“REUNION”
Reclaiming Baltic Jewry
Creating Study Tours to the Baltic Countries of Lithuania, Latvia and
Estonia and Israel
Michael Moshe Gans
United States
My father survived more than two years of internment in the Kaunas (Kovno) Ghetto, months of
forced labor in Palemon and Kedainiai in Lithuania and then Kuramea and Goldfibre in Estonia.
He was liberated with 100 other inmates from the Concentration Camp Klooga in Estonia. My
entire family was shot by Lithuanian collaborators and then buried in mass graves.
In 1994, after my initial trip to the Baltics, I joined a group of Lithuanian survivors seeking to
erect a monument for the Jewish victims at Klooga. After a long struggle with the newly
established Estonian government (including a meeting with the Prime Minister) we dedicated the
monument in 1995.
Intoduction- The Holocaust is about family!
In December of 1991, the Soviet Union was disintegrating as my mother was dying of cancer. I
flew from New York to Cincinnati every Friday to be with her on weekends. My days with her
were spent trying to keep her alive in the least possible amount of pain. Nights were full of
tossing and turning, trying to sleep in the uneasy silence of dust collecting in her apartment. My
father had died ten years earlier, also from cancer, and I knew that soon I would be an orphan.
One night, while leafing through my father’s old Yiddish books, I found in Umkum fun der
Yiddisher Kovne (The Destruction of Jewish Kovno) a picture of his Arbetsflichtkarte (work
permit) from the Kaunas Ghetto. In between the fraying pages, I also found a carefully folded,
yellowing sheet of paper. On it, in my father’s handwriting, was listed the dates in which he had
been interred in various Baltic work and concentration camps. The list began with the Kaunas
Ghetto, continued through Latvia, and ended in Workcamp Klooga, in Estonia.
I knew that after my mother’s death, my family would consist of myself, my twin sister, and one
surviving photo of my father’s family, taken in 1939. They always looked so stiff and
uncomfortable in the cracked brown frame sitting on my parent’s bedroom dresser. None of
them smiled.
I had never met them. I didn’t even know who they were until I was nine or ten. I remember my
parents nervously telling me that except for Uncle Isaac, who had left Lithuania in 1929 to
settled in Havana, Cuba, and Aunt Sheina, who, though frail, had survived the Kaunas Ghetto
together with my father, he rest of the family was in heaven. Somehow, I knew not to ask
more questions. Now, this evening in Cincinnati, thirty years on, I know I had to ask the
questions, for my sake, and for theirs. Finding my father’s list of where he had been
interred in the various Baltic work and concentration camps became the roadmap, my first
itinerary in reuniting me with my “family”.
The scourge of Anti Semitism
Anne Frank said it so well! “To our great horror and regret we hear that the attitude of a great
many people towards us Jews has changed. We hear that there is anti-Semitism now in circles
that never thought of it before…Oh, it is sad. Very sad, that once more, for the umpteenth time,
the old truth is confirmed: ‘What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does
is thrown back at all Jews”.’
Last Monday, June 21, 2004, I attended the FIRST conference ever to be held at the United
Nations in regards to ant-Semitism. This is how Professor Bayefsky*, a senior fellow at the
Hudson Institute, Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto, Barrister and
Solicitor, Ontario Bar, and adjunct professor at Columbia Law School began. “This meeting
occurs at a point when the relationship between Jews and the United Nations is at an all-time
low. The U.N. took root in the ashes of the Jewish people, and according to its charter was to
flower on the strength of a commitment to tolerance and equality for all men and women and of
nations large and small. Today, however, the U.N. provides a platform for those who cast the
victims of the Nazis as the Nazi counterparts of the 21st century. The U.N. has become the
leading global purveyor of anti-Semitism—intolerance and inequality against the Jewish people
and its state.” She continued, “for Jews, however, ignorance is not an option. Anti-Semitism is
about intolerance and discrimination directed at Jews—both individually and collectively. It
concerns both individual human rights and the group right to self-determination—realized in the
state of Israel.”
And then Elie Wiesel had this to say. “How can one here today not be concerned with the
assault that is being waged on Jewish memory? Some people deny that it occurred; others turn it
around and say that we were guilty. Others still, in their viciousness, use the vocabulary that we
use with regard to the killer, but they use it against Israel. How can there not be concern about
anti-Semitism? We were convinced that anti-Semitism perished here (in Auschwitz). AntiSemitism did not perish. Its victims did.”
The Shoah, the merciless destruction of one-third of the Jewish people, was not enough to quell
this insidious hatred. We have also realized that the naïve hopes and dreams of Theodor Herzl
and the early Zionists that with the establishment of a Jewish State, anti-Semitism would
gradually disappear, were just that, naïve!
Alas! How do we confront a future that guarantees the continued hatred of Jews and their
right to self-determination—realized in the state of Israel?
One of the most important avenues is the formal and informal education of both Jews and
non-Jews about the Shoah. On an informal level, Holocaust Study Tours may serve as
being one of the most powerful and profound of these educational tools.
Why should we develop Holocaust study tours to the Baltics?
1.
As stated by the renowned Holocaust scholar, Professor Franklin H. Littell**, “The
Holocaust, or Shoah, the near destruction of European Jewry, is the most significant event in the
life and death struggle of the Jewish people since the destruction of the Second Temple.” The
center of that European Jewish Intellectual Life was in the Baltics, in Vilna (Vilnius), the
Jerusalem of Lita (Lithuania). To study the Shoah in its actual setting, as Professor Littell states,
“is to truly understand the Jewish civilization that was destroyed and its impact on subsequent
Jewish life and culture.”
2.
Jews are commanded to Zachor! Remember! The creation of these study programs to
the Baltics serves this “memory”! When traveled by the living, they become a sort of Mourner’s
Kaddish or Yizkor for those truly unfortunate Jews who lived in an area of Europe destined to be
less remembered (or perhaps, even completely forgotten) than Auschwitz or Poland.
3.
How did Baltic Jewry differ from their brethren in other countries? To answer this
question, we must develop a thorough understanding of Jewish life in the Baltics prior to the
Shoah. This will be addressed by meeting with members of the remaining Jewish Communities
and by visiting “shtetls”, sites of former and/or restored synagogues, yeshivot, cultural
institutions, cemeteries and of course, sites of mass murder.
4.
During the Nazi occupation, the tragic fate of Baltic Jewry differed from that of their
brethren in Germany, Poland or Greece. These Holocaust Study Tours will address these
differences. These Tours will follow the routes taken by the Einsatzgruppen while carefully
examining, in their actual setting, their methods of extermination, the participation of local
collaborators, the role of righteous Christians, the creation and liquidation of ghettos, work and
concentration camps, the post-liberation murders.
5.
Another important component of these Tours is to also address the attempt to annihilate
the remnants of Baltic Jewry, after World War II, by the former Soviet Union.
6.
As Stockton College’s noted scholar, Franklin H. Littell states, “The Holocaust was a
watershed event in the history of Western civilization, an event that exposed at every level and
every context the pathological forces at work beneath the surface in European Christianity.” To
understand the underpinnings of European Christianity vis-à-vis Baltic Jewry, one must meet its
local leaders, educators and adherents. In addition, these programs will provide the local
population with an uncensored view of their own recent history by the scheduling of formal and
informal meetings between participants of the study programs and the local population.
Hopefully, these deliberate attempts to create a dialogue between both groups will facilitate open
and honest discussions in regards to such subjects as intolerance, anti-Semitism, honoring the
memory of Baltic Jewry and the future relationship between the Baltic countries, Israel and
Diaspora Jews.
7.
These Holocaust Study Tours are a life-altering experience. As Avraham Hirchson***,
March of the Living Founder and President says, “It is the submersion into humanity’s worst
nightmare. It demands courage, emotional honesty and intellectual fortitude. In return, it
provides the most passionate, consuming, fulfilling experience imaginable.”
8.
Most importantly, (I continue paraphrasing Avraham Hirchson, March of the Living
Founder and President); “A young person’s participation in a Holocaust Study Tour is the
strongest protest of both Jewish and non-Jewish youth all over the world against the denial of the
Holocaust. These young people will be the bridge between the survivors and the next
generation.”
Goals
1.
The goal of Holocaust Study Tours is for young people to learn the lessons of the
Holocaust and to lead the Jewish people into the future vowing to retain “Jewish Destiny in
Jewish Hands”. In doing so, “Never Again” becomes a reality!
2.
The Jewish People’s right to self determination- realized in the state of Israel is
reinforced by ending all study tours in Israel.
3.
Confront anti-Semitism. Explore the pain and discomfort experienced by generations of
Jews who have been so profoundly hated. Explore Jewish self-hatred and denial and other
methods used by Jews to confront anti-Semitism. Experience “rebirth” in Israel.
4.
A Holocaust Study Tour is a dynamic educational leadership program. Its purpose is to
teach students of different religious and ethnic backgrounds about the dangers of intolerance
through the study of the Holocaust, and to promote better relations among people of diverse
cultures.
5.
A Holocaust Study Tour inspires participants to believe in the power if individuals and
communities to make a difference in the ongoing effort to eradicate injustice and bigotry.
Methodology
There is a profound need for an international, educational program that brings Jews and nonJews, their friends and supporters, and those interested in understanding the Holocaust and
Israel’s ensuing rebirth from the ashes of the Holocaust, from all over the world to the Baltic
countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and then on to Israel. These Programs vitally need the
participation of the young citizens of the newly established Baltic republics. These programs are
to be individually developed, depending upon the demo- and psycho-graphics of participants.
Reunion (temporary name for a Baltic Program)
A core program is to be developed similar to the March of the Living Program where
participants arrive in the Baltics on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, but differ by hold
an alternating memorial program at one of the many sites of mass murder in the Baltics, i.e.
Paneriai, Kaunas (Kovno) Ghetto, the Way of Death at the Ninth Fort, Bikernieki and Rumbula
forests outside of Riga, the beaches of Liepaja, and then move on to Israel to observe Yom
HaZikaron, Israel Memorial Day, and Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel Independence Day. Another
major difference between the two programs is that the site selection, ceremony and the
organization of events is to be developed by various international committees of college
students, representing, the Americas, Israel, the EU, South Africa, the three Baltic countries and
when possible, various Muslim countries. Coordination would be a year long process, enabling
Jews and non-Jews from all over the world to work together, breaking down barriers of fear and
prejudice, in particular of Jews and Israel, while appropriately memorializing the destruction of
Baltic Jewry. Thereafter, the program moves on to Israel to commemorate Yom HaZikaron,
Israel Memorial Day and culminates in a joyous celebration during Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel
Independence Day.
Educational Component in each Program
In applying to any of these educational programs, participants agree to participate in an
educational component of the program prior to and during the trip. For adults, a one or two day
seminar can be created at the various Jewish Community Centers, Synagogues, Churches, local
Colleges and Universities, etc… For college students, the educational component will include a
semester long, credited course, to be offered by a History, Sociology, Anthropology, Holocaust
Studies and Genocide Studies, or Judaic Studies Department at various universities throughout
the world.
The curriculum, to be implemented during the semester before the trip to the Baltics and Israel, is
designed to help prepare the student for the intellectual and emotional challenges of the journey,
as well as the responsibilities upon returning home. In addition, the coursework will provide the
recent spate of anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, and anti-Israel college campuses with a positive source
of information for Israel and the Jewish People.
Topics to be examined include:
-Anti-Semitism
-Lithuanian Catholic History, Culture and Politics
-Latvian and Estonian Lutheran History, Culture and Politics
-World War I and the Inter-war Period
-The National Socialist Regime
-Refugee Policy
-Gentile Life under German Occupation
-Jewish Life under German Occupation
-Local Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian persecution of Jews and collaboration with Nazi
Germany during World War II
-The Einsatzgruppen
-Life in the Ghettos, Work Camps and Concentration Camps
-Other Victims
-Resistance, Rescue and Righteous Gentiles
-After the Holocaust
-Comparative and moral issues in contemporary society
-Theological Issues
The trip to the Baltic States is preceded by a day-long orientation in New York City for all North
American students. From there, participants and leaders travel to Vilnius, Lithuania.
Participants will have the unique opportunity to step into history and see first-hand Holocaustrelated sites. They will visit monuments and memorials that commemorate the once thriving
Jewish cultural centers in Vilnius, Kaunas, Siauliai, Riga, Daugavpils, Liepaja, Tartu and Tallinn
that were ravaged during the Holocaust. Estonia was the first European country to be declared
Judenrein, free of Jews! They will visit the mass graves at Paneriai, located southeast of Vilnius
(Vilna), where 70,000 Jews were mercilessly killed, the Kaunas (Kovno) Ghetto and the Way of
Death at the Ninth Fort, where another 30,000 Jews were brutally tortured and then shot,
Bikernieki and Rumbula forests outside of Riga, where 60,000 Jews were killed, the beaches of
Liepaja, and the Vaivara Concentration Camp Complex, of which, the Klooga Workcamp near
Tallinn, remains.
As Avraham Hirchson, March of the Living Founder and President states, “To stand on this
ground, to sense “the presence of the absence”, is to feel the power of hatred and the danger of
indifference. Perpetrators wrought this evil. Bystanders, with their silence, gave their consent
and allowed it to continue”.
An integral part of the program involves Holocaust survivors, who join the group on the journey
to share their stories and their wisdom. One feels their pain, learns from their courage and
carries on the task of bearing witness. Every participant makes a commitment to honor the
memory of the victims of Nazi terror, to oppose Holocaust deniers and to fight for a more
tolerant world.
Israel
The study program continues on from the Baltics to Israel, honoring the theme, “Jewish destiny
in Jewish Hands”. The Israeli portion of these programs will also have specific goals and issues
and will be developed in the workshop.
In Israel, it is important to develop a program that includes the major Holocaust sites, i.e. Yad
Vashem (tour of the Museum and a guest speaker from the International School for Holocaust
Studies), the Ghetto Fighters’ House (Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Heritage Museum),
Amcha (visit the AMCHA facilities and listen to a guest speaker; a therapist or survivor or a
child of a survivor), Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel along with the
religious and historic sites of modern day Israel, i.e. Jerusalem, the Knesset, the Western Wall,
various historic Churches and Mosques, the Mt. Herzl National Cemetery, Hebrew Museum,
modern day, international Tel-Aviv, the beaches, the night life, the Diaspora Museum, the
Galilee, the Negev, Eilat and the presently controversial sites, i.e. the “Wall”, a Jewish settlement
in the West Bank, etc…
A special program needs to be created for those groups that are to be in Israel during Yom
HaZikaron and Yom Ha’Atzmaut. A case for a militarily superior IDF needs to be developed by
encounters with Israeli youth and military personnel. Students should be encouraged to ask
questions. For Yom Ha’Atzmaut, the various international student committees should be
encouraged to participate in developing the celebratory events for Yom Ha’Atzmaut.
Issues in Organizing Holocaust Education Tours
1. Transportation
a. Air
1) to New York
2) transatlantic
3) Baltics to Israel
4) from Israel to final destination
b. Ground Transportation
1) New York City
2) Baltics
3) Israel
2. Accommodations
a. New York City
b. Baltics
c. Israel
3. Events
a. Memorial
1) New York City
2) Baltics
3) Israel
b. Yom Ha’Atzmaut
c. Creation of formal and Informal encounters with the local population
1) Baltics
2) Israel
4. Daily review of Sites, Events and Feelings
5. Meals
a. New York City
b. Baltics
c. Israel
6. Cooperation and coordination with various governments, universities, museums,
religious institutions, archives, sites of mass murder
a. New York City
b. Baltics
c. Israel
7. Addressing anti-Semitism
8. Religious and Theological Issues
9. Security
10. Maintaining the Sanctity of the Holocaust, Yom Ha’Shoah and Yom HaZikaron.
Creative Projects
Participants will be encouraged to develop projects prior and during the Tour.
1. Bring, share and expand the “Family” Album
2. Writing Competition
3. Express Oneself in Art or Music
4. Films
5. Ways to memorialize the 1.5 Million Children of the Holocaust
Working with Universities
It is essential that the staff of these programs work closely with faculty and members at many of
the pro- and anti- Jewish, Zionist and Israel colleges and universities throughout the US, Canada
and abroad.
Endorsements
In addition, it is essential that these programs have the endorsement of the US, Canadian, Israeli,
EU and Baltic governments, religious organizations, educational institutions, museums, etc…
Cost
The price of the various programs should be based on affordability. We want to reach the widest
variety of participants. Scholarships based on merit and financial need should be made available.
Financial assistance should be granted on a competitive basis to students expressing a strong
commitment to the program.
Fees will include the New York orientation, flights on the New York-Vilnius-Tallin-Tel-AvivNew York routing, and land arrangements in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Israel. Flights
between the participant’s home and New York will not be included in the fee. Insurance, tips,
passport/visa fees and program text are also to be extra.
Scholarships and Financial Aid
Scholarships and Financial Aid will be needed for college students who participate in the various
international organizing committees for Yom Ha’Shoah, Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’Atzmaut.
These could be provided by organizations interested in memorializing Baltic Jewry; those who
want to confront anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and anti-Israel groups; institutions of higher
learning; and those who want to promote international understanding and tolerance.
Closing
My father also left me a photograph of the central square and the marketplace of Erzvilkas, taken
in 1937. Outwardly, Erzvilkas has not changed much: when we finally got there, the town
looked exactly as it did in that photograph except that the horses had been replaced by former
Soviet made cars. Our small house, in the Zydu Gatve (Jew Street), the tiny Jewish Quarter of
the town, had been razed by a fire and a restaurant built on its foundations. We decided to eat
lunch there. It was wet and cold and I was confused and overwhelmed as we sat down. Which
of these gray-headed pensioners had murdered my family? Flames roared in the open brick
fireplace. The waitress poured hot red borscht over boiled potatoes, smothered in sour cream. If
I had been chilled before, now I was almost too warm. The clatter of pots, pans, dishes and the
drone of my tour guide’s voice, receded as I realized that I was sitting over my grandmother’s
kitchen. She had been forced to strip naked and then was shot, by her neighbors, and dumped
into a mass grave along with six of her children and their children, at Griblaukas, the Mushroom
Forest. I began sipping the sweet and creamy borsht and wondered, what had changed?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
1. Bierman, David. Restoring Tourism Destinations in Crisis: A Strategic Marketing
Approach. Wallingford, UK: CABI Publishing, 2003.
2. Dawidowicz, Lucy S. The War Against the Jews 1933-1945. New York: Bantam, 1986.
3. Dershowitz, Alan. The Case for Israel. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003.
4. Dwork, Deborah and Robert Jan van Pelt. Holocaust, A History: New York and London:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2002.
5. Ezergailis, Andrew. The Holocaust in Latvia 1941-1944, The Missing Center. Riga:
The Historical Institute of Latvia, 1996.
6. Gar, Yosef. Umkum fun der yidisher Kovne (The Destruction of Jewish Kaunas-Kovno.
Munich: Farband fun litvishe yidn in der amerikaner zone in Daytshland, 1948.
7. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Ordinary Germans and the
Holocaust. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.
8. Greenbaum, Masha. The Jews of Lithuania, A History of a Remarkable Community
1316-1945. Jerusalem and New York: Gefen Publishing House, Ltd., 1995.
9. Gurin-Loov, Eugenia. Suur Hkving, Eesti juutide katastroof 1941 (Holocaust of Estonian
Jews 1941). Tallinn: Eesti Juudi Kogukond, 1994.
10. Kruk, Herman. The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 2002.
11. Laqueur, Walter and Judith Tydor Baumel. The Holocaust Encyclopedia. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 2001.
12. Levin, Dov. Lithuania, The World Reacts to the Holocaust. London: John Hopkins
University Press, 1996.
13. Lieven, Antol. The Baltic Revolution, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the Path to
Independence. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993.
14. Oshry, Ephraim Rabbi. The Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry. Brooklyn: The Judaica
Press, Inc., 1995.
15. Rhodes, Richard. Masters of Death, The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the
Holocaust. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
16. Samalavicius, Stasys. An Outline of Lithuanian History. Vilnius: Diemedis Leidykla,
1995.
17. Schoenburg, Nancy and Stuart Schoenburg. Lithuanian Jewish Communities. New York
and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1991.
18. Sydnor, Charles W. Soldiers of Destruction, The SS Death’s Head Division 1933-1945.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.
19. Tokayer, Marvin and Mary Swartz. The Fugu Plan, The Untold Story of the Japanese
and the Jews During World War II. New York and London: Paddington Press, Ltd.,
1979.
20. Williams, Roger. Insight Guides- Baltic States. Singapore: APA Publications GmbH &
Co. Verlag, 2002.
21. Williamson, Gordon. The SS: Hitler’s Instrument of Terror, The Full Story from Street
Fighters to The Waffen-SS. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International Publishers &
Wholesalers, 1994.
Articles
1. Berdichevsky, Norman. “The Baltic Revival and Zionism.” Lituanus, The Lithuanian
Quarterly, Vol 38, No.2, 1992.
2. Buzshansky, L. Rabbi. “Likvidatsiye fun Lager Klooga.” Fun letzten Khurban Sept.
1948:9
3. Dery, Mark. “Shoah Business.“ Scope Nov 8, 1999
4. Greenhoiz, Shmuel Rabbi. “Khurban Kovne.” Fun letzten Khurban May, 1948:7
5. Kaplan, Israel. “Zum Khurban Lite.” Fun letzten Khurban May, 1948: 7
*Professor A.F. Bayefsky is a Professor at York University, Toronto, Canada, and a Barrister
and Solicitor, Ontario Bar. Professor Bayefsky is the recipient of Canada's preeminent human rights research
fellowship, the Bora Laskin National Fellowship in Human Rights Research. She is currently a member of the
International Law Association Committee on International Human Rights Law and Practice, and Editor-inChief of the Series "Refugees and Human Rights", published by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague.
**Professor Franklin Hamlin Littell
Professor Franklin Littell is rightfully known as the Father of Holocaust education in America. He was the first
American scholar to offer courses on the Holocaust and genocide and since 1998 has held the position of
Distinguished Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Richard Stockton College.
A graduate of Cornell College (Iowa), Dr. Littell also holds graduate degrees from Union Theological Seminary and
Yale University (Ph.D.) and well as several honorary degrees. He was a Professor of Church History at Emory
University, Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, and Chicago Theological Seminary before
becoming Professor of World Religions at Temple University in 1969. Since retiring from Temple in 1986, Dr. Littell
has continued to deliver lectures and serve as the featured speaker at numerous universities and scores of national
and international symposiums in several countries.
Author of twenty-four books and more than 700 articles in scholarly journals, his prize-winning work, The
Anabaptist View of the Church, heralded a breakthrough in the historiography of Anabaptism. It ushered in an era
of new interest in the Anabaptists and generated dozens of major monographs on various facets of the continental
Anabaptistmovement.
***Avraham Hirchson
Holocaust survivor, Knesset member, member of the Knesset Finance Committee; Founder and
President of The March of the Living .
IMPORTANT DISCUSSION TOPIC
By Mark Dery
In Scope
November 8, 1999
Does the creation of Holocaust Study Tours create a “Shoah Business”?
Shoah Business
Tourists eating sandwiches in a concentration camp
by Mark Dery Published November 8, 1999 in Scope
There's no business like Shoah business, to borrow the Jewish historian Yaffa Eliach's
mordant one-liner.
See also...
... by Mark Dery
... in the Scope section
... from November 8, 1999
In Selling The Holocaust, a gimlet-eyed analysis of the branding and blockbustering of the
unspeakable, the historian Tim Cole argues that "at the end of the Twentieth Century, the
'Holocaust' is being consumed." (No denier he, Cole frames the term in quotes to distinguish
the Holocaust as it appears in the mass-marketed conjurings of movies like Schindler's List
and museums like the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. from the historical
horror of the assembly-line murder of millions at the hands of the Nazis.)
Evidence that the Holocaust is being trivialized, merchandised, and (through feel-good
Hollywood confections and theme-parked museums), Americanized, is all around us. The
revisionist happy endings of Roberto Benigni's movie Life is Beautiful and the Robin Williams
vehicle Jakob the Liar domesticate the Holocaust, deodorize the memory of its poison gas
and its open-pit graves. There are Holocaust-related toys, lit Lite, postcards, and games.
Holocaust museums do a brisk business, and death-camp tourism is a common feature of
the Grand Tour for Jews and Gentiles alike.
"Each year," writes Cole, "tourists flock [to] Auschwitz, Anne Frank House, [the Israeli
Holocaust museum and memorial] Yad Vashem, the museums in Washington, D.C., Dallas,
Houston." In museum gift shops, visitors can buy mementos, from pins trumpeting the
trademark-ready phrase "Never Again" to postcards (to send to friends, Cole speculates,
"with the message 'Wish you were here'").
To the truly cynical, the "Holocaust" -- again, the cultural icon, not the historical event -- is,
in the words of essayist Phillip Lopate, "a corporation headed by Elie Wiesel, who defends
his patents with articles in the Arts and Leisure section of the Sunday Times" while
competing franchises like Yad Vashem and the Holocaust Memorial Museum fight for the
remaining market share.
"When in Washington, D.C.," writes Cole, "we 'consume' the 'Holocaust' on offer at the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ... and when in Krakow we 'consume' the
'Holocaust' on offer at the State Museum at Auschwitz."
At Auschwitz, a collaborative artwork by the Jewish artist Julie S. Dermansky and the
Austrian filmmaker George Steinboeck, literalizes the queasy notion of consumption amid
the crematoria -- in the literal as well as the capitalist sense. The installation consists of a
dozen TVs playing loops of people eating in the Auschwitz museum cafeteria, as well as the
couple's photos of the death camp.
Cole's grim foreboding that the "'tourist Auschwitz' threatens to trivialize the past,
domesticate the past, and ultimately jettison the past altogether" comes gut-lurchingly true
in Dermansky and Steinboeck's footage of tourists at the trough, shoveling in steam-table
glop as if it's their last meal. A bearded young man mechanically slurps up spoonful after
spoonful of soup, barely pausing for breath; a grotesquely fat man chews obscenely, wattles
quivering; a beady-eyed, hawk-nosed young man glances about nervously, as if worried
that someone will snatch his food off his plate.
It seems doubtful, somehow, that even the knowledge that the room where they're eating
was once the camp's processing center would spoil their appetites. In the unmarked,
anonymous building that now houses the cafeteria, newly arrived inmates were registered,
robbed, tattooed, shaved, disinfected, and dressed in the familiar striped pajamas -transformed from Mensch to Untermensch in what the authors of Auschwitz: 1270 to the
Present unforgettably call a "humiliating baptism into the kingdom of death."
A little over half a century later, the theme-parking of the inferno is well underway. The
Auschwitz imagined by the State Museum collapses the complex wartime network of 40
satellite camps and three main ones into a single, mythic netherworld of night and fog,
haunted by the million dead. The guided tour of Hell begins at the infamous gate whose
abandon-all-hope greeting, "Arbeit macht frei" (work will set you free), is a fixture in our
collective nightmares, despite the fact that "very few of the Jews deported to Auschwitz
ever saw that gate," according to the authors of Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present.
The tour's somber terminus, carefully orchestrated for maximum effect, comes when
visitors arrive at the crematorium. Guides don't trouble them with the burdensome truth
that the actual site of the mass murders lies two miles away, in ruins; the scene of their
solemn communion is in fact a postwar reconstruction, equipped with a portentous chimney
whose function is purely (if powerfully) symbolic, since it is not in any way connected to the
ovens.
The State Museum, which Cole rather flippantly calls "Auschwitz-land," is "a contrived
tourist attraction," he argues, a misconstruction of history that effaces the past in the name
of enshrining it. This is the Faustian bargain of the State Museum, which like all museums is
in the business of stage-managing historical memory. "In constructing a mythical
'Auschwitz,'" Cole asserts, "we distort the horrific reality of Auschwitz, and in its place
create an 'Auschwitz' which is open to the attack of those who would deny that the
Holocaust ever took place. Representing the complexities of the past in a ghoulish theme
park for the present has consequences."
One of those consequences, as Cole suggests, is the evisceration of history in a made-forTV world where the past is increasingly experienced as a whirl of free-floating images, cut
loose from context and complexity. It's instructive, for example, that many take Schindler's
List as a historical newsreel, not a Spielberg vision of a Holocaust with a happy ending.
Tourists on "Schindler's List tours" of the Krakow ghetto where the movie was set are taken
to the locations where the movie was filmed, rather than the sites where the Holocaust
actually happened.
Increasingly, not only the past but much of the present is mediated by flickering screens
and phone lines. Part of the psychological fallout of the virtualization of reality is the death
of affect that J.G. Ballard calls "the greatest casualty of the twentieth century" -- a psychic
numbness that cultural commentators from Camus to McLuhan have argued is a salient
characteristic of our media-bombarded, hyperstimulated culture. It's distinguished by the
disengagement from immediate experience, a cauterization of the soul evidenced by Cole's
anecdote about the visitor who toured Auschwitz in a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of
the heavy metal band Megadeth, or the tourists Dermansky and Steinboeck saw "going
through the crematoriums, laughing, filming each other," or the grandfatherly Auschwitz
visitor whom the historian Paul Levine overheard asking his companions if there'd be time
for shopping after their death-camp sightseeing.
In their artists' statement, Dermansky and Steinboeck write, "Auschwitz represents the
inhumanity human beings are capable of. People eating in the cafeteria reveal how
insensitive mankind is to its own history. Or perhaps we missed something, and walking
through the grounds at the museum really does give one an appetite, as would touring the
grounds of a theme park."
Watching their videos, we wonder what sort of human can eat lunch in a death camp. Or are
they human? They seem to have stepped out of a sick-funny sitcom dreamed up by George
Grosz and Mel Brooks. From our vantage point on the moral high ground, they're
reminiscent of the SS physician who wrote in a 1942 diary entry that after a hard day's
work of sending innocent men, women, and children to the gas chamber, he sat down to a
"truly festive meal" of "baked pike, as much as we wanted, real coffee, excellent beer, and
sandwiches."
What sort of monster works up an appetite in a hellworld of living skeletons, where the
smoke and reek of burning bodies reaches to heaven? The tourists stuffing their faces in At
Auschwitz are similarly swinish, soulless -- "useless eaters," we think. That is, until we
remember, with a jolt, the origin of that pungent phrase: Hitler's pet phrase for the
"subhumanity" fit only for the chimneys of the Auschwitz and other living hells like it.
In a creepy, deeply disorienting turnaround, we suddenly find ourselves face to face with
our inner Nazis, the side of us that reassures us that the difference between us and the
unfeeling creatures chowing down in a death-camp cafeteria is that they are somehow less
than human. That, ironically, is the first step down the slippery slope that ends in the abyss.
Mark Dery is a cultural critic. His collection of essays, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium:
American Culture on the Brink, was published by Grove Press. His commentaries can be
heard on the nationally syndicated "Radio Nation," and he was recently appointed a guest
lecturer for January 2000 in UC Irvine's Distinguished Fellow program.
Itinerary
8 days/ 7 nights
It has been estimated that of the 265,000 Jews living in Lithuania in June 1941, 254,000 or 95%
were murdered during the German occupation. No other Jewish community in Nazi-occupied
Europe was so comprehensively destroyed.
Vilnius, once a medieval stronghold first against the Teutonic Knights and then against the
Tartars, is famous for its university, built by the Jesuits in splendid baroque style and one of the
most important centers of the Counter-Reformation. In the 1920s, the school offered instruction in
Semitic languages. Surprisingly, today it is one of the few schools in Eastern Europe with a
program in Yiddish. Jewish Vilna had grown from about 3,000 Jews at the end of the 18th century
to over 80,000 in 1939, but today there are only about 6,000 Jews in all of Lithuania. Vilnius is
again the nation’s capital, but Vilna is no longer its Jerusalem.
Day 1. Vilnius
Arrival in Vilnius. City tour of Vilnius, including Gediminas Castle, Cathedral
Square, the President’s Palace, the Gate of Dawn, and Vilnius University.
Continue on to the Medieval Jewish Quarter; The Great Vilna Synagogue and
the shulhoyf; Vilna Gaon- the great Jewish scholar; Vilna- the center of the
struggle between mitnagdim and Hasidim; the famous Jewish sculptor
Mordechai Antokolski; the world-renowned Strashun Libarary; the territory of
the Large Ghetto during WWII, the courtyard of the Judenrat and the Jewish
cemetery and the grave of the Gaon of Vilna. Vilnius Tolerance Centre. Open in
2001 in the building of a former Jewish theater.
Have lunch with the staff of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum before
touring the museum. Continue touring the city, the “Cheap Houses”- large
dwellings built by Baron Hirsch for the poor Jews after the great flood and the
remaining edifice of the world famous printing-house “Widow and Brothers
Romm”.
Attend a reception hosted by the Yiddish Institute at Vilnius University.
Informal meeting with the local Jewish Community, dinner and a formal
meeting with Lithuanian university students to discuss Lithuanian Jewry, the
Holocaust, anti-Semitism, Zionism, Israel and Baltic and Diaspora Jewry and
Baltic relations.
Day 2. Vilnius-Paneriai Memorial-Trakai-Vilnius
The first Paneriai executions took place on 8 July 1941. At this site, once a popular holiday resort
for the Jews of Vilnius and originally intended by the Soviets as a place for the storage of fuel,
circular pits had been dug. Groups of one hundred Jews were brought from the city, made to
undress and then led, ten at a time to the edge of the pit and shot. In the twelve days following 8
July as many as 5,000 Jews from Vilnius were murdered in this way. They had been led to believe
that they were to be sent to labour camps. A Polish author, Józef Mackiewicz , was a witness of
the massacre of Jews by the Nazis in Ponary . He described this event in his book "Nie Trzeba
Glosno Mowic" ("It Should Not Be Spoken Loudly").
Breakfast and formal meeting with Lithuanian Roman Catholic clergy at the
only functioning Vilna Synagogue “Taharat Hakodes” built by the “enlightened”
Jews of Vilna in 1902. Continue on to the Ponary Memorial, where the Nazis
and their local accomplices murdered approximately 70,000 Jews.
A tour of Trakai, the ancient capital and the residence of Grand Dukes of
Lithuania with its 14th century, island castle and the museum of Lithuanian
history. Visit to the Karaite museum and the story of this small ethnic group
(confessing Judaism), brought by Vytautas the Great from Crimea 600 years
ago. Sightseeing of the Trakai National Park, where one can admire the
scenery of this place.
After dinner, it is time to enjoy Vilnius by night with the same university
students met, the night before, at the Yiddish Institute.
Day 3. Vilnius-Kaunas
Kaunas, an hour’s drive west along the Neris and is the commercial center of the country,
manufacturing textiles and food products. The Nemanus was a German trader’s route: the heart of
the city is dense with 16th century German merchant houses, standing next to the dozens of Art
Deco and Bauhaus style buildings built after 1920, when Poland annexed Vilnius and Kaunas
became the provisional Lithuanian capital and—briefly—a vibrant center for the arts. Kaunas had
been a home to Jewish traders even before it became a Hansa town; by 1939, the city’s Jewish
population numbered nearly 40,000, the expulsions of the first World War notwithstanding nor,
thereafter, the emigrations—principally to the United States, South America, South Africa, and
British Palestine—forced by their increasingly difficult economic situation at home.
On June 24, 1941, the third day of the invasion of the Soviet Union Kovno was occupied by the
Germans. Even before the Germans began entering the city, Lithuanian gangs went on a rampage
of murder. Thousands of Jews were moved to the Seventh Fort and other locations where they
were mistreated then murdered by Lithuanian guards. A total of 10,000 Jews were murdered in
June and July of 1941.
The Kovno ghetto was sealed off in August 1941. The killings continued. On October 28, 1941, the
date of the "big Aktion" 9,000 Jews, half of them children, were taken to the Ninth Fort and
murdered.
In June 1943, it was decided to impose a concentration camp regime on the ghetto. Young Jews
organized resistance groups. At the end of 1943, 170 members of a resistance organization made
off for partisan bases in the Rudninkai forest, south of Vilna.
On July 8, 1944 as the Red Army approached Kovno the remaining Jews were transferred to
concentration camps inside Germany, to Kaufering or Stutthof concentration camps. Ninety Jews
were able to hold out in bunkers and lived to see the Red Army enter the city.
Early departure for Kaunas (Kovno), the second largest city and interim capital
of pre-war Lithuania. En routes stop at Zezmariai (Zhezhmer), where a
remarkable Jewish community settled before the war with its surviving wooden
synagogue building
After checking in at the hotel, we begin a full day tour of Kaunas, including
Slobodka, a Jewish suburb of pre-war Kaunas and the ghetto during WWII, the
Old Jewish cemetery. The Great Action at Demokratu Square. The Seventh and
the Ninth Forts- death sites for some 30,000 Jews from Lithuania and other
countries. Meet with the Director of the Ninth Fort for an hour long discussion
about the tragic fate of the Jews of the Kaunas (Kovno) Ghetto and the Ninth
Fort. Visit the memorial and Holocaust Museum at the Ninth Fort.
Continue on and visit the beautiful Chorale Synagogue, striking for its black
and golden colors and the Children’s Memorial in its court. The house where
Leah Goldberg, the prominent Israeli poetess, lived. Then, on to the Sugihara
Center.
Born on the auspicious day of January 1, 1900, Sugihara was destined to make his mark on the
new century. He began his fast-rising diplomatic career as an interpreter at the Japanese Ministry
of Foreign Affairs. He knew English, Chinese, French, and German and taught Russian part-time.
His school’s motto--"Do much for others and expect little in return"--and his principles of
responsibility, virtue, compassion, and self-denial served him well when he assumed his post at
the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. Here the diplomat heard stories of Jews’ harrowing
escape from Poland after the Nazi invasion in 1939, as well as tales of Jews being terrorized, sent
to concentration camps, and murdered. After the Nazis quickly occupied Denmark, Norway,
Holland, Belgium, and France by 1940, Sugihara knew the worst was yet to come as Hitler (who
had mocked the Japanese as "lacquered half-monkeys") forged an alliance with Japan’s Hirohito.
Jewish refugees crowded into Kaunas, desperate for transit visas to escape, and when Sugihara’s
superiors in Tokyo rejected his repeated pleas to issue these exit visas, he disobeyed and chose to
risk personal disgrace and his diplomatic career. The Soviet consul, impressed by Sugihara’s fluent
Russian, agreed to allow Jewish refugees to travel through Russia on their way to Japan and then
safe havens far beyond Europe. He worked with his wife for three weeks, sixteen hours daily, to
write over 2,000 visas as refugees frantically clamored outside the building. When the Japanese
consulate closed, he continued to write the visas at his hotel, then the train station; finally, he
handed signed blank visas out the window of his departing train. Not until decades later did he
find out his visas had saved lives.
During dinner, meet with the members of the small Jewish community. An
evening walk in the Old Town with its Catholic churches, narrow streets, and
cobbled squares, cosy cafes and art galleries. Visit the Art Gallery of Ciurlionis,
the outstanding Lithuanian artist and composer, the Devil’s Museum with
hundreds of statuettes of the devil. A. Mapu and L. Zamenhoff streets.
Continue the walk along the main street, Laisves Aleja, boulevard, with its 2-3
story Bauhaus buildings, restaurants, shops as they looked before World War
II .
Day 4. Kaunas- Kedainiai- Siaulai- Klaipeda
"The following incident took place in Kedainiai, Lithuania, on August 28, 1941. A small
detatchment of Security Police belonging to Einsatzkommando 3, aided by local civilian
Lithuanians, killed 710 Jewish men, 767 Jewish women, and 599 Jewish children of that town on
that day. The Jews were taken from a barn to a pit in groups of 200. According to the postwar
testimony of one of the Lithuanians, a heavily built Jew, Slapobertkis, was told by a Lithuanian,
Czygas, to undress. The Jew, fully realizing what was happening,said to the Lithuanian that he was
a man like him. Czygas then tore the Jew's clothes off and drew his pistol. Slapoberskis grabbed
Czygas and drew him into the ditch, holding him with one hand by the neck and firing the
Lithuanian's pistol at the German commander with the other. Now the German jumped in to help
Czygas, freeing him, only to be grabbed by Slapoberskis in turn. Another Lithuanian, Jankunas,
who was heavy himself, jumped in, freeing the German, but found himself in the clutches of
Slapoberskis. Janukas drew a knife from his belt and killed the Jew. Czygas, gravely injured, died
on the way to the hospital.<13>" (Hilberg, 178-79)
Work Cited
Hilberg, Raul. Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish
Catastrophe, 1933-1945. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992.
Departure for Liepaja. En route a short visit to Kedainiai (Keidan), the citadel
of the Radziwil family, one of the most powerful noble families in Lithuania and
also the town where the Vilna Gaon lived and worked. The buildings of three
synagogues have remained in Kedainiai. City tour of Siauliai (Shavli), including
Hayim Frankel’s Synagogue, tannery and residence given to the Hebrew
School, the former “Trakai” and Caucasus” ghettos in Siauliai. Meet with
members of the Jewish community. Drive to Telsiai with an en route stop at
the Hill of Crosses, a symbol of Lithuanians’ resistance against foreign rule,
with more than 50,000 crosses. In Telsiai see the former renowned Yeshiva
and other sites of the town. Afternoon departure for Palanga- a popular resort
on the Baltic Sea.
Sightseeing of the Old Town of Klaipeda (Memel)
distinguished for its German influenced medieval architecture. Visit the Jewish
Cemetery, the Jewish Cultural Center and the Synagogue.
The first mention of Jews living in Klaipeda dates back to 1567.
Day 5. Klaipeda- Liepaja- Riga
About 7100 Jews lived in Liepaja in June of 1941. Approximately 200 survived the Nazi occupation
of Latvia along with about 300 who survived in the USSR. The murder of nearly 3,000 Liepaja
Jews at nearby Skede, on the Baltic Sea, occurred on December 15 - 17, 1941. These killings by
the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) and of their Latvian collaborators are documented in an
extraordinary and heartbreaking photographic record. A film clip and still pictures are available
and will be reviewed prior to arriving at the newly erected Liepaja (Libau) Holocaust Memorial and
walking the beaches of Skede.
Morning drive to Nida on the Curonian Spit. En route stop at Juodkrante for a
walk on the Hill of Witches, a vivid example of Lithuanian folk wooden
sculptures.
A visit to Nida with its 60 metre-high sand dunes, the
summerhouse of Thomas Mann and the Amber Gallery.
Departure for Liepaja (Libau). Have lunch with members of the local Jewish
community. Visit the memorial and walk the beaches.
Early evening departure from Liepaja for Riga.
After checking into the hotel, the group will attend a reception hosted by the
Latvia University’s Center for Judaic Studies. Informal meeting with the local
Jewish Community, dinner and a formal meeting with Latvian university
students to discuss Latvian Jewry, the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, Zionism,
Israel and Baltic and Diaspora Jewry and Baltic relations.
Day 6. Riga
The tour of Riga highlights the Jewish Quarter, the memorial for the Great
Chorale Synagogue on Gogol Street, built in 1893 and cruelly torched by the
Nazis on July 4, 1941 with 300 Jews locked inside. We continue on to the
Jewish school founded by Max Liliental, the museum “Jews in Latvia”, the
Jewish Community Center, and the sites of the famous historian, Shimon
Dubnov.
Lunch at the Jewish Community Center and a formal meeting with Latvian
Lutheran clergy members.
We then visit the Rumbula Memorial, a heavily forested area just outside of
Riga and the mass murder site and grave of 25,000 Jews from the Riga Ghetto,
murdered between November 30 and December 8, 1941 (10th and 18th of
Kislev on the Jewish calendar). Only 2 people who arrived at the Rumbula
killing site escaped death. Then on to the Bikernieki Memorial Site where
approximately 40,000 Jews from throughout Europe were murdered. In 2001,
a fitting memorial was dedicated at this site on the outskirts of Riga. Then on
to Salaspils- the memorial site of the concentration camps- Kaiserwald and
Kurtenhhof, camps operated by German Collaborators.
After dinner, it is time to enjoy Riga by night with the same university students
met, the night before, at Latvia University’s Center for Judaic Studies.
Establishment of Center for Judaic Studies
July 15, 1998 for the first time in the history of the Republic of Latvia a Center for Judaic Studies
was established at the University of Latvia. On January 19th, 1999 the official opening ceremony
was carried out after successful work of the Center during the first semester. The ceremony
caused great interest amongst mass media and the whole society of Latvia. More than 20 foreign
diplomats, members of parliament and government participated in the event that was addressed
by vice Prime Minister of Republic of Latvia, Ambassador of Israel in Baltic States, Chief Rabbi of
Riga and Latvia and other distinguished personalities.
The main activities of the Center for Judaic Studies is connected with its goal to give university
students, staff members, the Jewish community and the broader society the opportunity to obtain
a wider range of knowledge in Jewish history, philosophy, religion, traditions and the Hebrew
language. One of the priorities is the history of the Jews in Latvia and the Baltic region with a
special accent on the history of the Holocaust.
Day 7. Riga to Tallin
Breakfast. Early morning tour of Riga’s Old Town, including the Castle of Riga,
the Dome Cathedral, the Swedish Gate, the Great and Small Guilds, Cat’s
House, the “Three Brothers”, The House of the “Blackheads” and St. Peter
church to view the city from the tower. Leave Riga by coach and drive north
along the coast towards the border to Estonia.
Estonia
Prior to World War II and the 1940 Soviet invasion, half of the country’s 4,500 Jews lived in the
capital, Tallinn. A massive Soviet deportation operation on the night of June 13, 1941, sent
10,000 Estonians, among them nearly 500 Jews, to Siberia.
As the front line of the war drew near Estonia in August 1941, many Jews escaped to the Soviet
Union. Unfortunately, many Estonian Jews were more afraid of the Communists than of the Nazis,
and it is estimated that 1,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during
1941-42. At the Wannsee Conference held in 1942 to discuss the implementation of Hitler’s Final
Solution, Estonia was declared the first Judenfrei (country free of Jews).
Continue to the popular resort town of Parnu, beautifully situated on the shores
of the Baltic Sea. Later, drive past typical farmland is Estonia en route to the
capital: Tallin. After checking into the hotel we begin the tour of this charming
city which has been placed on UNESCO’s list of “World Heritage” sites. Drive to
the Old Town on top of a hill, to find breathtaking views of the tiled roofs and
colorful houses below. Stroll the beautifully preserved Medieval streets and
become part of Tallinn’s thousand-year old history. Walk past the impressive
Alexander Nevski Cathedral to the Town Hall Square and then on to the lively
Lower Town.
Reception and Dinner at the small and intimate Jewish Center. The Director of
the Estonian National Archive will address the group in regards to the Jewish
historical treasures hidden from the Soviet revisionists by the brave staff
members of the Estonian National Archives.
After dinner, it is time to enjoy Tallinn by night with Estonian university
students.
The Holocaust in Estonia
After the annexation of Estonia to the Soviet Union in 1940, the Jewish institutions were liquidated
and the political and social organizations disbanded. On the eve of the German invasion of the
Soviet Union, some 500 communal leaders and affluent members of the congregation were
arrested and deported to the Russian interior. Due to the efforts of the Soviet Army to halt the
German advance on Leningrad, the conquest of Estonia took about two months. Tallinn was not
occupied until Sept. 3, 1941, and about 3,000 Estonian Jews succeeded in escaping to the Russian
interior. All the Jews remaining in the zone of German occupation, numbering about 1,000, were
murdered by the end of 1941. In 1942 and early 1943 about 3,000 Jews, mainly from Germany,
were sent to the extermination camp in Kalevi Liiva. By May 1943 Heinrich Himmler had ordered
the cessation of mass shooting and the erection of forced labor camps. The main camp in Estonia
was Vaivara, commanded by Hans Aumeier (sentenced and executed in 1947). About 20,000
Jewish prisoners, mainly from Vilna and Kaunas (Kovno), passed through its gates to labor camps
at Klooga, Lagedi, Ereda, and others. The inmates were employed in mining slate, and building
fortifications. The successful advance of the Soviet army led to the evacuation of the camps to
Tallinn and from there to Stutthof from where a “death march” of 10,000 took place along the
Baltic coast. Other camps were also liquidated (2,400 killed at Klooga and 426 at Lagedi). On
Sept. 22, 1944, Estonia was finally liberated. The Germans attempted to burn the bodies of their
victims to conceal their crimes.
Vaivara Concentration Camp
Vaivara concentration and transit camp in northeast Estonia. It was apparently established in
1943, close to the Vaivara railway station. Initially, it served as a camp for Soviet prisoners of
war. From August 1943 until February 1944 it was the central camp of about twenty labor camps
throughout Estonia. Through it passed some twenty thousand Jews brought from the ghettos of
Vilna and Kovno in Lithuania, and from Latvia. On arrival in Estonia, the Jews were kept for some
time in the Vaivara camp, which was consequently known also as a transit camp. In addition,
Vaivara was a concentration camp, with an average of about thirteen hundred prisoners, the large
majority of whom were Jewish (men, women, and children), with a minority of Russians, Dutch,
and Estonians.
Administration.
The camp commandant (Lagerkommandant) of the Vaivara camp, and thus of all the other camps
for Jews in Estonia, was SS - Hauptsturmfuhrer Hans Aumeier. The camp was directed by
Hauptscharfuhrer Max Dahlmann, Hauptscharfuhrer Kurt Panike, and Helmut Schnabel, who held
the rank of Lagerfuhrer; the chief physician was Franz von Bothmann. The entire administrative
staff was made up of SS totenkopfverbande (Death's - Head Units). The camp was guarded by an
Estonian SS unit.
Living Conditions and Selktionen.
The prisoners worked from morning to night at different types of hard labor, such as constructing
railways, digging antitank ditches, quarrying large stones and pounding them to gravel, and felling
trees in forests and swamp areas where they stood up to their knees in half - frozen water. The
daily food ration received by the prisoners consisted of seven ounces (200 g) of bread with
margarine or ersatz jam, ersatz coffee, and vegetable soup.
After their labor and at night, the prisoners huddled together in wooden huts with very thin walls.
Each hut was divided into five sections, with 70 or 80 prisoners in each section, sleeping in triple tier rows. Water was inadequate, and washing was allowed only infrequently. Consequently, lice
and disease were rife in the camp. The sick and the weak among the Jewish prisoners, and all the
old people and children who could not work, were killed after Selektionen. The first Selektion was
held in the fall of 1943 on the parade ground of the camp: 150 Jewish men and women who had
been found unfit for labor were transferred by truck to the nearby forest and shot. In the second
Selektion about 300 Jews were taken out to their death, in particular those suffering from typhoid.
In twenty other Selektionen, held approximately every two weeks, about 500 Jewish prisoners
were killed. In one Selektion, the children, who until then had been kept together in a special hut,
were killed. Many scores of other prisoners were killed and wounded by the blows and
punishments of the SS. As the Red Army approached, several hundred of the remaining prisoners
were taken from the Vaivara camp westward to Saki.
Postwar Trial.
In 1968, Lagerfuhrer Helmut Schnabel stood trial, and was sentenced to sixteen years'
imprisonment; the following year his sentence was reduced to six years.
Day8 . Tallin- Klooga
Breakfast. Early morning coach to the former Klooga Concnetration Camp. All
the buildings at the main camp in Estonia, the Vaivara Concentration Camp,
have been razed and a monument has been erected. Klooga still exists and is
presently being used by the Estonian military. Tours of the camp and the
recently erected monument have been pre-arranged.
Klooga
One of the largest labor camps in Estonia. Klooga, established in the summer of 1943, was a subcamp of the Vaivara concentration camp. It held about 2,000-3,000 prisoners, who mainly arrived
in August and September 1943 from the Vilna Ghetto. A smaller contingent came from the Kovno
Ghetto, and about 100 Soviet prisoners of war were also interned there.
The Germans established camps in Estonia in order to take advantage of the local natural
resources. The prisoners were made to manufacture goods for the German war effort and build
fortifications against the Soviet army, which was drawing near. At Klooga, most prisoners worked
in brick and cement factories and in the sawmills, while a smaller group worked in the wooden
clog factory. The conditions at the camp were brutal; the prisoners received meager food and
water rations and were forced to work even when they were ill. A 75-man underground was
active in Klooga but because prisoners were often transferred out out of the camp, the
underground was unable top organize itself for an uprising.
The Germans began evacuating Klooga in the summer of 1944. On September 19 SS men shot at
least 2,500 prisoners in the camp. Only 85 prisoners managed to hide and survived.
Return to Tallinn. Free time to browse and relax before we drive to Kadriorg
Palace, built by Peter the Great of Russia, now the home of the President of
Estonia.
After dinner, an informal students review session to discuss feelings and
impressions. Preparations for Israel.
Day 9 . Tallin- Tel-Aviv
Early morning flight to Tel-Aviv, with a change from Estonian Air to El Al in
Moscow, Russia. Scheduled to arrive in Tel-Aviv around 3:00PM. Transfer to
Hotel in Tel-Aviv.
Evening Welcome Reception, Dinner and explore Tel-Aviv by night with Israeli
university students.