New document from Russian archives

 Just before what would have been our dad's 110th birthday, my sister Sharon meets an historian who uncovered a Russian document that reveals more secrets of our father: he was a doctor in the Kaunas prison, a Candidate for the Communist Party, he had an ex-wife in Moscow, and he cohabited and fled to West Germany with a German woman named Irma.

 

Russian document

 

Eli's Story

 In April 2023, at the St Petersburg Florida Holocaust Museum, Meri-Jane and Burt Rochelson presented on the life of their father, who graduated Kaunas Medical School with my father in 1939 and was a lifelong friend. My 93 year old mother was thrilled to attend.

Laima's students translate and dub Jewish history video

Video of Jewish History in Keidan

Joseph Silber emigration documents

Emigration of Joe --I found these cleaning out my father's things in Tenafly NJ in 2020.

 

Full Documentation as of 2025

Joseph Silber in 1935, age 20

Back in Keidan in 2019

I wrote a long post about my Lithuania trip to Keidan with Dan Fink, Laima Ardaviciene and Keidainers.

Grateful for Lithuanians engaged with Jewish history and working to preserve and honor Jewish cemeteries and memorial sites.

Click  to Keidan.

students present

Path to the USA

My mother found the West German passport that got my father through Ellis Island in 1951.
Six years after the end of WWII, he achieved his goal to emigrate to the US and begin a new life.

Those six years included eyewitness to the brutal Russian occupation of Berlin that ended the war. My father chose not to talk about what he saw.

This powerful 1945 diary of a 34-year old German journalist bears witness to the atrocities:

A Woman in Berlin

P.S. If we don't visit, who will?

If we don't visit, who will?
Roots in Keidan group

In July, be part of Richard Freund's amazing excavation. In June, go with the Vilna Shul.
NOVA 54 minute film
#NOVA#VilnaShul

From the IX Fort museum, household items that could have belonged to my cousins.
 (See Sharon's comment for IX Fort).  #IX Fort#Kovno

'Achoo' ('thank you' in Lithuanian)

My visit to Lithuania happened almost by chance.

My father never wanted to return to the country where he was born, never wanted to talk about it, never wanted his children to visit.

Like any place, the history is very complicated.

Much sadness and no immediate family remain in Lithuania.

But I felt more of a connection to this place than I expected, to the land, to aspects of the culture and mostly to the wonderful people who I met.

Until next time, Lithuania.

Lithuania has great ice cream.

And the pillows match the flavors.

Lithuanian citizenship

Because my father was a Lithuanian citizen after Soviet occupation, I am eligible to apply for Lithuanian EU passports, as are my children. However, he never had a Lithuanian passport and his birth record does not suffice. I am researching options.
My father would be turning in his grave to see any dilution of his family's beloved US citizenship.  The bitter memories of Lithuania overpowered any sweet memories. My father never wanted to return to Lithuania let alone regain citizenship.
But that EU status that comes with Lithuanian citizenship is tempting.
During the tour, present day Jews in Lithuania insisted that life was good. The quality of life in Vilnius is attractive, with many wonderful restaurants and beautiful architecture and parks.
Only Lithuanian citizens can own property, so there is also a potential economic opportunity for my children. Lithuania is a shopping destination for Scandinavians because of its low prices.
 One thing is certain, life in Lithuania is often not what it seems on the surface, it is complicated. There are a multitude of attitudes toward Jews. Here are two positive and one more frightening view, from Slate.com.

Citizenship-of-lithuania

Jews are cool in lithuania

Faina

Lithuania and Nazis. The country wants to forget its collaborationist past.

Ziezmarai

Only remaining wooden synagogue in Lithuania, built in 1819.

izzy's fire

Book about WW2 resistance.

Ziezmarai  has about 4000 residents, none are Jews. Before WWII, half were Jews.

The simple  bulletin board of information shown below tells only part of the story, and even it is only recent and because of the kindness of Mr. Ludviga.

Mr. Ludviga is the nephew of the man who risked his entire family's lives by hiding three Jewish families. Mr. Ludviga was very young at the time but he remembers playing with one of those boys And he remembers people disguising themselves as beggars as a way to bring food to the families.

The remains of the women's balcony.

Mr. Ludviga does all maintenance on his own accord without government support. He lives next door 

and unlocks the door when people want to visit. Mr. Ludviga told us UNESCO looked at the site but nothing came of it which is a pity because in such a small place one can really sense the enormity of losing half of one's neighbors in one day.

Many Lithuanians have yet to be convinced that it is important to remember the crimes of the Nazis. They say "it was so long ago" or their vision of history remains clouded by anti-Soviet sentiment. 

Please read this profile by Gordon Brown of Rachel Margolis. Everything is complicated in Lithuania.

#Izzy's Fire#Rachel Margolis#Ziezmarai

Sugihara House

Simonas Dovidavicus, same Simon of the Keidan  visit and Yudel Ronder visit, is Director of the Sugihara House, a very small but full of heart museum in the former Japanese embassy to Lithuania.

More than 2000 visas were issued, saving the lives of 6000. An act which Sugihara chose to do of his own independent will and for which his career and life suffered.

The Place Called Heaven is a short film we saw.

One man can make a difference.

Simon at Sugihara's desk.

Simon also told us about the other diplomat who made the heroic choice to issue visas to Jews and paid the price in his career. He is Jens deDecker of Holland.

Simon does noble work keeping these memories alive.

I feel connected to his mission and hold the dream of getting involved with the 

Sugihara memorial at Temple Emeth in Chestnut Hill, Ma 

Sugihara Boston

Sugihara children's picture on the desk.

                                                                      Chiune Sugihara

Kaunas street scenes

Statue of Jewish singer, and Bill Segal look-alike, Danielius Dolskis, on the pedestrian artery.

Market

 

Art Deco Movie theater.

in use during my father's University years in Kaunas in 1930s.

Panorama from Nerus River

.

Kaunas Synagogue

We are here on the somber anniversary of 70 years since the Kaunas ghetto was liquidated at the IX Fort  in 1944. My father was 29 years old at the time and had spent four years in medical school in this city only a few years earlier.

The only remaining synagogue in Kaunas. Unfortunately it is not used for services. The 200 Jewish residents of Kaunas have a community center elsewhere.

Linden trees along the synagogue.

The doorway of the American embassy from the period when Kaunas was the capital of Lithuania, 1934-1938.

Finding dad's medical school

The Kaunas Medical School is under restoration and without its signage. This is the building, Jill and Susan helped me find it. The building was new when my father attended in the early 1930s and is just a few blocks from our Hotel Kaunas in the central artery of Kaunas. 

before the Soviet occupation, when Lithuania was an independent country, the President, or it may have been the President's pianist son, had foresight and took it upon himself to safeguard the medical school records of Jews who were graduates of Lithuanian medical schools. he had their records sent to the American Academy of Medicine. The Academy is near Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

Thus, By serendipity, my father's medical school records landed in NY before he did.

Somehow he was told they were they there and he was able to get a residency and practice medicine when he came to NY in 1948.

Napoleon

For a place that people have barely heard of, It is hard to believe how much history has happened here.
Vingis park which I visited by bike in Vilnius turns out is quite historical.
In War and Peace when someone whispers into the Grand Duke's ear on June 23, 1812 that Napoleon has invaded Russia, turns out that takes place in the summer palace in Vingis Park.
And where Napoleon invaded Russia....
That was Kaunas.
The Nemunas River in Kaunas marked the east/west boundary where Napoleon entered Russia from Prussia.
It was just the beginning of the end for the more than 400,000 French soldiers who famously suffered from the harsh Russian winter and disgruntled Russian serfs and dwindled to fewer than 40,000 by the time they returned to France.
Perhaps the origin of the phrase "won the war but lost the battle?"

Yudel Ronder

This has been quite a day. Again.

My visit with the last Jewish survivor from Keidan in Lithuania was very special. Yudel is 92, 7 years younger than dad if he were still alive. He remembered my father and seemed to look up to him.  Twice he said, with Simon translating, "he was very handsome". I replied: "and I look like him don't you think?" And he replied "no".  bed ridden from a stroke 4 1/2 years ago, Yudel still has opinions. he remembers a lot. 

I got a very important piece of information that my father went to Uzbekistan to flee from serving in the Lithuanian army. Yudel ran into him there by chance. They got jobs together as washers of milk bottles. (See letter from Sara in Israel below: maybe my father was working as a doctor in Tashkent.)

This confirmation of my father being in Uzbekistan puts some questions into play. Did my father return to Lithuania and then get deported to Siberia for being a Zionist?  Or did my father enlist himself into the Soviet army to escape starvation conditions in Uzbekistan?

Yudel remembered my great-uncle Finkelstein as a firefighter. He told the story of a firefighter and boxer named Shlopovsky who bit a German soldier.

Yudel's house was close to my father's. Yudel played in my father's courtyard. My father and his friend Turitsky set up a pretend play store there for neighborhood kids.

Yudel asked to see a picture of my father in the US. I showed him a picture taken 20 years ago where my father is holding my newborn son Adam. Yudel asked if my father's grandchildren were close to him. "Yes. very close," I replied.

Yudel was much decorated as a soldier in the Lithuanian branch of the Soviet army. He was a lawyer and he was involved in community theaters. these activities seem to have kept his mind sharp. he is extremely well tended by his nurse, pictured here, who wanted to show me Yudel's medals and asked me if I played basketball. Both made me feel very welcome and we sat together for at least an hour. Many thanks to Simon for organizing this visit. As recent as last night, Simon thought Yudel was too sick for a visitor but I never doubted it would happen because that is how this trip is going.

August 28, 1941


PS
I received this wonderful message by email from Sara in Haifa on August 7, 2014. I forgot to ask how she found this blog, but probably from the Yahoo Keidan group.

Shalom and Hello dear Barbara,

I am Sara Yakubovski from Haifa, Israel. My mother Mina Ronder was Yudel Ronders first cousin.

I have enjoyed reading the notes of your trip to Lithuania. It brought me back to my first trip to Lithuania in 1993 (since then I have been there 3 more times).The progress and the changes in Lithuania are unbelievable. Needles to say that your visit to Yudel was very interesting for me and made me almost decide to go and see him again (before it is too late) We are very close and I love him very much.

As to your question about Tashkent I can help:

On June 22, 1941 the first bombs of the German aircrafts fell. It was still not clear what is going on-Moscow radio did not report anything until noon. The German radio was broadcasting Riventrop's speeches saying that Germany announced war against Russia. There were all kinds of rumors- nothing was clear .

The next day a lot of Keidaner Jews decided to leave Keidan and go to the east, towards the Russian border. Yudel and his nephew Velvke (who was one year younger than Yudel) were given bikes and warm clothes and were asked by the family to try and get to Russia.

Many other people from other villages and towns were also trying to go to Russia. It was not easy and not simple-they were not permitted to stay in several  places, they walked by foot, rode bikes, used some trains (if they could find room on the jammed trains) If not –they walked (by foot) miles and more miles  along the train bars. their feet and legs were swollen. They crossed rivers, had no food, had lice, had not where to sleep so they slept in the streets. When they were already in Russia they worked in farms, in a coal mine, in a factory and what not. They have met on the way some good people who helped them and they were advised to go to Tashkent because the winter is very cold and difficult and in Tashkent it is warmer. So they headed to Uzbekistan. They also thought that from Tashkent they would be able to cross the border to Iran and from there go to Israel. Yudel told me that as a child in Hashomer  Hatsair youth movement they used to sing a song which said:"Tashkent –the city of bread"…

They came to the railway station in Tashkent and it was jammed with refugees and the authorities told them that they can't stay there so they chose t o go to Fergana which is also a big city in Uzbekistan. There Velvke met, by chance, a  young  Keidaner who took them to the stop to Kuba-Say where he worked as a doctor in a clinic. His name was Zilber or Zilbert

(Can it be your father???  Velvke wrote in his memory notes around 1977 that "this Zilber lives now  in the USA")

He helped Velvke to find work in a factory of chemicals where Velvkee worked until he was drafted to the army.

Yudel and Zilber were drafted earlier-in April 1942.Yudel was  in the Lithuanian Division where

many Jewish soldiers  served and later Velvke too was in that division.

After the war three Ronder survivors: my uncle Chayim Ronder (the only eye witness of the massacre in Keidan, Yudel and Velvke reunited in Kaunas (Kovna).

IXth Fort (ninth fort)

IXth Fort was used over many years by several regimes for purposes ranging from city prison, torture place, way station to Siberia by the Soviets, to death site of the Nazis.

 Russians spent more than 20 years building it, yet the IXth fort was never used as a fort. IXth fort was almost immediately surrendered to the German Big Bertha in August 1915.

My father was an infant.

On the day of Big Action on October 29, 1941, 10,000 Jews from the Kovno ghetto were taken to the IXth Fort field of death and shot, including my great-aunt (see comment below).

My father was 26 years old. 

Was he in Kaunas but not living in the ghetto or was he not there? 

 My sister says he says he was deported  via Smolensk.

He may have been in Ukbekhistan.

Amazingly, I can apply to the KGB archives in Vilnius and confirm this with his deportation records.

.Archive application

My father chose not to talk about this traumatic time in his life.  Now he is gone.

We lost the opportunity in 1999-2007 when my father may have travelled to Lithuania. none of us thought to do it, and he likely would have refused.

The former Soviet bloc is just learning to tell the stories of traumatic times. See the post "Poland for the Day,"  Sowalki Poland showed no acknowledgment of its former Jewish citizens when I visited.

 Soviet rule put a hold on telling what Lithuanians and Poles don't want to hear anyway.

Richard Schofield is a British photodocumentarian doing interesting work to fill that void:

Piecing Together the Kaunas Litvaks

40 years in the wilderness

Guide Chaim Bargman chose to focus our tour of the IXth fort less on the torture and killing that occurred there and more on a story of hope and escape from the IXth fort.

Chaim's story is a story he has researched personally for more than 20 years, talking to every survivor and family of survivor he can find of the great escape from IX on December 25-26,1943. 

It is a story that deserves to be better known.

Chaim in front of a diagram of the escape route of Sixty-four Jewish corpse burner workers from the IXth Fort. 

Their escape plans read straight from a Hollywood film, a complex series of smart preparation, clever engineering, flexibility to change according to circumstances, loyalty, and sacrifice. 

 (in the role of Sasha Podosky, leader of the escape, my choice is Ben Affleck.)

1005B, corpse burner documentation. Named for file number of letter of complaint of decaying corpses in streets.  #1005B

Creepy huge concrete sculpture at the entrance. The middle one is supposed to be hope but this creepiness was way too close to the killing site memorial for my taste. 

Lots of tunnels connecting cannon places.

This is the end of the tunnel where the escape of 64 prisoners occurred. They departed in groups of 16 with an elaborate plan that was delayed by one day because the fresh snow would have revealed footprints. Plan included passage carved through wood piles, cutout of metal door, and sheets sewn together for camouflage in the snow. 

Managed the impossible task of getting past the tower guards with machine guns.

A boy who was hidden is returned to his father. there is the occasional happy story. This woman and her family would have been shot and killed had they been discovered.

The Germans eastward attack was quick and a surprise. up to 70 miles a day were covered. The Soviet border was crossed in June, 1941.

  Keidan massacre was in August, 1941.

Kovno Day of Big Action was October, 1941.

Kovno Ghetto liquidation July 8, 1944

my mother claims my father was warned by his mother to go east when she was in Keidan and he was in Kovno. That could date my fathers flee from Lithuania  up to June, 1941. 

That could mean that he fled from the Germans and not earlier from the Lithuanian army. 

The first massive deportation by the Soviets was also in June, 1941, only a week before the Nazi invasion, so it is also possible my father was deported in June, 1941, which is how my sister has written the story.

Kaunas County Archives

I may be turning into a geneologist. I have 13 pages of notes from two hours with Vitaglia, the world expert on Kaunas archives.  And it is all fascinating to me. 

I learned about feudal classifications, tax registrations numbers (Jews paid extra taxes, for candles and other ritual items), revision lists, military lists, who got internal passports with pictures, foreign booklet passports, election of rabbis (often there were two, the official state rabbi who kept records and the religious rabbi.)

From 1827, all men were required to serve a mandatory, short military service. if a peasant were resistant to a landlord, that service could be extended as a punishment and the extensions were as long 25 years. they were shortened to 4 years in the 1874 military reform. 

For most Lithuanian boys, the age they could be "recruited" ("punished" is a more accurate word)  was at 17. 

For Jews, boys as young as 12 years old could be recruited to military service terms of 25 years at the  whim of a landlord.

1858 was a good year for the Jews. That is when the Emperor visited Kaunas. The Emperor was not satisfiedwith the rate at which fine buildings were going up in the city center. hearing there were rich Jewish merchants elsewhere in the city, he immediately lifted the exclusion ban and Jews could live anywhere they could afford in Kaunas.

I got a copy of the 1887 revision list, my grandmother was 16 years old, her sister Mere 18 years old, and sister Hana was no longer at home, 31 years old. mother 55, father 59.

However, in the 1874 revision, the age difference between parents is 6 years.

I never knew that my grandmother was the youngest of three daughters, one much older and two closer in age, just like me. 

The document confirms that my grandmother was a shockingly old mother for her time, She was 44 years old when her only son was born, just like Sharon.

Life is a circle.

Vitaglia also gave me contact information to the state archives and historical archives for possible marriage certificate (not likely, should check the Paris archives for that) and medical school records (Simon kindly offered to do that for me.)

Some of the 1.3 million records which have travelled back and forth between Lithuania and Russia several times, depending who was in power. Vitaglia has handled every document.

 Germans were not interested in the records and during times of their occupation, and paper and fuel was in such short supply, Nazis permitted people to take paper from the archives for anything from burning for fuel, wrapping herring, and toilet paper.

great old map.

Serendipity strikes again

In the idyllic summer of 1980, I was an AFS exchange student to Finland with the Pitkanen family. Outi is my one year younger Finnish sister. I absolutely adore the family and the Finnish culture and landscape they introduced to me.
At the time, Outi and I talked about how the Finnish landscape was perhaps not so different from Lithuania where my family was from.
It turns out this is very much the case and I have been reminded by the landscape, food, and architecture every day that I am geographically near to Outi but was stupid to neglect to make plans to visit her.
Thanks to Facebook, Outi realized I was in Lithuania and sent me the gift of an invisible thread that connects Vilnius holocaust museum to a lovely girl named Heli I met in Orimattila, Finland in 1980.
That lovely girl grown up is now living in Austria and is the mother of a lovely son who is doing his army service as Holocaust education service...she is Sebastian's mother.....Just a coincidence but I am very happy to be connected to the young man who gave us such an eloquent and thoughtful welcome at the green house of the Vilna holocaust museum.
See post on the green house.

Golden age of early 14th century

 Lithuanians were the last pagans in Europe and did not convert to Catholicism until 1387.
When Spain and Germany were busy expelling Jews in 1323, Grand Duke Gediminius of Vilnius sought to welcome them. Gediminius wrote a letter inviting artisans, traders, and builders of any nationality to come help build the city of Vilnius. That was the invitation that brought so many Jews to Lithuania and it was a golden age, for Jews and for the city of Vilnius. During the lifetime of Gediminius, Jews flourished and were free to pursue all professions, of course including banking.
Unfortunately for the Jews, the successor to Gediminius, Grand Duke Alexander, was not so good managing his finances and he found himself deep in financial debt for which it was convenient to expell all Jews to flush them away with his bankers in 1495. Five years later Jews were invited back without penalty; Conveniently, the old debts were never paid.