Lithuania: The Pakruojis Jewish Cemetery as an Example Where Historic Boundaries Have been Diminished

Pakruojis, Lithuania. Jewish cemetery. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015. 

Lithuania: The Pakruojis Jewish Cemetery as an Example Where Historic Boundaries Have been Diminished
by Samuel D. Gruber

 In addition to the many several Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania that I recently visited where there has been clear progress with boundary recognition, fencing, and site restoration, there are many cemeteries in the country (possibly most) where encroachment over the past seventy years has greatly reduced the recognized size of the full cemetery.  Some of this can be seen at Radviliskis, about which I have already written.   

Often making this matter worse - despite probable good intentions - is the fact that many of these places have fenced and protected areas which give the appearance that the cemeteries are safe and at least nominally protected and maintained. It is hard to date these fences. Some are seem to have been erected during the period of Communist rule and many may have been installed following Lithuanian independence in 1990, when a concerted effort was made to better mark mass graves and other Holocaust-related sites (see Yosf Levinson, The Book of Sorrow (Vilnius, 1997).

 Pakruojis, Lithuania. Jewish cemetery. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015

One example of this problem which is probably typical is the "new" cemetery at Pakruojis, in Central Lithuania (I'll soon write about another, at Kalvaria in the southwest). The town was once a place with a substantial Jewish population, some glimmer of which one can still discerned in the existence of one of its synagogues, which will soon be restored.  The community was a old one, and before World War I about 1400 Jews lived here - though there was massive emigration overseas in the interwar years (see Schoenburg, Lithuanian Jewish Communities (New York, 1991), p. 221-222.  For a  virtual tour of Jewish Pakruokis click here.

An earlier cemetery was located on the town-side bank of the Kruoja River, but this was totally destroyed by the Germans. The present-day cemetery, about a 1 1/12 kms northwest of town, was probably founded in the mid to late 19th century. The cemetery includes a simple wooden fence that encompasses only part of the plot which has bee estimated to be about 100 x 40 meters in size.

 Pakruojis, Lithuania. Jewish cemetery. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015.

In many such places, the present visible and fenced remains of their Jewish cemeteries can only be very limited approximations of the cemeteries' former extent. When the fences at Pakruojis and elsewhere were erected around existing visible gravestones, these fences then denied recognition as protected sacred ground or for cultural heritage designation to all the area with graves but no visible stones.  This practice, which is widely followed in many countries, arises from the mistaken belief that the value of a Jewish cemetery is in its gravestones, not in the dead bu tried underground.  Respect and appreciation of the gravestones is an important recognition of the historical and artistic value of Jewish material culture, but recognition of the sacred character of Jewish burials is a recognition of a fundamental Jewish religious belief. 

There is also a killing site and mass grave outside Pakruojis in the Morkakalmis Forest where approximately 400 Jews were murdered by Germans and Lithuania accomplices in July 1941. 

Pakruojis, Lithuania. Jewish cemetery. A tree has grown around the gravestone. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015.

  Pakruojis, Lithuania. Jewish cemetery. This memorial to stone to the murdered Jews of Pakruojis was erected and unveiled in 1994.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015.

At Pakruojis, the cemetery on first glance might be declared in good condition, and this raises concerns about the criteria used in a recent survey to determine the condition of Jewish cemeteries throughout the country by the Ministry of Culture. On closer examination, the Pakruojis cemetery is a clear example of how earlier fencing excluded much cemetery land and many burials from even the most rudimentary protection. Stepping over the low wooden fence we walked in the woods on two sides and quickly found evidence of gravestones. A careful examination of the area, perhaps in coordination with map studies and even aerial photography or a geophysical survey, might better determine the original extent of the cemetery.

  Pakruojis, Lithuania. Jewish cemetery. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015.

 

Pakruojis, Lithuania. Jewish cemetery. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015.

A new fence will soon be needed in any case, and this could be the opportunity to correct this historic error.  Presently,  there is no signage or historical information on the site telling the history of the cemetery or the community and its fate.  It is timely, too, since work is to begin soon on the restoration of the former wooden synagogue. When this is complete (it will serve as a children's library) more visitors will come to Pakruojis, and the cemetery would be well  and accurately protected, and presented. One does not have to invest the resources as at Seduva, but the destroyed Jewish community of Pakruojis and its murdered members deserve something better. In the case of Pakruojis, the reduced boundaries of the cemetery can be easily remedied, since the land around the cemetery has not been developed. I am confident this will be done - though local officials may need encouragement and advice along the way.

At Kalvaria and elsewhere, this will be more difficult, and recovery of the original cemetery grounds could be a locally contentious issue. As I will discuss in future posts, the situation is more difficult when more substantial development and destruction has taken place on cemetery ground. Such is the well documented case at two historic cemeteries in Vilnius, but can almost certainly be found elsewhere through Lithuania, as it can in most other former Communist countries, and some western counties, too.  

Lithuania: The Radviliskis Jewish Cemetery Re-Discovered is an Example of Municipal Engagement and Initiative

Radviliskis, Lithuania. Jewish cemetery. New entrance gate, Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015

 

Lithuania: Radviliskis Jewish Cemetery Re-Discovered is an Example of Municipal Engagement and Initiative
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) I recently wrote about the extensive work to renovate, restore and memorialize the cemetery and mass grave sites in Šeduva, Lithuania.  As an example of the ripple effect of such work, one only has to travel a few kilometers up the road to the district capital of Radviliskis to see how that town's cemetery has now received attention from the municipality. 

The Radviliskis cemetery is a good example of how the land of Lithuanian Jewish cemeteries has often been privatized, but over the last two years the municipality has made an effort to reclaim much of the cemetery and to protect and restore it. Because access to the cemetery had previously been difficult, its existence and condition was hardly mentioned on previous surveys. 

Radviliskis, Lithuania. Inside Jewish cemetery looking towards new gate. Private orchard can be seen on left. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015

We were shown the cemetery at Radviliskis by Sergey Kanovich of MACEVA and the Šeduva Jewish Memorial Fund and by Vytautus Simelis, head of the department of heritage of the Radiliskis District Municipality.

The cemetery is enclosed by a continuous wall; there is no mistaking the location. But this property was privatized in the early 1990s and a single owner lay claim to the entire parcel – and behind the wall no one could see what took place.  A house is built at one end of the site and a small orchard is behind it.  Much of the rest of the cemetery plot was probably farmed – or at least used for gardening.  No stones are seen on much of the plot, and most likely stones were removed over the years to facilitate plowing and planting.

 

Radviliskis, Lithuania. Sign inside Jewish cemetery. New entrance gate, Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015

  

 

Radviliskis, Lithuania. Jewish cemetery. Several dozen gravestones survive at the far end of cemetery. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015

Now, in the past few years the municipality has managed to reclaim much of the area – about three quarters of the walled enclosure. This includes all the land except the house, its yard and orchard.  The original entrance was close to the house, but this could not always be accessed, so a new opening and a new attractive gate have been made in the wall facing the major road.  There is also a sign inside the cemetery stating that it is the “old Jewish cemetery (Senosios Zydu Kapines).” A simple high wire fence now separates the municipally controlled and cleaned cemetery from the part of the cemetery still claimed by the private owner. Perhaps in time, this part, too, might be reclaimed and joined to the rest, and the fence can come down. According to Sergey Kanovich, the recent clean-up and restoration "is an obvious result of the Šeduva Jewish cemetery which falls under authority of Radviliskis municipality.

Radviliskis, Lithuania. Jewish cemetery. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015

Radviliskis, Lithuania. Jewish cemetery. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2015

Meanwhile, the  municipality has been cleaning the cemetery which will allow the documentation of  the surviving gravestones, most of which are preserved, not surprisingly, at the edge of the cemetery furthest from the house.There appear to about 3-4 dozen intact and erect gravestones. There is also a substantial ruined brick tomb amidst the other stones.

MACEVA has agreed with local gymnasium (high school) that all stones will be photographed next summer. Then MACEVA will follow is established procedure for transcriptions and translations of all legible stones, and these will be made available on the organization's website.

 The situation at Radviliskis is not perfect. A significant portion of the remains privately controlled and proportionately managed. Still, the improvement of the situation is great and shows that increasingly there is a willingness of Lithuania municipal official to take action to protect Jewish cemeteries - but hits often has to be stimulated by outside attention, and sometimes subtle pressure.

USA: In Binghamton, NY, Rediscovery of an Early "Holocaust" Memorial

Conklin (Binghamton), New York. Temple Israel Cemetery. Holocaust Memorial (1952). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 

Conklin (Binghamton), New York. Temple Israel Cemetery. Holocaust Memorial (1952). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 Conklin (Binghamton), New York. Beth David Cemetery. Gravestone of Max Melamed, who died in World War II. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

 

Conklin (Binghamton), New York. Temple Israel Cemetery. American Flags decorate the graves of Veterans. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015

USA: In Binghamton, NY, Rediscovery of an Early "Holocaust" Memorial
by Samuel D. Gruber

On a recent visit to Binghamton, New York, Colgate University professor Rhonda Levine took time to show me an unexpected monument in the cemetery of Temple Israel, the city's conservative synagogue. The monument, erected in 1952 commemorates "Victims of Racial Persecution who lost Their Lives in Europe During the Years 1933-1945." The inscription gores on to assert "They Will Never Be Forgotten" This monument, a surrogate matzevot for those who have no burial place, takes its place among other graves of war dead in the Temple Israel and adjacent Beth David cemetery. 

This is one of the earliest memorials to Holocaust victims erected in the United States. In 1950 a memorial was placed in the B'nai Israel Synagogue in Millburn, New Jersey, where the rabbi was a refugee from Mainheim, Germany. Two stones from Mannheim's Haupt Synagogue, destroyed on Kristallnacht in 1938, were recovered and placed in a  wall niche of the sanctuary. Meanwhile, An ambitious memorial planned for Riverside Park in New York City was never built, despite competitions, plans, models, rallies and fund raising. As Rochelle Saidel has documented in her book Never too Late to Remember: the Politics behind New York City's Holocaust Museum (Holmes & Meier, 1996) it took decades until the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust opened in New York as a direct successor to that original commemorative effort.

The much smaller Binghamton project began in 1948 when, according to Prof. Levine: 

"a group of thirteen German speaking Jewish women who had resettled in the Southern Tier after fleeing Nazi terror in Europe formed the Get Together Club, a philanthropic and social club. The most ambitious project of the Get Together Club was the placement of a memorial stone in the Temple Israel section of the Conklin Avenue cemetery in November 1952, in memory of those who died during the Holocaust.   

The husband of a member of the Get Together Club bemoaned the fact that his parents, who had died in one of the concentration camps, had no graves.He told his wife, “I feel so bad. There’s no place for me to say a prayer.” His wife told him she had read in The Aufbau that people were making memorial stones in New York for those who died in the death camps.She then decided to bring the idea of erecting a memorial stone to the Get Together Club as a project. Many of the members had relatives who died during the Holocaust and had no proper burial or even marking of a grave. Club members began contacting all the Jewish families of primarily German descent in the area who lost family members in Nazi Germany, and took up a collection to pay for the memorial. 

The monument was dedicated on Sunday, November 9, 1952. Over 250 names were inscribed on scrolls and placed in a copper box buried at the foot of the monument. The Get Together Club asked all the local rabbis to cite prayers at the unveiling of the monument. Each year thereafter, on the Sunday in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Get Together Club sponsored a memorial service at the monument, with area rabbis taking turns at leading the service, and then one of the survivors read the names written on the scrolls. These services continued for over 20 years, well into the late 1970s.

Prof. Levine, explained, however, that "as members of these families died or moved away the purpose - and even the existence - of the monument was largely forgotten." Kaddish was no longer recited at the monument on annual pilgrimages to the cemetery, and the names of those buried beneath the stone and even of those who donated for its erection were lost to memory.

Conklin (Binghamton), New York. Temple Israel Cemetery. Holocaust Memorial (1952). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2015
 

Rhonda has made it a mission to rediscovery this part of Binghamton's Jewish history, and to remember the refugees who settled here from Germany and Austria and their loved ones who could not escape and did not survive.  

How many more such monuments exist in cemeteries throughout America?  If you know of one, and the story behind, let us know. The International Survey of Jewish Monuments will try to compile a list of early Holocaust memorials in the United States, just as similar lists have been created for Europe in the countries where Jews and other victims died.  Many of the first memorials created after liberation were later destroyed under Communism. There are some efforts to document these, and to restore them when they can be found, or replace them when it can be shown that they were removed. 

Remembering Architect Henry Fernbach (Died November 12, 1883)

  New York, NY. Central Synagogue. Henry Fernbach, arch. Image from Harper's Weekly (July 6, 1872), courtesy of the William A. Rosenthall Judaica Collection, College of Charleston Libraries.

 New York, NY. Central Synagogue. Henry Fernbach, arch. (1872, restored 2000). Photo: Peter Aron in Stolzman, Synagogue Architecture in America, 116

Remembering Architect Henry Fernbach (Died November 12, 1883)
by Samuel D. Gruber

On this day in 1883, architect Henry Fernbach, one of the first successful Jewish architects to practice in the United States and a favorite architect of the New York City Jewish community, died suddenly in his New York office. Fernbach was also an early member of the American Institute of Architects.

Fernbach was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) in 1828.  He graduated from the Building Academy in Berlin and came to the United States in 1855. His early death at age 55 deprived Jewish New York of one if its most successful and creative talents. Fernbach had designed three important Manhattan synagogues, as well as the Hebrew Orphan Asylum on 77th Street. He also was active as a commercial architect, often for Jewish patrons, such as the Stern Brothers, for whom he designed an impressive store on Ladies' Mile at 32 West 23rd Street.

New York, NY. Congregation Shaaray Tefila, 127 West 44th Street. Henry Fernbach, arch. (1869). Photo: Moses King, King’s Handbook to New York. Boston: Moses King, 1893 (2^nd edition), 403.

Today, Fernbach is best remembered for his design of the still extant and popular Central Synagogue (Congregation Ahavath Chesed) at 54th Street and Lexington Avenue built in 1872, but he also collaborated with Leopold Eidlitz on the design of Temple Emanuel, opened in 1868, and he designed Congregation Shaaray Tefilahon 127 West 44th Street. All of these buildings introduced new materials, forms and decorations to New York's synagogue architecture. Certainly, it was through Eidlitz and Fernbach's use of Central European "Oriental" designs that the "Moorish" style caught on with American Reform congregations in the post-Civil War period.
  
Among other secular buildings Fernbach designed were New York's Germania Savings Bank (1870), the Statts Zeitung building and cast iron loft buildings at 69 and 71-73 Greene Street (1877) and  114 Greene Street (1881).  The Germania Savings Bank was a magnificacne strucutre that dominated its corner site at 14th Street and 4th Avenue, where it stood until 1962.  

Tom Miller writes on his excellent blog Daytonian in Manhattan of the building that:

"Five stories tall, its regimented façade featured the arched openings, separating pilasters and cornices at each level made popular by the French Second Empire style currently all the rage.  Ferbach used the corner plot to visual advantage, placing the entrance on a chamfered point and crowning it with a faceted dome.  Architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler pointed to the building as an example as to why Fernbach “is one of the most accomplished practitioners in this country of academic Renaissance.”  A year after the building’s completion Fernbach would design a near-clone in Philadelphia with his New York Mutual Insurance Company building. "

New York, NY. German Savings Bank at 14th Street and 4th Ave. Photo:Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York  

Soon after in Philadelphia Fernbach designed the New York Mutual Life Insurance Company (now Victory Building) in 1873. The National Register listed Second Empire style building has recently been converted into condominium apartments. I have fond memories of this building and am glad it has been saved from demolition. In the late 1960s I spent many of the afternoons there working in the headquarters of Student Mobilization Against the War, and in 1968, Eugene McCarthy for President headquarters. 

Philadephia, Pennsylvania. The Victory Buiding (18??). Photo; Samuel D. Gruber 1982.

After Fernbach's death the mantle of "New York's Jewish architect" passed to Arnold W. Brunner, who had worked briefly in Fernbach's office as a teenager and who graduated in architecture from M.I.T. in 1879. In the 1880s and 1890s he took over work that might have gone to Fernbach