Translations Funded by the
Ellis Family of Milwaukee
In memory of the Members of the Meir Eliashevitz and Meir Krelitz
Families Who Were Victims of the Shoah
Translations Funded by the
Beiles Family of Canada
In memory of the Members of the Beiles and Kizell Families Who Were
Victims of the Shoah
Translations from the
Yurburg Yizkor Book are provided thanks to the
generosity of members of the American branch of the Krelitz Family, whose grandmother and great grandmother was Leah Naividel Krelitz of Yurburg.
For the full list of translated material,
click to view the Contents
of the Yurburg Yizkor Book and use to the
hypertext to access the translated material.
Review of the English Translation
of the Yurburg Yizkor Book, By Professor Dov Levin, Oral History
Department Hebrew University (noted expert on Lithuanian Jewry)
You do not have to be a bibliographer in order
to understand that Yizkor Books of Jewish communities which were
destroyed in the Holocaust are still being published, but there is no
doubt that their number has decreased.
One of these books is the "Yurburg Yizkor Book", published
recently, and probably most readers were not even aware of its
existence. The main innovative uniqueness of this book expresses itself
in the quality of its editing as well as its content. It has two parts,
written at different times, with an interval of several decades between
them. Every part embodies much assorted material of this old and
special community, due to its location, the composition of its
population and its economic and cultural situation.
The first part of the book was published in
Jerusalem in 1991, in Hebrew, by "The Organization of Former Residents
of Yurburg in Israel" with the active participation of, and edited by,
Zevulun Poran (Petrikansky). This translated part extends to over 2/3
(556 pages) of the English book under discussion. The editor of this
book, Joel Alpert, helped by assistant editor Josef Rosin, was
particularly careful to include all Hebrew and Yiddish material,
insisting that the translation should be exact and that names of people
and places would be properly translated into English. It was his
intention to include general information about the town and its Jewish
community; memoirs and authentic descriptions written by members of the
community who grew up in the town almost until the time of its
destruction; hundreds of thrilling photos of generations of families
and of the day by day life of Yurburg Jews. But what may be of special
interest for the genealogists among the readers are the lists of names
of Yurburg Jews: those who were privileged to die naturally and be
buried in the community cemetery, as well as those who were murdered by
the Nazis and their Lithuanian neighbors from way back, and also the
few survivors.
No less interesting and thrilling is the
additional material collected and added to the second part of the book
by the industrious editor and compiler Joel Alpert. Thanks to his
energy and personal motivation to widen the circle of more participants
interested in commemorating Yurburg Jewry, the 180 pages of the second
part include memoirs, documents and photos of former residents of the
town and its vicinity, of people who have been living in the USA for a
long time, such as Naividel, Eliashevitz, Laden, Feinberg, Krelitz,
Rosin-Hilelson, Craine and others. This part also contains several
essays written by Israeli residents who have a special affinity to the
Yurburg community, either as a result of family connections or because
they are engaged in historical research concerning this community:
Professor Ze'ev Bernstein from the Tel-Aviv University, Professor Dov
Levin from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Gita
Abramson-Bereznitsky and others.
Particular mention and praise should be given
to the B.A. thesis "Holocaust in Jurbarkas" prepared in 1998 in Vilnius
University by student Ruta Puisyte under the guidance of Professor
Meyer Shub from this University. Apart from the historical importance
of this work it is praiseworthy to note that this Lithuanian young lady
showed a great deal of personal courage, integrity and bravery to
reveal those local Lithuanians by name, who were the murderers of their
Jewish neighbors.
It is also worthwhile mentioning the wide
ranging and moving essay "A Journey to My Past" by Fania
Hilelson-Jivotovsky.
In summary, it seems that judging from the
quality of the material included in this book, it can be considered a
small encyclopedia, which could serve as a model for similar books.
As can be understood from the short review
above, there is no doubt that we are speaking about a significant
innovation, thanks to the courage of the editor in presenting a book to
the reader containing facts, memories and the description of a way of
life covering a period of about a dozen generations, who were residents
of a Jewish town and who today are spread all over the world, the
common denominator being: "One generation passes on its history and
ideas to the next."
The Talmud Torah - Hebrew School in
Yurburg
(from a 1926 postcard)
According to Jack Cossid, who
emigrated from Yurburg in 1937 at age 19, the town was almost totally
Jewish. They were the middle class, the merchants, whereas the non-Jews
were mostly farmers and lived in the countryside around the town. In
1920, the town established a secular high school, the Gymnasium, in
which secular topics such as physics and calculus were taught. The town
had at most about 3000 residents, most of whom were Jewish.