OPINION A Melancholy Pilgrimage To Lithuanian Homeland PRESENTS SCA% NASS, USA GARFIELD & MARKS Zane lla JCA cy d & Samm & More! INSIDE ORCHARD MALL West Bloomfield I n Orchard Lake Rd. North of Maple 248-626-0886 Take a Room from Ordinary to Extraordinary! `Tfie Moine 14c' cessory `11' 'areriouse Dc ors Of &find /011 i' I 0 1 7 West Maple Road Walled Lake, MI 48390 Phone: (248) 624-6700 Fax: (248) 624-5325 Sa 1 1 4 Or by appointment In-home consultations available. Interior Designers always wekome! M-F 8:30 -5 • - COLD FUR STORAGE Spring Prepaid Special: $27 6/ 1 2 1998 36 181 S. Oki Woodward Ave. (248) 642-1690 Mon.-Sat 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. L Tory was a survivor of the Kovno ithuania has been for many ghetto and former secretary of the ghet- years a veritable jewel in the to's elected Jewish Council. He was also crown of Jewish scholarship, the author of a critically acclaimed vol- epitomized by such towering ume, The Dial), of the Kovno Ghetto, talmudic scholars as the Gaon of Vilna, which was published in Hebrew and Kovno's Rabbi Yitzhak Elchanan Spec- subsequently translated into English by tor and Rabbi Israel Salanter. Martin Gilbert and re-published by Such yeshivot of world renown as Harvard University Press. Slobodka, Telsh, Ponievezh It was the influence of and others furnished religious Avraham Tory and his pam- leaders to countless Jewish phlets that finally induced me communities in Europe and to re-visit the country of my beyond. youth. I persuaded my son, Lithuania gained indepen- George Leikin, to join me on dence from tsarist rule after this pilgrimage of rediscovery, World War I and was man- a mission I considered too dated by the League of daunting to tackle alone. Nations to grant autonomy Our first stop in Lithuania and safeguard the civil and EZE KIEL was Vilno (Vilnius), the capi- religious rights of its ethnic LEI KIN tal, which because of its piv- minorities. The period of Jew- Spec ial to otal role in Jewish history was ish autonomy in Lithuania The Jew ish News known as "Jerusalem of was marked by an efflores- Lithuania." During the life- cence of Jewish creativity in time of the Gaon, Rabbi Eliahu (1720- many spheres, notably in the field of 1797), Vilno was the spiritual center of intensive Zionist activity and Hebrew Jews across Europe. Today, some 1,500 culture. Jews remain, subsisting mainly on gov- Zionist leaders began scouring acade- ernment pensions disbursed by a Jewish mic institutions in search of Hebrew- Bureau headed by Dr. Alperowitz. Our speaking personnel to direct and staff visit to the bureau coincided with a con- newly established Hebrew high schools cert in honor of Israel's 50th anniversary (gimnasias) where all subjects were and attended by the Israeli ambassador, taught in modern Hebrew. Oded Ben-Hur, and Lithuania's presi- Soon, similar Hebrew schools were dent, Valdas Adamukus. The Paneriai founded in Vilno, Kovno and other Forest, near Vilno, is the site of the Nazi major Lithuanian cities. Daily Yiddish murder of Minds 70,000 Jews and a newspapers blossomed in Vilno and solitary synagogue displaying the legend Kovno and Zionist groups, reflecting "a House of Prayer is a sacred various ideological leanings, lent vitality place for all peoples" is the only and versatility to Lithuania's cultural religious relic remaining of a landscape. Poet laureate Chaim Nach- once flourishing Jewish com- man Bialik referred to Lithuania as "the munity. A branch of Chabad- only bastion of Hebrew culture in the Diaspora." My link with Lithuania, and especial- ly the city of Mariampole, where I spent my teenage years studying in and gradu- ating from the Diaspora's first Hebrew high school, was kept alive by my inti- mate contacts with Israel's large but diminishing community of Lithuanian ohm (immigrants). For a number of years, I maintained close contact with distinguished Israeli attorney Avraham Tory, who managed to form a loose organization of former Lithuanians that — under his leadership — published significant brochures and sponsored public events memorializing Lithuanian Jewry, which attracted nationwide attention. Ezekiel Leikin is executive vice presi- dent of the Zionist Organization of America/Metro Detroit District. The Southfield resident was born in Vilnius (Vilno), Lithuania, in 1913. Lubavitch in Vilno is attempting to rekindle the dying embers of Jewish life: The Kovno ghetto and the 9th Fort will rank in infamy with such better known killing sites as Bergen-Belsen and Dachau. The Nazis and their Lithuan- ian collaborators reduced the Jewish population of Kovno from 37,000 to 2,500 in the course of three years. In 1943, the Germans began to prepare the Kovno ghetto as a concentration L -\ camp; nearly all its occupants were deported to death camps. One monument in memory of those who perished at the 9th Fort stands out as one of the most awe-inspiring of the Holocaust memorials built anywhere. It is a high monument, which on closer inspection, reveals tortured images of men and women raising their hands from the killing fields juxtaposed agairik images of other humans in a state of descent into the earth. This extraordi- nary piece of architecture, by a non-Jew- ish sculptor, was financed by Lithuanian Jewish societies throughout the world. Kovno's remaining 500 Jews subsist on $80 a month from governmental pensions, supplemented by a monthly stipend to the community of $10,000 n) from a South African Jewish philan- thropist and a subvention from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The affairs of the aging Jewish corn- munity are handled by a remarkable woman, Asia Guterman, secretary of the Bureau of Jewish Affairs, who is not a Inset: This monument stands at the 9th Fort in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania. The 19th century fort was built to defend against western aggression. The site marks where Nazis and Lithuanian fascists killed 3,000 Jews. Above: Carved into the mon- ument are bodies of murdered Jews stretched out in the fort's pits.