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Linkuva and Holocaust Resources


Puzzle

Linkuva families and information

Witness account of the killing in Linkuva Audio and text transcript

Extracts from the Lithuanian archives for Linkuva

Report of the killings in Linkuva

Extracts from the Pakroi archives

Extracts from "Yahadut Lita"

Extracts from "A notebook from Shavli - a diary from the Lithuanian ghetto" (1941 TO 1944) By Eliezer Yerushalami

Josef Lurie - story of a Holocaust survivor from Linkuva

The Linkuva Blood Libel Extracts from a book by Leslie Goldblatt

Linkuva and its Residents. Essay on the Jews of Linkuva by Teodora Katiliene, a non Jewish woman in Vilnius. Translated by Alexander Karnovsky, Rehovot

Linkuva Plot Map Plot map of Linkuva in 1863 showing ownership of individual properties

Bruce Khan's Photograph index. Includes 17 photographs of Linkuva.

The lucky few: Steamship arrivals in South Africa from Linkuva and surrounding villages

Genealogical information on Families from Lygumai/Ligum and Pakruojis/Pakroy/Pokroy, Towns within a few miles of Linkuva.


Family Goell from Linkuva - a visit to Linkuva by Julie Goell

Families Fabran, Gurvitz and Horowitz from Linkuva

Family Horowitz and Gurevicj from Linkuva (see also Families Fabran, Gurvitz and Horowitz from Linkuva above)

Families Bliden (Bleeden, Bloiden, Blidin) and Meier from Linkuva

Photographs and details about family Onyas, Goldblatt, Girsch from Linkuva

Family Melamed and Marks from Linkuva

Harry Nochumsohn Born Linkuva, died Italy WW2

Family Green/Guber from Linkuva and Pamusa

Family Davidson and Treisman from Linkuva

Family Shufer, Soufer, Shpir

Family Shtender (and Girsch) from Linkuva

Family Weller (Veler) from Linkuva

Family Weller (Veler), Gale and Per from Linkuva

Family Sulatt (Shulatt) with probable links to Linkuva (Contributed by Mealnie Rosenburg)

Books

It was but yesterday. Leslie Goldblatt (1951). Kayor Pub. Johannesburg, Pacific Press. Description of life in Linkuva (called Velinka in this book) before the destruction of European Jewry

The Jews of Lithuania - A history of a remarkable community 1316-1945 Masha Greenbaum (1995). Gefen Publishing ISBN 965-229-132-3. A wonderful book. Required reading for anyone who cares about the history of Lithuania.

HWE

Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (Alfred A. Knopf, New York). Controversial bestseller. Focuses on the oft-heard tale that the atrocities were solely the work of the Nazis and the SS. Conclusion: the crimes of the Holocaust were voluntarily and joyfully performed by ordinary, everyday Germans

Skausmo Knyga - The book of sorrow By Josifas Levinsonas (compiler). A Monument to the murdered Lithuanian Jewish comminity. Listing of massacre sites in Lithuania. VAGA Publishers, Gedimino 50, 2600 Vilnius, Lithiania

Heshel's Kingdom By Dan Jacobson. A truly wonderful autobiography and and philosophical "travel book" relating to a journey to Lithuania. Dan Jacobson is Professor of English Literature at University College, London. Published by Hamish Hamilton.


"Take up that photograph again. Nine lives in waiting. Nine escapees from the rifles and machine guns of the German Einsatzkommandos and their Lithuanian hirelings; from the burial pits and pyres that would have consumed their bodies in their natal land. Nine young people spared as a result of their father's early death to make the best or worst of the opportunities given to them and denied to those they had left behind"

HWE

On the Jews and their lies (Martin Luther, 1543). (Translation by Martin H. Bertram, Fortress Press, 1955). Christian anti-Semitism flourished long before Hitler came along. The founder of the Protestant movement, Martin Luther, despised Jews for failing to convert to his purified Christianity. In 1543, he wrote this evil book which helped to set the stage for the Holocaust. Among his most well known admirers was Adolf Hitler

"My advice, as I said earlier, is:
First , that their synagogues be burned down...
Second, that all their books, their Talmudic writings, also the entire Bible be taken from them...
Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God ...
Fourth, that they be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing and .... be expelled from their country and be told to return to Jerusalem where they may lie, curse, blaspheme, murder,..." Martin Luther (On the Jews and Their Lies)

On the Jews and their Lies

Click here to read the entire text of this book and for a discussion about the role of Christian thought in the holocaust.

Kaddish - The Jewish Prayer of Mourning

Say Kaddish for me : a reading by Elie Wiesel

The Kaddish in English

The Kaddish in Hebrew

The Kaddish in Hebrew with English lettering

Documents and Statistics

Advice to the immigrant going overseas: 1914 Excerpts from the book by V. K. Rackauskas, 1914 - a manual for the would-be future immigrant to the United States

The Jager Report Detailed report by SS-Standartenfuehrer Jager about mass killings in Nazi occupied USSR, July-November 1941

Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race Many Germans might not have comprehended the full magnitude of the crimes perpetrated in their names, but this is perhaps irrelevant. Other evils were perfectly self evident and largely unchallenged

The Nuremberg Laws: Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health The Attempt to Improve the German Aryan Breed, July 14, 1933

Percentage of Jewish population killed in different Nazi occupied countries Source: Encylopedia of the Holocaust

Lithuanian Jewish Genealogy Links

The ShtetLinks Directory  -  USA based collection of sites and files about Jewish shtetlekh (communities), past and present
The Lithuanian Names Project  -  Emerging database of the names of many of those murdered in the holocaust in Lithuania.
JewishGen: The Official Home of Jewish Genealogy - Numerous tools for beginning and ongoing Jewish genealogical research.
The LitvakSIG home page Special Interest Group for researchers of Litvak genealogy
Bruce Khan's Photograph index. Includes 17 photographs of Linkuva.
JGSGB Jewish Genealogy Society of Great Britain
Rochester Jewish Genealogy Page - good collection of resources
Genealogical Research and Travel in Lithuania by Bruce Kahn, Saul Issroff, & Howard Margol
Lithuanian Jews in South Africa Part 1 - The large majority of Jews in South Africa originate from Lithuania. Saul Issroff Jews in South Africa from 1652 through the present day with useful addresses and genealogical resources (in two parts)
Lithuanian Jews in South Africa Part 2
Michael Tobin's Web Pages Visit to Lithuania in July 1997. Numerous interesting photographs of Vilnius, Vilkija, Seredzius, Kaunus, Alove, Zarasai, Vilkomir, Alytus, Kaunus, Panarai etc.
A hole in the heart Site is about Keidan known today by its Lithuanian name, Kedainiai. Comprehensive and wonderful. By Andrew Cassel
Lithuanian Jewish Rip van Winkle A Jewish Lithuanian Rip van Winkle who awoke in his ancestral town of Tytuvenai (which Jews called their shtetl Tzitovian). By Les Gediman. Other stories and information on this site.
Martin Miller's Home Page - Another Jewish-Lithuanian genealogy home page
Lithuania: Looking Back - It features over a dozen portraits of Jews still living in Lithuania

Lithuanian Collaboration

Collaboration of the local population with the Nazis in the killing of Jews and Gypsies occurred in many countries, perhaps motivated by the idea that material advantages would result. In many cases, including in Lithuania there was direct collaboration in the killing of the Jewish population. Since Lithuania regained independence, the state has returned several synagogue buildings. However, the 1995 restitution law narrowly defines property that should be returned as communal property which had originally had been used for religious purposes. Other properties such as schools and private property stolen by local Lithuanians after the murder of owners have not yet been considered.

Killing of Jews in Kovno

Killing of Jews by the Lithuanian population in Kovno. The killing was filmed by the SS.
(What did you do in the war, tätis?)

LithPSig is a mailing list devoted to various issues associated with the Holocaust in Lithuania with emphasis on involvement of the Lithuanian population in the murder of a large subset of their population, theft of land and property of murdered families, and the way in which these events are approached by politicians in modern Lithuania. Join this list below.

Subscribe to LithPSig
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General and travel Information about Lithuania

Lithuanian Global Resources. - Website about Lithuania by a Lithuanian lady. Includes a small section about the Jews of Lithuania.
Lithuanian Global Resources -  Same as above on a different server
Vilnius in your pocket -Superb guide to Lithuania and the Lithuanian capital. Hotel details, restaurants an exhaustive list of what to see and do, and excellent section on Jewish Vilnius. For its fifth anniversary, the editors published a Lithuanian version. The Lithuanian History section spoke of the destruction of the Jews by the Nazis and "their Lithuanian helpers." This seemingly innocuous line precipitated a debate in the Seimas (parliament) as well as calls to ban the guide series. The sentence is retained in the internet version.
Information about Lithuania

Other Selected Holocaust Links

An Auschwitz Alphabet - by Jonathan Blumen.
The Nizkor Project - A collection of projects focused on the Holocaust and its denial.
A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust - From the College of Education, University of South Florida.
Bruce Kahn's Photograph Index - An index of photographs of sites in Europe, of interest to Jewish genealogists and Holocaust researchers. The majority of these photographs are of Lithuania.
Brave new web  - A collection of photographs taken at the concentration camp of Auschwitz/Birkenau.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center
Swiss Banks  - Swiss banks: first steps towards return of stolen property
The Holocaust in stamps - A nice web presentation.
The United States Holocaust memorial museum

Martin Niemoller

"In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me -
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
Pastor Martin Niemoller

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties - but right through every human heart - and all human hearts."
Alexander Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago)

News?

Last night, President Algirdas Brazauskas of Lithuania reiterated an apology he made in Israel two years ago for Lithuanians' war-time participation in the Holocaust. Brazauskas also promised to bring those responsible to justice, saying Lithuania now had a legal framework to deal with people charged with genocide. During World War II, Nazis and Lithuanian collaborators wiped out almost all of the country's Jewish community, killing some 200,000 people. In his speech, Ambassador Ben-Hur said that Lithuanians had rounded up and killed Jews even before the Nazis arrived in the country. He also said Lithuania had not lived up to its promise to prosecute war criminals. Vilnius, 12 September 1997 (RFE/RL)

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