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Recent blog posts
- Recalling those who survived the Keidan massacre
- ‘Good Morning, Lithuania’
- The Printed Version
- Another Day to Remember
- A Comment on Hirsh Bloshtein
- Yudel Ronder
- Coming Together for Passover
- A Century in Photographs
- The Problematic Hirsh Bloshtein
- Locating Lost Tribes
- Opening the Archives
- The Badkhn of Keidan
- The Keidan cemetery database
- Simchas-Toyre in Keidan
- August 28
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The Keidaner Network
Keidaner descendents reside all over the world. Keep in touch, share memories and materials about the community and its diaspora, via the Facebook group “Roots in Keidan.” Click the link to join.
Category Archives: Holocaust
Recalling those who survived: Images
By Aryeh (Leonard) Shcherbakov Collected here are images of Keidaners who survived the Holocaust, made in the following decades. Not many such images exist, particularly those clear enough to allow easy identification. The photographs were taken mainly between 1957 and … Continue reading
Posted in Holocaust, Images, Soviet Union
Tagged Images, postwar, Shoah / Holocaust, Soviet Union
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Recalling those who survived the Keidan massacre
By Aryeh Leonard Shcherbakov Preface When talking of the Jews of Keidan, the first who naturally come to mind are those who were murdered: our grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins lying in the mass grave on the outskirts of town. … Continue reading
Posted in History, Holocaust, Soviet Union, Yizkor Book
Tagged Israel, memorial books, Shoah / Holocaust, Survivors
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Recalling those who survived: Lists
The list below contains the names of Keidaners known to have survived the Holocaust, along with short biographic summaries where those could be obtained. The second list contains the names of young men who escaped the mass slaughter in Keidan, … Continue reading
Posted in History, Holocaust, Images, Soviet Union
Tagged Israel, Shoah / Holocaust, Soviet Union, Survivors
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Yudel Ronder
I first heard of him in 1994, from Laurence Salzmann, a Philadelphia photojournalist who was documenting Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Lithuania. At the time all I knew about Keidan came from my grandfather’s articles, which predated World War … Continue reading
Posted in Holocaust, Personalities, Soviet Union
Tagged Holocaust, Interwar, Oral history, postwar, Red Army, Ronder, USSR
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Yudel Ronder’s Story
Yehuda “Yudel” Ronder (1923-2016) was among the small number of Keidaner Jews who remained in Lithuania after the Holocaust. His story is both singular – a heroic tale of survival and persistence – and representative of the lives and experiences … Continue reading
Posted in Holocaust, Memoir, Personalities, Soviet Union
Tagged Lithuania, Oral history, Ronder, Shoah / Holocaust, Soviet Union, USSR, World War II, Zionism
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A Return to My Birthplace, Keidan
This article, by the Soviet writer Hirsh Bloshtein (1895-1979), was published Oct 22, 1958, in Morgen Freiheit, a New York City-based Yiddish newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party USA. By H. Bloshtein A journey back to childhood and early youth … Continue reading
Posted in Holocaust, Memoir, Soviet Union
Tagged Bloshtein, Holocaust, Lithuania, massacre, postwar, Soviet Union, USSR
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From ‘The Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry’
Keidan by Efraim Oshry The following is an entry from Oshry, Efraim, “The Annhilation of Lithuanian Jewry” (New York, 1995) Originally published in Yiddish as “Khurbn Lita”. New York, 1951. LITHUANIAN NAME: Kedainiai RUSSIAN NAME: Keidany LOCATION: A district capital … Continue reading
Exodus, Interrupted
The story of Keidan’s Sroelov and Smilg families By Tamar Dothan (Jerusalem) My grandparents, Chaya Smilg and Chaim Ber Sroelov, were married before World War I. Chaim Ber was operating the family’s wholesale beer business, as his father had passed … Continue reading
From Darkness to Light
By Rivka Shlapobersky-Strichman (Haifa, Israel)[1] In 1996, representatives of the Spielberg fund, who initiated the archiving of Holocaust survivor’s stories, asked to interview me. I wondered what I could share about my childhood and to my amazement I could gather … Continue reading
A Flag Comes Home After 16 Years
Originally published in “Israel Horizons” magazine, Dec. 1956. Miracles can happen even to a flag. Recently, the flag of Gdud Maapilim, of Ken Keidani of Hashomer Hatzair, was brought to Israel, the only flag of the Lithuanian youth movement to … Continue reading
Posted in Holocaust, Personalities, Soviet Union, Yizkor Book, Zionism
Tagged Beit Zera, Hashomer Hatzair, Israel, Kibbutz, Personalities, Youth movements
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