The Rama in Hilchos Tisha B’Av (559) cites the minhag to visit Jewish cemeteries after reciting Kinnos on Tisha B’Av. The Mogein Avrohom quotes the Shelah, who adds that those who are interred in the cemetery are also in pain on the 9th of Av.
Last week, I was in Lithuania. While visiting a few of the hundreds of botei kevorim, the cemeteries scattered throughout Lithuania, I could not imagine more pain than that felt by those Yidden lying in the unkempt, neglected, desecrated cemeteries of Lithuania. Their fate, unfortunately, can be determined by the whim and fancy of Lithuanian bureaucrats, and even with the blessing or at least the concordance of self-appointed representatives of the Jewish community in Lithuania and beyond.
There are approximately 250 official cemeteries in Lithuania and about the same number of kivrei achim. Last week, led by Rav Elchonon Baron and Rav Eli Meir Cohen, both fierce advocates for the preservation of the integrity and kedusha of Jewish cemeteries and burial grounds in Lithuania, I had the opportunity—actually, the privilege—together with a minyan of distinguished rabbonim and lay leaders to visit about a dozen of these sacred resting places of Yidden in Lithuania.
Some of the cemeteries were ancient, established as early as the late fifteenth century. They were bought and paid for by the kehillos of their respective towns. Unfortunately, the government that seized them seemingly does not recognize that fact and feels that they have the right to treat them or abandon them as they please.
Other places we visited, the respite of kedoshim until techiyas hameisim, were not actually designated as official cemeteries, but are rather known as kivrei achim, collective mass graves of the victims of our evil enemies. These were not purchased by any kehillah. They were spontaneously created as the final resting places of Yidden who were gunned down by Lithuanian rampaging murderers and their Nazi cheering squads. They were covered over or bulldozed with the intent to hide the heinous crimes, or, in some cases, the bodies were set on fire in another attempt to hide the atrocities from the world and the invading Russian troops toward the end of the war.
For three days, with just a few stops to see the remains of historical yeshiva buildings in Slabodka, Telz, Keidan, and others, we spent our time overseeing and, in some cases, physically helping restore matzeivos and gravesites. From Shnipishok to the Saltonishkiu Cemetery on Zaretcha Street, from the heavily desecrated Greener Barg Cemetery in Kovna to the neglected cemetery in Kelm, and the various kivrei achim there and in Telz to the 7th and 9th Forts, we cried at each of the final resting places of holy Lithuanian Jews. Some were holy in their lives; others were holy in their deaths. Others were indeed the holy of holies both in life and death. The painful scenes of the mundane way in which many of these hallowed grounds are treated, if not absolutely desecrated, are the antithesis of the reverence that these sacred grounds should be receiving. Seeing the neglect and desecration of so many of those places evoked tremendous emotions of pain and frustration. There were rays of hope as well, which I will elaborate upon in a future article.
Because of some weather-related problems that had us land in Tallin, Estonia, the uppermost Baltic country, and an eight-hour drive from Vilna, I was not zoche to visit the Paneira Forest, the site of the mass murder of some 70,000 Yidden of Vilna. Among them is said to be Rav Chanoch Henoch Eiges, the Marcheshes, Hy”d. The forest is located right outside of the Vilna city limits and is considered a national memorial to what the Lithuanians now describe as Nazi atrocities.
Indeed, the words and writing on the large memorial in front of the burial sites of the mowed-down kedoshim are indicative of the Lithuanian obfuscation of history.
Let me explain: Lithuania has a riddled history. It was once independent. Then it was swallowed up by Poland. In 1918, Lithuania was re-established as a democratic state. It remained in a quasi-independent state because the Poles were a dominating force in that country until the onset of World War II. At the start of the World War II, the Nazis and Russians made a peace treaty known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Poland was conquered by the Nazis, and Russia officially gave back independence to parts of Lithuania including Vilna. That is why the Jews fled from Poland to Vilna in Lithuania after the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939. Vilna at that time was part of an independent Lithuania that let yeshivos exist. Indeed, for the years of its independence, compared to other Eastern European countries, the Lithuanian Jewish community did not have major problems from their Christian neighbors.
But the independence did not last too long.
Only ten months after the start of World War II and the granting of Lithuanian independence, the Soviets reneged and invaded Lithuania. In the communist tradition, they seized all private property, shut down all manufacturing, stole the farms, and utterly devastated the small independent country. They threw resistors in jail and did not hesitate to shoot them. The Lithuanian hatred toward the Soviet communists seethed, but the Lithuanians could do nothing to stop the powerful Red Army. The yeshivos dispersed, and it was the Soviet persecution, not the future Nazi invasion, that prompted the Mirrer Yeshiva to flee Lithuania for Japan. (That was through the good graces of Japanese Consul Chiune Sugihara and Dutch diplomat Zan Zwratendik, whose homes and offices we visited.)
Meanwhile, the Soviets began repressing not only the democratic country but any vestige of Torah life. All the yeshivos sheltering there were now under communist threat instead of Nazi threat. In 1941, the Germans broke their pact with the Russians and invaded Soviet-controlled Lithuania.
Here is where the eradication of Lithuanian Jewry begins. The Lithuanian gentiles, who hated the Russians, cheered the Nazi invasion and did everything they could to destroy the communists and, of course, the scions of the creators of communism—the Jews. They were fed the lies that all Jews were communists and they were behind the Soviet ruination of their beloved independent Lithuania.
It was not the Nazis who led the charge going from house to house rounding up Jews, wreaking death and destruction, including the family of my great-uncle, Rav Avrohom Grodzinsky Hy”d, whom they refused to believe was not a communist. It was the Lithuanian partisans who led the charge, with the Nazis in full cooperation. The Lithuanians, egged on by their religious leaders, let their hatred of the Soviets include the defenseless Jews. They accused even the most religious Jews of being communists and, for no reason, meted out the most vicious revenge on them.
And that leads back to fascinating verbiage (or lack thereof) on memorial plaques throughout the Lithuanian countryside. On many of the plaques, the wording announces that “This is the site where thousands of Jews (the plaques often replace the word ‘Jews’ with the word ‘people’) were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.” Fascinatingly enough, there is often a large space between the word “Nazi” and the word “collaborators.” In almost every place, the word “Lithuanian” or “Lithuanian collaborators” has been removed, leaving a blank space. The original plaques were erected by the Nazi-and Lithuanian-hating Soviets after re-capturing Lithuania following World War II. For once, the Soviets told the truth. They wrote “Lithuanian murderers.” However, when the Lithuanians gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the word “Lithuanian” was removed—detached as an adjective to the exact type of collaborators who were the real murderers of the Jews.
The obfuscation of Klal Yisroel’s great history in Lithuania was even more apparent in the next massive burial land of holy Lithuanian tzaddikim.
Imagine a massive bais hakevaros, one that had more than 70,000 Yidden buried there. Not one tombstone and a single mere small monument. That is the tragedy of Shnipishok, a tragedy that continues in an ensuing saga that is being fought until this very day which I will discuss next week.
