[Pages 1251-1258]

My Visits to Lithuania

by Vladimir Grossman

Translated by Gloria Berkenstat Freund

I arrived during the winter in a small, secluded Muravjovo [Mažeikiai] station from the rich and strongly pulsing Liboi [Liepaja] from where one could almost smell a breath from the other side of the Atlantic. The station was covered in snow, covered up by the wind and I came into the hands of the wagon drivers and heard:

– No, no, the train does not go from here…

From there, I thought, I must get away very quickly. I immediately took a coach and left for the small shtetlekh [towns], Siad [Seda] and Telz. The world knew of the Telz [Telsiai] yeshiva [religious school for older boys and men] of R' Eliezar Gordon, the well known head of the yeshiva. We always heard about a new fire in Telz. Incidentally, my travel from Petersburg to Telz was also connected with a fire that almost destroyed Telz completely. But, Siad? Who had heard and who knew of Siad? Here a heap of houses lay buried under the snow on the night of a winter blizzard. It appeared as a ruin that would fall apart with one good wind gust. How do people live here–I asked myself.

The name of that shtetl would never have had a place in my memory if it had not literally “persecuted” me all of those years since I first saw it. In Brussels, in Oslo, finally in London, I met Jews in very good positions born in Siad. First, in London several years ago, I ran into an extensive family of doctors and their father, a resident of Siad. Jews from Lithuanian cities and shtetlekh spread out widely.

My first trip to Telz lasted some 15 hours.

The covered wagon squeaked and twisted in the thick mud. The entire surrounding world was gray and pale. Shabby and ragged human figures would appear as shadows and disappear. The snow turned to rain and I did not believe that I would ever arrive in Telz.

However, we arrived and I often remember the good trip, when several days later it was necessary to walk all the way to Raseyn [Raseiniai].

Half of Telz was burned. New houses were built. The inn, in which I was lodged, smelled completely of the freshly planed boards. But the yeshiva, a long, big building, a wide and airy room, almost entirely naked and without furniture, was already built and the work here was done with a true fervor and zest.

Here really, in the yeshiva to which the head of the yeshiva had brought me, I saw for the first time how much “truth” there was to the talk about the stifled temperament of the Litvaks. Young men studied in front of several reading tables along the wall, shouted, threw their heads, sang not only with zeal and fervor, but actually as if possessed. Their voices carried through the room and echoed in every corner. The clever old man pointed to the young men, “They are studying, although this is not the time to study”…
Later, going around through the burned ruins of the city, it seemed to me that I heard voices from all over, not a lament and not crying, but the melodies of the gemara [debate and discussions in the Talmud] coming from the young, thin souls who quivered by the reading desks and actually convulsed.

*     *     *

From Telz we traveled further, gossiping. The muddy road became more difficult. At each station I asked that another horse be hitched up. A kopek a viorst [.6 mile] for a horse and we still did not see any city. At night we had to overnight in a warm inn and dragged again for an entire day until we arrived in Raseyn.

On this muddy, unendingly large road, I saw the poor, dejected Lithuanians, those twisted, bent, oppressed peasants, for the first time. At one of the stations where we changed horses, I gave the peasant, who had harnessed the wagon, a small silver coin and I immediately sprung up as if scalded: the peasant grabbed my hand and kissed it. I could not calm myself for a long time. The driver wanted me to understand how natural this subservience was in the area.

Immediately at my arrival in Raseyn I felt the taste of Jewish communal life. From my room in the hotel I heard the praying. The prayers were said with very great enthusiasm. I could not understand where I was. The owner of the hotel told me that there was a great to-do in the town; the city needed to have a rabbi and R' Haim Brisker (Soloveitchik) had himself brought one of his sons–against the will of the second faction, who had earlier prepared a candidate. The exalted guests were lodged with me in the same hotel and the authority of R' Haim Brisker had drawn the entire religious community here.

Of the Jewish personalities in the city, the picture of the lawyer (“private attorney”) Levi, a truly grand elder, a handsome Jew with a broad beard and with a majestic, proud bearing long remains in my memory. Such a Jewish leader had to impress even the governor himself. He kept Jewish interests close to his heart. He would even have been suited for the Jewish community in Petersburg or Moscow. I met him again 25 years later in this same Raseyn, healthy, lively, as a giant tree in an old Sosnow forest near Nieman…

From Raseyn I traveled by sled in a deep snow through the large forest to Baisegole [Baisogala] and from there to Ponevez [Panevëþys], where an active and tenacious Jewish community lived. Here I met with the representatives of the Jewish Colonialization Society, which once would sometimes come to us in Petersburg. Healthy, vigorous, sober Jews.

Everything was a wonder to me in this part of old Russia: interesting Jewish figures, kehilus, societies sprouted from the forests and from the mud, from the poverty, from the grayness as if through magic spells. They lived, they maintained themselves.

In all of the cities and shtetlekh, the most robust and most productive and the boldest element had already gone away over the Atlantic, many to South Africa. The emigration absorbed much fresh blood. Many communities remained without men. They lived off the dollars and pounds from those who had rescued themselves from the mud and were building a new life in a new home.

I see before me the old, simply emptied Vilkomir [Ukmerge] after each large emigration. An old rabbi with a long white beard, which twists all by itself like Michelangelo's Moses, and a city with women. It was by chance; on the very day when I arrived, the first automobile with passengers went from Vilkomir to Kovno [Kaunas]. Kith and kin went outside when the vehicle suddenly, as if from the clear sky, shook and began to move. The entire shtetl ran after it. The vehicle went as far as Kovno. Who in the shtetl then thought of going wherever their eyes took them, someplace very far? Tearing oneself from the grey gloom?...

2

Years passed. It happened that I was in Lithuania more times–in Kovno, Shavel [Siauliai] and in small shtetlekh. Who among us then thought about the problem of a Lithuanian national movement, of a Lithuanian state, of Lithuanian-Polish and Lithuanian-Jewish relations?

But once, sitting in the Duma [Russian parliament] during debates about the brutal conduct of the Russian police in the Polish province, a small Lithuanian priest climbed onto the dais and began speaking about what the Poles were doing there to Lithuanians. I do not remember his name, He was from Suwalki. He was never noticed among the hundreds of people in the splendid Tauride [Tavricheski] Palace. In general, there was little notice taken of the Lithuanians. But the small man in his priestly clothing spoke so sincerely. He shouted so loudly from the dais into the room that his appearance became the sensation of the session. It could be seen how the members of the Polish Kolo [“circle”: a faction in the Second Duma] remained in their places as if struck by lightning and made grimaces, making a gesture of mockery. The Poles, a group of arch-reactionaries, were then playing the role of “splendid isolation” and elevated national pride. The small priest from Suwalki tore off their actors' masks and “put them in the pillory” [exposed to ridicule], so that people could see, and see thoroughly, who the real Polish martyrs were.

The Jews were able to have their representative in the Duma even after [Russian Prime Minister Pyotr] Stolypin altered the famous Russian constitution thanks to the good relations between Jews and Lithuanians. Naftal (Naftali) Markovitch Frydman, our representative in Ponevezh [Panevezys] in the third and fourth Duma, was chosen by Jewish and Lithuanian votes as the result of a pact among Jewish and Lithuanian representatives. This meant a great deal then.

Incidentally, if Kovno, the active and energetic Kovno, was well represented in the Duma by the indefatigable and creative Leonti Moiseievitch Bramson and the modest, sincere lawyer, Abramson, the provincial Lithuanian Jewry was well represented by the quiet, dreamy Frydman in the last two Dumas. The impression on his face would remind me of the sadness of the Lithuanian fields. Lithuania was at the hour of its redemption…

Years and years again passed. Lithuanian waited for its hour. The First World War ended. Lithuanian Jewry recovered its breath together with Lithuania. Lithuania began to build. Kovno began to beautify itself. The new Lithuania was built in pain, always threatened by both Russia and Germany; but more than anyone, by Poland. However, in the midst of deep anxiety, in the midst of internal quarrels, personal and party struggles, the small nation was rapidly built. Trains, bridges and magnificent highways. With each year, another piece of land was pulled from the mud. Lithuania began to export the necessities of life all across Europe.

Jewish Lithuania also continued to build. Jews were represented in the government. For the first time, a Jewish ministry with Soloveitchik as Minister for Jewish Matters and the old community worker and lawyer, Rozenboim, as aide to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Here, not always and not everything went smoothly. Here and there it was possible to hear plenty of Jew-hating voices. However, Lithuanian Jews acquired courage. In Kovno, I happened to be sitting in the office of Soloveitchik, the Jewish Minister, hearing his telephone “conversation” with the Lithuanian War Minister about a group of Jewish arrestees somewhere in the province. Soloveitchik protested stormily, ordered, did not ask, but demanded as one who was fully entitled.

It was in the springtime of Lithuanian independence, when we demonstrated everywhere abroad–and with truth–the political respectability and loyalty of kleyn lita [Lithuania Minor or Prussian Lithuania] as a model for people to live well together.

In Copenhagen, Denmark, during the war and post-war years, I suddenly received an unexpected new hint about Lithuania. A year earlier, Age Meyer-Benedictsen, the well known Danish world traveler and ethnographic researcher, had published in Danish a fine book about Lithuania: The Awakening of a Nation. This book brought a mass Danish translation of Lithuanian folksongs (dainos), warm descriptions of Lithuanian folk life, studies of the Lithuanian folk character. I met Lithuanians in Benedictsen's house, among them the Savickis, one of the genuine Lithuanian diplomats in the nations of Scandinavia. I was associated with him for many years. Benedictsen, who died 10 years later, had visited many nations, lived in India, studied in Moscow, loved people from other nations and knew many languages, became very particularly interested, simply bewitched by kleyn lita. He wanted to acquaint the world with the Lithuanian people and their national aspirations. Lithuanian is not an easy language for a foreigner, but Benedictsen learned the language so well and lived in it so that he was able to make magnificent and numerous translations from the Lithuanian folk songs into German.

Thus it happened that I penetrated deeper and deeper into the Lithuanian phenomenon.

3

Almost 10 years later I was again in Lithuania. This time with Chayele Grober, my wife, for a long concert tour across the country. It was after the parliament, it was after the Jewish Ministerium. Ostensibly, there was friendship with the Soviet Union, but no relations with Poland. [Antanas] Smetona was in the Presidential Palace in Kovno. A fresh-baked bureaucracy with a military clique in the old, Russian fashion pulled the strings.

Jews answered the new situation. Something was oppressive and they were not calm and sure of themselves. But Jews are a people who do things, not only of spirit. They spoke a delicious Lithuanian and they supported Hebrew and Yiddish gymnazies [secondary schools]. Even in my Vilkomir of the past—a Hebrew theater-studio with the most modern performances—wasn't it just “like God in Odessa”! [Yiddish expression: Odessa was known for its free-spirited atmosphere]. Truly a strange mixture…

A State Theater was in the center of Kovno. Its manager was a former actor from the Moscow Art Theater, a good friend of mine. He advised me to give the first concert in the Yiddish Theater because the State Theater would cost too much. But, I did not agree–it did not matter, we would pay. We wanted a good stage and good lighting. And it was the State Theater.

The Kovno State Theater was really a splendor, with which the common people could be proud. The government gave money, as much as was needed. A beautiful stage was built with all of the newest specifications. First class drama was organized, a distinguished opera troupe, a good ballet, a magnificent, exemplary large choir and a fine, large orchestra with a fine Jewish conductor, [Michael Leo] Hofmekler. Day and night, all of the actors, singers, dancers and orchestra members studied, worked, truly created wonders. I could watch enough to satisfy myself. As if they felt that darks days would come and they must grab whatever they could, everything possible.

The first concert by Chayele Grober in the Kovno State Theater ended for us with an extraordinary surprise. During the concert, Zielinski, the director of the theater, came to Chayele Grober to thank her for playing well and invited her for a glass of tea with his dramatic troupe in the foyer of the theater after the concert. The foyer–a magnificent room, entirely furnished with traditional Lithuanian furniture.

During the tea, Zielinski talked about Chayele Grober's Hasidic melodies and explained to the actors about what a treasure of theater art, Hasidic gesture and Hasidic facial expressions represent.

They could not remain too late at this improvised banquet because after one at night, no one was supposed to be in the street; there was a state of war in the city. Afterward, we gave a series of large concerts in the theater, but the Lithuanian performances were also worth seeing. For their operas, they used such great painters as Dobzinski, for their drama performances such directors as Michail Czekow.

On a beautiful morning, we received a phone call from somewhere and I did not in any way hear what the name of the shtetl was. It sounded something like Mozeyki or Maczeyki. Later, I learned that this was the former Muravjovo. It was a long trip; we arrived at three in the morning, but the trouble was worth it, because it was worth finding in the nest, a Jewish gymnazie, a Jewish bank, 400 Jews at a concert, not a shtetl, but a real city.

After the concert, there was a banquet with a speaker. We did not believe our eyes: a first class Jewish intelligentsia, educated teachers, doctors, readers of Yiddish and Hebrew literature, Jews who had the Jewish future in mind, and so little of the usual vulgar banalities. The people knew that they were responsible for the Jewish community and needed to provide something on behalf of the community.

We met a new Jewish multitude in a new Vilkomir, as well as in Telz, in Plungian [Plunge], in Memel [Klaipeda], in Wilkowyszki [Vilkaviskis], in Kybart [Kybartai], again in Kovno, in Yanove [Jonava], in Shavel [Siauliai], in Ponevez [Panevezys], and again and again in the very small nests. We could barely cover the expenses of driving together with the keyboard player, with the double taxes and all the plagues of such concert giving, but it was all worth it because it was true enjoyment to see how Jewish culture was revived after the expulsion of the First World War.

Several times when we came back from the “expeditions” across the country and, in the house of Dr. [Mendel] Sudarski and his wife spoke about our meetings, the dear people smiled and did not completely understand our enthusiasm. It is not seen, when one is too close to one's fellowmen. They also do not see their fellowmen well. But for us, this was a revelation.

Such wonderful Jewish settlements still lived then. And how terrible–murder exterminated everyone. The few Jews, who through miracles survived all of the suffering and saved themselves–how dear they have to be to us now.

[Pages 1259-1264]

The First Strike of the Bristle Workers in Lithuania

by M. Ladsky

Translated by Gloria Berkenstat Freund

At that time, the working bristle workers also began to stir. The bristle workers represented an important component of the Jewish proletariat and approximately 1,000 of them were concentrated in Lithuania, particularly in Suwalkia– in the cities: Vilkovishk [Vilkaviškis], Kalvarija, Wierzbolowo [Virbalis], Neistat, Vishtinetz [Vištytis]. In addition to these, there were smaller groups of bristle workers in Ponevez [Panevežys], Kovna, Vilna and others.

The economic situation of the working masses was more than catastrophic. They worked without end. They would arrive at work during the early morning hours and ended work during the night and for all of this, the worker's reward was such that it was barely enough for him as a livelihood– amid the primitive conditions in which they lived during the 90s of the previous century [19^th century].

It was decided to send several agitators from the Vilna activist group, which consisted of people who played a leading role in the Bund and also in the All-Russian S.D. [Social Democratic] Party, to the Suwalki area in order to organize the bristle workers to struggle against the inhuman exploitation. In 1895, three bristle worker agitators came from Vilna to Vilkovishk where 400 bristle workers worked – Motl Akyn, Shye Zaks and Zalman Kugl. The first attempt was made to organize. It proceeded with difficulty, great difficulty because not only the older workers, but also the younger bristle workers looked at the organizers with suspicion. He did not know what they wanted of him. He also did not understand the significance of organizing. Actually, this bristle worker had other ambitions; he wanted only to become an artisan (a master craftsman, who would then be considered as a sort of boss) and could himself exploit. Until then he had been exploited–but he felt not the least wronged by this. The conservative idea that he needed to follow the paths of his father was as logical and expedient to him as the suggestion of the agitators to organize in the struggle for humane conditions. Therefore, the attempt to organize did not succeed and there were few workers who followed the call of the agitators.

Six months barely passed and two bristle workers again came to Vilkovishk from Vilna (May 1896)–Avraham Aleksandrovitch (from Homel) and Urtshik. Their purpose was to organize the workers to struggle for a 10-hour work day. In order to increase the success of carrying out the action among the bristle workers, each of them began to work in a brush factory. The campaign was easier there and in a short time they were successful in organizing 70 percent of the bristle workers. A trade treasury was then created. Each of the organized workers paid five kopekes a week. The money that was collected was supposed to be provided to the strikers.

Thus began the preparation for the first statshke (strike). It was decided to begin the strike against the factory of N.V. Vindzberg where 120 men worked. The decision was to carry out the first strike against this factory because it had been easier to organize there. Avraham Homler, the organizer, worked in this factory. He was a worker-organizer in the full sense of the word. A man of 30-some years of age, not of small stature, solid in his bearing, serious in his attitude toward the worker's interests. Because of this, he succeeded not only with the workers in the factory where he worked, but in general with the Vilkovishkers and other bristle workers from the Suwalki area. He had become a worker not long before. Earlier he was exclusively a yeshivah-bukher [student in a religious school], studied without cost, then came from the city of Homel (therefore, he was called “Homler”) to Vilna and became a worker. In Vilna he began to be interested immediately in the illegal revolutionary worker's party and took an active part in the secret circles. Later, Avraham Homler was one of the founders at the creation of the All-Russian Jewish Worker's “Bund.” This worker activist organized the first bristle workers strike.

Naturally, the second agitator, Urtshik, the bristle worker, did not stand aloof, although he worked in another factory. He also carried out strike organizing in his factory and, in general, among the Vilkovishk workers. In the factory in which Urtshik worked, it actually was not so simple for him to carry on organizing because the working element there was very difficult to organize. Despite this, he spent so much time that he succeeded in organizing a large number of them. In order for him to be able to organize the factory, so that they could not dismiss him because he did not yet know the trade well, others would do his work for him, place it at his workplace and, to the master craftsman, it would be Urtshik who had made it. Urtshik, the organizer, already had great influence over the workers. And it is no wonder. Urtshik possessed an extraordinary strength at quickly winning the sympathy of the worker. The bristle workers, who were still quite inexperienced, were impressed by Urtshik's appearance. Small in stature, with a head of long hair–a characteristic appearance for an agitator in that era–sturdy, dressed in a red Slavic blouse with trim, he would give a fiery speech to the working throng somewhere in a forest outside the city. After the gathering he would sit in the circle of his worker colleagues and sing workers' songs with them. The worker group would be particularly inspired by this worker song:

In the streets,
To the masses,
Freedom's spirit calls…

With such entertainments and intimate conversations, the planned strike came closer. At night on one of the hot July days of 1896, when all of the Vilkovishk bristle workers were more or less prepared, a gathering of workers from Vindzberg's factory was called in Stav (a swimming place near Vilkovishk).

Sixty to seventy workers took part, mostly young, and it was decided to start the strike for a 10-hour work day in the morning. In the morning, except for the master craftsmen and a few older workers, the remaining workers did not come. This was the first organized protest.

In general, the owners and the master craftsmen did not understand the character of it. The concepts of “organization” and “struggle” were still strange to them. If a worker had a demand–incidentally, they could not imagine what a worker could have as a demand–he would come to the owner or master craftsmen and negotiate. But a joint demand by the mass, they did not, in general, understand what that meant. It immediately became clear to them, that this was a statshke (strike), that they, the strikers, intended to carry on until their demands were met concerning a 10-hour work day.

But if those who provided work were not clear about the concept of statshke, it was already clear to the Czarist gendarmes and on the same day, when the strike began, arrests also began. 10-12 workers were arrested. This did not frighten the remaining strikers. They continued the strike. And if on the eve of the strike they did not yet understand the significance of a strike, the class differences–who supported their interests and who gave them work–it became clear after the meddling of the Czarist police. The bitterness of the strikers then grew substantially and this was for them the first experience of class struggle. This was a lesson not only for the strikers, but also for the others in Vilkovishk who did not strike, but who were preparing to do so. Certain bristle worker circles from the neighboring city, Neustadt [Naumiestis], thought differently. At the call of the owners who were being struck, strikebreakers immediately came from there [Neustadt]. Despite the fact that strikebreakers worked in the factory, the first organized, stubborn struggle of the striking workers forced the entrepreneur to give into the 10-hour work day after two weeks of striking. After this the 10-hour work day also was automatically brought into all factories in the Suwalk area.

The first successful strike was a colossal event for Jewish workers in general
and the bristle workers in particular. This strike also found an echoing repercussion in the columns of the Jewish workers' press. The successful strike received a great deal of space in the first edition of the periodical, yidisher arbeter [Jewish Worker]. Jewish workers in other lines of work, the tanners in the first rank, were encouraged by this, organized and began to carry on a struggle to better their condition.

For the bristle workers, the bristle workers strike was the first page of the calendar of struggle and so began passing page after page, struggle after struggle, until they reached an eight-hour work day and humane living conditions.

And thus the bristle workers in Lithuania were among the first who brought an eight-hour work day to Russia.

May it be recorded in history!

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