This past weekend I checked out my European Jewish roots in Latvia/Lithuania (V LONG! Lots of pics)
I was born in 1973 - so now I am 46 years old. I lived in Westchester County north of New York City as a kid, went to college in upstate NYC and grad school in Los Angeles.
I never identified as anything but American really, but my father's parents were both directly from Ireland (but met in NYC and married in 1917). My mother's side of the family was Jewish and all 4 great grandparents on her side were the ones who immigrated to the United States. They all died before I was born (including my father's parents), so I had no connection to the countries they came from and both of my grandparents on my mother's side were born in the US. As far as I can tell, only my mother's mother's father had much religion - the rest just focused on surviving as poor immigrants in the US (not so different for my father's parents - they were even poorer when they settled into the Bronx).
As such, when I was 6 years old and the neighbor's kids asked if I believed in god, I was confused. They told me what it was - I said I don't buy it. They then said that I would go to a terrible place called hell. I thought that sucked. I banned religion from that day forward. Also, my brain just doesn't work that way. I'm ultra-analytical (PhD Algebraic Geometry) and on a scale from 0-10 where 0 is religious fundamentalist and 10 is pure scientist, I rate close to a 10.
So, I went on with my life - always aware that I had Jewish roots, but with not much more than a high school level academic knowledge of what happened in Europe to the Jewish people. We all know awful things happened of course. I never understood why the Jews were hated. They seem just like everyone else as far as I could tell - probably because I only knew secular Jews and non-orthodox Jews - and there were many in the NY area. The Ultra-Orthodox and the hardcore Hasidic are still very strange to me - much like the Christian fundamentalists are very strange to me. The one difference that I observe from a distance is that the highly religious Jews seemed more analytical about their faith and they ask lots of questions and try very hard to understand why their belief is what it is - very intellectual and philosophical. On the Christian side, maybe this exists too, but it seems more like there is a lot of "Believe or else you go to hell!"
Anyway, I just took a new job. My first big assignment was to work in the Warsaw office for 5 weeks and the Kiev office for a week (As of today, this is my last week in the Warsaw office). On the first weekend, I took a train to Krakow in southwestern Poland. Krakow is a beautiful city and the most interesting for tourists. I saw one of the first UNESCO world heritage sites there the Wieliczka salt mine https://www.wieliczka-saltmine.com/ - incredible place to visit. Down under the earth there were many sculptures made with the salt. One sculpture was of King Casimir III the Great of Poland who strongly welcomed Jews to Poland with full citizenship rights. I never knew why so many Jews were in Poland before Hitler - this was probably a very key reason I imagined.
Of course, much darker things also happened near Krakow. Oświęcim is an hour away - better known, of course, by its German name, Auschwitz. This was my chance to learn more about the Holocaust. I took it. I went to the death camp. There were many visitors of course. The tour guide took us through most of the Auschwitz camp. Some of the buildings, of course, are museums and they have various large photographs.
Two photographs stood out to me.
One showed Jews after getting off the deportation train. They were greeted by officers and also by fake prisoners wearing their fake prisoner clothes - these fake prisoners would tell them "everything is going to be fine", "the food is good", "don't worry, life is good here." All this while they were being herded to the selection process where those not fit to be slaves were immediately sent to the gas chambers (about 80% of the arrivals were gassed immediately). I looked carefully at these arrivals - their faces. I wanted to see who they were - I don't want them to be statistics anymore. An old couple in the picture looked like they could be my grandparents - no doubt they were gassed right away.
The second picture was a large one with a few mothers walking with their children entitled "On the way to death." They don't know it yet, but they are about to be gassed in a few minutes.
I then did the second part of the tour that took us to Birkenau where the gassing occurred. The Nazis blew up the gas chambers to try to cover their tracks as the Allied Forces closed in - but the ruins remain. I saw it. The exact location where this all happened. Surreal.
Then my wife and son came to Poland for a couple weeks so they do not miss me too much while I'm away (missed 4 days of school - the Easter holiday week helped). We took the 4 day Easter weekend to visit Vienna - a city on my wife's bucket list. We also checked Bratislava for kicks - Slovakia is a new country to add to my collection! Then they went home the weekend before the last. On the last full day in Warsaw, my wife didn't feel well, so I went to the Warsaw Uprising Museum with my 6 year old son. It was very interesting, but my son is six, so I had to rush through and I only got a superficial look - I promised to take him to a mall that had a huge trampoline, so I left due to his nagging 
. The Uprising Museum is well worth a trip (sans six year olds). The cruelty inflicted on Warsaw as a result of the uprising was unbelievable. The murders were staggering and the city laid to waste - the old town of Warsaw is a mere reconstruction - it was decimated.
One day at my office (which is a block from the uprising museum by total coincidence), I went out for lunch and walked past a wall I had seen a few times, but never stopped to look at. One day I looked and this is what I saw:
I walked back to my hotel as I did every day. I now looked more carefully and here is what I noticed (though these were behind gates):
This all really struck me.
Now my family had gone back to NYC. While Vienna was on my wife's bucket list, Riga, Latvia is definitely not on it and that is only an hour away by plane. So, I booked a plane ticket there last week for Friday and I just got back yesterday. This is where my Great grandmother (on my mother's father's side came from) - they left around 1894 - six years after her father died - not sure why they left, but that could be the reason they needed to seek a new life. They arrived in Scotland where they lived for 10 years or so before moving to NYC in the latter part of the nineteen aughts. My Great Grandmother, I am told, had a strong Scottish accent! My little brother, it turns out, has done a lot of family research. Through him, I met distant cousins on a Facebook group dedicated to the descendants of my great grandmother's father. Someone else there told me the address they lived at. The street name does not exist in Riga, but I think I found the new name and location. The number does not exist, but I can guess where it is. It doesn't look like much and it is in a not so nice part of Riga, but this is it:
Part of the reason, I think my guess that this is the street is because part of this street dipped inside of where the Nazis installed the Ghetto walls when they arrived in 1941. They put the walls where the Jews already lived. It is a good thing my family left when they did. The Jews of Latvia were utterly devastated. The Rumbula massacre was one of the worst atrocities of the war - almost as bad as Babi Yar. 25,000 men, women, children executed by guns at short range on November 30 and December 8, 1941. One family member on the Facebook group had research done in Latvia that he paid for. The researcher said records with our family's name went dark after 1941 - no doubt they were all killed - very distant cousins of course, but I wonder who they would have been. It is a near certainty that I have no relations from this family line in Latvia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumbula_massacre
Friedrich Jeckeln's face at the link is truly the face of evil - he also was responsible for Babi Yar.
Inside the walls, the remains of the central Synagogue exist:
Rock with 1941 inscribed
Synagogue remnant
Monument to rescuer
My little brother also told me that our other great grandparents were from Zagare, Lithuania about 90 minutes south of Riga. I hired a driver for the day and he took me there (and a few other places - I also visited the Hill of Crosses nearby in Lithuania and Rundale Palace in Latvia). I did not know what to expect.
When we arrived in Zagare just over the border in Lithuania, we saw a sign for a Jewish cemetery up a dirt road. So my driver took me up the road to take a look. It was not a cemetery - it was actually the location of a slaughter that had occurred - Nazis killing 3000 Jews. It still had not struck me that this was the killing of my great-grandparents' hometown.
There are Shermans in my family, but it is a distant part of the Riga branch - who knows though - maybe this is a relation.
This must be the synagogue that my Great grandparents used.
Zagare Synagogue
The local town square in this sleepy little town:
Zagare Town Square
Then I stumbled upon the Zagare Nazi Story - the 3000 was from my relative's town and anyone else I was related to that did not immigrate almost certainly perished on October 2, 1941. There is a bit of a glare, but if you try a little hard you can read:
"For hundreds of years Zagare (in Yiddish Zhager) had been home to a vibrant Jewish community. Zhager had many Jewish shops and was a center of commerce for merchants from here and a range of other towns. Many of their shops surrounded this square. Zhager was also famous for its many Hebrew scholars, the "Learned of Zhager." German military occupiers and some Lithuanian collaborators brought the region's Jewish men, women, and children to this square on October 2, 1941. Shooting and killing of the entire Jewish community of Zhager began here and continued in the forests nearby. About 3,000 Jewish citizens were killed."
We went to the Hill of Crosses to have a 30 minute look. Then, we went on to a small town called Zeimelis, another border town in Lithuania next to Latvia. My little brother said My great grandfather had a sister whose granddaughter got married and settled in Zeimelis and had two daughters. All four were killed on August 8, 1941 along with 160 others by guns. My brother showed me the family tree he created - photos of this family are on it. The only pictures I am aware of with relatives killed by Nazis - my family was truly lucky to leave in the late 1890s/early 1900s.
Zeimelis sign
Zeimelis memorial
I explored Riga a lot for the remainder of the weekend. There is a beautiful old town in the center - truly. I also went to Latvia's war museum. The whole country truly suffered greatly in both WWI and WWII - not good to be in the middle of Russia and Germany to say the least.
My five week stay in Warsaw is coming to a close. This is a picture of my 6 year old son and I in front of our Hotel in Warsaw from 10 days ago on the day he flew back to NYC. He is half Japanese, a quarter Irish, and a quarter Jewish! In the US, we are diverse, which is one of our great strengths! Those who do not realize this, I sure hope they learn. I am always hopeful and optimistic - maybe too much so.
Thanks for reading. I will be very surprised if you got this far
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So hard to believe something so awful happened at a place that looks so clean, picturesque and inhabited. It is very important that we remember, or if we never learned of it to learn about it now.
Teach our children as you are doing.
