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Tag: Lithuania

Exploring past, present

Exploring past, present

During Hillel BC’s Holocaust Education Week, Drs. Gene Homel (pictured above) and Rachel Mines offered Unheard Echoes, a program on Jews in Lithuania. (photo by A. Jaugelis)

Unheard Echoes, a program on Jews in Lithuania, was held Jan. 29 during Hillel BC’s Holocaust Education Week on the University of British Columbia campus. Dr. Gene Homel, an historian, and Dr. Rachel Mines, a Yiddishist and English instructor, spoke about the past and present experiences of Litvaks, Jews with roots in the region of Lithuania.

Homel began by introducing Lithuania, a liberal democracy in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union, currently in the news because of possible threats from Russia’s attack on Ukraine. He explained that Jews have been a key, productive part of Lithuania since at least the early 1300s, when they were invited by nobility to settle in these territories and were granted a charter to run their own affairs in their own communities. By the 1700s, the largest Jewish population in Europe was in what was then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, occupying much of Eastern Europe. The partition of Poland in the late 1700s absorbed the region into imperial Russia.

Vilnius, now Lithuania’s capital but then in the Russian empire, was known as “the Jerusalem of the North” for its role as a world-renowned centre of Jewish learning, culture and publishing. However, poverty and Russian conscription motivated many Jews to emigrate in the early 20th century to North America,  South Africa and elsewhere.

In 1918, with the First World War winding down, Jews joined the successful push for an independent Lithuanian state. While the restored Polish state, which now included Vilnius, slid into enhanced antisemitism in the 1930s, the much smaller Lithuanian state avoided pogroms and other extreme manifestations of antisemitism. Lithuanian Jews and Christians lived side by side in relative peace.

The 1939 pact between Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union divided Eastern Europe between the two tyrannies, and the Soviets forcibly annexed and Sovietized Lithuania and the other two formerly independent Baltic states, Latvia and Estonia. Mass deportations of Baltic peoples to Soviet Siberia included many Jews, who comprised an estimated 7% of Lithuania’s population but 10% of the deportees.

Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Baltics and the Soviet Union in mid-1941 initiated the Holocaust in Lithuania. Of the 220,000 to 250,000 Jews there, 95% were murdered, most in the early stages of Nazi occupation and control.

Lithuanian historians and researchers agree that, while most Lithuanians were passive bystanders, some thousands (the exact number is unknown) were (by degrees) active collaborators with the Nazis. Homel pointed out that collaborators were active in almost all other European countries, and there were some Lithuanians, such as Catholic clerics, who served as rescuers of their Jewish neighbours. More than 900 Lithuanians have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, and there were doubtless many more.

In 1944, the Soviets returned to the Baltics, robbing Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia of their independence, and costing many people their freedoms and their lives. Decades later, the fall of Soviet Communism – Lithuania was the first Soviet republic to declare its independence in 1990 – led to a revival of Jewish culture and institutions, as the Soviet Union had not only suppressed religious and cultural expression but denied or downplayed the Jewish Holocaust in the areas it controlled.

Homel discussed a particularly sensitive issue in Lithuania’s history of wartime Nazi occupation, since there was some overlap between those who were both anti-Soviet partisans from 1944 to the early 1950s (thus nationalist heroes) and Nazi collaborators. Recent published research on Lithuanian collaboration in the Holocaust has caused a stir of controversy, raising the problems of a competing sense of victimhood and of definitions of genocide. This can be seen as a sort of zero-sum game.  Collaboration has been a contested issue in other countries’ histories, of course, for example France and, notably, Poland.

That said, the Lithuanian government has accomplished much by way of justice since the restoration of independence. Shortly after that time, in May 1990, the government issued a declaration condemning “without reservation the genocide perpetrated in Lithuania against the Jewish nation … and notes with sorrow that among the executioners who served the occupiers there were also citizens of Lithuania.” The declaration also stated that there would be no toleration for any expressions of antisemitism, and that all bodies of government and citizens should “create the most favourable conditions for the Jews of Lithuania….”

Four years later, the government created the annual Sept. 23 National Memorial Day for the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews. Commemorations are held in schools and other public and governmental institutions. The prime minister recently joined a march to Paneriai, a site of mass murder of Jews and non-Jews during the Nazi occupation. The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum includes five sites, one being the “Green House” Holocaust museum. In 2011, Lithuania committed to pay 37 million Euros over a decade in compensation for Jewish communal property seized during the mid-20th century, and recently the government passed a bill to transfer another 37 million euros. Rescuers have been honoured in the country, as well as by Israel’s Yad Vashem. International teams of archeologists are working on a project to recover Vilnius’s historic Great Synagogue, which was utterly destroyed by the Soviets in the 1950s.

Mines followed Homel’s presentation with a more personal view of Lithuania, based on her reconnection with her Litvak roots, and her experiences with the non-Jewish Lithuanian community both in Lithuania and in British Columbia. She detailed her father’s family life in Skuodas, a lively and thriving town near the Latvian border, which, prewar, had many Jewish-owned enterprises. His relatives once owned a productive boot and shoe factory in town. In 1936, her father, Sender, moved to Kaunas, then capital of Lithuania, and married. In 1941, Sender and his family were imprisoned in the Kaunas ghetto. That winter, Sender was deported to Latvia and forced into slave labour in several Nazi ghettos and concentration camps. As a survivor, he emigrated to Canada in the early 1950s, where he remarried and started a second family.

photo - Dr. Rachel Mines presented a more personal view of Lithuania, based on her reconnection with her Litvak roots, and her experiences with the non-Jewish Lithuanian community both in Lithuania and in British Columbia
Dr. Rachel Mines presented a more personal view of Lithuania, based on her reconnection with her Litvak roots, and her experiences with the non-Jewish Lithuanian community both in Lithuania and in British Columbia. (photo by A. Jaugelis)

Mines and Homel have visited Lithuania a number of times in the last 16 years or so, including a Yiddish summer program at Vilnius University. They found a warm, welcoming reception in Skuodas, where the local museum featured a display on the town’s Jewish population, including Mines’s father. Locals took them to sites of interest, including the Jewish cemetery and Holocaust memorials, which date back many decades, to when the country was still under Soviet occupation. In 2015, Mines was invited to Skuodas to address high school students and adults during that year’s commemoration of the Holocaust in Lithuania. As she learned more about her father’s origins, Mines created a bilingual website on the town, shtetlshkud.com, as a genealogical and historical resource.

Both Mines and Homel are members of the board of directors of the Lithuanian Community of British Columbia (LCBC), which welcomes Litvaks and acknowledges the Jewish contribution to Lithuanian history and culture. The last two years, the LCBC has commemorated Lithuania’s National Memorial Day for the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews, first at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture and then at the Italian Cultural Centre. LCBC’s website is lithuaniansofbc.com. 

– Courtesy Gene Homel

Format ImagePosted on February 23, 2024February 29, 2024Author Courtesy Gene HomelCategories LocalTags education, Gene Homel, Hillel BC, history, Holocaust, Lithuania, Rachel Mines, Skuodas
A voice to Lithuania’s victims

A voice to Lithuania’s victims

Grant Gochin in J’Accuse!, which can be screened online as part of the South African Film Festival Nov. 2-12. (screenshot)

The award-winning film J’Accuse! is about the alliance between Grant Gochin, a Jewish activist for Lithuanian Holocaust truth, and Silvia Foti, the author of Storm in the Land of Rain, which reveals that her grandfather – Jonas Noreika – operated as a Nazi collaborator who ordered the massacre of thousands of Lithuania’s Jews. However, Lithuania continues to view Noreika as a freedom fighter because he fought against the Communists.

J’Accuse!, by filmmaker Michael Kretzmer, screens as part of the South African Film Festival, which runs Nov. 2-12, presenting more than 20 movies.

SAFF Canada brings together the combined histories and volunteer efforts of two in-person festivals – the Toronto South African Film Festival and the Vancouver South African Film Festival. When the pandemic hit in 2020, the organizations transitioned to one virtual South African Film Festival that could reach audiences across Canada. While most films are online, there are some in-person screenings and events in both Vancouver and Toronto.

photo - Silvia Foti in J’Accuse!, a documentary by filmmaker Michael Kretzmer
Silvia Foti in J’Accuse!, a documentary by filmmaker Michael Kretzmer. (screenshot)

The festival is part of, and raises funds for, Education without Borders, created in 2002 by local Jewish community members Cecil and Ruth Hershler.

“It is estimated that over 90% of South African Jews are Litvaks, [are] of Lithuanian descent,” said Cecil Hershler. “On a personal note, my maternal grandparents were born in Plunge. My grandmother, Ethel Sher, arrived on a ship in Cape Town in 1905 – she was 10 years old, she never saw her parents in Plunge again. On Ruth’s side, her paternal ancestors come from Riteva.”

More than 220,000 Jews – more than 95% of the prewar Jewish population – were murdered in the Holocaust. Kretzmer’s documentary exposes the scale and scandal of Lithuanian Holocaust denial by focusing on Noreika, who murdered as many as 14,500 Jews in the Plunge region in 1941. Gochin, whose family was murdered by Noreika, brought almost 30 legal actions against the Lithuanian government over more than three decades. In focusing on Noreika, the film also examines the role of the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Centre.

For tickets to watch J’Accuse! – the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre is a community partner on the film – or any of the South African Film Festival offerings, go to saffcanada.ca.

– Courtesy Education without Borders

Format ImagePosted on October 12, 2023October 12, 2023Author Education without BordersCategories TV & FilmTags Grant Gochin, Holocaust, J'Accuse!, Jonas Noreika, Lithuania, Michael Kretzmer, SAFF Canada, Silvia Foti, South African Film Festival
Building community bridges – memorial for genocide of Lithuanian Jews

Building community bridges – memorial for genocide of Lithuanian Jews

Lithuania’s ambassador to Canada, Darius Skusevičius, greets participants in pre-recorded video. (photo from Lithuanian Community of BC)

As a young teen growing up in Vancouver in the 1960s, I used to be puzzled by Remembrance Day. We were given red poppies at school to honour the soldiers who served Canada during the First and Second World Wars. But I knew my parents had also experienced war, and their families – my grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, even my half-brother and stepsister – had been horribly murdered. Why were there no red poppies for them and the six million others who had died in the Holocaust? Where were their memorial parades, their wreaths?

In Vancouver’s Peretz School, which I attended a couple of afternoons a week to learn about Jewish culture, we commemorated Yom Hashoah, which was established by the Israeli government in 1959. Our commemoration was a small event, important to staff, students and families, but ignored by Canadian society in general. It was not until 2005, when the United Nations General Assembly established Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, that non-Jews as well as Jews began to join in collective memorialization – or so I thought until quite recently.

In 1994, the Lithuanian Parliament established Sept. 23 as National Memorial Day for the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews. Every Sept. 23, the anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilna (Vilnius) Ghetto, commemorative activities are held at Lithuanian memorial sites, in schools and in other educational institutions. Government institutions, with the support and involvement of local Jewish communities and survivors’ groups, shape the content of these activities, and Jewish and non-Jewish Lithuanians regularly participate in them.

A few years ago, I joined the Lithuanian Community of British Columbia (LCBC), where I currently serve on the board of directors. This year, on Sept. 22, with the support of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC) and generous volunteers from Lithuanian and Jewish communities, LCBC and its partners, National Memorial Day for the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews was commemorated. The event, which took place at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture in Vancouver, was held for the first time in Canada.

Participants were welcomed by Algis Jaugelis, president of the LCBC, followed by opening remarks by Nina Krieger, the executive director of the VHEC. The ambassador of Lithuania to Canada, Darius Skusevičius, kindly provided a recorded welcome to the event, followed by a written statement from Christopher Juras, the honorary consul of Lithuania in Vancouver.

LCBC member and historian Dr. Gene Homel presented an overview of Jewish life in Lithuania from the 1300s to the present day. I gave an illustrated presentation on the Jewish community in my father’s ancestral town in Lithuania, using photos and information found in my research.

photo - Rachel Mines characterizes the lives of the Jewish residents of Skuodas, Lithuania
Rachel Mines characterizes the lives of the Jewish residents of Skuodas, Lithuania. (photo from Lithuanian Community of BC)

Helen Mintz, a Yiddish translator, read a selection from one of her translations of Abraham Karpinowitz’s short stories. Karpinowitz, the son of a theatrical family in Vilna, survived the Holocaust and later wrote several volumes of stories memorializing prewar Jewish life in Vilna.

The ceremony ended with the singing of the “Partisans’ Song” / “Zog Nit Keynmol,” written by Hirsh Glick in the Vilna Ghetto, which was followed by a recording of Glick’s words translated into Lithuanian and read by high school student Giedrius Galvanauskas under the auspices of Eli Rabinowitz’s We Are Here! international educational project.

photo - The ceremony ended with the singing of “Zog Nit Keynmol.” Left to right are Celia Brauer, Alan LeFevre, Victor Neuman and Kathryn Palmer. At the piano is Cathrine Conings
The ceremony ended with the singing of “Zog Nit Keynmol.” Left to right are Celia Brauer, Alan LeFevre, Victor Neuman and Kathryn Palmer. At the piano is Cathrine Conings. (photo from Lithuanian Community of BC)

Lithuanian and non-Lithuanian participants found the remembrance ceremony both educational and emotional, and emphasized the importance of dialogue and reconciliation. According to Jaugelis, it was “an important and moving event, an opening of doors and minds, with great potential for future intercultural and bridge-building events.” Andrea Berneckas, another LCBC director, wrote, “It was such a privilege to be part of this solemn, yet beautiful and hopeful event. I look forward to being part of the Lithuanian community’s strengthening of ties by the sharing of stories and experiences.”

“I look forward to more opportunities to bring the communities together,” said Krieger. And Celia Brauer, a local Yiddishist whose parents survived the Holocaust in Latvia and Poland, summed up the general feeling: “We are far away from the original homeland, yet this event brought people closer together – which is incredibly important.”

National Memorial Day for the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews is now on LCBC’s yearly calendar of events and the next memorial will take place in September 2023.

More information about the Lithuanian Community of British Columbia can be found at lithuaniansofbc.com.

Rachel Mines, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, was born and raised in Vancouver. As a child, she attended classes at the Peretz School (now the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture) and served on Peretz’s board of directors 2015-2016. Mines, whose Lithuanian citizenship was reinstated in 2022, now serves on the board of directors of the Lithuanian Community of British Columbia.

Format ImagePosted on November 11, 2022November 9, 2022Author Rachel MinesCategories LocalTags Canada, education, Holocaust, LCBC, Lithuania, memorial, Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, VHEC

Correcting historical record

Jonas Noreika, who was executed by the Soviets in 1947, has been revered in his native Lithuania and by its expatriate community as a national hero and an anti-communist patriot.

This vaunted hero, however, has come under intense scrutiny of late, largely as a result of the findings of his own granddaughter, Silvia Foti. Her research has revealed that Noreika, whose nom de guerre was “General Storm,” was in fact a Nazi collaborator, responsible for the murder of thousands of Lithuanian Jews – sometimes, on his own initiative.

In her new book, The Nazi’s Granddaughter: How I Discovered My Grandfather Was a War Criminal (Regnery Publishing, 2021), Foti documents her path from hearing stories about his almost legendary stature to her discovery of the disturbing truth.

The book, the writing of which had been undertaken to fulfil Foti’s mother’s (Noreika’s daughter’s) dying wish, was intended as a tribute. Foti succeeded in assembling hundreds of documents related to Noreika’s life, including an antisemitic pamphlet that he authored in 1933, and KGB transcripts of his prison interrogations.

At first, Foti did not want to believe the story that was emerging from the various written sources, finding it “too scary, too painful, too shameful.” Nonetheless, as a journalist, she could not ignore the rumours that she encountered during her investigative trips to Lithuania. She pursued the matter, in the hope that an examination of her grandfather’s acts during the Second World War would exonerate him.  Ultimately, she found so much evidence about his role in killing Jews that it was impossible to act as though it did not exist.

“I wanted to throw the manuscript away so many times, to just drop the whole project. I kept asking myself, Why me? Why am I the one to discover all this? I finally came to realize that, because I am the granddaughter, I would most likely get the most attention,” Foti told the Independent. “I am a practising Catholic, and I pray over this story constantly. My strength came from believing that this is the truth, and the truth needs to prevail, no matter the cost to me.”

What started out as a journey of discovery has now been the recipient of international attention. Foti’s story has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the BBC, among others.

“So much seemed accidental, inadvertent. I didn’t mean to discover that my grandfather was a Holocaust perpetrator. I didn’t mean to discover that the government of Lithuania refuses to acknowledge his role in the Holocaust and, instead, has declared him a hero,” Foti said.

In 2018, when she was 18 years into her project and believing it was nearing completion, she learned of a lawsuit by Grant Gochin, who lost 100 relatives in the Holocaust, against the Genocide Research and Resistance Centre of Lithuania.  They compared notes and joined forces in getting the story out to the international community.

The revelations about Noreika were, to say the least, not easy for many Lithuanians to accept.

“Today, now that the book is out, I face anger, fear and resentment from many Lithuanians who are still in denial over Lithuanians’ role in the Holocaust. I get hate email and death threats, accusations that I work for the Russians, that I’m a traitor to Lithuania, even that someone else wrote the book instead of me. So many Lithuanians think Grant wrote the book,” Foti recounted.

“Grant has an accounting degree and I have two writing degrees and yet, for Lithuanians, it’s easier for them to think Grant hypnotized me and wrote the book,” Foti added. “Lithuanians still have a lot of superstitions concerning Jews. They just can’t believe a Lithuanian would accuse her own grandfather of such horrors. In some ways though, I understand them, because I was there about 20 years ago – minus the superstitions.”

Foti believes, at present, that Lithuania has backed itself into a corner and needs to admit that the Genocide Centre, “its great arbiter” of what took place in the country during the Holocaust, has made a grave error in deeming Noreika a hero. Nevertheless, she does not think such an about-face will happen anytime soon.

“It would be a hari-kari move that would necessitate that the Genocide Centre fall on its sword. How could a mere granddaughter in Chicago uncover so much information about Jonas Noreika, and how could the nation’s legions of historians under the government’s payroll not?” she asked.

“This was Lithuania’s last graceful chance to own up to its role in the Holocaust,” she said. “It could have saved face if its legal system did its due diligence. Unfortunately, the court systems there have a reputation for being corrupt; holdovers from the Soviet era. Because Grant Gochin has exhausted all legal avenues in Lithuania, he now is able to take it to the European Union’s International Court of Human Rights.”

The Nazi’s Granddaughter was edited by Lisa Ferdman of Vancouver.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Format ImagePosted on October 8, 2021October 6, 2021Author Sam MargolisCategories BooksTags history, Jewish journalism, Jonas Noreika, journalism, Lithuania, Silvia Foti
Envying South African Jews

Envying South African Jews

During the Goldene Medina exhibit this past summer, the documentary Leah, Teddy and the Mandolin was screened. It will be shown again on Dec. 8 at Congregation Beth Israel. (photo from Steve Rom)

I have a bad case of South African Jewish envy. This condition developed when I moved to Vancouver from the North End of Winnipeg. I can’t remember meeting even one South African Jew while growing up in the Prairies – the majority of Jews in my hometown were from Eastern Europe. However, I met oodles of South African Jews when I moved here in the early 1990s and I was impressed by their knowledge of Judaism and their commitment to Jewish life. There seemed to be something unique about their community and it seemed exotic compared to Winnipeg’s. Many of them became my good friends, perhaps because, as a Litvak (my last name literally means a Jew from Lithuania), I share a common ancestry with my South African co-religionists, who predominately hail from Lithuania.

When I first moved here, my South African friend Geoff Sachs, z”l, two Montrealers and I organized Tschayniks, an evening of Jewish performing arts at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. It was at the JCC that I met another South African friend, Steve Rom, who was working there at the time, and helped us set up our events. About a month ago, Steve brought a fascinating exhibit to Congregation Beth Israel. Prior to being mounted in Vancouver, the exhibit, Goldene Medina, a celebration of 175 years of Jewish life in South Africa, was displayed in South Africa, Israel and Australia. Thanks to Steve, Jews in Vancouver got a taste of South African Jewish life, as well.

A unique feature of the exhibit was that nobody was named or personally identified on any of the displays. This approach helped tell the story of all South African Jews, and made the exhibit simultaneously particular and universal.

Stories were depicted on a series of panels, and traced the South African Jewish community from its origins in 1841 – when Jews first settled in South Africa – to the present. On one of the panels, I recognized the son and daughter in-law of Cecil Hershler, who has South African roots and is well known in the Vancouver Jewish community as a storyteller. His son married a woman from Zimbabwe and the wedding in Vancouver, which I attended, was a joyous blend of South African and Zimbabwean cultures. Seeing the panel brought back memories of that happy occasion and gave me an unexpected personal connection to the exhibit (other than identifying with my Lithuanian landsmen).

Other panels depicted various aspects of Jewish life in South Africa. While I was fascinated by the differences between the South African Jewish community and my experience growing up in Winnipeg, the exhibit was really a microcosm of Jewish life in the Diaspora. For example, the panel on Muizenberg depicted the resort town located near Cape Town, where throngs of South African Jews flocked to during the summer. The photos of crowded beaches told a thousand stories. However, that panel also reminded me of the stories that my dad, z”l, told me about taking the train to Winnipeg Beach in the summer with other Jews from the city to escape the summer heat. Like at Muizenberg, there was a synagogue at Winnipeg Beach. I am sure that Jews from New York have similar stories of escaping the city heat by going to the Catskills. In addition, the Jews of America, like the Jews of South Africa, referred to their new home as “the Goldene Medina.” Ultimately, all three places – Canada, the United States and South Africa – represented a new start for Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe.

The Goldene Medina exhibit gave me an opportunity to learn about Jews from the land of my ancestors in Lithuania, who were able to reinvent themselves on the African continent and create a thriving Jewish community, which, at one point, reached 120,000. This resiliency is a characteristic of Jews and Jewish communities all over the world. And this resilience was evident in the film Leah, Teddy and the Mandolin: Cape Town Embraces Yiddish Song, which screened at Beth Israel during the exhibit – and will be shown again at the synagogue on Dec. 8.

Using 10 years of archival footage, Leah, Teddy and the Mandolin showcases the Annual Leah Todres Yiddish Song Festival, which was held in Cape Town. The documentary features stirring renditions of classic Yiddish songs like “Romania Romania” and “Mayn Shtetele Belz,” as well as two original songs written for the festival by Hal Shaper, a renowned songwriter, which are sung with passion by talented South African Jews of all ages. The songs featured in the film evoke a yearning for a Jewish world that no longer exists in Lithuania and Eastern Europe and highlight the power of the Yiddish language and music.

While the South African Jewish community has shrunk since its heyday in the 1970s to approximately 50,000, it is still an important Diaspora community. In addition, South African Jews make important contributions to every Jewish community they move to, and bring their unique culture to their new homes.

Seeing the exhibit and the documentary cemented the kinship I feel with my South African brothers and sisters. A few of my South African friends even dubbed me an honourary South African Jew at the exhibit, an honour I gladly accepted. One day, I hope to make a pilgrimage to the land of the Litvaks to experience South African Jewish life firsthand. Until then, I will have to continue to learn about South Africa vicariously.

The Dec. 8 screening of Leah, Teddy and the Mandolin at Beth Israel takes place at 4 p.m. Admission is a suggested donation of $10. For more information, visit leahteddyandthemandolin.com.

David J. Litvak is a prairie refugee from the North End of Winnipeg who is a freelance writer, former Voice of Peace and Co-op Radio broadcaster and an “accidental publicist.” His articles have been published in the Forward, Globe and Mail and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. His website is cascadiapublicity.com.

Format ImagePosted on November 29, 2019November 27, 2019Author David J. LitvakCategories LocalTags Diaspora Jews, film, Goldene Medina, history, Leah, Lithuania, migration, Muizenberg, South Africa, Steve Rom, Teddy and the Mandolin, Yiddish
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