Going Back to My Roots

Generally I don't post about my vacations, but the latest trip I took with my mom Lithuania seems to fit with the theme of my Jewish experience in Europe so here we go anyway. Last week we went to find our roots in Lithuania. This needs some backstory. My grandma was born in a town called Memel (now Klaipeda) in Lithuania in the 1920s. When she was 6-weeks old my great-grandparents decided to move to South Africa. Since then my grandmother has never been back, despite being an avid world traveler.

So when my mom decided to come to visit me in Germany it seemed like a great opportunity to do some heritage hunting. My mom has been researching our family tree for years now and managed to locate the towns and villages that our ancestors were born in so off we set to go see what these places were like today.

Vilnus old city, Capital of Lithuania 

Rather naively I underestimated how heavy and emotional this journey would be. Living in Germany of course I'm quite aware of the modern day impacts of the Holocaust on the continent of Europe, but somehow I didn't expect this to have an overarching effect on this particular trip. Of course I was wrong. 92-96% of the Jews in Lithuania were murdered in the Holocaust. So today, unlike in Germany, for the most part the synagogues lay empty. In many of the towns that we visited all that's left is plaques and sculptures memorializing what was once a thriving community with around 200,000 jews.

Wooden Synagogue that survived the war in a village outside of Vilnus 

Holocaust memorial Kaunas, Lithuania 

Synagogue that survived the war in Kaunas, where my great-grandparents lived!

It was especially meaningful when we went to the Jewish Community Center in Klaipeda, where my grandmother was born and found them setting up for the birthday party of some community members as well as a Hessed lunch for elderly jews who otherwise could not afford to eat. It was nice after so much sadness to see that despite everything Jewish life still remains in Lithuania, and even more impressive to see the wide reaching efforts of JDC who support this community. 

Through all this I feel indescribably lucky that my family was able to move safely to South Africa, and then later to America. It's unbelievable to think that in another world Lithuania could have been my home and a city like Klaipeda may have been where I grew up. Going back to Lithuania 90 years after my grandmother left was totally surreal and incredibly moving.