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
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, and Moldova. Maftsir aims to further explore the Holocaust in Lithuania, particularly in its smaller towns and shtetlech, possibly including Keidan. He has already received partial funding, but needs additional help to cover the cost of travel, research and preparation of the scenario. Continue reading
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 was a self-made “man of letters;” he had an impressive professional career as a doctor in Šiauliai; he was active in the Šiauliai Jewish community, and in the last, tragic stage of his life, confined to the Šiauliai ghetto, he wrote a journal — one of the most important testimonies of the Holocaust in Lithuania. Continue reading
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 to drowning a baby girl when the toxic injections failed to do their job quickly enough. The Germans had formally prohibited all Jewish births in the ghetto, and had the newborns been discovered, their mothers and all other family members would be killed as punishment. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
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. Some of their names are engraved on the memorial plaques installed by the mass grave.
Not all however; only those names that Rimantas Žirgulis, director of the Kėdainiai Regional Museum, with the help of some Keidan descendants, was able to collect. They were found mainly on testimony pages held at the Yad Vashem Memorial Museum in Jerusalem. More than half of the victims were not memorialized; no memory of them remained, as entire families were erased with no one able to testify to their existence in pre-war Kėdainiai. Continue reading
Each summer, one of Lithuania’s most popular TV shows, called “Labas Rytas Lietuva” [“Good Morning Lithuania”] highlights different towns across that country. This year its focus was on Kėdainiai, and on July 4, the show aired a walking tour through the town’s Jewish quarter. Audronė Pečiulyte, director of the Kėdainiai Multicultural Center, gave the interview. Kėdainiai teacher Laima Ardavičienė shared the video on Facebook, and, very graciously, agreed to transcribe and translate the interview into English. Continue reading
Much of the material on this website got here via a project initiated several years ago by David Solly Sandler, a native of Johannesburg and Litvak descendent, who has compiled an impressive print library of material on Lithuanian Jews, there and in the diaspora. I had worked on and off for many years to try and make the Keidan Yizkor Book available in English, but the project only really took off after David offered to finance and publish a full translation. Continue reading
Recently, Jews around the world commemorated Yom HaShoah. Yet even if the Holocaust had never happened, however, this would be a season for remembering the suffering, death and displacement inflicted on the Jews of Eastern Europe by war – World War I.
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 family of his mother, Guta Kagan, was among those murdered in Keidan on Aug. 28, 1941. He serves as secretary of the Association of Keidaners in Israel.
by Aryeh Leonard Shcherbakov Continue reading
