Tzvi Hirsch Mileikowsky and Vilna, The Jerusalem, of Lithuania

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

  Zvi Mileikowsky b; 1849 Vilna, Lithuania-d: June 24, 1934 Palestine

 Tzvi//Zvi  Mileikowsky of Belarus, Great grandfather of Benjamin Netanyahu .  It looks like he has blue eyes.  b; 1849 in Vilna Governorate, Lithuania of Russian Empire;  d: June 24, 1934 at age 84-85 in mandatory Palestine, buried in Herzliya, Israel, son of Chaim Halevi Mileikowsky and Pesia, who was born about 1820. Pesia was the daughter of Hirsh Ber and mother of Hirsch Halevi Mileikowsky and Chana Mileikowsky.     He had a daughter, Sarah טייטל (born Mileikowsky), born 1882.  Zvi's wife and mother of Sarah was Liba Gili.  Liba waw born in 1857.  Sarah married דוד טייטל.  They had one daughter: רחל שמרון (born טייטל).             

                 Russians:  small soldiers, stout hearts

The Governorate-General was established in November 1794 when territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were incorporated into the Russian Empire following the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The core of the Governorate-General was the present-day territory of Lithuania and western Belarus. 

                                              

Russo-Polish War

In 1794–1797, the Governorate-General was composed of two governorates, Vilna Governorate and Slonim Governorate, which were merged into the Lithuania Governorate by Paul I of Russia. After his assassination, the governorate was again divided into Vilna and Grodno Governorates. In 1834, Kovno Governorate was formed from the seven western powiats of the Vilna Governorate.   The Vilna Governorate or Government of Vilnius was a governorate of the Russian Empire created after the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795.   

 Before World War II, Vilnius was one of the largest Jewish centers in Europe. Its Jewish influence has led to its nickname "the Jerusalem of Lithuania". Napoleon called it "the Jerusalem of the North" as he was passing through in 1812. 

The city was called Vilna and Jews lived here since the end of the 15th century but were banished in 1527 by Sigismund I at the request of the burghers.  A number returned but were the victims of a riot in 1592.  The following year, Jews were formally allowed to settle, acquire houses, and lend money.

In 1633, permission was granted to trade in precious stones, meat,, and livestock and to be craftsmen.  An anti-Jewish riot occurred in 1635, while in 1655, those members of the community who had not fled were massacred by the Cossack army.  

              Vilna Gaon:  Elijah ben Solomon b: 1720-d: 1797 

Elijah led the opposition to the Hasidim Jews in Lithuania, ordering their excommunication and the destruction of their literature.  That checked the spread of Hasidism in Lithuania. 

 When he was about 60, Elijah set out unaccompanied for Palestine but, for unexplained reasons, returned before reaching his destination. We know why;  it was most dangerous to travel abroad and especially dangerous to travel alone.  

This rabbi, The Vilna Gaon,  was a halakah expert, meaning he knew the laws of Judaism  very well.  He also opposed Haskalah, a movement that said to conform to Christian society in order to become Emancipated and to become a first class citizen like other people.  It meant radical assimilation and the death of Judaism, which is what is happening to a lot of Jews in the USA today.    

4,000 Jews were among the victims of famine in Vilna in 1709-1710.  From the 18th century, the city became a center of rabinical study, being dubbed the "Lithuanian Jerusalem', with its best-known scholar being Elijah ben Solomon/Zalman who was universally known as the Vilna Gaon.  Many Haskalah leaders also lived there.  Tzvi could possibly have been one of them.  His descendants fit the description.  

An important Hebrew press over several generations was that of the family ROMM, whose edition of the Talmud became standard.

Vilna was a Zionist center and also the birthplace of the BUND, which was the General Federation of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, a Jewish Socialist Party, created in 1897.  The Jews suffered from famine under German rule in world War I and from a pogrom at the hands of the Polish troops in 1919. YIVO had its headquarters there from 1925 to 1941.  

                                             

Poland and Lithuania both claimed Vilna (Vilnius) after World War I. Polish forces occupied Vilna in 1920, and before the outbreak of World War II, the city of Vilna was part of northeastern Poland.

                                                                 

Old city of Vilnius became a Jewish ghetto during world war II, under German occupation

The Jewish population numbered  140,000 by the end of the 19th century, but by 1941 had dropped to 65,000 while gaining 15,000 refugees from Poland.  Zvi had died in 1934.  

The Germany established 2 ghettos in Vilna and 30,000 Jews were killed there by the end of 1941.  The 12,000 remaining were augmented in 1943  by transports from White Russian rural districts.   

Deportation to extermination camps began in August 1943, and there was some resistance.  When the Russians entered Vilna in 1944, they found 600 Jews hiding in the sewers.  Jews from other areas began converging on Vilna after the war.  Jews living in Vilna by 1988 amounted to 13,000.  

In 2009, Vilnius was the European Capital of Culture, together with Linz, Austria. 

In 2021, Vilnius was named among top-25 fDi's Global Cities of the Future – one of the most forward-thinking cities with the greatest potential in the World.               

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania and its largest city, with a population of 589,425 as of 2019. The population of Vilnius's functional urban area, which stretches beyond the city limits, is estimated at 706,832 (as of 2019), while according to the Vilnius territorial health insurance fund, there were 732,421 permanent inhabitants as of October 2020 in Vilnius city and Vilnius district municipalities combined.^[ Vilnius is in southeastern Lithuania and is the second-largest city in the Baltic states. It is the seat of Lithuania's national government and the Vilnius District Municipality.

This capital  of Vilnius is classified as a Gamma global city according to GaWC studies, and is known for the architecture in its Old Town, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.geni.com/people/Hirsch-%D7%A6%D7%91%D7%99-Halevi-Mileikovsky/6000000020213025020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilna_Governorate-General

EUROPE'S PALE OF SETTLEMENT 1914 AND THE JEWS

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                       

 "In 1914, WWI began, a watershed in both Jewish history and European history, as it marked the end of four great empires: the Tsarist, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and German Reich. Together, these empires were home to the majority of world Jewry."  "World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918." At the outbreak of WWI, 5,600,000 Jews lived in the empire of the Czars. Almost 2 million lived in Poland.  300,000 Jews were in the Russian army. 

"The First World War, the most appallingly savage international conflict in all preceding history, had a profound impact on world Jewry. This was due to the existence of a large concentra­tion of Jews within one of the principal arenas, the enlistment of unprecedented numbers of Jews to the armies of the belligerent nations and the success of Jewish leaders in influencing the political policies of the major powers. Furthermore, increasing tensions during the war years deepened the hostile attitudes towards the Jews, particularly in Germany and in Eastern Europe."
                                                                       

This pogrom was sparked by an assassination

From 1871 to 1921, many pogroms were going on in towns of Russia that were anti-Jewish.  The movie, Fiddler On the Roof tells it well.  Note that pogroms went on after WWI ended.  They had their own reasons to pick on Jewish way before the war started and after it ended.  The Russian Jew lived in misery, never knowing when they would be attacked.  My own grandmother, Zlata had her legs broken in Lithuania.  Golda Meir was in a pogrom and she was able to escape and get to the USA .  Ukraine had many in 1905 and from 1918-1920 which was after WWI.  In January 1918, a regime of national autonomy was established in the Ukraine.  Crimea's Jews lived with Kararites until 1917.  Ukraine's captive Jews were also sent to Crimea to live.  Jews lived under lots of disabilities until Revolution of 1917.  More Jews came to live in Crimea after 1920.  A Communist Revolution started in 1919.  Austria-Hungary was involved in that.  
                                                  

Lithuania was a part of Russia from 1795 to 1918.  During WWI, 100,000 Jews were expelled or emigrated to the Russian interior.  In independent Lithuania, Jews received national AUTONOMY from 1918 to 1924.  Belarus was called White Russia (also Belorussia), settled originally by Polish Jews, suffered during WWI which became a war area and many Jews were expelled to the interior, partitioned after the War in 1921 between Russia and Poland.  Bessarabia was a Romanian Province, went to Moldavian and Ukrainian Republics.  were not alliowed to live near the frontier along with Gypsies, remainaed a focus of anti-Semitism and 90,000 Jews escaped from Soviet Russia through Bessarabia from 1919 to 1925.  Britain had been in the war since August 4, 1914.  Their campaigns of 1917-18 in the course of WWI led to the termination of Turkish rule of the Ottoman Empire in Eretz Yisrael.  

The loss of the city of Vilna to Poland in 1919 weakened the Jews of Lithuania.  It had been the capital and center of Lithuania, the hub of Jewish learning with the Gaon of Vilna from here.  Poland became independent after WWI and undertook to protect its minorities, but its attitude toward the Jews left much to be desired.  The Jews'economic position deteriorated as the new Polish middle-class tended to push them out of trade, handicrafts and industry.  Latvia, annexed to Russia in 1795,  became independent in 1919.  Their national minorities possessed autonomy until 1931. Jews were able to develop a Hebrew and Yiddish school system.  Estonia's Jews became independent with their state from 1917 to 1940, also suffering from anti-Semitism like all others in the 1930s. Belarus was under Russia rule from 1795 to 1918.  Eventually by 1795 Poland was partitioned by its neighbors. Thus a new period in Belarusian history started, with all its lands annexed by the Russian Empire, in a continuing endeavor of Russian tsars of "gathering the Rus lands" started after the liberation from the Tatar yoke by Grand Duke Ivan III of Russia.
                                                       

Tevyeh in Anatola, a Shtetl in Poland

 Europeans were being hit with ENLIGHTENMENT in their thinking  from 1700 to 1914 with a German Christian, Mr. Dohm, writing something people had not thought of, evidently:  That didn't stop Russians from attacking Jewish villages, driving many out to seek refuge in the Ottoman Empire's Palestine, their ancient homeland.  

  "If Jews seemed superstitious, unsocial and unsavory it was because they had been subject to oppressive conditions for many generations. Lift the oppressive conditions, argued Dohm, and the Jews will better themselves. They will become productive, useful members of the state."  
                                                       

Jews from Poland, Russia 

  " The two most popular destinations for Jewish immigrants during this period were America and Palestine. More than 2 million Jewish immigrants entered the United States between 1880 and 1924; 25,000 Russian Jews emigrated to Palestine as part of the first aliyah (wave of immigration) to in 1881; 40,000 followed as part of the second aliyah between 1904 and 1914. These immigrants, along with other Jews,  whose journeys were purely intellectual, changed the character of the countries they called–or came to call–home.
                                                       

How it all started:  1914

28th  June-Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated in Sarajevo
5th July-Kaiser Wilhelm II promised German support for Austria against             Serbia.
28th July-Austria declared war on Serbia
1st August-Germany declared war on Russia
3rd August-Germany declared war on France, invaded Belgium
4th August-Britain declared war on Germany
29th October-Turkey entered the war on Germany's side. 

1917 6th April-USA declared war on Germany

16.5 million died-both soldiers and civilians. 

9.7 million were soldiers. 

35 million casualties included dead and wounded.

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-history-1914-to-1948/
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/wwi-and-the-jews/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Belarus
https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-one/timeline-of-world-war-one/
Resource:  facts about israel,  Division of Info Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem,p. 32
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-history-1700-to-1914/
http://ww1facts.net/quick-reference/ww1-casualties/
Thank you Laurie David for giving me the idea of writing about 1914 and problems ensued.
Updated on Belorus at10am.

The Lithuanian Jerusalem: VILNA

Nadene Goldfoot                                         

Autumn shopping center in the main street of Vilnius,
Gediminas Avenue today

From the 18th century onwards, Vilna, Lithuania was called the Lithuanian Jerusalem.   Napoleon named it "the Jerusalem of the North. 
                                                                             

                         Vilna many years ago, the Jewish cultural and religious center

This is why my paternal grandmother was so proud to have come from Lithuania.  It was a center of Jewish learning.  She couldn't read or write but wanted us all to know that she was a LITVAK. She came from Lazdijai and her husband, our grandfather, came from Telsiai (Telz) , Lithuania.  
                                                   

It's best-known scholar,Elijah ben Solomon Zalman was universally known as the Vilna Gaon, with Gaon meaning: genius.  Thus, this became a center because of him. 
                                                        

    Many Haskalah (Enlightenment Movement) leaders lived here., starting in 1832 with Judah Jeiteles, a movment originating in 1750 to 1880 believing that Jewish Emancipation needed intellectual and social conformity with the non- Jewish population and that the this could be achieved by modernizing and westernizing the Jewish religion and customs including the active literary use of the Hebrew language.  It tried to mediate between Orthodoxy and radical assimilation that was happening in Germany.  The more German Jewry modernized, the more anti-Semitism grew.  Perhaps it was because Germans became more aware of Jews as competition in all things, especially in business.  This movement was very challenging to Judaism, but came through a desperation of wanting to be treated humanely, as much as any other people.   
                                                      

    Hibath Zion Movement (Love of Zion, Zionist movement starting in Russia in 1882 from an 1881 pogrom-slogan-TO PALESTINE which aroused tremendous enthusiasm and societies were organized in Russia, Poland, Romania and England.  Students bought land in Palestine, religious leaders stood aside.  Opposition came from assimilated Jews of Russian Jewry and those in Western Europe-notice-they hadn't been present in the many pogroms.  One can say that hateful and harmful pogroms of eastern Europe caused the re-population of Jews into Palestine with the 5 different aliyah populations.  
                                                            

    An important Hebrew press of over several generations was that of the family ROMM, whose edition of the Talmud became standard, called the Vilna Shass.
   Vilna was a Zionist center.  

                                                         







                                

Bund's way of demonstrating a point
with their bodies 

 Vilna was the birthplace of the BUND (General Federation of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, a Jewish Socialist Party founded at a conference in Vilna in 1897 a trade union and political party, struggling for better working conditions.
                                                       

    Lithuania itself was known for its GREAT YESHIVA OF SLABODKA.
    The smaller towns of Telzh, where our paternal grandfather was from, Ponivezh and Kelem were where hundreds of foreign students studied.
    The Salant community where from here that the Musar (Ethics) Movement began and spread from Rabbi Yisrael Salanter (Israel Lipkin 1810-1883), whose principles were based on the idea of intellectual activity and knowledge in order to correct and improve the behavior of the individual. He had set up special houses for the study of ethical literature and published a journal (Tevunah) of the ideas found.  The movement spread among the Torah students of Lithuania.   
                                                       

   Populating Jews in Lithuania and especially in the city of Vilna all started in the 14th century by the invitation of the Grand Dukes Gediminas and Vytautas (Witold).  

In 1388, one year after the Christian-Catholic religion was introduced to Lithuania, the Duke granted the Jews a preferred civil status and incomparable BILLS OF RIGHTS in many different areas such as protecting their bodies and property;  freedom to maintain their religious rituals;  significant alleviation in the field of commerce, and money lending-being permitted in relation to Christians.  There was a particular regulation to protect Jews against blood libels (accusation of using blood of child in the making of matzos) .  

Then, in 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue-the Spanish Inquisition took place against Jews which affected Jews throughout the whole world.  
                                                           

Lithuanian King  Vytautas The Great Aleksander (Kiejsturowicz Giedyminowicze) 1350-1430

By 1495, only 3 years later when all Jews were kicked out of Spain unless they converted to Catholicism, the Grand Duke Alexandear expelled all the Jews of Lithuania, then numbering more than 6,000 Jews and even confiscated their hard-earned property.  8 years later he became King of Poland, and he allowed Lithuanian Jews to return to their homes and gave them back part of the property.  Most privileges were left as they had been given to the Jews originally, meaning nothing since they hadn't protected them but for a long period they were of some help in preserving the legal, civil and economic status of Jews.  

The Christian townspeople of Lithuania were mostly Germans that had moved to this new country.  They had organized themselves into merchant and artisan unions and had the MAGDEBURG RIGHTS from Germany and in their eyes,Jews were competitors.  They had an edict written up forbidding Jews into Vilna or to trade in this city.  For hundreds of years, the townspeople threw insults at Jews including students of theological seminars (Yeshivot).  The NW part of Lithuania had been settled by ethnic Lithuanian tribes and had accepted Christianity much later in 1413, so did not react to Jews in this anti-Semitic way.  

"Jews and Germans were sometimes competitors in those cities. Jews lived under privileges that they carefully negotiated with the king or emperor. They were not subject to city jurisdiction. These privileges guaranteed that they could maintain communal autonomy, live according to their laws, and be subjected directly to the royal jurisdiction in matters concerning Jews and Christians. One of the provisions granted to Jews was that a Jew could not be made Gewährsmann, that is, he could not be compelled to tell from whom he acquired any object which had been sold or pledged to him and which was found in his possession. Other provisions frequently mentioned were a permission to sell meat to Christians, or employ Christian servants."

These special privileges all came about because of the terrible anti-Semitic treatment Jews suffered in the first place by these new Christians.  They realized they couldn't begin to enter a place unless the powers that invited them gave them protection from the anti-Semitic masses.  
                                                        

Vilna, Jewish quarter, 1900s. 

In looking at it's history, Jews had come to this Vilna at the end of the 15th century, but suffered from banishment in 1527 by Sigismund I at the request of the burghers. Jews expelled went to nearby towns such as Zamut where they found other Jews in the business of CUSTOMS AND COLLECTION for the government.   A number of Jews had returned later to Vilna but were the victims of a riot in 1592.  The following year, Jews were formally allowed to settle, acquire houses, and lend money since that's about all Jews were allowed to do all over Europe because of Christian prejudice to them entering their closed labor groups. 

This was a country of feudalism.  Most made their living from farming but Jews were not allowed to own land.  Some Jews then became peddlers, or dealt with import and export of agricultural products.  

By 1633, permission was granted to trade in precious stones, meat, and livestock and to be craftsmen.  An anti-Jewish riot took place in 1635, and while in 1655 those members of the community who had not fled from such anti-Semitism were massacred by the Cossack army. 

4,000 Jews were among the victims of famine in Vilna in 1709 to 1710..  This is the century that the city became the great center of rabbinical study, called the Lithuanian Jerusalem. 
                                                          

Vilna Jewish ghetto 

German rule in Lithuania in World War I caused famine for the Jews as well as the Gentiles.  An extra suffering they endured was that of of a pogrom at the hands of the Polish troops in 1919 after the war. 

YIVO (YIVO (Yiddish: ייִוואָ, [jiˈvɔ]), established in 1925 in Wilno in the Second Polish Republic (now Vilnius, Lithuania) as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (Yiddish: ייִדישער װיסנשאַפֿטלעכער אינסטיטוט,, Yiddish Scientific Institute), is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish."  It had its headquarters there from 1925 to 1941, the beginnings of the 2nd World War. 
                                                         

Nearby Kovno undergoing massacre on June 27, 1941 

          The Jewish population of Lithuania on the eve of the Shoah (Holocaust) was about a quarter of a million including the Vilna region and the refugees from Poland ..  This amounted to around 0.9% of world Jewry during the 20 years of Independent Lithuania.  It had been recognized for a long time as the specific religious-cultural unit in comparison to neighboring Jewish centers of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine.   Today Jews make up only about 0.02% of the world population.  

The Jewish population number in Vilna was 140,000 at the end of the 19th century, but by 1941 had dropped to 65,000 which included an additional 15,000 refugees from Poland.   The Germans created 2 ghettos in Vilna, where 30,000 Jews were killed there by the end of 1941.  The 12,000 remaining were augmented in 1943 to transports from White Russian rural districts. 

By August of 1943, deportation began and Jews were taken to extermination centers.  There was some resistance.
                                                    

The Russians entered Vilna in 1944 and found 600 Jews hiding in the sewers.  Jews from other areas began converging on Vilna after the war and the Jewish population in 1988 had built up to 13,000.  

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Preserving Our Litvak Heritage, a history of 31 Jewish communities in Lithuania  by Josef Rosin; Joel Alpert, Editor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_rights
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/05/center-of-jewish-learning-vilna.html
https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-happened-to-lithuanian-jews.html

Descendants of Jewish Lithuanians: Up To Gaon of Vilna's Days

Nadene Goldfoot                                         

The most famous rabbi from Lithuania was the Gaon of Vilna.  His name was Elijah ben Solomon Zalman and he was born in 1720 and died in 1797.  He was an expert in the Talmud and was famous very early on for his scholarship.  
                                                                             
What was the world like that he had been born into?  His parents were Rabbi Shlomo-Zalman d: 1758 and Treina.  His mother came from the town of Seltz (today's Selets) near Grodno.  His father came from a prominent Vilna family.  The known male line started with Rabbi David Ashkenazy d: 1645.  He was known as the Rosh Yeshiva in Lemberg, Poland.  This could have been the same man known as Rabbi David, son of Mordekhai Ashkenazy .  David's son was Rabbi Moshe Kremer who died in 1688, who held the position of the chief rabbi of Vilna.  Moshe Kremer's son was Rabbi Eliyahu who died in 1710, known as Hassid due to his piety.  I was just doing some genealogy on one of the Gaon's descendants, a Kramer.  This may be the connection directly to this famous rabbi.  .

 How were Lithuanian Jews different from other Jews in other countries?  My grandmother, Zlata Jermulowske, was born in  Lazdijai which was on the border between Poland and Lithuania, but she wanted her children to know that she was a Litvak; and proud of it. In 1855 Lazdey had 1,546 Jews.  That was 60% of the population for that town.   My poor bobba could not read or write in any language, but she produced 2 grandchildren who were American PhDs and 3 teachers of elementary schools, and one of those PhDs taught in college as well. She produced a master's degree.  Zlata was proud of her Litvak heritage and their reputation.  A ggrandson is a veterinarian.  A ggrandson is a classical pianist.

Our grandfather Nathan Goldfus couldn't read or write English, that I know when he came to the states in 1900.  His town of Telzh had 3,209 Jews in 1855, 61% Jewish.  By the time he immigrated in 1897 there were 3,088 Jews there which had dropped to 51% of the town's pop

ulation.  Jews were leaving.  .                                                         

Lithuanian Jews did have a reputation.  They were known for their intellectual and rational attitudes.  They were also called the Cross Headsa, suggesting that they would be ready to strike out vertically and horizontally  in order to achieve his goal, or to cross check his findings in order to reach THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH.  This was seen not only in their daily life but in other times in the social-cultural strata, such as not falling for any FALSE MESSIAHS.  It's known they were against the Chassidism, and can probably thank the Gaon of Vilna for that, since he fought against it pretty hard.
                                                                           

Shtetl of Shkudvil, Lithuania 

They studied the Torah with diligence in the synagogues as well in the Yeshivoth Ketanoth and in the Great Yeshivoth.  Jewish Lithuania was famous for its great Yeshivoth of Slabodka in Telsiai (Telzh) where my grandfather lived.  They also had Yeshivote in Poniezh and Kelem where hundreds of foreign students also studied.

The Salant community was also well known because it was from here that the MUSAR (ETHICS) movement began an spread by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter whose principals were based on the idea of intellectual activity and knowledge in order to correct and improve the behavior of the individual.

Lithuanian Jewry was also known for fostering the HIBATH ZION MOVEMENT, and later by practially adopting the Zionist idea, and at the same time an almost simultaneous openness to the challenge of the HASKALAH or (ENLIGHTENMENT MOVEMENT.)  It didn't matter if it was in Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian or German.
                                                                     

Jews had developed impressive attributes and achievements as well as a special character within the Jewish world, developed alongside the prolonged struggles for their economic and civil rights among the ethnic Lithuanian population where they were born in those days in spite of the frequent changes of rulers.                                               

By the time our Gaon of Vilna was 20 he spent his time traveling among the Jewish communities of Poland and Germany and finally settled down in Vilna, Lithuania where he taught and later founded his own academy.

As we know, Jews were driven out of Judah in 70 CE by the Romans who burned down the 2nd Temple there and even Jerusalem, taking who they could has slaves to Rome.  Those were the first Ashkenazi Jews as they would then make their way to Germany eventually.
                                                                     

13 Century Jews of Germany

The first settlement of Jews into the Great Lithuanian Princedom, THE MAGNUS DECATUS LITHUANIAE, began in the 1300s by invitation only from the Grand dukes Gediminas and Vytaufas (Witold).  They extended invitations usually because they heard of the Jews' prowess at math and keeping records, helping other governments with their skills.

By 1388, one year after the Christian-Catholic religion was introduced all over Lithuania, the Catholics also granted the Jews a preferred civil status and incomparable bills of rights such as protecting their bodies and property;  freedom to keep their religious rituals;  significant alleviation in the field of commerce;  and money lending which was permitted in relation to their Christians.  There was even a special regulation to protect Jews against blood libels.
                                                                     

The Italian Christopher Columbus could have been Jewish.  He wrote to
his son in Hebrew.  His ships had a Jew or two on as sailors, getting out of Spain.  He sailed at the time of the Spanish Inquisition.  Maybe he was
related to the well known Jewish Kalonymus family in Italy.  

1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue-Spain kicked out all Jews from Spain unless they converted to Christianity.

Christianity got around very fast and furiously.  By 1495, the Grand Duke Alexander expelled all Jews from Lithuania, too!  Jews by then numbered more than 6,000 people.  The  government also took all their property as well!  That must have been a good political move, because 8 years later he was elected King of Poland.  They had a joint rule clause between these 2 countries.  Then he allowed the Lithuanian Jews to return to their homes-if they weren't already occupied- and gave them back only part of their property.  He left most of the privileges alone as they had been so that they reserved the legal, civil and economic status of the Jews which must be why they decided to return.
                                                                     

Lithuanian town

The townspeople were not impressed or happy to see them return.  They  were mostly from Germany and were organized now in merchant  and artisan unions and who had been enjoying the MAGDEBURG RIGHTS  and now they saw the returning Jews as competitors who had to be fought.

They brought about an edict DE NON TOLERANDIS JUDAEIS, making it forbidden to Jews to settle in Vilna or to trade there.  These insults to Jews by the urban Christians, even students of theological seminars, continued for hundreds of years.  Anti-Semitism was created.
                                                                           

It was different in another part of Lithuania, though.  The NW region, ZEMAITIJA/SAMOGITIA had ethnic Lithuanian tribes living there who had become Catholics much later in 1413 and han't yet become infected with anti-Semitism with a religious background.  Zamut Jews were in the business of customs and tax collection.  Another wave of Jews came and settled there after Vilna and Memel Jews were kicked out in 1567.

Feudalism reigned in Lithuania.  Most people made a living as farmers, breeding cattle and poultry, fishing in rivers and lakes and harvesting trees.  It was the Jews who were peddlers, and a few of them dealt in importing and exporting agricultural products.  Finally due to improved roads, taverns and storehouses were built near crossroads and river ports turned into villages and towns where many Jewish artists and merchants settled.

Until the 18th century, townships were granted to only 83 settlements.   and rights for commercial activity to 87 settlements.  Really, there was no big difference between a small and a big town.
                                                                         

Granddaughters of a Jewish family in Eisiskes, Lithuania at time of Holocaust

Most of the people were Christians.  Most believed in devils and ghosts and now THE JEW replaced these evil symbols.  It was very easy for the average Lithuanian to believe in the BLOOD LIBELS.  It's a phenomenon that continue to exist until only recently in Europe, and I see some in the Middle East like Syria are believers as well.  The Blood Libel is when someone accuses a Jew of using human blood in making food such as matzos, the flour and water cracker eaten during Passover.  It's disgusting!  Jews don't even eat blood accidentally when eating any meat!  It's a no no to Jews, part of our Kosher laws.  No Blood.
                                                                             

At the end of the 18th century there were several places where half of the population was Jewish and in a few even a decisive majority.  In urban areas, Jews lived in the JEWISH QUARTER, sometimes called THE JEWS' STREET, just like in Syria.  Jews outside this confined area remained strongly linked, connected to Jews in this confined area.  Western Russia had created THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT in many countries brought about through Catherine the Great.  She influenced these other countries where they held where many restrictive edicts and harsh limitations that  were imposed on the Jewish population.  These caused great hardships and continued until World War I 1914-1917.
                                                                           

Warsaw, Poland Uprising 

The Holocaust started earlier than the USA became involved.  The late 1930s were horrible times for Jews of Europe with Hitler's rising.  On the eave of this Shoah, there were about a quarter of a million Jews including the Vilna region and the refugees from Poland. They were only about 0.9% of the world's Jews during the 20 years of Lithuania's Independence.  As we already know, 6 million Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust.
                                                                         

1941 Jews being led away by Kovno, Lithuanian  militianman to the fort.   

References: https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-academic-wonder-gaon-of-vilna.html
 Preserving Our Litvak Heritage-a history of 31 Jewish communities in Lithuania by Josef Rosin, Joel Alpert, editor
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Eliyahu's Branches-the Descendants of the Vilna Gaon and His Family by Chaim Freedman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Lithuania