Travel

Centropa in Latvia

95,000 Jews lived in pre-Holocaust Latvia and the majority was murdered by the Nazis and their local accomplices. From 1944 until 1991, Latvia was subsumed into the Soviet Union, and over the following decades, the Jewish community did not exist.

After Latvia's liberation, the community re-formed itself, and if there are around 12,000 Jews in the country today, the majority are Jews who had been born in the Soviet Union and emigrated to Latvia during the Communist decades.

Except in a very few cases, Centropa made it a point to interview only those Jews who had been born in the Latvia in the years preceding the Holocaust.

In Latvia, nearly all our interviews have been carried out by our Kiev-based team at the Institute of Jewish Studies, headed by Marina Karelstein, coordinator, and Ella Levitskaya and Zhanna Litinskaya, interviewers.

Centropa in Lithuania

When Lithuania became an independent state in the wake of the First World War, 154,000 Jews lived within its borders.

During the interwar period, Vilnius /Vilna had been given to Poland and the capital of Lithuania was Kaunas (Kovna in Yiddish). Long one of the liveliest Jewish communities in the world, more than 91% of this community was destroyed during the Shoah. Afterwards, the Soviets ended all religious activity and tolerated only a "cultural" Jewish community.

After 1990, when Lithuania achieved its independence from the Soviet Union, Lithuania's Jews re-established their communal structures and opened a school, a kindergarten and youth clubs.

As in Estonia and Latvia, most Jews living in Lithuania today are Russian and Ukrainian Jews who settled in the country during the Soviet decades. Our interest, however, is in Lithuanian-born Jews and we secured 30 interviews with those who can recall the prewar decades in Kaunas/Kovna and Vilnius/Vilna.

Centropa in Lithuania

When Lithuania became an independent state in the wake of the First World War, 154,000 Jews lived within its borders.

After 1990, when Lithuania achieved its independence from the Soviet Union, Lithuania's Jews re-established their communal structures and opened a school, a kindergarten and youth clubs.

Centropa in Lithuania

When Lithuania became an independent state in the wake of the First World War, 154,000 Jews lived within its borders.

After 1990, when Lithuania achieved its independence from the Soviet Union, Lithuania's Jews re-established their communal structures and opened a school, a kindergarten and youth clubs.