World War II: Two Little Lithuanian Towns, Telsiai (Telz) and Papile, Lithuania: and the Jews--Not To Forget the Past Lest It Be Repeated

 Nadene Goldfoot

Grant Gochin                                                    

World War II started with the German invasion of Poland, the next-door neighbor of Lithuania, on the 1st of September 1939, whereas the USA entered it later after Pearl Harbor was hit by the Japanese on December 7, 1941.  Three days later, after Germany and Italy declared war on it, the United States became fully engaged in the Second World War.                                                          

  Hitler conferring with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti, a Muslim,   about the "Jews" on November 28, 1941

Earlier, on March 20, 1939, Hitler had transmitted an ultimatum to Lithuania to leave Memel within 24 hours.  About 7,000 Jews who lived in Memel, in the SE corner of the Baltic by the Nieman River,  and in its region escaped, leaving most of their belongings behind, looking for asylum in the Zemaitija region and in Kovno.  Many of them settled in Telz/Telsiai, where the Jewish community cared for them.  

My grandfather, Nathan Goldfus, lived in Telz/Telsiai, Lithuania.  His family had been there for 6 generations to 1730 with Jonah Goldfus.  Telz had 17 butcher's shops and cattle trade of which 12 of them were owned by Jews.  Textile products and furs were also big business with 17 of those, with all 17 owned by Jews.  This was in 1931.  (My father also was a butcher who owned his own business in Portland, Oregon.  Telz had 78 businesses of which 63 were owned by Jews.    

Telšiai is one of the oldest cities in Lithuania, probably dating earlier than the 14th century. Between the 15th and 20th centuries, Telšiai became a district capital and between 1795 and 1802 it was included in the Vilnius Governorate. In 1873, Telšiai was transferred to the Kovno Governorate.

                                                         

By June 1940, Lithuania was annexed to the Soviet Union, becoming a Soviet Republic.  Following new laws, the majority of the factories and shops belonging to the Jews of Telz were suddenly nationalized and commissars were appointed to manage them.  All Zionist parties and youth organizations were disbanded, several of the activists were detained.  Hebrew educational institutions were closed, and the Hebrew school converted into a Yiddish one. 

At the beginning of June 1941, several Jewish families who were considered "unreliable elements" were exiled to Siberia.  They were Zionists, the Volperts, and 2 merchants with 5 in their family of Zax.  Their enterprises were nationalized.  Supply of goods decreased and prices soared.  The middle class, mostly Jewish, bore most of the brunt, and the standard of living dropped gradually.  

When the Jews of Telz became aware that the German army had invaded Lithuania on the 22nd of June 1941, they began to escape to the surrounding villages and to Russia, but very few managed to get there.  On the 23rd, the town was bombed by the Germans, and on the 26th, they entered Telz.                           

"Even before the Germans entered Telz, armed Lithuanians with white stripes on their sleeves took over the town.  On Friday, June 27 (when Shabbat starts at sundown) , Telz's Jews were expelled from their homes and directed to the shore of  Lake Mastis, having been ordered to leave their homes unlocked.  On the shore of the lake they were encircled by armed Lithuanians under German command, which they interpreted to mean that they were going to be murdered or drowned in the lake.  The town's Rabbi Blokh consoled them telling them that they should behave quietly and proudly as Jews behave who are going to die on "Kiddush HaShem", the Santification of G-d).  Men and women with children were separated from each other during the night and anyone showing opposition was beaten with rifle butts.  The women and children were allowed to return home, where they found their homes emptied of their contents, the door and windows broken.  

                                                                   

June 28, 1941, Shabbat (the Sabbath for Jews), armed Lithuanians appeared, expelling the women and children from their homes with beatings, then led the women  to the  Rainiai farm, 4 km from Telz, where they found the men.  A Jew, an American citizen, who had come to visit relatives in Telz, refused to go with them, waving his  American passport.  He was shot on the spot.  

The Jews were placed in a camp created at the farm.  They were put in stalls full of manure with men and women still separated.  They were able to cook rye flour porridge, and had 100 grams of black bread, 20 grams of butter and several potatoes, then could be with their families.  After 8 days, 30 men were put to work, digging up from their graves the corpses of 73 political prisoners murdered by Soviet security men before they left.  Telz men were forced to wash the corpses, kiss them and lick the decayed  wounds under the pretext that Jews had taken part in that murder.  The 30 men were beaten and wounded,, then forced later to kneel in the street during the funeral of the murdered.  The Catholic Bishop Staugaitis proclaimed the day of the funeral, July 13th as HOLY SUNDAY to symbolize victory over Soviet rule.  All the guards in the camp and in the working places were Lithuanians.  

                                                                      

      Crowd views the aftermath of a massacre at Lietukis Garage, where pro-German Lithuanian nationalists killed more than 50 Jewish men. The victims were beaten, hosed, and then murdered with iron bars. Kovno, Lithuania, June 27, 1941.

          SS Camp

By the 14th of July, several Germans and Lithuanians appeared in the camp, driving all Jews from the sheds and barns.  Men up to the age of 15 were beaten as they were forced to run in a circle, fall down and stand up.  Many of the Telz citizens came to see THE SPECIAL SHOW, and clapped.  Several elderly Jews died there, others were smitten and wounded and put back into the barns.  Like a cat plays with his mouse, the Lithuanians were having fun at the expense of the Jews.  

80 young, strong Jewish men were taken and given shovels and buckets, and taken to a grove where a pit was.  they were forced to pump the water out of the pits, then they were shot and thrown into it.  Prisoners at the barn didn't know what was happening.  Lithuanians came to the camp, took 24 more men for work, and later shots could be heard again.  On June 15th, 1941 (20th of Tamuz 5701) all men were taken out, led in groups to the grove and murdered.  They were forced to get naked, stand on a plank that went across the pit and shot.  Those that fell unhurt were buried alive anyway.  Rain stopped the progress so that those still alive had to dress, run to the shacks, but the next morning the killings continued.  The rabbis were in the last group.  Their beards had been  cut off or plucked off together with the skin of their faces.                         

Jewish women with bodies of executed men outside the Seventh Fort. Kovno, Lithuania, date uncertain.

Of the women, they found out what had happened when the Lithuanian guard burst into the barns and frightened them and then raped many.  The women were moved to Geruliai camp, about 10 km from Telz.  They were joined by others, altogether about 4,000 were crowded into these shacks.  On the 30th and 31st of December 1941, the women were taken out from the ghetto and led in groups to the pits beside the Rainiai estate, where they were murdered.  Of the women who escaped, 64 survived and actually survived to LIBERATION DAY.  Several tens arrived at the Shavli (Siasuliai) ghetto, their fate eventually being the same as the other ghetto Jews.                   

Papile is a shtetl, a smaller town than Telz.  It's coordinates are 56°09′10″N 22°47′3″E.  The settlement was first mentioned in 1339, after the area was raided by the Livonian Order. Two hill-forts have been preserved since this time. It's where Grant Gochin's  family is from before they moved to South Africa before WWII.  Many Lithuanians had moved to South Africa, but my grandfather had chosen the USA.

  Papilė is the birthplace of Abraham William Briscoe (1850-1917), who became a prominent businessman in Ireland. Abraham's son, Robert Briscoe (1894-1969), was an Irish revolutionary leader and legislator. Robert was the first Jew to serve as Lord Mayor of Dublin (1956-1957 and 1961-1962). Upon hearing that Dublin had elected a Jew as its mayor, the legendary American baseball player Yogi Berra famously quipped, "Only in America." Robert's son Ben (Abraham's grandson) also served as Lord Mayor of Dublin (1988-1989). Both our families may have been in Ireland after leaving Papile and Telz;  Ours had been in Dublin.  

It is a Shtetl  in Šiauliai County, Lithuania, near the Venta River.  Grant Gochin, our 3rd cousin twice removed,  asked, "What happened to the Jews that never managed to leave Papile?" His family had come from here, and his male ancestor Gochin had married a female Goldfus.  He uses Zagare as the example.  Žagarė is a city located in the Joniškis district, northern Lithuania, close to the border with Latvia. It has a population of about 2,000. Žagarė is famous for Žagarvyšnė - a cherry species originated in Žagarė.

  But first Grant wrote: " Papile, being a small village in the north of the country, had a miniscule Jewish Community. The men of Papile were taken for immediate murder, while the women were locked up in a building for two weeks. During that time, they were raped, beaten, tortured and starved. Simple Jewish village people were brought down to the lowest depths of hell that their Lithuanian neighbors could construct, while their neighbors divided the proceeds of the loot they had stolen from their victims. After two weeks of horror, these Jewish women and children were taken to the Zagare Ghetto, where they were finally slaughtered, and thus ended 700 years of continual Jewish life in Papile. Perhaps only some neighbors participated in the slaughters and rapes, perhaps only a few more shared their loot, but the rest stood by in silence as people they knew and lived amongst were irrevocably destroyed." (1)

"In late July 1941, the activists made a list of Jews who stayed in Zagare and began to transfer them to the ghetto.  The Jews who lived in nearby shtetls were also moved to the ghetto of Zagare.  The area chosen for the ghetto adjoined the market place and included Daukanto, Vilniaus, Maluno, Pakalnio,, and Gedimino streets.  Non-Jewish residents of these streets were moved to other neighborhoods."

"On July 22, 1941, A total of 40 Jewish men were killed by an Einsatzgruppen of 20 Lithuanian policemen and white armbanders (Lithuanian nationalists). Following the slaughter of the Jews, several Soviet supporters were brought to the murder site and killed making a total of 55 people massacred. The remains of the victims have been moved to the Papilė cemetery."

                   Silvia Foti’s grandfather,  Jonas Noreika, was a Nazi.  Family photograph

"I learned that the man I had believed was a savior who did all he could to rescue Jews during World War II had, in reality, ordered all Jews in his region of Lithuania to be rounded up and sent to a ghetto where they were beaten, starved, tortured, raped and then murdered. More than 95 percent of Lithuania’s Jews died during World War II, many of them killed with the eager collaboration of their neighbors. After researching his life for the past 20 years, I’ve dared to call my grandfather a Nazi even though he never officially joined the party. He worked with the Nazis, acted like them, was paid by them, hated Jews like them and, like them, facilitated torture and murder."(2)

On August 22, 1941,, chief of the Siauliai region, Jonas Noreika, informed local authorities and mayors of smaller towns of the Siauliai region that according to the order of the Siauliai Gebietskommissar, all the region's Jews and half-Jews were obliged to move to Zagare by August 29th.  The transfer began with Jews from Siauliai, Joniskis, Kursenai, Zeimelis, and other localities.  On August 25th, the mayor of Zagare informed the regional chief of Siauliai, that the ghetto occupied an area of 12,135 sq. meters and had a population of 715 Jews.  On September 20th, 5,566 people (2,402 Jews and 3,164 non-Jews) resided in Zagare.  (1)                                                   

Scene of barbarity: 'To the Poles and the Jews, these images were of paramount importance as evidence of atrocities' (3)

In the last days of September 1941,  local ethnic Lithuanians were marched to the town park where they were forced to dig a ditch.  On the morning  of October 2nd,  Jews from the Zagare ghetto were ordered to gather in the market square.  Commandant Mannteuffel addressed the crowd in German, assuring them that they would all be given work to do.  All had to form separate lines.  When the German whistle blew,, white arm-banders and policemen from Zagare and other towns began to surround the square.  The arm-banders shot into the crowd and beat them.  Scores of killed and wounded people were left on the square.  the survivors were forced to lie down on the ground where they had to stay until several trucks arrived.  Jews were then transported to Naryshkin Park. (1)

Money, jewelry, and other valuables were seized from the Jews as they marched to the murder site.  At the ditch, the victims had to remove everything except their underwear before they were forced to lie down in the pit and were shot.  the executioners sere a self-defense unit from  Siauliai, led by Lieutenant R. Koloska and white arm=banders from Linkuva.  The Zagare white arm-banders guarded the ghetto and led the victims to their deaths.  Several German SS men who had arrived from Siauliai supervised the killings and also participated in them.  The mass murder went un until very late at night.  The next day another Jewish group they found were murdered in the same ditch. (1) 

22,236 Jews (663 men, 1,107 women and 496 children were killed in Zagare.  during the panic, 150 Jews were killed and 7 white arm-banders who guarded them were wounded.  The Soviet special commission, who examined the mass grave in 1944, found 2,402 corpses (530 men, 1,223 women, 625 children, and 24 infants.(1)  

                                                              

6 million slaughtered Jews, who only wanted to live and not bother anyone.  Will we ever understand the immense number that 6 million was?  Who we lost?  Will we ever understand why somebody would want to cause this?  Those of us who managed to get born and live, how lucky we are to be here.  Remember, Never again.   

Resource

(1) Malice, Murder, and Manipulation--One man's quest for truth by Grant Arthur Gochin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDagar%C4%97,   Zagare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papil%C4%97

Preserving Our Litvak Heritage-a history of 31 Jewish communities in Lithuania by Josef Rosin

https://www.proquest.com/openview/666b4aced0cf4c0896831957e9e620fc/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1817084    Memel

https://www.grantgochin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/the-jewish-cemetery-in-papile.pdf

(2) Silvia Foti 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel%C5%A1iai

https://time.com/4084301/hitler-grand-mufi-1941/

(3) https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/jan/27/photography.museums

How Russia; the Largest Country in the World Brought About Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

 Hitler reviewing troops on Eastern Front 1939.  In August 1939 Russia and Germany had signed a non-aggression pact, but on June 22, 1941, Germany entered Russia-ready to kill all Jews.  So much for pacts!!!

I turned on the History 2 channel this afternoon and the program was about how the Germans went into Russia and the first thing they wanted to do was to kill all the Jews they found.  They killed everyone, including little children in the most bloody of ways.  I wanted to cry for all of them.  The news is constant on TV about Russia and the steps they are taking with Obama, China and of course, Ukraine today.  Their behavior is not new.  Look at their history with us.  What's that old saying?

When the Nazis came for the communists,

I remained silent;

I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,

I remained silent;

I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,

I did not speak out;

I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,

I remained silent;

I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,

there was no one left to speak out.

Russia's goal has always been that of continual growth, meaning adding land onto their empire.  At the end of the 15th century, Moscow began gaining land and right now they' re trying to take over Ukraine.  Ukraine was one part of the Pale of Settlement, an area where Jews were permitted to live in since they were banned from Russia proper.  Russia's past history shows that they took land sometimes peacefully but quite often otherwise.  The Czars followed this policy, and then the Communists who replaced them.  The USSR was by far the largest country in the world before its fall.  In 1978 there were 2,680,000 Jews living in the Soviet Union.  They wouldn't allow Jews to leave and move to Israel.  Jews couldn't practice their religion, either, as all Russians had to become atheists.
                                                                   

       Life in a shtetl in the Pale of Settlement, maybe Ukraine,  as shown from Fiddler on the Roof

All the time they encouraged and practiced anti-Semitism.  Jews were forbidden to enter Russia even for temporary reasons.  In 1772 the czars took over Lithuania and large sections of Poland and by doing so they found they were ruling over the world's largest Jewish community.  This became part of the Pale of Settlement.  Did that mean that Jews were left in peace?  "You haven't ever seen Fiddler on the Roof", then. Remember to Cossacks coming into the shtetl and as drunk as they were,  destroy as much as they could, including attacks on the Jews?  that was a Pogrom.  Golda Meier, former Prime Minister of Israel, wrote about her experiences in a pogrom.

The cruelty of the Russians then was shown by drafting Jewish boys into military service at age 12 or younger and stationing them in distant places such as Siberia.  They then attacked these young boys by violence and starvation in order to convert them to Christianity.  Of course this was in the days when their religion was fashionable.  These boys, if they lived, had to stay in the army for 30 years or more.  The surprise is that some held onto their Jewish roots, something they had barely remembered.
                                                                     

The czar in 1855 was Alexander II and startled Jews with acts of kindness.  Luther started that way with Jews, too, but did a 180 turnaround when he saw they wouldn't convert.  Alexander reduced restrictions on their work and their lives and urged them to become educated in Russian history.  Many did and became known as Haskalah (Enlightenment).  Finally, Jews saw that this was all part of Alexander's trick, similar to Luther's.  He was trying to take away their Jewish identity, so the government organized "spontaneous attacks against Jewish villages and towns with Pogroms-destruction.

Anti-Jewish laws were passed.  The worst was the "May Laws."  These forbade Jews from living in rural areas of the Pale.  65,000 Jews were forced out of their village homes, causing terrible overcrowding in cities where they were permitted to live.  It threw the economy of that area into chaos.  The czar knew what he was doing.  He said that 1/3 of the Jews would emigrate.  1/3 would convert.  1/3 would starve to death.

What happened was that 2 million Jews did leave and most went to the USA.  Many came over in the early 1900s; before and after like my grandfather from Lithuania via England and Ireland and my grandmother directly from Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania.   Those that stayed found ways to survive and kept Jewish scholarship going.  The Polish area remained a world leader in Talmudic studies until Hitler came along.  Jews became active in Zionism and socialism which were dedicated to improving the lives of Jews and of the world in general.

1917 was the end of World War I and also meant the fall of the czars.  It brought about a sudden end to anti-Jewish legislation.  Communist revolution brought a new wave of Russian oppression.  The Communists campaigned against religion.  They closed synagogues, made religious education illegal and put great pressure on Jews to end their traditional ways.

At the same time, Russia said that the Jewish people were members of a separate nationality.  At least in 1978, Soviet passports called us Jews and not Russians and Russian Jews were forced to live under new restrictions again.  They couldn't leave the country because this would cause Russia  embarrassment.  Everyone wanted to leave.  Russian Jewry hid from the rest of the world until the 1950's.  Jews in the USA were afraid their relatives would forget about Judaism just like the world had forgotten about them and their pain.  By the 1960's, the international attention was turned onto their situation and they began to demand their rights, including the right to leave Russia.  By the 1970s, tens of thousands were allowed to leave.

I made aliyah in 1980 and went over to be in a retraining program for teachers of English.  In my class were many many Russian teachers of English.  My teacher, Sarah, was carrying on a letter correspondence with a Russian in prison, Sharansky, and was teaching him Hebrew that way on the sly.  The bad thing was that when they spoke English, I, as an American born, couldn't understand them!  Another bad thing was that they were far smarter than I in learning Hebrew!  They were used to learning new languages and knew how to learn and study for Hebrew.  My husband and I didn't.  Though Danny taught boys for their bar mitzvah in Florida, he was having a terrible time learning to speak Hebrew.  We were in our late 30s and this had something to do with it.  Languages are hard to learn when you're older.  So between these 2 facts, we fell to the 3rd and smaller class, the gimel level, and did much better.  Then in the junior high I taught in, I was able to help the Russian and Egyptian teachers of English speak English better throughout my 5 years of living in Israel.  .
                                                                       

                                  Jewish immigration started in 1820s and ended in 1924

Jews had a different sort of history in the USA. In the 1600s 23 Jews from Brazil came in a boat to New York (New Amsterdam) wanting to enter.  What had happened was that The governor turned them down only to be told by his Amsterdam company that they were shareholders in the company and that he should allow them to enter.   In 1791 America's First amendment to the US Constitution made freedom of religion the land of the land.  In 1825, there were only 6,000 Jews in the USA and 9 congregations.  In the 1840s German Jews came over in large numbers and by 1871 there were 250,000 Jews in America.

In the 1880s Russian Jews sailed to Palestine to live.  They were building up the empty land.  Though there were Jews living there, they needed the push from these Ashkenazis to deal with the Ottoman Empire and build.  It's a time when Ashkenazi met up with Mizrachi and Sephardim that had returned to Eretz Yisrael.  This is when many Arabs followed them there hoping to get jobs in the building and development of the land.

 Then Russian Jews immigrated to the USA in the 1900s for reasons why listed above. It was a country already established, unlike Palestine, where immigrated had to start from scratch, much like the returnees from Babylon in 538-515 BCE. after Solomon's Temple was destroyed in 597 BCE and the people had been deported to  Babylon.  
                                                                       

      Starting off life in America as peddlers.  My grandfather had a horse and a wagon In Portland, Oregon.

Jews landed in New York and the Lower East Side of Manhattan Island became a bustling Yiddish-speaking city within the city with their own schools, synagogues and a rich cultural life.
                                                                               

By 1917 after WWI, a law was passed which almost ended immigration but Jewish immigration in particular.While Germany raised its hand against us with the Holocaust, only a trickle of Jewish refugees were permitted to enter the states. Medical schools then had quotas on Jewish students.  We were kept out except for a few.   Even so, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was seen as the Jewish protector and practically all Jews registered as Democrats, and like being faithful to Judaism, have remained faithful to their father's choice of politics, except for a few who have left.

1948 and Israel became a state with President Harry S. Truman voting first for its creation.  Come to find out, my mother was connected to Bess Truman's family tree.  She didn't know that Bess tended to be rather anti-Semitic.  1967's Six Day War added many admirers of Israel, but since then, our reputation has been smudged by anti-Semitic propaganda along with all the attacks they have had to defend themselves against.
                                                                     

The USSR collapsed on December 26, 1991.  The president of Russia today is Vladimir Putin.  "In the international community, Putin is thought of as a fan of Israel and the relations between Israel and Russia had been considered good. When the US and EU condemned the annexation of Crimea and attacked Moscow for providing help to Ukrainian rebels, Israel was practically the only country that made a point to abstain from criticizing or protesting Russia - a silence that was met bitterly in Washington." Russia accused the USA of arming the Syrian rebels, which they have been doing.  But Russia has been arming Israel's enemies.  ""Syria ... was supplying Hizbullah with Russian weapons. In 2006, Israeli forces found evidence of the Russian-made Kornet-E and Metis-M anti-tank systems in Hizbullah's possession in southern Lebanon. "  Russia has sold anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.  
                                                                   

Today the USA has about 6 million Jews living in the USA and 6 million living in Israel.  About 2 million are scattered in other parts of the world.  Our 14 million make up about 0.02% of the world population.  The Russians had made it unbearable for Jews to remain in Russia and live as Jews, so they have left at different periods for Israel.  Hopefully now, the Jews of the Soviet Union, over 2 1/2 million, have moved to Israel and are there today. Without Russia's terrible treatment of Jews in Russia, they may never had made aliyah to Israel.  That's the purpose of our tiny state; to be there for Jews who have suffered in the hands of other nations because of their religion.  Natan  Sharansky is now Chairman of the Jewish Agency in Israel.  I heard him speak when he visited Portland, Oregon a few years ago. Little does he know that he and I shared the same Hebrew teacher.  He did very well with his education by letters.

Resource: My People, Abba Eban's HIstory of the Jews Volume I adapted by David Bamberger pages 222-226
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9329366/Russia-accuses-US-of-arming-Syrian-rebels.html
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.546418
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller
GOLDA by Peggy Mann
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/01/portrait-of-russian-shtetl-kupel.html--be sure to read this.
http://www.jewishagency.org/executive-members/natan-sharansky-0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natan_Sharansky

Largest Jewish Ghetto in the World: Pale of Settlement

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                      

                                                      Tevia in "Fiddler on the Roof"

 Poland went through its 3rd partition in 1795 and added Vilna and Grodno Provinces to the Russian Empire.  This completed the formation of the Pale of Settlement, the largest Jewish ghetto in the world which existed for more than a century.

Jews had lived in Poland since the 9th century.  It's not certain if the first Jewish settler came from               Germany or Bohemia from the west or from the south where the Kingdom of Kiev and the Byzantine Empire lay.  It is thought that they were reinforced by Jews from Khazaria.  We know that they were traders. Traders had opened up areas in the Dark Ages to civilizing influences.  By the year 905, Poland had its first charter for Jews.  Polish coins of the 12th and 13th centuries were minted by Jews and bear Hebrew inscriptions.  The Tartars invaded in 1240 and utterly devastated Poland. "Mongol-Tartar Golden Horde forces led by Batu Khan, (a grandson of Genghis Khan), began attacking Europe in 1223, starting with Cumans, Volga Bulgaria and Kievan Rus."Actually, Tartars were a Turkic people who were also conquered by the Mongols and they were mostly the Kipchaks.  They had joined the Mongol forces.  

Catherine II didn't want Jews living in Russia so she allowed them to live in the Pale, which was Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.  She established the Pale in 1791.  This was done under pressure to rid Moscow of Jewish business competition and  the supposed "evil" influence on the Russian masses.  More than 90% of Russian Jews were forced to live in the Pale, which was only 4% of imperial Russia.  The Jewish population went from 1.6 million in 1820 to 5.6 million in 1910.  Even inside the Pale, Jews found that they were being discriminated against.  This was through paying double taxes and rules like they were forbidden to lease land, run taverns or receive higher education.

In 1860, a liberalization period started which granted Jews some privileges, but this came to an end with the May Laws of 1882. this coincides with the year of Jews who left and went to Palestine in the 1st Aliyah.   This group left from 1882 to 1903 and was led by the Bilu (1st modern Zionist pioneering movement founded in 1882 at Kharkov by Jewish students reacting against the wave of Russian pogroms.) They were first to immigrate to Palestine in 1882 and consisted of 15 young  men and women who reached Jaffa in the summer.  They were like the people on the Mayflower sailing to America.  Others followed later that year.    In 1882, 300 families and other smaller groups went to Palestine from Russia (Pale).

 These May  Laws restricted Jews in the Pale and forced them to to move to urban areas of other towns and shtetls in the Pale, which were  overcrowded and offered limited jobs.  Jews living in rural areas in 1882 of the Pale were forced to leave their homes.  250,000 Jews living along the western frontier of Russia were also moved into the Pale.  700,000 Jews living east of the Pale were driven into the Pale by 1891.  This must be the time that Tevia and his family in "Fiddler on the Roof" had to leave their little shtetl and cow in which he had milk to sell, which caused them and their neighbors to all immigrate as they found they were excluded from rural areas inside the Pale.   By 1870 and on to 1880, thousands of Jews became victims in pogroms.  They suffered form such pogroms, boycotts and other anti-Semitic depredations. In 1880, the Jews of Brody, which was just outside the Pale and actually situated in Austria-Hungary,  began the exodus of over 2 million Jews from the Pale to the USA, Britain, Europe, South America and Palestine.  There were over 4 million Jews living in the Pale by 1885.

 By 1890 all the persecutions going on sent thousands of Russian Jews to Palestine, and many Jews also chose to immigrate to the USA then as well. That was good for them, because in 1891, 2,000 Jews were deported out of Vitebsk, many of them were in chains as they left.  In that same year, 20,000 Jews were expelled from Chernigov.   This is about the time my grandfather left Lithuania for England, which led him to go to Ireland, and then finally to the USA.  All this led to mass immigration to the USA (2 million Jews between 1881 to 1914) A 2nd Aliyah to Palestine took place from 1904 to 1914.  During this period, the Kishinev and Homel pogroms and the failure of the 1905 revolution took place.  Only after the overthrow of the Czarist regime in 1917 was the Pale of Settlement ended in August 1915 and legally in March 1917.

Kovno was a Lithuanian city in Kaunas.  It was on the border of the Pale right across from the Baltic Sea and Germany.  Jews had lived there since the 15th century and were then expelled in 1495, right after the 1492 Spanish Inquisition.  They were able to return in 1501.  Again, they faced expulsion in 1753 but they survived.  Finally they received equal rights in 1858 and by the early 20th century numbered 50% of the total population.  It was a distinguished center of Jewish learning, which was most important to Jews, like other people needed amphitheaters to watch events.  Lithuania had their independence from 1918 to 1940.  Before WWII, there were 25,000 Jews in Kovno which was then 25% of the total population.  Then in 1941, all the Jews were herded into a ghetto by the Nazis and 10,000 were killed in a single day on October 28, 1941. The survivors were joined by 7,000 deportees from Germany and Lithuania but nearly all were exterminated by 1944.   Surprisingly, some must have returned, for there were 5,500 Jews in Kovno in 1988.

Vilna was a town in Lithuania and Jews had lived there since the end of the 15th century.  They were then banished in 1527 by Sigismund I because his burghers requested it.  Some were able to return only to become victims of a riot in 1592.  The next year they were allowed to settle, have homes and lend money.  In 1633 they were given permission to trade in precious stones, meat and livestock and to be craftsmen.  Then along came anti-Semitism in the form of a riot against them in 1635.  By 1655, those Jews left were massacred by the Cossack army.  4,000 Jews were among the victims of a famine in Vilna in 1709-10.

From the 18th century, the city became a center of rabbinical study, being dubbed the "Lithuanian Jerusalem.  The Vilna Gaon, Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the best known scholar,  came from here.  Vilna became a Zionist center and the birthplace of the Bund.

Jews from Vilna suffered from famine under German rule in WWI and from a pogrom at the hands of the  Polish troops in 1919.  Jews numbered 140,000 at the end of the 19th century, but by 1941 were only 65,000 including 15,000 refugees from Poland.  The Germans made 2 ghettos in Vilna and 30,000 Jews were killed there by the end of 1941.  12,000 remaining Jews were increased by Jews from White Russian rural districts who were shipped in by transports in 1943.   By August 1943, Jews were deported to extermination camps.  The Russians entered the city in 1944 and found 600 Jews hiding in the sewers.  By 1988 the Jewish population rose to 13,000.

Suwalki, where my paternal grandmother, Zlata came from, was right next door to Kovno with its west side bordering Germany. Originally it was a part of Lithuania and then went to Poland.  My grandmother said she was a Litvak.

In 1911 in Zhitomir, Russia, a person's given name and its spelling sometimes was a matter of life or death.  In civil and legal situations of many Jews the fact of the military draft caused young people worry and sometimes financial destruction.  An example of the spelling of a name in one small shtetl in one year is shocking.  The names of all draftees had died before the draft.  It didn't matter, the deceased were considered to be draft dodgers and their families were fined.  For example, the name from the Draft List was Pavolotskij, Lejb-Gersh Shimonov.  The name from the Death Records Book read as Favolotskij, Lejb-Gersh Simonov.  This was all in Hebrew, and the Hebrew letter pe reads as both a p and a f, which was the cause of the confusion.

Another case as a Jew identified as Mojshe who was drafted into the army, but he was also fined 300 rubles for a supposed brother Moisej, who was said to have evaded the draft because this Mojshe had been listed as Moisej in one list.

There was the family of a Yankel Korotkin who was executed in Vilna and was fined because the deceased was accused of draft evasion.

Letichev resident Yanakael Rozenblat was murdered during a pogrom, but his family was fined.  Another family was fined because a girl named Sima was entered by in the books by mistake as Simkha.  Hundreds of such cases like these happened every year making the lives of many ordinary Jews unbearable because of the consequences of spelling errors.

Lithuanian Jews, who became Russian subjects, also contributed to the pool of names.  Such male first names as:
Aaron, Abel, Al'bert, Alexander, Alfred, Armand, Arnold, Aron, Asher, Avner, Benyamin, Bernard, Calvin, Conrad, David, Edmund, Eduard, Efraim, Elias, Eliaser, Elie, Emil, Ephraim, Eugenio, Frederic, Gabriel,  or feminine names as: Bella, Clara, Corolina, Debora, Dina, Emma, Etta, Eugenie, Eva, Fanni, Gena, Ida, Liza, Marianna, Nakhema, Nataliya, Nekhama, Rebeka, Regina, Rivka, Roda, Ruth, Sara, Sonya, Zlata.

Such names were written in Hebrew and then transliterated into Russian with the Cyrillic alphabet.

Cyril,  According to Webster's 7th New Collegiate Dictionary,  a ghetto is a quarter of a city in which Jews are required to live;   broadly, a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live because of social, legal, or economic pressure.  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia defines ghetto as: a Jewish quarter, strictly, a quarter set up by the law to be inhabited only by Jews. I took it a step further calling the Pale of Settlement a huge ghetto and indeed it was.  I was not the first to say this.  That credit goes to Boris Feldblyum, born in Zhitomir, Ukraine in 1951,  who had lived in several cities in Ukraine, Russia and Lithuania before emigrating to the USA in 1979.  His book is listed in my resources.   He is a researcher of our Jewish history of the Jewish people in Russia and Eastern Europe.  He has written articles for Avotaynu, an international Journal of Jewish Genealogy on archival research and more.

The name "Ghetto" comes from the foundry or Ghetto in Venice where the Jews were segregated in 1517.  The idea of segregation of the Jews, implicit in earlier Church legislation goes back to the Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215 which forbade Jews and Christians to live together in close contact.  In Spain, the Jews lived at least from the 13th century, in "juderias" provided with walls and gates for their protection, the city officials said.  Of course then in 1492 the Jews either had to convert or leave the country.  Their laws affected Portugal who did the same thing a few years later.  From the 15th century, the friars in Italy began to press for the effective segregation of the the Jews, and in 1555, Pope Paul IV ordered that Jews in the Papal States should be forced to live in separate quarters.  This was immediately carried into effect in Rome and became the rule throughout Italy in the course of the next generation.  The name "ghetto" which was already accepted in Venice, was now universally applied. The institution was common under the name Judengasse.  It was also found in use in Germany, Prague, where the Jukdenstadft was famous, and in some Polish cities.  It was a town within a town, enjoying a certain degree of autonomy and a vigorous spiritual and intellectual life, but it was insalubrious, overcrowded because of not being allowed to expand, and subject to frequent fires.  The system was often accompanied by forced baptism, the wearing of the Jewish Badge, conversionist sermons, occupational restrictions, etc.  It was finally abolished in Italy in the French Revolutionary Period and reintroduced locally in the 19th century and came to an end when Rome united with the kingdom of Italy in 1870. In other countries the record was similar.
Between 1939 and 1942, Jews from Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia and other places were transferred mainly to the Warsaw and Lublin areas.  Ghettos were instituted there and at other places.  The Warsaw Ghetto population rose to 445,000.  

The Russian Catherine II used the same concept in respect to the Pale of Settlement.  Jews were confined to the Pale and could not enter Russia.  In fact, they had a very hard time leaving it.  When Jews started to emigrate to the USA in the early 1900's, my husband's family had to leave at night in the dark and sneak out at risk of their lives,and to do this they had to  pay a guide to get them out past the border.  In essence, this land was treated like a city ghetto only it was on a larger scale.  The idea was just the same.  The Jews were required to live within the borders that Catherine II allowed, and as you read, she changed her rules and confined them into the urban centers in the end.  In fact, the Pale, according to my encyclopedia was made up of 25 provinces of Czarist Russ in Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, Ukraine, Bessarabia and Crimea where Jews were "permitted" permanent residence, depending of the permanent nature of the day, it looks like, for they were forced out and lost their homes as well.  Life outside the Pale wasn't much better as those outside without permission to be there depended on the arbitrary decision of the local governor  with the borders arbitrarily restricted from time to time by the oppressive Statute of 1835 concerning Jews.  The May Laws certainly were horrible and restrictive, as bad as any city ghetto condition.
The whole concept was definitely a Ghetto action on a very large scale.  Catherine II in 1762 permitted all aliens to live in Russia except Jews.  With Poland being partitioned in 1772, 1793 and 1795, the great Jewish masses of White Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania and Courland became Russian subjects and were under the reactionary rule of the Czars.  In 1786 they were restricted to towns which lay the foundation of the Pale of Settlement.  Only the Karaites received equality of rights with the Christians in 1795.

Restricted to live in a Ghetto area, a quarter of land belonging to Russia, no rights like other citizens, all because of their religion being Jewish.  This is the foundation of a ghetto.  I'm looking at my map right now at Russia.  It's absolutely huge.  The countries of the Pale are barely seen on this map. The only one I can make out is Ukraine.  I would say that the Pale was only about 4% of Russia, and this reference came from Feldblyum.
                                                           

                                                Russia's Pale of Settlement

Reference:  Russian-Jewish Given Names by Boris Feldblyum
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/pale.html
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_and_Tatar_states_in_Europe
Update: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatars, Lipka Tartars in Lithuania
Update: "1648–1655
The Ukrainian Cossacks led by Bohdan Chmielnicki massacre about 100,000 Jews and similar number of Polish nobles, 300 Jewish communities destroyed."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism
7/11/13 http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Pale_of_SettlementUpdate: 

Portrait of a Russian Shtetl; Kupel, Ukraine--1941

                                                                        The Pale of Settlement-of Russia      
Nadene Goldfoot
Why do we need an Israel?  Because of what happened to the shtetl named Kupel in the Ukraine which was part of Russia.  Do you remember seeing "Fiddler on the Roof?"  Those Jews were living in a shtetl.  A shtetl was something like a small settlement.  Many shtetls were where Jews lived. "Shtetl - Little city, small town, village - in particular, the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, were where the remarkable culture of the Ashkenazim flourished before World War II."   Most all Jews were confined to the Pale of Settlement of Russia.  In order to get into Russia proper, one had to be very special and have a special pass.

Kupel, Ukraine  on the map was  49o 36' N   and 26o 331' E.  of Eastern Europe.
It was 300 km (186 miles) WSW of Kryyiv, the 8th largest city in Ukraine.  Kryyiv Rih or Dnipropetrovsk had 670,068 people.  In 1900 there were 2,727 Jews living in Kupel.  By 1910 there were 5.6 million Jews living in the entire Pale of Settlement.  The Ukraine was part of the Pale of Settlement.  So was Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarussia.  Catherine II decreed that all Jews had to be so confined on this 4% of Russian territory in 1791 which lasted until the end of WWI in 1917.   About 90% of Russian Jews lived here.   Even so, they gave birth and the population grew.  Just like in Fiddler on the Roof, "entire local populations could be abruptly "resettled," forced out of their homes, with no more legality then the arbitrary impulse of an often besotted governor."

Life in the Pale of Settlement was very similar to being treated like the Muslims treated Jews, the 2nd class citizen or dhimmis of the Middle East.  Jews had to pay double in taxes, couldn't lease land or own land, couldn't run a tavern or be able to receive higher education, even if they had the money to pay tuition.

In August of 1941, 50 Jews were taken as hostages and locked up in a tiny storage closet without any windows that was in a local market in Kupel.  The Jews were crowded in like sardines, stacked to the ceiling.  By morning all were found dead except those on top.  They were buried in shallow graves in the center of the shtetl, but the odor was so bad, they forced the living Jews to dig them up and bury them in the Jewish cemetery.

Itzhak Meer Glaser was the last rabbi of Kupel, and he was murdered in 1942.  So was his family, his neighbors and all others of the Jewish community by German invaders along with local Ukrainians.  Then they destroyed the Jewish homes.  This was done to keep others that were not home away so that the homes could be looted.  Rabbi Glaser was buried alive.

There were 2 million Jews who had immigrated to the USA from the Pale  from 1881 to 1914.  Jewish immigrants landed in New York, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and other places as well.  They were the lucky ones who missed being in the Holocaust.  Their friends and relatives were not so lucky and were part of the 6 million who were slaughtered.

Jews had been working on regaining their own homeland again from the middle 1800's and by November 2, 1917 were making inroads with the Balfour Doctrine.  Little did our leaders know that the more horrible event was yet to take place, the Holocaust.  Oh but to have already had their homeland, so many lives would have been saved.

Reference: http://kupel.net/content/short-foreword-nina-bolshakova
jewishgen.org
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/pale.html
http://www.templesanjose.org/JudaismInfo/history/shtetl.htm