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Travels in Ireland
Tuesday 21st June 2005
Dear Friends
General Letter about Travels in Ireland from
Basil Schur
I write from near Montreal,Canada, where I arrived a few days
ago after 6 weeks in Ireland. I wanted
to share with all of you a
snap-shot of my experiences and reflections while in the green isle
of Eire. In part this
is to express my gratitude to all the warm and
friendly people I met there, and in particular to the wwoofing and
servas
hosts who helped make my stay so memorable.
So here goes....
I arrived in Dublin, appreciative of having had
such a positive
experience in Lithuania, but keen to travel less hectically. Dublin
is a bustling city on the move,
thanks to the Celtic Tiger, the
decade old economic turn-around that is visibly transforming Irish
society for better
and worse.
I received a warm welcome from Rosalind Duke, a Servas host, and
enjoyed meeting three generations of
her family. A short walk from
her house in Ballinteer, brought me into my first delightful park,
with magnificent beech,
oak and ash trees in spring foliage.But
within two days I had taken a bus down to New Ross, County Wexford to
begin
volunteer wwoofing (world wide opportunities on organic
farms)with Will and Angela Sutherland. On their beautiful property
beside
the River Barrow they run courses in self sufficiency. Their
property was also the home of well known author John Seymour
(before
he died in his 80s in 2004). He authored such well known books as the
Self Sufficiency Manual, a self help manual
for everything from owner
building, to growing and preserving ones own food etc. Besides
myself, there were two other
volunteers, from Spain and Canada, based
in a
large caravan away from the main house. We got on well together.
The
daily work was quite demanding, but I enjoyed learning news
skills such
as stone rock building (come to Ireland for
vast amounts of stone
walls !), sampling delicious organic food and drink, and walking to
local sites such as the John
F Kennedy Arboretum, one of Ireland`s
premier sites for silviculture research and education.
Will Sutherland also
introduced us to the dynamic traditional music
culture of the Irish pub. In one such pub in Wexford, the doors were
locked
at midnight, and for an hour or two the occupants become a
kind of close knit community, as people bring forth their musical
offerings.
I found it easy to actually experience that Ireland has a
vital, participatory musical culture. As I
travelled amongst
the `down to earth` community of south coast
Ireland, which is made up of re-settlers originally from England,
Germany
etc, I saw that their
engagement in musical culture was also very strong. Into this throng
I threw my hat, and over
the coming weeks, enjoyed many
opportunities to play my clarinet, both from set music and improvised.
After the
week near New Ross, I decided to spend all my time just on
Ireland`s south coast, and moved on by bus to near the
small
village of Ballydehob, staying the weekend with Annette
Paetzold (another hospitable Servas host) and her two children.
All of the Irish countryside is uniquely beautiful, but the
coastline, mountains, hedge-rowed fields and
woodlands
of West Cork, in the deep south west, took my breath away
on many occasions. Annette introduced me to Dzogchen Beara, a
buddhist
retreat centre near Allihies, where I stayed a short while,
and other special places around the district including a
celtic
holy spring (with a shrine to Virgin Mary a short distance
away), the mystical oak woods of Glengariff,and so on. Everyone
I
met was special and unique in their own ways. Annette, for example,
is a deeply spiritual person, who lives out her
Buddhist ideals in
the way she treats all the sentient beings (both human and other) she
meets in every day life.
Then
followed a week of wwoofing with Thomas Wiegandt, a
musician and percussion specialist, who also conducts eco-tours
tourists
wanting to experience the awesome prehistoric standing stone
circles that frequent the Irish countryside.
I have
learnt so much from each wwoofing host I stay with. At one
point, after struggling to weed a garden in a poly tunnel that
was
rather overgrown, I gained a key insight into how important attitude
is to tackling any task in life. Ideally it
helps to stay focused
positively in the moment. At last I am learning to apply the
insights of `Zen and the art of motorcycle
maintenance` to practical
rural jobs such as whipper-snipping, using a small saw to cut
firewood, weeding and so on.
My approach to weeding now follows
something like this : First and foremost, align oneself with staying
relaxed and
having fun; learn
to identify what needs to be kept, and what needs to be removed.
Trial the best techniques for carefully
removing the weeds. Start
from the least overgrown areas and work towards the most difficult.
In other words, bush regeneration
methods applied on the micro scale.
Of course this may be old hat to any gardener, but for me it a
revelation that has
helped me enjoy and respect manual work much more.
One reason I came to Ireland was to understand better the profound
influence
Irish immigrants have had on Australia. During my stay I
absorbed a crash course in Irish history. Wow, I hadn't quite
appreciated
the full extent of the `cruel treatment metered out by
the English to the Irish over more than 600 years. No wonder there
was
unfinished business that spilled over to Australia, for example in
the Catholic working class/Protestant middle
and ruling class
tensions so
important in Australian colonial and 19C history. What brought all
this alive for me
was coming across sites directly linked to
turbulent Irish history. I visited several monasteries, churches and
castles
destroyed by marauding English armies, where from the period
1534 under Henry VIII, or 1594 - 1603 under Elizabeth 1 and
James
the 1, or Cromwell from 1649 (a particularly nasty campaign). After
1690 when William of Orange defeated the Catholics
under James II,
Irish culture, music and education was banned and by the end of the
18C catholics owned barely 5 % of
the land. One has to understand
the real human causes of the Great Famine of 1845 to 1851 when over
3 million died or
emigrated to understand the lasting bitterness
towards the English Crown on the part of the Irish people. In Ireland
somehow
all of this history comes alive.
Tow other periods of Irish history came to really interest me. The
fist was
the
time from the Easter Uprising of 1916 to the Civil War of 1921. I
watched the film `Michael Collins`about the life of that
ruthless but
charismatic leader who led the war against the British, headed the
negotiating team which led to the controversial
treaty and
independence, and was
killed by his own countrymen in an ambush in County Cork during the
Civil war in
1922. There are many historical references to
this period in West Cork, including a sign on a pub I passed in
Skibereen
which indicated that that pub was a favourite watering hole
of Collins himself.
The other period I was interested
in covers the troubles
in Northern Ireland (NI) from 1972 through to the 1998 Good Friday
Agreement
which brought
NI closer to peace than ever before. I had the chance
to discuss the peace process with several Irish people, and also
through
reading about the experiences of a remarkable woman Mari
Fitzduff, the former director of an Northern Ireland conflict
resolution
organisation called INCORE. On my travels this year I have
searched for
common themes connecting reconciliation processes,
whether in South
Africa, Australia, Sri Lanka, Lithuania or Northern Ireland. I am
convinced that grass roots community
action is vital to driving
different parties towards peace. The recent announcement by the G&
nations of debt relief
for the world`s poorest nations was prompted ,
in part, by such grass roots campaigns stretching back years. As
regards
reconciliation and building a more peaceful world, the making
of friendships across
previously divided peoples can play
a vital part of building such a
grass roots campaign.
So history is never boring in Ireland. I found that many people
who
now visit Ireland are returning to find out about their family roots,
not dissimilar from the way that I did in
Lithuania. Apparently as
much as 70 million people around the world claim Irish heritage and
yet only two to three million
people currently reside on the island.
The legacy of an oppressive history had implications for all those
countries
in which Irish people reluctantly left to find a better
future. So many characteristics of Australian culture can be traced
back
to their Irish foundations. It was great to find the
similarities.
I would like now to share a few of my experiences
to portray a
little of how day to day life was for me during my time there.
After a day exploring the scenic coastline
near Bantry, I arrived
at my third wwoofing host at Coomhola, on a Friday
evening a day or so earlier than there was
space for me in the
wwoofing caravans. So I put up my tent in the garden just as it
started to rain. Rather damp, I
retired to my tent without supper at
about 7.30pm with the biting midges outside and feeling very sorry
for myself.
Rather than remain that way, I made a decision to connect
with the other 3 wwoofers (two French and one Swiss). Within
minutes
they had
offered me dinner, and mentioned they were going in with a
neighbouring couple into Glengariff for
a music session at one of the
pubs there.So within an hour, I was meeting locals and joining in
with my clarinet some
of the music. Travel can be like that; from
riches to rags to riches again all in the space of an evening.
A week
later, while still at Coomhola, I borrowed one of Annie`s
bikes and cycled the 17km over the mountain pass to Glengariff,
exploring
the lush public gardens there with their myriad of bamboo,
Rhododendron and other exotic species, many in flower. I then
met up
with two local people I had got to know (Eamonn Harris and Tony Webb)
and was invited up to visit their small
holdings above Skehil Nature
Reserve. Although classified as `blow-ins` since they aren`t from
West Cork originally,
they are now well entrenched in the local
community, and have created delightful rustic homes for themselves in
the
woods with the stark mountains behind. I found exploring the
natural surroundings near their homes like entering a truly
mystical
celtic landscape, with old oak trees covered in moss, massive
boulders, old stone walls long since overgrown
with giant Rowan and
Holly, and the quiet tinkling of a little stream. My new found
friend Eamonn (who by coincidence
was at Tuntable Falls near Nimbin
when the Australian rainforest protest campaign began back in
1979)explained that
while in Australia there are special but brief
moments of light at dawn and dusk, in Ireland this same quality of
light
lasts much of the day bathing the landscape in its golden
ambiance.
It was getting late to cycle home, to I was
given a bed for the
night, and early morning had a glorious cycle ride in rare sunshine,
over the mountain in time for
a solid day`s wwoofing.
A third experience I would like to share is attending a Sunday mass
and procession at a
country church. The church was full (Catholicism
is still a powerful force in Ireland) with lots of children in
attendance.
The priest described how just that morning he had had to
break the sad news of a local 17 year old young man killed in
a late
night car accident. There is something special about being able to
stay long enough in a community to be part
of how it responds to
tragic events such as that. In Ireland I came across many books on
the Celts and celtic spirituality
(such as John O`Donohue`s
internationally well known `Anam Cara`) and I read one fascinating
book outlining the difference
between the early Celtic christianity
of Ireland (from the 3rd Centure BCE onwards) and the Roman
catholicism that overtook
it.It astonished me to learn that the
rigidity within Irish christianity (made famous of course by James
Joyce) was
once originally more responsive and inclusive.
While in the Bantry area I had mentioned to my various Wwoofing hosts
that
I was interested in Klezmer (Eastern European Yiddish music) and
was told of a local Klezmer group. It turned out that
one of the
musicians, Ruti Lachs, is Jewish and lived in Killarney, Co. Kerry.
Now Killarney was one place I wanted
to visit, because its national
park is a UNESCO biosphere reserve.
So I contacted Ruti explaining my interest in
Klezmer music and ended
up spending nearly a week in Killarney staying with Ruti and her
family. Not only did I get
to explore on foot and by bicycle the
marvelous national park, but I also got to listen to and play lots
of music, including
getting a much better grounding in how to play
Klezmer music. I also found it great to meet someone with many common
interests,
despite the fact that she was brought up in an orthodox
Jewish family in Liverpool and I on a cattle ranch in Zimbabwe.
Ireland
is like that. It is increasingly an international and
European melting pot, and a lot of other flavours are expressed
alongside
the solid core of Irish music and culture.
After Killarney, I took the bus through Cork (currently the 'cultural
capital
of Europe'), and on the last few days of my time in
Ireland I stayed a sunny, action packed weekend with a
warm Irish
Servas couple, Siobhan Maher and Kevin Brogan near
Kilkenny, a town with strong mediaeval links.
On the Sunday I
was privileged to attend a catholic funeral mass for
a ninety year old farmer that had died. A big slice of the community
turned
up to see him off. It is quite something to see someone
buried in an old church cemetery adjacent to fields that his
ancestors
have been farmed for over a thousand years.
From there it was back to Dublin for just one evening spent talking
about
all things Irish with Roseann Seale, a Dublin lawyer and Servas
host.
At 4am I caught a taxi to the Dublin airport
chatting to a friendly
Jamaican born driver. On the plane, I
sat next to a young Canadian woman of Punjabi heritage
studying in
Cambridge returning to visit family; I was inspired how progressive
and informed she was - we spoke on how
special it is when friendships
bridge the cultural and ethnic differences between warring nations.
Montreal is quite
something, but that is another story.... in short I
stayed five days in that remarkable city and are now wwoofing at
Maison
Emmanual, 100km or so km north of Montreal in the beautiful
forested Laurentian hills. Where I am volunteering is a community
based
on the Camphill model, for people with special needs. It is
rewarding to be here.
I look forward to hearing from
any of you, and will make every effort
to respond personally if you do wish to respond.
Warm wishes
Basil
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Travels In Lithuania in May 2005
General Letter #2 from Basil in Lithuania
Commenced.. 22/4/05...
I write from the old quarters of
the city of Kaunas, Lithuania. It is
snowing outside, beautiful flakes that quickly melt on the gray
pavements. A long
way from Tamil Nadu, southern India, from where I
last wrote. From the frying pan into the ice box, I think the
expression
goes.
Eugenius Bunke, of Plunge, with School History Teacher in Keltenai
village, where one of my great grandparents came from.
Eugenius Bunke, of Plunge, with a local resident in VIesknai
where my grandfather came from. This friendly man gave us a CD of historical photos of the town.
I came a week ago, by plane from Frankfurt. The bus journey from
Vilnius airport to the central city was
like driving through a
film from the end of the Soviet regime. The black wintry trees
without leaves, crumbling gray
concrete buildings, reserved people,
shabby advertising, and on in the distance, the drab high rise
apartment
blocks
where so many Lithuanians live.
But I was prepared through prior reading about the country not
to fooled by such
first impressions, and I have spend the last week
beginning to appreciate how the
newly independent Lithuania is already
shaking off the Soviet legacy,
and forging a much closer economic and cultural alignment with a
dynamic, pluralistic,
liberal European community.
But to go back a step to my last weeks in India.....
After a month volunteering
at the Buddha Garden organic farm I
decided I needed a room with a fan and a shower to cope with the
crescendoing tropical
heat, so I moved to Aspiration
community, one of the first established in Auroville in the late 60's.
From there I continued
to get to know , in more depth a rich
diversity of people including an artistic Indian family in
Pondicherry, local
teachers, artists living
in and visiting Auroville, and some of the remarkable older residents
of Auroville.
I
made but one excursion into the hinterland of Tamil Nadu, to visit
Tiruvannamalai,
which is at the base of a sacred
mountain, Arunachala Hill, linked
to the divinity Shiva and now a place of pilgrimage. I stayed at
the Sri Ramana
Maharashi
Ashram there, and found it a good base to walk the
trails up into the mountain to visit the caves where this guru (who
quite
a few of my Denmark friends seem to have photos of adorning
their homes) spent many years. As well I cycled the 14 km around
the
mountain on the full moon, a memorable experience. Along with the
huge crowds and many beggars, I found it special
to visit there, and
what amazed me is that the mountain is of granite, and the countryside
around there is similar to
the Matopos area near where
I grew up in Zimbabwe, and to the Devils Marbles area of Northern
Territory, and all share
a similar
Gondwanaland link and profound significance to local cultures....
I can but relate one of the many experiences
, which illustrate the
surprises visiting India brings. I refer to my taxi ride at
night
to the Chennai airport to
catch the plane out. A young Tamil man,
Ganesh, who I had got to know well at Buddha Gardens, asked to come
along with
a friend for the 4 hour return journey. On the one hand
the journey was hair raising with poorly lit highways, people and
animals
on the road, and no seat belts. On the other hand, we talked
virtually non stop about all sorts of things. I asked about
some of
the famous stories from ancient India, and the well versed young men
related a couple including the life of
Krishna (which because of the
traffic and their broken English, I only partly understood), but I
feel that
these
stories went into my subconscious, from where perhaps they may
appear one day into my dreams.... Half way to Chennai the
taxi
crunched to
a halt with a puncture, but I only started to worry when I saw the
vast queues waiting for security
clearance at the airport...
I arrived in Frankfurt to take a super fast train south to near Lake
Constance area,
the Swiss border region. There I spent some days
staying with friends, Gunter and Barbara Hamburger, who once visited
me
in Denmark.
They were marvelous to me, showed me places sacred to
them, including limestone cliff lookouts along
the upper Danube
valley,
ponds and bogs in the nearby forests, and Lake Constance itself. I
was inspired to learn
how they are actively incorporating deep
ecological processes and insights into their social counselling and
hospice
work. Gunter organised for me to meet with the director of
NGO based in Radolfzell, called the Global Nature Fund. I was
excited
to see how they are working with project partners in a broad range of
countries on a flagship lake conservation
program.
Quite a few of the wetland projects they support are in UNESCO
listed biosphere
reserves or world heritage
areas, so that was exciting. (see
www.globalnature.org and www.livinglakes.org) As they don't
have a project partner
in Australia, I suggested that the
organisation I work for back in Australia, Green Skills,
might be a good candidate.
I confess to harbouring a vision of
Denmark as a centre of a UNESCO listed biosphere reserve, and with
educational activities
that link it globally to a network of
progressive communities.
Constance is a remarkable town that manages to mix
a rich
history with a progressive modernism. It is one of two cities in
Germany with a Green Mayor. An example of the
delightful attitude of
the towns folk is that a decade or so ago they commissioned a local
sculptor to do a large statue
of a famous woman from the town;
Imelda, legend has it of ill repute. And so there she prominently
stands at the entrance
to the town's lake side harbour, holding in
one hand a bishop and in the other the devil. Apparently the local
catholic
clergy were rightfully outraged when it was unveiled.
From the Constance I went on to spent quality time
with hospitable
Servas hosts in Freiburg,
Essinglen near Stuttgart and Ladenburg near
Heidelberg. Finally for a few special days with
friends Esse and
Denne Bucher, from Raibach Gross Umstadt near Darmstadt.
A highlight for me was staying in a large
co-housing development in
Freiburg, southern Germany. Freiburg is an amazing city of 200,000
people with a Green mayor
and
very visible policies on controlling cars, wind and solar energy
(solar panels
everywhere on roofs !), bicycles
galore, and so on. The four story
co-housing
development is quite high density,
but makes up for it by being close
to forests and farmland, and lots
of community facilities
and expressions of creativity, gardens, colour and art. Along
with
nearby residential complexes, it is even heated by a co-generation
plant, based on local wood supplies.
One
morning in Freiburg I went for a long walk in the woods at
Schoenberg above the city, in
the gentle drizzle... it was
exhilarating... the white blossoms of
the orchards, the
forest trees coming into blossom and leaf... and the rivers
fed by
snow melt from the nearby mountains of the Black Forest.
As part of the theme of exploring Jewish issues
a whole series of
remarkable synchronicities have happened to me. It was great to
have long
discussions with my German
friends and Servas hosts about relations
between Jewish and German people. All of them are deeply committed to
building
a better world and to a more compassionate Germany. The
level of discussion and awareness on this topic is high. I will
quote
just three of the several experiences that occurred to me on my
two weeks in Germany.
In Essinglen I stayed with
a Servas host, who is
the Lutheran pastor in her local parish. ( The village in which she
lives is situated in the Schur
Wald (Schur forest), how about that for
coincidence?). She is deeply committed to
Jewish German better understanding,
as well as being active on
peace, third world and related issues. She showed me a recent art
exhibition that her church
community had organised, and the
exhibition included images by Jewish artists, and a number of images
relating to he
Shoah. On the Friday night I was with them they
welcomed the opportunity to partake in the Shabbat blessing of the
candles.
She invited me to play my clarinet in
accompaniment with her husband guitarist at a confirmation service
she facilitated
and it was great to do so. While Martin Luther had
problematic anti semitic views, I was inspired to meet a contemporary
Lutheran
pastor, who was able to describe the deep soul searching
that has gone on in the Lutheran church since the war.
I
was introduced to her husband's brother, a book restorer from
Nurtingen. He is a warm, cultured, thoughtful man, in this
early 30's.
He has a deep knowledge of Judaism, and the links of early
Christianity to it. He described how he had traced
his family history
and found Jewish ancestors, the Katz's, 300 years before. He showed me
photos of his great grandmother
with her dark features, as well as
photos of great uncles in the uniform of the Nazi army. He has
travelled to US on
several occasions, where he has Jewish and Amish
friends, and understands Yiddish.
On the day before I flew out
of Frankfurt, Esse Bucher, who I have
corresponded with since 1998 when Lisa Bucher and I visited her in
Germany, arranged
for her and me to attend a book launch call
the 'The Search for Major Plagge', fortuitously scheduled for my last
day
in Germany.
At the launch was the Jewish physician author from the US, his
father, who
was saved in Lithuania
during the war by local peasant farmers, other
Shoah survivors, and German allies who had helped research the book.
The
book chronicles the efforts of one Major Plagge in the Germany
army to
protect hundreds of Jewish people in Vilnius,
Lithuania, including the
author's mother, during the period 1941 to 1945. In a letter written
in 1948 Karl Plagge wrote
to one of the former Jewish inmates( of the
vehicle maintenance camp he had managed during the war), and with
whom he
had just had a joyful re-union meeting:
"I believe that the time has come for all
right-minded, well disposed people
to extend their hands to each
other across national boundaries to form a community of 'the solitary
among the nations'.
For whoever seeks truth and justice now days
remains solitary in the midst of a blind multitude crying for power
and
violence."
...continuing later... 24/4/05.
I have now been in Lithuania for nine days, spending the time in
and
around the two major cities of Vilnius and Kaunas. I write now
from the coastal city of Klaipeda.
I have come to
Lithuania to meet Lithuanians,
explore family history, confront some troubling questions from the
past..
What
has helped to gain a clearer perspective through the mists of
some emotional times, has been the back drop of the beautiful
forests
and lakes of Lithuania and the friendship offered by Lithuanian
families I have met..
I first stayed
in Vilnius with a Servas couple and their two young
children. (For those of you in the dark, Servas is an international
hosting
organisation dedicated to promoting peace). They live on the
four floor of one of the many gray box like apartment blocks
that
ring the city. Yet despite living in a tiny space, their family life
is rich and varied. On the very first day
I went with them to their
'garden' home, set in a forested area 30 km outside the city.
The following day, being
Saturday, we went on an excursion to some
special locations around Vilnius, a sacred oak forest with a rock with
ancient
pagan engravings, lakes, the castle at Takai. That day I
also met with Eugenius Bunka, a friend of my Israeli relative,
Abel
Levitt. Eugenius is of Jewish heritage, and deeply immersed in the
life and culture of Western Lithuania, and lives
in a national park
near Plunge, close to Vieksniai where my Grandfather was born in
1896. He invited me to a concert
the next day he had helped organise
which brought together current and former citizens of Plunge in a
feast
of music,
dance, poetry.
The next day I spend the morning with a Vilnius member of the Jewish
community, Regina Koplevich,
who showed me over the old Jewish
quarters of Vilnius, and also included a visit to the site of Major
Plunge's camp.
This was an overwhelming experience for me as the
extent of the calamity of the destruction of the Vilnius ghetto in
1941-
4. I visited the memorial site near Paneriai
as well as the bleak Ninth Forth site near Kaunas,
later in the week
and grieved deeply for the catastrophes that these
sites represent.
I found it inspiring to get to know Regina.
She knows several
languages including Hebrew and some Yiddish and recently finished a
degree through the Hebrew university
in Jerusalem. She has a deep
connection to Vilnius, her home, and walking through the streets it
was obvious she is
well known and appreciated. Over lunch, she
provided her carefully considered responses to my questions of how
contemporary
Lithuania was dealing with such issues, as educating
about the Shoah (Holocaust), restoring better relations with the
international
and local Jewish community, etc.
I have been blessed to have Servas families to stay with in Vilnius
and Kaunas.
Not only have they squeezed me into their apartment
homes, but they have made me feel welcomed and willingly engaged in
long
conversations about what makes this country tick. They have been
interested in me, as a Jewish person returning to visit
the homeland
of his ancestors, and the two Shabbat ceremonies I have shared with
them remain highlights of my trip so
far.
Without them, I can honestly say that I might have felt
despondent about the
prospects for reconciliation
between contemporary Lithuanians and
Jewish people. In fact, I have a lot of optimism that Lithuania
has embarked on
this journey of confronting deeply rooted anti
semitism and the loss of so many Jewish communities.
In Klaipeda
I was met by Eugenius's nephew, Mike,
who has kindly agreed to accompany me over the next few days on
visits to local
national parks such as the World Heritage Listed
Curonian Spit National Park. As well we will visit, with his uncle,
the
towns of Vieksniai, Kelme, Kaltinenai, and so where my great
grandparents lived. I realise that one of the reasons I have
for
visiting Vieksniai is to better appreciate the childhood environment
of my paternal grandfather, Louis Joseph Schur,
whose
difficult personality profoundly shaped the family dynamics of my
upbringing in southern Africa. So it is in eager
anticipation that I
am soaking up my travels through the Lithuanian countryside
I have
discussed questions relating
to Lithuanian collaboration with the
Nazis in WW2, etc at length with several Lithuanians, both
Jewish and non Jewish.
Yes, there was widespread collaboration with
the Nazis, but the subsequent 45 years of the oppressive Soviet
regime
prevented a proper public appreciation and understanding of the
extent of the Jewish calamity or Lithuanian involvement
in it. In
addition there were many examples of Lithuanians risking their lives
to help Jewish peopleYes,
anti-semitic
attitudes are apparently quite widespread in Lithuania
today, albeit held by a minority of people. But there are many
Lithuanians
for whom anti-semitism is an anathema and I have come to
the conclusion that it is unacceptable to apply collective blame
to
today's Lithuanian people for what happened.
In Kaunas I visited the inspiring Suihara House and Foundation
that
commemorates the Japanese consul in Lithuania who in the Second World
War saved the lives of thousands of Jewish
people by providing
transit visas.
Space prevents me sharing all my findings. In summary though I have
come
to the following preliminary insights.
Anti-semitism is an issue that will continue to deeply trouble
Lithuanian
society
and history until it is properly dealt with. Some of the
positive moves towards reconciliation include: a mass of atonement
held
by the Catholic church in the Vilnius arch-cathedral in 2000,
the beginnings of progress on restitution of Jewish property,
the
inauguration of an annual day commemorating the Holocaust
rehabilitation of Jewish cemeteries and memorial sites,
establishment
of teacher education programs on the Holocaust, etc,
etc.
Discussion on Jewish issues is apparently widespread,
but the
process of reconciliation will take much more time, for although the
Government has made many positive steps
(including a moving apology in
the Israeli Knesset in 1995 by the Lithuanian President), the
reconciliation process
has not yet become a people's movement, as
has,I believe, happened so strikingly in Germany.
....continued... 25/4/05
Here
in the coastal city of Klaipeda, I am feeling more relaxed.
Last night was the first night of Pesach (Passover), and I
joined in
the Seder dinner with Mike, and his Jewish Grandfather, Jacob Bunka
along with over 60 other Jewish people
from the local community. Two
American Hassidic rabbis presided over the Russian/English/Hebrew
ceremony. Luckily there
was kosher grape juice, as well as wine, so
in addition to eating a considerable amount of matzo (unleavened
bread)
, I have suffered no lasting hangover from the evening !
Over the past two days, Mike and I have tramped many kilometres
along
the beaches, forests and parks of the Lithuanian coast line. I have
leant that Klaipeda was once the capital of
east Prussia, and the
proximity of this port city to where the Schur family comes from
helps explain why they adopted
a German surname in the early 19C.
Nothing like on the spot detective work to solve a mystery.
Nine days on, and
thanks to the warmth and generosity of Lithuanian
people, I am beginning to appreciate what is special and valuable
about
this small country. I have tasted local cuisine in earthy
restaurants that remind me of my Grandmother's cooking, celebrated
my
birthday with them, joined in some folk dancing, asked my hosts why
Lithuanians, newly freed from a claustrophobic
communism, like jazz
so much. Not just jazz, but modern art, dance, music and everything
else that makes contemporary
Europe such an exciting place to be.
written 2nd May 2005 in Vilnius..
In the last few days I have visited
several of the towns lived in by
my
ancestors, with more memorable experiences. This includes Vieksnai,
where my
father's father comes from, and Kaltinenai and Kelme, where
other great grandparents were born.
I was fortunate
to be with Eugenijus
Bunka, to translate. He is a journalist who lives in Platelai in the
Zemaitija National Park in
the North West of Lithuania.
He has spent 3 days showing me
around, and introducing me to people and places.
I
found it great to visit a Tolerance Centre in Plunge set up to
promote understanding about Jewish history and culture ,and
sat in on
a Holocaust discussion session
with high school students run by a young Austrian volunteer working
with
the
Vilna Gaon Jewish Museum.
Vieksnai was particularly of interest to me. I learnt that it has
been largely
destroyed in the first world war, and so few building
date to the time of my grandfather's stay there. At the turn of the
century
the majority of the 6000 people who lived in the town were
Jewish, and the town's emblem comprised three Stars of David
at that
time. Of the many Jewish families living there in 1941, only 2
people survived. The memorial site is in a forest
near Mazeikia where
over 4000 people are buried.
The town now is typically Lithuanian, with perhaps 3000 people.
It
has a prominent Catholic church, as as well as a Russian Orthodox
church, many wooden buildings, including some dating
back to the post
WW1 period as well as the ugly buildings dating from Soviet times,
including the local High School.
The town is attractively set on the
banks of the Venda River with forests beyond. We spoke to local
people who were
able to share a lot of historical information,
including providing a CD of archival photographs and historical
information
on the town. It was a pleasure to conclude my stay to
Lithuania with such a visit.
On the way back to Vilnius I
again stayed with Servas hosts who made
me feel so welcome and keen to show me what is special about their
home country.
Perhaps
I can finish this letter outlining a dream I had the other
night.
I dreamt I was in an old institution but the only
people I could see
were my friends, not anyone actually responsible for running the
institution. I heard there were
apparently regulations for
accommodation
and food, but actually I had need of only a little food and no bed.
Around
the grounds of this big building, polar bears
reportedly
lurked. Along with others I could tentatively see them, but
after
running and running, climbing and hiding, we noticed no danger
followed. The fears we held were ours alone. We
were free to go
anytime we wanted, and no harm surrounded us...
If this dream sounds like a story line out of a
Kafka story,
perhaps this is apt. At times, my recent weeks travelling in Europe
has felt like participating in the
theatre of the absurd. Thankfully
a benign reality has never seemed very far away.
Warm wishes and in appreciation,
Basil
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