Nadene Goldfoot
Lazdijai is a little town on the border between Lithuania and Poland. It's in Lithuania, about 7 km (4.3 mi) east of the border with Poland.
The town of Lazdijai, or Lazdey in Yiddish, was part of the Polish Lithuanian Kingdom until 1795, then were caught in the 3rd partition by the 3 superpowers; Russia, Prussia and Austria. The result was that Lithuania became partly Russian and partly Prussian. Lazdey, on the left side of the Nieman River, was handed over to Prussia that ruled during 1795-1807. It had been created by the king of Poland, King Zigmunt II in August of 1570 and the Jews were granted the Magdeburg Rights in 1579 as well as permission to maintain a weekly market and 2 yearly fairs. During Prussian rule, Lazdey became the county administrative center.
By 1807, Napoleon defeated Prussia (a former German State), and everyone got equal civil rights except the Jews.
1815 saw Napoleon defeated and all of Lithuania was annexed to Russia.
In 1827, Lazdey had a population of 1,988 people living in 272 houses. My paternal great grandparents were among them. Lazdey was included in the Augustowa Province (Gubernia) and by 1866 became part of the Suwalk Gubernia as a country administrative center. All during its existence, Lazdey suffered from many fires.
Rabbis from Lazdey were:
1. Avraham Tsevi ben Meir,
2. Avraham ben Yekhezkel 1798 who was the father in law of
3. Yehudah-Leib, son of the famous Rabbi Eliyahu, Gaon of Vilna
4, Hayim-Yehoshua HaCohen Blumental from 1853 for several years; There was a Nissen Blumenthal (1805-1903)Cantor in Odessa in 1841 for 55 years.
5. Yosef-Mosheh Aranzon [Aaronson ?](1805-1875), died in Chicago;
6.Tsevi-Hirsh Kahana;
7. Yehudah-Leib Ginsburg;
8. Avraham-Eliver Yaffe (1823-1908) in Lazdey 1873-74;
9. his son Yehudah-Leib (1842--?) from 1908 in Laszdey.
My aunt Elsie looks the most like her mother, Zlata Jermulowski of Lazdijai, Suwalki, Lithuania
Lazdey Jews left for Eretz Yisrael before a Zionist movement started. In the old cemetery of Jerusalem there lie a3 tombstones of Lazdey Jews: Gershon son of Moshe-d:in 1910; Reuven son of Yehudah Frid, d: 1895; Hayah daughter of Rabbi Yudl Rosh HaGalil, d: 1897.
My paternal grandmother, Zlata Goldfoot nee Jermulowski/e was born in 1886 in Lazdey. She's buried in Portland, Oregon.
The independent state of Poland established after world War I in 1917 attempted to protect its minorities, but its attitude toward the Jews left much to be desired The economic position of its Jews deteriorated as the new Polish middle-class tended to push them out of trade, handicrafts and industry. Lazdey was surrounded by Jewish farms and farmers till WWI. Many families kept vegetable gardens behind their houses.
On April 1, 1915, Lazdey Jews were exiled into Russia by order of the retreating Russian army. After the war, most of them returned home and found that their property had been stolen. This had been shocking as the Jews were kept in the Pale of Settlement for years by the 2 Catherine empresses and were not allowed into Russia proper. The Pale of Settlement included all of modern-day Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova, much of Ukraine and east-central Poland, and relatively small parts of Latvia and western Russian Federation.
In 1919, the Polish army took over in Lazdey, but was expelled after several days. Lazdey remained inside the border of Lithuania, but the district administrative center, Seyny, was included in Poland. Today, all my paternal grandmother, Zlata Goldfoot nee Jermulowski's records are in Poland. My grandmother insisted that she was a Litvak, however. She immigrated to the US from Lazdijai, Suwalki, Poland in 1903.
(This and the next picture are courtesy of the Archives of the Association of the Lithuanian Jews in Israel)
By 1938, 300,000 Jewish men were unemployed and emigration continued on a large scale. 395,223 Jews left Poland from 1921 to 1937.
After WWII in 1945, Jews who had escaped to Russia or had been exiled, returned to try and pick up the threads of life in Poland, mostly settling in Silesia, Lodz, Warsaw, and Cracow. The Communist regime opposed their settlement, and there were cases of assault and even pogroms at Kielce in 1946, resulting in considerable emigration and a drastic reduction in the size of the new Jewish neighborhoods.
During the war, the tombstones in Lazdey's Jewish cemetery were overturned. Apparently, it was not demolished and built over as the Soviets did to numerous other Jewish cemeteries.
Picture taken by Ruth ben David 1994 (from Pilitovsky family)
The entrance gate of the Jewish cemetery, the only scraps
On the 13th of Mar-Cheshvan every year, natives of Lazdey living in Israel assemble in the Tel Aviv area for a memorial service in memory of the day of the annihilation of the Jews of Lazdey. After the memorial service, there is usually a friendly get-together. The well-known lawyer and native of Lazdey, Avraham (Golub) Tory, often speaks at these meetings. Each year, however, the attendance decreases as fewer natives of Lazdey remain alive".
The names of the Lithuanians who sheltered them are saved at the archives of Yad-Vashem.
After the war the survivors of the above mentioned towns erected a monument on the mass graves at Katkiske (Katkiškė in Lazdijai (Alytus County) is located in Lithuania about 78 mi (or 126 km) south-west of Vilnius, the country's capital town..) In 1991 a new monument was erected with the inscription in Lithuanian and Yiddish: At this place the Hitlerist murderers with their local helpers murdered on the 3.11.1941 1,535 Jews from the Lazdey district, men, women and children.
After the war in 1945, returning Lazdey Jews, who found their property stolen and most of the houses ruined, started to rebuild their lives anew. There were riots against the Jews in town over the conflict between Poland and the new Lithuanian state which concerned the sovereignty of Lazdey.
Starting in 1955,, open anti-Semitic activity took place, and certain Communist circles deliberately directed discontent against the Jews. After the Gomulka regime came to power in 1956, Jews were permitted to emigrate.
Between 1948 and 1958, about 140,500 Jews left Poland for Israel.
At the time, many historians believed that this anti-Semitic campaign and the resulting migration of Polish Jews was the final chapter for Jewish life in Poland. The estimated Jewish population in 1989 was 5,000-10,000. This latter figure is difficult to gauge due to the fact that many Jews who remained post-1968 choose to conceal their identity. But, after the fall of the communist system and Poland’s entry into the European Union in 2004, the Jewish community began experiencing a cultural resurgence. Festivals and educational initiatives reintroduced Jewish culture into the public sphere. The world’s largest Jewish culture festival was launched in Kraków in 1988. Polish Jews, as well as Israeli Jews of Polish heritage, are reengaging with the past and reinvesting in their former communities. The Jewish community in Poland is finding new ways to express its identity, and to resist the efforts of the twentieth century that attempted to destroy its life.
After the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, the situation of Polish Jews became normalized and those who were Polish citizens before World War II were allowed to renew Polish citizenship. The members remaining in 1990 were estimated at 16,000.
Lithuanian nationalists took the repudiation of the Brezhnev Doctrine as a signal that a declaration of independence might be accepted. On March 11, 1990, Lithuania declared that it was an independent nation, the first of the Soviet republics to do so.
The contemporary Polish Jewish community is estimated to have between 10,000 and 20,000 members. Poland’s chief rabbi leads the effort to receive Ukrainian Jewish refugees. Michael Shudrich says dozens have been helped by an ad hoc crisis group, as community prepares for many more displaced people fleeing the Russian invasion.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Preserving Our Litvak Heritage by Josef Rosin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#:~:text=After%20the%20fall%20of%20the,between%2010%2C000%20and%2020%2C000%20members.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement#:~:text=The%20Pale%20of%20Settlement%20included,Latvia%20and%20western%20Russian%20Federation.
https://blog.nli.org.il/en/polish-jewry/
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