Category Archives: Personalities

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

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Tracing the Pick Family

The following was submitted by Aryeh Leonard Shcherbakov. What do we know about Aharon Pick’s family from Keidan (Kėdainiai) There are many reasons why the name of Aharon Pick has long attracted our attention: He was born in Keidan, he … Continue reading

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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