Tag #116307 - Interview #78774 (Fania Brantsovskaya)

My maiden name is Joheles. It's an old Jewish surname and has a local Lithuanian coloring. My paternal grandfather, Velvl Joheles, was born in Vilnius in 1868. At that time Lithuania belonged to the Russian Empire. Jews constituted a big part of the population of Vilnius that consisted of Lithuanian, Russian and Polish people. Before World War II Vilnius was a center of Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe. There were over 100 synagogues in Vilnius, educational and prayer institutions, a charity fund, professional guilds, a Jewish hospital, an elderly people's home, a charity children's fund, a Jewish public school, a Jewish theater and choirs, a health organization, a labor association, a few schools and gymnasiums teaching in Yiddish and Hebrew. There were many Jewish craftsmen. They were hat makers, tailors, bronze workers, leather men, etc.