MADE IT!

Yesterday’s excursion offered an interesting glimpse into Lithuanian Jewish relations on the ground. We wanted to enter the 9th Fort in Kaunas, a place where Jews were rounded up and shot during WWII. As August 15 was a Holiday, the museum was technically closed. However a group had arranged access, and so there was a guard who could let us in. A harsh exchange with our guide prompted him to say he had enough Jews. She said we were American and gave him some cash. He said we could enter but we shouldn’t talk to the Jews. Yuck. Many people in our group wouldn’t go in.

The Synagogue in Kaunas was lovely. Liberal enough to have had a choir loft. I saw a Bible in Hebrew and Russian for the first time. We walked around with a Lithuanian student in our program who is from the city. We caught a glimpse of a sign in Russian and Yiddish and were told it was the former site of a Jewish orphanage and trade school. Another Synagogue is now an auto repair shop. The richness of the old world and the barrenness of the present reality are always with us.

And... More intrigue on the Fascist/Communist partisan issue. The brash, controversial founder of our program is at the center of it. He has been ostracized by the university, but is still seeking to get student support. It is hard to know if the agenda is his career, the nature of exhibits, or the fate of the few remaining partisans.

My party was fabulous. Fully half the program showed up (free wine goes a long way) and the weather in the garden was perfect. I was toasted, I told jokes, Happy Birthday was sung in English, French, Hebrew and Yiddish. I got a huge bouquet of roses and a number of books. The ones in Yiddish I will never read, but they will remind me of a good time.

Now that the days are getting shorter and the weather cooler, I am preparing to reenter.

The LOUD multiple conversations have become jarring.

I worry about the fate of the proud, small community post partisans. I am pleased to see a few dozen young people interested in this lost world, but wonder, really, what will happen. The beautiful partisan women who are our guides cannot NOT tell their stories. Will their stories be told in a decade?

I go over the guide book and am amazed both by what I have seen and what I will not see. I need to see the Synagogue. (Every Friday at 5 I have talked myself out of it!)

The rest is optional.