For many years now, I have spent my Tishah B'Av afternoons reading Holocaust memoirs. This year, a friend who knew I would be traveling to Lithuania on Motzaei Shabbos after Tishah B'Av with my oldest son, his oldest son, and my close friend and favorite tour guide, Rabbi Ilan Segal, recommended Rabbi Ephraim Oshry's The Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry.
Rabbi Oshry, a graduate of the Slabodka yeshivah, served as a posek in the Kovno Ghetto. His teshuvos from that period were subsequently published in five volumes as Sh'eilos U'Teshuvos mi'Ma'amakim.
Though I have been to Auschwitz-Birkenau twice, reading about the ways in which the Nazis wiped out one Jewish community after another to the East, with the eager help of axe-wielding local Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and Latvians, was, if possible, even more horrifying. The murder of close to 1.5 million Jews by the Einsatzgruppen was far less efficient and mechanical than the extermination camps, like Birkenau, Treblinka, and Maidanek, and the distance between the murderers and their victims much less, which makes the cruelty of the former even more unfathomable.
Rav Zalman Osofsky, the rav of Slabodka, found decapitated over his blood-stained Gemara and with his head placed in the window, was only one of thousands of Jews in Kovno-Slabodka hacked to death by Lithuanians, given free rein by the conquering German army.
But Rabbi Oshry's account, the second section of which details with each Lithuanian hamlet whose local population was destroyed, is not exclusively filled with horrors. He details the generosity of the local Kovno population in sharing living quarters and whatever little food they had, as Jews from surrounding areas were herded into the Kovno Ghetto, as well as the extraordinary lengths to which they went to continue performing mitzvos and learning Torah.
As happens every year, my Tishah B'Av reading left me profoundly grateful to have been born into such an extraordinary people, one that has suffered so much and yet survived and gone on creating and enriching the world around it. And with that gratitude goes the sense of obligation not to betray what so many others sacrificed to make possible.
One thing that reading did not do, however, was increase my eagerness to visit Lithuania, where the unasked question to everyone passed on the street would be, "What did your grandfather or great-grandfather do during the War?"
ON THE WAY from the Vilna airport into the city, we first stopped in the Ponary Forest, where the majority of Vilna's Jews — as many as 70,000 — met their end in huge pits originally dug by Russians for oil storage. The serenity of the large forest — much of Lithuania is covered in such forests — contrasted sharply with images of the mass killings that took place there. We briefly joined with a group from South Africa to recite Kaddish for the thousands of Jews murdered in that forest, many of whom had no one to say Kaddish for them.
In Vilna itself, one is struck by the huge gulf between what once constituted the "Jerusalem of Lithuania" and what remains. Yes, we could visit the ohel in which the Vilna Gaon was reinterred, after his original resting place was paved over, and those of Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzenski and Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz (the latter in an older cemetery).
At the time of Reb Boruch Ber's passing in late 1939, the Chazon Ish said ominously that as long as he was alive his toil in Torah had protected European Jewry. Reb Boruch Ber himself dismissed his Torah learning and his yiras Shamayim as guarantors of a lichtige Gan Eden. But he said of himself, "I loved every Jew, and whenever I saw another Jewish person, I thought about what was good for him." And that is a mindset we could all emulate.
One can still find the address where the Vilna Gaon lived, but of the Gaon's actual house, nothing remains. Similarly with the dwelling place of Reb Chaim Ozer. A large hole in the ground has replaced the Shulhof (the synagogue complex), which once housed the Great Shul of Vilna and 12 kloizen (smaller batei medrash), including that of the Vilna Gaon. Thirty kloizen, each belonging to a different trade society, dotted the city, and thereby joined together the parnassah (livelihood) and divine service of Vilna's residents. Each morning between 2 and 4 a.m., Reb Moshe Schwartz, a local tanner, delivered a well-attended Gemara shiur, and his was not the only one given throughout the night.
Walking in the old city of Vilna, we came to the square where Avraham ben Avraham, the scion of the noble Potocki family, was burned at the stake for becoming a ger tzedek. Before his martyrdom, the Gaon visited him in his jail cell. The ger tzedek posed a question that caused even the Gaon to hesitate: On the one hand, one should run to do a mitzvah. On the other hand, when being brought to the stake, perhaps one should not hurry so as to not hasten the end of one's life. As the ger tzedek was being taken to his death, the Gaon is said to have called out from a window, "Run."
In Poland, at various times in recent history, the government has outlawed statements indicting some Poles, along with Nazis, in the murder of Jews. But in the Vilna Holocaust Museum, no effort was made to hide the complicity, and in some cases the lead role, of Lithuanian commandos in the slaughter.
OUR SECOND DAY was, in some ways, the emotional center of the trip for me. The Rosenblum Family Facebook page contains, I'm told, around 1,300 entries of descendants of one Osher Rosenblum, my great-grandfather's great-grandfather, who lived in Vilkija, a village on the Nieman River not from Kovno, in the mid-19th century. In preparation for the trip, I had been in touch with a few distant and previously unknown cousins, who have either visited Vilkija or who manage the family tree. And it has been fascinating to follow the family from its Lithuanian roots to America, South America, and Sydney, Australia.
As we approached Kovno, we came to Raudondvaris Manor, the beautiful estate of a succession of noble families. I had been told that Osher Rosenblum managed the estate for the owners, and that a plaque mentioning Oseris Rosenblum, his Lithuanian name, hangs on one of the walls.
I was somewhat skeptical in advance, as the manor is not close enough to Vilkija to commute back and forth on a daily basis in a horsedrawn wagon. And in fact, our guide knew nothing about any such plaque or of Oseris Rosenblum.
But our next stop, at the Vilkija Jewish cemetery, atop a steep hill in another forest, came with no such disappointments. We quickly found the headstones of Osher Rosenblum, his son Nosson Nota, presumably my great-grandfather's grandfather, and several members of the Karnofsky family. (Osher was married to Rivka Karnofsky.) We were even able to read their praises on the headstones, such as "he partook of daas elyon." Along the Nieman River, we located a monument marking the place of the shul in which my ancestors davened. The view of the river today probably differs little from what they saw if they happened to glance out the window or as they entered the shul.
And nearby is the Louis Armstrong Pavilion, with a video playing of the great jazz trumpeter singing, "It's a wonderful world." Why in Vilkija? Because as a boy, Armstrong was taken in by an immigrant Jewish family in New Orleans, the Karnofskys (mentioned above), who found him scrounging for food. They gave him his first job helping the Karnofsky sons collect "rags and bones" and deliver coal, fed him, and even provided a place to sleep, despite having ten children of their own.
The elder Karnofsky advanced him the money for his first cornet and encouraged his musical talent. In a memoir, he wrote of singing lullabies with the family as they put an infant to bed, and credited them with instilling in him "singing from the heart." He wrote that the family "treated me like a son." And in recognition of the Karnofskys, he wore a Jewish star his entire life.
The Louis Armstrong Pavillion was a welcome break between the graveyard and our last stop in Vilkija, the mass grave where the Jews of Vilkija were shot to death in a forest outside the town, just as they were in hundreds of other Jewish hamlets throughout Lithuania.
ONE OF THE JOYS of any tour such as ours is the people one meets along the way. We arrived at the Kovno Jewish Center around 8:30 p.m., still with plenty of time to daven Minchah, and found a feast awaiting us (one of only two prepared meals over five days). One other diner was there, Reb Shmuel Stern, but he turned out to be the perfect guide, as he is the oldest grandson of Willi Stern, the late London askan and the visionary behind the Kovno Jewish Center.
Approximately 400 Israeli medical students study in Kovno, a large majority from nonreligious homes and many with little Jewish background of any kind. The Budapest-born Mr. Stern, whose family escaped Hungary on the Kastner transport, remembered well what it was like to be the only observant student at Harvard Law School in the 1950s, and has taken pains to spare other Jewish students.
His first such project was a heavily subsidized kosher canteen for Jewish students at London's Imperial College. And when he learned of the Israeli medical students, while doing business in Kovno, he had the vision of establishing a Jewish Center, today headed by Rabbi Moshe Sheinfeld and his wife (who were recharging their batteries in Israel during our visit). The Center provides weekday meals, a place to daven, regular shiurim, large Shabbos meals, and brings in such Torah luminaries as the late Rav Moshe Shapira ztz"l. Reb Shmuel also took us to view a beautiful mikveh for married Jewish students.
KOVNO WAS BY FAR the heaviest day of our five-day tour, and, I even began to worry that it would prove too overwhelming for my 16-year-old grandson. It included a visit to the Seventh Fort, where, according to most opinions, Rav Elchonon Wasserman Hy"d was murdered by his Lithuanian captors. In a famous speech on the way to their deaths, Rav Elchonon told those seized with him that they were being brought as korbanos (sacrifices) on behalf of their Jewish brethren in America, who were not yet in danger. And accordingly, they had to make sure their thoughts were pure, without any trace of a blemish that would cause them to be rejected as sacrifices.
The Ninth Fort is where most of the Jews of Kovno were slaughtered, and today houses a large museum, which basically portrays visually the scenes so vividly described by Rabbi Oshry. An open field at the end served as a mass grave, and it is today framed, appropriately, by weeping willow trees.
Prior to touring the two forts, we stopped outside the beis medrash of Rav Tzvi Hirsch Naziover, where Rav Yisrael Salanter established the first mussar kloiz. Next up was the Aleksot beis chayim, where both Rav Yitzchok Elchonon Spektor, the world's preeminent posek in his lifetime, and Rav Avraham Dov-Ber Kahana Shapira, author of Devar Avraham, Kovno's last chief rabbi, are buried.
The later was abroad receiving medical treatment when the Nazis yemach shemam entered Kovno, but he hastened to return to Kovno rather than abandon his flock. Rabbi Oshry relates how he remained awake all night in the ghetto, despite being critically ill, to answer a question posed by the Jewish Council as to whether they could comply with the Nazis' demands for turning over certain designated groups of Jews, in the hope of saving more Jewish lives.
One story told by Rabbi Segal about each Torah giant captures what their Torah learning meant to them. Rav Yitzchok Elchonon's wife, Sara Raizel, discovered that the person whom they had entrusted with her dowry had defrauded them. But when she went to the man to get their money back, he refused to speak to anyone besides her husband. She entered her husband's study — he was all of 16 at the time and already married three years — but he absolutely refused to consider interrupting his learning.
When her father heard what she had done, he slapped her and told her that one moment of her husband's learning was worth more than the largest dowry in the world. It was Sara Raizel herself who would proudly relate this story for the rest of her life.
As a bochur in Volozhin yeshivah, the Devar Avraham was drafted into the czar's army and sent to Minsk. While stationed there, he would sneak out of the barracks each night to learn in a local beis medrash, where he came to the attention of the Minsker Gadol, Rav Yerucham Yitzchak Perlman, who decided he would be a perfect match for his daughter. Using his connections as the rav of Minsk with Russian officialdom, Rav Perlman was able to secure his release from the army.
After the cemetery, we crossed a bridge from Kovno to Slabodka, as did generations of yeshivah bochurim on their way to Yeshivas Beis Yisrael (Slabodka), where the Alter of Slabodka, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, shaped so many of the roshei yeshivah who built Torah in America — Rav Aharon Kotler, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, Rav Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman, and Rav Yitzchok Hutner — or to Reb Boruch Ber Leibowitz's Knesses Beis Yitzchak. Only one tangential building remains of the Slabodka yeshivah, and nothing of Knesses Beis Yitzchak.
From the cemetery, we visited the abode in Kovno of Rabbi Aryeh Malkiel Friedman, a talmid chacham, who had learned with Rav Aharon Kotler in Slabodka, before prospering in business. That home was Rav Elchonon Wasserman's final refuge prior to being seized and taken to the Seventh Fort.
The Friedman parents did not survive the War. But each of their three daughters managed to escape by various circuitous paths, perhaps on the merit of having housed Rav Elchonon. And each married a prominent rosh yeshivah: Rebbetzin Rishel Kotler; Rebbetzin Rochel Sarna, and Rebbetzin Shulamis Wolpe.
Three-year old Shulamis was in Telz with her mother, where the latter had gone to secure the release from the army of a yeshivah bochur, when the Nazis captured the city. She witnessed the men of the Telz being herded into the shul, singing "Mah Tov Chelkeinu, Mah Tov Goraleinu," as it was set on fire. She herself was lined up with other children to be shot. To conserve bullets, the Nazis tried to kill several children with one bullet, and Mrs. Friedman noticed that her daughter was still alive and rescued her.
Later, they were hiding in freezing conditions, and her mother slit her wrists to give her daughter to drink of her blood in order to warm her. Rebbetzin Wolpe related in her later years, "Whenever I do something wrong bein adam l'chaveiro, I always see my mother's finger pointing at me from Heaven, covered in blood, and she asks, 'Is this why I gave you my blood?' "
Precisely the type of feelings that our time in Kovno triggered in me.