The systematic extermination of Jews in Jurbarkas continued from June to September 1941. On June 22, 1941, when the war between the USSR and Germany began, the town was located 24 km away in the border area of the Tilsit Gestapo. At a meeting held in the office of the burgomaster I. Hepner, it was decided that on July 3, 1941, in the afternoon, the first campaign of mass extermination would take place. The Jewish cemetery was designated as the execution site. The 40th Gestapo brigade arrived in the town. Together with the local police, they began gathering Jewish men. The police collected Jews in groups of 30 people. Empty wholesale warehouses were filled with people. Later, they were taken to the market square, where by about 1 p.m. there were already 300 Jews and several dozen Soviet activists. Due to the insufficient number, another 60 Jews were brought in, along with 3 women with children who did not want to part with their husbands. The column moved toward the cemetery. During this action, there were about 350 people at the cemetery; the column marched three abreast. Jews who had already been at the cemetery dug a long trench and then dug three more. When the column arrived, an order was given — those who were not digging had to break tree branches and camouflage the site from the road and the town. The shooting lasted four hours.

In modern history, the tragedy of the Jews of Jurbarkas has been reflected in the polemic between different groups of Lithuanian society: those who consider information about active participation in the extermination of Lithuania’s Jewish population as defamation of the national underground, and those who want to see and read the truth, no matter how bitter and terrible it may be.

In connection with the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War II on Lithuanian territory and the start of the total extermination of Lithuanian Jews, the Jurbarkas Regional Museum, with funds from the Culture Support Fund of the Ministry of Culture of Lithuania and the city’s municipal budget, commissioned the creation of a documentary film about the Jews who lived in this town before World War II. The film company “Filmų kopa” fulfilled the order, creating the documentary film “When Yiddish Was Heard in Jurbarkas”.

“Obelyai, Zarasai, Anykščiai, Tauragnai, Molėtai…” Somewhere far away, a choir sounds, and on the screen pass the names of Lithuanian towns and shtetls, engraved in Hebrew and Lithuanian on the stone walls of the Valley of Communities in the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem. The narrator’s voice quietly and sadly lists the names of towns and shtetls. What Lithuanian heart would not tremble with love and nostalgia at the sound of the familiar names of native places from childhood, where you were born and raised, where your relatives have lived for centuries! What heart of a Litvak — a Lithuanian Jew — would not tighten with nostalgia, sharp pain, and sorrow when recalling these names!.. For Jews, each town or shtetl name is a reminder of a ruined, neglected, and untended Jewish cemetery, of houses once built and forever abandoned during the Holocaust, but also — what is much worse — of long, 20-30 meter burial mounds near the shtetls or in forest clearings, mounds under which rest the remains of people who, before June 22, 1941, were full citizens of Lithuania, born, raised, and living in these very shtetls.

And on the screen is the documentary film about the life and death of the Jews of Jurbarkas “Kai apie Jurbarką skambėjo jidiš” (“When Yiddish Was Heard in Jurbarkas”). The narrator calmly and unhurriedly tells how and when Jews from the West came to Jurbarkas, how they obtained permission to live there, and how thoroughly and permanently they established their lives in the new place. The Jewish people are not nomads. Six centuries ago, they settled here and were confident that their descendants would live here for many generations.

The film’s footage flows in rhythm with the narration. Ordinary life flows peacefully: Jews were skilled craftsmen, merchants, established connections with the local population, streets appeared, the town grew, and Jews became an integral part of it. That’s how it seemed to them for six hundred years: they did not suspect that they lived on a volcano that could erupt. Reality turned out to be mercilessly cruel to the Jews. Who among them could imagine that one day all of them — from ancient elders to infants — would be mercilessly killed and buried by former neighbors, and the life of the town would go on as if nothing had happened, but without them?!

…The narrator reports: “Jurbarkas, conveniently located for trade and crafts, attracted Jews. What Lithuanian shtetl could do without Jews? Jurbarkas was no exception: with the participation of Jews, it turned into a real town. In the early 17th century, especially after Jurbarkas received Magdeburg rights, its Jewish community became numerous and influential. On September 9, 1642, Jews received a ‘Privilege’ and gained the right to enjoy all civil rights — to buy land plots and build houses on them.” City streets appeared, the main street — Kauno — was built, entire quarters grew, an extraordinarily beautiful wooden synagogue was built, and a Jewish cemetery appeared.

Before the viewer’s eyes passes the history of the town and its Jewish community. By the mid-19th century, there was no craft or specialty necessary for townspeople that Jews had not mastered. In 1918–1920, Jews selflessly participated in the struggle for Lithuania’s independence… A new episode of the film: on the territory of the ancient Jewish cemetery, viewers meet a young beautiful woman, Jurbarkas resident Rita Mažeikaitė. According to her, the mysterious world of the Jewish cemetery attracted her from childhood: she loved to come to this quiet corner of the town and read books in silence and solitude. After finishing school, she studied psychology at Vilnius University. One day she saw an announcement: Jews preparing to move to their historic homeland were invited to free Hebrew courses. And she, a Lithuanian who was not going anywhere from her native Jurbarkas, went to study Hebrew. She did not yet know why she needed Hebrew, but somehow she knew it was necessary and studied diligently.

Returning home, Rita tried to read inscriptions on at least one tombstone. And — she succeeded! Thus, her long-standing dream came true — to read what was written on the tombstones about those buried in this cemetery. She read brief stories of their lives on the tombstones as if they were pages of stone books. Then she decided to tidy up this old cemetery and restore the tombstone monuments. The work at the cemetery is vast, but Rita persistently carries it out. Why? Because this is the history of her town. “After all, these are not only Jewish monuments, they are also my monuments. If I cannot express my respect to those who built our town in any other way, then at least I will do it as I can,” Rita says. For many years she has been restoring the cemetery and tombstones, untouched by anyone’s hand since World War II. There are probably more than 220 such cemeteries in Lithuania, but Rita Mažeikaitė is the only person in Lithuania (and perhaps in all Europe) who selflessly devotes her free time to restoring an orphaned Jewish cemetery.

…Jurbarkas is a small town: Lithuanians, Jews — everything intertwined, mixed, merged. Now elderly educated people nostalgically recall that irretrievable pre-war time, “when Yiddish was heard in Jurbarkas.”

Native residents Aldona Ogorodnikova and Irena Černyavičienė remember the names of familiar Jews, their classmates, recalling details of their lives and relationships: Jews were friendly, always attentive and understanding to neighbors’ requests, lent money without requiring collateral or interest, came to help, and helped as much as they could. Elderly women recall that Jews spoke Lithuanian well and paid great attention to educating their children, striving for Jewish children to know the language of the people among whom they would live a long life from an early age, sparing no money for their education.

…Against the background of a song performed by the founder of Lithuanian pop music, Daniel Dolskis, views of pre-war Jurbarkas appear. In the documentary film, a series of group photographs of members of Jewish organizations, so fashionable in the pre-war twenties, pass by. Historical newsreels about the professional activities of Jews alternate with contemporary episodes, creating the effect of bringing events closer to the viewer.

…The theater shows a modern play about Jews who once lived here… Passions boil on stage — actors perform brilliantly, Lithuanian is spoken on stage because, as is known, the Jewish language died out 70 years ago; it was killed in July 1941 in shooting pits soaked with warm blood. This language turned into moans and cries of inhuman despair, pain, and suffering of people already shot but not yet dead. Yiddish ceased to be heard in Jurbarkas in the summer of 1941 because it was the language of an innocently killed, mercilessly torn-apart people who had lived in Lithuania for centuries, harming no one…

The main female role in the play is played by actress Liana Kriauciūnienė. She was born when there were no longer Jews in Jurbarkas. Liana talks about how she worked on her role: how much love for this Jewish girl, how much spiritual purity and understanding the actress put into the role she plays… Actor Alvidas Šimaitis saw Jews in his childhood and warmly talks about how he remembered them. The play’s director Danutė Samienė explains what moved her about the play about Jews and how she worked on its production.

Teacher and now pensioner Vladas Andrikis recalls how on Friday evenings before the war, Jews living nearby asked him, then still a schoolboy, to light the Sabbath candle and always paid him 5 cents for it — a real fortune for a boy at that time. From those distant childhood years, he also remembers how many residents — both Lithuanians and Jews — threw coins into a pit dug for the foundation of the city monument.

Film frame: Monument to the Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas the Great (sculptor Vincas Grybas)

Soon, as if from the coins thrown into the ground, a magnificent monument to Vytautas the Great grew on this site, becoming a classic work of Lithuanian art. Its creator — the famous Lithuanian sculptor Vincas Grybas — was among the first 100 Lithuanians and more than 200 Jews who were shot by “their own” — local killers — under the supervision of Nazi commanders. Among those shot was Andrikis’s brother.

Young people turned into brutal killers did not understand that they were shooting not only living people — Jews and Lithuanians — but also their own future, the future of their children, shooting their country and its future. Having destroyed people, they looted the property and houses of Jews, not yet knowing that the stolen property would bring happiness neither to themselves nor to their children…

At the 18th minute of the film, a large episode of historical newsreel footage passes: to the sounds of triumphant marches, Nazi troops enter the town, and local residents joyfully greet them with flowers. The streets are decorated with tricolor Lithuanian and Nazi flags. After 1–2 days, Lithuanian flags will disappear for 48 years. This was the case in Jurbarkas, as it was throughout Lithuania.

Elderly viewers, not poisoned by anti-Semitic propaganda, familiar with Lithuania’s history not from modern history textbooks but from personal experience, honest stories of their parents, or conscientious historical research, know: the uprising against Soviet power was prepared by the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), founded under the supervision of Nazi intelligence organizations in Berlin. Local LAF detachments in Lithuania clandestinely distributed leaflets calling to greet the German army with dignity.

With an appeal to the population of Lithuania on behalf of the Provisional Government of Lithuania, proclaimed on June 23, 1941, headed by Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis, a government representative, Ljonas Prapolionis, addressed the citizens of Lithuania via the Kaunas radio.

The current Jurbarkas administration’s concern about the film “When Yiddish Was Heard in Jurbarkas” is by no means due to the professional qualities of the film. Saulius Beržinis is one of the most renowned contemporary documentary filmmakers in Lithuania, author of about 40 films, laureate of national and international awards, his name is on the list of forty filmmakers whose work contributed to the destruction of the Soviet empire; in 2004, he was awarded the title of Tolerant Person of the Year. Of course, even the most talented people have failures, but in this case, it is not about the creative or professional quality of the film.

Authorities demand that the director interpret certain moments related to the history of Lithuania from 1939 to 1990 as primitively and inaccurately as it is done in school history textbooks, which have repeatedly been subjected to serious unfavorable criticism. The participation of “white armbanders,” as well as other Nazi collaborators in the extermination of Lithuania’s Jewish population, is among those issues that are barely mentioned in school textbooks, only briefly and incidentally. In the historical research of some Lithuanian historians, there are also many distortions in covering the issue of local population participation in the “final solution of the Jewish question.” The ruling elite’s desire to justify the collaboration of a known part of the Lithuanian population with the Nazi regime during World War II is clearly manifested in internal politics.

Jurbarkas residents A. Ogorodnikova and I. Černyavičienė recall how Nazis grabbed a Jewish boy and girl on the street and forced them to show houses where Jews lived. Nazis walked the streets and painted six-pointed stars on Jewish houses with oil paint. They painted the shutters on both the outside and inside so that it would always be visible (whether the shutters were open or closed) that Jews lived in that house. The women’s story is combined with historical newsreel footage. Probably, some kind of tragedy similar to the “Kristallnacht” also took place in Jurbarkas…

Both women recall with bitterness the terrible humiliations suffered by Jurbarkas Jews: they were forced, including elderly people and old men, to dance, run, jump. Overseers whipped them with whips, drove them into water with clothes on, forced them to destroy a masterpiece of Lithuanian wooden architecture — the synagogue built in 1790.

…Against the background of the tragic Jewish song “Shtiler, shtiler, lomir shvaygn…” (“Quiet, quiet, let’s be silent…”), a Soviet-era photograph appears on the screen: six Jews stand near the obelisk at the execution site. Here, 1,222 Jews of Jurbarkas, who lived in this town, were killed. These six standing near the monument are the surviving Jews.

The song “Shtiler, shtiler” connects the visual series — the memorial obelisk in Jurbarkas with the Wall of Honor at the world-famous National Institute of the Memory of the Victims of Nazism and Heroes of the Resistance Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. On the Wall of Honor, carved into the rock, are 916 names of Lithuanian Righteous Among the Nations — people who risked their own lives and the lives of their loved ones during the war to save Jews from inevitable death. Lithuanian names and surnames pass before the viewers’ eyes: Pyatronėlė and Jonas Zaronas, Pyatronėlė and Bronys Bialackas, Pyatronėlė, Ona, Dominikas and Pranas Toliušas, Jonas Gudavičius, Pranas Švestis, Bronislava and Izidorius Paulauskas… In some cases, the names and surnames are accompanied by photographs of the rescuers of Jews; in some cases, only surnames are present, and photographs are missing.

One could speak at length and in great detail about S. Beržinis’s documentary film, which strictly and consistently, relying on historical documents, photographs, historical and contemporary newsreels, memories, and testimonies of contemporaries, tells about the time when Yiddish was heard in Jurbarkas. The film lasts about 40 minutes, evoking difficult feelings and thoughts about tragic pages of Lithuania’s history and its present day. It contains neither unnecessary details nor tiresome verbosity.

After watching the film, the head of the culture department, Daura Gedraitienė, citing the opinion of members of the commission for shaping the city’s image (it turns out such commissions even exist!), with the characteristic brusqueness of some officials, resolutely stated: “We bought a film, but we got a pig in a poke.”

If Gedraitienė wanted to insult the director, she fully succeeded. But this was only the beginning. Then came an assessment more like an accusatory verdict: “The film not only does not stimulate love for Lithuania but also decisively contradicts historical truth.” It is surprising: how do officials know the only correct “historical truth”? Who and where sends them circulars about this “historical truth” that they zealously guard and spread?

In the recent past, when Lithuania was still part of the USSR, such phrases as “the film does not foster love for the Motherland,” “the film distorts the historical truth about Soviet reality,” “the film slanders Soviet power and Soviet people building communism,” etc., could be heard in any administrative institution from the collective farm chairman and minister of culture to the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. At that time, there were many officials called “art critics in civilian clothes,” that is, employees of state security agencies, party and Soviet overseers of creative people. They were not particularly polite with artists: if, in their opinion, the film “distorted historical truth,” “slandered Soviet people — builders of communism,” etc., the film was either destroyed or, at best, shelved as banned from screening. The fate of creators of such films was sad: they were subjected to harsh repressions or deprived of the opportunity to work professionally for many years.

How did it happen that in today’s independent Lithuania, politicians and administrators interfere in the work of historians, determine how to evaluate certain historical documents, periods, events, and the activities of historical figures? Sometimes officials, overstepping their authority, not only commission works of art but also arrogate to themselves the right to judge them on behalf of the people.

Andrikis testifies from the screen: “The Jurbarkas killing squad was created from former ‘white armbanders,’ šauliai (‘Union of Šauliai’ — a paramilitary organization in pre-war Lithuania), and policemen, commanded by physical education teacher Mikolas Levickas, my former teacher. Policemen, šauliai, and ‘white armbanders,’ led by M. Levickas, caught Jews and others doomed to death, arrested and killed them. There were Romka Levickas and his second brother, šaulys Vincas Ausiukaitis, Engeleika, Pranas Bakus, Almonaitis, policeman Krengelis, Urbonas, Krisiunas, Marcinkus, Nivis, and others. And the Hitlerites did not shoot there anymore; they only filmed and photographed, but did not participate themselves,” says 88-year-old city resident V. Andrikis, “there Lithuanians were in charge.”

Andrikis’s participation in the film, a former communist in Soviet times, especially irritates representatives of the Jurbarkas administration. They somehow think that V. Andrikis names the murderers’ surnames in a “prosecutor’s tone.” Apparently, one should speak about the murderers in some other tone.

“The Lithuanian people in this film are called murderers of Jews (žydšaudžiais). Not directly, but by naming those who shot by their surnames, although at the same time historical documents show that neither the Jurbarkas police nor the Jurbarkas šauliai organized the shooting, but the SS unit stationed in Tauragė. It was German work. It was the work of the Germans. Since the film is made with state money, showing it to the audience while it becomes an anti-state film, in my opinion, should not be allowed,” said D. Gedraitienė.

Although the film does not accuse the Lithuanian people of anything or call them murderers of Jews, the head of the culture department uses a hackneyed trick: she tries to hide specific executioners, who have individual names and surnames, behind the entire Lithuanian people.

Hearing that he was called the author of an anti-state film, S. Beržinis stated that all the names mentioned in the film were verified by documents from the Special Archive of Lithuania and published scientific works. And to exclude further discussions on this topic, he placed precise textual references to scientific works and archival documents on the background of the moving film frames, where the surnames of those named by V. Andrikis are recorded.

After watching the film, the employee of the Regional Museum, Adelė Meizeraitė, said: “Whether someone likes it or not, we will keep this film, like other exhibits. Museum workers do not belong to any party and do not carry out party orders. If we continue to be accused of commissioning a film directed against Lithuania, we will appeal to the Ministry of Culture regarding the artistic evaluation of the film.”

The words of the museum employee sound like the professional dignity of a person who knows and loves her profession — to acquaint museum visitors with the history of their native town and its people who built the town for centuries. Into this country, into this town came the Nazis, awakening cruel instincts in thousands of Mikolas Levickases, who turned into monsters that inflicted irreparable damage on Jews, their homeland, and their people. How terrible it is that defenders of these monsters appear in human guise!

And one wants to say many kind words to the museum workers for the fact that the film “When Yiddish Was Heard in Jurbarkas” does not gather archival dust, for showing it to the audience for whom it was created, and for courageously conducting educational work among the residents of Jurbarkas. It is high time to tell people the truth about the tragedy that happened on Lithuanian soil and to name the local executors of Hitler’s plans for the “final solution of the Jewish question” by name.

On July 3, the day of the shooting of 1,222 Jews of Jurbarkas, museum workers want to show this film all day — in memory of the town’s residents who died a martyr’s death.

What next? Will the public of the town and Lithuania continue to blame foreigners and the Jews themselves for the destruction of Lithuania’s Jewish community, or will it correctly understand the bitter but necessary truth of history for the country and the people, which until now has not only been silenced but also embellished, turning murderers into martyrs and heroes?

The entire press and internet publications of Jurbarkas took part in the debates about Beržinis’s film. The republican newspaper Lietuvos rytas published an article by Erika Baronaite titled “Bloody Jewish History — Like Salt on Wounds.” None of the articles contain any professional claims against the film’s creators.

Many reader comments appeared in Jurbarkas internet publications, but the article by E. Baronaite caused the greatest number of comments. One of them, comment number 537, signed by the name “Rasa,” is worth quoting: “I sincerely pity those commentators who think Beržinis has slandered Lithuania. It is you with your stupid comments who slander it. The director showed only facts in his film. Isn’t it a fact that some Lithuanians voluntarily participated in the murder of Jews? Instead of recognizing this cruel fact and condemning the criminals, you look for excuses for them. Because some Jews served in the NKVD, should their children have died? Were there no Lithuanians or Russians in the NKVD? So, according to you, should the heads of Lithuanian and Russian children have been smashed with rifle butts? Wake up. Let’s finally be a conscious nation that condemns its scoundrels and is proud of its heroes.”

Sources:

https://defendinghistory.com/фильм-о-юрбаркасе-в-котором-давно-не-зв/36656

http://holocaustatlas.lt/EN/#a_atlas/search//page/7/item/65/