Hebrew & Jewish Studies
Departmental Newsletter
- Hanukkah – December 2013
1
Contents
 Business, manuscripts, and
shows 3
 Strike Imminent! 7
 The Launch of our new BA
in ancient languages 9
 The Department Goes Green
10
 Departmental News 11
 John Klier Study:
Refurbishment and ReOpening 12
 News from Sir Moses – the
road ahead 13
 Autumn 16
 The Red Village 17
 The Heroes of Chelm 21
 Print room Café – A Glimpse
of History 23
 Warsaw July 2013 25
 Healing in Lithuania: Nes
Qatan Hayah Sham 27
Editors: Edouard Harari & David Dahlborn
2
Business, manuscripts, and shows
The Head of Department recaps recent and on-going projects at the department
by Professor Sacha Stern
Let’s get straight down to business. I am
glad to report that the Department has
been very busy, for a change, and on
several fronts. First of all, it is a great
relief that we have finally completed our
submission for REF2014. For those who
don’t know, REF stands for Research
Excellence Framework (I know, what a
ridiculous name); it is an exercise that
must be carried out every six years by all
Higher Education institutions, to assess
their performance in the area of research.
We need to submit samples of our
publications (books, articles, etc.) as well
as a set of extended statements
demonstrating the quality of our research
and
‘research
environment’,
the
achievements of our staff and research
(PhD) students, and most challengingly,
the ‘impact’ of our research on wider
society.
This range of titles and subjects reflects,
on its own, the richness and variety of our
research activities.
This said, we should not lose sight of the
fact that the REF is a politically driven
exercise, of which the main purpose is to
commercialize research and get us to do
what the Government thinks the taxpayer
wants. The whole operation of the REF
costs a huge amount of public money.
Besides the central REF apparatus itself,
UCL – like all other Higher Education
institutions – have been funding an entire
department just to handle its REF
submission. The REF also costs a huge
amount of our own time and work. It has
taken about three years (I am not
exaggerating) to plan our submission,
compile all the materials and the evidence,
and draft the necessary documents. It has
been hugely important to get this right, as
the Department’s funding for the next six
years will largely depend on the results of
this assessment; but I am sure we will do
very well.
Our REF2014 submission includes very
impressive work. We have brought out
books on ancient Babylonian medicine
(Mark Geller), rabbis, language, and
translation (Willem Smelik), calendars in
Antiquity (me), Poles and Jews in Poland
after 1800 (François Guesnet), the
Hebrew of late Enlightenment writers
(Lily Kahn), Jewish DPs in post-War
Germany (Michael Berkowitz), and
Lisbon in World War II (Neill Lochery).
We have also launched, in the last few
months, a major review of our degree
programmes. This has not been done for
many years, and is now long overdue.
First-year BA students will be given more
options and a wider range of introductory
courses to Jewish Studies; more
3
progression and structure will be built
into the rest of the degree programmes.
The MA degrees will be better structured,
with more focus on initiative and research.
We also hope to offer more teaching
hours to students for
the same number of
courses. All this is in
planning, so I am not
promising anything
yet, but do watch this
space; we hope to
have it all ready for
the next academic
year.
opened in the spring as a work-station for
all students. Space is very scarse at UCL,
and we are trying to make good use of
every spare inch.
In the meanwhile, I
am glad to confirm
two
new
developments in the
area of teaching: the
launch of a new BA degree
in Ancient Languages (available from
2014/15), and a generous scholarship for
BA students in memory of the late
Professor
Chimen
Abramsky.
Applications are invited for the next
academic year – please look this up on
our website, and do spread the word!
The Vernadsky Library in Kiev
At this point, I should pause and thank
everyone who has been involved in the
above endeavours: our academic and
teaching staff, our administrators, our
students and student volunteers (not least,
the editors of this Newsletter), our subject
librarian, the anonymous alumnus who
donated the Abramsky scholarship, and
all our other donors for their support for
lectureships, students, and library
Another major project has been the
refurbishment and uncluttering of the
John Klier Library (located in the corridor
of the Department), which will be re-
4
resources. It is wonderful to be
surrounded by such a friendly crowd, and
to feel that we are all working together to
achieve great things.
during the Soviet era. These manuscripts,
some going back to the 11th century,
were originally found in the Cairo
Genizah and other parts of the Near East,
and brought to St Petersburg in the late
19th century, where they were partially
edited and published by the great Jewish
scholar Albert Harkavy. What happened
afterwards is a little unclear. When
Harkavy died in 1919, the manuscripts
were donated to various institutions in
St Petersburg, but these institutions were
subsequently abolished by Stalin. Most of
What have I been up to myself, besides,
in the last few months? Does anyone
want to hear? Well, perhaps the most
exciting thing was my trip to Kiev last
June, where I spend close to a week at the
Vernadsky Library in search of medieval
Hebrew manuscripts that went missing
Interior of the Vernadsky Library
5
the manuscripts were then transferred,
sometime before World War II, to Kiev
(we must be grateful that they were not
simply abandoned or destroyed!). I have
been told that during the German
invasion, some of the manuscripts were
evacuated to Ufa (a city in Russia), and
then returned to Kiev after 1944; and that
another part of the collection was taken
to Germany, and returned after 1947 –
again, perhaps only partly – to Kiev, but
who knows. Since then, the manuscripts
were left in boxes, uncatalogued, and
largely inaccessible. Very few scholars
have been able to see them since.
as a few other pages currently in
Cambridge University Library – was
nowhere to be found. In all the turmoil of
the Soviet era, World War II, and the
post-Communist era, we must expect
some manuscripts to have gone missing.
But I am not giving up. One of the thrills
of research is getting on the hunt, and the
hunt goes on.
Early in November, I appeared on BBC
Four in a debate chaired by Ed Stourton
on the controversial documentary film
‘Search for Exile: Truth or Myth?’ (Ilan
Ziv, 2013). The film, which was shown
before the debate, argues – what has
always been known – that there was no
exile of Jews from Palestine after the
destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Its
main, political point is that contrary to the
Zionist myth of exile and return, Jews and
Arabs have had a common history in the
land until the creation of the State of
Israel. This seems to me a constructive
message. The debate was lively, but very
civil and on a good intellectual level. This
TV show was good publicity for the
Department, but also demonstrated the
importance of historical research, even
going as far back as 70 CE, for
understanding the complex situations in
which we find ourselves today.
I was privileged to be given access to the
collection, thanks to the help of the staff
of the Viddil Iudaiky (Judaic Department)
of the library. What did I find? Several
manuscripts that had been published by
Harkavy, and many others still
unpublished, including early fragments of
Mishnah. Some of these manuscripts shed
important light on the origins of the
Jewish calendar, which I am researching
as part of my ERC-funded project on
‘Calendars in Antiquity and the Middle
Ages’ (more on this project in another
Newsletter). But the manuscript I was
mainly looking for – more precisely, a
couple of pages from the Cairo Genizah
which, I suspect, belong to the same book
6
Strike Imminent!
A short guide on how best to make the world better tomorrow
by David Dahlborn
As a history student it is always a privilege
to witness, as I have had this past week,
history in the making. Turning the tide in
a
nigh
unprecedented
campaign,
outsourced cleaners at the University of
London went on their first ever strike last
Wednesday to demanding decent sick pay,
holidays, and pensions – basic rights
which the university has hitherto denied
them. Tomorrow (3rd December) all of us
students and members of staff at UCL
will have our chance to influence the
outcome of a struggle for fairness and
education that is taking place around us,
every day on our campus; staff at
universities around the country are going
on strike tomorrow, and by supporting
the strike we help to improve justice and
the quality of education at UCL.
Additionally, there is a 14 percent pay gap
between men and women and far from all
workers at London universities even
receive the London Living Wage. The aim
of tomorrow’s strike action is to change
this dangerous state of affairs, and it is
very important that it does so.
University managers could have avoided a
situation like this, but chose not to. In all
industrial disputes over pay and other
terms and conditions, strikes are always a
last resort. Therefore the strike tomorrow
reflects the refusal of university bosses to
award staff the justice they deserve, and
their complicity with the on-going
cutback of wages and equality at British
universities. At UCL, in particular, these
attacks on fair pay are especially telling. A
quick look at the university’s annual
report reveals that UCL runs on a yearly
surplus of over £26 million. Despite such
stable finances the bosses have chosen to
largely prioritise areas other than those
essential for the direct welfare of its
employees – surprising, considering
UCL’s
Staff members at universities across the
UK have, during recent years, on average
experienced real-term pay cuts of 13
percent. A worrying trend, since falling
wages within the higher education sector
are a threat to the long-term quality of
university
education.
7
Workers and students on the picket line outside Senate House in the first day of the cleaners’ strike
rhetorical support of fairness and equality.
Seldom have I experienced a feeling as
good as the rush of triumphant
excitement I felt while standing with the
University of London cleaners outside
Senate House. Their courageous show of
strength radiated a thrilling sense of
empowerment. When a delivery van
wanted to cross their picket line they
stood united and said, confidently: ‘No’.
They refused to budge and the van turned
away. This was something that they had
never been able to do before and then
and there I felt that I was experiencing
something that has never happened in the
history of the university. As it was
announced after the second day of the
strike that their employer had taken some
steps toward improving their contracts
the strength and effectiveness of the
strike was made clear. This strike had
concretely improved conditions for
cleaners. I hope that the spirit of their
inspirational struggle will resonate
throughout UCL tomorrow as workers
and students again stand up for what is
just.
By staying at home we students can help
our staffs’ struggle for fair pay. The strike
is meant to make the university as
ineffective as possible and we can help by
not turning up for lectures (something
that many lecturers will not be doing,
either).
Furthermore,
supporting
university staff greatly boosts morale and
confidence. Around the entrances to
campus tomorrow there will also be
picket lines consisting of staff members
and students standing outside the
university, symbolically showing that they
are not working. An essential rule for a
successful strike is to not cross a picket
line.
Missing a day’s worth of lectures may
seem annoying from a student’s
perspective,
but
thankfully
this
inconvenience is by far outweighed by the
long-term benefits for university staff and
our own education. Also, the show of
solidarity with our striking lecturers, who
are missing out on a day’s worth of wages,
is of great value. There are many
alternatives to going onto campus
tomorrow; I will be standing on the picket
lines, and other students will be studying
in the British Library rather than at UCL.
We all stand to will from a more equal
university. As one of the coordinators of
the cleaners’ strike put in a speech: “A
victory will not be a victory for two or
three, but a victory for all.”
8
The Launch of our new
ba in ancient languages
by Dr Lily Kahn
This summer saw the official approval of
UCL’s new BA in Ancient Languages,
based in the Department of Hebrew and
Jewish Studies. The programme, which
has begun accepting applications and will
run for the first time next year (2014-15),
is unique in the UK and is designed to
offer students concentrated training in an
extensive range of ancient languages and
textual traditions.
remembered for her fantastic comic ‘The
Amazing Adventures of the HJS
Department 1 (among her many other
achievements), was studying Greek with
Dr Nick Gonis in the Department of
Greek and Latin, and put us in touch
about the possibility of developing a
combined degree. We began working on
the idea, and after about two years of
planning, meetings, market research,
costing plans, and very extensive formfilling, the new BA became a reality.
The idea to develop the new BA came
about out of a desire to unite the large
selection of ancient language courses
available in the Department of Hebrew
and Jewish Studies with those taught in
the Department of Greek and Latin (as
well as in the Institute of Archaeology,
Birkbeck, and SOAS). For years we have
had students who are interested not only
in Hebrew and Aramaic but also in Greek
and Latin, as well as other ancient
languages such as Akkadian – and
previously there was no formal way for
them to combine these subjects in a
structured and methodical way. While
lecturers in the Department of Greek and
Latin were likewise interested in doing
something about this situation, the
collaboration on the new programme
didn’t begin until a mutual student made
the shidduch between us. Rosa Speers, a
HJS alumna who will always be fondly
The degree is structured around two core
languages (Hebrew and Greek or Latin),
which students will study intensively
throughout their time at UCL. In addition,
they will pick up to three additional
languages drawn from a large list
including Aramaic, Syriac, Ugaritic,
Egyptian, Akkadian, and Sumerian. In the
first year they will also take an
introductory linguistics module (taught in
the Department of Greek and Latin) and
will be able to choose from a wide range
of other options on the history, literature,
and culture of the ancient world. A fouryear programme with a Year Abroad (split
between the Hebrew University in
Issue no. 1 of the comic, ‘The HJS
Department and the Mysteries of Time’,
made its debut appearance in print in the HJS
departmental newsletter in March 2011.
1
9
Jerusalem and a European university) will
be available in addition to the three-year
degree.
The Department
Goes Green
We are truly delighted about the
establishment of the BA Ancient
Languages because by creating this degree,
UCL will be the first university in the
country to unite the closely related but
traditionally separate disciplines of
Classics, Jewish Studies, and Ancient Near
Eastern Studies into a cohesive academic
programme. As such it will provide a
unique platform for students both in the
UK and abroad with an interest in these
multifaceted regions whose heritages have
been central to the development of
modern culture and have long been
cornerstones of academic enquiry in the
humanities.
-
Good news on the Department’s
environmental impact
HJS has joined UCL Green Impact –
will you help boost our score?
Green Impact is a programme to improve
the environmental impact of UCL. It’s
running in departments across the
university, and we’ve just joined up.
Green Impact is based around an online
workbook that breaks down the challenge
of making environmental improvements
into simple and intuitive steps. It’s also a
fun way for departments to compete to
see who can make the biggest
improvements. We’re encouraging staff
and students to get involved in the
programme and help improve our
sustainability. UCL is also offering
training to students to help them get
involved
and
develop
essential
environmental employability skills.
Find out more:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/greenucl/whatshappening/programmes/green-impactucl
10
Departmental News!
The Department would like to
congratulate Sima Beeri, Angela
Debnath and Agata Paluch on the
completion of their PhD research. Well
done, we are very proud of you and wish
you all the best in your future endeavours.
3. Jews Commemoration Scholarship:
Riki Weiler
4. Hester Rothschild Scholarship:
Liberty Fitz-Claridge
5. Hollier Scholarship in Hebrew:
Anna Podolska (MA)
6. Jews Commemoration Travelling Scholarship:
Julija Levina
7. Samuel Bard Memorial Prize:
Jemima Loveys
8. Ben Yossef prize:
Hannah Iles (MA)
9. The Harris Prize for Effort:
Jacek Cegielski
10. Margulies Yiddish Prize:
Mara Gheorge & Jemima Loveys
We would also like to extend warm
congratulations to Angela Debnath and
Scarlett Young, who both delivered
gorgeous baby girls!
At the same time we welcome our newest
colleagues to the department, Dr Ilaria
Bultrighini and Dr Nadia Vidro as part
of Prof. Stern’s ERC Research Project
‘Calendars in Antiquity and the Middle
Ages’. Mr Zeljko Jovanovic has also
joined us from Cambridge, teaching the
first ever module on Judeo-Spanish and its
Literature.
11. Weitzman Prize:
Stay tuned for the next newsletter
which will be in honour of Professor
Ada Rapoport-Albert who retired at
the end of September, 2013. A leaving
party has been organised to be held on
Thursday 23 January, 2014, 6-8pm,
Terrace Restaurant Wilkins Building.
RSVP
jewish.studies@ucl.ac.uk
by
January 9, 2014.
The Department also announces with
sadness the death of their former
colleague, Dr Leon Yudkin, in June 2013.
Congratulations are also in order to the
following students who were awarded
departmental prizes in the academic year
2012/13:
1. Raphael Loewe Prize:
Deborah Fisher
For future updates and news, see the
departmental website and now you can
also
follow
us
on
Twitter!
https://twitter.com/uclhjs
Lucy Jennings
2. Hashimoto Rose Prize:
Laurence Nathan
11
John Klier Study:
Refurbishment and Re-Opening
by Belinda É. S.
Just opposite Dr Kahn’s office and right
reference library for MA and Research
next door to Dr Guesnet’s office, is room
students, and will hopefully be a nest that
330. Many of you may not have set foot
will witness the hatching of many
in this room and might not know what it
inspiring ideas and projects!
is. We hope that is about to change.
Thank you to all of you who have helped
Room 330, currently known as the John
in the process so far. We look forward to
Klier Library, was instituted a few years
its re-opening and will report on it in the
ago in honour of Professor John Klier,
Spring edition of this academic year’s
former HoD, whose passing was a huge
departmental newsletter!
loss for the Department. The space was
envisioned as a departmental library, but
over time the department felt the space
was
not
being
fully
taken
advantage of, so we took to
thinking what could be done
about it.
We are pleased to announce that
since the summer of 2013 the
space
has
been
under
construction and is due to be reopened as the John Klier Study,
in January 2014 (time and date
TBC). It will be a study space and
12
News from Sir Moses
– the road ahead
by Dr François Guesnet
I don’t recall whether the storm which
wreaked havock on much of the British
Isles on October 28 was called Harry or
Sally, but I certainly recall that after an
almost sleepless night, I send an e-mail to
Lucien Gubbay, trustee of the Montefiore
Endowment in the early hours of the
morning whether we actually can hold the
event. In a phone conversation we agreed
to assume that the storm, still very strong
at 7 a.m., would abate, which luckily it did.
And indeed, the seminar marking the
conclusion of the multiple year
digitization and transcription project of
the tributes sent to Sir Moses Montefiore
(1784-1885) started on time, with a
considerable audience, and proved to be a
very worthy conclusion of the project.
associations and institutions in one given
place would go at great lengths to send
their own, individual tributes to celebrate
Sir Moses’ exceptional longevity. Then,
Michael Silber (Jerusalem) spoke about
tributes from Hungary and how they
encapsulate the strong religious-cultural
divisions among Hungarian Jewry. Alyin
Koçunian (Florence/Istanbul) emphasised the strong impact of Sir Moses on
the
process
of
the
legislation
emancipating the Jews in the Ottoman
Empire in 1856, and Rosa Reicher
(Heidelberg) explained that it was
precisely the global fame of Montefiore
made him an important lead figure for the
small Jewish community in Dublin.
The next panel looked at two other
collections in the ownership of the
Montefiore Endowment, namely the
censuses of the Jewish population in
Palestine, commissioned by Sir Moses and
very recently digitized (Rose Feldman,
Jerusalem), and Sally Style (Montefiore
Endowment, London) reflected on the
vocabulary of a collection of petitions
which she at present catalogues and
which will be, hopefully, digitized in the
near future. The following panel looked at
language, style, and tropes in the tributes.
Abigail Green discussed the very
substantial inspiration provided for Sir
Rather
than
reflecting
on
the
achievements of Sir Moses himself, the
conference focused on his impact on the
imagination and the visions of community
of his contemporaries. In my opening
keynote, I pointed to the remarkable
tension between the leading theme in
many of the testimonials of the one
Jewish people, and the great variety of
understanding this notion. Also, the
frequent expressions of hope for unity
stand in contrast to the fact that on the
occasion of the much celebrated 100th
birthday of Montefiore, congregations,
13
Moses’ activities by his wife, Judith Lady
Montefiore, and stressed that she might
be a ‚trope’ in the testimonials to the
former, but represented a very real force
behind many of the initiatives of her
husband. Noemie Duhaut (Hebrew and
Jewish Studies, UCL) investigated the
notions of Europe and Civilization as
markers of cultural identification,
convincingly arguing that these notions
emphasised successful integration and
distancing from the peripheries of the
European project. Dvora Bregman (Ber
Sheva) devoted her talk to the authors of
Left and above:
Examples of Montefiore testimonials
14
the many examples of poetry in the
tributes, which she described as poets of
limited literary value, but in some
instances breaking new ground from a
poetological point of view – not in the
least because they were celebrating the
achievements of a new type of leader.
groups of documents indeed represent a
very substantial collection of documents
offering new insights into Jewish culture
of the 19th century, including unchartered
perspectives for genealogical research.
Let’s hope our department, the
Endowment and research funding bodies
will find the best way to take this
fascinating field of research forward.
As the collection now is online
(www.ucl.ac.uk/library/montefiore), the
question arises what lies ahead. The
cooperation between our department and
the
Montefiore
Endowment
has
established a solid working relationship
worthy to be continued. In the concluding
discussion, several speakers emphasised
the complementary nature of the tributes
on the one hand and the petitions on the
other. Whereas the tributes can be safely
qualified as the product of the communal
elites around the world trying to establish
a meaningful link between themselves and
the most famous Jew of the time, the
petitions – very often asking for material
help - reflect the needs of a much broader
group of people expressing their hope to
find a hearing in a world which looked
pretty bleak at times. Finally, thousands of
congratulatory messages glued into eight
very weighty volumes in the collections of
the Endowment have not been catalogued
so far, not to speak of a digitization or
transcription. Taken together, these three
As was pointed out many times during
the seminar on that bright sunny day after
a very stormy night, the project would not
have been possible without the sustained
commitment
by
the
Montefiore
Endowment, the Department of Hebrew
and Jewish Studies, the very substantial
assistance from UCL Special Collections,
the photographic mastery of Mary
Hinkley from UCL Media Services, and
the generous support offered by Martin
Moyle from UCL Library Services and his
team in setting up the online exhibition
which I invite you to browse. Most of all,
thanks are due to the many volunteering
students who have offered their time,
enthusiasm and expertise in transcribing
the hundreds of documents in the
collection of testimonials – this was a
really impressive contribution to the
research undertaken in our department.
15
Autumn
by Elizabeth Gregory
So I have nearly finished my first term at
UCL, and my second autumn in London.
Before I even noticed it, she crept into my
life. I hear a rustle at night and turn, but
it’s the paper bag leaves dancing in the air;
after I exhale my cigarette, smoke
continues to billow from my mouth. I’m
producing my own now.
on every corner, I have noticed this. Eyes
shine brighter in the fall dusk and the
strain and angst and hardship of their
lives penetrate your own. They cannot go
unnoticed and should not, and that moist
sheen, the murmur, “thanks” should be
enough to empower you to act again and
again and again.
In London autumn is different. Instead of
that tangible element of witching-hour
you sense in the country twilight, there is
a deep rumbling like a dormant giant
turning, that heralds back to great
industries. Thousands of people squirrel
around in their dark coats like Lowry
characters. They stand too close to one
another, breathing on one another, in
competition to get to work first. There is
the rumble and screech of the trains, a
rumble of the cars, the horns, and the
crossings bleat. People stand closer and
speak more quietly; they dash here and
there not wanting to feel the cold slap of
the wind, that icy lover squeezing your
throat. From the Library windows I stare
out across the square allowing the smug
pleasure that the rain can only splatter
against my vision, and not against me, to
warm me like the mulled wine I so covet.
Guy Fawkes gets lost in London. Tangled
in the loop of bureaucratic tape he is
hanged again. No bonfires here. No
roaring heat against your face, the crack
and cackle of the hysterical flame. I love
the way she hisses frantically at the
fireworks: isn’t it her show after all?
Magic can arise in London when
Wednesday Adams, Colonel Mustard and
a member of the undead are sat next to
you on the night bus. In the hazy yellow
of the synthetic lights, against the stillness
of the pitch-black night, there is
something bewitching about their slurred
laughs. And when Dorothy vomits on
Sophocles’ shoes I know London is
laughing with us. As I step off the bus I
am encircled in an almighty gust of wind.
I tug my coat closer, glance at the gherkin,
and run with the breeze into the autumn
night.
Kindness is an unexpected shadow of
autumn in London. With the huge
number of poor and hungry wasting away
16
The Red Village
by David Kimberley
This Summer I had the fortune, or
perhaps misfortune, to visit Azerbaijan. A
former Soviet State north of Iran and
west of the Caspian Sea, it is perhaps one
of the most bizarre places I have ever
been to. Throughout the country gigantic
posters of Heydar Aliyev, the now
deceased former president and former
father of the current president Ilham
Aliyev, align the roadsides, city centres,
motorways and more. These vary in form,
for instance there are some in which Mr
Aliyev is in a garden, amongst trees, some
in which he is looking after children who
are delighted to see him, some in which
he is in a dinner jacket and others in
which he is simply smiling with his chin in
the palm of his hand. There are also a
number of parks, roads, hotels, museums,
concert halls and even an airport named
after Heydar Aliyev. Aside from modest
leadership, Azerbaijan has the world’s
second largest flag pole (Turkmenistan
has the largest, in case you were
wondering), mud volcanoes and lots and
lots of oil. There is in fact so much oil
that from the bustling Baku city centre,
you can be in a desert like, seemingly
endless, oil field within a matter of
minutes. This may not sound like much
but imagine walking ten minutes away
from Oxford circus and finding yourself
in a huge field, with large machines
pumping oil out of the ground, it’s quite a
change in atmosphere.
Well, Azerbaijan is home to conceivably
the only all Jewish village in the world that
exists outside of Israel (apart from New
York) and whose population is comprised
entirely of Mountain Jews. Originally
known simply as ‘The Jewish Village’, the
Soviets, rather imaginatively, decided to
change the name to ‘The Red Village’ and
it has been known as such ever since. It is
located in the northern part of the
country, in a mountainous region near to
the border with Russia, and sits on the
other side of a river from the Azeri town
of Quba. Whilst the village is exclusively
populated by Mountain Jews, the
Mountain Jew population is spread across
the Caucuses, though emigration to
America, Europe and Israel has led to a
massive decline in the population of that
region.
The origins of the Mountain Jews remains
somewhat of a mystery. There are three
theories as to how they came into
existence, all of which were explained to
me by Shalom Baranow, who emigrated
from the village in the 1970s. The first is
that they came from Iran in the fifth
Century, the second is that they were
But why am I writing about Azerbaijan in
a Hebrew and Jewish Studies newsletter?
17
military colonists, settled in the
region by Sassanid rulers to
protect the northern borders of
the empire whilst the final
theory suggests that they were
simply a group of Jewish
converts.
Despite
this
uncertainty, we do know that the
Red Village was founded in the
mid eighteenth century as Feteli,
the Kahn of Quba, granted the
Jews permission to found a
settlement on the opposing side
of the river. Aside from their
nebulous origins, the Mountain
Jews speak a dialect knows as
Judeo-Tat. Much like Yiddish
and Ladino are comprised of a
mixture of languages, Judeo-Tat
is made up mainly of Hebrew
and Farsi with some Russian and
Azeri words. As a result of the
aforementioned emigration, Judeo-Tat is
now a dying language as European,
American and Israeli born descendants
have little need for the language in their
new homes.
throat. Along with my companion, I was
then dragged around the local carpet
making workshop which was surprisingly
interesting, they had even made a portrait
of Mr Aliyev. Finally, after this initiation, I
was to be shown around the village.
Bearing these things in mind and having
been made somewhat nervous by the
state of Baku’s wall-lined Synagogue and
decrepit Yeshiva, I made my way to Quba
where I was lucky enough to have been
given a contact. Upon arrival in the rather
quiet town I was met by a group of
babushka-type ladies who forced me to
eat copious amounts, exclaimed horror at
my thinness and crammed tea down my
Despite their proximity, Quba and the
Red Village are certainly distinct from one
another. At the entrance to the village is a
large, pink memorial to the sacrifices
made during the Second World War by
the Red Army. Despite its odd colouring
this was quite poignant as the Nazis were
just miles away from the village during
their attack upon the USSR and one
18
dreads to think what would have
happened had they reached the village.
The architecture was also rather different
as wealthier emigrants, mostly from
Moscow and Israel, had returned to the
village and built gargantuan mansions in
rather garish colours as well as donating
money for a new Synagogue and a huge
building to host wedding parties. Some
older buildings remained, however, and
there was an odd hotchpotch of huge,
newly built houses in bright colours and
older, unpainted wooden structures.
doing this he reappeared and, not taking
no for an answer, made us come with him
to a cafe where he bought us tea before
promptly leaving. The final item on our
tour was a visit to the cemetery. Although
the cemetery itself was well kept, it was
terrible to see a mass grave that had been
dug up and the bones left on display. This
was purported to be the work of a group
of Armenians a hundred years ago and
that recent excavations had ‘uncovered’
this terrible atrocity. The presentation of
the exhibition, however, presenting
Armenians as blood-thirsty savages,
seemed more aimed at arousing hatred
and
Azeri
nationalism
than
commemorating those who had been
killed and it was sad to see an atrocity
handled in such a way.
In the road three kippah clad children
pointed us towards the new synagogue
which we soon arrived at. Despite its
modesty the building was well presented
and seemed to fit, unlike the mansions,
well into the village. Outside were an
elderly man and woman, both with gold
teeth, whom we sat with and spoke to,
with them talking in a strange mix of
Azeri, Judeo-Tat and Russian. Despite the
hostility between Muslims and Jews in
other parts of the world, here, in the
mountains of Azerbaijan the two groups
seemed to get on perfectly well. The only
instances of hostility, recounted the man,
was when Israel was at war. When this
happened the Jewish children and Azeri
children would split into their own groups
and stage mock re-enactments of the
battles in the Middle East. In the midst of
this conversation, a man pulled up in a car,
got out and cried ‘I LOVE NICE JEWS’
in English before disappearing into the
Synagogue to collect the gas bill. After
The Red Village was certainly not the
most fascinating place I have ever visited
although it was certainly one of the most
peculiar. This peculiarity, however,
demonstrates the remarkable nature of
19
Jewish history, a history that is spread
across the entirety of the globe. So whilst
I would not rush back to Azerbaijan, I
would say that the thought of going
having been there continues to serve as a
reminder of the unique and wonderful
nature of the history of the Jewish people.
I would also like to thank Bath-Sahav and
Shalom Baranow, without whom my trip
to the village would not have been
possible.
20
The Heroes of Chelm
by Kenny Miller
Most readers would have heard of, if not
read, the stories of the so-called ‘Wisemen
of Chelm’.
My wife’s paternal
grandparents did truly come from Chelm
but it was far from being the town of
‘naaren’, simpletons, that we all believe.
There was an active and vibrant Jewish
community where the grandparents were
much involved and appeared in the
Yiddish Theatre, as well as helping to
found the first Jewish library.
fire would never be controlled. The
frantic factory-owner asked the Lublin
fire chief if there was anybody still left
who might be able to help.
“Well,” he said “we are still waiting for
the Jewish Volunteer Brigade from
Chelm”. Chelm was about 45 miles away.
And with that there came careering down
the road, just like the Keystone Cops, the
Jewish firemen from Chelm with Fire
Chief Moishe Levy clanging the bell. Like
real heroes they drove right into the
middle of the inferno. They fought like
lions and managed to put out the fire.
But, how many have heard of “Die
Helden von Chelm”, (The Heroes of
Chelm ), as told by Shlomo Simon?
There is an event which he does not relate
and which took place, as grandfather used
to tell, in the early years of the twentieth
century.
As the crowds all around cheered, the
factory-owner gave Moishe the 50,000
zlotys.
He asked Moishe “And what is the first
thing you will do with the money?”.
It was Chanukah time and the owner of a
very large clothing factory near Lublin
was giving a party for his staff which was
more than 90% Jewish. During the
celebrations and dancing the very big
“Chanukiyah“ was accidentally knocked
over and it started a fire which almost
immediately developed into a blaze.
“Buy a new set of brakes!” came the reply.
The owner of the factory asked the local
fire chief to call up any reserves, or any
other fire brigades in the area. He offered
10,000 zlotys to the group that could put
out the fire.
As the fire began to take hold he then
increased his reward from ten, to twenty
and ultimately to fifty thousand zlotys.
After about an hour it seemed that the
21
22
Print room Café
– A Glimpse of History
by Jacek Cegielski
The first time I entered the Print Room
Café over two years ago, the interesting
compositions hanging on the walls inside
of the café immediately caught my eye.
There have been wooden types used for
letterpress printing installed in wooden
printer drawers. One can say: nothing
special, just an artistic expression. In fact,
such an idea deserves credit and in my
opinion, seems to be a very original one at
that. However, from those who showed
any interest in old looking types, it’s likely
that just a few have any idea what they are
looking at and how important the hidden
meaning is included in these types.
About 8,000 years ago people made the
first inscriptions written on stone and clay
using a primitive alphabet. They tried to
describe their daily life and belief, and
preserve important information for next
generations. Only a relatively limited
number of such inscriptions have been
preserved till now. Nevertheless, the
inscriptions present incredibly rich
sources of knowledge
regarding our past. Later,
writing on parchment
(an animal skin) and
velum (less susceptible
and
more
durable
calfskin) became more
popular but less resistant
than stone or metal.
However thousands of
manuscripts
survived
until today, including the
oldest fragments of the
Hebrew Bible dated
mainly between c.150
BCE and 70 CE which
were found at Qumran in
1947, just a year before
re-birth of the Israel’s
state.
In the middle of the 15th
century
a
certain
important invention led
human history into a new
direction. This time, a
23
letterpress with movable printing tapes
was invented by Johannes Gensfleisch zur
Laden zum Gutenberg in Germany. In
1455 his magnificent Gutenberg Bible in
180 copies was printed on paper and
vellum. The printing press gave an
opportunity to copy and multiply the
same page of a book as many times as it
was needed and thus contributed to a
significant growth in the number of
books printed in Europe. In comparison
with the previous handwritten methods
used by scribes which took incomparably
more time, the letterpress became a high
tech engine of printing of its time. This
was described as ‘the art of writing with
many pens’.
whole the world constitute just a small
percent of books from private houses. As
UCL scholars, scientists, tutors and
students, all on our different levels of the
educational ladder, we are surrounded by
an incredibly large amount of books even
in the British Library and the UCL
Library. One can ask: the establishment of
many universities across the globe,
including the University of London (in
1836 to become University College
London): would it have been possible
without Gutenberg’s invention back in
the 15th century?
Drinking a single espresso or eating lunch
in the Print Room Café at UCL gives one
the opportunity to think about the
movable wooden types as representatives
of one of the most influential innovations
given to the humanity, the printing press,
called the ‘crown of all science’, and by
Jews in a religious context, melekhet
shamayim (a divine craft) or melekhet
hakodesh (a sacred craft).
The new possibilities of printing
encouraged writers to spread their ideas,
opinions and beliefs, and thus shaped
religious, political, scientific and artistic
thinking. This discovery was not without
impact, even indirectly, on our 21st
century living. From an academic point of
view, it seems to be almost impossible to
study without unlimited access to an
unlimited number of books, journals,
encyclopaediae, documents, chronicles,
magazines and newspapers, to mention
only a few, printed in all possible
languages for almost six hundred years.
Moreover, all of the printed material
encourages us to electronically write and
print other books, articles, essays, etc.
Our relationship with a printed text is
greater than we are able to imagine.
Millions of books storied in libraries of
24
Warsaw July 2013
by Rachel Harris
Warsaw in the summer months is a
delightful city, avenues of Linden trees, an
abundance of flowers in hanging baskets
and tubs and parks offering shade in the
heat of summer. It is a gentle city on the
banks of the Vistula river.
The Warsaw of today bears no
resemblance to the Warsaw of the thirties
with its wide avenues, grand buildings and
packed streets of bustling crowds. It was
often referred to as the Paris of the east,
the home of Chopin, a cultured city.
Even more so it is harder still to imagine
this city at the end of the war with only a
handful of its buildings still standing,
raised to the ground, total devastation,
and bereft of its one million Jews a third
of the city's population.
Last July I spent two and a half days in
Warsaw. For me it was an incredible
experience. I had studied with Dr
Francois Guesnet a year's course on
“Polish Jewry” and was very excited at the
prospect of actually going to Warsaw.
uttering Kadish. There is an inscription at
the base of the monument, “To those
who fell in the unparalleled and heroic
struggle for the dignity of freedom of the
Jewish nation, for a free Poland and for
the liberation of human kind”.
Opposite this monument, recently built, is
the Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
The building is an incredible feat of
modern architecture. Glass exterior, stone
interior, of stark appearance. It is hoped
that while the monument to the Ghetto
Heroes commemorates how valiantly the
Polish Jews died, the museum will
recount how for 700 years Jews lived in
Poland. It is a joint venture between the
Polish people and the Jews of the
Diaspora. Inside, waiting for permanent
exhibits to be installed, there was a
temporary exhibition of silent home
movies, showing life in Poland in the
thirties called 'a letter from afar'. I sat and
watched amazed at what Warsaw was
then and the lively pace of Jews living in
the capital.
I arrived Monday, midday. All the places I
hoped to visit were situated in what was
the ghetto area and within walking
distance of my hotel. I decided to go first
to see the monument to the Heroes of the
Ghetto. Alone I stood in this vast empty
square, during the war home to so many
Jews, an area where some of the most
intense fighting had taken place. Gazing
up at the monument, unveiled in the ruins
of the ghetto on the 5th anniversary of the
Ghetto Uprising 15th April 1948,
emotionally overwhelmed I found myself
Next morning, I walked to the Jewish
cemetery. On the way in Stawki Street I
stopped to see the Umschlag Platz –
Trans Shipment Square – memorial.
Now a residential area of apartment
blocks, it was a railway siding, from which
Jews from the Ghetto were transported
from 27th July 1942 onwards to Treblinka
at the rate of five to six thousand a day.
On reflection it was the Jewish cemetery,
that made such an enormous impression
25
on me. There are the graves of about
250,000 Jews, including ones of famous
rabbis, writers, and notables such as
historian Professor Major Balaban (1942)
and Adam Czemiakov, (1942) chairman
of the Judenrat and a monument to
Janusz Korczak, who went with the
children of his orphanage to the gas
chambers. There is also a mass grave to
victims of the Ghetto. Considering all that
has happened since the cemetery was
founded in 1806, most of the tombstones
are in quite good condition and are a
living testimony to a vibrant, well
established Jewish community which was
very much part of the everyday fabric of
life in Warsaw.
was the historian Emanuel Ringelblum
founder of the Oneg Shabes movement,
the members of which were sworn to
secrecy, determined that the outside
world should know what had happened to
the Jews in Warsaw. The collection of
documents detailing about life in the
Ghetto were hidden in milk bottles and
tins just before the Nazis destroyed the
Ghetto. Some of the documents were
miraculously recovered after the War and
are housed here in the Ringelblum
Archive, one of the Institutes’s proudest
possessions. The reading room was shut
for the summer vacation so I decided to
walk on into the old city, to see the royal
castle home of the last king of Poland,
down by the banks of the Vistula river.
On the way back to the hotel I passed one
of the blocks of black syenite on which
are inscribed events and the names of
individuals active in the Ghetto, on a
route which runs between the
Umschlagplatz and the monument to the
Heroes of the Ghetto, via the site of the
ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organisation)
command bunker.
In a couple of days I managed to see
some of the important historical sites, but
realise there are more, which altogether
allows one to picture life in Warsaw, as it
was, before during and after the war. It is
a strange feeling being in a city where
once lived one million Jews and one only
knows of their existence from their
cemetery and the memorials to them.
In the afternoon I visited the Jewish
Historical Institute on Tfomackie Street.
A most impressive building. Originally
erected in the years 1928-1936 as a library
which also housed the Institute of Judaic
Sciences and was demolished by the
Nazis May 16th 1943. It fell within the
Ghetto area during the War and held the
office of the Jewish Self- Help
Organisation. Among those working here
I look forward to returning next year to
Warsaw when the museum of the History
of Polish Jews will be open.
26
Healing in Lithuania:
Nes Qatan Hayah Sham
- “A little miracle happened here”
by Susan Storring
A wish to face and understand what really
happened in Lithuania - where my mother
came from and where her family perished
alongside most of the Jewish community has turned into a remarkable journey of
life-changing experiences, for me, for my
family, and for the Lithuanians I met.
of Oxford Street with the government
permission4.
Nevertheless, I decided to join the Vilnius
Yiddish (VYI) summer school in 2008, in
the hope that they will put me in touch
with someone who could help me
investigate my family’s roots in Gelvan,
and their fate in the nearby site in Pivonia
forest where, among the Jews of the
district, my family perished in September
1941. In the meantime, I needed the
songs of the Jewish resistance, the
“Partisans of Vilna”, just to have the
courage to proceed.
However, at its start, the outlook for this
journey was not good. Lithuania – and
Gelvan2, the shtetl from which she came was literally, for my mother and therefore
for me, an unspeakable place. I mean that
she literally would not speak about it,
which meant that, to my child’s mind, it
must be a place of terror and of
unspeakable dread. Then, while I was
taking Lily Khan’s Elementary Yiddish
course in 2007-8, news reports suggested
that this Lithuania of the past has not
changed. Elderly Jewish women, partisans
Unfortunately, my first 3 weeks in
Lithuania were not reassuring – rather the
reverse. During that time: a city guide
gave our group of students a tour of
Vilnius in which she talked about the
Lithuanian Holocaust - but she didn’t
mean the slaughter of Jews: she meant the
slaughter and deportation of Lithuanians
during the Soviet era; a fellow VYI
student met some Vilnius residents in a
club, who – on learning that she’s Jewish told
her
the
well-known
and
acknowledged fact that it was the
“Commie-Jews” who were responsible
for the suffering of Lithuanians under the
Soviets – to which she had no reply; there
from the time of the annihilation of Jews
in Lithuania, were being accused of war
crimes, and were being invited to answer
questions by the public prosecutor in
Vilnius3; and at the same time, neo-Nazis
were marching down Vilnius’ equivalent
2
Gelvan in Yiddish, or Gelvonai in Lithuanian, 40km
north-west of Vilna, and between Vilna and Kovno
(Kaunas in Lithuanian). Population in 2011: 284
http://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelvonai
3
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_c
ontinents/7508375.stm. Also “Lithuanian Jewish
History. Old Wounds. Clashing versions of Lithuania’s
history and how to treat it”, The Economist, 10 Feb.
2011, http://www.economist.com/node/18114903
4
http://vilnews.com/2012-02-12163 and
http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/02/07/washingto
n-author-launches-petition-to-stop-thisyear%E2%80%99s-neo-nazi-march-in-lithuaniancapital/
27
was (and still is) a Genocide Museum 5
with nothing in it about Jews, displaying
only the Lithuanian suffering; the Jewish
community centre was daubed with
swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans exactly
on Tisha B’av, (so they knew exactly what
they were doing); street signs in the
former Jewish quarter of Vilnius,
indicating its Jewish history, had been
removed and were not being replaced; we
had all seen 2 maps of Lithuania - one
with dots for all the places where Jews
had lived, and the second, with dots for
where they had been murdered - both
maps showing Lithuania black with dots,
having been a killing field in WW2. And
all of this illustrated the Lithuanian story:
that the Jews had it coming to them.
beautiful little village situated in very
pretty rolling countryside some 40 miles
north-west of Vilnius. First, Zita found
the Mayor, Lionginas Juzėnas. To
immediately allay any concern he (without
doubt) had about our intentions, she
explained that we were not interested in
recovering property, only in learning
about the family’s history. He softened a
little. I then pulled out an old photograph
of my mother’s. Then he really began to
melt. It seemed that my having this photo
was significant for his attitude towards me.
We learned later that this is a very wellknown photo in Gelvan, of the swearingin of the Gelvaner battalion of the
Lithuanian army of independence in 1922
in the village square. (I also learned, years
later, that my uncles were probably
among those soldiers. Perhaps the Mayor
already knew this, from his father...) I
knew that my family’s store was the big
wooden building in the photograph
immediately beside the soldiers, and I
could see, from where we stood in the
village square, that we were facing the
exact spot where it would have been. A
brick municipal building stood in its place.
I said nothing, but Mr Juzėnas himself
confirmed right away that this was the site
of the family store. He then proceeded to
prove it by pointing out the chimneys and
windows in the buildings across the street
as being the same as in the photo, and
explaining that my family’s store had been
torn down in the 1980s because it had
been falling down.
I had planned to visit Gelvan during the
last (4th) week of the summer school,
when my husband Patrick would join me
in Lithuania. The VYI put us in touch
with a Lithuanian Anthropology graduate
student, Zita, who had attended the VYI
Summer School previously and who was
now doing her MA thesis in Roots
Tourism. She would be our interpreter,
intermediary and guide, and I would be a
subject for her study. I also asked Mikhal,
a friend from the course and a Chazaneet,
to come with us for support, and to sing
the El Maleh Rachamim at Pivonia.
A different picture of Lithuania began to
emerge once we arrived in Gelvan, a
5
The Museum of Genocide Victims,
http://www.genocid.lt/muziejus/en/ziejus/en/
28
Unbelievably, he then invited us to his flat
to meet his father, because (he already
knew that) his father had been a customer
of my family’s store. There, we met Birutė,
his wife and a teacher in the local school,
who told us that the school holds
registers from my mother’s time. And we
met his father, who remembered the
“three beautiful girls” from the store. He
was in his 80’s but clearly still a lady’s
man...
people had been lined up at pits and shot,
falling into them. The shock of it felled
Zita who immediately collapsed upon me,
on the realization of the magnitude and
awfulness of the crimes committed there.
In taking upon her own shoulders the
horror of that sickening sight, she
extinguished the rage and hatred in me.
Patrick ended up with a gangrenous
appendix, needing emergency surgery in a
Vilnius hospital two days later.
We then discovered the beauty of Gelvan
itself -
That autumn, I felt compelled to take
François Guesnet’s “History of Jews in
Russia” course. I needed this man to
please explain to me what happened there.
And so it began. Returning again the next
summer with our son, Adam, we turned
up at the Juzėnas’ flat unannounced, and
yet received hospitality and even a huge,
newly-published tome on the history of
this tiny village, whose 1381 pages
included a 1924 register of Jews with my
mother’s family listed 6 . We also stayed
Afterward leaving Gelvan, we travelled
some 15 miles north to the outskirts of
Ukmergė/Vilkomir. There we drove into
the darkness of Pivonia forest, on and on
with gut-wrenching anticipation, until
suddenly we arrived at a clearing where
the sight of rows and rows of mounds hit
you physically, like a punch in the
stomach. The evidence seemed clear:
6
Gelvonai, 15-oji serijos “Lietuvos valsčiai”
monografija, Všl “Vermės” leidykla, Vilnius, 2009, p.
432
29
with Zita’s parents, in a village on the
northern edge of Lithuania.
Similarly, mine was an act on faith. I had
no idea how I would be received when I
gave my talk. My real fear was of being
confronted with those unspeakable
accusations about the “Commie-Jews
who had it coming to them, for all the
Lithuanian suffering under the Soviets”.
In fact, it was just this accusation,
alongside Nazi winks and support, which
By now, my desire to get to know the
Gelvaners was increasing – they are my
landslayt
(Yiddish
for
“fellowcountrymen”), afterall. But, how?
Eventually, the idea of meeting the
students in the local school came to mind.
I could tell them my mother’s story, since
it is also their story.
Zita had now become
our daughter-in-law,
and she was also keen
to set up such a
meeting. With the
School Director, Ona
Valančienė, she set
the stage for me to
meet the final-year
high school students,
in September 2012.
Looking back now on
what happened, I
realize what an act of
faith it was for Ona
to agree to my visit.
She had never met
me, and she knew
from Birutė that my
family was among those Jews murdered
by local Lithuanians in WW2. Ona had
every reason to fear that I could say
something
inflammatory,
with
consequences for her, and yet she agreed
to my visit.
sparked off the slaughter of the Jews in
1941. So, as well as preparing my talk, I
read up on the historical evidence to date,
in order to be able to respond
competently, quietly and with dignity,
should I have to.
30
So, how was I received at the school?
Ona and Birutė welcomed us with homemade cheese and cakes, with Rosh
Hashanah apples and honey, and they had
even found the 1926-27 school register,
with my aunts’ names in it (I hadn’t
known their names or ages before):
31
They then took us to see a room which
had been newly prepared, with show cases
and wall panels, to become a museum of
Gelvan’s history. After that, it was off to
the classroom to meet the students.
I had prepared a presentation using all of
my mother’s photos of Gelvan. Dating
from 1909 to 1940, most had been sent to
her by one of her sisters after my mother
had emigrated to Canada in 1929. The
photos are clearly of Gelvan. Here is the
village centre, where family and friends
posed outside the family store. And there,
on a front porch in a Gelvaner lane, 2
toddlers stand on a bench to have their
photos taken.
My mother’s story is one of emigration,
while mine is of return. My photos
included one of the clearing in Pivonia,
down the road from Gelvan. Then, a
photo of the reconciliation which resulted
from that visit: Adam and Zita’s wedding.
In the first few minutes of my talk, some
boys at the back of the class started
fooling around. But they soon stopped because no one was listening to them.
Everyone was listening to the story, in
rapt attention. Even when the bell rang:
we hadn’t quite finished, and one student
dashed out, but no one else moved.
Unfortunately, there was no time for
discussion with the students: we hadn’t
Then of course there was the one with
the army being sworn in, on the village
green in front of the family store.
counted on Zita having to translate the
whole of my talk for the teachers. The
32
Below: Ona addressing the class at the
end of my story.
There was the village square where the
Lithuanian Army was being sworn in
to fight Poland for Vilnius, with my
uncles in there somewhere and our
family’s store in the background. It was
as if the Gelvaner Jews had been
returned to town where they belong.
This means that, at least while Ona is
in charge, cohorts of children passing
through this school will see that the
Gelvaner Jews belong here, to this
community.
But that wasn’t all. Ona then addressed
the students. She told them about a
television programme she had seen the
night before, about Ponar (the infamous
site of the mass murder of Jews, just
outside Vilnius), and what this
programme taught about Jews: first, that
Jewish parents considered the most
important part of their children’s
education to be, not reading and writing,
but learning to be a decent human being;
and secondly, that the memory of the
Jews who were killed must be honoured. I
was hearing this in translation, but her
body language and tone of voice needed
no translation. This woman - whose
authority and presence in the region, as
School Director, is clear to anyone who
meets her - appeared to be announcing
what the narrative about Jews is going to
be in her presence. She was, in effect,
saying, “I don’t care what’s going on in
your head about Jews, but if you insult the
Jews in my presence, you’ll have to deal
with me.”
students have learned English, but the
teachers, having grown up under the
Soviets, know only Russian and
Lithuanian. This frustration led us to set
up a second meeting, in April 2013. This
time, I asked that the students tell me
their story. I wanted to hear whatever
they thought I needed to know, in order
to understand their lives.
At this second meeting, we were taken to
meet the students in the now-complete
school museum. Imagine my disbelief
when I found that we were seated facing
the display on the inter-war period, which
was full of my mother’s photos of Gelvan.
From the large photographs on the wall,
my mother’s family looked directly back
at me, as if they were alive again. My
mother’s sisters and their friends were
looking straight at me. The toddlers,
standing with their little round bellies on
the bench to have their photo taken, were
shyly turning their eyes away from me.
33
And as for the students, the 25 or so in
the room that day had chosen to come.
They were missing a lesson to be here,
and would have to make up the missed
work. They had not prepared their story
for me, because they had decided instead
to ask the questions which they hadn’t
been able to ask in September - questions
which indicated minds that were opening.
First, they wanted to know how my
mother felt about leaving home. My
mother had said little about Lithuania in
my lifetime, so I had no answer. But I
realized that the reason for this was
significant and worth talking about. So
after waffling somewhat while gathering
my thoughts, I explained that my mother
rarely spoke about Lithuania in my
lifetime because, by the time I was born,
she had suffered too many losses. She had
arrived in Canada at the beginning of the
Great Depression, when widespread
unemployment and no social security
meant that if you didn’t work, you didn’t
eat. This was hardship, the same the
world over at the time. But suddenly from
September 1941 onwards, letters stopped
arriving from her and my father’s families.
Six months later, her brother in Montreal
– the only family she had left - died of TB.
Only after the war ended did my parents
learn that their families and most of the
Jews of Eastern Europe had been
murdered. My parents knew then that
they were alone in the world; they had
only each other for protection. They had
the courage to pick themselves up, and
rebuild their lives, but in facing the world
as it is, my mother became cold and hard,
and rarely spoke again about Lithuania.
The students then asked me how I felt
about coming to Lithuania. I told them
honestly that I had been scared, because I
didn’t know how I would be received.
Would I be hated and feared as a Jew?
After all, although I have no wish to do
so, I could quite legitimately try to reclaim
family property. However, instead of fear
and suspicion, I found a welcome and
hospitality from the Mayor and his wife,
and from the School Director. My visits
have led to real healing and reconciliation,
and even to a marriage.
My story is about something of a miracle
taking place in Lithuania, where a new
narrative about Jews is beginning to heal
deep wounds. My part in this has been
made possible because of the seminal
work in Poland of Prof. Anthony
Polonsky and his colleagues, of whom
François Guesnet in this department is
one, who are now extending it into other
countries in the region. As François and
his colleague, Darius Staliūnas, wrote
elsewhere7, Eastern Europe was under the
cosh first of the Nazis then of the Soviets,
during which time the historical record
was distorted and suppressed. Whereas
we in the democratic West have been
examining the record of World War 2
7
Guesnet, F., & Staliūnas, D., “No Simple
Stories”, in Jahrbuch für
Antisemitismusforschung, Vol.21, Zentrum für
Antisemitismusforschung, Berlin, 2012, p.17-18.
34
since 1945 - and yet only in 1995, after 50
years, were the French able to
acknowledge their part in the round-up
and slaughter of Jews 8 – it is only since
the overthrow of the Soviet regime (198991) that the process of examining and
challenging the inter-ethnic hatred in
these countries could begin. It seems to
me that Prof. Polonsky and his colleagues,
simply by doing their job of academic
historical research in collaboration with
local academics, are not only slowly
bringing eastern European intellectual
thinking and research up to the standards
expected in the West; they are also,
through the process of engagement with
local colleagues and even sometimes with
villagers, providing an example and
experience of tolerance and thinking, not
to mention courage, which is quietly and
rationally confronting the anti-Semitism
in the region. The trickle-down to the
general population is of course very slow,
the work of decades and generations, but
how else does one address human
relationships other than through a
relationship? It’s as if a kind of “talking
therapy by means of academic history” is
taking place. My story is about my own
personal contribution to this process.
Without the Lithuanians of great courage,
heart and integrity whom I met; without
my daughter-in-law, Zita; my husband,
Patrick; and my teacher, François, none of
this would ever have come to pass.
8
Speech by M. Jacques Chirac, President of the
Republic, at the inauguration of the Shoah
Memorial, Paris 25.01.2005
http://www.ambafrance-uk.org/Speech-by-MJacques-Chirac,4257
35