by Grant Gochin
Many South African Jews are descended from an immigration wave from Lithuania in the 1920s. Our grandparents seldom explained the context; here it is.
During World War 1 when the current territory of Lithuania was part of Russia, the Tsarist army conducted a mass ethnic cleansing of Jews. During that period, especially in the spring of 1915, a number of Lithuanians took an active part in murdering old Jewish men, women, and even children, and plundering Jewish assets. Lithuania claims the Russians were entirely responsible for the actions of ethnic Lithuanians. Lithuanians retained the stolen Jewish property.
Betrayal after betrayal followed and Jews began to leave for greener pastures. It was the lesser-educated and unemployed Jews who left Lithuania, while the intelligentsia stayed on, hoping life would improve. Instead, they were slaughtered.
The world knows of the genocide perpetrated in Lithuania in 1941 in which Jonas Noreika was responsible for the murder of about 14,500 out of the 200,000 murder victims (including my own family). The sharing of Jewish property was widespread and once again Lithuanians were enriched by Jewish property.