Clay in My Boots: A Romp Through My Genealogical Past

This is a trip that every Jew must take. It is highly emotional, but extremely informative in helping you to understand the heritage and plight of the Ashkenazi Jews and the impact on all Jews of Europe. We visited one-horse towns, Shtetls, small villages, towns, small cities, and big cities. We saw fishing villages on the Nemenus, Naris, and Styr. We saw mountain towns, farming communities, industrial cities, and administrative, cultural and trading capitals. In all we visited 10 places in Ukraine, 19 in Lithuania, and 4 in Poland. I started out my planing in an attempt to understand where my ancestors lived, worked, and died. They all came to the US between 1897 and 1911. So, they avoided both World Wars. But, they didn’t, the impacts were felt by their cousins, neighbors, and friends.  As an example, My 2nd GG Grandfather in Kremenets Ukraine had 2 brothers, they had 22 children only 4 families escaped the holocaust. The rest of their decendents perished in the woods in a ...

Rivne was close to 60% Jewish in the early 1900’s. We had a lovely introduction be Viktoria Chymshyt who met us a the local synagogue where she works as an Administrator. I met Vik online in the Rivne genealogy facebook group. She shared that 30-38k Jewish people lived in Rivne, and all but 19 perished.   She indicated that the Soviet’s estimate of 17,500 was extremely low. She gave us directions to the Memorial site where there were 2 sets of memorials. The first prepared by the Soviets does not mention the citizens killed by the Nazi’s as Jews. The second monument created by Israeli repeats the figures but honors the Jews. It includes 69 tablets with names in 3 columns but only about 4200 are identified.   Oks and Gertzberg’s died in the Rivne akton; likely cousins of ours. On the way to Lutzk we stopped at the Tunnel of Love, a romantic site that is a railway, where a train slowly passes once daily. The shade trees make a splendid emerald tunnel for 7km. But of c...

This morning when I awoke in Klaipeda, I thought about where to walk after a 1/2 mile in desolate streets and strip mall parking lots. I decided what the heck and headed to the ferry for a ride over to the Curonian Spit and a walk across the "island" to the Baltic. I made the 8:20 ferry and the walk was only about 1.5 miles across, but it seemed longer and I was concerned about getting back to the hotel by 9:30. It worked out ok, and I had a short walk on the beach with not a soul in sight, except for a tractor in the distance. On the way back I just made the 9:20 ferry as a large container ship delayed launch, and the crew was nice enough to lower the ramp to allow me to board. Definitely worth the excursion. Saw the morning sun over the dunes as was the case in California. This was a nice distraction from the emotional parts of this trip.

In East Prussia the Germans used concentration camps, to bring people from all around the region for extermination. Oflager 53 is a camp we visited on our tour back to Vilnius as we traveled the southern route.  At Oflager 53 as with other concentration camps, use of bullets is considered expensive, so the Nazi sadistic bustards, find more cost effective ways to eliminate the Jews and sympathizers. Baltic Sea sand is extremely fine, so the Nazis buried people in sand pits and they drown in the “quick sand”. Also, since they are in the woods people were tied to trees and burned alive. So much for humane solutions. Back to the reality of Eastern Europe following 2 days of fun in the sun. A Train station is conveniently near by:

This photo-places overview gives a nice perspective of where we’ve been. Poland: Volyn & Galicia Ukraine: Eastern Lithuania: Western Lithuania:

We've just about wrapped up our Genealogy / Jewish Heritage / Roots tour through Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania.  If you've missed some of our posts, here is a link to an index of our posts: All Posts Yesterday we drove to Klaipeda on the Baltic Sea. We took a ferry across the lagoon to the Curonian Spit. We drove down to Nida a converted Fishing Village that serves as the center of recreational activities. We started by spending a few hours on the beach looking off towards Sweden, picking up rocks, taking in the sun, and going for a swim in the Baltic. Then we took a Tuk-Tuk to the heart of Nida. Whee we walked around a bit and soaked up some of the little "german village". We then took a one-hour boat ride to see the dunes, taunt the Russian Border Control boat and just enjoy the sea air. Russian Border Patrol (Hi Vlad!) I see Russia ... This was a nice distraction from our emotionally jam-packed heritage tour.