Day Three in Vilnius
Even though Shabbat starts very late in this Baltic country, we decided to spend the day locally around town to give us plenty of time to prepare. As it turned out, between starting late for breakfast dealing with follow-up issues regarding the car rental we didn't start out until 11:30am. Our first stop was to one of three small museums devoted to the holocaust and pre-war Lithuanian Jewry. Originally devoted to telling the story of the 'Victims of Fascism', the museum has been renamed in honor the Vilna Gaon by the post-Communist government. The first museum was rather small, with a listing and photgraph of every known Jewish Lithuanian who fled the various ghettos and fought in the partisans. Other displays included photographs of all known synagogues in the country, and retrospective of some of Vilnius' more famous Jewish citizens.
The second musuem was a much larger collection of exhibits, most of which were assembled during the communist era. The newer exhibits had explanatory descriptions in English and Yiddish, while the older one were only in Russian and Lithuanian. The older ones also rarely had the word Jew in it, clearly trying to avoid any and all overtones of a Jewish dimension to the tragedy. The newer exhibits went into a lot of detail on the Lithuanian mobs which carried out many of the early pogroms against Jewish homes and businesses after the Germans arrival, which the communist-era ones completely ignored.
Most of us were completely bushed around 3pm, so we went back to the hotel for a nap. Around 6, my father and went over to Lubavitch to pick up the food for Shabbos - we planned to eat our meals in the hotel. When we got back, Eileen had some bad news for us - the hot plate we brought from the States wasn't working.
We rushed back out to a local version of WalMart, looking for a hot plate. No luck. It looked like we were eating cold food for Shabbos. Gail & Eileen took it like a real bunch of troopers. They fed Daniel the soup, which was still luke warm, and I headed off to the only synagogue in town with my father.
The second musuem was a much larger collection of exhibits, most of which were assembled during the communist era. The newer exhibits had explanatory descriptions in English and Yiddish, while the older one were only in Russian and Lithuanian. The older ones also rarely had the word Jew in it, clearly trying to avoid any and all overtones of a Jewish dimension to the tragedy. The newer exhibits went into a lot of detail on the Lithuanian mobs which carried out many of the early pogroms against Jewish homes and businesses after the Germans arrival, which the communist-era ones completely ignored.
Most of us were completely bushed around 3pm, so we went back to the hotel for a nap. Around 6, my father and went over to Lubavitch to pick up the food for Shabbos - we planned to eat our meals in the hotel. When we got back, Eileen had some bad news for us - the hot plate we brought from the States wasn't working.
We rushed back out to a local version of WalMart, looking for a hot plate. No luck. It looked like we were eating cold food for Shabbos. Gail & Eileen took it like a real bunch of troopers. They fed Daniel the soup, which was still luke warm, and I headed off to the only synagogue in town with my father.
1 Comments:
At 3:03 AM,
Anonymous said…
Sunday 6AM
Dear Zach & Eileen - thanks so much for creating this blog. I Enjoyed sharing your adventures. I'm in FL with Laurel and will print it outfor her.
love Mom
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