-
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
Categories
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.
Tag Archives: Lithuania
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
Leave a comment
A Return to My Birthplace, Keidan
This article, by the Soviet writer Hirsh Bloshtein (1895-1979), was published Oct 22, 1958, in Morgen Freiheit, a New York City-based Yiddish newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party USA. By H. Bloshtein A journey back to childhood and early youth … Continue reading
Posted in Holocaust, Memoir, Soviet Union
Tagged Bloshtein, Holocaust, Lithuania, massacre, postwar, Soviet Union, USSR
Leave a comment
From Darkness to Light
By Rivka Shlapobersky-Strichman (Haifa, Israel)[1] In 1996, representatives of the Spielberg fund, who initiated the archiving of Holocaust survivor’s stories, asked to interview me. I wondered what I could share about my childhood and to my amazement I could gather … Continue reading
In Pursuit of the Murderers
Excerpts of letters from Yehuda Ronder, Kaunas After surviving the war as a soldier in the Red Army’s 16th Lithuanian Division, Yudel Ronder returned home to Lithuania and spent the rest of his life there. Throughout the post-war years and … Continue reading
Posted in Holocaust, Yizkor Book, Zionism
Tagged Holocaust, Lithuania, massacre, postwar, Ronder
Leave a comment
Young Refugees in Keidan
By Moshe Domb (Kfar Menachem, Israel) After many hardships and torments, we gathered in Keidan, in Lithuania, to continue the training as Kibbutz Manof that began in Włocławek [Poland]. We were all graduates of the Hashomer Hatzair movement, preparing for … Continue reading
Posted in Emigrants, Holocaust, Israel, Memoir, Personalities, Soviet Union, Zionism
Tagged Hashomer Hatzair, Holocaust, Lithuania, Red Army, Soviet Union, Youth movements
Leave a comment
A Series of Narrow Escapes
By Eliyahu Koenig I belonged to the Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz (community) in Włocławek (Poland), which included mainly those comrades from the cells in Warsaw, Lodz and Kalisz. When the war broke out and the Germans began their swift campaign of … Continue reading
Posted in Holocaust, Soviet Union, Yizkor Book
Tagged Hashomer Hatzair, Holocaust, Lithuania, Soviet Union, USSR
Leave a comment
In the Lithuanian Division
By Eliezer Lipman (Tel Aviv) I was born in Keidan in 1924. My father, Shmerel (Shmaryahu) Lipman, had a grocery store in Smilga (now Smilgos) Street, in a house that he had inherited from my grandfather. The whole street had … Continue reading
Posted in History, Holocaust, Israel, Memoir, Soviet Union, Yizkor Book
Tagged Holocaust, Lithuania, Military, postwar, Red Army
3 Comments
The Destruction of Keidan
By David Wolpe (Johannesburg) Originally published in the Yiddish journal, “Fun Letstn Khurbn” in Munich, 1948; and in English in 1950 by the Keidaner Sick Benefit and Benevolent Society of Johannesburg. By June 24, within days after Germany launched its … Continue reading
From the Ministry for Jewish Affairs
Letter from the Ministry for Jewish Affairs, Division of Communal Matters No : 193/64 Kovno 13 January 1922 Document No:43736 To: The Congregational Committee in Keidan We are currently carrying out specific statistical investigation of the Jewish soldiers in our army, … Continue reading
1930s Status Report
By Ben-Alexander Written about 1937, and published in 1951 in “Lita” [Lithuania], pp. 1587-9[1]. The town now consists of some 9,000 souls, a third of them Jews. The economic situation of the Jews has become very hard. Commerce has completely … Continue reading
Posted in History, Interwar, Yizkor Book
Tagged 1930s, Diaspora, Economics, Interwar, Lithuania
Leave a comment