Hello from Lithuania!!!

63 years ago, in 1941, my father Dr. Wolf Prensky, left his home in Kaunas/Kovno, a neighborhood he had lived in for most of his youth. After murdering most of the Jews in the ghetto, the Germans shipped off my father to Dachau, along with a few thousand (?) Jews, remnants of a community that numbered over 30,000 before WWII.
Those who ultimately survived numbered less than 500. As a young teenager, my father might possibly be the youngest original inhabitant/inmate of the Ghetto to survive.

63 years later, for the first time, my father returned to visit the city he once called home. Along with him came myself, my wife Eileen, our little 18 month old angel of a son Daniel, and my indefatigable Mother-In-Law, Gail Katz.

My name is Zachary Prensky. I always knew that going with my father to Lithuania would be a watershed experience for me. Yet, after only the first day and a half, I surprised myself at how fascinated I am by this trip. Since I've gotten many requests from friends and family for updates, I thought that by writing this blog I could convey to everyone just what a wonderful experience we're having.

So sit back and enjoy seeing Lithuania from the eyes of three generations of Prenskys - my Dad the survivor, myself the fascinated son, and the little 18 month old grandson Daniel who is doing just fine thank you subsisting on Lithuanian-style meals.

Israel: The Weekend Before

We flew Lufthansa into Lithuania from Israel via Frankfurt. Although we live in New York, my Mother-In-Law Gail has a son, my brother-in-law Scotty, who was in Jerusalem for Shabbos on the 24th. So before going to Lithunia we all agreed we'd spend a few days in Eretz Yisroel, first with Soctty, then on our own touring in and around Jerusalem. I had a number of friends in the area that I wanted to meet, so I was more than happy to deal with all of the extra logistics involved. Lufthansa was the only airline that flew to both Israel & Lithunia, which worked out to our benefit as they were very accomodation with Daniel. Each leg had a connection in Frankfurt, and for Daniel breaking up the trans-continental flight was a good thing.

While in the Eretz, I got to visit Rabbi Zone, a 90+ year old Jerusalemite who once spent a weekend with the Chofetz Chaim around 1930. A great tie-in to our trip, since we were hoping to get a chance to pop into Belarus/Radin if the issue of getting a visa could be sorted out. Rabbi Zone retold Daniel & I the story of the Chofetz Chaim's mussar speach Friday night. It was about the importance of keeping a Cheshbon HaNefesh, a diary of one's spiritual accounting.

Other friends I got to meet during the short time we were in Eretz Yisroel included Rabbi Price, Yitz Freidman and Reb Dovid Hirsch. Rabbi Price and his family were close friends for the year and a half I spent in Yeshivat Neveh Zion in '91 - '93. His numerous children were vastly older frm when I was a student, and it brought tears in my eyes to see them playing with my son with the same carefry & loving spirit with which I attempted to brighten up their lives so many years ago.

Yitz Friedman and were good friends and briefly chavrusas for the short time we spent together in Neveh. After my year and a half tour of duty, I moved on to college. Yitz never left the town Neveh was located in (Telshe Stone), and still lives their with his lovely wife Tehilla and thier four kids. By the way, you guessed it, Tehilla's a native Telshe Stone lady herself.

We made the trip to visit Rabbi Price and the Friedman's in Telshe Stone Sunday night. Daniel was all smiles with both families, playing with everyone non-stop till way past midnight. One of the wonderful things that constantly brings me happiness on this trip is the way my very you son behaves so well while traveling. His eyes are always wide open, taking in all the new sights and sounds wit an eager smile and energy that even I find hard to duplicate. For an eighteen month old boy, he seems to behave with manners more akin to someone twice his age.

Finally, after a marathon 25 hour fast (Tisha B'Av) pocketed with frequent trips to the Kotel for davening, we we off for Lithuania. Although our flight was scheduled for 5:30 in the morning and Daniel never got much sleep as we were packing and traveling all throughout the night, he once again behaved the perfect gentlemen and never once threw a temper tantrum. On the connection from Frankfurt to Vilnius both Daniel, Eileen & Gail all crashed and slept from the time the plane lifted off the tarmac to when the rude bounce upon landing awoke them. Around 4pm Wednesday afternoon, July 28th, we arrived in Vilnius. And so the family adventure began...

Lithuania : Day One

My father met us at the airport, waiting for us right outside the baggage claim (some would say uncharacteristicly untime, but I know the truth - when it counts my Dad always comes through!). Between myself, Eileen, Gail & Daniel we had 8 large pieces of luggage plus 3 smaller carry-ons and the mandatory car seat & stroller. I'm constantly amazed at all the stuff that goes along with transporting an 18-month old - we must shlep along 5 times his weight in assorted goodies!

My father flew in the day before with his sister, also a survivor of the German's wickedness. He was unsuccessful in renting a van yesterday for all of us plus our luggage, so Eileen & Daniel went with my father and Gail and I each took taxis to our hotel. My Lithuanian is non-existant, and the cabbie took full advantage. He didn't turn on the meter and quoted an outragious 40 lita when I got to the hotel. Gail's cabby told me in broken English, "my rate is the same as yours", and since we both managed to beat my father to hotel, I was stuck paying the crooks. I knew I was being taken but only later would I learn by how much - the same ride costs about 12-15 lita.

The hotel we are staying at in Vilnius, Ratunda, is a wonderfully small hotel in the European intimate style of living. The rooms are specious (especially the bathrooms) but things that you'd take for granted in the States such as an A/C are non-existant (Not that there are too many days that a nothern climate like Lithuania needs air conditioning!). Even though we have three rooms in our room, there's only one phone extention. - things like that gnaw at you, but appointments like a four poster bed and a plush couch that Daniel loves to climb on more than make up for the missing touches.

After unpacking and freshening up, we all headed to the local Lubavitch branch in Vilnius. Run by Rabbi Krinsky, we had contacted them before our trip about providing kosher meals for us throughout our stay in Lithuania. This was the one part of our trip I was a little apprehensive about since the email communications we had had from them were at times a little unclear. Thankfully, they had all our information down correctly and had completely prepared for our trip. Dinner was served within 15 minutes of our showing up, (a good thing too since we were all famished from all the flying) and it was delicious!!! I highly recommend them for anyone traveling to Lithuania; Rabbi Krinsky can be contacted at http://www.jewish.lt

After dinner we all packed into the Corolla and headed off to the Rotunda. We quickly stopped at a rather large supermarket that had the one small kosher section in all of Vilnius. We were now ready to sleep and tackle Kaunas in the morning.

Kaunas : Day Two Thursday July 29th 2004

I woke up earlier than the rest of the gang and headed over the Lubavitchers for Shacharis services. At 8:30, it was a beginners' minyan. Most of the congregants, numebring around 30, were in their 20s & 30s, and married. Rabbi Krinsky would give a short commentary frm time to time, and the major prayers such as Ashrei and Shema were sung to different melodies. All in all it took over 75 minutes to complete. Thursday's Torah portion was Ve'Etchanan, and I was given the first aliyeh. It was a rush thinking I was the first Prensky in over 60 years to get called up to the Torah in a land where probably 3 - 4 generations of my ancestors had walked.

The style of the prayers, Nusach Ari, was slightly different than my own Ashkenaz tradition. There was one interesting twist which I was not prepared for. During the prayer Aleinu, during a sentance referring to the vanity of worshipping idols that neither speak nor hear, at exactly the same time about three quarters of the congregation spat onto the flour and rubbed out their own spittle with their foot! Not something you hear everyday; the sounds of 20+ grown men spitting. I was told the custom used to be more widespread before the war and people's tastes changed, but it looks like here in Vilnius the spitting is going strong!

Breakfast was at the Lubavitch as well, and Daniel was once again in great form. My Mother-In-Law was enormously helpful in getting Daniel fed. He was all over the sugary pastries and cucumbers, and kept pointing to various drinks and dishes on the table that he wanted to taste. It didn't matter that my glass of Sprite was the same as Eileen's, mor my Dad's, he kept wanting bits from all of our meals, and who is to argue with the boss?

After breakfast, the plan was to drive to Kaunas and spend the day there. We encountered a serious problem right off the bat: the car wouldn't start. My father tried numberous times, then called the car rental company. The firm we rented the vehicle from is a very small business with sporatic operating hours. We were glad to just get them on the phone. They said they would send someone over to our location within 30 minutes.

Instead the company called us back at the Lubavitch office numerous times to ask us to try differnt strategems to start the car. None worked. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Gail stepped into the car and got it to work! Her secret - the car had a wireless disabling button on the key fob, to prevent theft. Neither Dad or I could figure it out! Gail was the hero of the day as we left Vilnius around 11am, but happy to be on the road.

We arrived at Kaunas around 1:30, after a few stops along the way. Daniel was especially playful at a gas stop right outside Kaunus, playing on some Communist-era swings and such (with grandpa Prensky's help of course).
Navigating ourselves into Kaunus from Hwy 1 took a little doing, but we were able to get to the center of town and find a parking stop rather easily. As we approached 'Laisves Aleja' (Freedom Way), previously the main drag, now a mile-long pedestrian mall, a pedestrian mall where my father's family lived in the 30s, I could see my Dad lightening up and feeling at home with navigating the streets, boulevards & shops.

Daniel was agreeable, and Eillen, Gail, and I followed Dad to his childhood home, Laisves Aleja 50. Behind the building facade led into a large courtyard where a number of buildings once stood. Like many houses, the facade had a horse-cart wide entrance into the yard containing various smaller apartment houses, service buildings,and businesses, that formed an isolated world withinthe city. You could still see the outline of some of the long since torn down buildings outlined against the brick of two older but sturdier buildings still standing. Off to the right was a fairly large brick building that my father said abutted against the window of his bedroom. Built around 1939, it obstructed his family's view from their apartment and my father remembered vividly how he would push away the fresh bricks whenever the workers weren't around.

The neighborhood that my father lived in was back then, and still is, a relatively well-off one. The urban design, where a number of small apartment buildings surrounded a courtyard leading onto a prominent shopping strip, is unfamiliar to me coming from modern day America. In Manhattan, the courtyard would've been long gone, replaced with one big skyscraper. It tried closing my eyes and imagining what it must've looked like.

We all did some shopping on the mall while Dad struck out to reconnoiter on his own. He found the building that was his Hebrew Gymnasium, a secular school, untouched, now a Music School. We later drove up to it, and also stopped at the last remaining synagogue in Kaunas, beautifully restored inside, but with hardly any congregants. We then drove across the river to where the ghetto once stood. After the war, the Russians overbuilt the area, all that remained are some of the older street names, some now turned into boulevards and drab, 5- and 10- story drab communist-era apartment building complexes. The main roads bordering the ghetto were still in existance, and my father pointed out where the ghetto's borders were. It was hard to imagine squeezing in 20,000 people in a space no more than a few acres.

The last trip we took in Kaunus was up north to Fort IX, the sight of the mass murder of almost of the ghetto's inhabitants. My father came mainly to see where his 20-year old sister was executed together with her boy friend, his family, and and about 9,000 otherstaken from the ghetto on October 29, 1941.

To their credit, the pre-independance Lithuania decided against building over the mass graves and instead designed a park and memorial to the 'victims of fascism'. The post independance government left the communist-era plaques in place, but added new once to emphasize the extant of Jewish suffering that took place at the site. Of the roughly 50,000 people who were killed at the site over 3+ years, 30,000 came from the Kovno ghetto, 10-15 thousand were Jews shipped in from other countries, 1,000 were local Russian communists captured by German forces, and the remainer were non-Jewish enemy combatants and assorted political prisoners.

We made it back to Vilnius in time for a 9pm dinner at Lubavitch, then headed off to the hotel. It doesn't get dark till about 10:15, and even then it's not entirely pitch black until midnight. Speaking for myself, I couldn't get to sleep until 1-2 in the morning.

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.

Shabbos in Vilnius

We were all vaguely aware of some organizational rift within the Jewish community in Vilnius. During the week, the head of teh Lubavitch center, Rabbi Krinsky, told us that he was uncertain if the main synagogue would be open Friday because of what he termed, 'internal issues'.

However, we were unprepared for what awaited us when my father and I got to the synagogue Friday afternoon. On the steps to the Synagogue was a counter-minyan taking place. As I approached the doors, a young women from the group told me, "Don't go in there if you are looking to daven'.

Ignoring her advice, I stepped inside. I went to get a siddur, but the only ones were Lubavicth ones in Nusach Ari. At the front of the sanctuary Rabbi Krinsky was leading the service. There were about twenty to thirty people participating, mostly seated in the front near the Rabbi. They were all praying very loudly. I didn't understand why until I saw the people milling about near the back. They were mostly older than the average praying congregant and they were talking amoungst themselves and on their cell phones. It was enough of a stir to be disruptive to the prayers so the Rabbi seemed to be trying to compensate by shouting. It didn't help that the acoustics of the Synagogue were terrible.

With us in the back row were four or five armed guards. They seemed be there to keep the peace between the two groups. They certainly didn't stand by the entrace to guard the building; you could come and go as you pleased. Mostly they stood in the back but occasionally they would go outside or towards the front if something strange caught their eye. It was surreal.

After prayers were over, Rabbi Krinsky headed for the exits rather quickly. The minyan outside was long since finished. The older protesters in the back spoke to anyone who listened that they were very much against the Rabbi attempting to hijack an historial Mitnagdish communal synagogue and stamp chassidus onto it. Apparently this fight had been going on for some time now, and it already has spilled out into the local government and secular court system.

Outside, both groups milled about in the courtyard. The presence of the security guards seemed to keep the peace, however a small scuffle took place when one of the Mitnagdic protestors began calling on his cellphone, even though Ma'ariv prayers were over and Shabbat had began. One of the Lubavitcher supporters started shoving the man, and the Rabbi himself held him back. At that point, my father and I headed back to our hotel in disguist.

The Trip to Druskininkai: 140 km, 2 cars & 1 ticket

Sunday started off bad, real bad, but ended wonderfully.

Druskininai is a two hour drive from Vilnius. In order to transport everyone and their luggage, we needed to swap our rental car for a minivan. The minivan was delivered on time to our hotel at ten in the morning, however there was one small problem - it was too small for our needs.

We conferred amoungst ourselves, and agreed we would rent a second car to compliment the minivan. Gail would go with my father and most of the luggage in the minivan, and I would drive a fairly recent model Mazda with Eileen & Daniel. So off we went, only two hours behind schedule to Druskininai...

The drive south was very pleasant. Vilnius is around 140 km (100 miles) from Druskininkai. Most of the trip was on a two lane highway known as A4. There wasn't much traffic to speak of. Most of the land bordering the highway was dense forest. Every few kilometers the trees would open up onto a small farm - we usually saw winter wheat planted - and ocasionally a cow or two. In order to keep the animals safe, they would be tied to a stake or other object and would graze in a 20-30 foot circumference. There were a number of small villages - if you could call them that - that dotted the forest landscape. Most had no more than 5 or 10 houses, mostly made of wood. You could make out the successful farmers from their poorer bretheren from the paint job - some had recently been coated while others looked like they hadn't seen new pain since the last world war.

It was two thirds of the way to Druskininkai, and I was in the lead going around 75 mi/hr. My father was following about 10-15 seconds behind in the minivan. I saw a policeman parked on the side of the road standing outside and he smiled at me. I waved at him and passed him by. I watched however, in the rearview mirror as he pulled out a little stop sign and waved it furiously at the minivan. My father pulled over to the side of the road and got out to speak with the man.

I meanwhile stopped about 200 yards down the road to see what was going on. Eileen turned on the two-way radio we carried and buzzed Gail. She initially didn't know what was going on, but after a few minutes said that they were pulled over for speeding! After another few minutes she told us ominiously, "Don't back up, keep going forward, I'm turning off the radio."

Eileen & I didn't know what to make of that last communication, so we drove another half mile and pulled over by the side of a fishing hole that broke through the edge of the forest at this point. I didn't like the situation, but we both agreed it was better that he pulled my father over than me. At least he could speak Russian with the man, whereas I would've been at the mercy of a policeman I couldn't communicate with.

It took around 15 minutes, but the radio started to cackle. "We're coming out of the forest, continue going." I hopped back into the car and drove off - in the distance I could see the minivan coming towards us. I was very curious to find out what happened, and it wasn't more than 10 minutes before Gail squaked us again over the radio to pull over. We prompty did, and got the full sotr from both of them.

It turned out that I was speeding as well, but the policeman either didn't flag me down in time or started to as I blew by him so either way I wasn't pulled over. He didn't have any backup to go after me so I was safe. He did ask my father if he knew the passengers in the car that had pulled over ahead of them, and that's when he told Gail to tell us to hightail it out of there.

Originally the policeman wanted my father to turn back to Vilnius and speak to a judge about paying a 300 Lt ($110) fine. My father explained in Russian that he was on his way to Druskininkai to meet his son, and would rather pay the fine, er ticket, on the spot. The policeman started out demanding the same 300 Lt, but somehow Dad negotiated him down to 150, which included $20 in US Dollars. When the policeman protested that he couldn't take the dollars, my father said he had no more Lits and that any bank would easily change the dollars for him. The policeman released the minivan's registration and they were on their way.

After he finished the story I told my Dad, "Wow, you're very first speeding ticket in Lithuania - you must've been grinning ear to ear!". My father didn't protest, but he did say that since we both were speeding, I should've been fined as well. I thought about it for a second, then dug into my pocket and handed over 70 Lits. There was no protest from Prensky senior as he pocketed the bills.

Checking in at the Hotel Violeta

The second scare of the day came upon reaching our hotel in Druskininkai - Hotel Violeta. A small, recently built hotel with only 20 rooms to its' name, it is set back approx. 1/5th of a mile from the main road. The rooms alloted to my father and I were spacious and modern - however my suite was lacking a kitchen. Given that we were planning on doing a lot of cooking this week, this was trouble. Futhermore, my mother-in-law's room, classified at the same rate as my fathers', was no bigger than one of my closets back home in New York. Honestly, there wasn't much standing room left over after the bed was taken into account. Clearly she couldn't be expected to live here for a week and have it called a vacation!

After bringing in the luggage, my father went off to speak a friend of his whole lives nearby, someone who helped with choosing this location and making the reservation for us. After conferring for close to an hour, my father found me downstairs checking out the turkish baths and said that he had fixed the problem. We were supposed to have rented out the third floor apartment, but there was one or more mix-ups along the way. The apartment was much more spacious and had a full sized kitchen to boot. I went upstairs and helped carry the luggage up to the third floor.

'Apartment' could hardly have been more of a misnomer. What awaited us upstairs was a 2000+ ft two-bedroom, replete with a a huge livingroom overlooking the back lawn and river, a kitchen/dining room twice as large as my own, two baths - one with pool/jaccuzi, and numerous nooks and crannies to fill even the most overpacked traveler's luggage. The cost: $250 a night.

Eileen & I took the master and my mother-in-law slept nearby in the smaller room, still twice as large as her original hotel room. Needless to say, she was all smiles.

Cooking up a storm!

After unpacking, we sized up the food situation. Down the road was a large supermarket, aptly named Maxima. The largest in the area, it had a full fish department, along with some kosher dry goods imported from Israel and Italy. The game plan was to cut up fish, make a pasta dish as well, and cook some of the local mushrooms - chaterells - that we've been buying from vendors alongside the forest/highway. My father and Gail made the first run to Maxima and came back with quite a number of bags of food. Gail took upon herself (bless her soul) the responsibility to cook every night, and none of us went hungry.

Everyone had a favorite dish. My father found some kosher vinegar and make a tasty salad dressing to go along with the local tomatoes and cucumbers. Daniel liked munching on the 'cukes, but his favorite, and mine as well, were the delicious chanterells. Sauteed with onions, they had a taste that couldn't readily compare to other mushrooms. Needless to say, I can't think of any night here in Druskininkai when we didn't cook up a pot of them.

Daytrips around Druskininkai

My father suggested adding Druskininkai to our itinerary for the week because its a nice resort town that's close to the Belarus border. Originally we had planned on visiting Radun, home of the Chofetz Chaim, but with the visa sitaution not practicable we were left with enjoying the R&R. Dad felt right at home with the pace of life; it was almost as if he was de-aging before our eyes. Once, during a car trip he commented how the smell of the Lithuanian forest came back to him and how pleasant it was to him and his father when he was a boy. Even the coffee seemed different to him; the wierd hours of the stores (nothing open past 6pm except for the one large supermarket) and all of three internet-wired computers in town didn't seem to faze him one bit.

Eileen & Gail got massages Monday morning, and we all took the afternoon to bounce back before traveling 7 Km to Grutas Park. The park is a fascinating collection of Soviet-era statues and outdoor artwork. It is absolutely fascinating. You can read more about this unique park at:

http://www.balticsww.com/stalin_world.htm

Daniel played on Soviet-era swings and cabin logs while my father & I trekked off to see some of the more flamboyant sculptures of Stalin, Lenin, and mythical figures from the worker's paradise. One of my favorites was a large poster extolling the virtues of electrifying the Vilnius - Kaunas railroad, dated 1975. My father's favorite parts were probably the ones detailing the various partisan groups that operated in the forest for over 10 years after Soviert rule was established in Lithuania. Alone amoungst almost all of Eastern Europe in its military resistance to communist rule, the partisans fought until the late 1950s, hiding in th bands of 10 - 20 people and attacking 'soft targets' when given the opportunity. The Russians devoted over 20,000 troops to putting down the partisans, who had a tremendous amount of sympathy from the average Lithuanian civilian. Mostly the partisans attacked Russian targets, but the displays did note that from time to time they would commit terrorist operations against civilian targets. Their favorite seemed to be the hundreds of mandatory 'book clubs' that were set up to teach the Lithuanians all about the greatness of communism. Usually the would warn the locals before blowing up a building, but once in a while innocent Lithuanians would die in the attacks. That didn't hurt the sympathy for the partisians; the countryside is dotted end to end with memorials and shrines to individual partisans who fell during the war.

Daytrips around Druskininkai - Alytus

Tuesday we sailed up the Nemous river; not much to report there. Gail was a real trooper on the trip; we all climbed a huge hill to visit an old church/monestary and she volunteered to carry Daniel all the way down when got antsy. Sitting around in a grassy courtyard listening to someone speak in Lithuanian about the history of a 400 year old building isn't his cup of tea - can't say I blame him.

Wednesday Eileen stayed in the hotel watching Daniel while my father Gail and I drove northwards to the country seat, Alytus. Alytus was a good 90 minutes by car, and we drove through at least 6 small villages along the way. The highway doubles as main street for many of these towns; at 90 km / hour we usually spent 15-30 seconds in the village before departing.

Many of the villages had the local cemetaries off the highway. A number of times we looked for the corresponding Jewish cemetary but couldn't find one. Almost all the villages of pre-war Lithuania had a Jewish component to it, but virtually all trace of our people had been uprooted from these small towns. There was one time that my father spied a sign pointing off the road to a holocaust memorial (probably marking the spot outside town that a group of Jews were killed, as so many of these monuments do. We read that the post-independence Lithaunian government has erected close to 200 such markers.) and we ambled along some dirt roads for 15 minutes but couldn't find it. All throughout the trip the lack of signs was always present. Without a very detailed map, compass, and a good sense of direction you were often dead in the water in the outlying areas.

Alytus once housed a sizable Jewish population. All that remains nowadays is the brick frame of the old synagogue and a memorial outside of town. We visited the synagogue first. It once had a huge upper level / women's section, and the men's area could have easily sat 400 people. The local government did a good job boarding up the entrances so that children couldn't wander inside, but we were able to make out the layout from the cracks in the windows. The outside was also very well maintained, with no graffiti or other damage that you might expect to occur to a derelict building. To the local's credit, it is located in a central area that would be suited for development but they've left it intact as is.I think my Dad was moved by the sight; we spent a while there, davening mincha and taking photographs.

More moving to my father, however, was the memorial at the southern edge of town in the forest. It was not in any guidebook we had; however I spotted it on a local map we bought just of the town. We needed to walk a good quarter mile into the forest from the parking lot, so I gathered that it didn't get many visitors. Instead of a shrine, or an imposing statue, what the government erected were large white cement pyramids, standing in the forest at irregular intervals. It was clear after walking around the site that they were erected wherever they could find evidence of mass graves having been dug. The sight was very moving; imagine walking through a cornucopia of green, animals chirping and flies buzzing. And there, all around you are a dozen or so large white pyramids. The only writing of any kind was a sign in Lithuanian near where we parked which read, "Recognise that the ground you are walking on is soaked with the blood of innocent people." My father later remarked to me that he found the Alytus memorial, for people he never met nor knew, more moving to him that the 9th fort where his sister was murdered outside of Kaunas.

The trip to Kybartai

Thursday we drove the farthest we'd been to date. My father wished to visit the town on the old Lithuanian/German border that he'd lived at till he was 6 years old - Kybartai. His father worked as a customs expiditer, and their third story apartment was in a building that housed a bank next to the river and railroad that marked the border with the Germans. That land, formerly Prussia now controlled by the Russians, still is a border town but with the lack of any meaningful amount of cross-border trade it is more akin to one of the small villages we drove through on the way to Alytus yesterday.

On this trip Eileen & Daniel joined us, and I really have to give them credit for daring to do so. The drive was 3 hours there and two and a half back. Quite a long drive to see a small speck on the map. Daniel was great, he slept half of the way and never once threw a tantrum. Eileen kept the box of Cheerios next to her up front and we munched on them the entire way and back.

The building my father grew up in was gone (hey, who needs banks in the workers paradise?), but the communists built a larger apartment building on the foundation. We didn't know this when we got there because the layout had been changed slightly. My father did knew the area however, he knew which street the house was one but couldn't nail down which of the two or three buildings it was. As it turned out we asked a lady walking the street who knew of a much older women who had lived nearby her entire life. My father and I walked over to her apartment and sure enough she was home. Dad introduced himself and asked where the 'Ukio Bankas' (lit. Commerce Bank) was. A great big smile lit up on her face as she said 'Ukio Bankas!' and pointed out the window to the building next door, No. #24.

Dad walked the perimeter of the building and that's when we recongized that the apartment building had been built on top of the old foundation. He then pointed out to me where his grandfather lived and where the cross-border traffic (consisting back then of geese, mainly) took place. We then drove a few blocks and he showed us where the synagogue used to be. The communists had raised what was left after the Germans, and the area was left comepletely bare. Nothing but a small puddle in a dusty patch of land the size of my building's parking lot. I was surprised they never built something over it given that it was a stone's throw from the main road / highway. You would of never known that the main synagogue occupied this land. I wondered if, in a hundred years, will anyone remember?