We stopped along the way in a small town, zeshmer…a classical shtetyl where 1300 Jews had lived for hundreds of years up to the Second World War. They were 70% of the population and lived peacefully with their Christian neighbors. Then the Nazis arrived and they were all deported and 80% killed. None returned. There we saw the houses of their childhood and adulthood and the quality of life in a little village with a small square where their shops and businesses had once thrived. Every wooden house painted a slightly different color…every one with a garden and growing vegetables…a very beautiful place but a poignant one in that there were people and faces missing.

But then, our wonderful extraordinary guide, Yulik, said he had a surprise…we left the bus and walked into a yard and there stood a big barn-like building…he asked people what it was and that was their guess, a barn…accept that it had boarded-up windows that were long and tall on the sides and each had a rounded top. It appeared to have windows for a second story on the sides and the back…it was a classic wooden synagogue, of which but 4 remain in all of Lithuania. Now locked and boarded up, Yulik found the old Christian woman who has taken care to protect this building for many years now…she opened the lock and we went in.

But a shell, the older former beauty was evident everywhere. The electric outlet for the center chandelier and the ner tamid were all there. The posts of the center bimah were somewhat intact. We stood and listened to the story of what had been…and then I asked everyone to close their eyes (yes!) and imagine the synagogue filled with the 1300 Jews on Rosh Hashanah…all dressed in their finery, the kids running down the aisles, the women up in the ezrat nashim..the overlooking but hidden balcony and then we sang the shma…it was really something…we thanked this old woman for what she was doing for us, our students, their siblings and families…for the people we represent and then we were back on the bus and on our way to Kovno. We have moments like this one every day and they leave both scars and gifts to the heart and mind.

As we approached Kovno you could feel the beauty in the air…and yet it was clearly more impoverished than Vilna. Once the capital of Lithuania and still its second largest city at 400,000, Kovno has been the site of the greatest rabbinical academies since the times of Sura and Pumpedita. The Yeshivot of Slabodka and Telz produced the most distinguished rabbis of generations, and our Zeydeh studied with them, received his rabbinic ordination from them, and ultimately became one of them. (He would become, ironically, one of the few of them to survive by grace of his radical decision in 1903 to pick up his family and leave in the face of the kishinev pogrom…something his teachers did not do (and even criticized) and as a result were sitting waiting when the Nazis came to town in the 1940’s.

We started our visit in Slabodka, a suburb of Kovno where Jews had first been allowed to settle and where they built their synagogues and yeshivot…There we walked the streets that had been zeydeh tuviah’s…can you imagine…really walked the streets and looked in the houses where he and his family might have lived…it was beautiful…

We then went to the Ninth Fort, one of a series of ancient forts that formed a protective network around the capital in former times. These forts, all connected over many miles by tunnels…the 8th, 7th etc all existed at one time…these remaining forts were used to imprison and then murder Jews not only from Kovno, but from countries as far west as France and Belgium. When ema and I were here in 1972, the fort was just a relic…the soviets marked the place, but did not mention that it was almost exclusively Jews that were brought here, Jews who marked their names and cities in the walls of their cells lest they be completely forgotten, Jews who had been taken by the 1000’s out to a local ravine and shot in cold blood for no reason whatsoever, except that they were Jews. Now however, since the achievement of independence in 1995, the Lithuanian government has created a powerful museum in the fort, showing pictures of the Kovno ghetto, the prisoners, the valiant escape attempts, the life saving heroism of the Japanese Consul Sugihara in issuing illegal visas to 6000 Jews in 20 days before he was sent from his post…all these stories are now there and visible. It is stark, cold both literally and figuratively, and very emotional. The soviets built a classic soviet monumental sculpture rising 20-30 stories high at the sight in 1985…

It was now 2 PM and we were tired and hungry and went downtown to a large pedestrian mall for lunch. Here was the modern city…stores for great shopping and restaurants and a few hotels and everything alive and modern and well…quite a contrast…and that was good for we could not dwell all day in the sadness and memory of the past.

Following lunch we gathered at 4 PM…it was a late day…in the great synagogue of Kovno…the one remaining synagogue of the 100’s that had been. It has been refurbished and is very beautiful inside…We spoke about many things inside and then I sang Zeydeh Tuviah’s tzur Meshelo and yom zeh l’yisrael. I had read to them from his biography on our drive from vilna in the morning, and now his very being came alive…the two men from the small remaining jewish community stood by in silence and amazement…I had brought a copy of the shohet picture that sue and I had taken of the last remaining shohet in all of Lithuania in 1972…they accepted it as an addition to their small museum. Here I suggested we sanctify the place by davening minha, which I did with zeydeh's nusah…and then the shames asked me to chant an el maleh rahamim, as yesterday was by coincidence the anniversary of the start of the Nazi invasion of Lithuania. That and a communal Kaddish for all we had seen and understood and not understood from the whole day was an emotional topping to a very powerful day.

We traveled back to Vilna…almost all sound sleep on the bus ride…and then ran to our rooms for a quick break before gathering at 7Pm for dinner in a wonderful and quite beautiful Vilna restaurant which has its own beer making facility. At 9:30 we made our way to the local grand park where one of 4 citywide celebrations of the summer solstice were taking place with music, dancing, folklore of all kinds and fireworks…it was grand day.