Holocaust Legacy in Post-Soviet Lithuania: People, Places and Objects

Description

Once regarded as a vibrant centre of intellectual, cultural and spiritual Jewish life, Lithuania was home to 240,000 Jews prior to the Nazi invasion of 1941. By war's end, less than 20,000 remained. Today, approximately 4,000 Jews reside there, among them 108 survivors from the camps and ghettos and a further 70 from the Partisans and Red Army. Against a backdrop of ongoing Holocaust dismissal and a recent surge in anti-Semitic sentiment, Holocaust Legacy in Post-Soviet Lithuania presents the history and experiences of a group of elderly Holocaust survivors in modern-day Vilnius. Using their stories and memories, their places of significance as well as biographical objects, Shivaun Woolfson considers the complexities surrounding Holocaust memory and legacy in a post-Soviet era Lithuania. The book also incorporates interdisciplinary elements of anthropology, psychology and ethnography, and is informed at its heart by a spiritual approach that marks it out from other more conventional historical treatments of the subject. Holocaust Legacy in Post-Soviet Lithuania includes 20 images, comes with comprehensive online resources and weaves together story, artefact, monument and landscape to provide a multidimensional history of the Lithuanian Jewish experience during and after the Holocaust. Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Preface: A Double Mourning Chapter 1 Towards A Multidimensional Approach A spiritual dimension The power of story The inner life of things The meaning of place Beyond the survivor label Moving narratives Models of inquiry Methodological considerations Methodological practices Chapter 2 Jerusalem of the North – An Historical Context Rachel Kostanian – ‘So we have long roots here’ Dora Pilianskiene – ‘Symbols, marks, marks didn’t survive’ Berl Glazer – ‘Do you know, there were four rabbis in my mother’s family?’ Fania Brantsovsky – ‘When the man came each Friday to deliver our newspapers and he was asked who was at the door, he would answer: “The bearer of culture”’  Chasia Spanerflig – ‘We were taught that we have to be as strong . . .’ Josef Levinson – ‘In Lithuania, there were poets, famous speakers and thinkers, and they supported the ideals of hope and a brighter future for the people’ Chapter 3 My Journey Begins in Ponar Chapter 4 The Mourner: Chasia Spanerflig Chapter 5 The Memory Bearer: Fania Brantsovsky Chapter 6 The Memory Bearer: Berl Glazer Chapter 7 The Memory Bearer: Rachel Kostanian Chapter 8 The Creative: Dora Pilianskiene Chapter 9 The Creative: Josef Levinson Chapter 10 Living with the Past Notes References Archival sources Oral history interviews Bibliography Index