Jews of Lithuania and Latvia

Jews of Lithuania and Latvia
Author: Keith W. Kaye
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2011
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1463420765

Discovery to Diaspora is a fascinating family journey which breathes life into the times of Jews in Lithuania and Latvia. The Jewish roots in the Baltic Sea region are rife with dualities. In one sense, the region is a beautiful coastal area with large sandy beaches and busy ports. Yet, these same attractions have fraught the region with war and conflict. It is here where the Graudan Family was established. It was also the site in which German Nazis and Latvian collaborators mass murdered thousands of Jews during WWII, including some of the Graudans, (the local population numbered about 7,000 before the war and yet less than 30 Jews remained after the war). Others in the family, through marriage, and the foresight of early emigration survived. Through their individual stories we see their descendents enriching the world with their skills, love, and compassion for life. With the help of genealogy reports, published works, public records, memoirs, journals, diaries, notes, interviews, and personal stories, Keith W Kaye develops a holistic blueprint of Jewish life and times of the Graudan family from the eighteenth to mid twentieth century. Steeped in rich ancestry and history, the personal stories allow the reader to travel to the Baltic and experience past life there in a firsthand way. A vivid picture of Jewish life in Lithuania and in Latvia evolves as the history, politics, and people of the region are explored. Jews of Lithuania and Latvia: The Graudans is also an important contribution to current scholarship of Baltic region Jewry. Along the way, Keith shares his own techniques for discovering the historical and familial facts, his unexpected and enlightening encounters, and his exciting exploration into the depths of his family history.

The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews

The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews
Author: Alvydas Nikžentaitis
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2004
Genre: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
ISBN: 9789042008502

The Lithuanian Jews, Litvaks, played an important and unique role not only within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but in a wider context of Jewish life and culture in Eastern Europe, too. The changing world around them at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first decades of the twentieth had a profound impact not only on the Jewish communities, but also on a parallel world of the "others," that is, those who lived with them side by side. Exploring and demonstrating this development from various angles is one of the themes and objectives of this book. Another is the analysis of the Shoah, which ended the centuries of Jewish culture in Lithuania: a world of its own had vanished within months. This book, therefore, "recalls" that vanished world. In doing so, it sheds new light on what has been lost. The papers presented in this collection were delivered at the international conferences in Nida (1997) and Telsiai (2001), Lithuania. Participants came from Israel, the USA, Great Britain, Poland, Russia, Belarus, Germany, and Lithuania.

The Case for Latvia

The Case for Latvia
Author: Jukka Rislakki
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9042024240

What do we know about Latvia and the Latvians? A Baltic (not Balkan) nation that emerged from fifty years under the Soviet Union - interrupted by a brief but brutal Nazi-German occupation and a devastating war - now a member of the European Union and NATO. Yes, but what else? Relentless accusations keep appearing, especially in Russian media, often repeated in the West: "Latvian soldiers single-handedly saved Lenin's revolution in 1917", "Latvians killed Tsar Nikolai II and the Royal family", "Latvia was a thoroughly anti-Semitic country and Latvians started killing Jews even before the Germans arrived in 1941", "Nazi revival is rampant in today's Latvia", "The Russian minority is persecuted in Latvia. . ." True, false or in-between? The Finnish journalist and author Jukka Rislakki examines charges like these and provides an outline of Latvia's recent history while attempting to separate documented historical fact from misinformation and deliberate disinformation. His analysis helps to explain why the Baltic States (population 7 million) consistently top the enemy lists in public opinion polls of Russia (143 million). His knowledge of the Baltic languages allows him to make use of local sources and up-to-date historical research. He is a former Baltic States correspondent for Finland's largest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and the author of several books on Finnish and Latvian history. As a neutral, experienced and often critical observer, Rislakki is uniquely qualified for the task of separating truth from fiction.

Protecting Our Litvak Heritage

Protecting Our Litvak Heritage
Author: Josef Rosin
Publisher: Jewishgen.Incorporated
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN:

Noted historian Rosin presents the history of 50 Jewish towns in Lithuania, providing information about the founding of the settlements, their development into vibrant communities, and their ultimate destruction in the Shoah (Holocaust).

Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present

Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present
Author: Benjamin Hary
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 657
Release: 2018-11-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 150150455X

This book offers sociological and structural descriptions of language varieties used in over 2 dozen Jewish communities around the world, along with synthesizing and theoretical chapters. Language descriptions focus on historical development, contemporary use, regional and social variation, structural features, and Hebrew/Aramaic loanwords. The book covers commonly researched language varieties, like Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, and Judeo-Arabic, as well as less commonly researched ones, like Judeo-Tat, Jewish Swedish, and Hebraized Amharic in Israel today.

Joining Hitler's Crusade

Joining Hitler's Crusade
Author: David Stahel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316510344

A ground-breaking study that looks at why European nations sent troops to take part in Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.

The Last Million

The Last Million
Author: David Nasaw
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 673
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 0143110993

From bestselling author David Nasaw, a sweeping new history of the one million refugees left behind in Germany after WWII In May 1945, after German forces surrendered to the Allied powers, millions of concentration camp survivors, POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and Nazi collaborators were left behind in Germany, a nation in ruins. British and American soldiers attempted to repatriate the refugees, but more than a million displaced persons remained in Germany: Jews, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and other Eastern Europeans who refused to go home or had no homes to return to. Most would eventually be resettled in lands suffering from postwar labor shortages, but no nation, including the United States, was willing to accept more than a handful of the 200,000 to 250,000 Jewish men, women, and children who remained trapped in Germany. When in June, 1948, the United States Congress passed legislation permitting the immigration of displaced persons, visas were granted to sizable numbers of war criminals and Nazi collaborators, but denied to 90% of the Jewish displaced persons. A masterwork from acclaimed historian David Nasaw, The Last Million tells the gripping but until now hidden story of postwar displacement and statelessness and of the Last Million, as they crossed from a broken past into an unknowable future, carrying with them their wounds, their fears, their hope, and their secrets. Here for the first time, Nasaw illuminates their incredible history and shows us how it is our history as well.

Lithuanian Jewish Culture

Lithuanian Jewish Culture
Author: Dovid Katz
Publisher: Art Stock Books Limited
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: Jews
ISBN: 9789639776517

"Dovid Katz's monumental Lithuanian Jewish Culture is the most comprehensive work ever to appear in English on the cultural, linguistic and spiritual worlds of the Litvaks. The Litvaks are the Jews hailing from the lands of the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its successor modern states - Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, and parts of northern Ukraine and northeastern Poland. This huge folio volume provides an introduction to Jewish history and culture starting with antiquity and leading methodically to the rise of Lithuanian Jewry some seven centuries ago." --Book Jacket.

The Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386-1795

The Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386-1795
Author: Daniel Z. Stone
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2014-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0295803622

For four centuries, the Polish�Lithuanian state encompassed a major geographic region comparable to present-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Estonia, and Romania. Governed by a constitutional monarchy that offered the numerous nobility extensive civil and political rights, it enjoyed unusual domestic tranquility, for its military strength kept most enemies at bay until the mid-seventeenth century and the country generally avoided civil wars. Selling grain and timber to western Europe helped make it exceptionally wealthy for much of the period. The Polish�Lithuanian State, 1386�1795 is the first account in English devoted specifically to this important era. It takes a regional rather than a national approach, considering the internal development of the Ukrainian, Jewish, Lithuanian, and Prussian German nations that coexisted with the Poles in this multinational state. Presenting Jewish history also clarifies urban history, because Jews lived in the unincorporated "private cities" and suburbs, which historians have overlooked in favor of incorporated "royal cities." In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the private cities and suburbs often thrived while the inner cities decayed. The book also traces the institutional development of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland�Lithuania, one of the few European states to escape bloody religious conflict during the Reformation and Counter Reformation. Both seasoned historians and general readers will appreciate the many excellent brief biographies that advance the narrative and illuminate the subject matter of this comprehensive and absorbing volume.