authors he had read as a child but which were forbidden by Nazis and by Soviets ... a piece of his youth confiscated, seemingly gone forever except as a memory and now two funny-looking strangers barge into his office and drop them on his table.'
We talked to Shubas for about twenty minutes. (His name appears variously as Shub, Shubas, or Shubas.) His Institute for Jewish Studies is three years old, since it was never allowed under the Soviets. He had been a teacher of philosophy before that, and even then he had to describe Spinoza as a Hollander, not as a Jew. (Actually, in an odd coincidence, the formal title of the institute is the Camilla and Fritz Hollander Center for Judaic Studies, the Hollanders being a couple from Sweden who are supporting it.)
As we said, he is on the history faculty. Mark relates, 'During World War II, he had been pulled into the Red Army because of his ability to translate German to Russian and vice versa. When he left, Vilna was a Jewish city. When the war ended there was no Vilna, only Vilnius. Pretty much his whole community was murdered. So he taught history and philosophy in post-war Lithuania. Before the Nazis, there were 75,000 Jews in Vilna; after the war there were 'a few thousand' left in Vilnius, and they could not practice their religion or teach their culture. With the coming of independence there also came an interest in Jewish studies and history--mostly from non-Jews. The University asked Shubas if he could teach Jewish Studies and he told them it had been his dream for years. Now he has seventy students. One is fully Jewish on both sides. Five are half-Jews [his distinction, not ours]. Sixty-four are Lithuanians interested in Jewish literature and philosophy. He opened a cabinet and showed us his library of Jewish books to date. They are undoubtedly better quality Jewish books than we have at home. But we probably have more than he has, and ours are in better condition. The National Yiddish Book Center will not ship via some international shipper like DHL because there is less danger of confiscation if they send the books with someone who will fight for them. They don't say that, but if you read between the lines, their mail to us was telling us what we should argue if there was an attempt to stop the books. So Shubas's dreams of getting the books of his youth waited until the NYBC could find someone willing to drag twenty pounds of books and stand up for them if necessary. Today two funny-looking Americans were sitting outside his office and he had his books.'
Evelyn adds, 'When he showed us his library of Yiddish books, it was with great pride, and that was perhaps the saddest part. It was by most standards a very small collection--a few dozen books--yet to him they were are precious as gold. If he saw the supply at the National Yiddish Book Center--over a million volumes--he would probably have the same reaction that Robin Williams had to the coffee aisle in MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON. (In that movie, Williams has defected from the Soviet Union and goes into a grocery store. He asks, 'Where is the line for coffee?' and is told, 'Coffee is in aisle 4.' On going to aisle 4, he sees dozens of brands of coffee: ground coffee, instant coffee, espresso, coffee beans, etc. He walks down the aisle mumbling 'Coffee. Coffee. Coffee. Coffee....' and the next scene shows him being wheeled out to an ambulance in shock still mumbling 'Coffee....'')
We should note that we spoke in English, his English being considerably better than our Lithuanian (or Yiddish, or German, or any other language). He attributed the small percentage of Jewish students in his classes to the fact that most of the Jews who were interested in their heritage had emigrated to Israel when they had the chance after the Soviets left, and the remaining Jews were enrolled in computer science, economics, or other more practical studies. He was also surprised that we were visiting Lithuania if that was not where our grandparents were from. He made more distinction between Lithuanian Jews, Hungarian Jews, etc., than we in the United States do--which is somewhat consistent with Evelyn's comments at the beginning of this log.
We talked to him for about thirty minutes, but then he had a meeting to go to, so we wished him luck with his Center and parted company.
Our original intention was to go to Paneriai, but the bus system let us down. By the time we got to the right bus stop, it turned out that bus number 8 no longer goes to that stop (near the train station), and bus number 45 which connected to bus number 8 wasn't going to be running again until the afternoon.
Okay, we'll change plans. We'll go to the local synagogue and the Jewish State Museum today and then Paneriai either a different day or later today (but not tomorrow because the museum there is closed on Tuesday). We walk to the synagogue. We can identify it easily--it's the building covered with scaffolding. So far in Eastern Europe we have seen nine synagogues. Three were covered with scaffolding (Budapest, Sofia, and Vilnius). One was post-World War II (Salzburg). One has since been destroyed by bombing (Sarajevo) and one damaged (Dubrovnik). We couldn't see the inside of the Altneuschul in Prague or the one in Kaunas because they were closed, and we only drove by the one in Bucharest. Churches we can see all over the place, but seeing synagogues seems to be really difficult for us. The Vilnius synagogue is also not open to the public outside service hours (9:30 to 10:30 and again in the late afternoon). So that turned out to be a short visit.
We continued on to the Jewish State Museum. Actually there are only two Jewish museums in the former U.S.S.R. and this is both of them. It is two dissimilar museums in two different buildings. Both museums as a whole would be tiny. The one on Pylimo gatve is a small collection of artifacts, mostly from the Great Synagogue which was heavily damaged by bombs in 1944 and then leveled by the Soviets: candlesticks, two Torahs, spice boxes, and the decoration of an Aron Kodesh (the resting place of a synagogue's Torahs). The latter was from another synagogue and was unusual in that it had carvings of animals--usually representational art is forbidden. There was also a Book of Esther written in such a way that the lines of tiny print, when viewed from a distance, formed a picture of Queen Esther. All together there were maybe three dozen items--so little to survive from so much. (Mark thinks that there may be more still used by the Jewish community, but with only 3,000 Jews left--there were 75,000 before the Holocaust--that still doesn't account for much.)
The other museum documents the community of Vilna and the Holocaust in four little rooms. The latter has yellow stars, photographs of victims, and an article in English about Chiune Sugihara, the heroic Japanese consul who sacrificed his career as a Japanese consul general in Lithuania to save several thousand Jews from the Nazis. As the June 4, 1994, 'San Jose Mercury News' relates, 'With a multitude of Jewish refugees camped out around his consulate and pleading for help, Sugihara decided to defy his superiors' orders and spent several days and nights scribbling visas for them, often skipping meals and sleep. Historians put the number of Jews he helped from 2,000 to 10,000 with most estimates near 6,000. Noted for his fluency in foreign languages, he once had been considered among the fastest rising stars in Japan's consulate corps. But for helping the Jews, he lost his job and, some accounts say, was forced to live out his life in dishonor in Japan-- selling light bulbs, running a military store and translating for living.' John E. Burman details, 'In July-August 1939 he signed hundreds of visas for Jews fleeing Poland before the Nazi invaders. He saved between 2500-4500 Jews, including all the 300 staff and students of the celebrated Mir Yeshivah. Sugihara was invited to Israel in 1969. By the time he was honored by Yad Vashem in 1985, he was too old and frail to attend the award ceremony at the Israeli embassy in Tokyo, and he died a year later aged 86. The Mir Yeshivah, relocated in Brooklyn, established a Sempo Sugihara scholarship fund to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Kovno escape.' And when his government closed the consulate, he continued issuing visas from his hotel room. (For those interested in learning more, there was a book called THE FUGU PLAN written about the escape of Lithuanian Jews into Japan with Sugihara's role detailed, and a section about Sugihara in THE BOOK OF THE JUST by Eric Silver, ISBN 0-297-81245-9. Another book, mainly about the Mir Yeshiva's part of the story, is THE SHANGHAI CONNECTION by Rabbi Dr. Chaim U. Lipschitz, ISBN 0-932351-20-4.)
Evelyn writes, 'As we have noted earlier, Lithuania's history visa -vis the Jews has been checkered. First Jews were welcomed and even invited in the Middle Ages. The various books claim that Lithuania doesn't have a history of anti-Semitism as does Poland and Russia, yet until after World War I, there was no separate, independent Lithuania distinct from Poland or Russia. After a brief period under Soviet rule, Lithuania was invaded by Nazi Germany. As we said, the 'Insight' guide claims that the reason some Lithuanians were so enthusiastic about helping the Nazis kill Jews was that they blamed the Jews for supporting the Soviets. Of course, after the war, when the Soviets were back in charge, they deported and killed most of the remaining Jews. Maybe now the Lithuanians have decided that if the Soviets hated the Jews, that's a point in the Jews' favor ('the enemy of my enemy is my friend'). Certainly Lithuania seems more interested in studying Judaism and Jewish and recognizing that the Jews were the prime target of the Nazis than other Eastern European countries seem to be. I suppose one might also be cynical and say that Lithuania wants to put a good foot forward for tourists, since most of the Jewish-oriented exhibits and sites are among the few that are in English. (But it can't be just this--the entrance to Paneriai specifically mentions Jews on the sign which is in Lithuanian, Russian, and Hebrew, but not English.)'
We bought a cassette of Jewish music at the museum, in part to support the museum and in part to give us something to listen to here and at home.
Lunch was at a fairly good kavine (that's a cafe) called the Victoria. Mark had hot borscht with sour cream (very good, he says) and something that turned out to be very like chicken-fried steak. Evelyn had an appetizer of herring and mushrooms, a vegetable soup (not tomato-based), and a chicken cutlet. Everything was very salty compared to what we're used to back home. Yes, you *expect* herring to be salty, but the fried potatoes and the sauce for the meat were also loaded with salt. Mark had two Pepsis, Evelyn had coffee, and the whole bill came to 35 Lt (US$8.75).
For dessert we each had a banana--the natural snack. You see banana peels everywhere and Lithuanians seem to love bananas. Mark tells the story, 'I don't remember the details of this anecdote but back in the days of the Soviets a Soviet was in Scandinavia somewhere working with Scandinavians. One day they were walking in the streets when the Soviet excused himself and disappeared for an hour. Strange. It happened again the next day. When he was asked about it, he said that he saw that someone had bananas for sale. In the Soviet Union, when you see bananas for sale, you buy them. They are a rare commodity. He was not aware or could not comprehend that many places bananas are *always* for sale.'
A not too dissimilar story happened to a Romanian-born friend. Her mother had given a reliable refrigerator to someone who had just come from Romania. Then within a few days the person reported that the freezer had broken. On investigating, they found the refrigerator was so full of frozen meat it had broken down. What possessed the newcomer to buy so much meat? It was on sale. It not only was available, it was on sale. Our friend had to tell them that meat is *always* on sale. When a product is denied, then is available, people tend to go 'hog wild.' It is possible that bananas were very hard to get prior to independence. |
