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Recent blog posts
- Aharon Pick’s Memoir
- Documenting the Holocaust
- Tracing the Pick Family
- Aharon Pick, Holocaust Witness
- Searching for Tsemach Pick
- 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
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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: Memoir
Aharon Pick’s Memoir
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
Posted in History, Holocaust, Literature, Memoir, Personalities
Tagged AharonPick, ghetto, Holocaust, Šiauliai, translation
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The Life and Times of Solly Chesler
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
Posted in History, Israel, Memoir, South Africa
Tagged History, Israel, South Africa
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Aharon Pick, Holocaust Witness
Late in the winter of 1943, Dr. Aharon Pick helped put Jewish infants to death. Assisted by other doctors and nurses in the makeshift hospital of the Šiauliai ghetto, he euthanized them with heroin and morphine, in one instance resorting … Continue reading
Posted in Holocaust, Literature, Memoir, Personalities
Tagged AharonPick, BCassel, Holocaust, Memoir
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In Prison
Dr. Aharon Pick This recollection by Keidan native Dr. Aharon Pick, of his time as a poor yeshiva student in Kovno, was published in 1935 in HaOlam, the official Hebrew weekly organ of the World Zionist Organization. Edited by Nahum … Continue reading
Posted in Memoir, Personalities, Pre-WWI, Religious, Russia, Zionism
Tagged AharonPick, Memoir, Personalities, pre-WWI, Religious, Tsarist Russia, Yeshiva, youth, Zionism
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Worlds Gone By
Keidan at the end of the 19th century By Dr. Hyman J. Epstein Originally published in 1930 by the Keidaner Assn. of New York. Keidan was not just another Lithuanian shtetl; it was a city, with an important lineage. Proud … Continue reading
Posted in Memoir, Personalities, Pre-WWI, Russia
Tagged 1930 Zaml Bukh, cheder, Education, Holidays, Memoir, Military, pre-WWI, Synagogues
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Memories of My Teachers
By Meyer Yitzhak Edelman Originally published by the Keidaner Assn of New York, 1930. 1. My first rebbe was Noach Reubens, who taught the youngest children. He lived on the northwest corner of the marketplace by German Street. The cheder … Continue reading
Posted in Memoir, Personalities, Pre-WWI, Yizkor Book
Tagged 1930 Zaml Bukh, cheder, Education, pre-WWI, rabbis
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A Comment on Hirsh Bloshtein
After reading my post about Hirsh Bloshtein, and the memoir “A Return to My Birthplace, Keidan,” posted here, Aryeh Shcherbakov submitted the following commentary, which I have edited. Shcherbakov, of Tel Aviv, was born and raised in Vilnius, Lithuania. The … Continue reading
Posted in History, Memoir, Personalities, Soviet Union
Tagged Bloshtein, Soviet Union, Stalin, USSR
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Reb Zvi the Cooper
(Memories of M.L. Lilienblum’s father) By Dr. Aharon Leib Pick (Šiauliai) Published (in Hebrew) by the Keidaner Assn. of NY, 1930. Translated by Nathaniel Stampfer. The area around the Lithuanian city of Keidan has been famous for its beauty since … Continue reading
Posted in History, Memoir, Personalities, Pre-WWI, Religious, Zionism
Tagged 1930 Zaml Bukh, AharonPick, Lilienblum, Personalities, pre-WWI, Religious, Zionism
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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, Soviet Union, USSR, World War II, Zionism
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A Visit to a Lithuanian Town
This was published in “The Keidaner” bulletin in three parts, from October to December, 1938. It was exerpted from the Warsaw Yiddish newspaper “Haynt” (“Today”), which carried the author’s account of travel through Lithuania. By Chaim Vital “When you are … Continue reading
Posted in Economy, Interwar, Memoir
Tagged Agriculture, Czapski, Economy, Folksbank, Gaon, History, Synagogues, Totleben
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