A Japanese ambassador, a Dutch ambassador, and the vice-mayor of a Lithuanian city walk into a cemetery. It sounds like the opening lines of a joke, but it wasn’t. This wasn’t the start of a joke. It really happened, and it was actually the beginning of some very serious reconciliation.
The convergence of these dignitaries occurred just outside the cemetery in Vilkie, a small town near Kovno. The group included more than just ambassadors and other international dignitaries from a wide array of countries. It also included descendants of Vilkie, kollel members, rabbonim, and lay leaders from Lakewood. But more importantly, it represented a unique experience and undertaking that, hopefully, can take place in other shtetlach and cities across Lithuania and Eastern Europe.
We are all familiar with the names of the famous Litvisher cities. Vilna, Kovno, Telshe, Ponovezh, and Kelm are known to everyone. As the son of a Lithuanian refugee, the Yiddish names of Lithuanian cities like Memel (Klapedia), Vilkomir (Ukmergė), Shavel, Rakashik, Ramaleis and Keydan are familiar to me. After all, these are some of the towns where my father learned or where other yeshivos were established. We also know cities by the names of the gaonim who were called by their shtetlach: Reb Nochum Trocker, Reb Chaim Stuchiner, Reb Leizer Vobolniker, and so on. But there were other cities and other gaonim that did not make the roll call of the famed cities of Lita. Nevertheless, that does not diminish their greatness. They, too, had rabbonim who were gaonim leading them, but, unfortunately, some of those names were lost to history, or at least lost to the lay yeshiva bochur, whose sense of history only comes from the names of the gaonim whose works have become famous or from the places in history that were home to citadels of Torah. But there were hundreds of other holy shtetlach that dotted the map of Lithuania.
One of them was the town of Vilkie, whose rov, Rav Hillel Dovid Trivesh, was a gaon olam, the father-in-law of Rav Moshe Rosen, the great gaon and author of Neizer Hakodesh. He was a mechaber seforim and the publisher of Lithuania’s first Torah journal, HaPisgah, lauded by Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky and others for its clear efforts to battle the purge of Haskalah.
One of the greatest problems in countries that had large Jewish populations that were decimated by the Nazis and their eager collaborators during World War II remains to this day. Truth be told, like Har Sinai after the Torah was given and the presence of the Shechinah left, there is no longer any kedusha between the walls of those former citadels of Torah. They make for great tourist attractions and definitely tug at the heartstrings of those with an emotional connection to the once-holy buildings, the roshei yeshiva, and the bochurim who filled the halls with a kol Torah, and the visitors who yearn for a connection to the past. But they are mere buildings. Cemeteries, however, remain sacred and halachically untouchable. The presence of a cemetery in the middle of an Eastern European city, whether in Lithuania or Ukraine, is a pronouncement shouting from the depths of the earth, “The Jews once lived here! There were 70,000 Jews here! This was once not a Lithuanian city! This was not a Ukrainian city! This was not a Soviet city! This was a Jewish city!”
For that very reason, it is a dagger in the heart of the pride of nationalists who want to erase the memory of a formidable Jewish presence from the landscape of their history.
For that very reason, the Soviets and Lithuanians smashed and uprooted every gravestone in so many cemeteries in Kovno and Vilna. Even to this day, the concept of cordoning off a large area and fencing it in with a declaration that this large area was once a Jewish cemetery is difficult for many Lithuanian government leaders whose nationalistic pride, tinged with anti-Semitism, would rather forget that there was ever sacred Jewish ground in what is now a central part of Vilna.
That is why the gathering of so many international leaders along with representatives of Lithuanian municipalities to rededicate the cemetery in Vilkie was no joke. It was a powerful statement of penitence and reconciliation from official Lithuanian leadership. Among those who came was Japanese Ambassador Tetsu Ozakis, whose feelings for the Jews of Kovno must be deep-rooted due to the kindness of a previous Japanese ambassador, Sempo Sugihara, who helped hundreds of Yidden escape Kovno in 1940 by issuing transit visas through Kobe, Japan, on their way to a “destination” on the island of Curacao.
The rededication also included the ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Jack Twiss Quarles van Ufford. After all, there is a deep-rooted connection between the Netherlands and the Jewish community of Kovno. Dutch businessman-turned-diplomat Jan Zwartendijk was the one who stamped 2,435 visas, including all of the Mirrer Yeshiva bochurim’s passports and those of so many others, with the words “An entrance visa is not required for the admission of aliens to Surinam, Curaçao, and other Dutch possessions.”
The ceremony was also attended by the renowned former European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, heart surgeon, and member of the European Parliament Vytenis Andriukaitis. Like many members of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP), Mr. Andriukaitis has shown great interest in trying to preserve and re-establish the important heritage sites of the Jewish community, especially the cemeteries.
Although Mayor Valerijas Makunas of the Kovno Regional Municipality, who has been supporting the restoration of Jewish heritage sites such as cemeteries and the renovation of the beautiful brick shul in Seishishok, was not able to attend, he sent Vice-Mayor Paulius Visockas. The vice-mayor spoke about the efforts of the Kaunas District Municipality to perpetuate the memory and cultural heritage of the Litvaks, emphasizing that all Holocaust sites in the territory of the municipality are protected and maintained together with the Litvaks of the United States.
It was probably the first time since before the Holocaust that so many Lithuanian nationals gathered to support the re-establishment of a holy Jewish site.
Sponsored by Kosher West of Lakewood, the ceremony was organized and led by Rabbi Elchonon Baron and Rabbi Eli Mayer Cohen, who are doing their utmost to preserve and restore cemeteries in Lithuania. The ceremony took place a few hundred yards from the actual cemetery, in a park honoring the memory of Louis Armstrong, whose jazz career was started and supported by the Karnovski family, who were refugees from Vilkie.
But the miracles continued as we moved from the park to the actual cemetery. It was a climb up a mountain into a forest clearing. Fortunately, the municipality built sturdy steps to make the trek easier. The actual cemetery was nestled away in the middle of a forest, and it seems that the only elements that caused its erosion were the elements of time and the forces of Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s nature. I only saw a few matzeivos. Most were sunken into the ground, simply due to the amount of time they had stood through more than a century of rain, wind, and storms.
We were greeted by an amazing sight. On the grounds and hard at work were members of the Christian Society for Penitence and Reconciliation. They were founded to help restore Jewish cemeteries as an atonement for Christians who destroyed Jewish cemeteries. They were hard at work restoring the fallen tombstones, brushing them off, and resetting them. They were also digging to find the sunken ones and carefully lifting them while guarding the integrity of the actual burial sites.
Tvhey had been working throughout the week, and a torrential rainstorm that passed through the region the previous day did not stop them. They looked up at us as one laughed and said, “It was a Mah-bull!” But it did not stop them. Kees Lavooij, the leader of the group who spoke at the ceremony, explained, “It rained to the right and it rained to the left of us. But the sun shone on us!”
When I arrived with Rabbi Baron, they had already found and reset 17 fallen stones. By the time this article goes to print, they will have restored close to 70. Indeed, the sun is finally shining on a bais hakevaros in Lita.
