by Simona Simonavičė, simona@skrastas.lt  I skrastas.lt

One of the most remarkable members of the Šiauliai (Shavl) Jewish community in recent decades, Leiba Lipšic (1925-2002) would have celebrated his 90th birthday today [July 14, 2015]. The Jewish community and the local Aušra Museum held an event to celebrate the date. Those who knew Lipšic personally called him a walking encyclopedia to whose end it was impossible to read.

A Walking Encyclopedia

“Looking back on the past, I and the people who worked with Lipšic are sorry we didn’t use him to his full potential. He knew so much that it was impossible for us to comprehend it all, and we lost part of that legacy along with losing him,” Girsh Rafael, a resident of Šiauliai, Lithuania and a friend of Leiba Lipšic said.

Rafael first came from Telšiai (Tels) to Šiauliai for school, and later settled down there. The first time he met Lipšic was in December, 1988, when Sąjūdis, the Lithuanian independence movement, resolved the Šiauliai Jewish Community should be reconstituted as an official body. A council was elected from among the more than 200 people who assembled with that purpose in mind. The council included school and university teachers and construction workers. It also included the then-64-year-old Lipšic.

“I thought, well, a common sort of person, not very well known, where does he get this sort of authority to be nominated for the council?” Rafael recalled his first impressions.

He admits that viewed from the present time it almost seems unbelievable what a good memory, what a breadth of knowledge and what a command of accurate and correct facts Lipšic had.

“You could point a finger at a building and ask, whose house was this, and he’d say: this was a pharmacy here, here lived doctors… He was a walking encyclopedia,” Rafael said.

Lipšic kept the material he collected on various topics at home. If there was a matter of controversy or mystery, those involved could always come to him and he never refused to recall  history, he always did so gladly. Rafael noted Lipšic was one of the most remarkable Jewish historians of the Shavl region in the post-war period, and that now there are no such historians left.

Lipšic transferred much of his material to the National Memory Institute Yad Vashem Holocaust Victims and Heroes Commemorative Museum established in Israel.

Quick, Clever, Sensitive, Scrupulous

Rafael recalled the famous local historian was painstaking and scrupulous, highly conscientious and principled, very clever, mercurial and even vitriolic, but as quick to forgiveness as anger.

“I see it now before my eyes: he’s walking up with a canvas bag full of all sorts of material. He is putting it down on the table and pulling documents out, then straightens out his mustache a little and begins to work,” Rafael remembered. Despite a painful past, Lipšic was able to remain objective and to write without anger.

Lipšic married a Lithuanian woman in Šiauliai and had two sons with her. Later he divorced.

Concentration Camp Prisoner

Lipšic was born in Riga, Latvia on July 14, 1925. His father Mordukh Lipšic was head accountant and head of production at Chaim Frankl’s leather factory. His mother Ester Rabinovich was the principal of a private Jewish primary and middle school and a teacher. Lipšic attended the Jewish school and then the Šiauliai Boys’ Gymnasium, which he didn’t complete: World War II interrupted his high school studies.

In his memoirs published in the book “Šiaulių getas: kalinių sąrašai” [“Šiauliai Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners”] Lipšic remembers how his family’s happy and fine life was thrown into chaos one day when he, his parents and his younger brother were sent to the Šiauliai ghetto on August 15, 1941. The family lived there and worked at Chaim Frankl’s leather factory until the liquidation of the ghetto in July of 1944, when they were sent to the Stutthof concentration camp.

Later he and his father were sent to Dachau while his mother and brother remained at Stutthof. American soldiers liberated him and his father as they were being marched from Dachau towards Austria in May of 1945. His father survived to see liberation, but died soon afterward, and is buried in the town cemetery of the city of Dachau.

Leiba Lipšic returned to Lithuania alone, hoping against hope to find his mother and brother there, but learning instead they had died at Stutthof in the death march following the liquidation of the camp. In Lithuania he learned he had lost his family and all his relatives.

He left the concentration camp very ill and with ruined nerves. For a long time he stayed ill and was unable to work, and he often changed the jobs he did have. After he had healed somewhat he received training as a mechanic and worked for some thirty years as head mechanic and other duties on the Šiauliai-Panevėžys railroad.

Donated His Archive to a Museum

Despite his poor health Lipšic devoted his life to preserving the memory of his suffering and murdered people. He was one of the founders of the Šiauliai Jewish Community restored in 1989, was the chronicler of the community, a scholar of the history and culture of the Jews of Shaval and a frequent consultant to the local Aušra Museum.

The museum conserves the archive Lipšic compiled over many years and donated to the museum in 2002, called “The Murdered World of the Jews of Shavl, 1941-1944.”

The archive contains 24 files containing information collected on the history, culture, trade and social and economic life of the Jews of Šiauliai and Lithuania. The collection contains many testimonies in different languages about the Holocaust and life in the ghettos and concentration camps and information collected on those who saved Jews. The archive contains an abundance of rich material for researchers.

Commemoration of the 90th birthday of the Šiauliai ghetto inmate began at Donelaitis Cemetery where  Lipšic is buried in the city of Šiauliai at 12:30 P.M. on July 14. A special tribute to teh memory of  Lipšic took place at the location where the gate of the Šiauliai once stood at the intersection of Trakai and Ežeras streets at 12:45 P.M.

The Chaim Frankl Villa of the Aušra Museum featured readings of Lipšic’s letters, discussion of his biography and work and a film made by students from the Didždvaris Gymnasium in Šiauliai called “The Šiauliai Ghetto” containing Lipšic’s testimony.