Gaon Fishing in Lithuania
When I offer a blessing to people in our congregation as they prepare to travel to Israel, I often say something to the effect of, “when you travel to Israel and back to Minnesota, it is like going to home in both directions.” For a member of the Jewish community, traveling to Israel is like going home…to our spiritual/religious/cultural homeland…and when it it is time to return to Minneapolis, we travel home. I had the fortune to travel to Israel this month (April 14-23, 2023) with 250 other Minnesotans as part of a Minneapolis Jewish Federation MegaMission to celebrate Israel’s 75th anniversary. For the past couple of years I have been on a deep dive to experience my family’s genealogical journey and to see from when I came, so I took this opportunity for a side trip on my way “home.” I left from Ben Gurion Airport on April 23rd, and Debbie flew from Minneapolis and met be in Vilnius, Lithuania. I have been joking all along that we were visiting my homeland. Of course I know that the Bolnicks and Locketz branches of my family originated in Lithuania as far back as we know, but it really is like visiting a homeland in so many ways.
We landed within about 30 minutes of each other coming from thousands of miles away in different directions. When we went to Germany last year, we assumed it would feel familiar…but it didn’t. I won’t say that Lithuania feels familiar in obvious ways…the language is harsh and unrecognizable to me, but the people are very friendly, and lo and behold, everywhere we look we see the history of our people in the Pale of Settlement as we have learned growing up. Landsman! Litvack! These words have been on the tip of my tongue as we have journeyed the land from which my family started out.
We spent our first afternoon catching up as we had been apart for eight days and then walking around near our hotel which is an historic Bed and Breakfast called the Shakespeare Boutique Hotel which had been recommended to us by a friend.
The hotel is in the heart of Medieval Vilna. I’ll share those photos another time as they are not particularly relevant to my family history which is why we are here.
This is another heritage trip…yes we take strange vacations and I am glad that Debbie is willing. We had our first dinner at a place call D’eco that popped up on Debbie’s Gluten Free app. It was lovely and the owner of the restaurant somehow knew immediately that we were Jewish. I think he was too.
On our first full day of touring, we met up with our local guide, historian and genealogy researcher Regina Kopelovich. I have been communicating with her for over a year and she has already done some helpful research for us. I know she will continue in the years ahead as she is quite gifted, knowledgable and connected. In about six hours, she toured us all over Vilna, showing us so many sites, many of which are connected to the Vilna Gaon who is one of the most famous characters from this city. And she took us to YIVO and the archives. I have done so much research that I imagined it would be tough to find anything I didn’t already know, but she did manage to show me original documents that proved much of what I thought. And even some new things too. She had a “surprise” to share with me as she found court records of a law suit in which the brother of my Great, Great, Great Grandfather, Girsh Locketz (Brother of Josel Locketz), was both witness and defendant in 1889. Later I found he had emigrated in 1890 to New York…probably running form the law.
On our second day in Lithuania, we rented a car and picked up Regina and then drove 90Km to Kaunas. There is so much I could say about it, but for now, I’ll just say that the number of shtetls and mass graves we drove past in that 90 KM is extraordinary. Perhaps the most surprising was the “Ninth Fort” outside of Kaunas where we stopped and stood witness in the field in which more than 50,000 Jews are thought to have been slaughtered and the massive sculpture that stands witness.
From there we went to the Kaunas Archives. Kaunas today is the amalgamation of two Medieval Jewish communities…Slobodka and Kovno. Both are historic and there is so much Jewish history to tell of those places, and to see. Almost every building we drove past has some historical significance, and much of it took place before Minnesota, my state, was even a state. In the archives, we were able to access the original tax records that showed where my family lived in the 1800s. More to come on that.
But the best was last. I have been working on my family history for a number of years. During that time, I have become aware of hundreds of people who are no longer living. Debbie made me a tee-shirt last year which is our family joke, “I see dead people.” Admittedly, I have only been looking for the dead people. But in that time, I have met, in person, a few living people, that I had not known before. Rick Bolnick, who is such an inspiration for me in restoring and preserving our family history, was the first. I have also met Dina Lokets, and her sister Lusya, who live in Chicago and are from Riga and who are DNA relatives even though we can’t quite determine our exact family connection. And today I met two cousins with whom I share a common ancestor who was born in Lithuania in 1803 - Khonol Bolnick. It was a pleasure to share a meal with Liuba Stulgaityte, my 3rd cousin 2x removed, and her daughter Daina Stulgaityte, my 4th cousin once removed. It was worth coming to Lithuania just to meet them. Liuba has an incredible story of survival and Daina told us she would get her mother to record it on video for posterity. Liuba’s father and brothers were murdered early in WWII and she, her mother, and her sisters went into hiding. She was eventually taken in by a couple in Varnia where she lived, given a Lithuanian name and raised as a member of their family. Later she was reunited with her mother and lived to tell the tale. She told me that she knew she had relatives that had gone to South Africa, and some to the US, but it wasn’t until Rick Bolnick contacted them in the 1990’s that they were reconnected to the rest of the family. I find it ironic that they are the only branch that remained in Lithuania and were therefore disconnected from the rest of the family that remained strongly connected in the US.
After we had lunch, we went to the cemetery where we chanted El Malei Rachamim and said kaddish at the graves of Liuba’s mother, (the other) Sara Bolnick, her sister and brother in law Raiche and Motel Davidovich and their children Sonata and Simon. I had been in touch with Simon for some time before his death in 2019 which the family believes was caused by an early case of Covid.
I have been searching for the history of our family which is mostly held by those who have already passed on. It was pretty powerful to be with those who are still with us and I hope to keep those connections alive for future generations.
