The Jews of Lithuania – book review: an enticing history of a once vibrant community
In a concise narrative backed by meticulous research Nick Sayers tells the story of the community his great-grandfather left behind when he emigrated to Cork
The cover of Nick Sayers’ book is an enticing, sunlit copse. Dotted among the pine trees are the few remaining sunken matzevot (headstones) of the old Jewish cemetery in Pikeliai, the shtetl in northern Lithuania, where generations of his father’s family are buried. The image, captured by the author’s daughter while accompanying him on a field trip, is the perfect metaphor for the scant traces of the once vibrant Litvak community, rooted in the Middle Ages.
We learn at the outset that Sayers’ great-grandfather, Meyer, left Lithuania for Cork in southern Ireland in the late 19th century, but this is not a family memoir. And despite the book’s authoritative narrative, backed up by meticulous research, neither is it intended to be an academic tome. What Sayers has produced it is a thoroughly readable account of the context that the community his great-grandfather grew up in.
Inevitably the core theme of the book is the oldest hatred. The book details how grotesque, classic antisemitic tropes were fermented by Christian theology and violently supercharged in the 19th century by the growth of ideological nationalism. The minutiae of shtetl life are described with an affection and vividness reminiscent of the photography of Roman Vishniac, but there is an ever-present sense of foreboding in the text.
Lithuania is where the war of annihilation began; the “Holocaust through bullets”. Among the maps at the front of the book there is one that locates where these massacres took place. It is a poignant precursor to the wide range of testimony that Sayers uses to give voice to the victims of these atrocities.
Indeed, it is the remarkably diverse cast of characters that Sayers’ introduces us to that makes this book so accessible throughout. We hear from the survivor-witness, Khonon Reif, who recalls hearing the rabbi of Vieksniai urging the men who are locked in a barn with him awaiting their fate, to recite psalms, “while in a second barn the women tore their hair out of their heads, kissed their small children, wept bitterly and wildly, and took leave of one another”.
Then there is Noah Shneidman, who recognises her erstwhile neighbours willingly rounding up Jews for the Nazis to murder as “former students of the local Lithuanian high school and members of a well-known basketball club. I was astonished to learn how little time it took to unleash the evil instinct in those who were previously regarded as decent young men.” And in contrast to these Jewish voices, Sayers shares an extract from an official Einsatzgruppe (Nazi killing squad) report: “These Jews are remarkably ill-informed about our attitude toward them… they naively believe that we shall leave them in peace if they mind their own business and work diligently.”
There are moments of breathtaking sorrow too. We hear of a desperate letter, found buried in the ground, left by Frida Niselevich when she was murder in July 1944 – a plea to whoever might find it – “as I take the step between life and death, I leave behind a few photos of my dearest ones in the hope somebody would find them someday while digging and searching in the soil, and that this person would be so kind as to send them to one of my relatives in America or Palestine, if any of them are left…”
Sayers remains focused on the broadest of canvases, which makes the few personal references all the more telling. We learn, for example, that a Latvian relative called Rosa, who survived months of slave labour in Stuttholf Concentration Camp and the subsequent torturous death march, got in touch with the family who were now living in Blackheath. Sayers’ father, a child at the time, recalls that help and accommodation was offered to her, on the proviso that she didn’t talk about her experiences in front of him.
The book deals comprehensively with the suppression of the Jewish perspective in post-war Lithuania. The few remaining Jews had little choice other than to allow the Soviet narrative of ‘The Great Patriotic War’ as the triumph of communism over fascism to remain unchallenged. The book pays tribute to the work of Rūta Vanagaitė and Silvia Foti, whose honest assessment of their country’s complicity in the Holocaust has made them targets of hate. Sayers’ accounts of their courage, alongside that of the partisan, uprising fighter and post-war activist Abba Kovner and the courageous Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, accorded the title Righteous Among the Nation, provides some welcome shafts of light.
Sayers’ clear and concise narrative succeeds in making the most dreadful of histories accessible to the general reader. His next publication, about the Lithuanian Jews of Ireland, is eagerly awaited.
• The Jews of Lithuania: A Journey Through the Long Twentieth Century is published by Vallentine Mitchell at £19.95
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