by Dovid Katz

We have this week made available two more videos from late 1990s expeditions to record the language, memories and world view of the last Yiddish-speaking Litvaks in Belarus. These videos are of return trips in 1998 to friends made in previous years, this time accompanied by the famed Lithuanian documentary film maker and Holocaust educator Saulius Beržinis, founder of the Independent Holocaust Archive of Lithuania.

One video is of the famous Litvak Yiddish author, Hirsh Reles (1913—2004), a native of Tsháshnik (Časniki, northeastern Belarus). Speaking in his apartment in Minsk, he talks about his father, Leybe, of Kovno (Kaunas) who himself dreamt of becoming a writer and moved to Vilna for that purpose. When things didn’t work out, he relocated northeastward to Tsháshnik, where he worked as a teacher, and was the one and only misnáged (non-hosed, Litvak in the popular religious sense) in town. He was trusted to read the Torah in the synagogue (it’s the same for both) but not to lead in prayers, because there are differences between the Litvak and Hasidic rites (even today here in Vilnius…).

The second is a brief compilation of revisits to the last shtetl (small town) Litvaks in western Belarus, including The friends I was re-visiting were in almost every case the last Jew in her or his shtetl. This selection includes brief clips with the last elderly Jews of Radashkóvits (Radáshkevits), Smólevitsh, Rádin, Smargón, Óshmene, Mir and Amdúr. Details on the people who appear will be added in due course, they are the heroes of a book of memoirs in progress.

All have long since passed away…

At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOpE0O0BuuM&feature=youtu.be

At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Pzx_-DuyY&feature=youtu.be