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.