna at certain points in the era under discussion. The continuing import in Vilna of prominent civic leaders known to be fo/kistn well into the 1930s presented the Vilna Bund both with opportunities for co-operation and with a source of competition which was not of significance in many other parts of Poland in the latter part

of the inter-war years. The fact that the independent political party known as the Democratic Folkspartey was established in Vilna in 1926, and continued its activities there for years thereafter, was part and parcel of Vilna’s exceptionalism, and had an impact on the history of the Bund in that city. The fact that a respected daily news-

paper based in Vilna—the Vilner tog—supported the policies of the Democratic 112 ‘Akht khadoshim vilbig’, Vilner tog, 25 May 1925; Bramson-Alperniene, ‘“Vilbig”—vilner bildungs-gezelshaft in der vilner prese, 1924—1925’, 6. 113 “Fun unzer yugnt bavegung’, Unzer shtime, 30 Dec. 1927, p. 4. 114 Ran (ed.), Jerusalem of Lithuania, i. 166; Z. Reyzen, Leksikon fun der yidisher literatur, prese un filologye, iv (Vilna, 1929), 242. 115 Kh. Kazdan, ‘Der foter fun avrom kahan’, Unzer tsayt, Mar.—Apr. 1982, pp. 35-7.

284 Jack Jacobs Folkspartey, and that the Bund did not have a daily newspaper of its own in Vilna after 1920, had a similar effect.11©

x The participation of leading Bundists in union, cultural, and educational affairs made these leaders widely known in Jewish Vilna well beyond the fairly small circle of Bund activists. The ‘name recognition’ of the Bund’s key local leaders likely aided those at the top of the Bundist electoral list——Wirgili, Rafes, and Aronowicz——in Vilna’s City Council election in 1927. The Vilna Bund supported its candidates in this election by publishing a periodical, Unzer shtime, the first issue of which appeared on 4 May 1927. The name of this periodical, it should be underscored, echoed that of the Bundist organ which had been published in Vilna from 1918 to 1920, and thus reinforced the sense that the Bund had long been an active participant in Vilna’s civic affairs. The Bundist platform in the election held in 1927 emphasized such points as the need for a progressive taxation policy, prohibition of evictions, installation of gas and electricity in workers’ quarters, equal status for the Yiddish language, and subsidies for Yiddish educational, cultural, and scientific institutions.!1” The Bundist slate received 3,499 of the 59,904 votes cast, and thereby elected three members of the Bund to the council. ‘Though the Bund received far fewer votes than the Jewish National list (which won nine seats), the total number of votes obtained by the Jewish National list was itself far lower than had been anticipated.!1® Because the Polish Socialist Party did well, increasing the size of its fraction to nine seats, and the rightwing, anti-socialist, and antisemitic National Democratic Party did not (decreasing the number of seats that it held from thirty-one to eleven), the Bundist spin on this election was that it had resulted in a victory for the left.119 The Bundists in the Vilna City Council, which had a total of forty-eight members in the wake of the 1927 election, used their positions to put forth proposals in accord with their election programme, not only on matters affecting the Jewish population, but also on matters affecting all poor and working-class elements of the city. ‘They

spoke out, for example, on behalf of the cessation of evictions, and in favour of municipal subsidies for consultation centres for working mothers.!*° However, they 116 M. Balberyszki, ‘Volkism and the Volkspartay’, in B. J. Vlavianos and F. Gross (eds.), Struggle for Tomorrow: Modern Political Ideologies of the Jewish People (New York, 1954), 242; M. W. Kiel, “The Ideology of the Folks-Partey’, Soviet Jewish Affairs, 5/2 (1975), 79. 11” ‘Mit vos geyen mir in shtotrat?’, Unzer shtime, 28 May 1927, p. I. 118 Ter nayer shtotrat’, Vilner tog, 21 June 1927. There were forty-eight individuals elected to the City Council in the elections of 1927, the overwhelming majority of whom ran on Polish lists, including the lists

of the Polish Socialist Party, the National Democrats, the Conservatives, and the ‘Pilsudski-ites’. ‘The Russian—Belarusian list won one seat, as did a Lithuanian list. An ‘international’ Workers’ Bloc won five

seats. 119 J. Arski [Jézef Aronowicz], ‘Der sakhakl’, Unzer shtime, 2 July 1927, p. 3. 120 YA. [Jézef Aronowicz], ‘Der bund in shtot-rat’, Unzer shtime, 16 Dec. 1927, pp. 1-2; A. Ratman, ‘In shtot-rat’, Unzer shtime, 10 Feb. 1928, p. 3. The Vilna Committee of the Bund continued to speak out vigorously in later years too against the eviction of workers who had been unable to pay their rent: LCVA, f. 53, ap. 23, b. 2037, item 489.

The Bund in Vilna, 1915-1939 285 devoted particular attention to issues revolving around the funding of Jewish schools and institutions. Jewish members of the City Council had, several years prior to the 1927 election, reached an agreement with certain of their non-Jewish counterparts (including representatives of the National Democratic Party) under which Jewish schools in Vilna received 36 per cent of the total sum budgeted for schools.!*! The Bundist representatives in the City Council who served after the election of 1927, however, argued against this agreement, on the grounds that it was the result of an unsavoury understanding between reactionary components of the Jewish community and reactionary components of the Polish community. In exchange for the promise of 36 per cent of budgeted funds, so the Bund charged, representatives of the Jewish bourgeoisie in the City Council had not publicly protested on any number of matters when they ought to have done so, including at times when economic policies of the National

Democrats had had a particularly negative effect on the Jewish population of Vilna.!2* But the Bund did not merely reject the existing arrangement: it also argued both against continued public support for specific educational institutions, such as the Yavneh school system (which was Orthodox and Zionist in its orientation, and which was associated with the Mizrahi party), and in favour of providing municipal funds to TsBK schools. !*? The Bundists were successful in having the prior arrangement as to the propor- . tion of public funds which would be accorded to Jewish educational matters overturned (because Polish parties, including the National Democrats, had come to have

misgivings about the arrangement), but did not succeed in obtaining the support they desired for the secular Yiddish school system. The Bund’s political enemies on the Jewish street charged that Bundist tactics had resulted in a decrease of 40 per cent in municipal support for Jewish educational institutions.!*+ The failure of the

Bund’s tactics on this issue (from the perspective of the Jewish opponents of the Bund) may help to explain why the Bundist slate did poorly in the City Council elections in 1934. Nine Jews running on the list of the Jewish National Bloc, and a tenth

Jewish candidate who ran on Po’alei Tsiyon’s list, were elected.!7° Only one Bundist, Dr Izaak Rafes, won a seat in that council election. It ought to be noted, however, that Polish leftists also fared poorly in Vilna in the

1934 election. A Sanacja list, supportive of the Pilsudski regime, obtained an absolute majority and thirty-four council seats. The National Democratic Party increased in strength, and came out of the election with a bloc of nineteen members in the City Council.1*© The Polish Socialist Party, on the other hand, did not win any seats at all in Vilna in 1934.17" 121 ‘T)i yidishe shul-frage haynt in shtotrat’, Vilner tog, 7 Dec. 1927. 122 Y_A., ‘Der bund in shtot-rat’, Unzer shtime, 16 Dec. 1927, p. I. 123 Aronovitsh [Jozef Aronowicz], ‘Vider di yidishe shul-frage in vilner shtot-rat!’, Unzer shtime, 6 Jan. 1928, p. 2: ‘Di nekhtike groyse zitsung fun bildungs komisye baym shtot-rat’, Tsayt, 18 Jan. 1928. 124 ‘T)i subsidye far di yidishe shuln nit bashtetikt’, Tsayt, 11 June 1928. 125 Der rezultat fun di valn in farglaykh mitn yor 1934’, Undzer tog, 23 May 1939. 126 ]. Tshernikhov (J. Czernichéw), ‘Di fizyonomye fun di vilner shtotratn’, Undzer tog, 12 May 19309. 127 er rezultat fun di valn in farglaykh mitn yor 1934’, Undzer tog, 23 May 1939.

286 Jack Facobs But the Bund appears to have redeemed itself, in the eyes of the Jews of Vilna, some two years later. The role played by the Bund in organizing a countrywide protest strike directed against antisemitism, fascism, clerical and nationalistic reactionaries, and capitalism, and for freedom for all, socialism, and equality for the Jewish population of Poland, seems to have impressed many in Vilna as well as in other areas.!7° In Vilna, the strike, which took place on 17 March 1936, not only shut virtually all stores on Breyte, ‘Troker, and Daytsher streets, which were in a heavily Jewish area of the city, but also resulted in the closing of specific factories and workshops which employed significant numbers of Polish and Belarusian as well as Jewish workers. Thousands of strikers reportedly gathered, and were said to have shouted ‘Down with antisemitism, fascism... Long live the Bund!’ The success of the strike was all the more impressive in light of the fact that non-Bundist leaders of the Jewish population of Vilna had declined to support the action in advance. !?9 The protest demonstration conducted in March seems to have contributed to the results achieved by the Bund in the ke/ile elections held in Vilna on 6 September 1936. In the 1928 kehile elections, the Bundist list had received 566 votes, and obtained three seats.!29 In the kehile elections held in 1936, the Bund—urging the potential electorate to turn out ‘against capitalism, fascism, and antisemitism’ and ‘for full social

and national liberation, for socialism’, just as it had months earlier in the protest strike—obtained 1,157 out of the 5,683 votes cast in Vilna.'3! Five Bundists— Zeleznikow, Aronowicz, Wajner, Abram Fajnzylber (Avrum Faynzilber), and Jakéb (Yankef) Grosman—were thereby elected to the Jewish Community Council.+°? The Bundists serving on the Jewish Community Council expressed their opinions forcefully and made concrete proposals even when there was little chance that

their views would be endorsed by the kehile as a whole. In October 1936, for example, Aronowicz proposed, at a plenary session of the Jewish Community Council, that the newly elected council protest against a decision of the magistrate declining to provide funds for clothing Jewish children who were enrolled in folks128 For a complete list of the slogans of the strike organizers, see the handbill issued by the KulturAmt and entitled “Tsu der yidisher arbeter-bafelkerung in vilne’: YIVO Archives, RG 1400, MG 9-232. 129 Der yidisher arbeter-klas in yor 1936 (1.6dz, 1937), 95-8. 130 Tbid. 222. The Polish Bund had boycotted the kehzle elections of 1931, and struggled with the issue of whether or not to stand in the 1936 elections: R. M. Shapiro, “The Polish Kehillah Elections of 1936: A Revolution Re-examined’, Polin, 8 (1994), 210-13.

131 Handbill issued by the ‘Val-komitet fun “bund’”’ under the title ‘Tsu ale arbeter un arbetsmentshn! Geyt shtimen!’: YIVO Archives, RG 1400, MG 2-128; Der yidisher arbeter-klas in yor 1936, 222; ‘Rezultat fun di kehile-valn in vilne’, Vilner tog, 7 Sept. 1936; ‘Nokh di kehile-valn in vilne’, Tsayt, 8 Sept. 1936. The total number of eligible voters in this election was 12,813. Thus, there was a turnout of 44%. 132 Nokh di kehile-valn in vilne’, Tsayt, 8 Sept. 1936. For an analysis of the results of this election from the standpoint of a Zionist newspaper, see A. Tsintsinatus, ‘Nokh dem val-yarid’, Tsayt, 8 Sept.

1936. Cf. A. Zhaludski, ‘Vos lernen unz di kehile-valn?’, Vilner radio, 8 Sept. 1936. The Bund did extremely well in the kehile election in Warsaw in 1936, and relatively well in Grodno, Lublin, and certain other cities: Shapiro, “The Polish Kehillah Elections of 1936’, 215.

| The Bund in Vilna, 1915-1939 287 | shuln (elementary schools affiliated with the TsBK).'?? In a meeting held the following month, Aronowicz proposed at a plenary session that the kefile protest against unrest directed against Jewish students at the universities.1°+ Neither proposal was accepted. Though Aronowicz’s attitudes were apparently not popular with most other councilmen, intense party rivalries led to his being elected to serve as vice chairman of the Jewish Community Council, with the votes of, among others, Agudah representatives and Revisionist Zionists (all of whom were bitter political opponents of the Bund). Upon learning of this result, Aronowicz quipped that he would more readily have believed that he would be chosen to be king of England than that he would win this position.'?° Aronowicz’s vice chairmanship notwithstanding, the Bund did not succeed in obtaining significant additional support for its institutions from the Vilna kehile, lost most of the budgetary battles in which it engaged, and remained a strong critic of the kehile’s policies.1°© The presidium of the kehile’s board was often able to soften the influence of the Bundist representatives when it so desired. At other times, Polish governmental authorities blocked the influence of the Bundists in the kehile even when the other Jewish parties represented in the Jewish Community Council did not encourage these authorities to do so.1?" But the Bundist representatives continued to speak out in a forthright manner against antisemitism-——and ultimately persuaded the kehile to do so as well. In February 1939 Aronowicz proposed at a plenary meeting of the Jewish Community Council that the kefz/e adopt four resolutions, protesting, first, against a decision by 133 ‘Vos iz forgekumen oyf der nekhtiker kehile-zitsung’, Ovnt kuryer, 21 Oct. 1936. Precisely because

the resolution had been proposed by a Bundist, the Zionists put forth an alternative resolution, which won the day.

134 ‘Durkhgefaln der tsyonistish-revizyonistish-agudistisher blok’, Vilner tog, 9 Nov. 1936. Aronowicz’s proposal was rejected on procedural grounds. 135 ‘Tkh volt gikher gegloybt, az men vet mir oyskleybn farn englishn kenig . . . sensatsyes un iberrashungen biz di nekhtike valn in kehile’, Vi/ner radio, 14 Nov. 1936. 136 ‘T)i zelbstbarimeray fun “bund”’, Tsayt, 30 Jan. 1938; ‘Bundishe kritik kegn der vilne kehile’, Undzer tog, 31 Jan. 1938. Some Bundist-affiliated institutions, such as day-care centres and summer camps run under the auspices of YAF, did receive modest grants from the Jewish Community. 137 When, for example, the Jewish Community Council elected an electoral commission including two Bundists (Fajnzylber and Wajner) and charged this commission with supervising elections to the board of the kehile, Vilna’s city officials, who had supervisory power in such matters, simply refused to confirm their appointments, and insisted that these two individuals be replaced with others: ‘Staroste

oysgeshtrokhn bundistishe ratmener fun der val-komisye’, 7sayt, 20 Sept. 1936. The Jewish Community Council did not immediately cave in, and re-elected Fajnzylber and Wajner: ‘Kehile-rat klaybt oys in val-komisye di oysgeshtrokhene 2 bundistn’, Vi/ner radio, 28 Sept. 1936; ‘Kehile-rat vider oysgeklibn di oysgemekte bundishe mitglider fun der val-komisye’, Vilner tog, 28 Sept. 1936; ‘Kehile bashlist, az di oysgeshtrokhene mitglider zoln vider blaybn in der val-komisye’, Vilner ekspres, 28 Sept. 1936; ‘Kehile-rat bashlosn vider tsu veyln di bundistn’, Tsayt, 28 Sept. 1936. But the city officials once

again declined to confirm these appointments: ‘Staroste vider nit bashetikt di bundishe forshteyer in der val-komisye’, Vi/ner radio, 16 Oct. 1936; ‘Staroste vider nit bashtetikt di tsvey bundistn’, Vi/ner tog, 18 Oct. 1936.

288 Jack Jacobs the magistrate to eliminate subsidies for Jewish schools; secondly, against segregated

seating for Jewish students in the universities; thirdly, against attempts to limit Jewish rights and to solve ‘the Jewish question’ by emigration; and, last but not least, against Nazi persecutions and expulsions.!?° Though the kehile amended the pro-

posed resolutions, and ultimately added a fifth proposal (stemming from a nonBundist council member) stating that the ke/z/e ‘supported the struggle of the Jewish masses to open the gates of the Land of Israel’, it ultimately accepted the essence of Aronowicz’s initial motion.!?9 The fact that it did so indicated that ideas stemming from Bundist sources were no longer automatically treyf. The willingness on the part of the kehile to adopt strong resolutions of Bundist origin, the increasing recognition

within Vilna of the growing strength of the Bund elsewhere in Poland, a feeling within the Jewish world that the Bund had powerful contacts in the Polish Socialist Party (and that that party could play an important role in combating political antisemitism), and the continuing development of the Bundist constellation in Vilna itself, may all have attracted additional voters to the Vilna Bund during the City Council election conducted in 1939, at which time the Vilna Bund ran a joint slate with affiliated trade unions. The joint slate’s platform stressed that its candidates, if elected, would work together with the Polish working class to transform city councils in Poland into organs of genuine self-administration, operating in the interests of all citizens regardless of their nationality. The slate also underscored that it was the intent of those running to work actively against fascism and asserted that the anti-fascist camp on the Jewish street was crystallizing precisely around the Bund and the trade union

movement.!4° An election meeting held in Vilna in mid-May, organized by the Bund and its partners and addressed by Henryk Erlich, attracted so many people that some of those who had hoped to attend were unable to enter the hall in which the meeting was conducted, and a megaphone was used in order to enable those far from the stage to hear the speakers. One published report claimed that that was the first time that such a thing had happened in Vilna at a Jewish gathering.'*! The announcement, several days before elections were held in Vilna, of election results from Grodno (in which the Bund and the Polish Socialist Party, taken together, won a majority of the seats) and from Bialystok (in which both the Bund and the Polish Socialist Party increased markedly in strength)—results which echoed those already apparent in several of Poland’s largest cities—probably contributed to the turnout 138 ‘Der ershter plenum fun kehile-rat’, Undzer tog, 20 Feb. 1939. 139 ‘Kehile-rat protestirt kegn geto, gerushim, farfolgungen, tsvang-emigratsye’, Tsayt, 24 Feb. 1939; ‘Kegn tsunemen di subsidye bay di yidishe shuln, kegn geto, yidn geyresh, zabonshin un eksterminatsye protestirt plenum fun der yidisher kehile in vilne’, Undzer tog, 24 Feb. 1939; ‘Kehile-rat protestirt kegn tsunemen di shul-subsidye, geto, zabonshin un eksterminatsye’, Vi/ner radio, 24 Feb. 1939. 140 Val-komitet fun ‘bund’ un profesyonele klasn-fareynen, ‘Valplatform fun “bund” un prof. klasnfareynen tsu di shtotrat-valn in vilne’, Apr. 1939: YIVO Archives, RG 1400, MG 2-128. 141 ‘Val-miting fun “bund” ibergegebn durkh megafonen farn groysn oylem’, Vi/ner radio, 15 May 1939; ‘Der miting fun “bund” un profesyonele fareynen’, Undzer tog, 15 May 19309.

The Bund in Vilna, 1915-1939 289 for the Vilna Bund.!4? Prominent personalities, including some not previously known to have supported the Vilna Bund (such as the writer Khayim Grade), urged friends of Yiddish culture to vote for the Bundist slate.!4° Altogether 68,579 individuals voted in Vilna’s City Council election on 21 May 1939.144 The National Democrats received more votes in this election than did any other party, and came out of it with twenty-six of the seventy-two seats in the newly

enlarged council.!4° Ozon, a right-wing, nationalistic, and militaristic party, received the second highest vote total, and won nineteen seats. A joint slate sponsored by the Polish Socialist Party and the Democratic Club came in third among the lists, attracting primarily Polish votes, and won nine council seats. Since the Polish Socialist Party had not won any seats at all in 1934, however, its third-place finish in 1939 was widely seen as an impressive achievement. Po’alei Tsiyon, which had gone into the election with only one representative in the council, succeeded in winning a total of three slots.!4© The Jewish National Bloc, which had had nine councilmen, won only five seats.!4“ A Progressive slate headed by Jozef Czernichow of the Territorialists (who had, at a marginally earlier point in his career, been very closely identified with the Democratic Folkspartey) did not win

any seats at all.!4° Indeed, the collapse of support for the Democratic Folkspartey of Vilna helps to explain the results obtained by the Bund. In the period during which it had been headed by Tsemakh Szabad, the Democratic Folkspartey continued to have a significant presence in the Jewish life of Vilna even though the Folkist movement had declined dramatically in import in other parts of Poland. During those years, Vilna’s Democratic Folkspartey represented an important alternative

to the Bund, and in some cases succeeded in attracting supporters who might otherwise have worked with the latter party. However, Szabad’s death, which occurred early in 1935, seems to have been a blow from which his party was unable to recover. In 1939 the Bund almost certainly picked up much of the support which had earlier gone to Szabad’s party. The Bund/trade union slate, for which 7,200 people voted, won ten seats.'49 The Bund, in other words, which had had only one representative in the City Council from 1934 to 1939, increased the size of its faction by a factor of ten. The Bund had 142 *Arbeter-merheyt in grodne’, Undzer tog, 16 May 1939. 143 *Tsu der yidisher arbetndiker inteligents’, Vi/ner radio, 16 May 1939. 144 *Nokh tsifern vegn di valn’, Undzer tog, 29 May 1939. 145 ‘A neytike informatsye tsum hayntikn ershtn plenum fun nayem shtotrat’, Undzer tog, 28 June

1939. 146 Tbid. 147 “Endgiltiker rezultat fun di valn’, Vilner radio, 22 May 1939. 148 Czernichéw, who had been elected on folkist slates to the City Council and to the kehile in an earlier period, underwent something of a shift in his political orientation in 1933—4, and associated himself with the Territorialists from that time on: Niger and Shatzky (eds.), Leksikon fun der nayer ytdisher literatur, iv. 169.

149 “Vilne’, Naye folkstsaytung, 23 May 1939. The individuals who won seats on the Bund/trade union list were Anna Rozental, Jozef Tejtel, Jozef Aronowicz, Mariem Rejnharc (Manie Raynharts), Abram Fajnzylber, Chaim Walt, Morduch Joffe, Jakob Grosman, A. Fajn, and Zorach Nanes.

290 Jack Facobs more representatives in the new council than any other Jewish party, and as many as all of the other Jewish lists combined. ‘The Bund, 1n other words, emerged from the 1939 election as the strongest Jewish party in Vilna. The daily Undzer tog, which had supported the Progressive slate, claimed, in post-election analysis, that neither the Bund nor the Jewish National Bloc had anticipated winning as many seats as they did in fact win.1°° The author of this piece argued that the election results should be attributed to the excellent organization of the Bund’s campaign and to the ‘complete bankruptcy’ of ‘Jewish politics’, which had ‘compromised the Jewish “leaders” in the eyes of the non-proletarian Jewish masses’, and also noted that ‘that which happened in all of Poland, in Warsaw, in t_6dz, in Biatystok, in Grodno’ (presumably referring to the Bundist electoral victories in those cities) ‘also had a place in Vilna, notwithstanding the specific circumstances’ existing in that location. A commentator in t/ner radio underscored that the new City Council would not bring salvation of any kind for the Jewish population. Working with preliminary results (which differed marginally from the final, official, distribution of seats), this commentator noted that though it was true that the total number of Jewish council members had increased from eleven to eighteen, it was also true that the Jewish council members plus the Polish Socialist Party council members totalled only twenty-seven, and that the National Democrats alone also had twenty-seven votes. ‘The Jews will, therefore,’ this commentator asserted, ‘continue to remain at the “mercy” of the Ozon fraction’, which had, 1n effect, inherited the portion of the political spectrum earlier occupied by Sanacyja, and the policies of this fraction had already proven to be deleterious to Jewish interests. In sum, the Jews would have to deal with ‘the same antisemitic yente, but somewhat differently veiled’. Vi/ner radio predicted, in the wake of the election, that the increase in the total number of socialist and democratic council members would lead both to stricter control from above on the part of the Polish authorities, and to much more interesting council meetings!!°!

Tsayt, Vilna’s Zionist organ, ran an article noting that ‘the success of the Bund and of Po’alei Tsiyon can be explained by the embitterment of the disappointed masses and by the vacillating position of the responsible leaders of the bourgeois eroups towards the most cardinal questions of Jewish mass life’.1©* The psychological effect of the socialist victories in other cities was also mentioned.

In a piece which appeared in 7sayt two weeks later, Avrom-Iser Yoskovitsh asserted that the clear victory of the Bund was due not to any dramatic improvement

in it but rather to the weakening of its Zionist opponents throughout Poland.1°? 150 An alter bakanter, ‘Nokh di shtotrat-valn’, Undzer tog, 23 May 19309.

151 Zshal., ‘Nokh di valn tsum vilner shtotrat: Di zelbe antisemitishe yente nor epes andersh geshleyert ...’, Vilner radio, 23 May 1939. 152 H. Tamarin, ‘Nokh di shtotrat valn (reflektn)’, Tsayt, 26 May 1939. 18 A. I. Yoskovitsh, ‘A shtikl khezbn-hanefeh (nokhn nitsokhn fun “bund”)’, Tsayt, 9 June 1939. I became aware of this article as a result of my reading of Sartinas Liekis, 1939: The Year that Changed Everything in Lithuania’s History (Amsterdam, 2010). My thanks to Professor Liekis for allowing me to make use of his typescript prior to its publication.

The Bund in Vilna, 1915-1939 291 This weakening, Yoskovitsh continued, could itself be explained by events in the Land of Israel, by the ever-smaller possibility of immigrating into that land, by the temporary improvement of the mood within Poland, and by the White Paper.!°4 More important still, in Yoskovitsh’s opinion, was a failure on the part of the Zionist leadership to foster Hebrew-language cultural activities promoting Zionist ideals among Jews in Poland: ‘The masses gave their tens of thousands of votes to the eternal “enemies of Zion” and friends of the Mufti only because we did nothing cultural for them.’ Ovnt kuryer, apparently the most widely circulated Yiddish daily in Vilna, published election commentary signed by A. Y. Grodzanski, the newspaper’s publisher, which suggested that the Bund’s victories (and those of Po’alei T’siyon) might have a positive result. ‘The victories of ‘the Jewish socialist parties’, Grodzanski wrote, ‘increased the chances of the struggle for our rights, which the bourgeois groups had, in the past, often allowed to slip through their fingers’.!°° The Bundists of Vilna themselves admitted that the extent of their victory had exceeded their expectations.!°© To be sure, there had been signs throughout the campaign that their list was being very well received, a Vilna Bundist wrote in the Naye folkstsaytung, which appeared in Warsaw, but certain of their Zionist opponents had used slander, lies, and obscenities in attempts to undermine the Bundist slate—and, this Bundist implies, there had, before the election, been some fear among the Bundists that such tactics might have an impact. The Bundist correspondent concludes by suggesting that the victory of the Bund in Vilna was not only part and parcel of the party’s success in many areas, but also a local victory. At the first plenum of the new City Council, at which each party was permitted to make an opening statement, the Bund made clear that it would not be cowed by the antisemitic and reactionary forces arrayed against it—forces evident in the opening

remarks made at this plenum on behalf of the National Democratic fraction. Aronowicz, demonstratively wearing a red flower on his lapel, read a declaration on behalf of the Bund in which it was asserted that the Bund had become the strongest group in Jewish society, and which stated that the Bund’s representatives in the council would therefore be speaking in the name of the majority of the Jewish masses.!°" The 154 The British government’s White Paper on Palestine, which was approved by Parliament and appeared days before Vilna’s City Council election, declared that it was not part of the policy of the British government that Palestine become a Jewish state. 195 A. Y. Grodzanski, ‘Nokh di shtotrat-valn in land’, Ovnt kuryer, 30 May 1939. Ovnt kuryer reportedly had a circulation of 4,500—5,000. The other Yiddish dailies typically did not have circulations higher than 1,000—1,200: Niger and Shatzky (eds.), Leksikon fun der nayer yidisher literatur, 11. 334.

156 Jan, ‘Vilne in di ershte reyen fun bundishn faroysmarsh (a briv fun vilne fun unzer korespondent)’, Naye folkstsaytung, 26 May 1939. In another article, Naye folkstsaytung reported that the Vilna

organ of Ozon was blaming the success of the Bund on the National Democrats, ‘who fought more against Ozon than against the communizing [komunizirndikn| Bund’: ‘Der bundishe nitsokhn—a beyn in halz dem ozon’, Naye folkstsaytung, 27 May 1939. 157 ‘T)i ershte zitsung fun nayem shtotrat’, Undzer tog, 29 June 1939; ‘Di nekhtike ershte zitsung fun nayem shtotrat’, Ount kuryer, 29 June 1939; ‘A nayer shtotrat mit an altn magistrat’, Vi/ner radio, 29 June 1939; ‘Efenung fun nayem shtotrat’, 7sayt, 29 June 1939.

292 Jack Jacobs declaration underscored that, the triumphs of reactionary forces in the world notwithstanding, socialist lists had come out of the city council elections in Poland victorious. It also noted that the Jewish workers together with the Polish workers were ready for the greatest sacrifices in repelling the ‘Hitlerian’ invasion, that the Jewish masses felt themselves to be full citizens of the country, entitled to the same things as were other citizens, and that they would therefore oppose all attempts to minimize their human, civil, and national rights. The Bund, the declaration continued, opposed both nonJewish and Jewish voices advocating ‘emigrationism’ or the evacuation of the Polish Jewish population. ‘The Bund, finally, took the opportunity to state that it would fight

for the democratization of electoral rights, the securing of schools for minorities making use of their own languages, just distribution of taxes, the right to work, and support for Jewish cultural institutions, among other matters. On 14 September 1939—two weeks after the beginning of the Nazi invasion of Poland—Vilna’s City Council met in order to elect eight aldermen. The available slots were divided up among the various parties represented in the council. Precisely because of the size of the Bundist contingent in the council, Aronowicz was one of those elected.1°8 Never before in the history of the Vilna Bund had a member of the party held an aldermanship.

The Bund, born (and partially raised) in Vilna, was deeply divided by the Bolshevik revolution, and had fewer than 200 hard-core members in its native city in the years immediately following the end of the First World War. However, a number of factors—some of which applied throughout Poland and others of which were specific to Vilna—contributed to a very dramatic rise in the party’s reach. By 1939 the establishment of a constellation of specialized organizations revolving around the Vilna Bund, the active engagement of local Bundist leaders in civic and educational organizations, the decline of Vilna’s Democratic Folkspartey, and a growing admiration among Vilna’s Jews for the Bund’s willingness to confront antisemitism both directly and forcefully—all this, among other matters, led to a clearcut victory in the last elections held in Vilna prior to the Soviet occupation. The Vilna Bund was more powerful on the eve of that occupation than it had been at any other point in the inter-war years. 1°? 158 Der shtotrat oysgeveylt 8 lavnikes’, Tsayt, 17 Sept. 1939. 159 Aronowicz, Rozental, Tejtel, and Zeleznikow were arrested by agents of the Soviet government, and did not survive incarceration: D. Blatman, For Our Freedom and Yours: The Jewish Labour Bund in Poland, 1939-1949, trans. N. Greenwood (London, 2003), 17. Other Bundists arrested by the Soviets in Vilna in the autumn of 1939 include Chaim Walt and Ruwim Wajnsztejn: D. Levin, “The Jews of Vilna under Soviet Rule, 19 September—28 October 1939’, Polin, 9 (1996), 118.

‘The Lithuanian-Language Jewish Periodicals Miusy garsas (1924-1925) and v Apzvalga (1935-1940): A Soctolingustic Evolution ANNA VERSCHIK FOR A VARIETY of reasons, independent Lithuania was a centre of Jewish politics, culture, and publishing activity. During the inter-war years, Jews here were divided along Yiddishist or Hebraist/ Zionist lines, as the main languages of cultural and political expression were Yiddish and, to some degree, Hebrew (though the latter was not then a native language for its speakers). Traditional (non-secular) Jewish culture had strong roots as well. At the same time, trends of linguistic behaviour that were characteristic of earlier periods had not completely disappeared, and ‘major’ languages such as Russian and German were still attractive for some Jews. Many have overlooked the phenomenon that the increased use of Lithuanian was a means not merely of communication with neighbours, but also of self-expression and internal Jewish communication. With this background in mind, in this chapter I shall provide an overview of two Lithuanian-language Jewish periodicals, focusing especially on their discourse about language. I also discuss changes that occurred as the Lithuanian language was acquired and internalized by some sections of the Jewish population.

JEWS AND THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE , The prevailing historiography suggests that Lithuanians and Jews were culturally alien to each other or were even antagonists.? In the era before independence, Lithuanian was a language of communication between Jews and their neighbours but was not a cultural language for Jews. Proficiency in Lithuanian among Jews ! E. Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (Bloomington, Ind., 1983), 227.

2 §. Liekis, A State mithin a State? Jewish Autonomy in Lithuania, 1915-1925 (Vilnius, 2005), 18, 25-30.

204 Anna Verschitk varied, depending on factors such as location, personal needs, networks, and occupation. ‘he traditional Jewish world had little concern for matters related to language status, language planning, and the symbolism of language in nation-building. The conventional Jewish diglossia was retained, with Hebrew claiming the ‘high’ function while Yiddish was the vernacular. Although Jewish secular nationalism promoted modernization, there were major disagreements over whether Yiddish or Hebrew was to be the choice of language for the modern Jewish nation. Hebraists and Yiddishists battled against each other as well as against proponents of ‘assimilation’—that is, against those who were shifting to non-Jewish languages (although this language shift did not necessarily connote an abandonment of ethnic identity). In addition, as one might have expected, German and Russian, and to a lesser extent Polish, were associated with power and prestige for many Jews. In contrast, the languages of the co-territorial peoples in the area between the ethnic Russian and Polish heartlands were young as codified literary languages and territorially restricted and had developed only with the emergence of modern national sentiment, although they made remarkable progress in a short time. In general, for Jews during the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, these languages (for example

Latvian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian) could not compete with Jewish languages (Yiddish and Hebrew) or with more prestigious European languages that had attracted a considerable number of Jews. The situation began to change, albeit slowly. Some political co-operation took place between Jews and Lithuanians during elections to the Russian Duma starting in 1906.° Later, the support of influential Jewish leaders became crucial to the fate of Vilna. In 1918 the Lithuanian Council (Lietuvos Taryba) was founded, with several prominent Jewish activists as members (Simona Rozenbaum, Nakhman Rachmilevich, and Jakub Wygodzk1). The Lithuanian Constituent Assembly (Lietuvos Steigiamasis Se1mas), elected in 1920, had 112 members, of whom seven were Jews.* Genuine cultural cooperation between the two peoples needed time to develop. Urijas Kacenelebogenas (1885-1980) was among the few Jewish intellectuals who promoted the Lithuanian language and culture among Jews and emphasized the importance of minor languages in general.? In Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern’s words, he had made an ‘anti-imperial choice’.©

When the country attained independence, the status of the Lithuanian language changed overnight and proficiency in standard Lithuanian became imperative. The state and especially its educators set out to create a system of education in which the 3S. Atamukas, Lietuvos Zydy kelias: Nuo XIV amZiaus iki XX amZiaus pabaigos (Vilnius, 1998), 106—7; E. Bendikaité, ‘Expressions of Litvak Pro-Lithuanian Political Orientation, c.1906—c.1921’, in

A. Nikzentaitis, S. Schreiner, and D. Stalitinas (eds.), The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews

(Amsterdam, 2004), go—1I. 4 Atamukas, Lietuvos Zydy kelias, 128. 5 M. Kvietkauskas, Vilniaus literatury kontrapunktai: Ankstyvasis modernizmas, 1904-1915 (Vilnius, 2007), I1Q~29.

6 Y. Petrovsky-Shtern, The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew (New Haven, 2009), 2.

Lithuanian-Language fewtsh Periodicals: A Soctolingustic Evolution 295 teaching of Lithuanian was a priority. This also applied to the schools of the national minorities. Jews constituted the country’s largest minority (7—8 per cent), even after the loss of Vilna and the Vilna district in 1920. While Jewish autonomy was shortlived and was a topic subject to much debate both within Jewish circles and in the parliament,’ the network of Jewish schools (Yiddish and Hebrew, secular and tra-

ditional) was well developed, and cultural autonomy was preserved de facto throughout the inter-war years. The Lithuanian language was compulsory in Jewish schools; later, certain subjects such as Lithuanian history and geography were introduced, to the dismay of some Jewish educators, who resisted what they considered to be Lithuanianization.® However, labels such as ‘assimilation’ or ‘Lithuanianization’ are misleading or imprecise. In the spirit of the time, instruction in the mother tongue was preferred, and it was felt that education in languages other than a student’s first could be ineffective or even harmful. On the other hand, one might ask why Hebrew as a—or indeed the—language of instruction was then considered justifiable, given that few east European Jews spoke it as a first language.? It is noteworthy that so-called compromise schools (pshore-shuln) that used both Hebrew and Yiddish as languages of instruction were often frowned upon by Yiddish- or Hebrew-medium educators. 1% In an environment in which monolingualism was considered the norm, instruction in more than one language was considered a pedagogical problem. Although Jewish primary and secondary education, in either Yiddish or Hebrew, was accepted, and this did not change until the Soviet occupation, the school system’s

statistics indicate a significant increase in the numbers of Jewish students attending Lithuanian schools and a decrease in those at Jewish schools, so that by the mid-1930s, about 20 per cent of Jewish students attended Lithuanian schools.!! In addition, Vytautas Magnus University required Jewish students to use Lithuanian, as 1t was the language of instruction. The percentage of Jewish students there (26—28

per cent in 1923-32 and 15-20 per cent in 1933-8) exceeded that of Jews in the country’s population. In sum, a sector of the Jewish population was gradually internalizing Lithuanian and increasingly using it for in-group communication. Hence,

” Liekis, A State within a State?, 183-5. 8 D. Lipets, ‘Hebreishe shul-vezn un kultur-bavegung in lite (1919—1939)’, in H. Laykovich (ed.), Lite, 1 (Tel Aviv, 1965), 305-6. 9 It is true that some Yiddishists in Estonia and Latvia did argue against Hebrew-medium instruction, stressing the superiority of ‘instruction in only the mother tongue’. A dichotomy between ‘mother

tongue’ and ‘national language’ (Yiddish and Hebrew, respectively) obscured the discussion even further. 10 E. Shulman, ‘Di yidish-veltlekhe shuln in lite’, in Laykovich (ed.), Lite, ii. 337-8. 11 Tn the school year 1921/2, 954 Jewish children attended Lithuanian-medium schools, but by 1935/6 the number had risen to 3,483, which amounted to 20.4% of all Jewish elementary-school pupils: Mendelsohn, Jews of East Central Europe, 235. See also Lipets, ‘Hebreishe shul-vezn un kultur-bavegung in lite’, 308. 12'S. Liekis, ‘Zydy studenty organizacijos Kauno universitete 1922—1940 m.’, in Mokslinés konferencyos ‘Lietuvos Zydy svietimas ir kultura iki Katastrofos’ medZiaga (Vilnius, 1991), 69.

296 Anna Verschik the situation changed: instead of having merely a working command of the language, Jewish authors were now writing Lithuanian fiction and poetry; among such authors

were E. Beliackinas and S. Matisas.‘% It is thus intriguing to look closely at Lithuanian-language publications by Jews; in the inter-war period major changes occurred in the purpose and scope of such periodicals. I have written elsewhere that the sociolinguistic situation of Lithuanian Jewry reflected subtleties that determined the choice of either one language or another. !4 The speech repertoire of a multilingual person is more complex than is suggested by the formula ‘one language for one function’, and language acquisition (Lithuanian in this case) does not merely add another grammatical system to an existing one. It is probable that no data about the multilingual capabilities of Jews exist for this period. This is understandable, because linguistics was then concerned with the traditional dialectology, codification, and cultivation of standard languages, and with historical linguistics and the study of linguistic structures. Still, some reconstruction of the sociolinguistic profile is possible by examining sources that provide indirect evidence on attitudes to language, discourses about language(s), language ideologies, and so on. Surprisingly, the two Lithuanian-language periodicals Misy garsas and Apzvalga, as well as the topic of Jewish cultural self-expression in Lithuanian, have so far attracted very little scholarly attention. In what follows, I shall describe the two periodicals, discussing their scope and purpose, and paying special attention to their discourse about languages (Jewish languages, and Lithuanian and other languages, if relevant). It is interesting that the earlier periodical, Musy garsas (1924-5), appeared at a time when Lithuania’s independence was still young and the debate on the nature and scope of Jewish autonomy was very much on the agenda; the later, ApZvalga (1935-40), was published in the last decade of independence before the Soviet occupation, and presents a somewhat different picture. Thus, the two periodicals were published at opposite ends temporally of Lithuanian independence, and bear witness to the dynamics of changing attitudes and language discourse.

MUSU GARSAS

Miusy garsas (Our Voice’) was a short-lived periodical. It was planned as a Lithuanian version of (or supplement to) Di yidishe shtime (“he Jewish Voice’; 1919—40), one of the most important Yiddish-language dailies in Lithuania. Initially titled Miusy Zodis (Our Word’), it was renamed because another periodical had the same title. Both Di yidishe shttme and Misy garsas were edited by Ruvin Rubinstein (Ruvinas Rubinsteinas in Lithuanian). The editorial board was composed mostly of General Zionists, a strand of Zionism with many adherents among Lithuanian Jews. 13 Atamukas, Lietuvos Zydy kelias, 161; A. Verschik, “The Jewish Lithuanian Periodical Apzvalga (1935-1940): Towards a New Cultural Polysystem’, Central and East European Review, 4 (2010):

. 14 Verschik, ‘Jewish Lithuanian Periodical Apzvalga’.

Lithuanian-Language Jewish Periodicals: A Soctolinguistic Evolution 297 The ideology and political stance of the newspapers are important to note because Lithuanian Jews were far from homogeneous in their attitudes towards language(s), tradition, cultural autonomy, the school system, and other cultural questions.!®° Misy garsas outlined its goals in its first issue.'® In noting a developing mutual estrangement between Jews and Lithuanians, it stated that one of the paper’s objectives was to ‘introduce Lithuanians to our world’. The struggle for cultural autonomy was also proclaimed as a goal.!’ Although the initial editorial emphasized that the paper would not provide space for responses to its observations, its general tone and spirit were rather polemical and argumentative, for which it was immediately criticized in the Lithuanian periodical Lietuva.+® Strikingly, very few contributions were signed with their writers’ real names; pseudonyms such as Uteniskis, Talktinas, Dztikas, Valstybininkas, and NN are found throughout. Occasionally, prominent Lithuanian intellectuals contributed to the paper as well (among them Jonas Jablonskis and Jonas Basanavictus: see below); and one of the most eloquent contributors was Juozapas Albinas Herbaciauskas (Jozef Albin Herbaczewski; 1876-1944), a scholar and bilingual writer in Lithuanian 15 See E. Bendikaite, Sionistinis sqjudis Lietuvoje (Vilnius, 2006), 205—10, on internal conflicts between

Zionists and non-Zionists, secularists, and traditionalists, and within the Zionist camp; and Shulman, ‘Di yidish-veltlekhe shuln in lite’, on the struggle between proponents of Yiddish and Hebrew school

systems. 16 Misy garsas, 22 Jan. 1924, p. I. 17 It has to be noted that in Jewish historiography the end of Jewish autonomy in Lithuania has generally been considered as a failure (see e.g. Atamukas, Lietuvos zydy kelias, 131); however, Sartinas Liekis

has recently investigated the notion of autonomy and has demonstrated that Jewish politicians, community leaders, and thinkers of different schools had varying understandings of the term. For some, autonomy meant having a corporate body that stood between the communities and the state, similar to the situation of medieval Jewish autonomy, while others argued that communities are not identical to religious communities, and so on (Liekis, A State within a State?, 92—-9). The definition of ‘community’ (Yiddish kehile, Lithuanian bendruomeéne) was much debated. Zionists insisted on the modern character

of communities, as opposed to the traditional understanding, and strongly advocated the idea of autonomy. Still, they insisted on a centralized structure—one community in one locality (see Bendikaite, Sionistinis sqjudis Lietuvoje, 107)—and had little patience with such slogans as ‘a state within the state’ or ‘the building of a national ghetto’. For instance, one author, writing under the pen-name Uteniskis, vehemently attacked Christian Democrats who advocated voluntary participation in communities. For Uteniskis, communities have historical value and autonomy equals continuity: ‘Juju teisybe’ (“You are Quite Right’), Misy garsas, 26 May 1924, p. 1. In a similar vein, Simonas Rozenbaumas states that a community is territorial and cannot be equated with clubs and societies: ‘Viena bendruomené ar kelios bendruomeénés?’ ((One Community or Several?’), Masy garsas, 28 Oct. 1924, p. 2. This is crucial both for the understanding of the arguments and also in a comparative Baltic_Jewish perspective because in Latvia and Estonia cultural autonomy meant rather a right to education in the mother tongue, supported by the state, and freedom of cultural expression. In Estonia, Jewish cultural autonomy (1926—40) was

realized through voluntary personal participation, that is, a declaration by an individual of his or her will to partake in cultural autonomy or to leave it. Despite this radical difference in the meaning and scope of the term, the Estonian law on cultural autonomy was considered exemplary by Jewish leaders in Lithuania and was even translated into Lithuanian and published in Masy garsas, 31 Mar. 1925, p- 3.

18 “Naujas laikrastis Masy garsas’ (“The New Newspaper Masy garsas’), Lietuva, 4 Feb. 1924, p. 7.

2908 | Anna Verschik and Polish who aroused controversial feelings among his contemporaries because of his individualism and lack of willingness to follow the literary and cultural conventions of the time. In his articles, Herbaciauskas passionately supported the Jewish cause and engaged in arguments with his political opponents.?°

The periodical seldom addressed questions of language as such. If languagerelated matters were considered at all, it was usually in relation to more general topics such as citizens’ rights, Jewish autonomy, antisemitism, or nationalism. Language and languages were viewed in the context of what we would today call laneuage policy and language rights (regarding instruction in schools, public signage,

etc.); occasionally, Jews were mentioned as speakers of Lithuanian and Russian. Interestingly, the Hebrew/ Yiddish controversy was not discussed at all, although its existence lay behind the very reason why many east European Jewish intellectuals, educators, and journalists parted company and became bitter antagonists. In general, language-related topics can be classified under the following headings: language policy; language rights (language of instruction at school, language of public | signage); language teaching and learning; and cultural contacts, including translations from Yiddish into Lithuanian and vice versa. Clearly, the topics are interconnected; no rigid classification can be applied. When the Russian language spread among some upwardly mobile Jews (even in Lithuania) in the second half of the nineteenth century, this phenomenon created a view of Jews as Russifiers among the oppressed peoples of the Russian empire. Although anti-Jewish propaganda used the image of Jews as sympathizers and carriers of Russification, the role of Jews as Russifiers cannot be completely denied.?!

Even though statistics show that the first language of Jews in Lithuania was Yiddish,?7 the stereotype of Jews who would rather speak Russian than a Jewish lan-

guage became widespread. Misy garsas exerted itself to disprove this claim in a general context of combating antisemitism. Thus, the author who used the pseudonym Talktnas argues that people notice Jews speaking Russian in the middle of Laisves aleja, the main street of Kaunas, but

do not notice that Lithuanian policemen, military men, and state officials also converse in Russian. He points to a real lack of dictionaries and textbooks and asks

whether, indeed, ‘non-Jews know Lithuanian so well’. His argumentation then takes a somewhat unexpected direction when he claims that high proficiency in Lithuanian will not help, and that, by contrast, ‘the better we learn Lithuanian, the 19 E. Vaitkevicititée, ‘J. A. Herbaciausko asmenybe ir ktiryba XX a. pradzios literattrologiniamekulttirologiniame kontekste’, Lituanistica, 53 (2003), 77. 20 J. A. Herbaciauskas, ‘Mano balsas ir jo aidai’ (“My Voice and its Echo’), Masy garsas, 21 Apr. 1924, pp. 2-3; id., ‘Quo vadis, Domine?’, Masy garsas, 25 Aug. 1924, pp. 3-4. 21 See Petrovsky-Shtern, Anti-Imperial Choice, on imperial and anti-imperial choices among Jews; see also Jabotinsky’s warning to Jews, in V. Jabotinsky, ‘Fal’sifikatsiya shkoly’ (1910), in id., [zbrannoe

(Jerusalem, 1989), 133. ,

22 VY. Mark, ‘Undzer litvish yidish’, in M. Sudarski, U. Katsenelenbogen, and Y. Kissin (eds.), Lite, i (New York, 1951), 430.

Lithuanian-Language fewish Periodicals: A Soctolingustic Evolution 299 more antisemitism there will be’. What is more, when Jews are proficient enough in Lithuanian to teach others, this will, according to Talkitinas, inevitably increase antiJewish feelings. In other words, it is implied that Lithuanians will not remain indifferent towards the appropriation of their language by Jews.7° Proficiency in Lithuanian was, of course, considered a must. Still, in the polem-

ical tone characteristic of the paper, contributors often asked what the state had done to improve instruction in Lithuanian. Talkitinas argued that, before the war, the — average Jew knew Lithuanian to the extent that was required for his or her occupation,

but the state was now doing little to help learners. Similarly, Joktbas Robinzonas (Robinzon), a Seimas representative, asked in a parliamentary speech about the existence of language courses and textbooks.?* He cited Latvia by way of comparison, and came to a somewhat far-reaching conclusion: that all necessary steps had been taken

there, not through legislative acts and decrees, but by an efficient organization of courses and the publishing of teaching materials; hence, the Latvianization of teachers

had occurred.2° One may ask how this claim was substantiated and exactly what ‘Latvianization’ meant——though it ts clear that the term had positive connotations. By contrast, the term ‘Lithuanianization’ was emotionally loaded and regarded

as negative: in a speech on language rights, the Seimas representative Ozeras FinkelSteinas declared, ‘You want to denationalize us, you want to Lithuanianize us, starting with language.’2° FinkelSteinas also discussed Lithuanianization in connec-

tion with public signage. A draft law prohibiting the use of languages other than Lithuanian on public signs was actively discussed but not passed; as Jewish deputies in the Seimas pointed out, it violated the constitution. In his rhetoric, Finkelsteinas referred to the Lithuanians’ struggle for their language rights and for the legalization of the Latin alphabet. In another case, the term ‘Lithuanianization’ was used in connection with plans

to make Lithuanian the compulsory language of instruction for state-financed schools; only private schools would be able to teach in other languages, mirroring the language-teaching regulations of Poland.?’ Fortunately for minority schools in Lithuania, the law was never passed. Later, the teaching of some subjects through the medium of Lithuanian, as mentioned, was also labelled Lithuanianization. These examples show that the notion of Lithuanianization was far from precise. Its use was inconsistent, emotional, and varying in context. 23 'Talkiinas, ‘Ar esama pas mus antisemitizmo?’ (‘Is There Any Antisemitism?’), Masy garsas, 5 Mar. 1924, pp. 2-3. To the best of my knowledge, no voices were audibly raised against the ‘appropriation’ of Lithuanian. Still, in many societies there exists a discourse of ‘gate-keepers’—people who decide who

is and who is not a legitimate speaker/user of a certain language: A. Pavlenko, ‘Poststructuralist Approaches to the Study of Social Factors in Second Language Learning and Use’, in V. Cook (ed.), Portratts of the L2 User (Clevedon, 2002), 277-302. The issue may become especially controversial if ‘strangers’ use the language for literary expression, as occurred in both Germany and Poland.

24 Miisy garsas, 9 July 1924, p. 3. 29“. todél ten mokytojy sulatvinimas vyko’: ibid. 26 Q, FinkelSteinas, ‘Misu kalbos teisés’ (‘Our Language Rights’), Masy garsas, 18 Nov. 1924, p. 3. 27 Dzikas, ‘Antpuolis pries’ mokykly autonomija’ (‘Attack against School Autonomy’), Masy garsas, 1 May 1925, p. 1. See also Lipets, ‘Hebreishe shul-vezn un kultur-bavegung in lite’, 292-323.

300 Anna Verschtk During its short history, Misy garsas dealt several times with the language of signs. When Yiddish- and Hebrew-language signs were either removed or damaged in some locations in 1923 and 1924, prominent Lithuanian intellectuals condemned such actions, among them Jonas Basanavicius (1851-1927), one of the spiritual fathers of the Lithuanian independence movement, and Jonas Jablonskis (18601930), an outstanding Lithuanian scholar, linguist, and language planner.?°® Basanavicius’s original letter protesting against the removal of signs in Jewish languages was printed in Masy garsas.?9

Two articles, by Jablonskis?° and by Chackelis Lemchenas,*! dealt with Lithuanian-language teaching materials. Rather than making general statements with

political overtones, these articles presented a detailed and precise analysis of a Lithuanian grammar for Russian-speakers by Liudas Gira (Jablonskis) and described

the state of affairs in the teaching of Lithuanian as a foreign or second language (Lemchenas). The articles do not engage in political polemics but deal with specific issues of the teaching of grammar and vocabulary in a calm and rational manner. These are important sources for a study of the history of teaching Lithuanian as a second language. Lemchenas continued to maintain his interest in the topic and occasionally discussed the matter in Lithuanian-language publications.°” Several articles in the paper were devoted to cultural contacts. Urijas Kacenelenbogenas wrote that nationalists (¢autininkat, a term without pejorative overtones) of different peoples can and should understand each other’s aspirations and co-operate for the benefit of their country. He mentioned several Lithuanians who wished to learn Yiddish and some Vilna Jews who had started Jearning Lithuanian before the

First World War. Kacenelenbogenas was also proud that a Lithuanian-language Jewish periodical existed.?? Another feature about cultural contacts was a translation from Yiddish of an earlier article (1921) by Baal-Machsovos (Baal Makhshoves, the

pen-name of Isidor Elyashev, 1873-1924) on the art of Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875—1911).°4 Finally, an anonymous article informs readers that Urijas Kacenelenbogenas’s Yiddish translation of Lithuanian dainos (a particular genre of folk songs) has appeared in the American Yiddish-language periodical Tsukunft. Kacenelenbogenas is lauded for his work on behalf of cultural co-operation, and the article includes an extract from his preface to the translation.*° In 1925 the paper began to appear irregularly. ‘The issue of 1 May of that year was

its final edition. All in all, there were just twenty-one issues. It was apparently 28 Atamukas, Lietuvos ydy kelias, 131-2. 29 Misy garsas, 4 Sept. 1924, p. 1. 30 J. Jablonskis, review of Liudas Gira’s Russko-litovskaya grammatika, uchebnik i samouchitel’ (Kaunas, 1924), in Misy garsas, 18 Nov. 1924, pp. 3-4. 31 C, Lemchenas, ‘Lietuviy kalbos vadovelio reikalw’ (“On Lithuanian-Language Textbooks’), Masy garsas, 23 Mar. 1924, pp. 3-4. 32 See A. Verschik, ‘The First Textbook of Lithuanian for Yiddish-Speakers’, Archivum Lithuanicum, 7 (2005), 139-54. 33 U. Kacenelenbogenas, “Tauta tautai’ (“From a People to a People’), Masy garsas, 21 Apr. 1924, p. 2.

34 ‘Ciurlionis’, Misy garsas, 5 Mar. 1924, p. 2. 39 ‘T jetuvos dainos zydu kalba’ (“Lithuanian dainos in Yiddish’), Miasy garsas, 1 May 1925, pp. 2-3.

Lithuanian-Language fewish Periodicals: A Soctolingustic Evolution 301 difficult to maintain the paper and to guarantee its publication. It is also possible that the demand for a Jewish periodical in Lithuanian was still low.

APZVALGA The Jewish weekly Apgvalga (‘Review’) was published in a markedly different polit-

ical and cultural climate. Produced by the Union of Jewish Soldiers (Zydu kariy sajunga) during the regime of Antanas Smetona, it was published at a time when many freedoms were limited (there was censorship as well as a ban on political parties and freedom of assembly). However, while the regime was indeed authoritarian and conservative, the independence of the court system was preserved and religious tolerance still existed, and some restrictions were eased towards the end of the 1930s. Neither did the regime and its ideology take action against minorities, and specifically against Jews.°° I thus believe that we should take a cautious approach and not claim that the outspoken patriotic position of Apzvalga is the consequence of pressure to be loyal. The paper did criticize laws and regulations when it seemed appropriate and when, in its view, there was a threat to Jewish interests: for instance,

it was critical of the law regulating professional activities (‘amatu jstatymas’).°/ Ap&valga defended Jewish rights, especially against economic antisemitism, and engaged in dialogue with mainstream Lithuanian papers, clarifying misunderstandings and correcting occasional erroneous representations of Jews, their languages, and their customs. Not only had the political climate altered, but also Lithuanian Jewry had changed over the ten years. Jews had become proficient in Lithuanian and had developed the habit of reading Lithuanian-language periodicals and fiction. The first editorial calls attention to Jewish readers, the new generation that ‘knows Lithuanian well, reads in Lithuanian, and loves Lithuanian’.?° Potential Lithuanian readers are mentioned much later in the article. Similarly, the paper occasionally discussed the issues of a new generation proficient in Lithuanian and remarked on the internalization of Lithuanian among Jews. On the occasion of the periodical’s third anniversary, Joktbas Goldbergas claimed in an interview: ‘Young Jewish people use Lithuanian among themselves not only in public places but at home as well. It is not a rare occasion nowadays to hear Jewish children speaking Lithuanian among themselves.’?? The paper had more time to develop its unique profile and to establish a readership. The range of its topics was wide, and included news from Lithuania and abroad (not necessarily Jewish news). Translations of fiction from Yiddish and Hebrew appeared 36 T. Lane, ‘Lithuania’, in D. J. Smith et al., The Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (London, 2002), 24-9; S. Suziedélis, “The Historical Sources for Antisemitism in Lithuania and Jewish— Lithuanian Relations during the 1930s’, in NikZentaitis, Schreiner, and Stalitinas (eds.), Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews, 135-6.

37 S. Gutmanas, ‘Koks turety biti amaty istatymas?’ (‘What Kind of Law on Professions Should There Be?’), ApZvalga, 15 Jan. 1939, p. 5.

38 ‘Miusu tikslai’ “(Our Goals’), Apzvalga, 16 June 1935, p. I. 39° Ap&valea, 1 July 1938, p. 4.

302 Anna Verschik in almost every issue, as did original poetry written in Lithuanian by such writers as

S. Matisas and C. Mechanikaite. |

Topics related to language remained more or less the same: language use, language planning, the languages of Jews, and so on. Nevertheless, the emphasis

changed. The image of Jews as Russian-speakers had survived, and the paper devoted several articles to its deconstruction.*° Some authors clearly distanced themselves from Russian, viewing it as an imperial language, and in this way expressed their solidarity with Lithuanians.** It is noteworthy that no arguments such as those proposed by ‘Talkiinas (1.e. increased proficiency in Lithuanian would allegedly provoke increases in antisemitism) ever appeared in ApZva/lga. Instead, the role of Jews in the promotion of

Lithuanian as a lingua franca among minorities is positively emphasized.*? Moreover, the same author regards Jews as a positive Lithuanianizing force among minorities and stresses the free choice of Lithuanian as a medium of expression. As with Miusy garsas, the Hebraist/ Yiddishist controversy is barely mentioned and the paper does not take sides 1n the conflict. It is most likely that Apzvalga deliberately chose neutrality on this internal Jewish problem, opting for an all-inclusive approach. The topic of language teaching and competence in Lithuanian received more attention in Apzvalga than in Miasy garsas. In view of the fact that Musy garsas existed for barely two years and that it was more concerned with political debate than with other matters, this is not surprising. Needless to say, the level of proficiency in Lithuanian varied among members of the Jewish population. It depended on social networks, occupation, individual needs,

and generational factors. Younger Jews were more likely to have a satisfactory command of Lithuanian. Yet stereotypes about minorities speaking poor Lithuanian

and underperforming in Lithuanian language exams were still alive, and in one article an anonymous author argues against claims that minorities have a poor command of Lithuanian and also against the proposition that only native speakers of Lithuanian can teach the language efficiently. The idea earlier expressed by Lemchenas was repeated: those who had to master Lithuanian would have a better overview of the difficult aspects of grammar and would be able to compare systematically the form and structure of the two languages. Moreover, the author claims, the new generation of Jews is highly proficient in Lithuanian and some are even acknowledged researchers of Lithuanian. The article implies that the author 1s a 40 To give just some examples: I.M., ‘Mes kalbame rusiskai?’ (‘Do We Speak Russian?’), Apzvalga,

to Jan. 1936, p. 5; Livsicas, ‘Del rusy kalbos vartojimo zydu tarpe’ (‘On the Use of Russian among Jews’), Apzvalga, 25 Oct. 1936, p. 5; S., ‘Siek-tiek kantrybés’ (‘Some Patience, Please’), Apzvalga, 11 June 1937, Pp. 5.

41 R. Uteniskis, ‘Reikia savitarpio supratimo’ ((Mutual Understanding is Needed’), Apzvalga, 3 June 1935, P. 2.

42 Litvakas, ‘Apzvalgos reiksmé lietuviams’ (“The Meaning of ApZvalga for Lithuanians’), Apzvalga, 1 July 1938, p. 4.

Lithuanian-Language Jewish Periodicals: A Sociolingustic Evolution 303 teacher of Lithuanian in a Jewish school.*? Also challenging stereotypes, another teacher, A. Odes, points out that critics often operate with facts and statistics that are twelve to fifteen years old and are no longer valid.*#

| Some authors address even more specific questions of language planning (that 1s, cultivating language and deciding what is and what is not appropriate for standard use), naming, for instance, enterprises and businesses. An author with the pen-name Iksas concludes that language planners need to agree among themselves on their criteria; otherwise, regulations will be inconsistent.4° The article provides linguistic details and fine analysis and proves that the author is truly cognizant of current laneuage-planning issues. Note how different this case is from the earlier discussion on the language of public signage; there, the very choice of language was an issue. An article by M. Naivedelis goes into even greater detail about language planning, and the discussion has no connection to Jewish issues whatsoever.*° Over its existence of almost five years, Apzvalga succeeded in creating its own profile and finding a niche. It became a respected periodical, acknowledged by both Jewish and Lithuanian journalists. Altogether, there were 223 issues, the final one on 25 June 1940.

CONCLUSION The two Lithuanian-language Jewish periodicals described here shared certain features and differed in others. Language-related topics were present in both papers, although ApZvalga took a more nuanced approach. As shown, Apzvalga was not concerned with denationalization or Lithuanianization, but emphasized the social and cultural integration of Jews. Overall, it seems that, compared with Muasy garsas, its tone is much less polemical and apologetic. ‘The difference between the papers is found mostly in the topics they covered: ApZvalga dedicated more space to cultural events and published translations of Jewish authors into Lithuanian as well as original poetry in Lithuanian written by Jews. Apparently, the time was ripe for a Jewish periodical in Lithuanian, by contrast with the 1920s. A new generation of readers and writers now existed for whom Lithuanian was not just a second language but an integral part of their very own linguistic repertoire. To some extent, this tendency can be compared to that of Poland.*” It is impossible to know to what extent and how a version of Jewish cultural self-expression and identity in Lithuanian would have emerged: too little time remained to the Jews of Lithuania. 43 ‘JT jetuviu kalba mazumy mokykloje’ (“The Lithuanian Language in Minority Schools’), Apzvalga, 17 July 1938, p. I. 44 A. Odes, ‘Ir vel del lietuviy kalbos mazumy mokykloje’ (“This Too is about the Use of Lithuanian in Minority Schools’), Apzvalga, 1 Jan. 1940, p. 7. 45 Iksas, ‘Filologija ir tkis’ (“Philology and the Economy’), ApZvalga, 12 Dec. 1937, p. 2. 46 M. Naivedelis, ‘Daugiau aiskumo’ (‘More Clarity’), Apzvalga, 28 Nov. 1937, Pp. 3. 47 On the languages of Polish Jewry, see C. Shmeruk, ‘Hebrew—Yiddish—Polish: A Trilingual Jewish Culture’, in Y. Gutman et al. (eds.), The Jews of Poland between Two World Wars (Hanover, NH, and London, 1989), 285-311.

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‘Listen, the Jews are Ruling Us Now’ Antisemitism and National Conflict during the First Soviet Occupation of Lithuania, IQG4O-IG4I SAULIUS SUZIEDELIS THE RED DELUGE: FIRST DAYS ON 17 JUNE 1940 Ignas Seinius, one of Lithuania’s prominent writers and the Red Cross representative in Vilnius, returned to Kaunas. The trip proved difficult: ‘As

far as the eye can see .. . the dust rose like smoke from the road, choked with Bolsheviks and their vehicles. It was impossible to get around them, the dust infused

with the unbearable smell of petrol and sweat.’ A mounted Red Army officer, ‘himself layered with dust, atop a dust-armoured horse’, helped Seinius’s official Mercedes-Benz through the log jam—the only bright moment in the depressing montage of the invasion which he painted in his literary memoir Red Deluge.' Unable to persuade his cabinet to authorize military resistance and determined not to preside over the country’s surrender, President Antanas Smetona opted for exile. The leader of the nation left none too soon. The presidential motorcade set out for the German border on the afternoon of 15 June just as a Soviet aeroplane carrying the Kremlin’s viceroy for Lithuania, Molotov’s deputy Vladimir Dekanozov, touched down at Kaunas airport.* Augustinas Voldemaras, Smetona’s long-time arch-rival, foolishly took the opportunity to return from exile in France only to be summarily arrested by the NK VD and sent to Russia.* The exile of inter-war Lithuania’s two most prominent politicians, one voluntary, the other forced, signalled the political This chapter includes material from two previous works of mine: ‘Foreign Saviors, Native Disciples: Perspectives on Collaboration in Lithuania, 1940-1945’, in D. Gaunt, P. A. Levine, and L. Palosuo (eds.), Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Frankfurt am Main, 2004), and ‘Lithuanian Collaboration during the Second World War: Past Realities, Present Perceptions’, in J. Tauber (ed.), ‘Ko/laboration’ in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungsformen und Deutung im 20. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 2006). 1 T. Seinius, Raudonasis tvanas (New York, 1953), 102-3. 2 See the account by Marija ValuSiené, Smetona’s sister, written on 1 August 1940, as published in Lietuvos aneksya: 1940 mety dokumentat, ed. L.. Gudaitis (Vilnius, 1990), 45—50. 3 See A. Voldemaras, Pastabos saulelydzio valanda, ed. G. Rudis (Vilnius, 1992).

306 Saulus Suziedelis and, in many cases, the physical extinction of the leadership which had guided the country for two decades. Whatever the rationale behind the decision not to resist the Soviet invaders, the submission to Moscow’s ultimatum had onerous consequences. The inglorious demise of the First Republic (1918—40) did much to discredit the country’s leadership and political culture which, despite its conservative authoritarianism, had provided a counterweight to extremism. The newly formed People’s Government, engineered by the Soviet Mission in Kaunas as a Trojan horse, was rudderless, befuddled by the events. Its masquerade as a democratic alternative was short-lived. The acting prime minister, the popular writer Vincas Kreve-Mickevicius, feared that the aggressive behaviour of the Soviets

and their collaborators had begun to evoke an ugly response. On 27 June he protested to Nikolay Pozdnyakov, the chief of the Soviet mission in Kaunas, that the ‘methods and tempo’ of change were leading to social disorder and economic collapse. The writer resented his coerced role as ‘an executor of the directives of the [Soviet] Mission’, and warned that he could not be held responsible for the people’s reaction to the country’s Sovietization. Kreve also complained that the legalization of the Communist Party was a dangerous political mistake, for ‘it had aroused panic among a population which was perturbed by the behaviour of the Jews, who have disdain for Lithuanian statehood’.*

, Well known for his leftist and pro-Soviet sympathies, Kreve was no antisemite, but his perception of ‘Jewish behaviour’ was widely shared. There is little doubt that the images, and later the memories, of invasion contributed to the construction of

ethnic archetypes which raised tensions between Lithuanians and the country’s minorities, especially the Jews, which had, in any case, become more evident since the late 1930s.5 While Seinius watched the Red Army from the comfort of his car, the commander of the Lithuanian Sixth Infantry Regiment recorded his own memories, ironically entitled ‘How They Showered Me with Flowers’. Colonel Jonas Andrasitinas noted anxiously that ‘hitherto unknown passions and attitudes suddenly appeared’ in the town of Plunge on the day of the occupation. Informed that contingency plans to resist foreign invasion had been cancelled, he was ordered to meet up with and escort a unit of Soviet troops advancing into the town. After greeting the Soviet colonel, Andrasitinas led the foreign force into town: [ My] car was in the lead followed by numerous Russian tanks. When we reached the outskirts of Plunge, I observed that quite a few people had gathered, mostly the town’s Jews. Since I was first in line, they assumed that I was the commander of the Soviet tank force and showered 4 ‘Telephone report record [Telefonograma] no. 2, 27 June 1940, Makarov to USSR Commissariat of Foreign Affairs: Lietuvos ypatingasis archyvas, Vilnius (hereafter LYA), f. K~1, ap. 49, b. 828, fos. 45-6. © Inter-war tensions are discussed in my ‘The Historical Sources for Antisemitism in Lithuania and Jewish—Lithuanian Relations during the 1930s’, in A. Nikzentaitis, S. Schreiner, and D. Staliiinas (eds.), The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews (Amsterdam, 2004), 119-54. A more comprehensive account can be found in L. Truska and V. Vareikis, Holokausto prielaidos: Antisemitizmas Lietuvoje XIX a. antroji puse—1941 m. birzelis (Vilnius, 2004), 52-60.

‘Listen, the Jews are Ruling Us Now’ 307 flowers on both my car and the tanks behind me. The blossoms were fresh, the shouts and greetings in Russian. True, not everyone did this, but such exalted enthusiasm was shown especially by young Jewish boys and girls. I watched as the excited young Jews leaped into the Lithuanian gardens, grabbed up the flowers, and threw them onto my car and the Soviet tanks which crept along behind me. A trifle? Perhaps, but the impression back then was horrendous, it burned in the mind. One part of Plunge’s population exulted, the other wept. I saw a young Lithuanian farm girl sobbing as the Jews pulled up her flowers. It seemed as if two peoples had split up, separated, never to live in peace again. And these momentary images are so ingrained in my memory that I can still see them today.°®

The historian Zenonas Ivinskis walked along the main thoroughfare in Kaunas as the tanks entered the city, noting that the street ‘was full of people . . . especially Jews, crowded around the tanks and ingratiating themselves’. He noted that ‘the scattered gaggles of Jewish boys and girls, no older than 15-18, who greeted every passing [Soviet] vehicle, made a very bad impression on me... But it was only the young Jews who were happy; the older Jews disapproved. They just looked on.’ Leaving Kaunas a few days later, Ivinskis grew more depressed as he observed the ‘seemingly endless columns of the Bolshevik army, surging into Lithuania on all roads’. / Another native of Kaunas, the 15-year-old Valdas Adamkus, future president of Lithuania, recalled more than half a century later the stench of sweat that followed the marching Soviet soldiers. He found their reception odd, but this account by a Westernized head of state carefully avoided more precise identification of the welcomers: I was even more surprised when small groups of people appeared carrying bouquets of flowers. I couldn’t understand who they were, why they were rushing to hug these reeking soldiers of a foreign army. At the time I didn’t quite understand the concept of ‘occupation’, but I grasped that Lithuania had suffered a great misfortune. I didn’t condemn these people, but only wondered: they were nicely dressed, clearly Kaunas people, but for some reason they were handing flowers to the Russians.®

Jewish accounts reflect nearly identical images, albeit from a different perspective. Frieda Frome’s childhood memories of Lithuania included the rosy conviction that under Smetona’s regime ‘Germans, Russians, Jews, and many others, in addition to

the native Lithuanians, lived together in tolerance and peace’. As she remembers: I was at home the afternoon of June 15, 1940, when I heard singing outside in the street . . . People were hurrying along the street, shouting, singing and clapping their hands. They were

joined every few yards along their march by other excited men, women, and children. I rushed out of the house and into the street .. . ‘Our liberators are coming,’ they shouted 6 J. AndraSitinas, ‘Kaip mane apmété gélémis’, Akiraciai, 1984, no. 10, pp. 9-10, 13, 15. ’ Zenonas Ivinskis’s diary, entries for June 1940: LYA, f. 55, ap. 3377, b. 240. The reservation of the older generation of Jews is noted in Y. Bauer, The Death of the Shtetl (New Haven, 2009), 38. 8 V. Adamkus, Likimo vardas — Lietuva: Apie laika, tvykius, Zmones (Kaunas, 1997).

308 Saulius Suziedels joyously. “The Russians will make us free. Down with Smetona and the Fascists!’ Looking in the direction they were headed, I saw great hordes of Russian soldiers in olive drab uniforms coming down from the hills.?

Harry Gordon records that the sudden appearance of tanks evoked fears of a German invasion, but as the red stars came into sight, Our mood changed. Instead of panic we felt an unnatural joy. Everyone started hugging and kissing each other, family and neighbours, as if the Messiah had just arrived. Those who had been hiding ran out of their houses and began throwing bouquets of flowers at the approaching army. It took a week of marching day and night for the army to move through the town.!°

Certainly, there were non-Jews among the flower-throwers, but they do not stand

out in the diaries and memoirs. Bitter fault lines separate Lithuanian and Jewish wartime memories, but the contrasting reaction of the communities to the invasion does not seem to be one of them. Of course, hindsight can impose an arbitrary clarity on what, at the time, must have presented a kaleidoscope of images. Nevertheless, the selective initial impressions are revealing. Both Lithuanian and Jewish accounts evoke a crossing of the Rubicon. Even when the clichés of flower-throwing Jews who welcomed the Bolsheviks, or the flower-tossing Lithuanians who greeted the fascists

a year later, are noted without rancour, they nonetheless reproduce archetypes which have survived to this day.

THE CONTEXT: SOVIET POWER AND ITS TROUBLES Behind the noise of the tanks and crowds the social and political restructuring of the country proceeded apace. The confusing, often farcical, political machinations surrounding the invasion baffled even seasoned observers and politicians. Smetona had been right: at the very least, token armed resistance would have made it impossible to obscure the invasion as an act of aggression. In many quarters, the pent-up resentment of the Nationalists’ monopoly of power meant that much of the well-orchestrated rejoicing at Smetona’s downfall was shared by at least a part of the non-communist public. The promise of social reforms appealed to the economically marginal, while many Jews rejoiced at the prospect of ‘equal treatment for all nationalities’. But the

urban middle class and landed peasantry had little desire for revolution. During the first days of the occupation, the authorities reiterated solemn promises to safeguard private property. Only a minority expressed any desire to join the ‘Soviet family

of nations’.! The politics of Lithuania’s Sovietization which led to the formal incorporation of the country into the Soviet Union in August 1940 have been well 9 F. Frome, Some Dare to Dream: Frieda Frome’s Escape from Lithuania (Ames, lowa, 1988), 7, 10. 10 H. Gordon, The Shadow of Death: Holocaust in Lithuania (Lexington, Ky., 1992), 11-12. 11 See the revealing report of the commander of the Panevézys District Security and Criminal Police, 27 June 1940, in Lietuvos okupacya ir aneksya, 1939-1940: Dokumenty rinkinys, ed. L. Breslavskiene et al. (Vilnius, 1993), 306-9.

‘Listen, the fews are Ruling Us Now’ 309 documented elsewhere. ! It should not be surprising that the history of the summer of 1940 evoked inconsistent, even contradictory, interpretations, the least convincing of which is the standard Soviet portrayal of the occupation as a popular revolution, or the more recent Russian attempts to portray the annexation as consistent with international legal norms. !? There is little doubt as to who wielded real power once the Red Army had secured the country. At the apex was a working group of Soviet officials and operatives of

the Lithuanian Communist Party (Lietuvos komunisty partya; LKP) who coordinated the activity of the People’s Government through the Soviet mission in Kaunas, whose chief, the urbane Pozdnyakov, played the ‘good cop’ to Dekanozov, Beria’s rude ‘bad cop’. For its part, the Ministry of the Interior and State Security Department, which had been taken over by the communists within the first week and now operated under Soviet control, prepared to deal with the ‘enemies of the people’. The security police carried out a wave of arrests: 504 prominent citizens had been detained by 17 July,!+ many of whom were deported to the Soviet Union, including Antanas Merkys and Juozas Urbsys, the last prime minister and foreign minister, respectively, of the independent state. The First Republic’s body politic was effectively decapitated. Finally, the Soviet military conducted itself as a con-

quering force, frequently providing the direction and personnel to flesh out the fulsome demonstrations of gratitude to Stalin and the Soviet Union. The vote for the so-called People’s Diet (Liaudies Seimas) proved one of the most

efficiently orchestrated electoral charades in history. The hitherto unknown Lithuanian Union of Labour (Lietuvos darbo liaudies sajunga) appeared as if by magic on 6 July. The balloting then followed a week of ‘campaigning’. ‘The process was not without its bizarre aspects and even some (in hindsight) comic relief.+° On 12 See the latest English-language survey, A. E. Senn, Lithuania 1940: Revolution from Above (Amsterdam, 2007), 1109 ff.

13 Since the late rggos the Russian refusal to acknowledge as an occupation the sudden influx of more than half a million Soviet troops into the Baltic countries under conditions of an ultimatum has achieved official approbation. By contrast, while the Czech president Emil Hacha formally agreed to Hitler’s ‘protection’ in March 1939, few Germans would argue that the Nazi seizure of the Czech lands under threat of force was anything other than aggression against an independent state. See, on Soviet preparations in the event of a ‘Finnish variant’ of resistance, Natasha Lebedeva’s introduction in SSSR 1 Litva v gody Vtorot mirovot voiny, 1: SSSR 1 Litovskaya Respublika (mart 1939—-avgust 1940 gg.), ed. A. Kasparavicius,

C. Laurinavitius, and N. Lebedeva (Vilnius, 2006), 51-3. 14 Beria’s report to Stalin and Molotov, undated: LYA, f. K-1, ap. 49, b. 828, fo. 85. 15 At least two candidates claimed to have discovered that they had been nominated when they read the daily newspaper in Kaunas. The electoral slate also included a phantom candidate: Jonas Abakonis apparently found a place on the ballot at the suggestion of a comrade who vaguely remembered this

peasant as a stolid underground party member years before. No one apparently bothered to check whether this stalwart was actually living and available. When the duly elected Abakonis failed to turn up at the first session of the People’s Diet, his place was taken by ‘president’ Justas Paleckis. See L. Dovydenas, Mes valdysim pasault: Atsiminimai (Woodhaven, NY, 1970), 193-4; A. Garmus, ‘Lietuvos yungimas 1 SSSR-Maskvos diktatas’, in J. Baldéitinas (ed.), Lietuviy archyvas: Bolsevizmo metat, 4 vols. (Kaunas, 1942-3), 11. 36-7; J. Bulavas, ‘Zaidimas seimu’, Vi/niaus balsas, 2/3 (Oct. 1989).

310 Saulius Suziedelts 16 July the electoral commission announced that 1,386,569 voters, or 95.5 per cent

of the total, had cast 99.2 per cent of their votes for the only permitted list: the seventy-nine Labour candidates. Contemporary police reports, party records, and other sources provide enough evidence for the coercive and farcical nature of the election.'© On 21-23 July the Diet, in a circus atmosphere of organized enthusiasm, met in Kaunas to declare Soviet power and choose a delegation to request admission into the Soviet Union, to ‘bring Stalin’s sun’ to Lithuania. On 3 August 1941 the USSR Supreme Soviet accepted Lithuania into the Soviet Union. 1!” The political machinations had proceeded smoothly and pro-Stalin demonstra-

tions produced impressive street theatre, but the invasion, occupation, and Sovietization of Lithuania delivered severe shocks to society. Lithuania’s inter-war history and geopolitical realities promised a difficult transition. Most of the younger generation, especially those who had benefited from the first modern polity dominated by ethnic Lithuanians, had come to accept independence and majority rule as the sole legitimate form of governance. The landed farmers were especially concerned to retain title to their holdings, an attitude evident from the very first days of

the occupation.!® Lithuania’s strong identification with the Catholic Church ensured that attacks on religion would rouse opposition. Many urbanites were unimpressed with the ragged appearance of the Soviet soldiers, and some of the invaders became the objects of gleeful snickering, fuelled by stories of officers’ wives appearing on the streets in nightgowns mistakenly acquired as fine evening wear. Most of the popular tales of simple Russian soldiers confused by indoor plumbing and entranced by consumer goods were probably apocryphal, but at least some were based on observed behaviour. ‘The image of scraggly Soviet infantry, coloured by stereotypes of ‘Mongol-like’ soldiers, had reinforced the perception that Sovietization would drive down living standards.!? On 25 June the security police reported that rumours of annexation ‘truly frighten many people, who say that they fear destitution, which can result from the loss of Lithuania’s independence’.?° 16 Lietuvos Liaudies Seimas: Stenogramos ir medziaga, ed. K. Surblys (Vilnius, 1985), 31. See Mariampole District Security and Criminal Police Report, 16 July 1940, and Paneveézys District Security and Criminal Police Report, 18 July 1940, in Lietuvos okupacya ir aneksya, ed. Breslavskiené et al., 366, 375-7; also LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 110, fos. 2-5; LK P Central Committee Directive, 14 July 1940: LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 108 (text in Russian). Cf. the reports by the head of the American mission

in Kaunas, Owen Norem: Norem to State, 15 July 1940: National Archives, College Park, Maryland (hereafter NA), M1178, roll 19, 860M.00/450; Norem to State, 19 July 1940, NA, M1178, roll 19,

860M.00/452. 17 Senn, Lithuania 1940, 238-41. 18 Siauliai District Security and Criminal Police Bulletin, 24 June 1940: Lietuvos centrinis valstybés

archyvas, Vilnius (hereafter LCVA), f. 378, ap. 12, b. 296, fo. 5.

19 See the racial musings in Seinius, Raudonasis tvanas, 104-8. Cf. Jewish memoirs, for example Gordon, Shadow of Death, 12-15. The nightgown episode is repeated by both Gordon, ibid. 14, and Frome, Some Dare to Dream, 13. There is also the ‘alienating impression’ of the ‘Mongolian’ Soviet soldiers as ‘Huns storming Europe’, whose singing sounded like the ‘howling of wolves’, as recalled by B.

Press, The Murder of the Jews in Latvia, 1941-1945, trans. L. Mazzarins (Evanston, IIl., 2000), 32. 20 Vilnius District Security Police Bulletin no. 127, 25 June 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 699, fo. 584.

‘Listen, the Jews are Ruling Us Now’ 311 Whatever the reality, the perception of Soviet power as representative of primitive ‘Asiatic’ values aroused contempt among those already predisposed to reject communism. Aside from other psychological factors, a significant destabilizing circumstance was the growing conviction that the Soviet regime was transitory. One popular belief

prevalent in the summer of 1940, frequently reported by the authorities, was the imminence of a Russo-German war. This perception was so widespread that in late June a hoarding spree emptied the shops.2! Unsurprisingly, as anti-Soviet attitudes deepened, the Germans, as one police report intimated, increasingly came to be seen as liberators, especially among ‘the wealthy bourgeois’.?7 But this canard about the bourgeois was Marxist wishful thinking: it was not only the well-to-do who came to see their salvation in the West. An interesting paradox of the Lithuanian SSR during 1940-1 was the incongruity

between the Soviet regime’s institutional power and its political weakness. The Soviets failed to achieve any substantial acceptance of what most Lithuanians quite logically perceived as a foreign imposition. The widely anticipated German invasion (and, later, during 1945—50 the hope of a Western intervention) mitigated a spirit of resignation in the face of overwhelming force.

CONFLICTS OF THE BRAVE NEW WORLD: SOCIETY, IDEOLOGY, POLITICS, AND RACE The social and political dislocation which accompanied Sovietization inevitably pro-

| duced ethnic and social fissures far more dangerous than any disenchantment with the flower-throwers. Aside from the communists and fellow travellers who welcomed the new order on ideological grounds, much of Lithuania’s Jewish community had good reasons to see at least some aspects of Soviet rule as beneficial. Soviet power pro-

vided obvious protection from Nazi Germany. Even anti-communist Jews could argue that ‘under Germany we were doomed, under Russia we were free’.7? It was also obvious that many Jews, who understandably preferred Stalin to Hitler, did not share the depth of the Lithuanians’ grief and shame at the loss of independence. In addition, for a considerable part of the Jewish population, especially its youth, the new regime promised career opportunities, particularly within the bureaucracy and economy, which had been limited during the period of nationalist rule. Numerous sources reflect the hubris of the young. The Siauliai police reported on 24 June 1940 that ‘the irresponsible Jewish element, especially youths, walks in 21 Siauliai District Security and Criminal Police Bulletin, 24 June 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 12, b. 296, fo. 4. Cf. Vilnius District Security Police Bulletin no. 127, 25 June 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 699, fo. 582.

22 Vilnius District Security Police Bulletin no. 144, 17 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 699, fo. 640; cf. Vilnius District Security Police Bulletin, no. 209, 20 July 1940: LCVA, f. R-754, ap. 3, b. 311. 23 See W. W. Mishell, Kaddish for Kovno: Life and Death in a Lithuanian Ghetto, 1941-1945 (Chicago, 1988), 8-9.

312 Saulius Suziedelis the streets of the towns and does not even allow Lithuanians to pass by on the pave-

ment... Lithuanians complain that the Jews are bragging: “We are now the masters”’.24 Harry Gordon remembers something similar: During this time the young communists, some of them Jewish, had quite a celebration. They insulted the Lithuanian police, laughed about the president, Antanas Smetona, who had run to Germany, and told exaggerated stories about the Lithuanian police beating up Jews. ‘This antagonized the whole Lithuanian population . . . At this time, they began hiring Jews at the NKVD, the Russian FBI, and many Jews became food distributors to the Russian army.?°

William Mishell recalls that ‘as citizens with equal rights’ his brother-in-law, sister, and father all found employment in the new order. At his own job in Kaunas, he wrote, ‘I progressed very nicely and my prospects for the future were extremely bright.’ But he also lamented: ‘With their economic base totally destroyed, the Jews reached out to whatever was offered to them.’ Noting that this ‘contributed to the strained relations between the two nations’, Mishell remarked that ‘Although there were relatively few Jews who got these new jobs, to the Lithuanians it looked like an invasion.’2© A number of Jews found their niche in highly visible economic positions as the pace of nationalization accelerated. Lithuanian officials sometimes served as

figureheads, while more experienced Jewish assistants actually administered the nationalized companies.2’ One such newly minted Lithuanian factory chief’s childlike scribbles can be found on his delegate form for the Fifth Congress of the LKP. Silvestras Runéa listed himself as a ‘self-educated’ former worker of the Neris factory. He misspelled the name of the enterprise, his own title of ‘director’, and the word ‘factory’.7®

Some of the conflicts seem to reflect a continuation of the rivalry within the economy and professions characteristic of the inter-war period.*? The medical services can serve as an example. In his memoir of the occupation, Kreve claimed that the minister of health, Moisieyus Leonas Koganas, had, within days of his appointment, purged ethnic Lithuanian doctors, characterizing them as ‘reactionaries and pillars of the old Smetona regime’. When Kreve protested to Paleckis and threatened to resign, most of the fired Lithuanians were reinstated.?° In March 1941 one M. Vasiljevas complained to the Kaunas municipal personnel office that Jews in the

~ city’s hospitals were working in a ‘chauvinistic’ spirit. Dr Moze Bermanas, a Koganas appointee, was accused of Zionist leanings. As the former personal physician to Smetona’s household, he had once been awarded the prestigious Order of 24 Siauliai District Security and Criminal Police Bulletin, 24 June 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 12, b. 296, fo. 5.

28 Gordon, Shadow of Death, 11-12. 26 Mishell, Kaddish for Kovno, 8. 27 T), Levin, ‘The Jews and the Socio-Economic Sovietization of Lithuania, 1940-1941 (Part I)’,

Soviet Fewish Affairs, 17/2 (1987), 27. 28 List of Delegates to the Fifth Congress of the LKP(b), Feb. 1941: LYA, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 19, fo. 3.44.

29 See Suziedelis, ‘Historical Sources for Antisemitism’, 125-31. 80 V. Kreévé, Bolseviky invaziya ir laudies vyriausybé, ed. A. Zalatorius (Vilnius, 1992), 29-30.

‘Listen, the fews are Ruling Us Now’ 313 - Gediminas. Vasiljevas alleged that Jewish doctors hired only other Jews, assigning the ‘dirty work’ to other nationalities, and refusing to admit non-Jewish patients. In this scenario, the Jews were portrayed as reactionaries who ‘accuse others of antisemitism and reaction, but then, hiding behind the veil of communism, carry out national chauvinistic and reactionary work’. Vasiljevas wrote how ‘society is observ-

ing everything and asks how long this can go on’, warning that ‘if the Health | Department does not solve this problem in due course, the working class itself will have to settle the issue. After all, working people would occasionally like to see a nonJewish doctor in the clinics.’?+ A more dangerous trope was the perception of Jews as traitors, ‘stabbing 1n the back’ the state and nation whose land they had enjoyed as guests—or in antisemitic parlance ‘exploiters’-—for centuries. The long-held perception of the inextricable link

between Jews and Bolshevism was reinforced. Colonel Kazys Skirpa, Lithuania’s envoy to Germany, penned his impressions on returning to Berlin after a brief visit to Kaunas in late June 1940: The only ones who still feel good [in the current situation] are the Jews. It goes without saying

that, just as there were communists among them before, very many new ones have now appeared. Also, fearing the Reich, many Jews who basically do not hold communist convictions are more inclined to think that it is better to align with Soviet Russia and submit to communism. For this reason, in the various street demonstrations it is the Jews who above all express sympathy for Soviet Russia, completely forgetting that only yesterday they were licking the Lithuanians’ soles, expressing loyalty to Lithuania for its liberalism towards the Jews. Lithuanian society, of course, is indignant at this Jewish fawning over the Russians and is thus each day more and more infected with antisemitism, especially since the Jews, in

emphasizing their loyalty to the Soviets, often publicly insult Lithuanians, particularly former government officials . . . The Russian language, as in tsarist times, has once again become for the Jews an expression of Russian patriotism.

Skirpa reported a fist fight between a Lithuanian soldier and a Jewish worker which grew into a window-smashing pogrom in the town of Marijampoleé.*” Skirpa’s role

as the leading advocate of a pro-German Lithuanian orientation might make his observations suspect if it were not for the fact that other sources, including numerous police and party documents in the archives, paint a picture of intense ethnic rivalry and conflict within every sphere of Lithuania’s Sovietized reality of 1940-1, tensions played out in a broad spectrum, from the intellectual elite to the ‘toiling masses’.33

The perception of ‘Jewish power’ motivated many protesters at the grass-roots level. A group of villagers from Taurai sent a delegation to their district chief to ot LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 341, fos. 153-5.

32 Skirpa to Saulys, Balutis, and Klimas, 1 July 1940: Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, California, Edvardas Turauskas papers, CSUZ 75015-A, box 3, fo. 10. The Marijampole riot appears in a number of police reports. 33 A useful brief overview is given in Senn, Lithuania 1940, 195 ff.

314 Saulhus Suziedels request a permit for an ‘anti-Jewish rally’ which would protest against the ‘Jews intruding into all government agencies’.?+ The same resentment was reported in Sakiai, where ‘many farmers and Lithuanians’ were angered at the inclusion of ‘citizens of Jewish nationality’ in the militia.?° In early July the security police in Vilnius noted the widespread resentment against Jews, ‘who have become very insolent and

dare to brag that they are now in power; consequently, there is talk among Lithuanians and Poles that, if the Germans were to come, the Jews would suffer ereatly’.2 Antisemitic feelings united the most unlikely allies: ‘Recently there has emerged a peculiar co-operation of Lithuanian and Polish nationalists’ against the Jews, noted a police report in late July 1940.2’ Such a bond would have been unimaginable under the Smetona regime and certainly was not the ‘fraternal unity of nations’ envisioned in contemporary communist propaganda.

, For many Lithuanian workers and peasants national prejudice trumped class solidarity. One government report concluded that the perception of Jewish domination was ‘the most important reason for the unpopularity of the Communist Party’.*® The mutual antagonism of various national groups, especially Jews and non-Jews, was one of the most widely reported phenomena of the wrenching social and political

transformations of the first weeks and months of Soviet rule.2? The plethora of demonstrations and rallies, with radical speeches inciting crowds, was conducive to a tense atmosphere. Prejudicial stereotypes and passions, old and new, rubbed emotions raw. Offended soldiers complained about the overwhelming presence of the red flags and they grumbled at the conspicuous lack of the national tricolour, which reflected the collapse, in their words, of ‘a general national and civic consciousness’.

One lieutenant carped that ‘now there is no place for chauvinism, but the Jews demonstratively degrade Lithuanians, their language and songs’, reporting that when his regiment appeared in a demonstration and broke into song, ‘Jews who had gathered on the pavements began to jeer’.49 Assaults on the Church and the army,

the two institutions held in high esteem by most Lithuanians, were especially resented. The first month of the fierce and hurried push for Sovietization, which began 1n

early July and culminated with the campaign for the People’s Diet, produced numerous reports of a sharpening social divide. On 11 July an election rally attracted a predominantly Polish crowd in Trakai. As a Jewish agitator began to speak, ‘the 34 State Security Department Bulletin no. 92, 3 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 12, b. 296, fo. 27. 85 State Security Department Bulletin no. 207, 16 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 225, fo. 756. 86 Vilnius District Security Police Bulletin no. 138, 9 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 699, fo. 619. 37 State Security Department Bulletin no. 210, 23 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 225, fo. 767. 38 Ministry of the Interior Information Bulletin no. 13, 7 Aug. 1940: LCVA, f. R-754, ap. 3, b. 314, fo. 77.

39 Vilnius District Security Police Bulletins nos. 138 and 139, 9 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. ro, b. 699, fo. 619.

40 Report of the Army Staff’s Second Section, 16 July 1940, in Lietuvos okupacya ir aneksya, ed. Breslavskiené et al., 368.

‘Listen, the Jews are Ruling Us Now’ 315 crowd began to ridicule him . . . from all sides it was proclaimed that the Jews promise the people all kinds of wonderful things’ only for the purpose of gaining power. ‘Otherwise’, the report noted laconically, ‘the rally went off without incident.’*! On the same day another campaign event took place in nearby Lentvaris: A bus arrived .. . from Vilnius bedecked with election campaign placards in Yiddish. Only Jews singing Russian songs were riding on the bus. When the bus stopped near the railway station and the newcomers began speaking in Yiddish and Russian, the Poles and Lithuanians who had gathered to listen to the speeches immediately dispersed, expressing their dissatisfaction with the Jews. Only about eighty local Jews, of whom the majority were underage youths, listened to the speeches. The Lithuanians and Poles were determined to beat up these Jews, but the police official, who arrived just in time, did not allow disorder.*4

On the eve of the balloting, the NK VD’s resident in Kaunas reported to Moscow | that leaflets had appeared in Alytus district urging a boycott of Jewish businesses and a ‘quiet struggle’ against the Jews, railing against the establishment of a ‘second Palestine’ in Lithuania.*% Even the poorer Lithuanians and Poles, while approving of the new, ostensibly more socially equitable, political system, expressed resentment towards the Jews’ alleged ‘leading role in political and social life’. Conflicts of the kind described above became commonplace. ‘Finally’, the authorities reported, ‘in recent days in Vilnius there have been incidents of fisticuffs in the streets, Poles and Lithuanians against the Jews.’44 The Siauliai police reported in typical bureaucratese: ‘It 1s characteristic that in the various election district precincts, the rejected ballot slips were mainly of candidate no. 5, Naochas Mackevicius. The majority of people of Jewish nationality placed only ballot no. 5 into the envelopes, while the villagers and other voters of non-Jewish nationality would tear it out.’ The same phenomenon was noted elsewhere.*° Officers observing the electoral behaviour of the Fifth Infantry Regiment recounted: ‘A considerable number of soldiers, without being subject to outside influence, tore out the ballot coupon of the only candidate of Jewish nationality, putting it in their pocket or just throwing it on the floor. Most of the ballots scattered on the floor belonged to the Jewish candidate.’*° Many voters deposited, in place of the ballots, various texts and diatribes against 41 Vilnius District Security Police Bulletin no. 140, 11 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 699. 42 Vilnius District Security Police Bulletin no. 141, 12 July 1940: ibid. 43° Makarov report, 10 July 1940: LYA, f. K-1, ap. 49, b. 828, fo. 72. 44 See Vilnius District Security Police Bulletin no. 141, 12 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 699. For an overall account of Jewish participation in the July 1940 elections based on Yiddish sources, see D. Levin, “The Jews and the Election Campaigns in Lithuania, 1940-1941’, Soviet fewish Affairs, 10/1 (1980), 30-45. 45 Siauliai District Security and Criminal Police Bulletin no. 98, 18 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 12, b. 296, fo. 13. Cf. State Security Department Bulletin no. 209, 20 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 225; and Vildziiinas report, in Lietuvos okupacia ir aneksija, ed. Breslavskiené et al., 375. 46 Report of the Army Staff's Second Section, 16 July 1940, in Lietuvos okupacya ir aneksija, ed. Breslavskiené et al., 367.

316 Sauhus Suziedelis the new regime. The archival collection of former People’s Government president Paleckis contains a representative sample of thirty such ‘protest enclosures’ left at voting precincts in Kaunas on 14-15 July. Fourteen of the messages are antisemitic; some are ungrammatical and misspelled, indicating lower-class origin. A few proclaim dire threats and bloody vengeance against ‘Jews and degenerate communists’. Even some protesters of a leftist orientation showed impatience, demanding a ‘true Lithuanian socialism’ free of Jews. ‘Adolf Hitler, the liberator from the Jews’ was one of the impromptu votes. Another scrap dropped in the ballot box read: ‘The entire battalion for Adolf Hitler. Signed: A soldier.’ ‘There were other anti-Bolshevik candidates: Smetona, former army commander General Stasys RaStikis, the Finnish

hero Marshal Mannerheim, Mussolini, Voldemaras, and Mickey Mouse.*’ These were likely the first write-in candidates in Lithuanian history. Rumours that procommunist voters would be ‘dealt with when the Germans come’ reflected the sense of impermanence surrounding the new regime, especially in the villages. Some voters ‘forgot’ to bring their passports to the precincts, thus avoiding the incriminating stamp signifying that they had cast their ballots for the People’s Diet.*® Lithuania became the first (and only) predominantly Catholic republic of the Soviet Union. The secularizing policies of the People’s Government, such as the introduction of civil registry, welcomed by some as a long overdue modernization, were, however, soon supplanted by a more forceful attack on the Church. As early as 27 and 28 June, leaflets appeared in Siauliai city directed against communists and Jews, proclaiming ‘Long live Catholic Lithuania!’*? The prominence of several Jews in the party’s propaganda and media apparatus, which was in the forefront of the regime’s anti-religious campaigns, fuelled the notion that they were a danger to the faith. In August 1940 health minister Koganas reportedly informed the mayor of Kaunas, Antanas Garmus, of plans to seize the city’s Theological Seminary, the republic’s last remaining Catholic institution of higher education, to expand the city’s Jewish hospital. Several sources claim that even leading Lithuanian communists were aghast at such an inane provocation in a predominantly Catholic country. By the end of the year, the seminary buildings had instead been transferred to the Red Army.°° Also in August the security police reported that a Jewish official named Kleinas had been appointed as liquidator of the bookshop of the St Casimir Society in Kaunas. Since the society had assisted poorly educated villagers, maidservants, 47 Ballots of citizens with anti-Soviet attitudes cast in Kaunas during the People’s Diet elections, 14-15 July rg4o: LYA, f. 3377, ap. 58, b. 593, fos. 6-83. 48 Report of Tauragé District Chief BalduSis, 21 July 1940, in Lietuvos okupacya wr aneksya, ed. Breslavskiene et al., 385. 49 Siauliai District Security and Criminal Police Bulletin no. 69, June 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 12, b. 296, fo. 35. 50 ‘Two versions of the incident agree on the basics: K. Jira, Monsinjoras (Brooklyn, NY, 1979), 65— 6; and the more detailed account in V. Brizgys, Kataliky Baznycta Lietuvoje: Pirmoje rusy okupacyoye 1940-1941 m., vokieciy okupacijoje 1941-1944 m. (Chicago, 1977), 25—6, and his ‘Kunigy seminariya Kaune bolSevizmo metais’, in Balcitinas (ed.), Lietuviy archyvas, 1. 56-8.

‘Listen, the Ffews are Ruling Us Now’ 317 and devout older women (Lith. davatkos), its demise caused ‘widespread disgruntled talk among the people about the fact that the society has been seized by the Jews’.?! On 10 July Kaunas workers arrived in Trakai in a truck adorned with portraits of Soviet leaders to conduct an election rally attended by hundreds of locals, mostly Poles and Lithuanians. As one speaker shouted ‘down with the priests, down with the Church’, the crowd countered with, ‘give us bread and work, but don’t touch

| the priests!’ In the end, the campaign lorry barely made its escape; otherwise, as the police noted, the agitators ‘would have come to harm from the enraged crowd’. The

local communists were unhappy with such heavy-handed agitation by outsiders, which only made their work more difficult by inciting people in Catholic villages.°? The examples of anti-Christian incidents involving Jews and other supporters of

the new regime, some real, others apocryphal, many doubtless embellished, resonated among a Catholic population already suffused with antisemitic sentiment.°* The impression that Jews sought to destroy Christianity was, of course, based on the behaviour of a relatively small number of party members and supporters, but the distorted logic, however faulty, proved inexorable. On 19 August 1940 Jonas Malasauskas, a bookbinder, appealed to the LKP Central Committee to open all businesses on Saturdays. He reported the following conversation among ‘a group of pious old women and a neighbour’s son’: Listen, the Jews are ruling us now. Just take a look: they seized the salaries of our priests, drove them out of the schools, and now they want to discontinue [religious] services over the radio. But they don’t do anything to the Jews: just as they celebrated their sabbath before, so they do it now, just as they closed their stores, so they have the shabas now. And you can see that nearly all government employees are Jews. So isn’t it obvious that we are ruled by the Jews?°*

Shared socialist values did little to bridge the animosities among the lower ranks of comrades and fellow travellers. Owen Norem, the head of the American mission in Kaunas, wrote to the State Department that ‘there seems to be a great deal of fric-

tion between the Gentile and the Jew even when both seek to embrace the Red °1 State Security Department Bulletin no. 217, 5 Aug. 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. ro, b. 225, fo. 788. Cf. the account in M. Vaitkus, Atsiminimat, vi: Milziny rungtynese, 1940-1944 (London, 1972), 46-7. 62 Vilnius District Security Police Bulletin no. 140, 11 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 699, fo. 621.

53 The following embellished second-hand memoir is reminiscent of the desecration stories which circulated during the Spanish Civil War: ‘The worker from Vilkija, Petrauskas, told me that the former notary public, the young Jewish communist Dov. Tam., who had become a famous communist official, on one Sunday invited all officials and other people into the Riflemen’s Union hall. He placed a small cross on a table and ordered everyone to make a disrespectful gesture in poking at the Christ-figure

in order to show their loyalty to the Communist Party. Then the worker Ciapas shouted: “Jew! It’s not your business to handle the priests, it’s better that you deal with your rabbis! And if there’s nothing here, then what’s this business with poking?” The others were also appalled, but remained silent out of fear.’ From the account by Bruno Ignatavicius, written down in Ottawa, 22 Aug. 1974, and provided to the author by Klemensas Jiira. 54 LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 280, fos. 153-4 (emphasis original).

318 Saulius Suziedelis tenets’.°° Ethnic tensions were particularly intense within the Komsomol, where Jewish influence was historically strong. Young Jews were occasionally criticized in

the Yiddish press for their ‘chauvinism’. A communist official in Panevezys observed a local Komsomol meeting: Sitting by a table in the Komsomol club is a Jewish committee member and round him are Jewish comrades speaking Yiddish loudly, while on the other side of the club sits a Lithuanian committee member and round him are Lithuanian members speaking Lithuanian. The Jewish Komsomol members explained the phenomenon by saying that it is impossible to become friends with them [the Lithuanians] there.°©

Leftist sympathies provided no immunity against antisemitic fantasies. A flyer left at a police precinct by the self-described Lithuanian Anti-Jewish Committee on 8 July 1940 hailed the achievement of ‘freedom and equality’, which was endangered by ‘a new exploiter climbing onto the slow Lithuanian’s neck—the Jew’. The same

Jews who once shouted ‘Long live Antanas Smetona!’ and who had ‘purchased a plantation in Palestine for their friend Smetona’ now supported the new regime. The leaflet explained: We do not say that we must beat the Jews, for the Jews never beat us either. We will declare a quiet war against them. We will not buy their goods, but, most important, we will not allow them into our organization. We will create our own communism .. . the Jews—let them build their own if they wish. We want to see those really rich Jews next to us doing manual labour, which they have avoided and feared all their lives. We want them to get only that which they conscientiously earn.°”

The threat posed by the prevailing anti-Soviet mood was aptly demonstrated by a thorough NK VD secret report on the political atmosphere within the Lithuanian 29th Territorial Riflemen’s Corps, the Red Army formation which had incorporated most of the Lithuanian military. One Lithuanian soldier consoled himself with the hope that ‘we’ll survive somehow—soon the Germans will come and we'll get back what’s ours and be free’. A junior officer opined: ‘Hitler has proposed to clean out the Baltics, the Soviet Army will be gone and our Lithuania will be free.’ One lieutenant thought that ‘Germany is much more cultured than the USSR, and Lithuanians are more cultured than Russians. If Germany seizes Lithuania, we will save culture.’ The NKVD acknowledged the growing ideological radicalization as a reaction to foreign occupation: ‘If formerly the Nazi territorial-racial theory did not attract [the men], now very often there is talk among the officers that only German culture can save Lithuania.’ ‘The contempt for the new order was palpable: “barely literate Asians [azzyaty| have come here and have destroyed our national culture. Only Hitler can save us.’ As an alternative, the men pointed to Slovakia, where ‘life 1s splendid’. 5° Norem to State, 17 July 1940: NA, M1178, roll 19, 860M.00/ 464. 56 As quoted in D. Levin, ‘The Jews in the Soviet Lithuanian Establishment, 1940-1941’, Soviet Jewish Affairs, 10/2 (1980), 33. 57 State Security Bulletin no. 202: LCVA, f. R-754, ap. 3, b. 311, fos. 38—40.

‘Listen, the fews are Ruling Us Now’ 319 Attempts to change the restive mood among the soldiers were counterproductive: “The replacement of the Lithuanian political officers by Russians and other nation-

alities has tremendously worsened the national problem in the units of the Territorial [Corps].’ As an example, the NK VD noted that in the 26th Cavalry Regiment of the Corps ‘there is a Jewish political officer [politruk| who, because of his ignorance of the Lithuanian language, is openly ridiculed by the officers in front of the Red Army men’. The Soviet secret police noted that the majority of the 29th Corps were ‘completely unreliable’ and predicted with considerable prescience, and

with a curious reference to Russia’s Civil War, that ‘given the opportunity, the officers would go across to the Germans by the hundreds, just as, in their time, tsarist officers crossed the Don to the Cossacks’.°® Contrary to impressions prevalent among Lithuanians, Jewish society was hardly a monolith in its attitude to the new regime. The flowery welcome given the Soviet troops in Kaunas did not reflect the attitude of the older and more conservative elements in the community. Days before the invasion, the rabbis of the Vilnius region had gathered to pray ‘that the Soviets not take over Lithuania’.°? Once in power,

Antanas Snieckus, the head of Lithuania’s communist party, reported that ‘two opinions are noticeable among Jewish society’. The wealthier Jews opposed annexation by the Soviet Union and ‘preferred the current government since it guarantees democracy and private property, but the Jewish poor hold the opposite view’,©° the latter supporting the ‘complete absorption of Lithuania by Russia’.°! The Jews of Eisiskes were disturbed that ‘in Vilnius many rich Jews have been arrested who have nothing to do with politics’.©2 Frieda Frome, who, in her words, had initially succumbed to the ‘Russian way of thinking’, became increasingly disenchanted: Juozas, a ‘very ignorant’ Lithuanian commissar, was put in charge ‘over Daddy in the store’, and her family began to bear the brunt of the regime’s anti-bourgeois policies.°? At the end of July an army report noted that ‘it is interesting that dissatisfaction with the present order has been observed among soldiers of Jewish nationality. Previously there were never such cases.’©4

650.

Thousands of manufacturing and commercial enterprises were nationalized during the first year, the majority Jewish-owned, and middlemen were eliminated °8 The quotations in this and the preceding paragraph are from ‘Dokladnaya zapiska o politiko-

moral’nom sostoyanii 29-go territorial’nogo korpusa’, Jan. 1941: LYA, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 531. 59 State Security Department Bulletin no. 188, 12 June 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 225, fo. 695.

60 State Security Department Bulletin no. 193, 27 June 1940: ibid. 712. 61 Siauliai District Security and Criminal Police Bulletin no. go, 1 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 12,

b. 296, fo. 33.

62 Vilnius District Security Police Bulletin no. 147, 20 July 1940: LCVA, f. 378, ap. 10, b. 699, fo.

3 See Frome, Some Dare to Dream, 11-18. For a useful overview, see Levin, “The Jews and the Socio-

Economic Sovietization of Lithuania, 1940-1941 (Part I)’, 18—30, also his “The Jews and the SocioEconomic Sovietization of Lithuania, 1940-1941 (Part IT)’, Soviet femish Affairs, 17/3 (1987), 26-38.

64 Army Staff Second Section Bulletin, 29 July 1940, in Lietuvos okupacija ir aneksija, ed.

Breslavskiené et al., 392.

320 Saulius Suziedélis as ‘the great exploiters of the working class’.©° On the other hand, a number of previous owners reinvented themselves as socialist directors of the very same, and now state-owned, enterprises. To antisemitic minds this reaffirmed the conviction that Jews were behind the big money in any social system, encouraging the simplistic axiom that Jews, more favourably inclined towards Soviet rule, suffered less than Lithuanians. Even in less prejudiced heads, perceived Jewish gains in the national-

ized enterprises and within the Soviet administration, real but limited in scope, obscured the suppression of independent Jewish religious and cultural life. Hebrew-language schools in the republic were closed after the Soviet invasion, although a smaller number of Yiddish institutions were allowed to operate. Only twelve of the twenty-three Jewish secondary schools which had functioned under Smetona in the spring of 1940 were still open a year later. The diverse and colourful Jewish political, social, and cultural life of the inter-war period was severely curtailed. Seventy-nine of the 217 banned public organizations were Jewish. Most Yiddish and Hebrew periodicals ceased publication: most Jews were left with the communist Emes (‘Truth’). Lithuania’s world-famous yeshivas were closed and Jewish religious holidays, which had official status under the bourgeois regime, were declared regular work days.®© On 1 October 1940 a gathering of ‘Jewish workers and white-collar employees’ demanded that Jews work during religious holidays; otherwise, Since numerous enterprises contained a majority of Jewish workers, offices and factories would close. In view of the ‘imperialist war’ and the grave economic situation, declared these selfless Soviet patriots, ‘we have no right to aggravate our economic situation and harm the cause of our nation and country’.® It is difficult to imagine such anti-Jewish cultural policies and enforced self-flagellation under the inter-war right-wing regime. The Soviet authorities knew better than to assume unqualified Jewish support

for a communist future. On 29 March 1941 Major Petr Gladkov, the People’s Commissar of State Security of the Lithuanian SSR, delivered his report ‘On the Counter-Revolutionary Activity of Jewish Nationalist Organizations’. The Soviet police were concerned about the numerous ‘Zionist, bourgeois, revisionist, Betarist, and other formations’ which had flooded the republic, particularly the Vilnius area, following the destruction of Poland. The American Joint Committee was allegedly a major force behind anti-Soviet activity. Even worse, Soviet security observed that ‘at the present time Jewish counter-revolutionary elements have begun to ally themselves with other anti-Soviet elements regardless of nationality’. The major purpose of the Jewish organizations, according to Gladkov, was to facilitate emigration to America and Palestine, and they were not above co-operating with the Polish nation-

alists in forging travel documents. The heart of the ‘Jewish nationalist counterrevolutionary element’ consisted of the remaining synagogues and rabbinical schools. 65 Reports in Taryby Lietuva, 1 and 4 Oct. 1940. 66 S. Atamukas, Lietuvos Zydy kelias: Nuo XIV a. iki XXI a. pradZtos, 3rd, rev., edn. (Vilnius, 2007),

221-3. 87 Taryby Lietuva, 2 Oct. 1940.

‘Listen, the fews are Ruling Us Now’ 321 Gladkov singled out one Rabbi Zhukovich, who utilized religious services to ‘educate the Jewish people in a spirit of hatred of communism’. The determination of religious Jews to resist the godless state, and the contacts that Jewish political and religious organizations maintained with the ‘imperialist powers’, that is, Britain and

the United States, were a danger to the Soviet state. According to Gladkov, in response to the increase in Jewish counter-revolutionary activities, the security police arrested eighty-nine Jewish counter-revolutionaries at the end of 1940. In the spring of 1941, Soviet security uncovered dozens of Bundist, Betarist, and Zionist circles in Kaunas, Vilnius, Ukmergeé, Kedainiai, and other Lithuanian towns with large Jewish communities.°®

REALITIES OF POWER: THE CHANGING FACE OF LITHUANIAN COMMUNISM To what extent did the conflicting perceptions and stereotypes which swirled around the politics of the first year of the Soviet occupation correspond to the realities of power? The imposition of the Stalinist system depended on forging the LKP into a dependable instrument of Moscow’s rule. For the first time since the revolution, the Kremlin faced the task of integrating ‘foreign’ members of the Comintern into the

All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Vsesoyuznaya Kommunisticheskaya partiya (bol’shevikov); VKP(b)). The history of the country’s Sovietization became the subject of considerable obfuscation at the hands of Marxist historians who understood that the legitimizing rationale for the very existence of the Lithuanian SSR depended on the evasion of any genuine investigation into the events of 1940. As long as access to the party’s records was strictly controlled, the assaults on Marxist mythology could be dismissed as anecdotal evidence or deceptions manufactured by émigré and other anti-communist circles. Whatever their other faults, the hardliners proved to be prescient censors: their fears that serious scrutiny of the revolutionary narrative would be politically catastrophic were amply vindicated by the events of the late 1980s.

Since the pernicious charge that ‘Jews and Bolsheviks are one and the same’ constituted the most successful Nazi propaganda theme during the German occupation, there is clearly some sense in examining the actual distribution of what can loosely be termed ‘ethnic power’. Needless to say, the subject is laden with potentially ugly

connotations. One can reject outright the accusation that ‘most NK VD torturers were Jews’ and similar canards in the antisemitic arsenal. Nevertheless, some cautions are in order. The archival evidence is easily manipulated and can produce contradictory images. The social and ethnic face of Lithuanian communism throughout the entire Stalinist period represented a shifting mosaic, so that selective statistical 68 The relevant quotations and information are found in Gladkov’s report ‘O kontrrevolyutsionnoi deyatel'nosti evreiskikh natsionalisticheskikh organizatsii’, 29 Mar. 1941: LYA, f. K-1, ap. to, b. 4, fos. 179~98. My thanks to Dr Solomonas Atamukas for providing me with a copy of the document.

322 Saulius Suziedels ‘snapshots’ can easily mislead. The membership rolls of the LKP as of 1 January 1941 reveal a majority of ethnic Lithuanians among the republic’s communists, some two-thirds of the 2,486 party members and candidates. ‘These oft-cited figures supposedly demonstrate the predominance of native cadres,®? but although the overall membership numbers are sometimes instructive, they are of little use in understanding who ran the country. On the eve of the Soviet invasion the LKP had approximately 1,600 members, the majority in the underground. Native-born Jews and Russians constituted nearly half of the membership. Following the occupation, as the prisons disgorged hundreds of eaunt leftists, the party also took in a flood of new recruits. By October the percentage of Lithuania’s communists who had been comrades for at least one year had plummeted from 82 per cent to 19 per cent. Not surprisingly, many who joined turned out to be opportunists of questionable ‘ideological maturity’. During the first weeks, the largest contingent of newcomers consisted of Jewish merchants, tradesmen, office employees, and proletarians; by mid-July, Jews, albeit briefly, made up 76 per cent of communists registered in Kaunas city. An estimated 40-50 per cent of new candidates in the small towns were also Jews. On the other hand, a significant

number of ethnic Lithuanians signed up, including former Riflemen’s Union members and active nationalists. By the end of the summer, ethnic Lithuanians made up four-fifths of the 826 members of the republic’s city, district, and rural party committees. But again, while these numbers reveal something about political dynamics and party demography, they tell us little about who held the most influence. By early October Lithuania’s communist membership had tripled to more than 5,000. Ihe situation could not last. On 8 October 1940 Lithuania’s communists were

formally made a constituent member of the VK P(b), but Moscow had come to regard the newly baptized, yet ideologically polluted, LKP(b) with undisguised horror. ’° A Central Committee review completed on 1 December 1940 concluded that of 5,388 communists registered by the regional party committees during the peak period in early autumn, only 1,507 had a record of ‘underground service’ (Rus. stazh).’* In the autumn of 1940 the party began the massive expulsion of ideologically and socially questionable recent new members, a house-cleaning accompanied by an influx of Soviet communists, primarily Russophone ‘experienced cadres’.

Russian became the language of the LKP(b) Central Committee and the most important government ministries. By the end of the year about half of Lithuania’s communists had been drummed out of the party. Official orthodoxy mandated the LKP(b) to work in a spirit of ‘internationalism’, that is, ethnic solidarity, but the volatile party politics of Soviet Lithuania were rife 69 See e.g. K. Surblys (ed.), Lietuvos Komunisty partija skaiciais, 1916-1975 (Vilnius, 1976), 45 ff. 70 See N. Maslauskiené, ‘Lietuvos komunisty tautiné ir socialiné sudetis 1939 m. pabaigoje—1940 m. rugsejo men.’, Genocidas ir rezistencya, 5 (1999), 95-9. The party’s title was now Lietuvos komunisty

partija (bolSevikai), LKP(b). 1 LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 139, fos. 2-4. 72 N. Maslauskiené, ‘Lietuvos komunisty sudeétis 1940 spalio—1941 birzelio mén.’”, Genocidas ir rezistencyja, 6 (1999), 28-9.

‘Listen, the Jews are Ruling Us Now’ 323 with national tensions which heightened as the purges progressed in the autumn of 1940. Native Jewish and Lithuanian communists, whatever their differences, both resented the tutelage of the Russophone arrivals who understood their new positions in the Baltic as launching pads for career advancement and were quick to realize that charges of Zionism and/or Lithuanian nationalism provided ammunition against local rivals. Russian overseers, following Soviet practice since the later 1930s, made special efforts to reduce the number of Jews within the LKP(b). In Kaunas, two Russophone comrades, Shupikov and Parashchenka, launched a hunt for Jewish Zionists and Mensheviks, but their campaign was often successfully resisted by the majority Jews on the city’s party committee, supported in turn by Jewish members of the Central Committee. ’? By early October ethnic Lithuanians had temporarily achieved a majority in the Kaunas party organization, making up 60 per cent of the communists 1n the city, mainly owing to the arrival of replacements for ‘bourgeois’ government officials. “4

But nothing illustrates better the transitory nature of party statistics during this period than the fact that this supposed Lithuanian dominance lasted but a few weeks, after which Russians more or less owned the Kaunas organization until the early 1950s. According to party records, by the end of January 1941 the Russian per-

centage had nearly doubled (25 per cent of party members), the proportion of Lithuanians had declined from two-thirds to 53 per cent, while the Jewish ratio remained little changed at 15 per cent. ”° An important instrument of foreign power was the system of control by which Russophone second secretaries were appointed to supervise the work of native first secretaries. Lithuanians constituted 77 per cent of first secretaries, while Russians and Belarusians made up 84 per cent of their supposed deputies. Contrary to the principles of management and suggestive of the real role of the second secretaries, 72 per cent of the ‘assistants’ held more than three years of ‘experience as cadres’, compared with only 42 per cent of the first secretaries. By December 1940 there was not a single case where both the first and second secretaries of any city or district party committee were of the same nationality. ’© As the party explained: “The better-trained and selected communists... assigned by the Central Committee of the VK P(b) to work in the Lithuanian SSR have been sent to the secretaries and district party committees.’ “” On another front, Lithuanians continued to lose ground among the regional party committee members, where they had once predominated: in January 1941, exclusive of the first and second secretaries, they made up but 55 per cent of the members, with Jews (22 per cent) and Russians (21 per cent) providing most of the remainder. ’® 73 Thid. 28-36. 74 Maslauskiené, ‘Lietuvos komunistu tautiné ir socialiné sudeétis’, 99. 7 LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 170, fos. 27-9. 76 LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 282, fo. 174, also fos. 7-11, 53, 75, 124; cf. the list of first and second secretaries of the Lithuanian SSR’s city and district party committees in December 1940: LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 283; also the documents in LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 281, fos. 7-8, 27.

LYA, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 457, fo. ro. 78 The data are based on LYA, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 457, fos. 10-13.

324 Saulus Suziedels The important Fifth Congress of the LKP(b), which took place in Kaunas on 5— g February 1941, accelerated the republic’s Sovietization. The opening speeches included the requisite expansive militant incantations about exporting revolution. ’? The effusive gratitude to Stalin and the Red Army played to a receptive audience. Ninety-three of the 277 voting delegates to the congress were listed as ‘workers of the Red Army and NK VD’, mostly Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians.®° Of the 342 delegates in attendance (sixty-five were non-voting participants) only seventynine were veterans of Lithuania’s pre-war underground Communist Party who had ‘suffered repression during bourgeois times’. The proceedings were held in Russian. Table 1. Delegates to the Fifth Congress of the LKP(b), by nationality

National group Voting delegates Non-voting delegates

No. (%) No. (%) Lithuanians 107 (38.6) 30 (46.2) Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians 128 (46.2) 24 (36.9)

Jews 33 (11.9) 9 (13.8) Other 9 (3.2) 2 (3.1) Total 277 (100) 65 (100)

Note: ‘The numbers of delegates to the congress reflected in the party records show slight variations,

but since they amount to less than 1% in either direction, the inconsistencies are not statistically significant. Cf. Surblys (ed.), Lietuvos Komunisty partya skaiciais, 61, and R. Sarmaitis, ‘LKP(b) Penktasis suvaziavimas’, in id. (ed.), Revolucinis judejimas Lietuvoje (Vilnius, 1957), 576. Sources: LYA, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 12, fo. 1; LYA, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 4, fo. 200.

After the opening ceremonial triumphalism, the congress confronted directly the obstacles to Lithuania’s Sovietization. A major concern was the countryside’s hostility to Soviet power and the anti-communism of the Catholic population.*! The discussions concerning cadre policy also exposed the social and national tensions which had characterized the Soviet occupation from the very beginning. ‘There were persistent complaints that ethnic Lithuanians favoured ‘their own’ in staffing administrative and economic institutions; reactionary Lithuanian nationalism was thus identified as a chief obstacle to Sovietization.®* But ethnic Lithuanian chauvinism was not the only concern. The Vilnius party boss Baltrushka reported that among 180 recent applications for membership within his party section, 157 were 7 LYA, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 4, fo. 139. The delegate Shuvalov declared that the war ignited by the capitalist powers would inevitably involve the world proletariat; thus, the communist cause required not peace, but the conclusion of a ‘just war, a war for socialism, for the liberation of other nations from the bour-

geoisie’ (emphasis original). 80 LYA, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 4, fos. 197-8. 81 Speeches of Damulevich and Alekna: LYA, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 4, fos. 248, 322.

82 According to the veteran communist Bronius PuSinis, the Commissariat of Agriculture was a bastion of anti-Soviet Lithuanian nationalism. Delegate LukoSevicius complained of Lithuanian chauvinism against Jews and Poles in the Liettikis and Maistas companies. LY A, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 4, fos. 31, 124.

‘Listen, the Fews are Ruling Us Now’ 325 non-Lithuanians, primarily Jews, Russians, and Belarusians.®? At the same time, Feliksas Bieliauskas, the head of the republic’s Komsomol, who had replaced a Jewish chief, complained that only 57 per cent of the party’s youth wing consisted of ethnic Lithuanians, which, he complained, was clearly insufficient, considering that Lithuanians constituted 80 per cent of the republic’s population.®4 Perhaps the sharpest dispute at the congress was provoked by Soviet Lithuania’s nominal head of state, Justas Paleckis. He criticized overly enthusiastic ideologues who saw it as ‘their chief duty to hang a sword of Damocles over every office employee . . . because of some lapse in his résumé, regardless of the quality of the work’. Paleckis also appealed for a more balanced approach to the problem of nationalism in economic and social life, claiming, albeit in typically obsequious fashion, that it was not only the Lithuanians who were at fault: On the national question, it must be said we do not yet have that healthy, authentic internationalism which has already developed in the other [Soviet] republics. We must take this fact into account. We often observe the phenomenon of people usually supporting ‘their own’. And soa Lithuanian will above all support a Lithuanian, a Jew will trust only another Jew, a Pole will promote a Pole, a Russian will try to attract more Russians.2°

The former left-wing journalist had unwittingly disturbed a hornets’ nest. The muted appeal for competence in the workplace, and his reminder that Lithuanians were not the only practitioners of national exclusion, provoked sharp rebukes from hardliners and members of the ‘fraternal parties’.°© Like the proverbial schoolboy, Lithuanta’s head of state was quickly taken behind the shed. As he had done in the summer of 1940, Pozdnyakov, the Kremlin’s de facto viceroy, played the role of peacemaker, acknowledging that Paleckis’s critics were doctrinally correct, but tactfully refusing to take sides on the volatile issue of Polish—Lithuanian relations in Vilnius, reminding the congress that from ‘our point of view nationality has only secondary importance’.°” Whatever the rhetoric, the actual redistribution of power

was formalized when the congress approved the party’s leading organs on 9 February. The new Central Committee of the LKP(b) contained forty-eight full members, of whom scarcely half were ethnic Lithuanians; of sixteen candidate members only three can clearly be identified as Lithuanians, who also constituted

less than half of the important Control Commission attached to the Central Committee.®° The policy of promoting ‘native cadres’ thus took a back seat to the realities of governing an occupied and restive land. Lithuania’s communists, nearly half of whom had joined in 1940, desperately needed fraternal guidance. The listing of the republic’s communists of 1 January 1941 indicated that only twenty-nine comrades (1.2 per cent) had completed a degree in higher education and only seventy-eight (3.1 per cent) could boast secondary school

83 Tbid. 211. 84 Tbid. 223-8. 85 Ibid. 242-3. , 86 Tbid. 251-2, 282; 293—4; 312. Delegate Abramov’s response: an ‘evil jest’ and a ‘strange theory’.

87 Thid. 335—50. 88 Tbid. 361, 390—1, 408, 412-45.

326 Sauhus Suziedelis certificates. Scarcely a tenth of the members and candidates had ever attended secondary school. The majority (1,296, or 52 per cent) had completed a primary education, which in Lithuania consisted of the first four grades. More than a third (36 per

cent) of party members and candidates were described as ‘literate but without primary schooling’.®? The educational profile of this most ignorant political body in the history of Lithuania is revealing. ‘The majority of the party consisted of minimally educated comrades who were 1n no position to debate, let alone decide, anything. ‘The image of uncomprehending faces, hands raised, and ‘voting’, captures the reality.

The Russification of Soviet Lithuania’s power structure accelerated swiftly during the early months of 1941. On the eve of the Nazi invasion, Russophone party members, the majority of them recent arrivals, had come to exercise disproportion-

: ate power in the party. Table 2. ‘he ethnic composition of the LK P(b), 1940-1941 (%)

Nationality 1 Oct. 1940 1 Jan. 1941 22 June 1941 (N = 5,365) (N=2,486) (N= 4,703)

Lithuanians 68.5 67.0 46.4 , Jews 16.2 16.6 12.6 Russians and others* 15.3 16.4 41.0 2 The category of ‘Russians and others’ includes other Russophones, mainly Ukrainians and Belarusians. Non-Slavonic ‘others’ are statistically insignificant. Note: The figures for membership on | Jan. 1941 differ slightly from those presented here if one includes data from the Svencioniai district incorporated into the Lithuanian SSR but formerly within the jurisdiction of the Belarusian Communist Party. I have excluded these figures, which hardly affect the overall statistics, because they were not included in the LKP(b)’s own reports of 1 Jan. 1941 and there is some doubt about the extent to which the party members of this region were integrated into the political life of the Lithuanian party. Sources: Based on LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 162, fo. 4; LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 170, fos. 279; Maslauskiene, ‘Lietuvos komunisty tautine ir socialine sudetis’, 99, and ead., “Lietuvos komunisty sudetis’, 38; Truska, ‘Lietuvos valdzios istaigy rusifikavimas’, 16.

And yet the overall picture shown in Table 2 still understates the grip on power exercised by the Russophone cohort. A more enlightening indication of relative influence is the situation in the country’s two most important cities. In Vilnius the city committee of the LKP(b) listed on 1 January 1941 included a majority of Russians (45 per cent) and Jews (26 per cent). Meanwhile, the ethnic Poles, a major-

ity in Lithuania’s historic capital, produced not a single communist there. In December 1940 an ethnic Lithuanian from Russia, the first secretary Pavel Baltrushka, presided over a Vilnius city party committee consisting of four Jews and four Russians. The Vilnius district committee employed only two Lithuanians out of thirteen members; the majority were Russian and Ukrainian immigrants.?° The 89 LYA, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 250, fo. 21. 90 LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 283.

‘Listen, the fews are Ruling Us Now’ 327 Table 3. The ethnic composition of the Kaunas city LKP(b), 1940-1941 (%)

Nationality 1 Oct. 1940 1 Jan. 1941 22 June 1941

(N = 911) (N = 376) (N = 900)

Lithuanians 60.4 42.0 21.7 Jews 31.6 47.9 25.8 Russians 74 8.8 52.4

Sources: Based on party lists as found in LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 165; LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 170, fo. 20; Maslauskiene, ‘Lietuvos komunisty tautine ir socialiné sudétis’, 99,

and ead., ‘Lietuvos komunisty sudetis’, 27; Truska, ‘Lietuvos valdzios istaigu rusifikavimas’, 16.

Russian assumption of control in Kaunas city, where Lithuanians made up threequarters of the population and which was the republic’s de facto administrative capital during 1940-1, is shown in Table 3. Even more indicative than the statistics on the rank and file is the fact that among the sixty-seven Kaunas city delegates to the Fifth Congress of the LK P(b) in early 1941, only seventeen were Lithuanians (25 per cent); twenty were Jews (30 per cent),

while the largest number (thirty, or 45 per cent) were Russians and other eastern Slavs, the majority of them incomers from the Soviet Union.?! Among all communists of the Kaunas district at the same period, Russophones (42 per cent) outnumbered both Lithuanians (41 per cent) and Jews (14 per cent). Aside from the large urban party organizations, the influx of Russians was particularly noticeable in the bureaucracy of the LKP Central Committee, in the mid-level administrative posts, and, particularly, in the upper echelons of the security services.?* The pattern of Russification, to a greater or lesser extent, was evident throughout the republic.?° Such was the reality behind the images of ‘Jewish power’. Unfortunately, perceptions rather than realities of party politics stoked the fires heating the cauldron of national mistrust and hatred. Matters grew worse as the year of Soviet rule neared its end. Jews themselves, of course, were acutely aware of their

vulnerability in the increasingly hostile atmosphere. ‘This is not the time of the Smetona government: we are now living as if on a volcano’, a member of the Betar central committee named Khrust confided to a police informer.?* The Soviet deportations of 14-17 June 1941 pushed an already anxious Lithuanian society over the edge. Almost 20,000 men, women, and children, including several thousand Jews, %1 The registration forms of the delegates to the Fifth Congress are in LYA, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 19. °2 The Russification of the entire system, especially the security police, is well documented in the works of Truska and Maslauskiene. Further examples in the archives: LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 170, fo. 6; LYA, f. 1771, ap. 2, b. 457, fo. ro. 93 LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 170, fos. 20 ff.; also Maslauskiené, ‘Lietuvos komunisty sudeétis’, 37. Cf. L. Truska, ‘Lietuvos valdzios jstaigy rusifikavimas 1940-1941 m.’, Lietuvos gyventojy genoctdo ir rezistencyos tyrimo institutas: Darbat, 1 (1996), 16-17. 94 Gladkov, ‘O kontrrevolyutsionnoi deyatel’nosti’, 193.

328 Saulius Suztedélis were rounded up and loaded onto cattle wagons, most bound for Siberia and the Soviet far north.?° ‘The mood in the country was as before an explosion’, remarked the Holocaust survivor William Mishell.?°

DEADLY PERCEPTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES In 1918—20 thousands of Lithuanians, Jews, and other minorities had fought together to restore an independent state even as they entertained conflicting visions of the new polity. But the deteriorating international situation of the 1930s and the

realities of the Soviet occupation profoundly affected communal attitudes. The republic’s national communities turned inward as their geopolitical orientations became ever more incompatible. Examples of Lithuanian and Jewish responses have been outlined above. For their part, most of the Germans simply repatriated to the Reich during the spring of 1941. The Polish population was in an impossible situation: most detested Soviet rule, but they also viewed Lithuanians as the ‘occupiers’ of Vilnius, while the Nazis hardly figured as potential liberators. Geopolitical realities contributed to the radicalization of society as well as the Lithuanian anti-Soviet resistance. While never a monolith, the Front of Lithuanian Activists (Lietuviy aktyvisty frontas; LAF), established on 17 November 1940 in Berlin by a group of émigrés and led by Skirpa, gravitated to the militant nationalist political spectrum. The LAF’s pro-German stance did not go unchallenged, especially by Lithuanian diplomats still accredited in Western capitals and older leaders who, like Smetona, were hostile to Nazi ideology and doubted Germany’s success against an eventual Anglo-American alliance, but those who favoured a German orientation held the upper hand. Some were impressed by the raw power of National Socialism, especially in the face of strategic realities: with Britain seemingly on the verge of defeat, Germany appeared as the only force capable of expelling Lithuania’s

tormentors. The most extreme were a small group of Voldemaras supporters, especially military officers, who adopted a thoroughly Nazified world view, proclaiming themselves ‘a young Lithuanian generation . .. which has come to honour the new racial ideals of fascism and national socialism’. Their brief ideological outline listed a number of principles for Lithuania’s domestic politics, of which the second stated: ‘Jews are stricken from life.’ A number of these self-styled crypto°5 Unfortunately, the old figures of 35,000 victims and more, including as many as 7,000 Jews, are still being regurgitated by Western writers unaware of the latest findings. The figures for the deportees do not include the mostly Lithuanian political prisoners evacuated at the outbreak of the war. There is a solid statistical analysis of the June 1941 deportations in E. Grunskis, Lietuvos gyventojy tremimai 1940-1941, 1945-1953 metais (Vilnius, 1996), 38-53. See the dissenting analysis of Atamukas, Lietuvos

Zydy keltas, 230-1.

96 Mishell, Kaddish for Kovno, 9. Cf. the observation by G. Suras, UZrasai: Vilniaus geto kronika, 1941-1944, trans. N. Kvaraciejiite and A. Antanavicius (Vilnius, 1997), 23. 97 The programme is cited in the diary of Z. Blynas, Karo mety dienorastis 1941-1944 m., ed. G. Rudis (Vilnius, 2007), 123-4. A short overview of the ideological spectrum of the LAF is given in Suziedeélis, ‘Foreign Saviors, Native Disciples’, 333-41; cf. Truska and Vareikis, Holokausto prielatdos, 86-94.

‘Listen, the Fews are Ruling Us Now’ 329 Nazis had a limited political impact, but they were to play their part as foot soldiers of the Holocaust. It is difficult to establish the political and ideological interaction between the émigrés and the resisters in Lithuania. It is likely that LAF-Berlin’s increasingly strident antisemitism was partly a reaction to the mood back home, which was a distorted response to a real tragedy and needed little prodding from ‘foreign influences’. Speaking more broadly, one should also not underestimate the extent to which life itself served as the midwife of radicalism. The older generation’s relatively moderate political discourse appeared hopelessly outmoded if not embarrassingly irrelevant. It was obvious that the only avenue of liberation, unless one were incur-

ably naive, lay in a violent breakdown of the partnership established in August 1939 between the Soviet conquerors and the Nazis. The predicament of ethnic communities caught in diametrically opposite and illusory (though, from their point of view, logical) geopolitical solutions to their distress is not altogether unique to Lithuania, or the other territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939-41.2° The Soviet occupation worsened matters by intensifying the already inflamed ethnic passions, while destroying and discrediting both the political regime and the social stratum which, as in the 1930s, acted as the only force with the prestige and authority to restrain antisemitic excess. The other nationalities had reason to chafe at Soviet rule, but none saw their situation in quite the same way as the Lithuanians. Overall, anti-Soviet activity was a complex and contradictory mosaic of attitudes and movements, which actually included both Jews and Lithuanians.?? The thoroughly mined recent archival evidence!”° discredits some politicized stereotypes, some of which are embedded in memoirs and other anecdotal accounts: for example, that the Jews were not a significant player in Lithuania’s Sovietization

process (they were); or that the majority of secret police interrogators were Jews (they were not); or that Soviet rule was really ‘Jewish power’ in disguise (it was not).

The real power in Lithuania lay with the handful of doctrinaire Stalinists of the Snieckus type and the rapidly growing army of predominantly Russophone military, security, and other cadres offering ‘fraternal assistance’.

The virulent atmosphere of 1940-1, including the rise of antisemitism, contributed greatly to the anti-Jewish violence which accompanied the outbreak of the Nazi—Soviet war. As one Jewish historian concluded sharply, “The special ferocity which the population demonstrated toward Lithuanian Jews during the Holocaust was undoubtedly the outcome of the very complex political situation created by the 98 See Bauer, Death of the Shtetl, 32 ff. 99 The various Lithuanian groups are discussed in V. Brandigauskas, Siekiai atkurti Lietuvos valstybinguma (1940 06-1941 0g) (Vilnius, 1996). Cf. Gladkov, ‘O kontrrevolyutsionnoi deyatel’nosti’.

100 See Truska, ‘Lietuvos valdZios istaigu rusifikavimas’; cf. Maslauskiené, ‘Lietuvos komunistu tautineé ir socialineé sudetis’, as well as her sequel, ‘Lietuvos komunisty sudeétis’. The data published there confirm what I found in my own search of the same archives in 1992.

330 Saulius Suztedelis Soviet occupation in 1940 and 1941.’!9! Such categorical assertions have a basis in

| the history of the period, but they also ignore, as contributing factors, both the increasingly evident antisemitism of the 1930s and the role played by the Nazi invaders in the summer of 1941. Excessive emphasis on the Soviet occupation as a causal factor has led unscrupulous authors to embrace the ‘theory of two genocides’ according to which Lithuanian collaboration in the Holocaust was but revenge for

the atrocities committed by Jewish supporters of the Soviets.1°2 However, the recent scholarly interest in the issue of ‘Jews and Others’ in the Soviet-occupied ter-

ritories, the first venue of the genocide, should allow us to understand better the dynamics of communal conflict in a depoliticized setting. 19°

Antisemitism as an ideological construct is founded on religious and/or racial mythologies, but it would be an oversimplification of the history of the first Soviet occupation to characterize Lithuanian hostility to the Jews as simply the result of a ‘fantasy’, unconnected to the actual situation as it evolved in 1940-1 or ungrounded in the realities of a wrenching political and social transformation. One should resist

the temptation to interpret the first year of the Soviet occupation from a postHolocaust perspective and read the history backwards. Lithuania’s Jews of the period were not a hapless body buffeted by a storm of racial hatred as during the Nazi occupation. Antisemitism gained new strength, embedded as it was within a conglomerate of old aversions, traditional stereotypes, and distorted perceptions of the Other’s behaviour, and was further intensified by the clash of competing collective interests and geopolitical orientations. 101 A. Shochat, ‘Jews, Lithuanians and Russians, 1939-1941’, in B. Vago and G. L. Mosse (eds.), Jews and Non-fews in Eastern Europe, 1915-1945 (Toronto and Jerusalem, 1974), 310. 102 Versions of the ‘revenge’ theory in the popular and pseudo-academic press are too numerous to mention here. One of the more egregious examples is by the renowned writer J. Mikelinskas, “Teise likti nesuprastam, arba Mes tr jie, jie ir mes (Pamastymas ne tiek ikyréjusia, kiek amzina tema)’, Meta1, 8~9 (1996), 126-63. 103 See especially E. Barkan, E. A. Cole, and K. Struve (eds.), Shared History—Divided Memory: Jews and Others in Soviet-Occupied Poland, 1939-1941 (Leipzig, 2007).

Soviet Resistance and Jewish Partisans in Lithuania SARUNAS LIEKIS LITHUANIAN Jews, while facing the Holocaust, found themselves amidst a struggle among four opposing forces: Poles, the Lithuanian local administration, the Nazis,

and Soviet partisans. These groups’ fight for dominance over the region further endangered the survival of the remnants of the Jewish community. This topic 1s constantly exploited by politicians and has resulted 1n substantial Jewish historiography.

However, studies miss the main elements behind the formation of the resistance movement, are too general, and are based primarily on oral histories and memoirs. The subject remains hostage to the nationalist narrative. Many elements of the new, critical narrative were previously not available because of limited access to archival materials during the time of Soviet rule. The Vilna area before the Second World War, including its south-eastern corner

with the Rudniki forest, later home to numerous partisan groups, was part of the former Polish eastern borderlands (Kresy Wschodnie). It was an ethnically mixed area where Poles, Lithuanians, and some Belarusians comprised a majority in rural areas before the war. Poles and Jews lived in urban areas and dominated local economies. Ethnic Poles ran the administration, police, and school system. Heavyhanded Polish policies, as well as the Lithuanian—Polish territorial dispute from 1918 to 1938, provoked resentment and resistance, and fuelled Lithuanian—Polish conflicts on both sides of the border for two decades. l Y. Arad, The Partisan: From the Valley of Death to Mt. Zion (New York, 1979); I. Kowalski, A Secret

Press in Nazi Europe: The Story of a Jewish United Partisan Organization (New York, 1969); id., Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance, 1939-1945, 1v (New York, tggt); L. Eckmann and C. Lazar, The

Jewish Resistance: The History of the Jewish Partisans in Lithuania and White Russia during the Nazi Occupation, 1940-1945 (New York, 1977); C. Lazar, Destruction and Resistance: A History of the Partisan Movement in Vilna (New York, 1985); D. Levin, Fighting Back: Lithuanian fewry’s Armed Resistance to

the Nazis, 1941-1945, trans. M. Kohn and D. Cohen (New York, 1985). Valuable information is provided by the authors of memoirs who describe the pre-partisan period in the ghettos: A. Sutzkever, Fun vilner geto (Moscow, 1946); A. ‘Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, ed. M. Gilbert,

trans. J. Michalowicz (Cambridge, Mass., t990); H. Kruk and M. Bernshtayn, Togbukh fun vilner geto (New York, 1992). See also Jewish Partisans: A Documentary of Jewish Resistance in the Soviet Union During World War IT, ed. J. N. Porter, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1982), where far-reaching conclusions are drawn on all the Jewish partisan groups on the basis of Belarusian material; N. Tec, Jewish Resistance: Facts, Omissions, and Distortions (Washington, DC, 2001), 36.

332 Sarinas Liekis After the outbreak of the Soviet-German war in June 1941, the German army quickly swept through the country in three days and took over the territory that had recently been occupied by the Soviets. From the beginning of this war, and after losing Lithuania to the Germans in June 1941, the Soviet government and its military made attempts to revive the activities of its military and security institutions in Lithuania. According to preliminary information, in 1941-2 from 576 to 1,432 people may have been underground activists. Only some of them were armed and the majority did not take part in military action. These groups of so-called partisans comprised Red Army stragglers, a few former Communist Party officials, and Soviet NK VD

(secret police) and Soviet army intelligence groups. | As early as July 1941, Soviet forces started to train and send NK VD intelligence groups into Lithuania from training schools in the environs of Gomel and Mozyr in Belarus, and Kalinin in the Russian Federation. That month, the first group, led by Adomas Godliauskas, was sent into Lithuania without any specific task. Three additional military intelligence groups arrived in Lithuania in August 1941, consisting of former NK VD officials.? A total of eighty fighters in six groups reached Lithuania on foot in July and August 1941 from Kalinin.* According to archival documents, members of all these groups carried only personal arms (pistols), were inadequately trained, and had no specific tasks.° They consisted exclusively of Lithuanians who had previously served in the NK VD, the militia, or the NK VD prison system.° Having no political backing and being isolated once in Lithuania, these groups either surrendered or switched sides. Some of their members were killed or betrayed to the police or the department of security.’ In 1941 there were only uncoordinated anti-Nazi activities in the country; these did not raise any great concerns for the occupying authorities. The partisan movement failed to develop. The highly ineffective policy of sending Soviet intelligence groups consisting of exNKVD operatives with limited military tasks continued in Lithuania in 1942. But eradually, from April 1942, after the Soviets started to gain the upper hand in the struggle against the Germans, the situation began to change. On 30 May the central

staff of the partisan movement, headed by the Belarusian First Secretary P. K. Ponomarenko, was formed. The task of the central staff and its subordinate staffs attached to the Red Army fronts and republican central committees was to centralize, co-ordinate, and direct partisan activities. The new partisan movement had to be a mass movement uniting all people under the leadership of the Communist Party. ‘This did not mean that supervision of it by the Soviet secret police or military intelligence was stopped; however, membership in these organizations was no longer obligatory. 2 P. Staras, Partizaninis judéjimas Lietuvoje DidZiojo Tévynés karo metais (Vilnius, 1966), 54, 71-

3 J. VildZitinas, Kova be atvangos (Vilnius, 1979), 263, 266, 267. 4 Staras, Partizaninis judéjimas Lietuvoje Didziojo Tevynes karo metas, 48. 5 Report on ‘Patvarieji’: Lietuvos ypatingasis archyvas, Vilnius (herafter LY A), f. 53, ap. 1, b. 1, fo. 1.

6 Ibid. 1-2. 7 Thid.

Soviet Resistance and fewish Partisans in Lithuania 333 The Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party (Lietuvos komunistu partija; LKP) had to reconsider its new role as a unifier and organizer of people’s resistance to the Nazis. The committee had been taken over before by the Soviet military intelligence in Lithuania. On 12 May 1942 two hundred men of the 16th Lithuanian Riflemen’s Division (the only Soviet military unit made up of Lithuanian inhabitants) were selected to be trained for partisan warfare in Balakhna,

in the Gorky region.® Having made this decision, the LKP established its own Headquarters of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement (Lietuvos partizaninio judejimo $tabas), to be incorporated into the central staff of the partisan movement.? The founding of the headquarters was formalized by order of the Soviet State Defence Committee and was signed by Stalin on 26 November 1942.19 The changes in the Soviet grand design to conduct partisan warfare based on a mass movement were immediately noticed by the German police authorities. On 12 July 1942 the German military authorities sent an order to all Lithuanian police stations and garrisons to intensify anti-partisan vigilance, and provided information about the tactics of the partisan groups, derived from its experience with such strugoles in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.!! But, in practical terms, the Nazi authorities and the Lithuanian police did not immediately pay much attention to these changes and felt comfortable suppressing the poorly organized groups of escaped Soviet

prisoners of war, as well as the activities of the weak communist underground. Information obtained from captured Soviet agents did not reveal any specific changes to the earlier tactic of sending people exclusively to gather military intelligence. It is interesting to note that the German authorities received information on the partisan training school at Balakhna, which would train future Lithuanian partisan leaders in late autumn 1943. !4 Police reports on partisan activities abound with information about minor occurrences in 1942 that do not seem to be of a political nature. A good example comes from the Panevezys district, where armed groups (‘friends of Stalin’, as they were called in the police reports) stole 1,400 Reichsmarks, clothing, and food. Residents reported to the police that they had been approached by partisans more than a dozen times, asking for food or directions; the railway was bombed four times; and several local people from the German administration, or ‘ex-partisans’ in the pro-German rebellion of 1941, were executed.!* Several incidents involving escaped Soviet prisoners of war were reported in Marijampole.!+ Similar occurrences were reported 8 LKP Central Committee Bureau minutes no. 9, 2 July 1942: LYA, f. 1771, ap. 5, b. 62, fos. 10-22.

9 The plan for the creation of a partisan movement and for its further activities was presented by the First Secretary of the LKP Antanas Snieékus to Ponomarenko on 2 July 1942. 10 Decree of J. Stalin no. GOKO-2540a: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 426, fo. 1. Tl Main order of the German leadership concerning the struggle against the partisans, 12 July 1942: LYA, f. 5, ap. 1, b. 1, fo. I. 12 Auszugsweise Abschrift. Quelle: Abw.Kdo 103, 23 Nov. 1943: National Archives Microfilm Publi-

cation, 1°78, roll 563, frame 211. 13 Chronology of events: LY A, f. 3777, ap. 58, b. 266, fo. 3. 14 Circular of the Marijampolé Commander, 28 May 1942: Lietuvos centrinis valstybés archyvas, Vilnius (hereafter LCVA), f. R-715, ap. 1, b. 2, fo. 218.

334 Sartnas Liekis throughout the territory of Lithuania, except for the west, which bordered eastern Prussia. At that time, police described the partisan movement as an exclusively Russian phenomenon, and alleged that subversive partisan activities were concentrated around places where few ethnic Russians lived: ‘Local Russians, even if they are not communists themselves, provide [the partisans] with information and support them with food. The local people have for a long time had the goal of getting the Russians out of Lithuania. Then the threat of communism would not be as great.’!° The change of attitude on the Soviet side was soon transformed into different

tactics, resulting in an intensification of the partisan movement in occupied Lithuania: this movement, in response to successful attacks by the Red Army, had to become ‘a struggle waged by everyone against the fascist plunderers’.!® The first move towards such a popular war in Lithuania was made when nineteen partisan groups were sent there in 1942 from the training camp in Balakhna in the Russian Federation. Nine were parachuted in during that year. The other ten, forming three units, were to cross the front line on foot,!’ yet the first five of them, making up the so-called Pranevicius partisan unit, reportedly arrived in Belarus only in April 1943, and did not even attempt to cross into Lithuania. ‘The remaining groups arrived in May of that year. Some were ambushed by the police, and two groups were completely annihilated while in a marsh. Other groups lost several people too.1® Additionally, for the co-ordination of the partisan movement, a group from the Central Committee of the LKP was sent into the Belarusian forests. This group was

to explore the political situation in the country, learn about the activities of the German authorities, form a fighters’ reserve from the local population, and create a Lithuanian partisan movement in close co-operation with the Belarusian partisans. 1° The Belarusian factor was considered extremely important because, as of 1 July 1943, in the forests of Lithuania there were only 377 partisans, escaped prisoners of war, or Lithuanian members of the NK VD and Communist Party activists in hiding, who did not have adequate arms for guerrilla warfare and were not in possession of any ready bases or infrastructure from which to expand the partisan movement.?°

Understanding the difficulties confronting the partisan movement in their attempt to represent ‘the people’, an operational group of the Central Committee of

the LKP, consisting of Motiejus Sumauskas (head), Genrikas Zimanas (deputy head), and the four members Domas Rocius, Stanislovas Syrius, Janina Narkevicitité, and Vasily Maevsky, departed for the forests of Begoml in Belarus in April 15 Chronology of events: LYA, f. 3777, ap. 58, b. 266, fo. 3. 16 ‘Strengthening of partisan fighting in relation to attack by the Red Army’: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 426,

fo. 2. 17 Report: LYA, f. 1771, ap. 16, b. 95. 18 Lietuvos laudis DidZiajame Tévynes kare: Dokumenty ir medZiagos rinkinys, ed. J. Arvasevicius et al. (Vilnius, 1982), 401, 408. ~ 19 A. Snieckus, decree no. 16, 9 Feb. 1943: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 427, fos. 21-3. 20 Notes of D. Shupikov, deputy head of the Headquarters of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement: LYA,

f. 1, ap. 1, b. 172, fo. 1. These groups included eighty-four people under the direct command of the Headquarters of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement who reached Lithuanian territory in the spring of 1943.

Soviet Resistance and Jewish Partisans in Lithuania 335 1943. They were to be followed by a special group of forty-nine fighters trained at Balakhna. Later, they were all moved to three intermediary bases in south-eastern

Lithuania, established by the five Pranevicius groups, who were positioned in Belarus in the Rossony forest.2! Initially the operation met with a great failure. The operational group of the LKP’s Central Committee lost two of its members, and two were wounded, including Zimanas, during a glider landing. Only Sumauskas and Rocius remained capable of moving on their own. A further eight people from the special group were also killed during the landing. The survivors from the LKP’s

operational group and the special group joined the five Pranevicius groups and moved to a first temporary camp in Belarus, close to the base of the Fedor Markov unit. ‘hese partisans formed the Zalgiris brigade, made up of the Vilnius, Kostas Kalinauskas, and Zalgiris units. One of the first ‘local’ partisans, who had already joined the Vilnius unit in Belarus, was Yitshak Arad. He, along with several other Jews, was a fighter in the Soviet Belarusian partisan movement and was transferred into the Lithuanian groups.7? In the Soviet partisan movement documents he was called Itsik Rudnickis (nom de guerre ‘Kukickas’).?° On 14 May 1943 the Zalgiris brigade, along with the Belarusian partisan unit, began the march to the Kozyany (Kazenai) forest in Belarus on the border with Lithuania,** but it was July before all had reached their base. At that time the task of multiplying the partisan groups could begin, carried out with the direct participation of the party’s operational group—which, for reasons that are still unclear, split in two. ‘The most probable reason for this competition was personal animosity. Later, to avoid complications in the chain of command, the LKP decided to set up a southern committee under Zimanas and a northern district under Sumauskas.25

Zimanas, now as an independent commander, with a communist underground committee made up of Marijonas Miceika (nom de guerre ‘Gabrys’) and Vincas Sakalauskas (nom de guerre ‘Rimonis’), moved to the Rudniki forest, together with the Margiris group, which was made up of fighters trained for partisan warfare,?° and then proceeded to the Trakai district.2” Albertas Barauskas (nom de guerre ‘Greitas’), the head of Margiris, became Zimanas’s head of intelligence. Sumauskas, for the time being, stayed in the Kazeénai forest and later took over the northern part of Lithuania, while the third surviving member of the party’s group, Rocius, was

killed in action during the German punitive operation ‘Fritz’ in the Glubokoe (Gtebokie) area in July-August 1943, where Germans killed 327 partisans in fighting and captured another 227.7° 21 A. Snieckus, decree no. 16, 9 Feb. 1943: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 427, fos. 21-3.

22 Arad, Partisan, 120-1. 23 List of Vilnius unit fighters: LY A, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 172, fo. 9. 24 M. Sumauskas, radio message no. 141, 14 May 1943: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 406, fo. 143. 25 Lietuvos liaudis Didziajame Tévynes kare, ed. Arvasevitius et al., 240-1. 26 This group consisted exclusively of Lithuanians. 27 Jurgis (Zimanas), radio message no. 474, 8 Sept. 1943: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 407, fo. 290. 28 Lietuvos liaudis Didziajame Téevynes kare, ed. Arvasevitius et al., 405; J. Turonek, Bialorus pod okupacja memiecka (Warsaw, 1993).

336 Sariinas Liekis The most difficult task for Zimanas’s southern party committee was to start a new movement, based on the local population, but still under the leadership of the old

guard from the pre-war LKP and the ‘students of Balakhna’. In a letter dated 24 October 1943, Zimanas stated that the local population’s attitude towards partisans was a serious issue: “They are afraid of us because they have never met real partisans, only bandits. The self-defence units [fighting against us| have growing success; people in larger numbers are taking up arms. The partisans are often betrayed, and even ambushed by the locals.’29 The political situation in Lithuania also appeared to be dangerous for the new partisan movement: ‘If in Belarus some are not for the

Germans, then they are for Soviet rule. Here, in the meantime, we have a third option—nationalists, and in Vilnius, even a fourth option-—the followers of Sikorski [i.e. the Polish Home Army]. It seriously complicates the local situation.’?°

The situation in the ‘old partisan’ groups seriously compromised the partisan movement’s prospects. Discipline in these groups was disorganized, and they were hostile to the local population, alienating not only Lithuanians, but even Jews who had escaped from the ghettos. Because of their grim experiences, and the German and Lithuanian collaboration against them, Soviet prisoners of war viewed everybody around them as potential enemies. Prejudices against Jews played an important role as well. The majority of the Russian prisoners of war had not been exposed to Jews or Jewish culture before, and viewed Jews as nothing more than traders and merchants, incapable of doing strenuous physical work.?! Thus, not having feasible

options for resistance in Lithuania, some escapees from the Lithuanian ghettos immediately left for Belarus.

The backbone of the newly established Zemaité partisan unit was the Dyakov sroup, made up of sixty escaped prisoners of war. Its ‘organizers’ wrote with astonishment that this large partisan unit, throughout its existence from 1942, had not conducted a single military operation, that there were grave breaches of secrecy, everyday drunkenness, and excessive robbery of the local population.?? Similar problems of discipline existed in the only ‘partisan’ group in Rudniki before Zimanas’s arrival in the spring of 1943, namely the Soviet military intelligence group

no. 14 of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the general staff of the Red Army operating in the Rudniki forest. However, in contrast to Dyakov’s group, it was highly efficient. After the war, in 1946, Zimanas made a bold statement, character-

izing the group in the following way: | The special group [no. 14] took part in many joint partisan operations, its leadership consulted with and listened to underground party organizations. It is true that ordinary members sometimes looted and used force against the local population. However, the leadership, after 29 G. Zimanas (Jurgis), letter to A. Snieckus, 24 Oct. 1943: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 37, fo. 37. 30 G. Zimanas (Jurgis), letter to A. Snieckus, 11 May 1943: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 33, fo. 70.

31 K. D. Slepyan, ‘The People’s Avengers: Soviet Partisans, Stalinist Society and the Politics of Resistance, 1941-1944’, Ph.D. diss. (Univ. of Michigan, 1994), 267. 32 Report of the commander of the Zemaité unit: LY A, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 31, fos. 18-19.

Soviet Resistance and fewtsh Partisans in Lithuania 337 the intervention of the party organizations, as a rule took the necessary measures . . . But after

the arrival of Major ‘Grozny’ [Evgraf Pavlenko], the situation suddenly changed for the worse. Major ‘Grozny’ did not listen to the party organizations, and did not stay in touch with them. He completely ceased military activity on the pretext of reorganization. Discipline surprisingly weakened, which we deduced from the increasing incidence of robberies and

violence against the population. I have met ‘Grozny’ several times and he has never been sober ... The fighters from his group said that everlasting drunkenness, brawling, and fraternizing with shady characters reigned over their camp.?°

Despite Zimanas’s personal antipathy to commander ‘Grozny’, his statement did reflect tensions between Communist Party and military objectives and policies in the area. There is no doubt that ‘Grozny’ did not undertake any reorganizing, but merely simulated it as he awaited the approach of the Soviet—German front line that took place in the spring of 1944. However, his group consisted entirely of trained soldiers, more than 250, forming the largest underground group. All sides preserved their independence: any attempt to unite Zimanas’s partisans and Group no. 14 would have obstructed efforts to build an indigenous—at least in appearance—partisan movement in the country. Group no. 14 would have swallowed up Zimanas’s partisans if it had been decided to merge the two. Later, Group no. 14 was instrumental in helping to bring many escaped Jewish partisans to the newly formed partisan groups. The group marched against the Germans to the Taurage district in July 1944 as a sabotage unit dressed in German uniforms, leaving its wounded and sick in Rudniki. The group was eventually destroyed and dispersed by the units of the German XX XX Panzer Corps in August 1944. Reflecting on the state of the Soviet intelligence units and those made up of Soviet prisoners of war, the First Secretary of the LKP, Antanas Snieckus, sounded a note of caution against attempts to appoint a Russian military leadership in the partisan units. In early autumn 1943 he wrote to Zimanas: ‘You must promote Lithuanians

, to the leading positions. However, only after a thorough background check. As for the Russians, especially former prisoners of war, it’s difficult for them to inspire the

local population to fight. I think that you can now form ethnically mixed units, putting forward, as a rule, Lithuanians.’** The flow of ‘trained partisans’ from the Soviet Union continued constantly throughout 1943 and helped to form the backbone of partisan units in Lithuania, ninety fighters arriving in April—June 1943 alone.?°

Both of the underground party committees, in the south and in the north, responded to this development by placing emphasis on forming indigenous partisan forces. The beginning of a ‘new’ partisan movement was envisaged primarily through the formation of ‘new’ local party organizations. Originally, active underground 33 G, Zimanas, statement to the LKP Secretary A. N. Isachenko, 29 June 1946: LYA, f. 14, ap. 1, b. 1, fo. 8.

34 A. Snieckus, letter to G. Zimanas no. 82, 28 Aug. 1943: LYA, f. 1771, ap. 1, b. 119, fo. 19. 89 Lietuvos liaudis Didziajame Tevynes kare, ed. Arvasevitius et al., 187, 197, 213, 418, 459.

338 Sarinas Liekis communist organizations existed along ethnic lines, starting on 24 October 1942 in Vilnius, when the Union of Active Struggle (Aktyvios kovos sajunga) was established with nine members. This organization was soon transformed into the Union of Polish Patriots (Zwiazek Patriotow Polskich).?° In February 1943 they established contact with the Lithuanian communist organization of Juozas Vitas, the so-called Union for the Liberation of Lithuania (Lietuvos islaisvinimo sayunga). The Soviet underground in Rudniki established contact with the Jewish communist organization in the Vilnius ghetto, led by Itsik Wittenberg, which formed part of the Jewish United Partisan Organization (Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye). Communist activists from all these organizations founded a regional party committee headed by Juozas Vitas. Soon the entire leadership was betrayed, arrested, and executed by the Nazis, but the majority of the ordinary members survived Nazi repression and were actively employed by the communist movement operating from

the Rudniki forest. A new party organization was soon established there on 10 August 1943 and was led by Marijonas Miceika (‘Gabrys’). It was his activities and

contacts that helped increase the number of partisan groups in eastern Lithuania and contributed to the saving of refugees from the Jewish ghettos, followed by their incorporation into Soviet Lithuanian partisan units.

JEWS IN THE PARTISAN MOVEMENT The involvement of Jews in partisan groups was initiated from above by the Soviet Lithuanian partisan movement. The remnants of the Lithuanian Jewish community were an attractive source of recruitment. From the very first days of the occupation, the Nazis implemented policies to exterminate the Jews. The first half-year of Nazi occupation was the most tragic for Lithuanian Jewry. According to Nazi reports dated 31 January 1942, a total of 136,421, or three-quarters of Lithuania’s Jews, had been killed in the country. Further extermination actions followed, and by the end of April 1943 only 44,584 Jews were left in the Generalkommissariat Litauen in the Vilnius, Kaunas, and Siauliai ghettos. Around 30,000 inmates were used for labour,

benefiting the Wehrmacht, the police, and the local economy. This situation changed on 21 June 1943, however, when Himmler proclaimed an order to liquidate the ghettos and move their inhabitants to concentration camps.°"

Only a few Jews fought in the partisan or underground groups up until the summer of 1943. Luckily for those ready for resistance, the liquidation of the ghettos in the summer of 1943 coincided with attempts to expand the partisan movement. Most of the ghetto inmates were brought to the partisans with the help of the Vilnius and Kaunas Communist Party organizations. ‘The backbone of the partisan groups that were to be expanded with the influx of new arrivals under the Headquarters of 36 Minutes of the interrogation of Jozefa Przewalska, 25 Sept. 1944: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 137, fos. 36—7. 37 A. Bubnys, Vokieciy okupuota Lietuva (1941-1944) (Vilnius, 1998), 204.

Soviet Resistance and FJemish Partisans in Lithuania 339 the Lithuanian Partisan Movement consisted, as a rule, of Lithuanians and Russians with extensive military training or experience in partisan warfare. In order to form new units, the Margiris unit (which among its military roles exercised disciplinary control over all the partisan units in the Rudniki forest) allocated a group of eight people to form the Perkiinas unit, thirteen to form the ‘Death to the Occupiers’ unit, and twenty-five to form the Adomas Mickevicius unit.?° Ninety people served in

Margiris in 1943—4, and along with other special groups that arrived later they carried out tasks such as recruitment, sometimes smuggling people out of labour camps and ghettos into the units. According to a graphic report from the ‘Death to the Occupiers’ unit, it was founded on 3 November 1943 as a group of Russian partisans who underwent training at a ‘partisan training centre in Russia’ and aimed to attract prisoners of war and to encourage desertion from the Vlasov military units consisting of Russians in German service. Their recruiting efforts succeeded and they soon received more fighters than expected: We brought in many comrades from the Jewish ghetto in Kaunas; they made up a large part of our partisan unit. But these people were very diverse in their military value; there were some who had seen service in the military before, as well as people who didn’t have the slightest idea about warfare. You shouldn’t think that these people came to our unit independently—the majority arrived in an organized fashion.?°

One anonymous Jewish fighter from the unit who escaped from the Kaunas ghetto, which had by then been transformed into a concentration camp, testified thus: “I got the chance to make contact with the Kaunas Communist Party organization, which gave me clothing, hid me for ten days, gave me a pistol, and on 6 January put me in charge of twenty-six people in order to escort them to the “Death to the Occupiers” partisan unit.’4° During its existence, this unit numbered five Lithuanians, ninety-three Russians, seventy-nine Jews, and forty-seven men of other nationalities.*! All the units were

founded in a similar fashion. In this way, the Kaunas Ghetto Jewish Fighting Organization, not yet in contact with the Kaunas Communist Party organization, tried to send as many prospective fighters as possible to the partisan groups, starting in the summer of 1943. On 6 October, after the arrival of a liaison officer from the operational group of the LKP’s Central Committee, Gese Glezeryté (nom de guerre ‘Albina’), the Communist Party organization was formalized and permanent contact with the city’s party organization and Zimanas’s southern party bureau was established.*” Thereafter, an attempt was made to set up a partisan base in the forests of Augustow, but this failed because of poor arms supplies and the distance to the destination. Eighty people left for Augustéw, but along the way forty-three were killed 38 Commander Albertas Barauskas, report, 30 Sept. 1943: LYA, f. 12, ap. 1, b. 1, fo. 2. 39 Lithuanian partisan unit ‘Death to the Occupiers’: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 47, fo. 6.

40 bid. 12. 41 Report of the unit ‘Death to the Occupiers’: LYA, f. 24, ap. 1, b. 1, fo. 69. 42 Tbid.

340 Sarinas Liekis | and eleven were arrested by the Gestapo.*? Only in autumn 1943 did the mass evacuation of the ghetto’s underground fighters start. The majority were taken away in trucks by Soviet Lithuanian partisans dressed in German police uniforms and with forged documents. ‘The ghetto authorities were asked, as a rule, to provide twenty

or thirty people ‘for the night shift’. The transportation continued until 15 April 1944, when the Gestapo discovered the Soviet Lithuanian partisan conspiracy and the transport was ambushed by the Germans.*4 The units with the largest proportion of Jews from the Kaunas and Vilnius ghettos were ‘Free Lithuania’ (54 out of 94), ‘Death to Fascism’ (39 out of 69), “The Struggle’ (58 out of 77), “To Victory’ (106 out of 119), ‘The Avenger’ (105 out of 107), and the Vladas Baronas group (11 out of 18). They were located primarily in the Vilnius district.4° Out of those who had previously been commanders of informal refugee groups from the ghettos, Samuel Kaplinsky of “To Victory’ was the only one who retained his role as commander after the transformation of the unit into a Soviet Lithuanian partisan unit. He stayed on in this capacity until 20 May 1944,

when he had to resign and Abram Shabrinsky, a former prisoner of war, was appointed instead.*® In all the other cases, Lithuanians or Russians took over the command of the Jewish partisan groups, leaving the escaped Jews with only menial positions in the units. Nevertheless, from the perspective of military utility and purpose, these appointments were justifiable in the conditions of guerrilla warfare. Even Chaim Lazar, who in his memoirs was critical of the non-Jewish partisan leadership for its ruthlessness and contempt for human life, agreed that, at the beginning, ‘the experience of the Jewish fighters was not very reassuring. Many had been in the forests for only one month and they already had to set out on dangerous tasks. Obviously, if these people ever encountered Germans, they would all be killed.’*/ Only a few of the refugees had military training or had seen military service in the pre-war years. The ‘Struggle’ unit of the Vilnius district, which had fifty-eight Jews and nineteen non-Jews on its list (Russians, one Pole, one Lithuanian, and one Ukrainian), could serve as an example. Only one Jew, Kamleizer (his first name is not recorded), had seen military service before the war as an NCO in the Polish army. Of the nineteen non-Jews, five had been in military service before, and all had commanding positions in the unit.4° Another unit, ‘To Victory’, commanded by Abram Shabrinsky and also based in the Vilnius district, had 119 fighters on its list, and only thirteen were non-Jews (Russians, a Kyrgyz, a Turk, an Uzbek, a Pole, a Lithuanian, an Estonian, and a Dutchman). The Jewish fighters had among their

ranks eleven people who had seen military service in the pre-war Polish or

b. 1, fos. g—I0. 44 Tbid. to. 43 Kaunas Ghetto Underground Partisan Fighting Organization (Appendix): LYA, f. 15409, ap. 1,

45 Lists of the partisan groups belonging to the Headquarters of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 488, fo. 20. 46 History of the ‘To Victory’ unit: LYA, f. 11, ap. 1, b. 1, fo. 13. 47 Eckmann and Lazar, Jewish Resistance, 151. 48 List of the ‘Struggle’ unit partisans: LYA, f. 10, ap. 1, b. 1 (envelope), fos. 33-5.

Soviet Resistance and fewish Partisans in Lithuania 341 Lithuanian armies. Five of the six commanders were Jewish. Among the non-Jews there was only one person who had served in the army.*° The demographic and social profile of the Jewish fighters is also worthy of analysis. Traditionally, before the Second World War, the conscription age in Lithuania for males was 21-35. During the Second World War, in Germany and the Soviet Union people were conscripted and enlisted between the ages of 18 and 45, with slight variations depending on the country and the circumstances of recruitment. What was the

demographic picture of the Jews in the Soviet Lithuanian partisan groups? The number of Jewish fighters of conscription age—born between 1898 and 1925—in the ‘Struggle’ unit was forty-six, or 79 per cent (two were younger, born in 1927 and 1929). However, there was no one over 45 (an age at which one was still eligible for conscription in the Soviet Union). Additionally, women made up 10-17 per cent of the unit, performing, as in all armies during the Second World War, auxiliary roles and only seeing real combat in exceptional cases. Their ages also fell well within the Soviet Union’s conscription brackets, none being older than 35. The greatest proportion of the Jewish fighters, twenty-three in all (40 per cent), fell into the ‘traditional’ conscription age group of 21-35; younger fighters, primarily 18—21-year-olds, with the two above-mentioned exceptions, numbered sixteen (28 per cent); ten were aged 35—45 (17 per cent). The non-Jewish fighters in this unit were of conscription age, with the commander, Ivan Vasilenko, being the oldest at 37 in 1943.°° The educational profile of the ‘Struggle’ unit is also worth noting. The only person with both a university and a military education was the commander. Of three others in the unit’s line of command, two had a secondary education, and one had finished the seventh grade. ‘The educational level of Jewish fighters in the unit was predominantly below the tenth grade. Out of the fifty-eight, nine had a secondary education and only one apart from the commander had a university education,°! the accountant Jacob Yashunsky, who had been born in 1905. Moreover, there were only two Communist Party members in the group, a Lithuanian and a Jew, and only eight Jewish Communist Youth members and four non-Jewish Communist Youth members. Even the commander of the unit was not a member of the Communist Party.°?

A similar personnel situation existed in ‘To Victory’, the Soviet Lithuanian Jewish unit under the command of Shabrinsky. Here there were only two Jewish fighters over the age of 45. Out of the total of 106 Jews, only four were younger than 18. A large majority of the Jewish fighters had been born in 1920—5. A secondary education, not to speak of higher studies, was more of an exception than the rule. The majority of fighters were blue-collar workers, and only about 10 per cent were members of the Communist Party or communist youth organizations.°? The Jewish 49 List of the ‘To Victory’ unit partisans: LYA, f. 11, ap. 1, b. 1 (envelopes 1 and 3). The unit took part in actions to support itself. Only three people were lost in action, and three wounded (among the latter Chaim Lazar).

°° List of the ‘Struggle’ unit partisans: LYA, f. 10, ap. 1, b. 1 (envelope), fos. 33a—36. 51 bid. ©2 Ibid.

°3 List of the ‘To Victory’ unit partisans: LYA, f. 11, ap. 1, b. 1 (envelopes 1, 2, and 3).

342 Sartinas Liekis | members of other Soviet Lithuanian partisan units, in which Lithuanian and Russian participation was higher, conformed to this pattern, with the almost absolute exclusion of marginal age groups but with a higher proportion of membership in communist organizations. The age and social profile of Jewish partisans confirms the theoretical supposition that Jews were drawn into the Soviet Lithuanian partisan units exclusively as a part of the Soviet partisan recruitment effort, and only indirectly with the object of saving people from the horror of the Holocaust. The main purpose was to draw upon the human resources of the ghettos who were of conscription age. Additionally, the crucial element that allowed entry into the Soviet Lithuanian partisan units was having links to the Communist Party underground and to informal Jewish youth networks whose activity was directed against the educated white-collar ghetto estab-

lishments in Vilnius and Kaunas. |

In the lists of units belonging to the Headquarters of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement (including non-combatants who lived in the partisan camps), there are 3,908 people named who, to some degree or another, saw action or supported the partisan movement during the war from 1941 to 1944. At the peak of its expansion, the Soviet Lithuanian partisan movement, according to data from the headquarters, fielded 1,633 partisans in the forests.°4 The distribution according to nationality is also worth mentioning. Out of the

total of 3,908 listed Soviet partisans in Lithuania, Russians constituted 1,477, Lithuanians 1,388, Jews 676, and all the other ethnic groups 367. There were 1,020 escaped Soviet prisoners of war among them. ‘These numbers are reliable, though they create the illusion that partisans made up a large fighting group.°? Allowance has to be made for the fact that the partisan lists included male teenagers and women,

whose active participation in the fighting, though possible, was unlikely in the ‘macho’ culture that dominated guerrilla movements. The lists also included partisan informants, and all varieties of supporters of the partisans. ‘There were 425 partisans in the Communist Party, fifty-five candidates to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and 472 Communist Youth members.°® The movement suffered substantial casualties as a result of military encounters. According to the list of partisans killed in action fighting the ‘German-Fascist occu-

piers’, in 1943-4 the units subordinate to the Headquarters of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement suffered 404 casualties killed in action (177 Russians, 119 Lithuanians, seventy-five Jews, eight Poles, four Belarusians, and twenty-one unidentified fighters) and nine were taken prisoner. In addition, twelve partisans were executed for treason, and four deserted.°’ These numbers, however, are incomplete. First of all, they do not include people from the military intelligence 54 Slepyan, ‘People’s Avengers’, 203. 55 Data on the number of partisans, compiled 4 Nov. 1945: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 136, fo. 6. 56 Thbid.

57 List of partisans killed in action by the German occupying authorities, and lists of traitors of the Headquarters of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement, 1943-5: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 185, fos. 1-63.

Soviet Resistance and fewtsh Partisans in Lithuania 343 eroups for the period 1941-4. Even the severely reduced official casualties of the Soviet military intelligence group no. 14 reported a loss of twenty people (sixteen Russians, two Belarusians, one Pole, and one Jew).°® The real losses of Group no. 14 could have totalled as many as 120 people.°” The statistics also omit casualties among those who, though they came under the control of the Belarusian partisan leadership, were either Lithuanian or perished on Lithuanian soil, whether as individuals or as members of partisan groups. Reported Jewish casualties do not include people killed while being transported from the ghettos to the partisan bases, since

they died before being integrated into the command of the Communist Party. Further, the data do not include fighters killed while living in the family camps, and fail to reflect those who fell victim to the Special Affairs Division 1n the partisan units: according to Lazar, this body executed six former ghetto policemen on suspicion of engaging in espionage for the Gestapo.©° Victims of brawling and deaths from disease are also often not recorded in the statistics.

The Lithuanians in the partisan movement were distributed unevenly over the territory of Lithuania, despite making up the seemingly large proportion of 35.5 per cent of the movement (29.5 per cent according to the data of 22 December 1944). The proportion of Lithuanians was highest in the west of the country. Russians and Jews were over-represented by comparison with the local population in the area around the Rudniki forest in the south-east, where a majority of the Jewish partisans were concentrated. In partisan groups in 1943-4 there were 577 Jews (42 per cent), 448 Russians (32 per cent), 127 Lithuanians (9 per cent), and 231 fighters of other nationalities (17 per cent). Jewish partisans made up the single largest nationality in

the partisan units in the south-east of Lithuania. According to the lists from 22 December 1944, the Vilnius brigade, under the command of Miceika (‘Gabrys’), had 340 Jews (57 per cent), 132 Russians (22 per cent), 47 Lithuanians (8 per cent), and 76 others (13 per cent).©! Additionally, there were three groups from the Kaunas brigade in the Rudniki forest with 359 fighters, of whom 149 were Russians (42 per cent), 126 Jews (35 per cent), 33 Lithuanians (g per cent), and 51 others (14 per cent). In the Trakai district the ethnicity of the 425 fighters in the Trakai brigade was: 167 Russians (39 per cent), 111 Jews (26 per cent), 43 Lithuanians (10 per cent), and 104 others (25 per cent).© However, the expansion of the Soviet Lithuanian partisan movement, mainly

thanks to Jews from the ghettos, caused Antanas Snieckus, the head of the °8 List of partisans killed from Group no. 14: LYA, f. 14, ap. 1, b. 15 (envelope), fo. 8. — 59 The group was home to 250 fighters. The main list had 152 names, twenty of which were casualties,

hence about a hundred others are unaccounted for. The operation of August 1944 in Taurage and the encirclement of the group by regular Panzer troops imply high casualties. 60 Lazar, Destruction and Resistance, 144, 159.

61 Data on the number of partisans, compiled 4 Nov. 1945: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 136, fo. 6. 62 Main list of the ‘Liberator’ unit: LY A, f. 49, ap. 1, b. 1 (envelope 1), fos. 1-8; main list of the ‘For the Fatherland’ unit: LY A, f. 49, ap. 1, b. 1 (envelope 1), fos. 1-7; main list of the Adomas Mickevicius unit: LYA, f. 8, ap. 1, b. 1 (envelope 4), fos. 1-10.

344 Sariinas Liekis Headquarters of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement, to boast about the recruiting

success in the autumn of 1943: “The number of partisan groups and units has increased from twenty-one to forty-three. The number of people has grown from 230 to 1,225. The local population has added 825 people, ninety-nine former prisoners of war, and seventy-one sent from the reserve of the Headquarters of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement.’©?

COMPETITORS Difficulties in building up anti-Nazi resistance were caused 1n part by the nature of the Nazi regime, which was relatively more lenient in Lithuania than, for example, in Belarus. For the majority of non-Jews, the prospect of Soviet rule, which was advocated by the Soviet partisans, promised an even more repulsive future than the presence on their soil of the German military, despite all the administrative excesses of the latter. Jews, in contrast to others, did not have a choice whether to side with the Soviets and their ‘internationalist ideology’, as this was the only real alternative

to the genocidal policies of the Germans. A majority of the politically active Lithuanians and Poles supported restoration of the pre-war independent Lithuanian and Polish states. Nevertheless, both Lithuanians and Poles had conflicting claims over the territory and the historical heritage of the Vilnius area, which was incorporated into Lithuania only in 19309, after first the Germans and later the Soviets defeated and occupied Poland at the beginning of the Second World War. ‘The Lithuanians considered the Vilnius area to be an integral part of their country. The vision of the majority of Poles was diametrically opposed. They considered the Vilnius area as having belonged to the Second Polish Republic from 1922. The

Second World War inspired nationalist sentiments and widespread preferential treatment of co-nationals. As a result, it caused great damage to the relations between the different groups inhabiting the country. The military government coexisted with the civil administration in Lithuania from the summer of 1941. German repression and hostage-taking 1n retaliation to Soviet resistance actions started only in 1942, and only after attacks by Soviet par-

tisans from Belarus. Overall, the population co-operated with the then German authorities against the Soviet partisans raiding from Belarus. Police reports contain

numerous communications to this effect from the local population, and even accounts of active armed participation in operations against partisans. For local Poles and Lithuanians, the commencement of partisan raids on territories in the Generalkommissariat Litauen was a true disaster. The raids by Belarusian partisans into border areas started in the middle of 1942, and immediately triggered large-scale repressions against the local population.®* Jews, Belarusians, Poles, and 63 Lietuvos liaudis Didgiajame Tévynés kare, ed. Arvasevicius et al., 229.

64 The watershed moment came on 19 May 1942 after Belarusian partisans ambushed, killed, and mutilated the bodies of four German officers as they travelled from Svencionys to Lentupis. Some five

Soviet Resistance and Jewish Partisans in Lithuania 345 Russians were targeted for execution. The increasing activities of the partisans from Belarus in 1942—3 not only displayed a ruthlessly unfeeling attitide towards the fate of the local population, but also damaged the already strained local economies of

towns and villages at war. Largely in response to these actions, the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa; AK) attained great popularity among the local Polish population from 1942. Lithuanian self-defence units, supported by the Lithuanian police, sprung up in villages in the south-east of Lithuania. The number of incidents increased during the cold winter of 1943-4. However, all sides had a hand 1n the plunder of the population, including the police and German punitive expeditions. Early in 1943 Belarusian partisans were joined by Soviet Lithuanian partisans, who all lived as guerrillas at the expense of country-dwellers, sparing only their direct supporters from making contributions. The demand for contributions heightened

inter-ethnic tensions. Polish partisans from the AK robbed Lithuanians and Russians, but as a rule did not touch Poles. The Germans and the Lithuanian administration and police avenged these acts by harsh treatment of everyone, except

Lithuanians. A war of nationalities resulted, in which everybody was trying to survive at the expense of the ‘others’, who were perceived as aliens. Jews who were in hiding in family camps or in partisan groups in Belarus fell victim to this war as often as everyone else. Police reports give good descriptions of the ‘nationalities war’ in the south-eastern part of the country: On 7 January 1944, the villages of Karklyne, Torosiskés, and Songailiskes near Eisiskes were attacked and robbed by a group of thirty bandits, consisting mostly of Jews. While transporting the stolen goods, the group was met by a Lithuanian self-defence group and came under

fire. Two Jewish men, one Jewish woman, and their six horses were killed. One auxiliary policeman was seriously wounded, another one slightly.°° On 16 January 1944, a group of Russian bandits was caught looting in Griauziskes; from farmers (Poles and Lithuanians) they took four wagons, food, clothing, etc.°° On the night of 17-18 January 1944, Polish bandits attacked Rudamina, and disarmed and robbed all police officials and local Lithuanians. They stayed there for three hours. They took two machine guns and twenty rifles from the policemen.®’ There are five hundred Polish bandits in small bands in the environs of Paberze, Giedrai¢ia1, Nemencine, Pabrade, and N. Vilnia. They rob local farmers (of all nationalities, except Poles), and terrorize Lithuanians in various ways, publicly announcing themselves to be Polish partisans fighting against the Bolsheviks and Lithuanians.°*

The way the partisans obtained goods in this indiscriminate fashion is well illustrated, though with an ideological bias and wording, by an unpublished description hundred people were executed in reprisals for this attack. Intelligence report on the reprisals for Beck, killed in May 1942: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 69, fo. 5. 65 Police reports for 5-11 Jan. 1944: LYA, f. 3777, ap. 58, b. 266, fo. 30.

66 Police reports for 17~25 Jan. 1944: LYA, f. 3777, ap. 58, b. 266, fo. 38. 67 Tbid. 68 Weekly digest on bandit activities in Lithuania for 18-24 Mar. 1944: LYA, f. 3777, ap. 58, b. 266, fo. 59.

346 Sarinas Liekis of procurement written by Albertas Barauskas (‘Greitas’), the head of Zimanas’s intelligence: , The first days of our stay in the district did not pass unnoticed. When we arrived, all our clothing and shoes were worn out. We had to find a way out of this situation. We had to ‘bomb White partisans’ for clothing and shoes, who had goods (property) from the Jews and the Soviet people. Sure, this was how we could get dressed. But this had a serious impact on our work as after such events we were always followed and persecuted . . .©°

The Lithuanian police, for their part, naturally did not include in their information summaries any reports about their own abuses of power and the measures they took that caused widespread resentment among local Poles, Jews, and other groups. And the police and the local administration were themselves falling victim to these encounters too: the newspaper Lietuvos laisves trimitas reported in October 1943 that ‘bandits’ (Soviet and Polish) had by then killed 280 Lithuanian government officials. “°

The Soviet Lithuanian partisans competed with German and Lithuanian officialdom for power and the resources of the local population, but did not need to share

their living quarters in the forests. The main competitor for stolen goods in the forests and for living quarters was the AK. The growth of its military strength coincided in time with the growth of the Soviet partisan movement in Lithuania, and eventually the forces had to come into conflict over zones of influence in a country under-supplied with resources. ‘The AK military structure in the eastern parts of the former Second Polish Republic was based on the regional division of the country into provinces (wojewodztwa); the AK districts roughly corresponded to these. ‘The

units around Vilnius were part of the AK Wilno, and the territory of the AK Nowogrédek also overlapped with Lithuanian territory. The whole former Nowogrodek wojewodztwo was administratively included in the Reichskommissartat

Ostland as part of the Generalkommissariat Weissruthenien, and areas around Eisiskés with large forests were included in the Generalkomissariat Litauen. ‘The AK Nowogrodek maintained that these areas were under its jurisdiction, despite the fact that the real borders set by the German administration (and even earlier by the Soviet Union, of the Lithuanian SSR and the Belarusian SSR) were drawn differently. All units of the AK Wilno and AK Nowogrodek were under the command of the

territorial operational headquarters, under the supreme commander Colonel Aleksander Krzyzanowski (nom de guerre ‘Wilk’). The ideological strength of the AK

was drawn not only from the grievances of the population over the German occupation: a very important component of their nationalist political views was based on anti-Soviet ideology and was directed against all ‘others’, meaning non-Poles. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of the AK was rather contradictory. ‘There were constant | 69 A. Barauskas, report on the Margiris partisan group, which was active in 1943-4 in the Vilnius district: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 501, fo. 136. 70 ‘Banditizmas Lietuvoje’, Lietuvos laisvés trimitas, Oct. 1943.

Soviet Resistance and Jewish Partisans in Lithuania 347 expressions of paternalistic care for all the ‘minorities’ of that region (Jews, Lithuanians, Belarusians, and Germans). Order no. 5 issued by Krzyzanowski stated: “The local people, despite differences in nationality or faith, have to be treated equally and justly. No excessive use of force towards civilians may take place. ‘Their lives and possessions have to be guarded by the Polish Army.’’! However, a large number of documents contain echoes of disquiet about the attitude of the ‘minorities’ towards the AK and Polish statehood, with abundant remarks about the tense situation between Poles and Lithuanians, Poles and Belarusians, and Poles and Jews. The AK perceived this as a ‘war of nationalities’. All non-Poles were stamped with certain ideological characteristics. The Lithuanians were nationalists, ‘Pole-haters’, and all Germans were ‘fascists’, without differentiation of the many political and

ideological trends inside any ethnic group. Jews were not an exception in this pattern. In the AK’s propaganda and instruction materials, Jews were considered equal to the Soviets and vice versa. In other words, being Jewish meant being ‘communist’, ‘Bolshevik’, ‘Russian’, and most often a ‘Soviet bandit’.’? The Jews were presented as ardent supporters of the Soviet cause and potential backers of Soviet partisan groups. ‘° The image of the Jew was of a member of a Soviet partisan group who lived at the expense of the local Polish population. ‘These images had their pedigree in the radical deterioration of Polish—Jewish relations in the eastern Polish territories as a result of the Soviet occupation of the eastern Polish borderlands in 1939.

The interests of Polish and Jewish mainstream political groupings and the politically active population went in opposite and confronting directions. In 1939 the chauvinistic and nationalizing practices of the inter-war years, especially strong and evident in the eastern Polish borderlands, were turned back against the Poles, who had until recently been dominant. The price was the loyalty of Ukrainians and Jews, Belarusians and Lithuanians in times of crisis of Polish statehood. All stereotypes

had a certain foundation. The raids on Polish villagers for food and clothing that were launched from Jewish family camps and Jewish self-organized partisan groups in the areas of Lida and Nowogrodek were prominent features of everyday life. ‘The large influx of Jews into the Soviet Lithuanian partisan groups further added to the strengthening of stereotypes and ideological stigmatization of Jews as Soviets. ‘The Soviet underground, in return, popularly considered and called the Polish underground ‘Hitlerites’ and ‘Polish fascists’. “4 Everyday conflicts were caused by the competing claims of the AK and the Soviet partisans over control and over contributions collected from Polish villages around “1 Order no. 5: LCVA, f. 601, ap. 1, b. 4, fo. 4. “2 AK Wilno report on the nationality situation in 1944: LCVA, f. 601, ap. 1, b. 46, fo. 9. “3 Reports on the current situation in March 1944. Soviet partisans and local bandits: LCVA, f. 601, ap. 1, b. 50. “4 Tnformation on nationalities and the east no. 29. Government Delegation for Poland, Department

of Information and Press, Eastern Section, 1941-5: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC (hereafter USHMM), RG-15.045M, reel no. 3, p. 65.

348 Sarinas Liekis Vilnius. The Soviet Lithuanian partisans did not make distinctions about which localities would ‘supply’ their units: local economies needed to be harmed so that, as a con-

sequence, provisions for the German army and local administration would be reduced.’° Each of the two groupings had different visions for the country’s future. The Soviet Lithuanian partisans saw Lithuania’s future as a Soviet Socialist Republic

in the USSR, while the AK fought for eastern Lithuania—and possibly all of Lithuania—to be a part of Poland. By contrast with the Soviet partisans, who were engaging with the occupying forces or with those civilians who were regularly not complying with orders or demands, the AK was saving its strength for the end of the war, when decisive battles would have to be fought, and was mostly concerned about territorial defence. Zimanas had mentioned in a letter of 25 November 1943 that ‘the White Poles are showing up and raiding around’. “© His colleague Sumauskas (nom de guerre ‘Kazimieras’) was more categorical about the Polish partisans: “They beat us, we have to beat them in return.’”” Despite the fact that Zimanas was less well informed about the conflict and very often had distorted and incomplete information about the true intentions of the AK, he predicted that, as it strengthened, the AK would start to pose a serious threat to the Soviet Lithuanian partisan movement. ‘® The conventional wisdom among the parties in conflict was that the Soviet partisans controlled the Rudniki and Inkleriskes forests. The territory to the east and south of Rudniki forest was controlled by Polish partisans. As a consequence, when Soviet partisan units wanted to reach the Vilnius—Molodechno or Vilnius—Lida railway lines, they had to cross the Saléia valley that was controlled by the AK.“ The war diaries of many Soviet partisan groups abound with accounts of skirmishes between Soviet partisans and the AK. The reports of partisan groups in the Rudniki forest are full of messages about minor yet bloody encounters with AK groups. Some of these messages illustrate the true nature of the conflict. Thus, on 25 May 1944, partisans from Shabrinsky’s “To Victory’ unit went to obtain food, under the leadership of their military intelligence officer, as the unit was on the brink of starvation. When they reached the village designated to ‘supply them with food’, they found that it had already been plundered by the ‘White Poles’; the Soviet partisans added in their Soviet bureaucratic language, ‘[ We] conducted the operation and it yielded us deplorable results.’ The estate where they expected to ‘improve the results of our previous operation’ the following night was guarded by large forces of ‘White Poles’ and they had to leave the area without achieving their aims.°° Another time, the same unit planned to attack the German barracks that the German garrison had left in Turgeliai and to set fire to the barracks. However, the operation had to be called 7 M. Wardzynhska, Sytuacja ludnosci polskiej w Generalnym Komisariacte Litwy, czerwiec 1941—liptec 1944 (Warsaw, 1993), 204-5. 76 G. Zimanas, letter to A. Snietkus, 25 Nov. 1943: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 55, fo. 16. 77 ‘Kazimieras’, letter to A. Snieckus: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 55, fo. 27. 78 G,. Zimanas, letter to A. Snieckus, 18 Aug. 1943: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 32, fo. 53. 79 R. Korab-Zebryk, Operacja wilenska AK (Warsaw, 1988), 95. 80 Report on the activities and war diary of the ‘To Victory’ unit: LYA, f. 11, ap. 1, b. 1, fo. 4.

Soviet Resistance and fewtsh Partisans in Lithuania 349 off as the ‘White Poles’ had occupied all the surrounding villages and prevented the partisans from accessing the locality. Asa rule, the conflicts started when Soviet partisans entered territories inhabited by Poles. ‘This helped the AK to make a strong argument in defence of the Poles and to find themselves a role in the guerrilla war. However, the command of the AK had a more moderate stance on relations with the Soviet Lithuanian partisans. Yet in the order for operation ‘Burza’ (‘Storm’) formulated in 1943 the Polish partisans were warned against entering into conflict with the Soviet partisans. If such clashes took place and attempts to reach a cessation of hos-

tilities were unsuccessful, then the AK units might have to be relocated to other bases. The AK had to give the appearance to the Soviet army that it was controlling

the situation in the country; however, fighting against the Soviet partisans was allowed in self-defence.®!

Formal dispositions were one thing, but actual day-to-day practice among the ‘forest brotherhood’ was another. The war diaries of partisan units reveal especially high tensions. Attacks on small Soviet Lithuanian partisan groups by the AK and vice versa were an everyday occurrence. It is interesting to note that, out of the 722 people who crossed the front line into Lithuanian territory or were parachuted there

in 1942—4 under the auspices of the Headquarters of the Lithuanian Partisan Movement, 141 were registered dead by the beginning of May 1944. The majority were killed by the German army and Lithuanian police, others died in accidents, some fell casualty to the local people, and only seven were killed by the AK.®?

However, every partisan unit in south-east Lithuania suffered larger or smaller numbers of casualties at the hands of the AK.°° The single largest loss of this kind was the extermination of the twelve members of the Eduardas Taujenas group from

the Kostas Kalinauskas unit near Dubingiai on 1 March 1944 after they were ambushed by AK fighters. In the incident, the lists of the group’s informants and supporters fell into the hands of the AK, who later hunted them down.®* The AK for its part lost its men to the Soviet Lithuanian partisans. However, the intensity of the fighting here was not as high as it was in Soviet partisan conflicts with the AK in the areas around Nowogrodek or Svir in Belarus in the spring of 1944. German reports indicate that the Germans had predicted such conflicts in the area to the west of Svir.®° 81 Korab-Zebryk, Operacja wilenska AK, 74. 62 List of fighters killed in action: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 172, fos. 118-27. 53 Regular partisan groups lost 225 killed in action, according to the 1945 lists in LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 185, fos. 1-63. These lists are incomplete and do not reflect arbitrary executions within the units or the lack of documentation on personnel, especially for 1943. The real figures for casualties from the partisan groups could have been up to twice as high. The personnel files of partisans began to be compiled only in 1945 when the Central Committee of the LKP considered decorating ex-partisans with medals. There are great discrepancies between the numbers provided and the name lists. For example, the reports of Group no. 14 claimed 250 fighters in the unit but were able to list only 152 men. A note below the list said that the whereabouts of the others was unknown because of the lack of documentation. LYA, f. 14,

ap. 1, b. 1, fos. 1, 6. 84 List of partisans killed in action: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 185, fos. 26-7. 55 Report no. 79, 7 Feb. 1944: LCVA, f. R-666, ap. 1, b. 5, fo. 202.

350 Sariinas Liekis The AK units started to mass their forces to the south and north of the Rudniki forest in March 1944. The Soviet Lithuanian partisan leadership thought that the AK, together with the Germans, was going to attack Soviet Lithuanian partisans. In response to the apparent threat, Zimanas’s partisans in the Rudniki forest started to concentrate their forces in the triangle of Vilnius—Benekainys—Valkininkai, destroying bridges over the rivers.°© With the approach of the Soviet—German front, both sides, but especially the Poles, became more inclined to negotiate a division of zones of influence and to avoid conflicts in an unpredictable situation. The first negotiations took place in April 1944, and led to an agreement that the border between the two sides would be the Saléia river. When Soviet partisans wanted to cross territory under AK control, the latter had to supply guides and food, while Soviet partisans

had to supply the AK with arms in return.®’ Later, on 25 June, the next meeting between ‘Wilk’ and ‘Gabrys’ took place and an agreement was reached whereby the

Soviet Lithuanian partisans would provide the AK with arms and form a joint command for the struggle against the Germans.®° This meeting is also noted in the memoirs of Barauskas, though he denies that any agreement was reached on that day.®?

A similar meeting took place in the Braslav district of Belarus between the Soviet partisans and the local AK command on 31 May 1944. At the negotiations, the AK welcomed ‘the Soviet partisans as guests of the Polish land’. ‘The meeting’s agenda aimed to discuss: (1) a division of influence over territories, with the introduction of signposts for the controlled areas; (2) an agreement about the mode of food requisi-

tion and its volume; (3) handing over those Soviet partisans accused of crimes against Polish citizens into Polish hands; (4) an agreement by the Soviet partisans not to mobilize in the territories under AK control; and (5) the return of the bodies of eight members of the AK.?° However, as on other occasions, the negotiations did not bring positive results. The attempt to preserve Polish statehood under the AK was not a feasible option. In the contest for territory in the eastern borderlands (as in Galicia, Vilnius, and Warsaw), the main concern of the AK was to hold ground before the advancing Soviets, but in practice its expectations were unrealistic: the Soviets had their own designs for the future of the Polish eastern borderlands and

repelled any attempts by the AK to secure territory either there or in Warsaw, western Ukraine, or Lithuania. The speedy approach of the Soviet-German front line made the Soviet Lithuanian partisans lose interest in any accords with the AK. Wherever possible, they avoided conflict with the AK partisans in the spring and summer of 1944 and waited for the regular Red Army to do the job, not only against the Germans but also to get rid of the AK presence in south-east Lithuania. 86 Intelligence report: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 24, fo. 10.

87 Korab-Zebryk, Operacja wilenska AK, 98. 88 Ibid. ror. 89 A. Barauskas, Misky frontuose (Vilnius, 1968), 270. %0 Information on nationalities and the east no. 29. Government Delegation for Poland, Department of Information and Press, Eastern Section, 1941-5: USHMM, RG-15.045M, reel no. 3, p. 65.

Soviet Resistance and Jewish Partisans in Lithuania 351 THE LOCAL POPULATION AND JEWS IN THE SOVIET LITHUANIAN PARTISAN MOVEMENT The struggle to control territory and supplies in order to feed large groups of men in the forests made up a substantial, indeed essential, part of the partisans’ military efforts. Here the Soviet Lithuanian partisan groups encountered resistance from the | AK. Polish villages in the Vilnius area were dominated by the AK, and there is no hint of a suggestion that in general the Polish inhabitants supported the Soviet partisans. There were some Polish informants, but negligible participation by Poles in the Soviet Lithuanian partisan groups. Among the Lithuanian population the attitude was different. Even though Lithuanians made up a substantial proportion of the Soviet partisan movement—people from the 1940-1 Communist Party apparatus and organizations, from the Lithuanian SSR administration, from the NK VD, and others—very often they had been drivers, accountants, workers, and people doing menial jobs in these institutions. As a group, they had little appeal in the minds of the population at large, who were still affected by memories of the “first Soviet occupation’ of 1940-1, with its forceful indoctrination, large-scale repression of political opponents, executions, and so on. Anti-Sovietism and antisemitism

played a role in the attitudes of the Lithuanian population towards the Soviet Lithuanian partisans and the Soviet Union, in much the same way as it did among the Poles. In this regard, the security situation of the Lithuanian partisans, and the political orientation of the population, were well captured in the report made by Jurgis Basciulis (nom de guerre ‘Stalionis’) of the Kestutis group in the Siauliai area: The enemy spy network is extensive, especially in towns and factories; some of them are former Soviet activists, such as militiamen, Communist Youth, and the like... The Gestapo in the towns and villages also has its own spy networks . . . The former ‘partisans’ who executed Soviet people, Jews, and prisoners of war are a great help to the Gestapo. The Germans obliged every civil servant in the administration to spy and provide information about suspicious persons. The Lithuanian Saugumas [security police] supports secret nationalist organizations, and even if they get somebody from the nationalists, they immediately try to release them, but if they get a Gestapo, then ‘kaput’, because the Germans treat them no better than they do us.?!

In regard to the ‘Jewish question’, the same reporter noted: Especially despised are those who have carried out executions, who have shot Jews and Soviet

citizens and plundered their property. Some of them have never been active, but some of them completely sold themselves to the Germans and have acted not only against us, but against innocent civilians as well. Among the Lithuanians they are simply called ‘Jew killers’ and ‘Jew stranglers’, or [Jew] murderers. Many of these people died, or went nuts sensing that their end was approaching... Often during youth evenings they [the Jew killers] would be asked: ‘What suit is that you’re wearing today? Maybe it’s Moishe’s . . .”?”

fos. 140-1. 92 Ibid. 144. °1 Report of the Kestutis partisan group for 1943-4 in the Siauliai district: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 501,

352 Sariinas Liekis It should be noted that although there are few Jews, if any, many workers are disappointed at the large number of Jewish civil servants under Soviet rule. Although the majority feel sorry for Jews who have suffered under the German occupation, at the same time they express surprise that for such massive numbers of people killed, there have been no instances of resistance or escape, or of later fighting against the Germans. It is obvious that the Germans’ propaganda did a lot through their agents, press, and posters, but antisemitism in Lithuania is visible in all social strata.9?

This report 1s interesting in many respects, not only because of its informal, firsthand, impressionist narrative, but also because of the opinions and attitudes of the population that are presented and which Soviet partisans claim to embody. Against the background of mistrust and gravitation of the population to the political right, the entire territory of the country was tightly controlled by German occupational forces. Numerically, the German police, Gestapo, and Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst; SD) were weak. Sonderkommando 3A (part of Einsatzkommando A) under the command of Karl Jager, which was mainly responsible for the crimes committed against Jews in Lithuania, became the core of the German police security effort when it was incorporated on 23 September 1941 into the office of the Commander of the German Security Police and the SD in Lithuania (Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD ftir den Generalbezirk Litauen), whose head was subordinate to the Commander of the Ostland Security Police and the SD in Riga. In 1943 they had a relatively small force of 112 men in Kaunas, forty in Vilnius, and only seven in the Siauliai district and six in Panevezys. The German Order Police (Ordnungspolizei) _ had similarly small forces: eighty in Kaunas, sixty-five in Vilnius, twenty-six in Panevezys, twenty-six in Siauliai, and thirty in the Vilnius district. Apart from this, the German security police employed motorized police units and police battalions made up of Estonians, Latvians, and Ukrainians. The 9th and 16th German SS police regiments were active in south-eastern Lithuania from 1943 as well. However, the core of the security forces that fought against the partisans and controlled the area consisted of Lithuanian police under the control of the Headquarters of the Lithuanian Liaison Officer for Police (Stab des Litauischen VerbindungsOffiziers fiir die Schutzmannschaft des Einzeldienstes), whose commander was Vytautas Reivytis, a graduate of the Berlin Police School who was attached to the

headquarters of the Order Police. The Lithuanian police force (Litauische Schutzmannschaft des Einzeldienstes) was represented in all twenty-two Lithuanian districts, had its own infrastructure, and numbered 4,034 policemen in August 1943; a quarter of them had seen police service 1n pre-war Lithuania, though nearly all had served in the pre-1940 Lithuanian army. In addition, there was a category of paid auxiliary policeman (desoldete Hilfsschutzmann), of whom there were 1,636 in August 1943. Che category of unpaid auxiliary policeman (unbesoldete Hilfsschutzmann) was much larger, made up of 7,769 auxiliaries who received arms only during operations. 3 Report of the Kestutis partisan group for 1943-4 in the Siauliai district: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 5o1,

fo. 155. 94 Bubnys, Vokieciy okupuota Lietuva, 101.

Soviet Resistance and fewish Partisans in Lithuania 353 They formed the core of the self-defence units opposing Soviet partisan and AK attempts to raid Lithuanian villages in the south-east of the country. Additionally, there were twenty-three Lithuanian police battalions, which listed about 8,000 men and 300 officers on 1 March 1944.°° The Lithuanian Security Police (Saugumas), which had been subordinated to the German Security Police and the SD, had 886 security and criminal police officers.?°

Even the collaborationist Lithuanian forces exceeded the Soviet resistance groups several times over. However, these forces had a high rate of desertion and other disciplinary problems. For example, the Lithuanian police battalions listed on 1 March 1944 counted 2,300 deserters.?’ According to data from 6 January 1944, out of 5,734 policemen in the Lithuanian Schutzmannschaft, 257 had deserted and

964 were under arrest.?® |

The police forces consisted predominantly of members of Lithuanian nationalist organizations. During the Second World War, the Lithuanian nationalist underground supported the theory of struggle against two enemies, the Germans and Soviets, but did not engage in active combat against the Germans, concentrating their efforts instead on propaganda and preparing to fight the Soviets if they came back after Germany’s defeat. This meant that contact or negotiations with Soviet Lithuanian partisans, even in theory, was unlikely. The partisans did not waste time on negotiations with the major Lithuanian nationalist organizations. They were mostly interested in getting on their side the Lithuanian police and ‘local troops’ of General Povilas Plechavicius, who had been recruited by the Germans as the basis for a Lithuanian army in the spring of 1944, were under the command of Lithuanian officers, and were initially intended by the Germans to be used against Soviet and

Polish partisans. The first attempts to lure the police to their side came in the summer of 1943. Zimanas wrote that they had managed to establish contact with one police station, but the Germans had arrested some of the policemen. He mentioned in his report that in two other localities the police were members of nationalist organizations and none wished to desert.?? An order issued by Snieckus on 25 May 1944 sought to provoke tension between ‘Lithuanian nationalists’ and Germans, and thus to involve Lithuanians in an armed struggle against the Germans. He ordered the Soviet partisans not to allow the Germans to disarm the Plechavicius units, but to agitate among them and try to purge them of anti-Soviet officers.!°° However, the order came too late, as the period from 15 to 21 May 1944 was when Plechavicius’s

Lithuanian local troops were disbanded and disarmed after refusing to go to the western front. The officers at the troops’ headquarters were arrested and sent to the Salaspils concentration camp in Latvia. A majority of the 14,000 troops deserted, only to join later the Nationalist partisan movement after the Soviet entry into 95 LCVA, f. 3777, ap. 58, b. 265, fo. 110. 96 Bubnys, Vokieciy okupuota Lietuva, 93.

97 LCVA, f. 3777, ap. 58, b. 265, fo. 110. 98 bid. 105. 99 Zimanas, letter to Snieckus, 13 Aug. 1944: LYA, f. 1, ap. 1, b. 437, fo. 73. 100 A. Snieékus, decree, 25 May 1944: LYA, f. 51, ap. 1, b. 1, fo. 5.

354 Saritnas Liekis Lithuania in the summer of 1944. Only a fraction, around 3,000 men, were sent to serve in flak units on the western front. The only known ‘recruitment success’ of the Soviet Lithuanian partisans arose out of an incident in which the commander of the Lithuanian company at Starlygiai, ~ Senior Lieutenant Vladas Slapelis, was wounded and captured by partisans from the Vilnius group with the help of fighters from the Markov brigade of Belarusian partisans. After talks between the NK VD operative Jonas VildZitinas and the head of the Northern Party Committee, Sumauskas, the officer agreed to join the partisan unit and to try to persuade the men from his Starlygiai company to follow him.!°! He wrote letters trying to convince them, but his comrades believed that Slapelis was being coerced to agitate them into partisan hands. The negotiations lasted for several days. The partisans did not get more ‘new converts’, and Slapelis’s commanding officers did not manage to release him or exchange him for captured partisans. During the negotiations, his battalion commander maintained that ‘I will not let Lithuania go to the Germans or the Bolsheviks’.!°* Even Plechavitius regretted that his officer had fallen into the ‘gang of Jewish lads’.1°° The outcome, a recruitment success of sorts, was the creation on 25 May 1944 of the Vytautas unit under the command of Slapelis, with twenty-six people drawn from Plechavi¢cius’s units

and the police. , The overall relationship between the partisans and the local population was prob-

lematic. Soviet historiography traditionally maintained that everyone except the class enemies of Soviet rule and traitors voluntarily supported the Soviet Lithuanian

partisans, though all this took place against a background of mutual suspicion. However, setting aside disciplinary problems, the greatest challenge for the Soviet partisan movement in its relations with the local population came from self-defence forces organized in the villages by the Lithuanian police and made up of unpaid policemen (unbesoldete Hilfsschutzmdanner).

The newspaper Afeztis published an announcement on 21 September 1943 about the organization of self-defence in villages to counter Polish and Soviet partisan influence. ‘The proclamation describes an agreement between the adviser of the Lithuanian civil government Petras Kubilitinas, the General Commissar of Ostland Theodor Adrian von Renteln, and the head of the German SS and police concerning the founding of self-defence units in Lithuania’s districts. There were plans to set up the units by 1 October 1943.1°° However, the idea proved ineffective as the Nazis considered it too dangerous to arm villagers in an unpredictable situation in which contributions were being exacted and mobilizations were taking place in the country. Von Renteln was criticized over this agreement by Heinrich Himmler and Gottlieb Berger, the head of the policy division of the Reich’s Ministry of the Occupied 101 S. Apyvala, Sakalai broleliai (Vilnius, 1961), 214. 102 Response of the battalion commander: LY A, f. 60, ap. 1, b. 1, fo. 79.

103 Tbid. 104 Report of the Vytautas unit: LYA, f. 58, ap. 1, b. 1, fo. 3. 105 Bubnys, Vokieciy okupuota Lietuva, 121.

Soviet Resistance and Jewish Partisans in Lithuania 355 Eastern Territories.!°° As a result, the Nazis basically boycotted the supply of weapons to the groups, which was consequently implemented only to the extent that the Lithuanian police made efforts to legalize those weapons that were already in the

hands of the population. The units were made up mainly of unpaid policemen, poorly armed with Soviet trophy rifles, who were not properly disciplined and were inhibited by all the deficiencies of self-made forces. Reliable statistics for the selfdefence units are non-existent, and information basically comes from reports of the Soviet partisans, as they were a strong point of irritation for the guerrilla fighters and the first line of defence for the occupying authorities. The self-defence units were very helpful in shielding the German authorities from the rage aroused in the local population by the unpopular punitive actions against the partisans and their supporters. The self-defence units became the only line of defence in a country where the Germans were loosening their control day by day and were not able to commit their forces to serious anti-partisan warfare.!°’ The confrontation was fiercest around the Rudniki forest. Villagers in south-eastern Lithuania lived in collectively maintained villages, not, as elsewhere in Lithuania, on farms. This proved to be a good precondition for organizing collective defence activities in the countryside. The partisans in the Rudniki forest were the largest contingent of guerrilla fighters in all of Lithuania. Poorly armed and requiring large quantities of supplies to maintain such a force, they were keen to hunt for weapons that were in the possession of the population. This became a constant activity in the region in late autumn 1943 and the spring of 1944. Killings in retribution were widespread on both sides. ‘There were reported cases of punitive partisan expeditions against local villagers. During the Nazi occupation, there were a number of instances when Lithuanian settlements were burnt down, and their inhabitants either perished in the fire or were shot.!9° This destruction by the Nazis reached its largest scale 106 R. Zizas, ‘Vietiné savisauga (savigyna) Lietuvoje naciy Vokietijos okupacijos metais (1941—-1944)’,

Genocidas ir rezistencyja, 11 (2002), 75. 107 Tbid. 74. 108 Uzusaliai (12 Sept. 1941): forty-eight people killed. Svencionys (20 May 1942): 100 people killed. Ferma (8 Sept. 1943): the village was burnt down and its inhabitants deported. Lazdenai (11 Sept. 1943): the village was burnt down and its inhabitants deported. Druziliai (11 Sept. 1943): the village was burnt down and its inhabitants deported. Sarkiskes (30 Sept. 1943): the village was burnt down and its inhabitants deported. Milhiinai (13 Oct. 1943): four people killed. Slapekiai (13 Oct. 1943): the village was burnt down and its inhabitants deported. Laucitinai (13 Oct. 1943): the village was burnt down and its inhabitants deported. Gumbas (9 Apr. 1944): forty people killed. Kernave (9g Apr. 1944): four people killed. Pagrazupys (13 Apr. 1944): four people killed. Inkleriskés (14 Apr. 1944): fifteen people killed. Inkleriskes (13 May 1944): sixteen people killed. Plunksnoéiai (16 May 1944): the village was burnt down and its inhabitants deported. Pirciupiai (3 June 1944): 119 people killed.

356 Sariinas Liekis when 119 people were burnt alive on 3 June 1944 in Pirciupiai. On the other hand, Soviet partisans destroyed the Kanitikai and Bakaloriskes settlements, where selfdefence units were in conflict (in Kanitkai they were apparently backed by the AK) with Soviet partisans. Thirty-five people were killed in Kanitikai, and seventeen

in Bakaloriskes. Most of the buildings there were burnt down and cattle were slaughtered.

The psychological and military intimidation of the farmers did bring some results. Resistance to the partisans was highly ineffective because the partisans, as a rule, limited their activities to confiscating weapons, clothing, and foodstuffs. ‘There were some incidents of fatalities; however, it was more often the case that a peaceful solution to the confrontation would be found. The campaign to disarm the villagers brought some results too. A report from 1945 indicated that the Rudniki forest partisans had acquired 527 rifles and eleven machine guns with 10,000 bullets from the enemy (the lion’s share coming from village self-defence units).!°% This made an important contribution to the military strengthening of the Soviet Lithuanian partisans and made the survival of the movement possible up until June 1944 and the arrival of the Soviet army. No one expected that discussions on the nature of the guerrilla warfare and the legacy of the Second World War in Lithuania would become a controversial talking point at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Yet it has become an important focal point for building nationalist narratives on all sides—Lithuanian, Polish, and Jewish—in trying to find meaning in the deeds of the partisan fighters in the Rudniki forest. 109 Zizas, ‘Vietiné savisauga (savigyna) Lietuvoje naciu Vokietijos okupacijos metais’, 86.

he Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and

the Fate of Lithuanian Jewry, 1941-1945 THEODORE R. WEEKS IN RECENT years, serious research into the history of Lithuanian Jewry has expanded significantly. And yet there remains much that we do not know—and far more that is not widely known or accepted among the broader Lithuanian populace—about the tragic (and by far best-researched) final chapter in the history of Jews in Lita.! The present chapter aims less to present radical new factual findings than to examine and analyse previous scholarship with one main question in mind: what were the key differences between the formation, existence, and destruction of the Kaunas and Vilnius ghettos, and what can these differences tell us about relations between Lithuanians and Jews in these terrible years? In order to understand the specific cases of Kaunas and Vilnius, a certain amount of background information is indispensable but the main focus here will be on the two largest ‘Lithuanian’ cities in this period.

BACKGROUND: POLES, LITHUANIANS, AND JEWS, IQI9Q~1939 Jewish ‘Lithuania’ (Hebrew Lita, Yiddish Lite) was a large territory without precise boundaries. Certainly Vilnius and Kaunas belonged in this territory but so, too, could cities as far away as Smolensk and Suwatki. In the eighteenth century this entire region formed part of the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth, and after 1795 until the First World War the territory was ruled by the Russian empire. After 1918 Jewish Lithuania was divided up between the newly created (or ‘resurrected’) Lithuanian, The research for this chapter was carried out in great part at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the author wishes to express his thanks to USHMM for its support of his work. The chapter was also improved by the comments of members of the UC Berkeley graduate student krouzek.

1 Place names in eastern Europe present a great source of confusion and irritation to writers and readers alike. Here I will use the present-day accepted forms ‘Lithuania’, ‘Vilnius’, and ‘Kaunas’ for convenience. As will be noted, this usage certainly does not amount to an acceptance that ‘Vilnius’ was a ‘Lithuanian’ city in this period.

358 Theodore R. Weeks Polish, and Soviet states.* This division was crucial for the later fate of Lithuanian Jewry as it forced on them the need to declare a loyalty to one state (and conversely, against all others). Worst of all, by the end of the Russian Civil War and Soviet—Polish War a pervasive sense of Jewish sympathy for the Soviet Union was well established.? The First World War really only ended in this region 1n 1920 and in a sense only in 1922, when the city of Wilno (Vilnius) was officially annexed by the Republic of Poland.* For nearly the next two decades, the lives of Jews in Kaunas and Vilnius

would follow quite different paths. The independent Lithuanian state had been declared on 16 February 1918 in Vilnius, though soon the mainly hostile Polish pop-

ulation of the city forced the Lithuanian authorities to Kaunas, the ‘provisional’ capital of the small and insecure state up to 1939 (every Lithuanian constitution claimed Vilnius as the ‘real’ capital). In Kaunas, Jews were at first treated very well indeed, and the Kaunas government went out of its way to woo them, allowing broad cultural autonomy and even appointing a minister for Jewish affairs. A proclamation of August 1919 referred to the Jewish ‘nation’ and guaranteed Lithuanian citizens of Jewish nationality the free use of Jewish languages in all state institutions, respect for Jewish religious laws, proportional representation for Jews in elected bodies, and autonomy in cultural, educational, social, and religious institutions (with government support and the right to tax the Jewish community for specific internal needs).°

The Lithuanian government’s policy of Jewish autonomy went beyond that of any other European state. In Poland, in contrast, the government very ungraciously acquiesced to demands at the Paris Peace Conference to respect minority rights and in practice often did not keep its promise.® More disturbing still, the chaotic period after Germany’s defeat and the ‘Treaty of Riga (March 1921) was punctuated by a number of pogroms, some carried out by Polish troops. Long-time Vilnius resident and chronicler Khaykl Lunski described 1919 as a year of epidemics and famine,

even worse than the war years. In 1914, Lunski noted, one often heard cries and weeping, but by 1919 the misery and exhaustion was so great that no one could even cry any more.’ Hirsz Abramowicz describes almost total desolation under Soviet 2 For an excellent overview, see D. Levin, ‘Lithuania’, in G. D. Hundert (ed.), The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, 2 vols. (New Haven, 2008), i. 1068-76. For more detail, D. Levin, The Litvaks: A Short History of the Jews in Lithuania, trans. A. Teller (Jerusalem, 2000).

3 On such accusations and anti-Jewish violence in the post-1918 period, see e.g. F. M. Schuster, Zwischen allen Fronten: Osteuropdische FJuden wahrend des Ersten Weltkrieges (1914-1919) (Cologne,

2004), 436-49 and passim. ;

4 'T.R. Weeks, ‘Vilnius in World War I, 1914-1920’, in Uber den Weltkrieg hinaus: Knriegserfahrungen in Ostmitteleuropa, 1914-1921, special issue of Nordost-Archiv: Zeitschrift fur Regionalgeschichte, 17 (2008), 34-57. © E. Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (Bloomington, Ind., 1983), 219-21. For more detail, see S. Liekis, 4 State within a State? Jewish Autonomy in Lithuania, 1915-1925 (Vilnius, 2003). 6 On Poland at the Paris Peace Conference (from an outsider’s viewpoint), see M. MacMillan, Paris rg1g: Six Months that Changed the World (New York, 2001), 207-28. 7 Kh. Lunski, Mehagheto havilna’1: tipusim utselalim (Vilna, 1921), 7. On the author, best known as a

The Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and the Fate of Lithuanian Jewry 359 rule in April 1919: ‘Hunger was pervasive. It was against the law to buy or sell anything... Bread was difficult to find and a bow] of plain soup was also a rarity... anyone who was able to do so fled Vilnius.’® The Polish seizure of the city from the Bolsheviks in April 1919 was accompanied by a pogrom in which dozens were killed.® Worse yet, 1n the long run, was the frequent assumption by Poles that the Jewish population supported the Bolsheviks and communist rule.

While there is considerable evidence that many Vilnius Jews would have preferred that the city pass to Lithuanian hands, by 1920 few declared this position openly, probably for fear of antagonizing the Poles.!° For example, Jacob Wygodzki noted in his memoirs that the previously neutral policy adopted by Jews towards the occupying powers (from the Germans onward) needed to be changed to one of active support for the Lithuanians once they had taken Vilnius, and he spoke of the situation of Jews in ‘Kovno-Lita’ as ‘paradise’ (gan eden). However, once the city was back in Polish hands a much more cautious approach was again the order of the day.!! Earlier, before General Lucjan Zeligowski’s October 1920 occupation of Vilnius made a non-Polish future for the city very unlikely, Jewish leaders from Vilnius, including Wygodzki and Dr Tsemakh Szabad, had expressed support for a closer

connection to Kaunas and stated that all Lithuanian Jews should be brought together. Szabad was also quoted as arguing that while in Poland Jews would form a small minority among the Poles, Lithuanian Jews felt that they belonged to this land and wished to remain here (i.e. also under Lithuanian sovereignty). While these statements come from Lithuanian government sources and can be challenged as biased, it seems unlikely that they would have been invented (these documents were for internal use, not for propaganda purposes). In any case, the arguments for a closer connection to Kaunas were both logical and consistent with what we know about Jewish attitudes in Vilnius at the time. !* librarian at the Strashun Library, see H. Abramowicz, Profiles ofa Lost World: Memoirs of East European

Jewish Life before World War IT, ed. D. Abramowicz and J. Shandler, trans. E. Z. Dobkin (Detroit, 1999), 178. These memoirs were originally published as Farshvundene geshtaltn (Buenos Aires, 1958), 261—325 (sections on the First World War and aftermath). 8 Abramowicz, Profiles of a Lost World, 209.

3 Schuster, Zwischen allen Fronten, 445-8; report on Vilnius pogrom: Lietuvos centrinis valstybés archyvas, Vilnius (hereafter LCVA), f. 383, ap. 4, b. 31, fos. 25, 30-45. 10 In general on the Vilnius Jewish community during this period, see S. Kassow, ‘Jewish Communal Politics in Transition: The Vilna Kehile, 1919-1920’, YIVO Annual, 20 (1991), 61-01. 11 One sign of Wygodzki’s support for the Lithuanians was the fact that he agreed to serve as Minister

of Jewish Affairs in the Lithuanian Taryba (‘Council’, a proto-government set up in 1918 during the

German occupation), without, however, leaving Vilnius: Y. Vigodski [J. Wygodzki], In shturm (zikhroynes fun di okupatsye-tsaytn) (Vilna, 1926), 199-200. Wygodzki does admit that the Lithuanians made mistakes in Vilnius, including a tendency to favour Lithuanians for state jobs and an overly hasty

attempt to introduce the Lithuanian language in the city (p. 203). See also S. Liekis, ‘On Jewish Participation in the Taryba in 1918’, Lithuanian Historical Studies, 4 (1999), 62-82.

12 Lietuvos Ministeriy Kabinetas, Zydu reikalu ministerija, Spaudos skyrius, Biuletenis No. 13: LCVA, f. 923, ap. 1, b. 30, esp. fos. 7-8. This bulletin is not dated, but the file bears the date 1919.

360 Theodore R. Weeks By 1922, when Vilnius was officially incorporated into the Polish Republic and Polish—Lithuanian relations froze into a hostility that precluded even diplomatic relations or open borders (lasting to 1938), Jews in Vilnius and Kaunas—-prior to 1914 members of a larger ‘Litvak’ Jewish community—found themselves cut off from each other. Jews in Vilnius made up around one-quarter of the city’s population in this period, and while economically the city never recovered from the war, the inter-war decades were remarkable for their cultural richness.!?° A recent study has argued that relations between Poles and Jews in Vilnius were on the whole better than elsewhere in Poland; while this argument may be a bit too optimistic, certainly one should not overemphasize tensions or hostility.!4

For inter-war Kaunas we have much less information. Speaking broadly, however, it seems clear that at least two processes had a significant impact on Jews living there. First of all, by the end of 1920s and even more by 1939, a sizeable

Lithuanian-speaking Jewish community had developed (in 1918 a Lithuanianspeaking Jew had been quite rare). Second, and more negatively, the Lithuanian geovernment moved away from its initial pro-Jewish policies, abolishing Jewish autonomy by the mid-1920s and after the 1926 coup emphasizing ethnic Lithuanian nationalism. However, it should not be forgotten that the Lithuanian strong man, Antanas Smetona, was no antisemite; he consistently opposed anti-Jewish measures that were proposed by more extreme elements.!° While much more research needs to be done on the topic, it seems that antisemitic sentiment did rise significantly in Lithuania in the inter-war period, but with rare exceptions the government opposed measures that would have restricted Jews’ legal rights and certainly did not sponsor anti-Jewish violence or intimidation. With increasing numbers of ethnic Lithuanians

receiving secondary and higher education, however, the Lithuanian state and economy decreasingly ‘needed’ Jewish specialists in the 1930s. In an atmosphere of

increasing nationalist sentiment, symbolized in Lithuania by two proto-fascist organizations, the Iron Wolf (Gelezinis vilkas) and the Riflemen’s Union (Sauliy sajunga), Jews in Lithuania might feel uneasy about their future, but not directly threatened.!° 13 J. Lestschinski, ‘Wilna, der Niedergang einer jiidischen Stadt’, fuidische Wohlfahrtspflege und Soztalpolittk, 2 (1931), 21-33; M. Dmitrieva and H. Petersen (eds.), fudische Kultur(en) im Neuen Europa: Wilna, 1915-1939 (Wiesbaden, 2004). 14 J. Wolkonowski, Stosunki polsko-zydowskie w Wilnte 1 na Wilenszczyénie, 1919-1939 (Bialystok, 2004). 15 L. Truska, ‘A. Smetonos valdzios politika zydy atzvilgiu (1927—1940)’, Lietuvos aukstujy mokykly mokslo darbat: Istorija, 5g—60 (2004), 67-81.

16 ‘There is no completely adequate account of Jewish—Lithuanian relations in the inter-war period. For different aspects of this complicated issue, see R. Puisyte and D. Stalitinas (eds.), Zydy gyvenimas Lietuvoje / Jewish Life in Lithuania (Vilnius, 2001), 111-42; L. Truska, Lietuviai ir Zydat nuo XIX a. pabaigos iki 1941 m. birzeho: Antisemitizmo Lietuvoje raida (Vilnius, 2005), esp. 89-206; and L. Truska and V. Vareikis, Holokausto prielaidos: Antisemitizmas Lietuvoje XIX a. antrojt puse—1g4r1 m. birgelis / The Preconditions for the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism in Lithuania, Second Half of the roth Century—fFune 1941 (Vilnius, 2004).

The Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and the Fate of Lithuanian fewry 361 Without wishing to go into the details of the traumatic events of September 1939 to June 1941, a few facts must be noted.!” The attack by Nazi Germany, and two weeks later by its ally the Soviet Union, destroyed the Polish state and sent thousands of Jewish refugees east and north, including to both Kaunas and Vilnius. On 28 October 1939 the Soviet Union officially handed over Vilnius to the Lithuanian republic, to the jubilation of the Lithuanian public. From that point onward, the Lithuanian authorities would adopt measures to make their capital (Vilnius) more

Lithuanian—which in practice meant less Polish. In 1940 Soviet pressure on Lithuania (and other Baltic countries) resulted in rigged elections on 14 July fora ‘People’s Parliament’; not quite three weeks later Lithuania was ‘accepted’ into the Soviet Union. The period of 1940-1 traumatized the Lithuanian population, and their anger at the loss of independence found a convenient scapegoat: the Jews. To be sure, there were noticeable numbers of Jews among the supporters of the new Soviet power, which from a Jewish point of view was surely the lesser of two evils.1®

For many Lithuanians, however, it seemed that Jews had betrayed their responsibilities as Lithuanian citizens by co-operating with the new Soviet authorities. However one explains it, there seems no doubt that antisemitic sentiments among Lithuanians grew sharply in this first year of Soviet occupation.!?

SUMMER I194I The Nazi invasion launched in the small hours of 22 June 1941 easily destroyed the

organs of Soviet power in Lithuania within a few days. The Red Army seemed totally unable to put up any resistance; Lithuanian soldiers who had been drafted into the Soviet army often deserted. At the same time, Lithuanians launched an uprising against the retreating Red Army, both venting their fury for the repressions and arrests of the past eleven months and hoping to show the Nazis that the Lithuanians should be treated as an ally, not an occupied people.?? Already on 17 On this period, see L. Sabaliiinas, Lithuania in Crisis: Nationalism to Communism, 1939-1940 (Bloomington, Ind., 1972); and R. J. Misiunas and R. ‘Taagepera, The Baltic States: Years of Dependence, 1940-1990 (Berkeley, 1993).

18 Indeed, a distinguished historian of Lithuanian Jewry used precisely that metaphor in his book about this period: D. Levin, The Lesser of Two Evils: European Jewry under Soviet Rule, 1939-1941, trans. N. Greenwood (Philadelphia, 1995). 19 Again, much more work needs to be done on Lithuanian attitudes in the crucial period from the mid-1930s to the Nazi invasion of June 1941. Meanwhile, see S. Liekis, 7939: The Year that Changed Everything in Lithuania’s History (Amsterdam, 2010); L. Truska, ‘The Crisis of Lithuanian and Jewish Relations (June 1940—June 1941)’, in Truska and Vareikis, Holokausto prielaidos, 173-208. For an overview of the entire period in Vilnius, see T. Weeks, ‘A Multi-Ethnic City in Transition: Vilnius’s Stormy Decade, 1939-1949’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 47 (2006), 153~-75.

20 The historical discussions of this uprising are very unsatisfactory, seemingly more interested in whitewashing any possible Lithuanian involvement in anti-Jewish violence than in presenting a balanced picture. With that caveat, one may glean some useful information from the following works: V. Rimkus, Lietuviy sukilimas Vilniuje 1941 m.: Is asmenisky prisiminimy ir isgyvenimy (London, 1969); A. M.

362 Theodore R. Weeks 23 June Radio Kaunas announced the formation of a provisional government consisting mainly of Christian Democrats. Lacking an army, effective police force, and legitimacy, the provisional government had mainly symbolic force, hoping to gain some kind of autonomy from the Nazis. Instead, the Germans treated the Lith-

uanian provisional government as inconsequential but also prevented it from exercising power, even forbidding the publication of its laws. The real power was held by the Germans, who set up the administrative unit Ostland on 17 July encom-

passing territory from the three Baltic republics and some parts of Belarus. Lithuanian territory was administered from Kaunas as Generalbezirk Litauen. On 5 August, after six weeks of existence and under German pressure, the Lithuanian provisional government dissolved itself, though most offices and police forces in

Generalbezirk Litauen, including Vilnius, continued to be staffed by ethnic Lithuanians.?! The collapse of Soviet power in Lithuania upon the Nazi invasion was amazingly

swift. On the first day of the war, both Kaunas and Vilnius were bombed by the Luftwaffe; German soldiers were in both cities two days later. Survivors recall a panic wave among Jews; many attempted to flee eastward, but all trains were packed

with refugees, communists, and soldiers. Others continued eastward on foot but were turned back at the Soviet border. Still others managed to get on trains which were destroyed by Nazi strafing. Nearly all Jewish memoirs also mention the enthusiastic reception given the Nazi troops by the Lithuanian populace and the widespread violence by Lithuanians against Jews.7 The issue of Lithuanian collaboration during the Nazi occupation and most especially the role of Lithuanians in the murder of Lithuania’s Jews remains a controversial one.”? Patriotic accounts like those of Rimkus and Budreckis (see n. 20) wish to portray the Front of Lithuanian Activists (Lietuviy aktyvistu frontas; LAF) as a nationalist, anti-Soviet, but not antisemitic group. They object in particular to the accusation that LAF members participated in the murder of Jews. We lack a serious

monograph on the organization but one should keep in mind that the LAF was indeed a patriotic/nationalist group but also an organization that included a broad Budreckis, The Lithuanian National Revolt of 1941 (Boston, 1968); A. Damusis, Lithuania against Soviet and Nazi Aggression (n.p., 1998). More serious but more general is A. Bubnys, Nazi Resistance Movement in Lithuania, 1941-1944, trans. V. Arbas (Vilnius, 2003).

21 L. Truska, Lietuva 1938-1953 metais (Kaunas, 1995), 98-105. 22 See e.g. H. Holzman, ‘Dies Kind soll leben’: Die Aufzeichnungen der Helene Holzman, 1941-1944, ed. R. Kaiser and M. Holzman (Frankfurt am Main, 2002), 12-15; A. Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, ed. M. Gilbert, trans. J. Michalowicz (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 3-7; N. N. Shneidman, Jerusalem of Lithuania: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Vilnius. A Personal Perspective (Oakville,

Ont., 1998), 43-8 ; G. Shur [H. Suras], Evrei v Vil’no: Khronika 1941-1944 gg. (St Petersburg, 2000), a8. For two serious overviews of the issue, see Y. Arad, “Che Murder of the Jews in German-Occupied

Lithuania (1941-1944)’, and A. Bubnys, “The Holocaust in Lithuania: An Outline of the Major Stages and their Results’, both in A. Nikzentaitis, S. Schreiner, and D. Stalitinas (eds.), The Vanished World of Lithuanian Fews (Amsterdam, 2004), 175-203; 205-21.

The Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and the Fate of Lithuanian Jewry 363 variety of individuals. Thus many LAF members may indeed have opposed violence against Jews. And it should be pointed out that the Nazi administration officially dissolved the LAF (driving it underground) as early as September 1941. However,

both Polish and Jewish accounts place this organization squarely in the centre of anti-Jewish persecution. Quite aside from the issue of one organization, however, is the broader issue of Lithuanian antisemitism and attacks on Jews in the immediate aftermath of the German attack, that is before Nazi control had been established in these areas. In a joint article, Saulius Suziedélis and Christoph Dieckmann have stated starkly: “The persecution and killing of the Jews began within hours of the Nazi invasion of Lithuania. By the end of June . . . Jews already constituted a conspicuously large number .. . of civilians killed.” The authors also mention, as do memoirs, the widespread and egregious public humiliations and physical attacks to which Jews were subjected.24 Attacks on Jews in the chaotic first weeks after 22 June are mixed up with revenge against real and imagined Soviet collaborators. Attacks on Jews often took place with no political overtones, as in the most notorious incident, the beating and murder of dozens of Jews at the Liettikis garage in central Kaunas on 27 June 1941. While both Germans and Lithuanians were involved in this atrocity, there is no evidence that the pogrom was organized or initiated by Germans. The most shocking aspect of the garage beatings and murders is that they took place in full sight of passers-by and

no one—neither members of the public nor officials—intervened to help the victims.*° While one can hardly fault civilians for not opposing armed thugs and criminals, the fact that nothing was done as Jews were beaten and killed—over a number of hours—does indicate either a profound weakness of the Lithuanian civilian authorities or a lack of interest in preventing violence against Jews. As German control was further strengthened, thousands were arrested as Jews, communists, or both. Most of those arrested—some 5,000 in all—had been shot at the Seventh Fort outside Kaunas by 6 July.2© Thousands of others remained in jails and in the forts that surrounded Kaunas. In mid-July the Kaunas ghetto was already taking shape and all Kaunas Jews were being forced to move there by mid-August. The situation in Vilnius in late June and July 1941 was quite different from that in Kaunas in many respects. The Germans arrived in the city on 24 June and set about organizing their administration. There were no large-scale attacks on Jews in Vilnius, possibly because of the larger numbers of Jews in the city (since September 1939 its population had shot up with refugees, many of them Jewish), the relatively 24 S. Suziedélis and C. Dieckmann, ‘The Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jews during Summer and Fall of 1941: Sources and Analysis’, in C. Dieckmann and S. Suziedeélis, Lietuvos Zydy persektojimas tr masines Zudynes 1941 m. vasara ir rudent / The Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian

Jews during Summer and Fall of rg41 (Vilnius, 2006), 99. 4° Garagas: Aukos, budeliat, stebétojat, ed. S. Vaintraubas (Vilnius, 2002), collects numerous eyewitness accounts as well as commentary. 26 This is the figure given by Dieckmann and SuzZiedélis, Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jews, 139.

364 Theodore R. Weeks small number of Lithuanians, and the uneasy position of Poles, who still constituted

the majority of the population.*’ Throughout the period, indeed from late 1939 onwards, the city administration remained largely Lithuanian; memoirs such as that of Herman Kruk refer frequently to Lithuanian policemen. As early as 4 July the Germans demanded that a Judenrat (Jewish council) be formed; two days later all Jews were ordered to wear the Star of David. On 10 July Jews were prohibited from

appearing on the main city-centre streets (Wielka, Niemiecka, Trocka, Zawalna, Mickiewicza).2° Despite the increasing numbers of laws against Jews, no ghetto was actually declared in Vilnius until early September.??

TWO GHETTOS: KAUNAS AND VILNIUS Kaunas As we have seen, orders forming the Kaunas ghetto went out as early as mid-July 1941. Jews in Kaunas were commanded to move to the boundaries of the ghetto by 15 August or face severe penalties. The ghetto was located in the quarter of Slobodka (or Vilijampole, the Lithuanian designation) on the edge of Kaunas across the Neris

river from the city centre, in a poor area that was short on modern infrastructure (paving, electricity, sewers).2° Now this ghetto was to be home for the 37,000 Kaunas Jews as well as many refugees. This number is, of course, very imprecise, as many Jews had managed to flee in the confused weeks after the Nazi invasion, and more still had been arrested, executed, or murdered. In any case, the housing and infrastructure available in Slobodka was grossly inadequate for the population that would now be moved there. The creation of the ghetto was preceded by the appointment of a Jewish Council 27 Y. Arad, ‘The Concentration of Refugees in Vilna on the Eve of the Holocaust’, Yad Vashem Studies, 9 (1973), 201-14. 28 H. Kruk, The Last Days of the Ferusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939-1944, ed. Benjamin Harshav, trans. Barbara Harshav (New Haven, 2002), 46—60. For an insightful comparison of Kruk and Emanuel Ringelblum as chroniclers of ghetto life, see S. D. Kassow, ‘Vilna and Warsaw, Two Ghetto Diaries: Herman Kruk and Emanuel Ringelblum’, in R. M. Shapiro (ed.), Holocaust Chronicles: Individuahzing the Holocaust through Diaries and Other Contemporaneous Personal Accounts (Hoboken, NJ, 1999), 171-215.

29 For a contemporary Nazi German overview of ‘Judenghettos im Baltikum’, focusing mainly on ‘Wilna, Kauen, Kedahnen’ (Vilnius, Kaunas, Kédainiai) but with a broader historical overview, see LCVA, f. R-1421, ap. 1, b. 233 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC (hereafter USHMM,), microfilm 1999.A.0105, reel 13).

30 For an idiosyncratic but valuable short discussion of the Kaunas ghetto, see K. Schlogel, ‘Der Grundriss des Ghettos von Kowno’, in id., /m Raume lesen wir die Zeit: Uber Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolittk (Frankfurt am Main, 2006), 117-22.

31 For a list of the members of the Council of Elders with their position on the council and home addresses (in Lithuanian), see LCVA, f. R-973, ap. 2, b. 4, fo. 5. This file also contains excerpts from orders issued by the council from 17 August 1941 forward. This file and others of the Kaunas ghetto police are available on microfilm at the USHMM, 1998.A.0073, reel 28.

The Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and the Fate of Lithuanian Jewry — 3:65

of Elders (Altestenrat).21 The head of this council was the respected physician Elkhanan Elkes, who possessed an excellent knowledge of the German language (he

had received his medical degree from the University of Konigsberg and later counted among his patients the German ambassador in Kaunas). Elkes was also a man widely respected by both religious and secular Jews; he expressed his vehement unwillingness to accept the position heading the council and only gave way after a number of prominent Jews begged him to sacrifice himself for the good of the Jewish

community. In sharp contrast to the later head of the Vilnius ghetto, Jacob Gens, one is hard pressed to find in the memorr literature any negative comments about the personality and actions of Elkes.°” On 15 August 1941 the ghetto boundaries were sealed up; henceforth any Jew caught outside the ghetto without special permission was subject to severe punishment, including the death penalty. However, the borders of the ghetto were never hermetically sealed. For one thing, the relatively large size of the ghetto (at the beginning, some two kilometres by one kilometre) and a fairly flimsy barbed-wire boundary in some places allowed a fair amount of (illegal) trade with the outside. For another, every day work crews left the ghetto and, while bringing in food or information was strictly forbidden, it happened nonetheless. The ghetto had its own police force which had the unsavoury task of carrying out the Nazis’ orders. Public announcements of regulations—for example to keep streets and courtyards clean,

maximum prices for foodstuffs, and so on—were issued in three languages (Lithuanian, Yiddish, and German) and signed by the ‘Chairman of the Council of Elders of the Jewish Ghetto Community in Vilijampole’.?° Nearly as soon as the ghetto had been established, the process of ‘liquidation’ of

the population began. On 18 August some 500 well-educated ghetto residents received an invitation from the Gestapo to report for office (archive) work. They were told to bring a small suitcase, as the work might keep them away for several days. Some 530, mainly well-dressed young men, showed up and were taken away and subsequently shot in the Fourth Fort. For some time afterwards, the ghetto residents hoped for their return. This pattern was repeated several times: the promise of work or of mere ‘relocation’, the spiriting away of a group of people, followed by a total silence about their fate. On 4 October the ‘Small Ghetto’ with its hospital was brutally liquidated, and the hospital was set aflame with its patients and personnel inside. An even larger ‘selection’ was carried out at the end of October when the entire ghetto population was ordered to assemble on Democrats’ Square. By the end of October, around one-third of the ghetto’s population had been ‘selected’ (some 32 A moving and very personal account of this figure is given by his son Joel Elkes, Values, Belief and Survival: Dr. Elkhanan Elkes and the Kovno Ghetto (London, 1997).

33 For examples of such orders, see LCVA, f. R-973, ap. 2, b. 1, fos. 150-4 (USHMM, microfilm 1998.A.0073, reel 28). 34 The Ninth Fort has become the symbol of Nazi murders, but it was only one of several forts around Kaunas that were used for mass murders. See the similar but not identical illustrated documentary pamphlets by O. Kaplanas, Devyaty1 fort obvinyaet (Vilnius, 1964), and id., 1X fortas kaltina (Vilnius, 1970).

366 Theodore R. Weeks g,200 individuals) and marched away. They were soon shot at the Ninth Fort.?4 Thus by the end of 1941 the Kaunas ghetto’s population was down to around 18,000

individuals. The German authorities repeatedly emphasized, as they would after every mass deportation, that there would be no more Aktionen, and that every hardworking individual in the ghetto had nothing to fear.?°

By the end of 1941, few Lithuanian Jews outside the main ghettos (Kaunas, Vilnius, Siauliai) remained alive. To survive, some Jews who had evaded the mur-

derous attacks of the German-led execution squads fled into the ghettos.°° Compared with the horrors of 1941, the following year seemed calm and even hopeful. To be sure, no one could feel truly safe, huge difficulties in everyday life (especially getting enough to eat and remaining warm in the winter) remained, and the Germans continued to issue if not murderous, then petty regulations that made life miserable. For example, on 27 February 1942 it was announced that all books ‘regardless of content or language’ had to be handed over.?’ On 24 July all pregnancies among Jewish women were forbidden under pain of death. Despite these brutal measures, for most Jews 1942 at least provided hope: the Germans had not taken Leningrad and Moscow, the Americans had joined the war against Germany, and Kaunas ghetto workshops were producing vital equipment (gloves, uniforms, even toys for German children) and providing labour for the construction of the Aleksotas military airport.?° Despite the seeming calm, executions and beatings took place every day, as well as deaths from overwork and malnutrition. The Germans made it clear and continually stressed that through hard work, the inhabitants of the Kaunas ghetto could hope to survive. The testimony of survivor On the atrocities at the different forts, see I. Ehrenburg and V. Grossman, The Complete Black Book of Russian fewry, trans. and ed. D. Patterson (New Brunswick, NJ, 2002), 314-26. 35 On the setting up of the ghetto and events of autumn 1941, see Holzman, ‘Dies Kind soll leben’, 61— 7, 79-92; Tory, Surviving the Holocaust, 13-61; Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto (Boston, 1997), 44—

54 (including photographs and documents); S. Ginaite-Rubinson, Resistance and Survival: The Jewish

Community in Kaunas, 1941-1944 (Oakville, Ont., 2005), 47-68; S. Ganor, Light One Candle: A Survivor's Tale from Lithuania to Jerusalem (New York, 1995), 92-167. An excellent detailed map of the Kaunas ghetto appears at the beginning of Rabbi E. Oshry, The Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry, trans, Y. Leiman (New York, 1995). A unique diary of the Kaunas ghetto, originally written in Lithuanian— very unusually among the memoir literature—but first published in Hebrew is T. Lazerson-Rostovsk,

Yomanah shel tamara: kovnah, 1942-1946 (Tel Aviv, 1975), Lithuanian edition T. Lazersonaite, Tamaros dienorastis (Vilnius, 1997).

36 On the fate of Lithuanian Jews in the provinces, see Dieckmann and Suziedelis, Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jews, 142-77, and documents on pp. 187— 271; A. Bubnys, “The Holocaust

in the Lithuanian Province in 1941: The Kaunas District’, in D. Gaunt, P. A. Levine, and L. Palosuo (eds.), Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust: Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Bern, 2004),

283-312; Y. Arad, ‘The “Final Solution” in Lithuania in the Light of German Documentation’, Yad Vashem Studies, 12 (1976), 234-72; A. Eidintas (ed.), Lietuvos Zydy zudyniy byla: Dokumenty tr straipsniy rinkinys (Vilnius, 2001).

387 A. Faitelson, Heroism and Bravery in Lithuania, 1941-1945 (Jerusalem, 1996), 102-22. 38 On the ghetto economy, see Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto, 125-48; L. Garfunkel, Kovnah hayehudit behurbanah (Jerusalem, 1959), 225—30.

The Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and the Fate of Lithuanian Jewry 367 Zev Birger is typical of such attitudes: “The labor done in the [Kaunas] ghetto workshops was important for the German military, and we harbored the false hope that as long as we did good work, we would not be transported.’?? Ghetto inhabitants

laboured in workshops within the ghetto and on construction sites outside it. Anyone living in the ghetto who failed to carry out the ‘duty to work’ could expect severe punishment. Complicated arrangements were made between the Nazi administrators of the ghetto and private companies or agencies of the German army or civilian administration covering numbers of workers to be delivered, conditions, and pay (most of which, of course, was absorbed by the German administration with a small amount allotted to the ghetto authorities and, finally, a minuscule payment given to the actual workers).?° The year 1943 was remarkable in several ways. It began with the clear German defeat at Stalingrad (Field Marshal Paulus surrendered on 31 January) and by the

end of the year Hitler’s ally Mussolini had been removed from power and the German troops had been pushed back (the siege of Leningrad was lifted on 27 January 1944). During 1943 it became clear that the Nazis would not, barring a miracle, win the war. The Germans clearly recognized this fact—or feared that it was so—as 1s shown by their efforts to destroy evidence of the mass murders already

committed at the forts surrounding Kaunas. For the Kaunas ghetto itself, the most

important event of the year was its transformation (or reclassification) on 15 September from a ‘ghetto’ to a ‘concentration camp’.*! This reclassification took place at the same time as the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto and many feared that Kaunas would soon share its fate. Initially, however, the Germans sought to calm those remaining in Kaunas by increasing the food ration. In the next months deportations to Estonia and to a smaller labour camp on the outskirts of the city reduced the population of the ghetto to around 8,000, some 4,600 of whom continued to labour for the German war effort.* In 1943 the question on everyone’s mind was whether they could possibly survive to witness the German defeat. The increased strength (and proximity) of Soviet forces was reflected in increased partisan actions in Lithuania in which many Jews 39 Z. Birger, No Time for Patience: My Road from Kaunas to Jerusalem. A Memoir of a Holocaust Survivor (New York, 1999), 51.

40 Various correspondence about Kaunas ghetto inhabitants employed in a variety of tasks can be found in LCVA, f. R-973, ap. 2, bb. 52 and 53 (USHMM, microfilm 1998.A.0073, reel 40). This correspondence is almost entirely in Yiddish and Lithuanian, only rarely in German or with German translations.

41 For German documents contrasting ghetto and concentration camp administration (not just in Kaunas), see Einsatz im ‘Reichskommissariat Ostland’: Dokumente zum Volkermord im Baltikum und in

Werftruffland, 1941-1944, ed. W. Benz, K. Kwiet, and J. Matthaus (Berlin, 1998), 115-220, 264-71. 42 Ehrenburg and Grossman, Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry, 318—33; C. Dieckmann, ‘Das Ghetto und das Konzentrationslager in Kaunas’, in U. Herbert, K. Orth, and C. Dieckmann (eds.), Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Entwicklung und Struktur, 2 vols. (Gottingen, 1998), i. 439—

71. On the news that the Vilnius ghetto was being liquidated and on worries about the new designation of Kaunas as a ‘concentration camp’, see Tory, Surviving the Holocaust, 462-93.

368 Theodore R. Weeks took part. However, as Sariinas Liekis has pointed out, few partisans were active before summer 1943; he also cautions us against accepting later heroic memoirs, often published during Soviet times, at face value.4? Only young, healthy, and Lithuanian- or Polish-speaking Jews could, practically speaking, join the partisans. Sara Ginaite-Rubinson, to name one example, describes her own activity as a ‘ghetto resister’ (living in the ghetto, but in contact with resistance groups) in 1943 and her final departure from Kaunas at the end of 1943 to join the partisans.*4 The worsening military situation of the Germans and the hope of surviving their defeat caused many Jews in Kaunas to dig shelters in the basements of their dwellings, the so-called malines. This activity became even more frantic after the ‘Children’s Action’ in March 1944 when some 1,200 children and old people were taken away.

By now everyone knew what fate awaited those ‘selected’ or ‘relocated’ and the Germans and their Ukrainian helpers made no effort to mask their brutality.*° After March 1944, it was clear that the days of the Germans and of the Kaunas concentration camp inmates were numbered. The question was, who could hold out longest? Some Jews managed to escape the ghetto and find hiding places with Lithuanians. Others, as we have seen, joined the partisans. Some, like the young Harry (Hershke) Gordon, who could speak Lithuanian fluently, escaped from the ghetto but after various adventures found it necessary to return, ending up at Auschwitz by the end of the war.4® For most, however, and in particular for more traditional Jews who could not blend in with the Lithuanian population, escape from the ghetto was not a viable option. ‘They continued to work, to hope, and to build

hiding places. Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, one of the very few to survive in a maline, describes the complicated process of digging a bunker deep enough to afford protection, assuring a supply of food and water, rigging up a ventilation system that would not be easily discovered from the surface, and then the long, tense wait for liberation—or something much worse.*/ The long-awaited end began on 8 July 1944, as the Red Army approached. By this point some 6,100 individuals remained alive. Some were placed on barges and sent downriver, but the majority were marched across town to the railway station for transports headed west. ‘The Germans set fire to the entire ghetto 1n order to smoke out or kill those hiding in malines. Most ended up at the concentration camp Stutthof (outside Gdansk); when that camp was liquidated many were killed, but some were evacuated further west, finding themselves in Germany at the end of the 43 S, Liekis, ‘Jewish Partisans and Soviet Resistance in Lithuania’, in Gaunt, Levine, and Palosuo _ (eds.), Collaboration and Resistance during the Holocaust, 459-78. The Germans seldom used the word ‘partisans’, preferring ‘Banditen’. For reports on ‘Bandit’ activity in 1944, see LCVA, f. R-1399, ap. 1, b. 103 (USHMM, microfilm 2000.209). 44 Ginaité-Rubinson, Resistance and Survival, esp. 85—124. 45 Holzman, ‘Dies Kind soll leben’, 251-6. 46 H. Gordon, The Shadow of Death: The Holocaust in Lithuania (Lexington, Ky., 1992), 106—42. 47 Oshry, Annihilation of Lithuanian fewry, 134-51. When Oshry and his companions were rescued, they had survived in the ma/ine for thirty-eight days.

The Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and the Fate of Lithuanian fewry 369 war. William Mishell (Mishelski), for example, ended up at Dachau, where he was liberated by the Americans in late April 1945.4° Kaunas was liberated by the Red Army on 1 August 1944, and at that point the very few Jews who had survived in Kaunas crept out of their hiding places.*?

Vilnius The fate of the Jews in Vilnius mirrored, in some ways, that of their co-religionists in Kaunas. In many other respects, however, their experience was much different. The general outline of restrictions, ghettoization, liquidations, false calm, more deportations and murder, ending with the final liquidation of the ghetto, was similar to the situation in Kaunas, with the important difference that the redesignation of the Kaunas ghetto as a ‘concentration camp’ in September 1943 occurred just as the Vilnius ghetto was being dissolved altogether. Two other key differences must be kept in mind: the Jewish community in Vilnius was considerably larger than that in Kaunas (some 80,000 Jews, including refugees, were living in Vilnius in June 1941); and the Vilnius ghetto was set up in the very centre of the city. It also needs to be remembered that the Jews of Vilnius rarely knew Lithuanian, the most useful lancuage for dealing with petty officials and policemen. As already mentioned, while there were no large-scale acts of violence against the Jews of Vilnius (like the Liettikis garage incident in Kaunas), the Germans quickly issued a series of laws forbidding Jews from using telephones, radios, or trains, from appearing on the main streets of Vilnius, and even from walking on the pavement. As elsewhere, in Vilnius Jews were ordered to affix yellow stars to their exterior clothing.°° In August a ‘contribution’ of 5 million roubles was demanded of the Vilnius Jewish community.°! The actual order to move into a ghetto came a bit later than in Kaunas, after an incident generally called the ‘Great Provocation’. On 31 August in the middle of the city, at the corner of Szklanna and Wielka (Stikliy and Didzioje) streets, there was an incident involving Lithuanian ‘partisans’

(i.e. pro-Nazi irregular soldiers) who entered a building, fired shots from the window, then rushed out, claiming that Jews had fired at German soldiers standing nearby.°* Two young Jews were hauled out of the building and shot, and the ‘provo48 On Mishell’s experiences after being evacuated from the Kaunas ghetto, see W. W. Mishell, Kaddish for Kovno: Life and Death in a Lithuanian Ghetto, 1941-1945 (Chicago, 1988), 255-345.

49 On the liquidation of the Kaunas ghetto, see Holzman, ‘Dies Kind soll leben’, 266-74; Hidden Fistory of the Kovno Ghetto, 203-17. 50 Failure to wear the yellow star (i.e. attempting to pass as non-Jewish) figures prominently in the arrest records of Jews, especially in the early period: LCVA, f. R-689, ap. 3, bb. 68, 74, 241, 275, 284 (USHMM, microfilm 1999.A.0108, reels 4, 8). At this point failure to wear the yellow star was punished by a fine of 1,000 roubles or thirty days’ arrest. It should be noted that these are records of the Vilnius city police, kept entirely in Lithuanian. 51 LCVA, f. R-1421, ap. 1, b. 525 (USHMM, microfilm 1999.A.o105, reel 24). 62 A printed trilingual proclamation accusing two Jews of shooting at German soldiers and forbidding

all Jews from leaving their dwellings between 3 p.m. and 10 a.m. was posted on the streets on 1 September: LCVA, f. R-614, ap. 1, b. 695 (USHMM, microfilm 1999.A.o108, reel 17).

370 Theodore R. Weeks cation’ gave the Germans an excuse for evicting Jews living nearby and sending them

to Lukiskes prison (they would subsequently be deported to Ponary and murdered there).°? Several thousand Jews were thus arrested and taken away, along with, as Kruk notes, about 2,000 Poles. ‘The remaining Jews, some 40,000 in number, were forced into two ghettos on 6 September. Around 29,000 Jews crowded into the large ghetto (‘First Ghetto’) to the west of Niemiecka (Vokieciy) Street, and around 11,000 were assigned to the small ghetto (“Second Ghetto’) on the other side of the street, in the most traditional Jewish quarter of town, where the Old Synagogue was located.°4 As in Kaunas, the first months of the ghetto’s existence were extremely traumatic. By forcing Jews out of their homes and relocating them in the ghetto, the Germans destroyed neighbourhood solidarity and lessened the possibility of resistance. As elsewhere, a ghetto police was set up, serving several purposes at once: passing the dirty work of everyday surveillance and violence onto Jews, breaking down solidarity

! within the ghetto, and keeping order.°° In September and October it was clear that the Germans were also ‘culling’ the Jewish population (though of course never openly admitting the fate of those taken away), reducing the number of mouths to feed, and 1n particular targeting the young and elderly for arrest and deportation. Mass arrests in October essentially emptied

the Second Ghetto, which was liquidated on 21 October 1941.°© Further Aktionen took place in the ghetto in the following months, with the Germans issuing

yellow and pink passes that protected the bearer from arrest, then hunting down anyone without the needed document. Thus by late 1941 only around 20,000 Jews remained in the Vilnius ghetto, about one-third of the pre-war Jewish population. With the initial killing over, the ghetto settled into an uneasy period of ‘stabilization’.°’ As elsewhere, the Germans emphasized that by working hard the Jews would earn the right to live on. The view that the best survival strategy required Jews to

, make themselves useful to the Germans was shared by the head of the Vilnius ghetto from 1942, Jacob Gens. By contrast with the situation in Kaunas, there was no continuity of Jewish leadership or any universally respected figure like Elkhanan Elkes.°® 53 On the ‘Great Provocation’, see Y. Arad, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the fews in Vilna in the Holocaust (Jerusalem, 1980), t02—5; M. Dvorzhetski [ Dworzecki], Yerushalayim dlite in kamf un umkum: zikhroynes fun vilner geto (Paris, 1948), 51-7; Shur, Evret v Vil’no, 44-6; Kruk, Last Days of the Ferusalem of Lithuania, 81-93. Kruk, unlike the others, mentions a German soldier being wounded in the arm. 54H. Minczeles, Vilna, Wilno, Vilnius: La Jérusalem de Lituanie (Paris, 1993), 383-6; Kruk, Last Days of the Ferusalem of Lithuania, 95-110.

55 For some documents on the duties of the Vilnius ghetto police, see LCVA, f. R-1421, ap. 1, bb. 34, 36, 38 (USHMM, microfilm 1999.A.0105, reel 2). The latter document (b. 38) is a list in Russian, dated 1948 and noted ‘translation from German’, giving the names of ghetto policemen. 56 Arad, Ghetto in Flames, 133-42; Shneidman, Jerusalem of Lithuania, 59-61. 5” Dvorzhetski speaks of the ‘stabilizatsye epokhe fun geto’: Dvorzshetski, Yerushalayim dhte in kamf un umkum, 140-5.

°8 More generally on the differences between the Kaunas and Vilnius Jewish ghetto administrations,

The Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and the Fate of Lithuanian fewry 371 The widely respected social activist Dr Jacob Wygodzki had served on the earlier Judenrate (the first had been formed in early July 1941 shortly after the Germans occupied the city) but was arrested on 24 August and died shortly thereafter (he was 86).°% After the death of Wygodzki there was no single individual who could serve as

a rallying figure and inspiration in the way that Elkes did in Kaunas. Into this gap stepped Jacob Gens. Very unusually for Jews in Vilnius, Gens spoke Lithuanian well as he had been an officer in the Lithuanian army. He was not from the city, coming originally from Siauliai and arriving in Vilnius only after the city passed to Lithuanian

control. In the past he had been affiliated with the revisionist Zionist Betar movement; his instincts were that of a military man. It should also be noted that his wife

was Lithuanian and it would probably have been possible for him to hide his Jewishness, but he chose not to. When the ghetto police was formed in September 1941, Gens was selected as its head. His organizational skills and military bearing impressed the Germans; when they abolished the Vilnius Judenrat in July 1942, he was named ‘ghetto representative’, essentially the highest Jewish official in Vilnius.©° Kruk, as a Bundist, despised Gens and even wrote sarcastically of him as ‘II Duce of the ghetto’.©! For all his authoritarianism and lack of intellectual polish, however, Gens did try—as best he could according to his own judgement of the situation—to preserve the lives of as many Jews as possible. For this reason he maintained (cool) relations with the ghetto underground, all the while making clear that he would strike hard against them if he felt that their activities endangered the ghetto as a whole. In September 1943, when Gens recognized his own failure, he allowed himself to be arrested by the Gestapo (though he had been warned in advance and could have escaped) and died at their hands. We know far more about the Vilnius ghetto than about Kaunas, possibly because of the central place of Vilnius in Jewish memory.®? In some ways the cultural traditions of Vilnius Jewry continued even in this dark period. For example, the Germans were very interested in preserving some of the most remarkable books from Vilnius’s see D. Porat, “The Jewish Councils of the Main Ghettos of Lithuania: A Comparison’, Modern Judaism,

13 (1993), 149-63; Y. Arad, ‘The Judenrate of the Lithuanian Ghettos of Kovno and Vilna’, in Y. Gutman and C. J. Haft (eds.), Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe, 1933-1945 (Jerusalem, 1979), 93-112.

°9 Minczeles, Vilna, Wilno, Vilnius, 380-3; Arad, Ghetto in Flames, 95-8; Kruk, Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, 52-5, 67—70, 80.

6° The best overall discussion of this controversial figure is N. N. Shneidman, The Three Tragic Heroes of the Vilnius Ghetto: Witenberg, Sheinbaum, Gens (Oakville, Ont., 2002), 103-31. See also Arad,

Ghetto in Flames, 125-7, 284-91, and passim. Soviet historiography denigrated him as a ‘Lithuanian bourgeois nationalist’ and ‘fascist’, e.g. Masinés Zudynés Lietuvoje, 1941-1944: Dokumenty rinkinys, i

(Vilnius, 1965), 172 n. } 61 Kruk, Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, 148 (entry for 1 Jan. 1942).

62 On the Vilna myth, see S. Kassow, ‘The Uniqueness of Jewish Vilna’, in L. Lempertiené (ed.), Larptautines mokslines konferencyos ‘Vilmaus Zydy mtelektualinis gyvenimas tkt Antrojo pasaulinio karo’ medziaga / Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference ‘Fewish Intellectual Life in Pre-War Vilna’

(Vilnius, 2004), 147-61.

372 Theodore R. Weeks libraries (especially the renowned Strashun Library). The so-called Einsatzstab Rosenberg hired a number of Jews, among them Herman Kruk, to go through the books and sort them. While doing so, the Jewish staff attempted to spirit away and hide important material.°? Kruk described his misgivings at this task in this way: ‘Kalman|owicz]| and I don’t know if we are gravediggers or saviours. If we succeed in keep[ing the treasure] in Vilna, it could be our [great ser|vice to some extent, but if they take the [Strashun] library away, we [will have] had a hand in it.’ Cultural life in the Vilnius ghetto was amazingly rich. A recent collection of the posters announcing lectures, concerts, theatre performances, and the like fills a book of several hundred pages.©° Schools were created for the children who had survived the murderous Aktionen of 1941, public lectures on a variety of topics were organized, and—most controversially—musicians and actors were called upon to entertain the ghetto inhabitants. Kruk’s reaction at the opening of the theatre was one of personal offence: ‘you don’t make theater in a graveyard’; he surmised (not quite fairly) that the theatre had been allowed by the ghetto police for the purpose of ingratiating themselves to the Germans.®® Most ghetto residents, however, appeared grateful for any kind of distraction from the grim reality surrounding them. Theatre performances began in January 1942 1n a hall on Konska (Arkliu) Street; concerts

were also held here. A ghetto library was set up at 6 Strashun Street, opening its doors not two weeks after the creation of the ghetto. By October 1942 the library had lent out over 100,000 books.®” Religious life also continued, despite the ever more stringent restrictions coming from the Nazi authorities and the disruption caused by the loss of so many rabbis and traditional Jews in 1941.6® Despite the horrendous conditions, Vilnius ghetto physicians strove to preserve life. One doctor remembered using the ghetto hospital not only as a treatment centre for sick people, but as a shelter for the homeless (in particular for orphaned children) 63 On the ‘paper brigade’, as it was called, see D. E. Fishman, Dem Feuer entrissen: Die Rettung jiidischer Kulturschatze in Wilna (Hannover, 1998). Two further members of the paper brigade (on and off) have left memoirs about the ghetto and their experiences as partisans, which is how they survived: A. Sutzkever, Vilner geto, 1941-1944 (Buenos Aires, 1947); Sh. Katsherginski [S. Kaczerginski], Khurbn

vilne (New York, 1947). 64 Kruk, Last Days of the Ferusalem of Lithuania, 212. 65 Vilniaus geto afisos: Albumas-katalogas (Vilnius, 2006). For the original posters, see LCVA, f. R1421, ap. 2, bb. 1-221 (each file contains one poster). These files—unfortunately photographed in black and white only—are available on microfilm at USHMM, 1999.A.0105, reel 32. 66 Kruk, Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania, 174 (entry for 17 Jan. 1942). 67 J. Sobol, ‘The Passion of Life in the Ghetto’, in E. Zingeris (ed.), Atminties dienos / The Days of Memory (Vilnius, 1995), 247-50. For reports (in Yiddish) on the activities of the cultural section in the Vilnius ghetto, see LCVA, f. R-1421, ap. 1, bb. 226, 246-70 (USHMM,, microfilm 1999.A.o0105, reels

13—I4). ,

68 The Germans were also interested in religious life in Jewish Vilnius, at least from the historical

perspective, as reports on the ‘Stadtsynagoge’ and ‘Klausen’ (k/oyzn) show: LCVA, f. R-1421, ap. 1, b. 505 (USHMM, microfilm 1999.A.0105, reel 23). 69 S. Beinfeld, ‘Health Care in the Vilna Ghetto’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies,12 (1998), 66-08. Information on the ‘health section’ (folksgezunt) in the Vilnius ghetto can be found in LCVA, f. R-1421, ap. 1, bb. 199-207 (USHMM, microfilm 1999.A.0105, reel 13).

The Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and the Fate of Lithuanian Jewry 373

and a hiding place.°? Gens was very concerned that any rumour of infectious diseases in the ghetto would lead to its instant liquidation and during a typhus epidemic was constantly present in the hospital. The epidemic also provided an excuse to cordon off certain rooms in the hospital from German visitors, and at times these areas were also used—with Gens’s full knowledge—by members of the ghetto resistance. /° Another doctor wrote soon after the war about the specific diseases he had seen and attempted to treat in the ghetto: complications of the intestinal and urinary tracts, swellings of the legs and hands, scabies, impetigo, fleas (due to the overcrowding and lack of sanitation), tuberculosis, and typhus. Hunger caused or made worse a number of ailments; despite the existence of special public kitchens (for members of the Jewish Council and their families, for children, one kosher soup kitchen, and kitchens organized by the Zionists and the Bundists), everyone went hungry, and those without any illegal access to food would soon begin to starve. Despite the terrible

conditions, the hospital functioned to the end of the ghetto with its own pharmacy and wards for paediatrics and infectious diseases, and even teaching departments. ’4 The non-Jewish population of Vilnius could not help but notice the setting up of the Jewish ghetto in the middle of town; it was also a daily occurrence for groups of Jews to leave the ghetto to work in various enterprises. More research would be necessary to ascertain exactly which firms profited most from the use of Jewish slave labour, but lists drawn up by the Nazis give well over one hundred firms, ranging from chemical enterprises to luggage manufacturers, who used Jewish labour. Judging from the names of these firms—though this could be deceptive—they were mainly Lithuanian-owned or at least Lithuanian-fronted.’? In general, following the Nazi policy of favouring Lithuanians as future participants in the Nazi-led ‘New Europe’, Lithuanians held most administrative offices, including that of mayor, and Lithuanian names and companies dominate a typewritten telephone directory drawn up by the Nazi occupiers. ‘? Another way that local non-Jews profited from the misfortune of their Jewish neighbours was by taking over ‘abandoned’ Jewish property, ranging from real estate to bedding and pillows.’4 The hundreds if not thousands of forms labelled ‘Anmeldung—Pranesimas—Zawiadomienie’ in the archives document the transfer of formerly Jewish property either ‘temporarily’ (as a loan) or 70 A. Wajnryb, ‘Medizin im Ghetto Wilna’, Dachauer Hefte, 4 (1988), 783-115. Dr Wajnryb, a refugee from Warsaw, served as the head of the department of infectious diseases in the ghetto hospital. He survived and wrote these memoirs in Hebrew some forty years later. “1 M. Dvorjetski [Dvorzhetski], Le Ghetto de Vilna: Rapport sanitaire (Geneva, 1946), 35-44, 52-3, and passim.

“2 For details on the use of Jewish slave labour, see LCVA, f. R-614, ap. 1, b. 249 (USHMM,

microfilm 1999.A.o108, reel 3). , 73 LCVA, f. R-614, ap. 1, b. 307 (USHMM, microfilm 1999.A.0108, reel 3). “4 On confiscated Jewish property, Jewish property stolen by Lithuanians (and claimed by the Nazi authorities), and attempts to collect back taxes on confiscated Jewish real estate, see LCVA, f. R-614, ap. 1, b. 408, 409, 409a (USHMM, microfilm 1999.A.0108, reel 8); f. R-643, ap. 1, bb. 434, 750, 759 (USHMM, microfilm 1999.A.o108, reel 13); f. R-643, ap. 3, bb. 44, 198-200 (USHMM, microfilm 1999.A.0108, reel 2).

374 , Theodore R. Weeks permanently (by sale, apparently for rather favourable prices) to non-Jews. These forms are almost exclusively filled out in German or Lithuanian, though at times ungrammatically (a Pole trying to ‘Lithuanize’ himself?). In the memoir literature and historiography, the resistance movement in the Vilnius ghetto has received a relatively large amount of attention.’° This is only natural as many of the memoir writers survived because of their participation in the anti-Nazi underground and the partisan movement. And of course there is the psychological and political need to show Jews not only as victims but also as active resisters of evil. Abba Kovner’s famous—or infamous—manifesto to Vilnius Jews (despite his name, Kovner was a Vilner, though born in Sevastopol), ‘Let us not be led like sheep to the slaughter’, has sometimes been twisted into an accusation against the victims. Kovner’s intent was quite different: now (1 January 1942), he argued, we can see very clearly what was not so obvious earlier: ‘Ponar 1s no concentration camp. All were shot dead there. Hitler conspires to kill all the Jews of Europe.’“’ The Vilnius ghetto was both better and worse off than Kaunas 1n regard to resist-

ance. The location of Vilnius about a hundred kilometres to the east meant that contact with Soviet partisans (becoming important, as we have seen, only from summer 1943) was that much easier. However, the location of the Vilnius ghetto in the very centre of the city made any undetected escape from the ghetto that much more complicated. Gens was well aware of the underground organization—_the most

famous group being the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye (United Partisan Organization; FPO)—and even assured their leaders that ‘at the proper time’ he would make use of them. Meanwhile, however, Gens cautioned against any provocative or hasty actions that could push the Germans into fatal action against the ghetto as a whole. ‘® Gens’s unyielding position and growing unease with the underground is Shown by his insistence that the FPO’s head, Yitshak Witenberg, give himself up when the Gestapo sought him. Witenberg did turn himself in and, according to different stories, either died from poison given to him by Gens or was tortured to death by the Gestapo. ’? The FPO, now under the leadership of Abba Kovner, continued to operate until the very end of the ghetto.®° Himmler’s order of 21 June 1943 to close all ghettos and transfer any remaining 7 LCVA, f. R-614, ap. 3, b. 435, tomai iv (USHMM, microfilm 1999.A.0108, reels 13-14). “© The remarkable documentary film Partisans of Vilna (1986, directed by Joshua Waletzky) must also be noted here. Actual participants in the events of September 1943 appear in the film, including Abba Kovner. 77 Kovner, quoted in Arad, Ghetto in Flames, 231-2. Another memoir of the ghetto fights in Vilna, with a strong Betar-Zionist emphasis (though the author also participated in the FPO), is C. Lazar, Destruction and Resistance: A History of the Partisan Movement in Vilna (New York, 1985).

78 Shneidman, Jerusalem of Lithuania, 72-01. “9 Shneidman, Three Tragic Heroes, 43-64. 80 On the FPO and its members, see e.g. R. Margolis, ‘Pogrindiné antifaSistiné organizacija FPO Vilniaus Gete (1942—1943)’, in Zingeris (ed.), Atminties dienos, 296-311; ead., ‘V Vil’niusskom getto: Organizatsiya soprotivleniya’, in Zydy muziejus / Evreiski muzet / The Jewish Museum (Vilnius, 1994), gg—112. The author wrote her memoirs of the period in Polish: R. Margolis, Wspomnienta wilenskte (Warsaw, 2005).

The Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and the Fate of Lithuanian fewry — 375 prisoners to concentration camps took some six weeks to affect Vilnius directly. In August several transports destined for Estonia removed thousands of Jews, including Herman Kruk, from the ghetto. It was becoming clear that the end was near but the underground and Gens differed on strategy: the FPO held that they must strike now as the situation was desperate. Gens continued to hope for a reprieve and tried to put pressure on the underground in every way he could to avoid any provocative actions. On 1 September Jews were suddenly not permitted to leave the ghetto for work duties; all work was to be carried out within the ghetto. The FPO decided that the time to strike was at hand and set up a barricade at their headquarters at 12 Strashun Street. Approaching Germans were fired upon, calling forth massive retaliation by the

Germans.°! On 6 September the FPO decided that further resistance within the ghetto was suicidal and called on its members to leave the ghetto and join the partisans.

Gens was arrested and shot on 14 September. On 23 September the Vilnius ghetto was declared liquidated; remaining ghetto residents were loaded onto trucks and trains and deported, in part to Latvia, others to Estonia.°? The Vilnius ghetto was no more. A few words need to be said about the place where most Vilnius Jews met their

end, Ponary (in Lithuanian Paneriai). A suburb of Vilnius some seven miles from town, before the war Ponary had been a place for picnics and weekend outings. Already in July 1941, however, the Nazis had transformed Ponary into a centre for

mass killings, first of political opponents, then for the wholesale slaughter of Vilnius’s Jews.°° A unique witness to these murders was the Pole Kazimierz Sakowicz, who described the killings of Poles and Jews (at the hands of both Lithuanians and Germans) that he witnessed from his nearby dwelling. Sakowicz’s sober descriptions, not without contempt for ‘Jewish passivity’, show clearly that the large-scale murder in Ponary was no secret to the inhabitants of Vilnius.°4

COMPARISONS, CONCLUSIONS, MEMORY The memory of the Second World War remains strong in Lithuania, though knowledge (and public memory) of the Holocaust there is often overshadowed by the arrests, murders, and deportation to Siberia of ethnic Lithuanians in the post-1944 81 Shneidman, Jerusalem of Lithuania, 92-108; Dvorzhetski, Yerushalayim dlite in kamf un umkum, 466-74; M. Rolnikaite, ‘Paskutinés Vilniaus Geto dienos’, in Zingeris (ed.), Atminties dienos, 155-64; Arad, Ghetto in Flames, 420-40. 82 Ehrenburg and Grossman, Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry, 285—7; M. Balberyszski, Likwidaca getta wilenskiego (Warsaw, 1946).

53 It should be stressed that thousands of Poles and Lithuanians were murdered in Ponary too, but the largest numbers of victims were Jews. For somewhat Polonocentric, but still valuable, accounts, see H. Pasierbska, Wilenskie Ponary (Gdansk, 1996); M. Tomkiewicz, Zbrodnia w Ponarach, 1941-1944 (Warsaw, 2008). 84 Kk. Sakowicz, Ponary Diary, 1941-1943: A Bystander’s Account of a Mass Murder, ed. Y. Arad (New Haven, 2005). The diary was written in Polish but has not been published in that language. The original handwritten diary was discovered in the LCVA by Rachel Margolis.

376 Theodore R. Weeks period. Much has been done in recent years to fill in the ‘empty spaces’ left by one-sided Soviet historiography and the reactions to it. During the Soviet period, the sufferings of communists tended to be stressed above all, but the Jews were not entirely ignored. In a document collection published in 1965, among general documents on ‘the terrorization of inhabitants’ (avoiding mention of ethnicity) and the ‘Catholic Church’s collaboration with the Hitlerites’, there are sections on the ‘annihilation of the Jews’ in both Kaunas and Vilnius. Here the Jewish police are specifically called ‘helpers of the occupiers’; in a footnote Gens is described as a ‘fascist’. The main purpose of this collection appears to be the defamation of Lithuanian ‘bourgeois nationalism’ but at the same time to shift the present-day location of that ideology and murderous individuals to the west, thereby conveniently exculpating the present population of the Lithuanian SSR.®° The exact role of ethnic Lithuanians in the Holocaust remains a highly controversial and touchy subject. The fact that the Germans favoured the Lithuanians over all other ethnic groups (a fact that Polish memoir writers constantly stress) had the

inevitable effect that Lithuanians were far more involved in administration and repression than, say, Poles were in the Generalgouvernement.®*® The precise role of the Lithuanian police and so-called Hilfspolizet in actual mass murder is controversial, but it seems clear that the participation was considerable.®” On a broader level,

the memoir literature from Kruk to Holzman to Kaczerginski to Sakowicz makes frequent references to the hostility to Jews and even direct co-operation with the Nazi authorities of significant numbers of Lithuanians. ‘The Catholic Church in Lithuania was itself in a difficult position but the fact remains that while some individuals helped Jews, the Catholic Church did not openly encourage such behaviour.8°> However, one should also not neglect to mention the Lithuanians who risked 85 Masines Zudynes Lietuvoje, passim.

86 This is not to say that Poles did not at times co-operate with the Nazis, as J. T. Gross’s Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne (Princeton, 2001) has shown. See also K.-P.

Friedrich, ‘Collaboration in a “Land without a Quisling”: Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War IIT’, Slavic Review, 64 (2005), 711-46.

87 J. Matthaus, ‘Die Beteilung der Ordnungspolizei am Holocaust’, in W. Kaiser (ed.), Tater im Vernichtungsknieg: Der Uberfall auf die Somjetunion und der Volkermord an den Juden (Berlin, 2002), 166—

85; id., ‘Jenseits der Grenze: Die ersten MassenerschieBungen von Juden in Litauen (Juni—August 1941)’, Zettschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft, 44 (1996), 101-17; K. Stang, Kollaboration und Massenmord: Die litauische Hilfspolizet, das Rollkommando Hamann und die Ermordung der litauischen Juden (Frankfurt am Main, 1996). 88 The efforts of clerics to defend their behaviour (and that of the Church as a whole) are not entirely

convincing and sometimes stray into stereotyped anti-Jewish rhetoric (Jews as communists . . .). See e.g. V. Brizgys (former archbishop of Kaunas), Kataliky Baznycia Lietuvoje: Pirmoje rusyo kupacioje 1940-1941 m., vokieciy okupacijoje 1941-1944 m. (Chicago, 1977); J. Prunskis, Lithuania’s ews and the Holocaust (Chicago, 1979). 89 For passages from her diary, see Ehrenburg and Grossman, Complete Black Book of Russian fewry,

333-68. For the difficult relations between Lithuanians and Jews during the Nazi occupation, see S. Neshamit, ‘Lietuviy ir zydu santykiai vokieciy okupacijos metais’, and M. Erenburgas, ‘Naciy auku gelbejimo Lietuvoje specifika (1941—1944)’, both in Zingeris (ed.), Atminties dienos, 419-29; 431-41.

The Vilnius and Kaunas Ghettos and the Fate of Lithuanian Jewry 377 their own lives to help Jews, such as the doctor Elena Buivydaité-Kutorgiené.®° The issue of ‘collaboration’ is a difficult one which even in western Europe has only in recent decades become a widespread topic of interest and research. Soviet historiography, of course, denied widespread collaboration and pilloried those Lithuanians who did co-operate with the German occupiers as ‘bourgeois nationalists’, ‘fascists’, and the like—and usually noted that they took advantage of the arrival of the Red Army in 1944 to escape to the West.?° Some years ago Saulius Suziedelis published an article arguing that Lithuanian attitudes under Nazi occupation swung from initially positive (in great part because of anti-Soviet feeling) to negative, especially because of Nazi attempts to draft Lithuanians into labour and military units.

In part the Germans’ own clumsiness and offensive behaviour towards the Lithuanians doomed broader co-operation.?! Recently a number of important essays on this issue have appeared in English, Lithuanian, and German.?? Slowly the politics of silence embraced by the Soviet authorities and Lithuanian nationalists alike on Lithuanian antisemitism and the role of Lithuanians in the Holocaust is coming to an end. 90 See e.g. Gitlerovskaya okkupatsiya v Litve: Sbornik statei (Vilnius, 1966); J. Bulavas, Vokiskyujy

fasisty okupacinis Lietuvos valdymas (1941-1944 m.) (Vilnius, 1969). Very different but also downplaying Lithuanian collaboration with the Nazis is The USSR-German Aggression against Lithuania, ed. B. J. Kaslas (New York, 1973). More serious and even-handed contributions have appeared in recent years: A. Bubnys, Vokieciy okupuota Lietuva (1941-1944) (Vilnius, 1998); A. AnuSauskas and C. Laurinavitius (eds.), Lietuva Antrajame pasauliniame kare (Vilnius, 2007).

91 S. Suziedélis, ‘The Military Mobilization Campaigns of 1943 and 1944 in German-Occupied Lithuania: Contrasts in Resistance and Collaboration’, Journal of Baltic Studies, 21 (1990), 33-52.

92 See the essays by C. Dieckmann, S. SuZiedélis, M. McQueen, and E. Aleksandravitius in ‘Kollaboration’ in Nordosteuropa: Erscheinungsformen und Deutungen im 20. fahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 2006), 128-91; and the at times less scholarly but always interesting exchanges in Eidintas (ed.), Lietuvos Zydy Zudyniy byla, 353-727.

BLANK PAGE

‘To Transform Ourselves’ — Lithuania Looks at the Holocaust ELLEN CASSEDY IN THE LATE 1980s, as Lithuania moved towards independence from the Soviet Union, the country began to engage with its Jewish heritage and with the Holocaust. A new public discourse took hold. Through the publication of research, museum.

exhibits, memorials, educational curricula, and Jewish cultural activities, Lithuanians were afforded the opportunity to confront difficult truths about their | history. The way forward was not easy. Yet the leaders of the effort believed that if Lithuania was to become a mature nation, it was vitally important to face the past.

NEIGHBOUR TO NEIGHBOUR For nearly seven centuries, Jews and non-Jews in Lithuania lived side by side, mostly in peace. The city of Vilnius grew to be known as the ‘Jerusalem of the North’, and Kaunas, too, became a centre of Jewish culture and religious learning. By the twentieth century, about one-third of the occupants of Lithuania’s cities and about half of the residents of its towns were Jewish. On the eve of the Second World War, Lithuania’s Jewish population totalled more than 220,000 out of 2.8 million. ! Yet, while Lithuania was generally a hospitable place for Jews to live, nonetheless the Jewish and the non-Jewish cultures were separate and not especially friendly.

‘Lithuanian and Jewish neighbourhoods were close and familiar’, wrote Linas Vildzitinas, a founder of the House of Memory (Atminties namai), a Holocaust education organization, ‘but at the same time separated by a wall of different traditions, Ellen Cassedy is the author of We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust (Lincoln, Nebr., 2012). Some of the material in this essay appeared in different form in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal (an

imprint of Indiana University Press). The author is grateful to Mendy Cahan, Leonidas Donskis, Giedrius Kiaulakis, Regina Kopilevich, Indré Makaraityte, Snieguolé Matonieneé, Rita Puisyte, Saulius _ Suziedelis, Vytautas Toleikis, Irena Veisaité, and Emanuelis Zingeris for their generosity in speaking with her about Lithuania’s engagement with its twentieth-century past. Some of their comments are quoted in the text that follows. 1 Some estimates of Lithuania’s pre-war Jewish population are as high as 263,000. See ‘An OSS Report on Wartime Population Changes in the Baltic’, Lituanus, 27/3 (1981): .

380 Ellen Cassedy a lack of understanding, and superstitions.’* Snieguolé Matoniené, also a Holocaust educator, concurred: ‘We lived neighbour to neighbour for centuries’, she said, ‘but even so, it 1s hard for Lithuanians to think of Jews as “ours”. Jews were “others”.’° During the Second World War, a land of relative harmony became a place of uncommon brutality. Lithuania’s Jews were massacred with a swiftness and thoroughness unusual for even that bloody time. The long-standing alienation between cultures helped to lay the groundwork for the carnage. So did the upheavals of the period immediately before the war. In 1939, the Molotov—Ribbentrop pact allowed the Soviet Union to annex the Baltics. Soviet tanks moved into Lithuania the following

year, and along with the tanks came a rapid Sovietization of Lithuanian society. Schools, government institutions, and all aspects of civic life were upended. Thousands of Jews and non-Jews who were considered opponents of Soviet rule were deported to Siberia. Meanwhile, German propaganda flooded the region, blaming Jews for the Soviet takeover. These developments set the stage for the orgy of killing that followed the German

invasion in June 1941. Throughout the summer, special German forces—the Einsatzgruppen—swept through the countryside in search of communists and Jews.

Not far from the market squares of hundreds of Lithuanian towns, Jews were marched into the forests, shot, and hastily buried in mass graves. While it was usually Germans who issued the orders, in most cases Lithuanians pulled the triggers. In the cities of Vilnius, Kaunas, and Siauliai, thousands or tens of thousands of Jews were confined in ghettos. Some were forced to work as slave labourers. Most were eventually killed. By 1944, more than go per cent of Lithuanian Jews had perished.

The end of the Second World War did not bring peace to Lithuania. Among many non-Jews, the years after the war were remembered as being far more difficult than the war itself. By agreement among the Allies, the three Baltic countries became

Soviet republics. Tens of thousands of Lithuanians emigrated to the West. DeNazification proceeded apace. Some 50,000 Lithuanians were tried and convicted of crimes against the Soviet Union. Deportations to Siberia took place on a massive scale. A fierce guerrilla struggle erupted and lasted for eight years. Between 1940 and 1952, according to the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania

(Lietuvos gyventojy genocido ir rezistencijos tyrimo centras), one-third of the Lithuanian population was lost to massacre, war casualties, deportations, executions,

: and emigration. 2 L. Vildzitinas (ed.), Mano seneliy ir proseneliy kaimynai £ydat, ii (Vilnius, 2003), 255.

3 Matoniené was head of the Holocaust education department of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania (Tarptautineé komisija naciy ir sovietinio okupaciniy rezimy nusikaltimams Lietuvoje ivertinti).

4 The website of the centre cites the figure of 780,922 people lost: see . In an undated pamphlet titled The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazt and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania (ISBN 9955-9472-3-3),

the International Commission uses the larger figure of 1,078,185, citing I. Ignatavicius (ed.), Lietuvos natkinimas tr tautos kova, 1940-1998 (Vilnius, 1999).

‘To Transform Ourselves’: Lithuania Looks at the Holocaust 381

POST-WAR POLICIES Immediately after the war, Soviet Lithuania commemorated the murdered Jews with numerous rituals. Monuments were built at the massacre sites, and a Jewish museum opened in Vilnius. But by the beginning of the 1950s, government policy changed course, and official mention of Jews all but disappeared. The plaques at the mass murder sites were altered so that they no longer referred to the Jewish dead, but instead to ‘victims of fascism’ or ‘innocent Soviet citizens’. The Jewish museum

was closed down. Yiddish-language schools were shut and Yiddish presses destroyed. Jewish cemeteries were neglected or bulldozed, the tombstones used as construction materials. The silence about the Holocaust in Lithuania of the late 1940s was hardly unique. In the United States and western Europe, too, the wartime fate of the Jews disap-

peared from the public arena at that time, emerging again only after a lengthy ‘latency period’. Yet in Soviet Lithuania, factors other than those that produced the silence in the West were at play as well. One factor was Stalin’s ‘campaign against cosmopolitanism’, which targeted Jews. Beginning in the late 1940s, it continued until his death in 1953. Alongside that campaign was the post-war Soviet effort to unify a deeply fractured society. “The Soviets

were internationalists’, a student of Jewish history explained. By downplaying Jewish (and other) cultures and describing the Jewish victims as ‘innocent citizens’, she said, the authorities were seeking to fold Jews into the ranks of ‘all of us’. At the same time, they took pains to stress the ‘otherness’ of the Lithuanian killers, denierating them as ‘bourgeois nationalists’, ‘fiends’, ‘bastards’, and ‘outcasts’.° During the nearly fifty years of post-war Soviet rule, the suppression of Jewish culture was not total, and on occasion the reality of the Holocaust was brought into the open for all to see. Beginning in 1956, a Jewish amateur folk theatre, which on occasion presented Holocaust-related material, flourished in Vilnius; performances attracted audiences of up to a thousand. Memoirs by Jewish survivors were published. And in the 1960s, war crimes trials were held in several Lithuanian cities, garnering widespread publicity. The accused men were convicted of participation in the massacre of the Jews and condemned to death. Also in the 1960s, regional officials throughout Lithuania received orders to document the local history of the Holocaust. Region by region, they compiled eyewitness accounts of the wartime massacres. ‘When the killing was finished’, said one such statement recorded in the Rokiskis region, ‘[the killers] yelled “hoorah” three times in Lithuanian’ and tossed empty vodka bottles into the pit among the bodies. 5 With Regina Kopilevich, I examined the following documents in the archives of the Rokiskis Area Museum (Rokiskio krasSto muziejus) in the city of Rokiskis in north-eastern Lithuania: “The activities of the defenders of the people and the wicked deeds of the bourgeois nationalists in the Rokiskis region during and after the war’ (archive 28, file 5a) and ‘Atrocities of the bourgeois nationalists in the Rokiskis District in 1941-1944’ (archive 29, file 5b).

382 Ellen Cassedy At a series of solemn gatherings, community leaders and Jewish survivors bore witness and registered the mass murder sites in an official inventory.® After the 1960s, however, the wartime fate of the Jews once again sank into official obscurity. Between 1963 and 1988, Jewish religious objects in Vilnius were on view only at the Museum of Atheism that was installed in the Church of St Casimir. In the 1970s, the country’s Jewish heritage slipped further out of sight when Jews were allowed to emigrate. From a post-war peak of nearly 25,000, Lithuania’s Jewish pop-

ulation steeply declined. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, it had dropped to scarcely over 4,000.‘

FACING THE REAL SITUATION As the Soviet Union neared collapse, a cadre of officials, educators, and activists— Jews and non-Jews alike—began to venture into the hidden recesses of the past. ‘The process of facing the real situation, of getting to know the real numbers and

figures’ began in earnest, said Irena Veisaiteé, a Holocaust survivor saved by Lithuanian rescuers who became a leader of the effort to bring the facts into the open. She was a founder of the Open Society Fund-Lithuania and served as its chair between 1993 and 2000. The story of the war years began to be described in a new way, one that made the culpability of Lithuanians impossible to ignore. ‘The German occupation had been administered largely by local people, according to Ariinas Bubnys, a historian at the Lithuanian Institute of History. While it was Germans who organized the destruction of the Jews, “Germans comprised only 3.3% of the occupation administrative staff’, Bubnys wrote. The rest of the staff, well over 90 per cent, were Lithuanians.

The rules that were put forward by the occupying authorities—requiring Jews to wear yellow stars on their clothing, to walk in the street rather than on the pavement, to turn over their property, to move into sealed ghettos—were implemented for the most part by Lithuanian neighbours of the Jews.® The killing, too, was carried out mostly by local people. ‘Mass shootings were often led by German Gestapo officers’, Bubnys wrote, ‘but there were many small towns where people were murdered without direct German involvement.’ Even in the places where Germans were involved, it was local people who gathered the Jews of the region, guarded them, selected the mass murder sites, and readied the pits. © Rokiskis Area Museum, archive 29, file 5b, fos. 45, 48; archive 28, file 5a, fos. 170-3. ” For the peak figure, see Open Society Archives at the Central European University, Budapest, citing

‘Soviet publications of data from the censuses of 1959, 1970, and 1979’: . For the 2001 figure, see the website of the Department

of Statistics to the Government of the Republic of Lithuania: . 8 A. Bubnys, ‘The Holocaust in Lithuania: An Outline of the Major Stages and their Results’, in A. Nikzentaitis, S. Schreiner, and D. Stalitinas (eds.), The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews (Amsterdam, 2004), 215.

‘To Transform Ourselves’: Lithuania Looks at the Holocaust 383 Only after this ‘preparatory work’ had been completed did the Gestapo arrive to oversee the massacres themselves.” According to numerous characterizations, as these facts emerged, Lithuanians were astounded. ‘For Lithuanians, the Holocaust and the complicity of Lithuanians in the murder of Jews was an entirely new issue’, wrote Alfonsas Eidintas, former ambassador to

the United States, Israel, and other nations. When he himself visited the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, in 1994, ‘I was stunned’, he wrote. 1°

‘Even the intelligentsia was unprepared’, said Indre Makaraityte, a colleague of Matoniene’s at the International Commission. ‘Mass killings, and their neighbours did it!’

Not only non-Jews but even some Jews were surprised. A man whose father was a Holocaust survivor said he was shocked when he learned, in 1989, that Lithuanians acting on German orders had wiped out the Jewish community in his ancestral town. ‘I started shivering’, he said. ‘I did not quite suffer a nervous breakdown, but close to it. | couldn’t belveve that Lithuanians had slaughtered the Jews. The idea that Lithuanians killed my family members—it was nearly unbearable.’ How could people not have known? “The Holocaust in Lithuania was carried out very publicly’, Vildzitinas wrote, ‘with no attempt made to hide the crimes. . . Its witnesses were virtually all of the country’s population.’!+ Everyone saw. In the autumn of 1941, ‘the centres of Lithuanian cities and towns made every passerby’s flesh creep’, Eidintas declared in a speech to the Lithuanian parliament.

‘The unusual silence, no running children, closed shops, houses with smashed windows and broken window frames and nailed-down boards across the doors told the tale.’!* Yet fifty years later, Eidintas asserted, the tale told by the boarded-up houses had been thoroughly forgotten. Even allowing for the distortions and suppressions of the Soviet era, how could this ber ‘If you ask people about the silver spoons in their parlour—where are they from’, said Giedrius Kiaulakis, who worked with Vildzitinas in the House of Memory, ‘—they will say they don’t know. And in fact, some of them really don’t know. They

really have forgotten.’

‘People knew, but they didn’t know’, said Matoniene. The older generation did know, said her colleague Makaraityte. They remem_bered. “This one had a carpet from a Jewish house. That one wore a Jewish dress.’ 9 Ibid. 213. 10 A. Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust, trans. V. Arbas and E. Tuskenis (Vilnius, 2003), 394-5. 11 LL. Vildzitinas (ed.), Mano seneliy ir proseneliy kaimynai &ydai, i (Vilnius, 2002), 253.

12 A, Eidintas, ‘The Tragedy of Lithuanian Jews’, presentation at the Lithuanian Seimas (parliament), Special Session in Respectful Commemoration of the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Holocaust in Lithuania, 21 Sept. 2001, reprinted in Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust, 501.

384 Ellen Cassedy But as for younger people, in her view they had little or no knowledge of the Holocaust. Other educators declared that the truths were always there, even if unacknowledged. ‘Of course information about the Holocaust was available in the Soviet time’, said Vytautas Toleikis, who between 1999 and 2005 directed an organization called the Foundation for Educational Change. ‘Of course they know’, said Rtita Puisyte, an educator at the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum. ‘All generations know.’ ‘Everybody knew’, said Veisaite. “But it was not vivid.’

Vildzitinas offered an explanation. “The annihilation of Lithuania’s Jews... affected every member of this society’, he wrote. ‘Maybe it 1s precisely for that reason—the deep psychological trauma experienced at the time—that the massacre of the Jews, and the very life of the Jews in Lithuania, was as if erased from our collective conscience . . . But it doesn’t disappear, it becomes an unhealing wound.’!? After the war, however, the traumatic events of the Holocaust became ‘a tedious historical abstraction .. . It wasn’t “our” tragedy.’!4

Compounding Lithuanians’ aversion to facing the reality of the Holocaust, Vildzitinas wrote, was the official Soviet position that obscured that reality. ‘Psychological dissociation was reinforced by a lengthy post-war period’ in which ‘the Holocaust was not totally silenced, but Soviet ideology distorted its essence’.+° For many Lithuanians, the injustices of the Soviet era loomed much larger than those of the Nazi era. When independence came, they were eager to say aloud what could not be said during the Soviet era. They needed to air the history of the deportations that had affected thousands of families and to honour those who had fallen in the guerrilla struggle. Some who were consumed with telling the buried truths of

the Soviet era were hostile to the project of facing the truths of the Nazi era. ‘Confronting the Holocaust’, Vildzitinas wrote, ‘questions the martyr myths of a state which has just regained its independence, and demolishes idealized visions of , a national history. And thereby elicits a multitude of passions and contradictions, and incites defensive and aggressive reactions.’!® Fifty years under two regimes had created a tangle of resentments, hatreds, and conflicting perceptions of martyrdom. ‘Lithuanians were used to viewing themselves as victims’, said Matoniene, of the International Commission. “The notion that the Jews were the real victims seemed impossible.’ ‘Of course, everyone sees his own suffering first of all’, said Veisaite. “This doesn’t make for an easy dialogue.’

13 Vildzitinas (ed.), Mano seneliy ir proseneliy kaimynai Zydai, ii. 191.

14 Tbid. i. 253, 254. 15 Tbid. 16 Thid. 254.

‘To Transform Ourselves’: Lithuania Looks at the Holocaust 385 AWAKENING Yet despite resistance, discourse about the Holocaust began to move forward. In the

words of the writer Markas Zingeris, there came an ‘awakening from .. . a long slumber of mind, spirit and conscience’.!’ ‘Slowly’, said Makaraityté, ‘denial progressed to recognition.’ Saulius Suziedelis, a Lithuanian American historian, published a series of influential essays that urged Lithuanians to face the realities of the Holocaust. “The only way for Lithuanians to lighten the load of the difficult history of 1941’, he wrote, ‘is to embrace it. . . To admit that the country’s moral and political leadership failed in 1941, and that thousands of Lithuanians participated in the Holocaust, is one of the preconditions for Lithuania’s acceptance as a member of the trans-Atlantic com-

munity of nations.’!® ,

‘In our subconscious’, Eidintas wrote in 2003, ‘we all sense our moral responsibility for... what occurred .. . no matter that we might not have been born at the time.’!? ‘Confronting the reality of the Holocaust’, Vildzitinas wrote, ‘is a most serious test of the moral values and civic maturity of modern-day Lithuanian society.’ The effort to examine the truths of the past ‘is not a Jewish project’, Veisaité stressed. ‘It is a question for all of us in common. It is very important equally for Jews and for Lithuanians—because as long as you are hiding the truth, as long as you fail to come to terms with your past, you cannot build your future.’ ‘It is not for the Jews that we are doing this, and not for international relations’, said Makaraityte, of the International Commission. “This is for us. Our goal is to transform ourselves from a society of bystanders into an active civil society.’

One of the first acts of the newly independent government was to rebuild the steps leading to the Palace of ‘Trade Unions in the centre of Vilnius. Early in the post-war era, gravestones from the old Jewish cemetery had been used to build these steps. The new government also replaced the plaques at the mass murder sites. The new plaques made clear that the victims were Jews, killed by ‘Hitlerists and their local helpers’.

With the help of Britain’s Holocaust Educational Trust, hundreds of mass murder sites were clearly marked. In Vilnius, plaques inscribed in Lithuanian and Yiddish were installed on city streets to commemorate events important in Jewish history, including the Holocaust. ‘Here, on this spot’, read one, ‘stood the gate of iv M. Zingeris, ‘Scrambling out from the Abyss of Holocaust’, Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review, 8 (2001): . Zingeris was Research Coordinator for the Nazi Period at the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania. 18 §. Suziedélis, ‘The Burden of 1941’, Lituanus, 47/4 (2001): . 19 Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians and the Holocaust, 14. 20 VildzZiiinas (ed.), Mano seneliy ir proseneliy kaimynai &ydat, i. 254.

386 Ellen Cassedy the Small Vilna Ghetto. Through it, between 6 September and 29 October 1941, 11,000 Jews were driven to their deaths.’ Even before independence, Jewish community life had begun to flower, as exhibitions of Jewish art and artefacts were organized. In 1989, the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture reopened the Jewish museum, which grew to encompass several branches

under the name of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum (Valstybinis Vilniaus Gaono zydu muziejus). A Jewish secondary school opened its doors, a quarterly newspaper began publishing, clubs and social services sprang up, and a synagogue began to hold regular services. In 2001 and every few years thereafter, Lithuanian Jews and their descendants came to Vilnius from around the world to attend a World Litvak Congress. In 1995, Lithuania’s president, Algirdas Brazauskas, appeared before the Knesset in Israel and delivered a formal apology for Lithuanian collaboration with the Nazis. And in 2000, Lithuania’s bishops issued a statement apologizing for clergy who had

collaborated with the Nazis. ‘It pains us’, they wrote, ‘that a part of the Church’s children lacked love for persecuted Jews during World War II and did not use all possible means to defend them.’?! A second statement apologized for clergy who had collaborated with the Soviet secret police.

EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS A variety of educational projects got under way. At first, according to Toleikis, the impetus for focusing attention on Jewish heritage and the Holocaust came from Jewish and foreign organizations, but by the end of the first decade of independence the effort had become ‘Lithuanianized’. Toleikis wrote, “The impulses coming from society—pressure from the West did not play an important role here—were much stronger than elsewhere in eastern central Europe at the time.’** In 1998, President Valdas Adamkus established the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, whose stated mission was to conduct research so as to ‘fill in the existing

gaps in the modern history of Lithuania’; to stimulate the ‘process of historical justice and understanding . . . of the crimes of [the] Nazi and Soviet occupations’; and ‘to educate society . . . to inform citizens and students of all age groups about 21 For references to this apostolic letter, see S. Atamukas, “The Hard Long Road toward the Truth: On the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Holocaust In Lithuania’, Lituanus, 47/4 (2001), and Bridges:

Lithuanian American News Journal, 24/6 (2000): ; and, for the original Lithuanian version, the Lithuanian Bishops’ Conference website:

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Figure 1. The announcement in Hatsefirah, 22 Dec. 1897 (3 Jan. 1898), of the publication of Y. H. Zagorodski’s book on hygiene Hayenu ve'orekh yamenu, with an introduction, supplements, and amendments by Dr Gershon Lewin

| Dr Gershon Lewin: Pioneer of Public Health ASI

} ti gu | Figure 2. Dr Gershon Lewin in 1928

TT i, bee When the Russo-Japanese war broke out in 1905, Lewin was mobilized (because

Poland was part of the Russian empire) and sent to the Far Eastern front. He recorded his wartime observations and impressions of life in that remote region, sending letters to the Hebrew newspaper Hatsofeh, and later publishing this correspondence in book form. After the war, Lewin returned to the Jewish Hospital in Warsaw, and focused on fighting tuberculosis, especially among Jews. ‘To this end he published articles in the popular press, created brochures for distribution, and gave public lectures in many cities; in addition, he founded Brijus-Zdrowie, the Jewish Anti- Tuberculosis Society. War broke out again in 1914 and Lewin saw more military service. When Poland achieved independence after the First World War, Lewin volunteered in the new Polish army, achieving the rank of major. Finally demobilized and back at the Jewish Hospital, he became head of one of the departments of internal medicine, a prestigious post that he held until his retirement in 1938.

In 1912 in St Petersburg, Jewish physicians founded the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population (Obshchestvo okhraneniya zdorov’ ya evreiskogo naseleniya; OZE), a national relief and health organization that provided essential services to the Jewish population in Russia.* In 1915 Lewin, along with other physicians and Jewish figures, founded its Warsaw branch and assumed

chairmanship of it. In 1921 the related Polish organization TOZ was formed (Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludnosci Zydowskiej w Polsce; Society for the 4 L. Wulman, ‘OSE—its Achievements and Plans for the Post-War Period’, Harofe ha’ivri, 19 (1944), 173-84 (Hebrew, 85-94).

452 Karin Ohry-Kossoy and Avt Ohry Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population in Poland), though it did not become functional until 1922.5 Over the following two decades, until the Holocaust wiped out Jewish life in Poland, this organization provided an outstanding health and welfare system throughout the country, in many cases also serving non-Jews. Funding was based on membership fees, local donations, and major support from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in New York. Although TOZ helped and upgraded existing Jewish institutions such as local hospitals, its most important achievements were in an entirely new realm: health and hygiene education, prenatal care, and the provision of meals and medical care for schoolchildren. It fought effectively against such diseases as tuberculosis and trachoma, and operated dental clinics, nurseries, and summer camps for deprived children, as well as counselling services for the physically disabled and the mentally ill. After the German invasion of Poland

in 1939, FOZ did its best to alleviate the rapidly declining situation of the Jews, continuing its activities under dire conditions in the ghettos until 1942.° One of the founders and chairs of the Polish Medical Association in the nineteenth century had been the physician Ludwik Natanson (1822-96), who had also

established and edited its journal. By the time Poland became independent, however, antisemitism was on the rise and there was a need for a separate Jewish medical society. Lewin was among its founders in 1923.’ During its sixteen years of existence, this Association of Physicians of the Polish Republic (Zrzeszenie Lekarzy Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej; ZLRP) convened scientific meetings in Warsaw featuring local and foreign specialists. It established branches in other Polish cities and created a mutual assistance fund from members’ fees. In addition to his involvement in ZLRP, TOZ, and other Jewish organizations, Lewin was an active Zionist, a founder of the World Union of Jewish Physicians, and a member of the Polish Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1926, to commemorate thirty years of their teacher’s professional activities, Lewin’s assistants dedicated papers to him in a special issue of the Jewish Hospital’s clinical quarterly. Two years later, Lewin organized and chaired TOZ’s first national conference. Lewin worked extensively to spread Jewish and Hebrew culture in Poland. He

was a frequent and popular contributor to the leading Jewish newspapers: the Yiddish Haynt® and the Hebrew Hatsefirah and Hatsofeh. The writers Shalom Aleichem, Isaac Leib Peretz, and S. An-sky were his friends. With Peretz, Lewin founded Hazamir (in Yiddish Hazomir), an association promoting literature and music among the Jewish public. Hazamir became a Jewish cultural centre in Warsaw before 1914 and later established branches in many cities, to which Lewin came to lecture.? He published two ° L. Wulman, Pieé lat dziatalnosci TOZ-u, 1922-1926 (Warsaw, 1927); id., Na strazy zdrowia ludu zydowskiego (15 lat TOZ-u) (Warsaw, 1937). 6 Wulman and Tenenbaum, Martyrdom of Jewish Physicians in Poland. 7 J. Mackiewicz, ‘On the 25th Anniversary of the Founding of the Polish Jewish Medical Association’,

Harefuah,.31 (1946), 211-12. 8 See . ° On Hazamir, see .

|.

Dr Gershon Lewin: Pioneer of Public Health 453

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Figure 3. Map showing the activity of the Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia in Poland in 1926 (from ‘Sprawozdanie z dzialalnosci Stacji Opieki nad Matka i Dzieckiem Towarzystwa “TOZ” w Wilnie na okres czasu od 1920-1927 roku’, Opieka nad Dzieckiem, 6/1 (1927))

462 Karin Ohry-Kossoy and Avi Ohry shown by the accompanying map (see Figure 3), published in one of its yearly reports. OZE helped TOZ financially, first from Germany, and later from France. Funds also came from members (more than 15,000 in 1939), from Polish local authorities (non-Jews could also use many TOZ services), from Jewish communities in Poland, from local fund-raising, and to a great extent from the AJJDC in the United States. At two national health and hygiene exhibitions, ‘TOZ was awarded gold medals for its achievements. It was sometimes nicknamed ‘the Jewish Ministry of Health’. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the organization continued its work, even in ghettos and camps, as best it could, until late 1942 and 1n some locations even a little longer, though it was doomed, as were the people who constituted it. TOZ

members and employees operated first-aid stations, clinics, and hospitals, and extended individual help. Under German occupation, TOZ could not exist officially as an independent body. It therefore became part of a structure called Jewish Social Self-Help (Jiidische Soziale Selbsthilfe / Zydowska Samopomoc Spoleczna), mostly financed by the AJJDC, as well as by other foreign Jewish and non-Jewish charity organizations. ‘'(OZ’s general secretary, Leon Wulman, was one of the few who survived. His book The Martyrdom of femish Physicians in Poland, published in New York in 1962, is the main source of information about the organization.® 8 L. Wulman and J. Tenenbaum, The Martyrdom of Fewish Physicians in Poland (New York, 1962), 118-21.

‘The Medical School in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1941-1942 MARTA ALEKSANDRA BALINSKA PICTURE an old middle-class house lost in the Sarthe countryside. Picture then a little girl who spends her summers surrounded by books in Polish, French, English, and Russian, with a Polish great-grandmother who tells her stories that reach back to the nineteenth century, who provides her with commentaries on the reproductions of old paintings of Warsaw that decorate her house, and who delights in listening to Chopin. The great-grandmother dies, the little girl grows up. One rainy day she passes the time leafing through the books in the immense library and happens to come upon the memoirs of her great-great-uncle, the immunologist Ludwik Hirszfeld (1884-1954). Modestly called Historia jednego zycia (‘The Story of One Life’), this work will for ever mark her: not just by the accounts of a young, idealistic doctor who made two great discoveries in serology before the age of 35, who tended

the sick and wounded with the Army of the Orient and thus criss-crossed Europe, or by the enthusiastic description of his participation in rebuilding the institutes of medicine and hygiene in Poland after its restoration by the Treaty of Versailles, but also and above all by his experience as a physician in the Warsaw ghetto, his flight from that Gehenna, and his lucid, humanistic, and tragic view of the century in which he was fated to live. The years pass. By a happy circumstance, the young girl, who is now an adult, meets Stanislas ‘Tomkiewicz, the eminent child psychiatrist known to his friends as Tom’. ‘The first conversation lasts for several hours and I learn (I do not know how) that Tom had been Hirszfeld’s student at the medical school in the Warsaw ghetto. Indeed, not just a student of Hirszfeld’s, but also of a group of medical professors This chapter is a translation of the author’s previously published article ‘L’Ecole de médecine dans le ghetto de Varsovie (1941—-1942)’, Revue du praticien, 58 (2008), 227-9.

‘ Known primarily as the co-founder (with Emil von Dungern) of the ABO system of blood groups, and considered as the founder of sero-anthropology, Ludwik Hirszfeld is also the first to have foreseen the serological conflict between mother and child, later confirmed by the discovery of the rhesus factor. In Poland his memoirs brought him great renown. This autobiography has never been published in French (despite the efforts of Robert Debré), but has been translated into English by the present author, who, along with William Schneider, a historian of serology, has also provided annotation and editing: L. Hirszfeld, The Story of One Life, ed. and trans. M. A. Balinska, ed. W. H. Schneider (Rochester, NY, 2010).

464 Marta Aleksandra Balinska

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