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| Typical Jewish House in Ziczmariai (Ziezmar in Yiddish), a Shetl in Lithuania |
During the 1800s, Lithuanian Jews had been encouraged to settle into rural shtetls. In over 200 shtetls that were established and spread across the area near the cities of Vilnius and Kaunas, the Jews were relegated to serve a specific purpose - to jumpstart commerce. The Jews were expected to conduct a market in the town for trading twice a week. They located their homes in the center of town, primarily bordering the central square marketplace and radiating out from there. Jews made their homes serve double purpose as a shop and a residence. Some Jewish homes even had two doors facing the street: one for the shop and the other for the residence.
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| Shtetl home originally built by a Jewish merchant: one door for the shop; one door for the home |
However, the typical homes of Lithuanians have the entrance door through the side, with only windows facing the street. The Lithuanians were traditional farmers who were self-sufficient, feeding themselves and their families from their own farms. They did not orient their homes to the street like the Jewish merchants did.
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| Typical Lithuanian Home - Entrance door is on the side |
After the Jews Moved Out, Their Homes Were Converted
After Jews left their homes, the Lithuanians converted the layout to their custom, replacing the street door with windows, and relocating the entrance to the side of the property. In the photo below, the street-facing door has been removed, but the threshold step still remains in the place where the door had been.
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| Former home of a Jewish merchant; converted to Lithuanian home by removing street-facing door |
Very few Jews remain in Lithuania after what the Russian Tzars, Nazis and then the Soviets did to them. Today, there are less than 5,000 Jews in the country of Lithuania, down from 2.4 million in the region of Lithuania and Poland before World War II.
My family lore was that the Russian Army was the reason they left. My father's family ripped up their lives, scraped money together and traveled halfway around the world to the United States where they knew no one and did not speak English. But, I wondered, what was it about the Russian Army that caused them to leave? I had maintained visions of Tzarist soldiers on horseback, stampeding into the Jewish shtetls, wearing brass buttoned capes and swinging bayonets to terrorize the Jewish inhabitants.
It took a visit to Lithuania, with travel to shtetls with a knowledgeable guide, to understand more.
What happened to the Jews?
Beginning around 1850, Russia controlled Lithuania and Poland. There were about 2.4 million Jews in the territory, making Jews among the largest minorities in the Russian Empire. In the view of Tsar Nicholas I, the Jews needed to be assimilated and Russified. The way to do that was through education - specifically, military education. Russia imposed an edict of military conscription. At the age of 12, Jewish boys were taken from their families and sent far away from their families, to schools where they were not allowed to practice Judaism. At age 18, they were required to serve in the Russian military for the next 25 years. Eventually, many of the Jews who served in the Russian military converted to Christianity. I cannot fathom what it felt like to have one's sons taken away for 31 years.
From the time of the Tsarist conscription through the Nazi era, the Jewish population of Lithuania has dwindled to nearly none.