History of the Jews in Lithuania
The history of the Jews in Lithuania goes back to the early Middle Ages . In the following, Lithuania is not understood as a political territory, but as a cultural area. The first Jews probably immigrated from the southeast into the area of the later Grand Duchy of Lithuania . From the end of the 11th century , Ashkenazi Jews immigrated in significantly larger numbers as a result of the persecution of the Jews during the time of the Crusades and the great plague as well as numerous local massacres and expulsions from German-speaking areas eastwards, first to the Slavic and then to the Baltic countries. The mostly religiously tolerant Polish and Lithuanian rulers encouraged the settlement of Jewish immigrants, whose knowledge and contacts were of great benefit to the economic development of their countries. Not only in the Kingdom of Poland, but also in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which remains from the personal union of Lithuania and Poland as part of the Real Union, which is referred to as "Lithuania" in Jewish cultural history ( Hebrew "Lita" or "Lito", Yiddish "Lite") largely coincides with the designated area, the number of the Jewish population and Jewish communities grew, which were granted extensive autonomy in internal affairs. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania gradually developed into one of the centers of Eastern Judaism, with Vilna , which was known as the "Jerusalem of Lithuania" or " Jerusalem of the North ", as its center and formed the basis of what happened in the 19th century Century until the Second World War developed into a typically Lithuanian-Jewish culture and scholarship.
Before the German occupation during the Second World War, more than a million Jews lived on the territory of historic Lithuania, spread over six states: Latvian SSR : 94,000, Lithuanian SSR : 147,000, Poland : 505,000, Russian SFSR : 4,000, Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic : 375,000 , Ukrainian SSR : 32,000. More than 90% of them were murdered by Germans and their local helpers during the German occupation.
The existence of Jews in Lithuania is attested for the year 997. Jewish gravestones dating back to the late 11th century were found in Eishyshok, in Lithuanian Eišiškės, a small town south of Vilnius . The historian Abraham Harkavy believed that Jews from Babylonia and other areas of the Near East immigrated to Lithuania in the 9th and 10th centuries. Both Harkavy and other historians consider it likely that Jews from the Khazar Empire settled in the fortified cities of Lithuania as international traders, particularly in Grodno , Kovno , Minsk and Pinsk, after its fall from the 10th century . As servi camarae regis they were under the protection of the princes. Simon Dubnow and with him the majority of historians assume that Jews immigrated to Lithuania from German-speaking areas for the first time as a result of the first crusade at the end of the 11th century. However, Jews probably did not settle permanently in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania until the second half of the 14th century.
Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Rise to great power
According to legend, Grand Duke Gediminas is said to have granted the Jews of Lithuania a privilege shortly after 1320, when the city of Vilna was founded . The oldest documented privileges are those of Grand Duke Vytautas from 1388 for the Jews of Brest-Litowsk and Trakai , the former capital of Lithuania, who adhere to older Polish models. In the following year, Vytautas granted the Jews of Grodno an extraordinarily comprehensive privilege that guaranteed property, freedom of movement and freedom of worship. The privilege shows that the Jews had lived in the city for a long time, owned land and were active in numerous branches of the economy, that they had the same rights as Christians as craftsmen and traders and that they owned a synagogue and their own cemetery. In contrast to Poland, the Jews in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania formed a “ third estate ” at this point in time , which was economically on an equal footing with the Christian townspeople. Under Grand Duke Vytautas and 480 were from the peninsula Crimea originating Karäerfamilen in Trakai and Panevėžys settled, however, lived largely isolated from the rest of the Jews, whose number is estimated at 6000th
In the 14th and 15th centuries, the prosperity and influence of the Jewish communities grew. A wealthy Russified Jewish class of traders, large landowners and tax collectors emerged, while the majority of Jews lived in poor conditions. In 1495 the Jews were expelled from Lithuania by Grand Duke Alexander . The Lithuanian Jews settled in neighboring Poland. After Alexander inherited the Polish crown after his brother's death, they were allowed to return to Lithuania in 1503. The attitude of his successors Sigismund I and Sigismund II August towards the Jews was also often contradictory. In 1528 was the Jews, at the urging of the city's Burger banned, establishment and trade in Vilnius and then in Kaunas of Grand Prince Sigismund, but which at the same time appointed Jews as tax collector for both cities and the privileges of the Jews in the Statute of 1529 confirmed . In the statute of 1566, however, Jews were required to wear yellow headgear to distinguish them from the Christian population.
Noble republic of the Polish crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Through the Lublin Union of August 12, 1569, created by Sigismund II. , The personal union of Lithuania and Poland, established in the 14th century, was transformed into a real union . Volhynia , Podolia and Ukraine were separated from Lithuania and became Polish. The area remaining as part of the Union as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in which 10,000 to 25,000 Jews were likely to have lived at the time, largely coincides with the area known as "Lithuania" in Jewish cultural history.
Lite
It is called Yiddish Lite (ליטא, also ליטע or ליטה), Hebrew Lita , in the Ashkenazi pronunciation Lito , and includes today's Lithuania , Latvia , Belarus , parts of northeast Poland , northern and eastern Ukraine and extends into Russia . The oldest evidence for the name Lite can be found in the responses by Israel Isserlein from Regensburg from the 15th century, but the name is likely to be a lot older. The western part of Lithuania is frequently Yiddish Samet (זאַמעט) ( Žemaitija ), the eastern Travel (רייסן) ( Reussen called). The formal Jewish name for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, on the other hand, was Hebrew medinas Lito (מְדִינַת לִי Staat) (State of Lithuania) or more often medinois Lito (States of Lithuania).
Litwak
The Yiddish name for a Jew from Lithuania is Litwak (ליטוואק) (plural: Litwakes ), female Litwitschke (plural Litwitschkes ). The expression - originally pejorative - is only documented in the 19th century. The adjective Litwisch denotes in particular the Lithuanian Yiddish, Litwischer , feminine Litwische (plural: Litwische ), but may have been the usual Yiddish name for the Lithuanian Jews in the past. Non-Jewish Lithuanians, on the other hand, are referred to in Yiddish as Litwiner or Litwin , female Litvin or Litwinerke .
Litvish
Ashkenazi Jewish societies were trilingual or quadrilingual. Knowledge of the two “holy languages” Aramaic and Hebrew , in which the Tanach , the Talmud and other rabbinical writings as well as the Kabbalah are transmitted, was reserved for men. Not only were they learned, read and used in the liturgy , but also written by Jewish scholars. The common language of the Litwakes, however, was Yiddish. The Lithuanian East Yiddish dialect is referred to as Northeast Yiddish in linguistics. It differs from both Polish Central East Yiddish and Ukrainian Southeast Yiddish, which are closer to each other and are summarized as South East Yiddish. Northeast Yiddish has mostly retained the vowel qualities of the original languages, mainly German and Hebrew, for example kugel (Sabbath dish ), suchən (search), said (silk) compared to southern East Yiddish kiigel , siichən , saad , but knows no vowel lengths; sun can mean both “son” and “sun”. Central Yiddish oj wojnən (to live) and aj wajnən (to cry) coincide to ej wejnən ; you wejnst can mean both “you live” and “you cry” in northeast Yiddish. Another feature by which Litwakes were immediately recognized is the coincidence of the sibilants s and sh to s, shabəs ( Shabbat ) becomes sabəs . In Yiddish dialectology, this peculiarity of Lithuanian Yiddish is called sabəsdiker losən (sabbatical, elevated language). In contrast to the other East Yiddish dialects, Lithuanian Yiddish does not know any neuter nouns and does not distinguish between dative and accusative .
The Jewish communities
The Jewish communities, Hebrew kehillot ( singular kehillah (קְהִלָּה)), of the larger cities began to organize as early as the 14th century. In the second half of the 16th century there were fifteen kehillot in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , which in turn controlled smaller communities in their vicinity. The congregations were presided over by three to five elected members, who replaced each other annually in the office of Parnas , the headmaster. In addition, the community administration, in Hebrew kahal (קָּהָל), consisted of judges, administrators of the community institutions, overseers, tax assessors and tax collectors and others. The communities maintained synagogues, schools, charities, baths, slaughterhouses and cemeteries.
The Kahal supervised the practice of religion and was responsible for all family law matters. He was responsible for collecting the taxes that the communities used to finance themselves. Four percent of the purchase price of land went to the community, meat was taxed at ten to twenty percent, and additional taxes were levied if necessary. Commercial activity was controlled through the Chasaka system and protected from non-Jewish competition. The interests of the communities to authorities, nobility and became king of advocates, the remunerated by the municipalities Schtadlanim perceived. The judiciary was in the hands of the rabbis , who were usually elected for a certain period of time. In individual cases, however, the office of community rabbi could also be purchased.
The Council of the Country
The council of the countries , in Hebrew Wa'ad ha Aratzot (וַעד הָאֲרָצוֹת) , which was established in the 16th century to represent the Jewish communities of the aristocratic republic, was superordinate to the communities . It had developed from the rabbinical courts that met on the occasion of the large markets in Lublin , which were attended by many Jewish community leaders and traders. For Lithuania, elected representatives are documented as early as 1533, who appeared on behalf of all Jews in Lithuania. In the 1560s, tax collection was centralized. The delegates, three representatives each from the regions (countries) Brest-Litovsk with around 30 sub-parishes, Pinsk with 8 and Grodno with 7 sub-parishes and three rabbis met every three years in Brest-Litovsk. In 1623 the three Lithuanian municipalities split off from the Council of the States and founded the Council of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , in Hebrew Wa'ad medinas Lito (וַעד מְדִינַת לִיטָא). Vilna was added as a separate municipality in 1687, Slutsk as the last in 1691. The Lithuanian Council , an oligarchical representation of the Jewish communities, in whose election only a small minority of Jews could participate, was independent, but the representation of the Jews before the central government of the aristocratic republic was carried out by the Council of the States . With their own advice , the Jewish communities of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, along with those of Poland, received de facto an autonomy that was seldom found in Europe at the time. After the split up until its dissolution in 1764, the Lithuanian Council met a total of 37 times, on average every two years for the first 30 years, then much less often. A book was kept of the negotiations and resolutions. The books, in Hebrew pinkas , of the Lithuanian Council have been preserved in their entirety and were published by the historian Simon Dubnow . Externally, the main task of the council was to determine the taxes for the individual communities, for the delivery of which it was responsible; internally, it regulated the civil, religious and economic life of the Jews of Lithuania, often by means of the ban , in Hebrew Cherem ( חֵרֶם), a measure that meant social death for those affected and their families. Likewise, it was up to the council to protect Lithuanian Jews from attack and false accusations and to bring anyone who injured or killed a Jew to justice.
Cossack uprising under Chmielnicki and Northern War
The Jews of Lithuania were less affected by the uprising of the Cossacks under Bohdan Chmielnicki of 1648/49 than the Jews of Ukraine and Poland, where thousands of Jews were killed and many were sold as slaves by the Tartars allied with the Cossacks . Numerous Jews threatened with death fled to Lithuania. The Lithuanian Council decreed a three-year mourning period in 1650, during which the celebration of festivals was restricted and the wearing of jewelry and flashy clothing was prohibited. Music was forbidden during the first year, not even at weddings, and the council had a special tax levied in order to be able to fulfill the Jewish obligation to buy prisoners free. New halachic decisions, some of which still apply today in Orthodox Judaism, were created for married women (Hebrew agunot ) who were able to save themselves, but whose husbands were missing, and the children of women raped by the Cossacks had to be cared for.
In 1655 Lithuania was attacked by the Russian troops allied with Chmielnicki . Vilna was largely destroyed, and numerous residents fell victim to massacres. However, the majority of the approximately 3,000 Jews in the city managed to escape. Many of them migrated west and settled in Samet or migrated on to Courland and Prussia . In Samet, the following year the Jews were overtaken by the Swedish invasion of Lithuania from the west and decimated by the outbreak of the Black Plague. Only after the withdrawal of the Russian and Swedish troops and the peace with Russia in 1667 was the Jewish population of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania able to recover. Their number rose to 32,000 by 1676.
Local government debt
As a result of the Chmielnicki uprising and the Northern Wars in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , the Jews and the Jewish communities were impoverished and had to raise money. Their main donors were abbots and nobles. The bankruptcy of the Jewish communities followed in the 18th century . After the dissolution of the Council of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1764, a poll tax was introduced for all Jews from the age of two. According to the census carried out for this purpose, 157,649 Jews lived in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at that time.
Origin of Jewish culture
The early Jewish scholars who worked in Lithuania came from other parts of Europe; later scholars from Lithuania gained notoriety beyond Lithuania and were themselves active in other parts of Europe. The first Lithuanian Jewish scholar of supraregional importance is considered to be Moses ben Jakob von Kiev , who was probably born in 1449 in Šeduva , Lithuania , also known as Moses ha-Golah , Moses the Exile, who settled in the Crimea after numerous wanderings, where he lived around 1520 died. Salomon ben Jechiel Luria , born probably 1510 in Brest-Litovsk, called Maharschal or Raschal , was one of the early Lithuanian-Jewish rabbinical authorities , Hebrew posek (פּוֹסֵק). Luria , who developed his own method of interpreting the law and taught it in his yeshiva , which was founded in Lublin in 1567 , took a markedly Ashkenazi stance in his Talmudic commentaries and responses , which provide information about Jewish culture in Lithuania and Poland in the 16th century . Joschua Hoeschel ben Josef , born in Vilnius in 1578, worked as a rabbi in several cities in Lithuania and Poland before becoming head of the yeshiva and rabbi in Krakow , where he died in 1648. His most tester student was probably in 1621 in Amstibovo (Mścibów, Belarusian Mstibava ( Мсьцібава ) today in Belarus) was born and in 1662 in Holleschau in Moravia who died ben Sabbatai Meir ha-Kohen , chess called, we a description of the suffering of the Jews during the Khmelnytsky Owe uprising. He is best known for his commentary on Shulchan Aruch , Joreh De'ah , which is included in most editions of Shulchan Aruch .
Mitnagdim
In the 18th century a separate Lithuanian-Jewish scholarship developed. It was promoted by the mystical movement of Hasidism , which emerged in the middle of the century , whose piety practices led to a confrontation with the traditional rabbinical view of religion. The most important of the opponents, Hebrew Mitnagdim , of Hasidism was Elijah ben Solomon , called the Gaon of Vilna , who was considered the leading Jewish scholar of Ashkenazi Judaism of his time. He advocated occupation with the sciences, but rejected philosophy. He considered Hasidism to be incompatible with Judaism. On his initiative, the supporters of Hasidism were expelled from the Jewish communities in historic Lithuania in the 1770s and banned several times. His way of studying the Jewish texts, his ascetic way of life and his teachings form the basis of what developed in the 19th century as a typical Lithuanian expression of Jewish culture and learning. Elijah Gaon taught a small number of students, including Chaim ben Isaac of Wolozin , in Wolozin, today Valozhyn in Belarus, at the beginning of the 19th century the prototype of the Lithuanian yeshiva founded.
Partitions of Poland
The partitions of Poland in the second half of the 18th century made the area of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania part of Russia . Polish Livonia and the Belarusian territories up to the Daugava were annexed by Russia as early as 1772 in the first partition, in the second partition in 1793 the rest of Belarus and the eastern regions of Lithuania came to the tsarist empire and with the third partition in 1795 Russia had the former Grand Duchy Lithuania fully incorporated.
Among the Jews of Poland-Lithuania there was a small number who actively participated in the Polish reform efforts under the last Polish king Stanisław II August Poniatowski , according to the early Jewish enlightenment , Hebrew maskil (מַשְׂכִּיל), Menachem Mendel Lefin .
After the first partition, the Vilna Jewish community called on the Jews to support the rebels under Kościuszko and collected money. Their chief supplied the Polish troops with ammunition, the Jewish tailors supplied uniforms free of charge. Berek Joselewicz , who was born in 1794 in Kretinga , Lithuania and is revered as a Polish patriot, went the furthest, established a Jewish regiment and commanded the Kościuszko uprising against the Russian troops and died in 1809 in the battle of Kock against Austria.
Lithuania as part of Russia
From the end of the 18th century until the First World War , the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania remained part of Tsarist Russia. It consisted of the governorates of Grodno, Kovno, Suwalki and Vilna, which are often considered Polish-Lithuanian, as opposed to the Belarusian-Lithuanian governors of Minsk, Mogilev and Vitebsk. At the end of the 19th century, around 1.5 million Jews, around one eighth of the total population, lived in the towns and villages of these provinces. In many places they formed the majority of the population; There were over 300 places with more than 1000 Jews, the twelve largest counted more than 20,000 Jews: Vilna, Minsk, Bialystok, Vitebsk, Daugavpils, Brest-Litovsk, Kovno, Grodno, Mogilew, Pinsk, Bobruisk and Gomel.
Lithuanian Jews suffered significantly less from anti-Jewish excesses than Jews in Poland, Bessarabia, and Ukraine. Even at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, when pogroms against the Jewish population were taking place all over the tsarist empire , Lithuania was largely spared from pogroms. The relative security in which the Jews of Lithuania lived shaped their way of life and culture, which is different from that of the rest of the Jews of Eastern Europe.
Escape of the Jews from Poland via Lithuania
After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, around 10,000 Polish Jews fled to neutral Lithuania . Chiune Sugihara (1900–1986), the consul of the Japanese Empire in Lithuania, presented the plan to the Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Relations, Vladimir Dekanosow , who was responsible for the Sovietization of Lithuania as the representative of the Moscow party leadership Japan wanted to leave the country by sending the Trans-Siberian Railway to Nakhodka ( Russian: Нахо́дка ) on the Pacific coast and then to Japan. After the annexation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union in August 1940, Stalin and People's Commissar Molotov approved the plan, and on December 12, 1940 the Politburo made a corresponding decision, which initially extended to 1991 people. According to the Soviet files, around 3,500 people traveled from Lithuania via Siberia by August 1941 to take the ship to Tsuruga in Japan and from there to Kobe or Yokohama . The port of Tsuruga was later named "Port of Humanity". A museum in Tsuruga commemorates the rescue of the Jews. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs decreed that everyone who should get a visa, without exception, must have a third country visa to leave Japan. The Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk (1896–1976) had 2400 of them with the official destination Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles , for which no entry visa was required, or with papers for Dutch Guiana . About 5000 of the refugees received a Japanese visa from Chiune Sugihara, with which they were supposed to travel to the Netherlands Antilles. For the rest of the Jews, however, Sugihara ignored this order and issued thousands of Jews with entry visas and not just transit visas to Japan, thereby jeopardizing his career but saving the lives of these Jews.
Salvation of the Mir Jeshiva
In Me the Second World War as lived at the beginning of 2400 Jews. Among those rescued in the Shanghai ghetto were 70 rabbis and 350 students from the Mir Yeshiva , the only European Yeshiva ( Talmudic Academy ) to survive the Holocaust. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, they fled from Mir to Vilnius and later to Kėdainiai . After Lithuania became the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic , they received visas from Chiune Sugihara at the end of 1940 to travel from Kėdainiai via Siberia and Nakhodka to Kobe . Some members of smaller yeshivot joined them. The entire remaining Jewish population of Mir was murdered by the Nazis on August 16, 1941.
World War II and German occupation
Residents before the German occupation
Before the German occupation during the Second World War , more than a million Jews lived on the territory of historic Lithuania, spread over six states: Latvian SSR : 94,000, Lithuanian SSR : 147,000, Poland : 505,000, Russian SFSR : 4,000, Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic : 375,000 , Ukrainian SSR : 32,000. More than 90% of them were murdered by Germans and their local helpers during the time of the German occupation.
Lithuanian SSR
After the attack on the Soviet Union , the Wehrmacht occupied the Lithuanian SSR in July 1941. As in other Baltic states, Lithuanians showed solidarity with the new occupiers and killed numerous Jews in the first pogroms . By November 1941, around 175,000 people had been murdered in Lithuania, including around 80,000 Jews. The remaining Jews were interned in ghettos. The Wehrmacht set up the Kaunas concentration camp , the Vilnius and Šiauliai ghetto, and a few smaller ghettos for around 45,000 Jewish forced laborers who were “fit for work” . After the Germans suffered first major losses in the war against the Red Army , the ghettos were largely dissolved and their inmates transported to extermination camps. The few remaining Jews were murdered by the German troops when they withdrew from the area.
Known Lithuanian Jews
- Shalom Jakob Abramowitsch (Mendele Moicher Sforim) (1836 Kopyl near Minsk - 1917 Odessa ), writer
- Moshe Arens (1925 in Kovno - 2019 in Savjon ), Israeli politician
- Yemima Avidar-Tchernovitz (1909 Vilnius - 1998 Jerusalem, Israel), children's book author
- Menachem Begin (1913 Brest-Litovsk - 1992 Jerusalem, Israel), Israeli politician
- Bernard Berenson (1865 in Butrimonys - 1959 in Florence), art historian, art collector and writer
- Abraham Cahan (1860 in Podberesy near Vilnius - 1951 New York , USA), socialist journalist and writer
- Marc Chagall (1887 Peskowatik near Vitebsk - 1985 Saint-Paul-de-Vence , France), painter
- Simon Dubnow (1860 Mszislau - 1941 Riga ), historian
- Romain Gary (1914 Vilnius - 1980 Paris , France), writer, Goncourt Prize winner and diplomat
- Leopold Godowsky (1870 Žasliai near Vilna - 1938 New York, USA), pianist and composer
- Emma Goldman (1869 Kovno - 1940 Toronto , Canada), American anarchist and peace activist
- Nahum Goldmann (1895 in Wischnewa near Valózhin - 1982 Bad Reichenhall , FRG), founder of the World Jewish Congress (WJC)
- Aron Gurwitsch (1901 Wilna - 1973 Zurich , Switzerland), philosopher
- Laurence Harvey (1928 Joniškis - 1973 London , UK), (film) actor
- Jascha Heifetz (1901 Vilnius - 1987 Los Angeles , USA), violinist
- Jay M. Ipson (* 1935 Kaunas ), founder and director of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond
- Al Jolson (~ 1886 Seredžius, Jurburg district - 1950 San Francisco , USA), American singer and entertainer
- Berek Joselewicz (1764 Kretinga - 1809 Kock ) - Jewish colonel in the Polish army
- Old Kacyzne (1885 Vilnius - 1941 Ternopil , Ukraine), photographer and writer
- Grigori Kanowitsch (* 1929 Jonava or Kovno), writer
- Joseph Gedalja Klausner (1874 Olkeniki, Trakai District - 1958 Jerusalem, Israel), historian, literary and religious scholar
- Sir Aaron Klug (1926 Želva, Vilnius district - 2018 Cambridge), biochemist, 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Emmanuel Levinas (1906 Kovno - 1995 Paris, France), philosopher
- Isaak Ilyich Levitan (1860 Kybartai - 1900 Moscow) painter
- Jacques Lipchitz (1891 Druskininkai - 1973 Capri , Italy), sculptor
- Salomon Maimon (1753 Sukowiborg near Mir - 1800 Nieder-Siegersdorf near Freystadt, Silesia ), philosopher of the Enlightenment
- Louis B. Mayer (1884 Minsk - 1957 Los Angeles, USA), American film producer
- Icchokas Meras (1934 Kelmė - 2014 Tel Aviv, Israel), writer
- Hermann Minkowski (1864 Kowno - 1909 in Göttingen ), mathematician and physicist.
- Yehuda Pen (1854 Zarasai - 1937 Vitebsk), painter
- Shimon Peres (1923 Vishneva near Valózhin - 2016 Tel Aviv), Israeli politician, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, President of Israel
- Shlomo Sanwel Rappoport (An-ski) (1863 Vitebsk - 1920 Warsaw ), writer and journalist, author of the play of the Dibbuk
- Salman Shazar (1889 Mir - 1974 Jerusalem, Israel), Israeli politician, third President of Israel
- Elijah Ben Salomon Salman, Gaon of Vilna (1720 in Selez near Grodno - 1797 Vilna), rabbi and scholar
- Schneur Salman von Liadi (1745 Lyosna - 1812 Hadicz, Poltava district ), founder of the Hasidic Chabad Lubavitch movement
- Ben Shahn (1898 Kowno - 1969 New York, USA), painter and graphic artist
- Joe Slovo (1926 Obeliai, Rokiškis District - 1995 Johannesburg , South Africa), South African communist politician, member of the ANC
- Chaim Soutine (1893 Smilowitchi near Minsk - 1943 Paris, France), painter
- Maier Suchowljansky (Meyer Lansky ) (1902 Grodno - 1983 Miami , USA), American gangster
- Abraham Sutzkever (1913 Smorgon near Vilnius - 2010 Tel Aviv , Israel), writer
- Meir Vilner (1918 Vilnius - 2003 Israel), Israeli communist politician, co-signer of the declaration of independence of the State of Israel
- Max Weinreich (1894 Kuldīga - 1969 New York, USA), linguist, co-founder of the YIVO in Vilnius
- Uriel Weinreich (1926 Vilnius - 1967 New York, USA), linguist
- Chaim Weizmann (1874 Mótele - 1952 Jerusalem, Israel), chemist, Zionist politician, first President of Israel
- Morris Wintschewski (1856 Jonava - 1932 New York, USA), socialist writer
- Ossip Zadkine (1890 Vitebsk - 1967 Paris, France), painter and sculptor
- Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (1859 Białystok - 1917 Warsaw), ophthalmologist and philologist, inventor of the artificial language Esperanto
See also
- Jews in Jonava
- History of the Jews in Latvia
- History of the Jews in Poland
- History of the Jews in Russia
Movie
- Herdolor Lorenz, Leslie Franke: The taboo of freedom. Jews in Lithuania . A co-production by Kern TV with SWR and ARTE
literature
- Solomon Atamuk: Jews in Lithuania. A historical overview from the 14th to the 20th century . Konstanz 2000, ISBN 3-89649-200-4 .
- Christoph Dieckmann : German occupation policy in Lithuania 1941-1944 . 2 volumes. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011
- François Guesnet: Litwaken . In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 3: He-Lu . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02503-6 , pp. 548-552.
- Masha Greenbaum: The Jews of Lithuania. A history of a remarkable community, 1316-1945 . Jerusalem 1995, ISBN 965-229-132-3 .
- Dovid Katz : Lithuanian Jewish Culture . Vilnius 2004, ISBN 9955-584-41-6 .
- Dov Levin: The Litvaks. A short story of the Jews in Lithuania . Jerusalem 2000, ISBN 965-308-084-9 .
- Alvydas Nikžentaitis , Stefan Schreiner, Darius Staliūnas (eds.): The vanished world of Lithuanian jews . Rodopi, Amsterdam 2004, ISBN 90-420-0850-4 .
- Nancy Schoenburg, Stuart Schoenburg: Lithuanian Jewish Communities . Garland, New York / London 1991, ISBN 0-8240-4698-6 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Herman Rosenthal: Origin of Lithuanian Jews Article "Lithuania" in: Jewish Encyclopedia , Volume 8, New York / London 1904, p. 119 (English). Retrieved January 28, 2010
- ^ Dovid Katz: Lithuanian Jewish Culture . Vilnius 2004, pp. 22 ff. And 323 (English)
- ^ A b Dovid Katz: Lithuanian Jewish Culture . Vilnius 2004, p. 51 (English)
- ↑ Yaffa Eliach: There Once Was a World . Boston 1998 (English) ISBN 0-316-23252-1 online
- ^ Masha Greenbaum: The Jews of Lithuania. A history of a remarkable community, 1316-1945. Jerusalem 1995, p. 2f. (English), ISBN 965-229-132-3 .
- ↑ Shmuel A. Arthur Cygielman: Jewish autonomy in Poland and Lithuania until 1648 (5408) . Cygielman, Jerusalem 1997, ISBN 965-90187-0-3 , pp. 6-7 .
- ^ Herman Rosenthal: The Charter of 1388 Article "Lithuania" in: Jewish Encyclopedia , Volume 8, New York / London 1904, p. 119 (English). Retrieved January 28, 2010
- ^ Haim Ben-Sasson, Ezra Mendelsohn, Stefan Krakowski, Isaiah Trunk , Sara Neshamith, David Sfard, Moshe Avidan, Lena Stanley-Clamp: Poland . Article in: Encyclopaedia Judaica , Ed .: Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Volume 16, 2nd edition, Macmillan Reference, Detroit USA 2007, p. 292, online: Gale Virtual Reference Library (English).
- ^ Dov Levin: The Litvaks . Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2000, ISBN 1-57181-264-4 , pp. 43 .
- ^ Dovid Katz: Map from: Project: An Atlas of Northeastern Yiddish . Retrieved January 26, 2010
- ^ Herman Rosenthal: Lithuania article "Lithuania" in: Jewish Encyclopedia , Volume 8, New York / London 1904, p. 119 (English). Retrieved January 28, 2010
- ^ Dovid Katz: Jewish Cultural Correlates of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , pp. 198 ff. (English). Retrieved January 26, 2010
- ↑ Uriel Weinreich: Sabesdiker losn in Yiddish: A problem of linguistic affinity . Slavic Word 8, pp. 360-377, December 1952
- ^ Dovid Katz: On the dialectology of Yiddish . In: Werner Besch et al. (Ed.): Dialectology. A manual for German and general dialect research . W. de Gruyter, Berlin 1983, half volume 2, pp. 1018-1041 ISBN 978-3-11-009571-5 online
- ↑ Solomon Atamuk: Jews in Lithuania. A historical overview from the 14th to the 20th century . Konstanz 2000, p. 23 ff. ISBN 3-89649-200-4
- ↑ Jacob Katz: Tradition and Crisis. The path of Jewish society to the modern age . C. H. Beck, Munich 2002, p. 91 ff. ISBN 3-406-49518-4
- ↑ Simon Dubnow (ed.): Pinkas ha-Medinah be-Lita , Berlin 1925
- ^ Haim Ben-Sasson: Councils of the Lands . Article in: Encyclopaedia Judaica , Ed .: Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Volume 5, 2nd edition, Macmillan Reference, Detroit USA 2007, pp. 239–245, online: Gale Virtual Reference Library (English)
- ^ Masha Greenbaum: The Jews of Lithuania. A history of a remarkable community, 1316-1945. Jerusalem 1995, p. 55 (English), ISBN 965-229-132-3 .
- ↑ a b Dov Levin: The Litvaks . Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2000, ISBN 1-57181-264-4 , pp. 51 ff .
- ↑ Shmuel Ettinger: Chmielnicki (Khmelnitski), Bogdan . In: Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.): Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. tape 4 . Macmillan Reference USA, Detroit 2007, pp. 654-656 ( online: Gale Virtual Reference Library ).
- ^ Dov Levin: Lithuania . Article in: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe , 2 volumes, Yale University Press, New Haven 2008, (English) ISBN 978-0-300-11903-9 . Retrieved September 9, 2010
- ↑ Shlomo Eidelberg: Moses ben Jacob of Kiev Article in: Encyclopaedia Judaica , Ed .: Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Volume 14, 2nd Edition, Macmillan Reference, Detroit USA 2007, pp. 550-551, online: Gale Virtual Reference Library (English).
- ↑ Meir Raffeld: Luria, Shelomoh ben Yeḥi'el Article in: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe , 2 volumes, Yale University Press, New Haven 2008, (English). Retrieved November 15, 2010
- ↑ David Bass: Shabetai ben Me'ir ha-Kohen article in: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe , 2 volumes, Yale University Press, New Haven 2008, (English). Retrieved September 22, 2010
- ↑ François Guesnet: Litvaks . In: Dan Diner (ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish history and culture . tape 3 . J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02503-6 , p. 548 ff .
- ^ Israel Klausner et al .: Elijah ben Solomon Zalman . In: Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.): Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. tape 6 . Macmillan Reference USA, Detroit 2007, pp. 341-346 ( online: Gale Virtual Reference Library ).
- ^ Moshe Rosman: Poland; Poland before 1795 . Article in: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe , 2 volumes, Yale University Press, New Haven 2008, (English). Retrieved September 9, 2010
- ^ Masha Greenbaum: The Jews of Lithuania. A history of a remarkable community, 1316-1945 . Jerusalem 1995, p. 69 (English)
- ↑ François Guesnet: Joselewicz, Berek . Article in: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe , 2 volumes, Yale University Press, New Haven 2008, (English). Retrieved September 9, 2010
- ^ Yehuda Slutsky et al .: Lithuania article in: Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed .: Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Volume 13, 2nd edition, Macmillan Reference, Detroit USA 2007, pp. 117–128, online: Gale Virtual Reference Library (English)
- ↑ Heinz Eberhard Maul, Japan und die Juden - Study of the Jewish policy of the Japanese Empire during the time of National Socialism 1933-1945 , dissertation Bonn 2000, p. 161. Digitized . Retrieved May 18, 2017.
- ↑ Palasz-Rutkowska, Ewa. 1995 lecture at Asiatic Society of Japan, Tokyo; "Polish-Japanese Secret Cooperation During World War II: Sugihara Chiune and Polish Intelligence," ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The Asiatic Society of Japan Bulletin, March-April 1995.
- ↑ Tsuruga: Port of Humanity , Official Website of the Government of Japan. Retrieved May 22, 2017.
- ↑ Gennady Kostyrčenko: Tajnaja politika Stalina. Vlast 'i antisemitizm. Novaya versija. Čast 'I. Moscow 2015, pp. 304-306.
- ^ Jan Zwartendijk , Jewish virtual library. In: Mordecai Paldiel , Saving the Jews: Amazing Stories of Men and Women who Defied the Final Solution , Schreiber, Shengold 2000, ISBN 1-887563-55-5 . Retrieved May 16, 2017.
- ^ Astrid Freyeisen: Shanghai and the politics of the Third Reich . Königshausen & Neumann, 2000, ISBN 978-3-8260-1690-5 , pp. 398-399.
- ↑ Shanghai Jewish History ( Memento of the original from May 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ David Gaunt, Paul Levine, Laura Palosuo, Collaboration and Resistance During the Holocaust, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania , Peter Lang, Bern, Berlin et al. ISBN 3-03910-245-1 .
- ^ Dovid Katz: Lithuanian Jewish Culture. Vilnius 2004, pp. 22 ff. And 323 (English)
- ↑ The sources speak of several hundred to several thousand Jewish victims.
- ↑ See Jäger report
- ↑ Timm C. Richter (Ed.): War and crime. Situation and intention: case studies , Munich 2006, ISBN 3-89975-080-2 , p. 53 ff.
Web links
- Lite map of the territory of Jewish Lithuania (Lite) and Lithuanian Yiddish (Lithuanian)
- EYDES, Evidence of Yiddish Documented in European Societies ( Memento from April 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (German and English)
- The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe , online edition (English)
- Dov Levin, Josef Rosin (Ed.): Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities. Lithuania Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 1996 (English)
- Herman Rosenthal: Lithuania Article in: Jewish Encyclopedia 1901–1906 (English)
- Yehuda Slutsky, Joseph Gar, Michael Beizer, Daniel Romanowski: Lithuania Article in: Encyclopaedia Judaica , Ed .: Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Volume 13, 2nd Edition, Macmillan Reference Detroit USA 2007, pp. 117-128. online: Gale Virtual Reference Library (English).
- The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum website (English and Lithuanian)
- Website Jews in Lithuania (English and Lithuanian)