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Photo of the Synagogue in
Neishtot-Tavrig (Zemaiciu Naumiestis), Lithuania
April 1996 Photo supplied by Gerrard
Rudmin
Photo of the Plaque on the Synagogue
in Neishtot-Tavrig (Zemaiciu Naumiestis), Lithuania
Plaque located on the right front
corner of the building in the top photo
The translation of the plaque
is:
" HERE UNTIL JUNE 22, 1941 WAS
SYNAGOGUE
WHICH WAS LED BY THE WORLD FAMOUS
RABBI J. M. LESINAS (Rabbi Lesin in
Yiddish)"
April 1996 Photo and Translation
supplied by Gerrard Rudmin
According to Dr. Ben Lesin, grandson of Rabbi
Lesin, Israel Kaganovitz (who came from Neishtot-Tavrig and lived
in Kaunas until 1991 when he made aliyah to Israel and died in
1993 or 1994) arranged for this plaque as well as other plaques
and tombstones at the entrance to what was the Jewish cemetery,
across the street from the synagogue, as well as at the entrance
to the "newer" cemetery on the outskirts of town on Klaipeda
street (Klaipedos Gatve) near Kaleshene.
Plaque for Neishtot-Tavrig in the
Holocaust Cellar at Mount Zion in Jerusalem
The translation of the plaque is:
In eternal memory of the Neishtot-Tavrig
Martyrs who were murdered by the Germans and the Lithuanians in
5701-1941.
Memorial day is on the 24th of Tamuz.
We will remember them forever.
Former citizens of the Neishtot Community in
Israel and in the Diaspora.
Photo of the mass graves near the village
Siaudvyciai, 3 kilometers east of Neishtot-Tavrig where the Jews
of this town, the town of Vainutas and the vicinity were murdered
and buried. The picture appears in "The Book of Sorrow," a new
book published in Vilnius in 1997 in which photograhps of 239 mass
graves throughout Lithuania appears and are described.
From the book Where
Once We Walked by Gary Mokotoff And
Sallyann Amdur Sack, Published by Avotaynu, Teaneck NJ, 1991 - A
Guide to the Jewish Communities Destroyed in the Holocaust:
Zemaiciu Naumiestis, Lithuania (Ir Chadasha
Sugint [Hebrew: New City Sugind], Neishtat Sugind, Neustadt
Sugind, Nishtot Tavrig); 120 km SW of Siauliai, 55 deg, 22' North
Latitude, 21 deg, 42' East Longitude.
Other Resources:
JewishGen Family Finder
Do you have roots in Neishtot-Tavrig (Zemaiciu
Naumiestis)? Would you like to connect with others researching the
same community? Then click the JGFF button below to search
the JewishGen Family Finder database.
Please enter your family names and your name on
the JewishGen Family
Finder (JGFF) for Neishtot. We will be removing the list below
shortly. You can find other reserachers below by searching JFGG
(see below).
-
- 2. Click TOWN-EXACT SPELLING
-
-
- See report by
Marjorie Rosenblum Kantor at Rosenblum-White Family Reunion
Dinner on July 31, 1983.
Article on Neishtot-Tavrig (Zemaiciu
Naumiestis), Lithuania by Joseph
Rosin
Neishtot-Tavrig is situated in the Zemaitija
region of Western Lithuania, near the Sustis River, about 2
kilometers from the border with East Prussia and 35 kilometers
north-west of the county city of Tavrig (Taurage), which for many
years was a district town in this county.
Until the First World War it was called Neistot
Sugint in Yiddish. Neishtot is mentioned in the official land
registry in the year 1650, in 1750 the town being granted
commercial privileges and in 1792 the right to self-government.
After the third division of Poland in 1795, Neishtot became part
of Russia, as did most of Lithuania, its name being changed to
Aleksandrovsk having been annexed to the Vilna Gubernia (Region),
and as from 1843 to the Kovno Gubernia. During the second half of
the nineteenth century the town developed considerably, to the
extent that there were 165 houses in 1860 with 1,600 people living
there, the majority being Jews.
Its proximity to the German border and the
existence of a customs office boosted its commerce. There were
warehouses for merchandise, 30 shops and taverns, 3 flour-mills, 3
workshops for leather processing, a hospital, an elementary
school, with two yearly fairs and two weekly markets being held in
the town. By 1897 the population had increased to 2,445, including
1,438 Jews (59%).
When the World War I broke out in 1914, most of
Neishtot's houses were burned down, and being too near the front,
its inhabitants evacuated to safer places. During the years
1914-1918 Neishtot was ruled by the German Army, and after the
war, when independent Lithuania was established, the Germans
returned the town to the new state. From the middle of the 1930s
it was called Zemaiciu Naumiestis, the "new town of the Zemaitija
people."
The Jewish Community until the end of World
War I.
Jews settled in Neishtot at the beginning of
the seventeenth century and made their living by trading, mainly
grain and flax, with Memel, Koenigsberg and Hamburg. They also
owned shops and a few families grew vegetables.
In due course the Jews built two synagogues - a
Beth-Knesseth and a Beth-Midrash. Among the Rabbis who served in
Neishtot were Avraham ben Shlomo-Zalman, (a brother of the Gaon of
Vilna), the author of the book "Ma'aloth Hatorah" ("Steps of the
Torah") published in Koenigsberg, 1851 (5611); his son Eliyahu ben
Avraham; his son Shlomo-Zalman ben Eliyahu; Ya'akov Bendetman who
died in 1861 and whose book "Zichron Ya'akov" was published by his
grandson in Vilna in 1875 (5635); Eliezer Yehoshua Shapira (from
1898).
Zionist ideas began to find roots in Neishtot
in the 1880s. On the occasion of Moshe Montifiori's 100th birthday
in 1884, a special prayer "Mi Shebeirah" was offered in his honor
by Torah readers, and contributions were given for the settlement
of Eretz-Israel. The money raised was sent to the editorial board
of the Hebrew newspaper "Hameilitz" in St.Peterburg in order to be
transferred to Eretz-Israel. There were, however, also many
opponents to Zionism in Neishtot.
During those years, hundreds of Neishtots Jews
emigrated to South Africa, England and America. Some Jews returned
to Neishtot after having lived in South Africa for a few years,
bringing a lot of money with them. In 1884 about 200 young men
emigrated to South-Africa, of whom 10 returned home to Neishtot,
after becoming wealthy. In those years there were families in
Neishtot whose only income was the money sent to them by their
relatives from South-Africa.
In Neishtot, like in most of the Jewish
communities, mutual aid funds existed. When a pogrom took place in
the city of Nizhni-Novgorod in Russia in July 1884 and Jews were
murdered, money was raised for the kinsmen of the victims. The
emigrants from Neishtot in South Africa also raised a considerable
sum of money, which was sent to its destination via the Rabbi of
Kovno, Yitzhak Elhanan Spector.
During this period a Jewish physician (Dr. Paul
Valk) and a Jewish pharmacist (Julian Veinstein) were active in
Neishtot and both were very devoted to helping the sick and poor
of the town.
The German Army occupied Neishtot at the
beginning of the First World War, as mentioned before. They
transferred Jewish youth from Poland to Neishtot, placing them in
the synagogues which had been turned into labor camps, surrounded
by a wire fence, its inhabitants occupied in various tasks of
forced labor and as conditions were very bad, hunger and sickness
prevailed. Neishtots Jews helped the imprisoned far beyond their
ability, in spite of the fact that it was strictly forbidden to
maintain any contact with the prisoners.
During the Period of Independent
Lithuania.
At the beginning of the 1920s Neishtot elected
a community committee of nine members, in accordance with the
Autonomy Law for Jews. This committee acted via sub-committees in
most spheres of Jewish life and existed until the end of 1925. The
committee owned some agricultural land of a few hundred hectars
outside the town, a part of which was sold to local Jews and
another part was leased, this area being owned by the community
until Lithuania became a Soviet Republic in 1940.
According to the first survey of the Lithuanian
Government in 1923, there were then 1,771 people, of them 664 Jews
(37%), in the town.
The Jews made their living mainly from
commerce, some of them were craftsmen. The German border being
near, the export of horses, geese, flax, eggs and other
agricultural produce went by way of Neishtot, many Jewish families
earning their livelihood from this trade, although the main
exporters were local Germans.
According to the government survey of 1931,
Neishtot had 33 shops, 22 (63%) of them owned by Jews according to
the table below:
The type of the business Total In Jewish
Ownership
________________________ ____ ________________
Groceries 2 0
Butcher shops and meat trade 7 4
Restaurants and taverns 8 4
Textile products and furs 3 2
Leather and shoes 2 1
Haberdashery and cooking utensils 1 1
Drugs and cosmetics 1 1
Watches and jewelry 2 2
Others 9 7
According to the same survey the Jews in
Neishtot owned a power station (S.Rabin), a wool combing workshop
and a bakery. In 1937 there were 25 Jewish craftsmen: 6 tailors, 4
shoemakers, 4 butchers, 2 tinkers, 1 baker, 1 hatter, 1 carpenter,
1 barber, 1 watchmaker and 4 other tradesmen in the town.
The Volksbank, established in 1925 and claiming
102 members was accepted as a member of the Association of the
Volksbanks in Lithuania in 1930 and contributed very much to the
economic life of the town. In 1939 there were 40 telephones, of
which 10 belonged to Jews.
Jewish children were educated in the local
Hebrew school established in 1920 and many of them continued their
studies in the Hebrew High Schools and "Yeshivoth" of the state
(Tavrig, Telsh, Kelm, Slobodka). There was also a "Heder" in
Neishtot with very few pupils as well as a Jewish library with
several hundred books in Hebrew and in Yiddish.
From time to time there were theatrical
performances by local amateurs. The synagogue (shul) which was
burned down in 1914, was rebuilt as a magnificent brick building
thanks to the donation of 1,000 pounds from the former citizens of
Neishtot, Sami Marx and the brothers Luis and Max Rotshild from
South Africa. The initiative for this enterprise came from Rabbi
Ya'akov Moshe Lesin , who was also the last Rabbi of Neishtot (see
plaque on the synagogue above).
This buiding still stands as can be seen in the
photo above that was taken in 1996. In the "shul" prayers took
place only during the summer, because it was too cold there in the
winter. In the other synagogue, the "Beth-Midrash", where most
middle class people prayed, all of whom were acquainted with the
"Torah", they would study a page of the "Talmud" in the evenings.
There was an additional house of prayer (Klois) for the craftsmen
of Neishtot, which also served as their meeting place. In this
"Klois", in addition to praying, they would learn a chapter of
"Ein Ya'akov" (a collection of tales in the "Talmud"). Some boys
of Neishtot were organized in "Tifereth-Bahurim", an organization
whose task it was to learn "Torah" and to be engaged in public and
social activity.
Neishtot's welfare institutions consisted of
"Linath Hatzedek" and "Gmiluth Hasadim", helping those in need, as
well as the "Ezra" and "Adath-Israel" societies, who competed with
each other with regard to managing the community's affairs.
Many of Neishtot's Jews supported the Zionist
idea and there were supporters of all the Zionist parties. In the
elections to the first Lithuanian "Seim" (Parliament), which took
place in October 1922, 161 Jews voted for the Zionist list, 105 -
for "Ahduth" (Religious) and 3 for the Democrats.
Below are the results of the elections to the
Zionist congresses in Neishtot: