Siaulenai, Lithuania

THE GINZBURG/LIPSCHITZ FAMILY

       “SHAVLAN - WHERE JEWS USED TO LIVE AND WERE MURDERED” 

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Our family on my mother’s side (Ginzburg Lipschitz) lived in Shavlan (Siaulenai). We don't know when they got there and where they came from, but we know that they were there in the 1880s till 1941 when the remaining members of my family were murdered by the Lithuanians.

My grandmother Pia Rifka Ginzburg was a Lipschitz (Liptz) and we believe she had relatives in Shavlan and  Shavli. My grandfather Mendel Ginzburg was the son of Shevel Ziskind Ginzburg from Ponidel Pandelys Lithuania where he had a shop, cart and property. His wife was Sarah Pauline Fullman.  He sold matzos and books. He had five children, four of whom immigrated to the US.

Mendel Ginzburg, our grandfather, was his second oldest son and he and his family lived in Shavlan  Lithuania, a small agricultural village of 1000 people. In 1798 there were 535 Jews in Shavlan (53% of the general population), by 1923 the Jewish population had decreased to 237.  The nearest big towns were Kovno and Vilnius miles away. ⁴⁸

Our grandfather Mendel (called Mendele by the locals) by all accounts was a charming sociable man, very religious and respected in his community.  Jews in Shavlan were known by their first names and his daughters as Mendelikes.  He was in the timber trade and leased woods. He also sold railway sleepers to the Danish rail. He was elected as a "government rabbi” foreman of the Siaulenai prayer school. In 1905 he was diagnosed as breathless and in congestive heart failure; and he had to resign his position because he could no longer physically or mentally do the job. He submitted a letter of resignation to Kaunas gubernya board with a certificate from his Kaunas doctor attesting he was suffering from breathlessness and was in heart failure, unable to perform the duties required of him.⁴⁹  Its interesting that he had to officially resign. Elected boards of synagogues had to be confirmed by the governor so in order to resign officially they needed the governor's permission.

According to my mother, there was a quarrel between Mendel and his brother Harry about inheritance. This took place outside  the Shavlan schul in 1907. It was said that Harry struck him and he fell down and died. He was only 54 years old at the time of his death in 1907. It is possible that the argument was the last straw for his weakened heart. Fearing that he would be tried for murder, Harry fled to the United States. My grandfather Mendel was buried in the Shavlan cemetery.

Our grandmother Pia Rifka, in the year 1907, was thus left with six children to care for. The sixth child was born a few months after her husband's death. The family consisted of the baby Hotke, a son Solly aged 2 and Braine, our mother, who was then only 3 years old. Her sister Rachel was 7,  Zeisel was 9 and brother Benjamin 11 years old.

The family lived in a wooden house. They had no running water or sewage system and water was obtained from their well. They did not have central heating and used a wood stove for cooking and heating. The store part of the house faced the market square. In the yard there was an outside building in which supplies were stored, especially for the winter. This is still standing.³⁶

In order to provide for herself and her family, our grandmother, clearly a resourceful woman, converted part of her house into a general shop, selling fabrics and haberdashery.³⁵.  There was a painted sign above the front door:

                        “KOLONIALINE
                         KRAUTUVE
                         IR MANUFAKTUROS
                         R. Ginzburga"  

Somehow she managed to provide sufficient food and clothing for her children.

The Ginzburgs had a garden with fruit trees and vegetables and a cow, which provided them with milk. She made cheese, bread, pickled cucumbers and cherry wine and all sorts of dishes and also baked bulkes. She was a Zionist and, according to my father, a good looking woman, devotedly religious and superstitious. She must have derived help from some of her family the Lipschitzes (Liptz) who also lived in the village. We don't know all the Jewish families who lived there but some of the families were the Grazutis, Katz (Kacas), Liptz, Leikis (Leib was a tanner), Shapiro (Sapira) Jankelis and Ginzburg.

Shavlan, like many places in Europe, was sharply divided into Jewish and Christian communities and they did not mix. Jews in Lithuania were treated as foreigners. The Jews evidently helped out. When the local priest would not bury the dead Christians without pay, the poor obtained loans from the Jews. The Jews never refused. They also sold goods on credit. In the early 1900 there were 400 Jews in the village but by 1921 there were only 100 Jews left. Clearly there was no future for the children whether it was because of pogroms or because of conscription by the tsarist government or lack of Hebrew school or lack of jobs.

There was no Hebrew school in Shavlan so Benjamin was sent to his aunt and uncle in Kovno when he was eleven to study Hebrew and two years later at the age of 13 he was sent to the USA to stay with his aunt Atty Reva Weiner in New Jersey to avoid conscription by the tsarist army. The family hoped that once he established himself the rest of the family would follow. This hope was not to be realized because the Americans changed the immigration laws

In 1915 the Germans advanced into Lithuania.  Fearing the Jews would aid the Germans, the Russian government exiled the Shavlan Jews to Ekatrinaslav in the Ukraine.   This violent upheaval must have devastated the family. Deprived of their usual resources to survive, they were forced to take jobs. Braine (our mother) had to work in a paper mill and Saul (her brother) on the railway. Our grandmother Pia Rifka had to cook for the army.  The rest of the deported family worked to survive.

In 1918 the family were allowed to return to Lithuania.  On their return they sent a photo to their son in America.  My grandmother Rifka held the photo of her son and wife. Hotke, the youngest, held a photo of the new American granddaughter.⁴⁰  They were once again in contact with their American family.

They found their property still standing on their return from exile although the property had been rifled.  Local farmers later returned some of the objects that had been stolen.  Their cow was given back and this my mother said was much needed. According to Vtalija Gircyte (Kaunas Archives), the Jewish houses were not confiscated and people who were deported or fled during WWI remained the owners of their property. Till they came back the local municipalities took care of their houses.  It was very different in WWII. Even now relatives of those deported and murdered can' t get their property back, especially since the front page of the land records for Shavlan is missing.

My grandparents owned their home. We don't know if they bought it through one of the locals. There is no evidence in the land records that they paid rent or owned their home but photo shows that my grandmother's name is on a sign in the front of their house which proves that they occupied the house.³⁵ 

Rifka Ginzburg also received money from her son Benjamin in American as did many of the families whose children had immigrated. My uncle Benjamin tried to get his brother Saul into the United States but couldn't do so. In 1921 Saul immigrated to South Africa sponsored by his mother's stepsister Pere (Liptz) Blum in Kimberly.

Our grandmother Pia Rifka (mother of five) was pregnant when her husband died. She had 6 children to support. She opened a general fabric shop in the front of the house after my grandfather died in 1907 and the family lived in the rest of the house.^{39, 44}   The shop sold a variety of things including buttons and cloth.  The Ginzburg family, according to my mother, had good food, an easy life and a worker to help clean. My mother wore a scarf on her head to avoid dust when their house was cleaned. They had an orchard with many fruit trees and grew vegetables and flowers. They had apples, pears and cherries in their orchard.  From the cherries Pia Rifka Ginzburg made wine. My mother also made wine from cherries just like her mother did.

Many Jews in those days kept inns and, in order to earn money, made liquor to sell to the peasants.  When it was feared that peasants would be left in a permanent state of drunken stupor, a governor forbade the Jews to make or sell liquor to the peasants. There were woods and a stream nearby the Ginzburg house. In the winter my mother recollected that she went sledding. The family owned a cow and made their own cheese and butter from the milk. Butter was a delicacy in those times and limited to the affluent. My mother said she was lucky in her youth because she had a good life and said this made it possible for her to endure the hardship she faced in the beginning when they immigrated to South Africa.

After Lithuanian Independence, life for Jews became harder and anti-Semitism grew stronger. In 1938 my grandmother Rifka sent a postcard to my mother stating that the Lithuanians were no longer as they had been, indicating that things were not good and that she was having difficulty with them.³⁸  In the picture on the front of the postcard you can see workers repairing the Ginzburg house.  You can also see their family, my grandmother Rifka and my two aunts.³⁷  Did she want us to have a record of the Lithuanians who were repairing her house because she feared them?

There was no Hebrew school so Jewish children attended the Lithuanian school. There was however, a Jewish library and reading room. When I visited Shavlan the synagogue was no longer there.  It had been built in the mid-seventeenth century and had a beautiful holy ark of carved wood, which was said to have been a work of art.

We also visited the old Jewish cemetery.  Shavlan has the oldest cemetery in Lithuania. Until the 19^th century, people who died in Shavli (Siaulai) were buried in Shavlan (Siaulenai).  My grandfather was buried in this cemetery, and when I visited it in 1995, I was lucky to find his grave.⁴²   The cemetery was overgrown with weeds and was unkempt.  Several of the graves looked as if they had been tampered with.  It was known that graves were dug up to search for gold teeth.  On my first visit to the Shavlan graveyard, I found Menachem Mendel's grave only because my cousin Sorelle had given me a photo she had saved from her father Benjamin Ginzburg’s records that showed my grandmother Pia Rifka and her two daughters Hotke and Nechame with her at Mendel's grave.⁴¹   The photo was taken circa 1908.   Initially we could not find the grave in the weed infested graveyard but Len Yodaiken looked at the photo I had and found the tree at the site of the grave.  I was lucky that Len was there because he was also able to read the Hebrew on the gravestone.  My grandfather's grave stone was very unusual. Carved by an artist. The inscription reads: ”Menachem Mendel son of Shmuel Ziskind was a very special man".⁴³

My father Kalman Baumslag  came from Dvinsk, Latvia  and became the principal of the Shavli Yavneh school. He lodged with  my grandmother Rifka and that's how he met my mother whom he married in 1926 . They left for South Africa in 1929 when they saw the writing on the wall of increasing anti-Semitism and limited future

During the Nazi occupation in 1941 Jews were placed in a temporary ghetto. The people were made to dig potatoes for the German soldiers and then wrap them in torn torah sheets to add insult to injury.  In October 1941 pits were dug out in the hilly area of Kalneliai to serve as a mass grave for the Jews who were to be killed. The elder Zevitis refused to allow the murder of the Jews near the town in order not to spoil the name of the village. According to locals, first a small number of Jews were taken to Radvilliskishkis peat bog and murdered and the rest were marched to Zagare where they were murdered. Regina Kopilewitz and Victoras Bolotlnas interviewed local elders (including Steponas). Steponas  said: "Let the Jew killers be cursed".

When we visited Shavlan in 1995 our guide didn't try and find the Ginzburg house. We saw other houses with wells like the Ginzburg house still standing.⁴⁵   However, by continuing to search in 2000 and 2004, we found the house from land maps and from elders. The house and the storeroom in the yard at the back are intact and still standing.³⁶   The current owner says it was  “rebuilt” but, for sure, its been painted Russian yellow.⁴⁶ 

The Lithuanians stole, murdered and kept their ill gotten gains and to date have returned nothing to relatives of the families they destroyed.  I was denied getting to know my grandmother, aunts and cousins murdered by the Lithuanians and, for that, I will never forgive them.

The yahrzheit date for the massacre of Jews from Shavlan was 10/2/41. (Ref Slaughter of the masses of Lithuania).

Written by Naomi Baumslag, Granddaughter of Mendel and Pia Rifka Ginzburg, 2008

Footnotes are File Numbers     

File No.  Description

35      The Ginzburgs house with the shop in front facing the market square.  My mother Braine is standing in front, circa 1925

36      Storeroom in the yard behind the house intact, 2004

37      Front of postcard with picture of Lithuanian workers repairing Ginzburg house. On the Left Rifka Ginzburg and workers family, On the right my two aunts, circa 1938

38      Back of postcard with note “how do you like it?   Almost unexpectantly.  You don’t want to see them and hear them. But you understand the Lithuanian people are different. Where you don’t plant them, they grow anyway and so its planted.  circa 1938. 

39      Dining area in the Ginzburg house with Rifka Ginzburg and her two daughters seated at their table, circa 1931

40      Ginzburg Family, Grandmother Rifka Ginzburg proudly holding a photo of her American son Benjamin and his wife Cara. Next to her is Rifka’s youngest daughter holding a photo of the new American granddaughter, circa 1918      

41      Rifka Ginzburg and daughters at Mendel Ginzburg’s grave, circa 1908

42      Mendel Ginzburg’s Gravestone, 1995

43      Closeup of Mendel Ginzburg’s Gravestone, 1995

44      Entrance to Ginzburg house. Standing on the steps my aunt (Nechame) and my mother (Braine)and seated a friend, circa 1925

45      Wooden houses in Shavlan, still in original state with  well in front 1995

46      Ginzburg house “Rebuilt?” and painted yellow, 1995

48       Map of Siaulenai and Surrounding Area

49       Mendel Ginzburg’s official letter requesting permission to resign from the synagogue board because of ill health, March 29, 1905