In 1996, I discovered the Association of People from Ivye, a small town in the Lida district of Belarus. We were invited to attend the annual memorial service to commemorate the annihilation of the Jews of Ivye and surrounding areas by the Nazis in May 1942. We attended the ceremony held in Tel Aviv and met the members of this group. It was an experience we will never forget, one that was certainly a catalyst in making us more active in Jewish genealogy.

Rose (Rasha Bloch) Kasow, the mother of Harvey, my husband, was born in Ivye in 1909 and left in 1922 after losing both parents within a year. Her five brothers and sisters had preceded her to the United States, so she made the journey alone. Her mother, Dvora (Harmatz) Bloch, was from Svencionys, which is located about 40 kilometers N.E. of Vilnius, and she married Hillel Bloch from Ivye. This was our Ivye connection.
 

In May of this year, a tour was organized to Ivye in order to consecrate the memorial site established there through the efforts of the Association. It was accompanied by eyewitness testimony to the events of May 1942 and the whole tour was videotaped by Belorussian Television. My husband and I participated in the trip, firstly, to honor the memories of the murdered who, in all probability, included members of his family, and secondly, to walk the streets of this ancestral village his mother had told him about - a journey to the past. In addition, the tour included stops at or near the village of Lunna and the city Grodno where my husband's father Abraham Kasow and his paternal grandparents Joseph and Rifka (Shishatzky) Kasow (Katzoff or Kaciew) were born. As Israel is a hop, skip and jump from these places, it was a
golden opportunity.

Thirty-seven Yiddish, Russian and Hebrew-speaking people comprised the group. Three generations were represented, ranging in ages from 29 to 92, mostly from Israel but including relatives from the United States, Canada, France and South Africa. The itinerary was expanded to include two days in Lithuania and stops at memorials to the mass murders of Jews by the Nazis and by the local populace. The places visited included Minsk, Vilnius, Punari, Trakai, Lida, Davanisuki, Briozivka, Karlizi, Mir, Radun, Belitza, Shushin, Zeludok, Vasiliski, Kjatlove and Vishnevo. In addition, we took two private trips. Our guide, Tamara Kushir, a native of Ivye and a new immigrant to Israel, found a Yiddish-speaking guide to take us to Svencionys to visit Bluma Katz. She and her husband are the last Jews in this small town of about 3000. Bluma is in her eighties and remembered two families with the name Harmatz who lived there in the 1920's and 30's. She has a daughter living in the U.S. and has been to Israel several times. Bluma gave us names of people in Israel who might provide us with additional information (Photo 1). She took us on a tour of the town and to the site outside the town where the murder of thousands of Jews by the Lithuanians is memorialized (Photo 2). Bluma Katz was responsible for ensuring the establishment of a memorial in the Town Square (Photo 3).

The other trip we took was to Lunna and Grodno. It was a cold, rainy day but we managed to see the cemetery in Lunna, which hasn't changed in the 80 years since my father-in-law left. It was extensive and untended but not destroyed.
Its location "out of town" (two streets from the main street) and next to the Christian cemetery, probably explains the benevolent neglect (Photo 4 and 5).

From a home base in a hotel in Lida we spent several mornings wandering around Ivye before our last morning there and the memorial ceremony. The interaction within the group included hearing the stories of the various families. Heartbreaking isn't a word quite strong enough to describe the experiences of the surviving Jews, of their travails in the forests, and of
the villagers who had helped and those who didn't. Some of the people are still living and the various families visited them. One family had a sister still living there with her husband and that was quite an emotional reunion. Again, they were the only Jews remaining in a town of about 30,000. Through the memories and descriptions of Ivye related by the group we found a part of town where Rasha Bloch might have lived (Photo 6). The town was interesting to explore because of the pervasive feeling that from the 1920s it had withstood progress and modernity (Photos 7 and 8).

We saw the old synagogue that was in disuse (Photo 9) and  heard a speech by the mayor at City Hall (Photo 10). Apparently the cemetery was destroyed with the exception of one gravestone. Apologies were made and we were then treated to a lunch in what seemed to be the only restaurant in town. It was a noble attempt to supply a repast in a sadly impoverished city and country. As in all the places we visited, large or small, there is a village square with a memorial to the Russian victory in World War II (Photo 11).

The Mayor, the Israeli Consul General who is based in Minsk, and a group of school children, attended the dedication of the memorial site (Photo 12). It was a freezing day but the cold couldn't deter the heartfelt testimonies of the group members. They were expressed in Yiddish, English, Hebrew and Russian. Hardly anyone left to escape the cold during the 3-l/2 hour ceremony.

The memorial site (Photos 13 and 14), like the ones  visited in Minsk, Lida, Punari and Scvencionys, is modest in comparison to the enormity of the event, but the living memorial consists of groups like ours visiting and remembering
the past and passing it on to our children. That is what Jewish genealogy, with its special emphasis on remembering and remembrance, is all about.

Harriet Kasow is the Media Librarian at the Bloomfield Library for the Humanities and the Social Sciences at the Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus .  For those wishing more information on this trip please contact by e-mail:
mskasow@mscc.huji.ac.il