Category Archives: History

Finding the Pick Family

Posted on December 6, 2025 by Andrew

Our earlier posts about Tsemach Pick raised questions about his life in the Soviet Union, his 1952 death and his descendants. We knew only that he was the younger brother of Aharon Pick and a friend of B. Cassel; that … Continue reading →

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Keidan Memorial Book — Contents

Posted on July 14, 2025 by Andrew

 “Sefer Zichron” / Yizkor Book Published by the Keidan Association in Israel, with the participation of the Committees in SouthAfrica and in the United States of America. Tel Aviv 1977 (Original in Hebrew unless otherwise noted; links to translated material) … Continue reading →

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Keidan Memorial Book: Preface

Posted on July 13, 2025 by ACassel

The preface to the 1977 Keidan “sefer zikaron” or Yizkor (Memorial) Book.  At first glance this book is like all the other hundreds of books published since the end of World War II in memory of the Jewish shtetl in … Continue reading →

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A Call for Folksongs – 1898

Posted on November 11, 2024 by Andrew

B. Cassel (my zeyde) wrote this in his history of Keidan:  In the beginning of 1898 S.M. Ginzburg and P.S. Marek of St. Petersburg published announcements in the journals  “HaMelitz,”  “Voskhod,” and “HaTzefira,” inviting Jewish intellectuals in Russia with close ties … Continue reading →

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‘The Most Civic City’

Posted on February 23, 2024 by Andrew

Boruch Chaim’s History of Keidan contains a passing reference to the town, in 1590, receiving “Magdeburg rights.” I researched this enough to include a short explanation of these as a set of rules, under which municipalities could administer their own affairs. … Continue reading →

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Aharon Pick’s Memoir

Posted on January 4, 2023 by Andrew

We all have hopes and expectations for the new year. Mine are topped by the coming publication of a project I’ve been working on for three years: The translation of Aharon Pick’s Holocaust memoir, written from 1942-44 in the ghetto of Šiauliai. Continue reading →

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The Life and Times of Solly Chesler

Posted on April 12, 2022 by Andrew

By Jennifer Chesler Rubin, Ramat Efal, Israel (Adapted from an essay by Muriel Chesler on the occasion of Solly Chesler’s 75th birthday.) This is the story of my father, the late Solly (Sholem) Chesler, a self-made man, who arrived in … Continue reading →

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Documenting the Holocaust

Posted on April 5, 2022 by Andrew

To our Keidaner friends, We were recently contacted by Israeli filmmaker Boris Maftsir, best known for his documentaries about the Holocaust. Maftsir’s film project called  “Searching for the Unknown Holocaust” includes documentaries on the experience in Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, … Continue reading →

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Jewish economic life in Kėdainiai and vicinity before WWII

Posted on March 25, 2021 by Andrew

By Aryeh Leonard Shcherbakov and Moshe Girshovich The purpose of this study In 2011, the director of the Kėdainiai Regional Museum, Rimantas Žirgulis, compiled a list of Jewish enterprises active in Kėdainiai in the interwar period (Source #1). Here we … Continue reading →

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Searching for Tsemach Pick

Posted on March 17, 2021 by Andrew

Last month I received the following email: From: Ilya Shneyveys Subject: Dr Aharon-Leyb Pick Dear Andrew, Congratulations on this fascinating project! I just came across this blog today and am finding a lot of interesting information here.

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