Tag Archives: Interwar

Jewish economic life in Kėdainiai and vicinity before WWII

By Aryeh Leonard Shcherbakov and Moshe Girshovich The purpose of this study In 2011, the director of the Kėdainiai Regional Museum, Rimantas Žirgulis, compiled a list of Jewish enterprises active in Kėdainiai in the interwar period (Source #1). Here we … 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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Coming Together for Passover

“Getting together for Passover” used to be one of those second-nature ideas, an assumption for families and groups of friends every year about this time. This year, of course, the phrase has become bitterly ironic. With everyone more or less … Continue reading

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A Century in Photographs

This website – and everyone interested in Keidan – owes an enormous debt of gratitude to the Kedainiai Regional Museum, whose director, Rimantas Zirgulis, has been the driving force behind efforts to preserve and commemorate the history of  this complex, … Continue reading

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A Greeting From Home, 1939

This unsigned article appeared in “The Keidaner” bulletin of the Keidaner Association of NY,  September 1939. Never have our landsleit come to hear such an interesting report about Keidan as that which took place at the last meeting. The report … Continue reading

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Locating Lost Tribes

On the “Roots in Keidan” Facebook group, Bruce Patt asks if there is any documentation about a Keidaner organization in Chicago. The answer is … yes! In the 1930s, the Keidaner Association of New York published a monthly bulletin, filled … Continue reading

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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

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Survival in Siberia

By Menachem Klibansky I was born in Keidan, Lithuania. During the First World War, we were exiled to Russia and settled temporarily in the city of Tsaritsyn (later renamed Stalingrad). In 1921 we returned to our home at Number 5 … Continue reading

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Reb Meishe Chone Shamesh

Translated by Bella Golubchik. Reb Meishe Chone Shamesh, of blessed memory, was one of the most significant Jews in Keidan. He was humble, modest and self-effacing. He was not very conspicuous outside of the cheder, where he taught the children, … Continue reading

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My Birthplace, Keidan

By Shmuel Goldblatt (Kfar Giladi, Israel) My memories of the town of my birth, Keidan, begin at the end of the First World War, when the first refugees began returning to their town. Our family was among the refugees who … Continue reading

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