Shtetl Love Song.
The shadow of collaboration and of Soviet rule.
Sunday—potatoes, Monday—potatoes . . .
A buried courtyard.
And uncovering an escape tunnel.
It belonged to the family of two distinguished Yiddish scholars.
With the help of the Japanese consul.
A legacy of collaboration with murder.
Destroyed by Nazis and Soviets.
Rewriting history.
February 16 is Lithuanian independence day. Since 2008, an organization with openly pro-Nazi sympathies has used the date for its annual march through the city. . .
The Jewish Research Institute (YIVO), founded in 1925 in the Polish city known to Jews as Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania), contained the world’s largest archive. . .
The Council of Four Lands, which governed Polish and Lithuanian Jews for two centuries, may have been the most important Jewish institution in European history—though. . .