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 he had introduced Jewish folk music to the Latvian musicologist Emilis Melngailis in 1899, and that he had had a long career in medicine, specializing in occupational health and safety. His son, Ilya Pick, fought in the Red Army during World War II and left the army in 1952. We didn’t expect to learn more until, early last month, I received an email from Moscow: 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 to the Jewish masses to collect and record Jewish folk songs. There was a response from towns and cities, resulting in the first collection of real Jewish folk songs in Russia, published in 1901 in St. Petersburg under the editorship of Ginzburg and Marek. A total of 376 folk songs were included in the book, of which 154 were collected in and around Keidan by the author of this article and his friend, Dr. Aharon Leib Pick. Through an oversight, the songs that appear above the names Cassel and Pick are described as having been collected in Kovno province. In reality, they were collected in Keidan. These songs were among the best and most interesting in the collection.

I’ve long wondered how Ginzburg and Marek phrased their call for folksong collectors. Recently I actually found an original copy of the “HaMelitz” issue that carried it. On the front page, no less:

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. But what was that really about? And why is it called the “Magdeburg” rights? What’s Magdeburg anyway?

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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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, 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 →

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Tracing the Pick Family

Posted on May 9, 2021 by Andrew

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 →

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Aharon Pick, Holocaust Witness

Posted on May 8, 2021 by Andrew

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 →

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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. Continue reading →

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Recalling those who survived the Keidan massacre

Posted on October 5, 2020 by Andrew

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. 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 →

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‘Good Morning, Lithuania’

Posted on July 8, 2020 by Andrew

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 →

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