In front of the stone of a loved one, we face our own mortality. There and then, we are better able to sort out what is really important in the big scheme of things, before we too depart one day.
Other cemeteries might be less personal to us, yet they remain fascinating places with a unique tranquility and history, where a name carved in stone becomes eternal and carries the spirit of somebody's life and a memento of achievements of the common everyday person who lived and worked, and contributed to the creation of a better place for those that followed.
But not all cemeteries are sources of community pride and not all societies promote an attitude of reverence and respect, and encourage preservation of these unique resources for future generations to appreciate and learn from. If a society fails to deal with this issue not only will genealogical and historical past be distorted, but also this society will potentially lose its civility. Along the way the ability to record the true course of its human history will also be lost.
On our trip to Yurburg in May of 2001, we found the "Old Jewish Cemetery of Yurburg", which remains a forgotten but unique memorial to a centuries old Jewish community that perished in the hands of the Nazis and their willing Lithuanian collaborators.
The cemetery sits on a hill about a kilometer to the east of the town, overlooking the Nieman River in a beautiful and idyllic setting of the Lithuanian countryside. Amazingly, this cemetery, unlike the other sites we have visited, remains in relatively good condition, with the grass not too high, and the view of the headstones and graves still unobstructed by the bushes and trees overgrowing the monuments that remain. Some headstones still stand proudly upright, while others, worn out by relentless passage of time or vandalism, are lying on the ground.
The Nazis overran the Jewish community of Yurburg on the very first day of the German invasion of Lithuania, on June 22, 1941. This is the only institution of the Jewish community of Yurburg remaining today, six decades after the murder of all the Jewish residents.
It is now well known that that the old Jewish cemetery of Yurburg became one of the massacre sites of the Jews of Yurburg. Today, in this cemetery, we can find a memorial engraved in stone and long rows of gravel marking the site where Jews were forced to dig their own graves into which they fell after they were brutally massacred.
But things are slowly beginning to change. In 1990, the current Yurburg community, now all non-Jews undertook to clean up the cemetery. Dobba Most Rosenberg, a 72 year old former Yurburger, who still lives in Lithuania, accompanied us on the trip to Yurburg in May 2001; she told us of an effort to engrave a new stone in memory of the Yurburg Jews who perished in the war. A proper inscription on the monument will place Jews at the beginning of the citation, because most of the victims of the massacres were Jews. The old memorial inscription bearly mentions that the Jews were the majority of the victims. Gladly, we gave money to the Jewish community in Vilna to help them accomplish this task.
In 1995, Donald Levinsohn of Maple Shade New Jersey commissioned a Lithuanian to photograph the headstones of the Old Jewish Cemetery of Yurburg. Donald then sent the photos to Joel Alpert who translated the legible inscriptions. Of the 325 photos, Joel could read the first names and the family names of about half of them, and first names on most of the remainder (see the "List of headstones" below, revised by Max Michelson of Natick, Massachusetts).
One late night as Joel was translating these head stones, he realized in amazement that he had found his own great-grandmother's head stone. "Leah (Naividel) Krelitz, daughter of Hillel" was what he read. Joel relates that the date of her death, as indicated on the head stone was 1904 and confirms the family story. "My grandmother, Celia Krelitz, was faced with a painful and most difficult decision of her life - to stay with her mother who had fallen ill, or leave before borders would close tightly. Celia Krelitz chose the ultimate sacrifice that would have repercussions for generations to come - with a pained heart she left her mother she knew she would never see again. Thanks to her sacrifice, a generation of her descendants could live in safe haven. Celia accompanied her sister Rachel and her cousin Hillel Eliashevitz (Harry Ellis), whom she would marry a few short years later, and went to America in 1903." Leah did have a son Meyer Krelitz, and two daughters, Elka Krelitz Zarnitsky and Masha Krelitz Abramsohn, who remained behind with her in Yurburg.
In May 2001, Joel Alpert, Brenda Freshman, and Itzhak Zarnitsky, all descendants of Leah Krelitz had made a trip to Lithuania and visited her grave in the Old Jewish Cemetery of Yurburg. It was most likely the first time in 60 years since the Shoah that anyone in the family had visited the gravesite.
On that trip in 2001, we visited numerous other Jewish cemeteries. In Rassein, we could only find a plaque on a low stone wall overlooking an empty field that indicated the site of the old Jewish cemetery. In Kibart we found the Jewish cemetery surrounded by a fence with many standing headstones, all overgrown with trees, weeds and thick bushes growing right out of the graves. But the mausoleum marking the grave of our cousin's Josef Rosin's grandfather could still be easily identified, in spite of continuous vandalism endured over the years.
In Sudarg, just a few kilometers to the west of Yurburg, behind a farmer's house, we found a fenced off field behind a farm house with a sign telling that this was the site of the Old Sudarg Jewish cemetery. With only a handful of headstones visible, finding an old stone of an ancestor in an old forgotten graveyard of Lithuania was tantamount to a sheer miracle. Said Fania: "two standing headstones of my great grandparents had an emotional impact on me that is difficult to convey. Splendidly preserved and imprinted for eternity in a dusty stone of Sudarg, these were my roots, the ones I came to reclaim. To learn about the past was an enriching experience for me and it became a journey of self awareness and understanding."
What many of us have learned is that, it is important to preserve and visit these forgotten places of our past. Our ancestors, they too made this world a better one for us to live. Some of them paved the way for others to find better lives, and sacrificed their own along the way.
By visiting these forgotten Jewish cemeteries of our ancestors in blood-soaked Lithuania and paying tribute to our past, we accept all of life – with the joys and the sorrows, the love and the loss, as we remember….
