Let us begin with geography and continue with history.

A report issued in 1930 states: Widze is 26 kilometers by road to the
train station at Dukst, on the Vilna-Dvinsk line, 125 kilometers
northeast of Vilna. It is located in a beautiful area, surrounded by
lakes, forests and also mineral springs which during the nineteenth
century served as healing centers for near and far. Russians,
Lithuanians, Poles, Tartars, and of course Jews, make up the local
population. There's a Catholic church, a Greek Orthodox church, a
Mohammedan mosque, and three synagogues of which the two smaller ones
are of the Hasidim.

Throughout history, Widze, often spelled Vidzy, was regarded as one of
the four largest market places in Lithuania. Established over 500
years ago in the Lithuanian kingdom, its history was marked by
numerous wars: Russians vs. Swedes; Lithuanians vs. Poles; Germans vs.
Russians. Prior to World War I, it belonged to Russia; afterwards, it
became Poland. During World War II, again Russia, then Lithuania,
later Nazi Germany, and finally it was incorporated into Belarus. The
same fate was shared by many towns in the Vilna district. Widze was
destroyed numerous times, in various wars and by fire. It happened
twice in the lifetime of the previous generation. At the beginning of
the First World War, battles in the area forced nearly the entire
Jewish population to flee. About fifty who remained were subjected to
persecution, torture and rape, while most of the town was left in
ruins. After the war, less than half of the previous population of
about 4,000 Jews gradually returned to rebuild their lives and the
Jewish community. The last destruction began with the invasion of the
Germans in June 1941, which culminated with the final chapter of the
Widze ghetto, as the remaining survivors were transported to their
death in the Ponar woods near Vilna on April 5, 1943. In the early
1990's there remained one old Jewish woman in town and she would not
identify herself as a Jew.

I left my hometown at the age of eight. When I returned nearly sixty
years later in 1989, the only landmark I could identify was the church
with its two steeples that struck us with awe when we were children.

There were Jews in Widze already in the fifteenth century. The 1894
census lists the following breakdown: Catholics 661, Russian Orthodox
407, Greek Orthodox 320, Tartars 200, Karaites 5, Jews 4348. A 1931
report by a Jewish relief agency mentions a population of 450
families, among them 230 Jewish, in round numbers. This would mean
some 1200 to 1500 souls. The sharp Jewish decline reflects the flight
during the war years.

Widze earned "honorable mention" in our people's history on account of
the conflict between Hasidim and Mitnagdim. The World History of the
Jewish People by Shimon Dubnow records that in 1798, in the midst of a
violent controversy dividing the Jewish community, as rabbis fought to
suppress the newly emerging Hasidic movement, a Hasidic shochet of
Widze was responsible for informing on irregularities in the Vilna
Kehilla, which led the Russian authorities to arrest its leaders.
Though the founder of Habad, the school of Hasidism which took root
among Lithuanian Jews, Rabbi Shneur of Ladi, issued a call against
further strife, mentioning the Widze incident by name, relations
between the factions became even more strained following the release
of the Vilna leadership. In a remarkable coincidence 130 years later,
another controversy between Hasidim and Mitnagdim broke out in Widze,
though not in such brutal form, involving once again the local
shochet. I recall the episode when "Reb Mendl the shochet" (Klumel)
was crowned by the Hasidim as their Rebbe, and prominent rabbinic
personages were brought in to resolve the issues.

Widze contributed its share to the galaxy of personalities who played
a leading role in Jewish life in the last century. Rabbi Joseph
Kahaneman, founder of the Ponevez yeshiva in Bene Brak, the largest
yeshiva in Israel, had served as rabbi of Widze for five years before
the First World War. He established a yeshiva for 150 students which
was destroyed in 1915. Israel Aharoni, who pioneered in zoological and
botanical studies in Israel, was born in Widze and came to Palestine
in the early part of the century. In his numerous research expeditions
throughout the area, he assembled a fauna collection still preserved
in a church museum in the Old City of Jerusalem. His autobiography
written in Hebrew, Memories of a Hebrew Zoologist, made fascinating
reading for me as a youngster. Our town also made its contribution to
literature in the person of Natan Goren (Greenblatt), Hebrew essayist
and literary critic, who held the position of chairman of the Israel
writers' organization. Then there was the Yiddish poet, Baruch Gelman,
whose volume of poems published in 1937 depicts local scenes and
expresses the prevailing and often gloomy mood in the town, while
striking a nostalgic tone. It was reissued in 1990 by the Widze
Association in Israel. The young poet met his death together with his
five brothers and sisters in the Widze pogrom of 1941. There was also
Dr. Meyer Klumel (of the previously mentioned Klumel family) who
played a leading role in the Zionist movement in Warsaw before leaving
for Palestine in the 1930's, where he died in 1936.

Jewish community life presented numerous opportunities for religious,
educational, political, artistic and recreational activity. Besides
the three synagogues listed, functioning in the traditional pattern
for worship and study, there was the Yiddish school building serving
as the cultural center. Established in 1921 largely through the
generosity of the Zlatkin family, it offered a six-year curriculum of
Jewish and general studies. It was a secular school and, in keeping
with the then accepted practice, all disciplines, including science,
were taught in Yiddish. I recall to this very day a lesson in physics,
conducting an experiment on how metal expands when heated. Most
children of elementary school age were enrolled in the school. The
teachers were dedicated intellectuals sent in from the central office
of the Yiddish school organization in Vilna. These would become
actively involved in the cultural life of the community. The memoirs
appearing in this volume include nostalgic recollections of the
teachers and the warm atmosphere generated in the school which was
carried over to a wide range of extra-curricular activities, both in
the school building and in the countryside with its woods and lakes.
Students remember with fondest sentiments teachers such as Sioma
Halpern and his wife Dina. The building also provided facilities for a
choir, a dramatic group and had an auditorium for lectures and
artistic performances.

Then there was the "Heder" of "Yankel der Lerer", as he was known, the
only one in town during my childhood years. The very appellation of
"lerer" instead of "rebbe" is revealing as to the content of
instruction and the religious and cultural climate of our shtetl. The
traditional Heder curriculum throughout the centuries had been aimed
largely at introducing the pupil at the tender age of seven or eight
to the rigor of Talmud study, with its emphasis on legal
technicalities and minutiae at the expense of everything else, with
the exception of the weekly Torah portion. In contrast, our Heder
opened up for us -- among other subjects -- the world of the Bible
with its exciting tales of ancient Israel and the inspirational
rhetoric of the Prophets. I still cherish fond memories of the book of
Isaiah, recited with a chant along with the Yiddish translation by the
"older" students of age 10, and how I envied them. The fact that many
children attended both the religious Heder and the secular "Shule", is
a further indication of the prevailing unifying spirit, as borne out
by the composition of the board of the school which included leaders
of the religious community as well.

The marked division and even gulf separating the religious from the
secular in Israel today, and to a somewhat lesser though significant
degree elsewhere among world Jewry, did not exist in the Lithuanian
shtetl before its destruction. This is not in keeping with the
stereotype shtetl in the mind of the contemporary Jew. The fanatic
zeal of the ultra-orthodox manifested in temperament, garb and
practice which we witness today, was alien to the Litvak mentality. It
is largely a modern phenomenon, though we find its roots among our
Polish and particularly Galician and Hungarian brethren of previous
generations. Beside the Yiddish school-cultural center which played
such an important role, Widze could not boast of a Tarbut school, with
its modern Zionist-Hebraist education, as some towns in the area.
However, its only continuously functioning Heder was quite different
from what the name generally conjures up in our minds, the curriculum
reflecting the changes introduced by the modernizing tendencies of the
Haskala (enlightenment) movement of the preceding century. Neither was
there a Yeshiva, though as mentioned, one did exist for a few years
before the first war. Nor should this be regarded as any negative
reflection on the religious life of the community, its rabbis,
synagogues and institutions. In this respect, it represented the norm
rather than the exception in Lithuanian Jewry which nevertheless
produced the leading Orthodox sages and Talmudic scholars in the
twentieth century. And to this very day, the "Litvishe" yeshivas in
Israel and abroad, with their ultra-Orthodoxy, are recognized as the
most prestigious.

In addition to the cultural panorama, with its library, choral group,
drama circle, guest artists and lecturers, the young people were
politically alert and involved. There were Zionist youth movements,
mainly Hechalutz, aiming to prepare for kibbutz life in Palestine.
Communism attracted a high proportion of adherents -- some fulfilling
their dream of crossing the border to help build the new socialist
society, where they soon shared the tragic fate of other
revolutionaries. Political and economic conditions being as they were,
with their entry restrictions in Soviet Russia and Zionist Eretz
Yisroel, the flow of emigration was directed to countries across the
ocean. Many may have reached North America, but the majority of those
who left Widze landed in South Africa and Argentina. The Israel
contingent of Widze descendants consists largely of survivors.

A word about the economic picture which was no different from other
communities: Jews were largely storekeepers and merchants. There were
craftsmen -- shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters and
coachmen, the latter being so indispensable because of the many hours
of travel required to reach the railroad town. A 1930 survey refers to
120 storekeepers, 60 merchants, mostly of flax and 40 craftsmen. The
economic policies of the government in their preferential treatment of
the Polish working population placed ever increasing obstacles for
Jews to eke out a living and compelled them to emigrate to other
lands. Those who were forced to do so, were spared the fate of the
Holocaust. Among them was my own father. Ironically, the anti-
Semitism of the Polish government turned out to be a blessing in
disguise.

The major thrust of this Memorial book is of course the Holocaust,
just prior, during and immediately after. The prior begins with the
Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, dividing Poland between them. Widze
therefore "belonged" to the Russian partner and the Soviet army
entered the town on September 17, 1939. For nearly two years, while
the Second World War was being waged on the Western Front, the town
was under Communist rule. This meant elimination of private property,
and subjection of all forms of community activity to the Soviet system
including educational and cultural institutions. Life became
problematic but tolerable. The particulars are found in the personal
recollections recorded in these pages. On June 22, 1941, Germany
launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union and Russian troops
withdrew from Widze, with the Germans entering five days later. In the
interim period, local criminal elements began to rob and harass Jews,
until some semblance of "order" was restored by the occupying forces.
For the nearly two years that followed, the tales of unimaginable woe
that transformed that span of time into nightmarish horror in the
ghettos and camps, are unfolded in this volume.

Initially, we had intended to present English summaries of the Yiddish
and Hebrew memoirs of the Holocaust years as they appear in this
volume. However, after exposure to the details of limitless brutality,
the diabolic and endless torture, wanton murder, sadism, humiliation,
starvation, deprivation, crushing labor, victims digging their own
graves before being shot, relegation to vermin-like mass
extermination, blood curdling scenes of bayoneting babes in arms,
hiding in pits and animal dugouts, while the last spark of humanity,
with few rare exceptions, extinguished even among one's own former
Polish and Lithuanian neighbors -- I lacked the stamina to undertake
such an agonizing task, not having been there in person. Then there
are the acts of heroism, maintaining the human image under all
conditions, joining the partisans in their desperate struggle against
the Nazis, reunification of surviving members of families, waiting in
DP camps before setting out, in some instances by illegal routes, to
reach the promised land whose gates had been closed tight by the
British rulers. All this and more is told in various versions, some
appearing repetitious of others, but with individual nuances
justifying their inclusion.

The present volume with its reminiscences, historical data, Holocaust
testimony, also contains information on institutions and colorful
personages, along with brief biographies of prominent personalities
who emerged from the shtetl and left their impact in various fields of
endeavor. Then there is local folklore representing a rich mine of
characteristic anecdotes, idioms and nicknames -- and just about
everybody was identified by a nickname, not necessarily complimentary
-- the latter inspired by some physical, social or other trait and
idiosyncrasy in the bearer's appearance, habits, behavior, occupation,
status or relationships. All this, which added coloration to the local
scene, does not readily lend itself to translation. An attempt has
been made to render a few of the articles in an abbreviated form into
English, while some of the material contained in the others has been
incorporated in this introductory chapter. The contributions of the
authors are published in the language in which they were submitted --
Yiddish, Hebrew and two in English -- with one or two exceptions
translated from Polish. The commemorative pages for individuals and
families appearing in this volume were made possible by the financial
participation of Widze families in Toronto, New York, New Zealand and
Israel.

Let this book be our recitation of the Kaddish -- in the very meaning
of the words of the prayer itself -- the sanctification and
remembrance of our martyred brothers and sisters and forebears, of the
life they led and the death they met. Amen