Rosh Hashanah Road to Eišiškės

Subtitle: The third Valkininkai chapter follows the calendar, from forced labor on Shabbat to the removal of women and children on Rosh Hashanah.

Earlier in this series: Carts, Sacks, and Certificates and There Were No Germans in Town.

The first chapter followed the property. Certificates from the town administration permitted Lithuanian peasants to take cows from Jewish farmers while the owners were still alive. The second followed the authority. Leyzer Goldman identified the Lithuanian administration, police, and armed partisans who regulated, robbed, assembled, and marched the Jews of Valkininkai. This third chapter follows the calendar.

Goldman’s signed 1947 testimony preserves more than the acts and the actors. It preserves the Jewish time in which the acts occurred: Shabbat, the eve of Rosh Hashanah, and the first day of the Jewish New Year. A civil calendar records September 20, 21, and 22. A Jewish calendar records the desecration.[1]

The Holocaust in Lithuania was not only a campaign against Jewish bodies and Jewish property. It invaded Jewish time. Shabbat and the festivals ordered work, worship, family, memory, and obligation. In Valkininkai, the machinery of persecution moved through that sacred calendar with brutal precision.

On Saturday, September 20, 1941, Jews were working at the peat bogs. Saturday was Shabbat, but occupation had already converted rest into forced labor. After midday, the workers were told that work was over and that everyone had to return to Valkininkai. By Saturday evening, the men were back in town. At 5:30 the next morning, Lithuanian partisans woke the chairman of the Jewish committee. All Jewish males above approximately twelve or thirteen were to report to the market square by 7:00.[2]

The civil chronology says Sunday, September 21. The Jewish chronology says the eve of Rosh Hashanah. The men were separated in the morning. At sunset, the Jewish New Year began. The women, children, elderly, and sick remained in town until Monday, September 22, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, when wagons were brought to take them toward Eišiškės.[3]

One calendar marks an administrative sequence. The other records the injury.

Rosh Hashanah is the day on which Jews ask to be inscribed in the Book of Life. In Valkininkai, Lithuanian power converted the community into an age-defined list for assembly and transport. Men were ordered to the square. Families were divided. Armed guards controlled the road. The calendar of renewal became the timetable of liquidation.

About 300 men were marched toward Eišiškės under a guard of roughly forty armed partisans. Shloyme Braz, too weak to continue, was shot on the road. At Eišiškės, the men were held in a barn and stripped of what they still carried. Some had worn their best clothing. Some had put on two suits. The guards took it.[4]

The next day, the wagons carried bedding, clothing, dishes, women, children, old people, and the sick. The persecutors made the Jews enact their own dispossession. Household goods and human beings moved in the same convoy. Armed partisans surrounded the town and fired into the air as the remaining families were driven from their homes. Rosh Hashanah became the road to Eišiškės.[5]

Here the three Valkininkai chapters meet. The certificate authorized the theft. Lithuanian local authority enforced the new order. Jewish sacred time became the setting in which property, family, and community were torn apart.

The record does not require us to prove that every date was selected because of its religious meaning. The documented effect is enough. Shabbat became forced labor, recall, and preparation for assembly. Rosh Hashanah became separation and removal. The Days of Awe, a period of judgment and repentance, placed the Jews of Valkininkai under the judgment of armed men who had already decided their fate.

The memorial volume repeatedly preserves persecution through Jewish calendar anchors. Its editors identify Rosh Hashanah in the Valkininkai chronology, explain the dates of Yom Kippur in 1941 and Sukkot in 1942, and retain Rabbi Kalman Farber’s Vilna diary entry from the eve of Yom Kippur in 1943. These dates are not decoration. Jews did not experience the destruction only as entries on a civil calendar. They remembered the Sabbath, the festival, the prayer that should have been said, and the family that should have been gathered.[6]

Modern euphemism removes this layer of the crime. “Killed in mass executions” does not tell the reader that a Jewish holiday was turned into a transport day. “Local collaborators” does not identify the partisans who surrounded the town, fired into the air, and moved Jewish mothers and children from their homes. “Nazi occupation” names the conquering power but not the Lithuanian-administered authority that regulated labor, property, movement, assembly, and the road. “Perished” erases everyone who acted.

The survivor record refuses that flattening. It remembers Saturday. It remembers 5:30 on Sunday morning. It remembers the market square at 7:00. It remembers sunset. It remembers the first day of Rosh Hashanah. It remembers the barn, the wagons, the shots, the dishes, the children, and the road.

For the prosecution of Artur Fridman, the conflict is direct. When the Lithuanian state criminalizes speech that identifies Lithuanian agency, it is not merely disputing an interpretation. It is trying to force Jewish testimony back into categories the state finds safe. Goldman did not remember the Holocaust as an abstraction called occupation. He remembered who woke the committee chairman, who ordered the men to gather, who guarded the column, who took the property, who fired into the air, and on which holy day the families were removed.

Jewish memory is specific. A criminally enforceable national euphemism is not.

The first chapter asked who received the cow. The second asked who issued the certificate and governed the town. The third asks what day it was. Saturday, September 20: Shabbat. Sunday evening, September 21: Rosh Hashanah began. Monday, September 22: women, children, the elderly, and the sick were put on the road to Eišiškės.

Property, authority, time. Goldman’s testimony holds all three. Lithuania may prefer a neutral chronology in which Jews simply “perished” under occupation. Goldman left a Jewish chronology: from Shabbat into Rosh Hashanah, from home into wagon, from community into liquidation. The road to Eišiškės began on a calendar Lithuania still cannot make disappear.

^[1] Leyzer Goldman, born August 15, 1895, a blacksmith and lifelong resident of Valkininkai, gave this testimony to Leyb Koniuchowsky in the Bad Reichenhall displaced-persons camp on December 21, 1947. Goldman reviewed and signed the Yiddish account; copies were preserved by YIVO and Yad Vashem; Jonathan Boyarin translated it into English on May 18, 1994.

^[2] Goldman testimony, September 20-21 sequence: Saturday afternoon notice at the peat bogs that work was over, return of Jewish men to Valkininkai by Saturday evening, and Sunday 5:30 a.m. order by Lithuanian partisans for Jewish men to assemble at the market square by 7:00 a.m.

^[3] Olkeniki in Flames editor’s note: in 1941, Rosh Hashanah began at sunset on Sunday, September 21. Goldman’s testimony places the women, children, elderly, and sick on wagons toward Eišiškės on Monday, September 22, the first day of Rosh Hashanah.

^[4] Goldman testimony: about 300 men were marched under a guard of roughly forty armed partisans; Shloyme Braz was shot after becoming too weak to continue; at Eišiškės the men were held in a barn and stripped; on Monday wagons were brought for women, children, elderly, and sick.

^[5] Goldman testimony, September 22 sequence: wagons were loaded with household goods and with women, children, elderly, and sick; armed partisans surrounded the town and fired into the air; the group was taken toward Eišiškės.

^[6] Olkeniki in Flames includes editor’s calendar notes for Rosh Hashanah 1941, Yom Kippur 1941, and Sukkot 1942; Rabbi Kalman Farber’s diary section includes an “Eve of Yom Kippur 5704” entry dated Friday evening, October 8, 1943, in the post-liquidation Vilna context.