6/29/2004:  Balbieriskis
6/29/04:

Balbieriskis

After a breakfast of small salami sandwiches and yogurt, we started off for Balbieriskis, back in Lithuania.  Along the way, we tried to stop for gas in a major city, but had to wait for an hour and a half until the workers finished their lunch - the most obvious remnant of the communist past, I think.

We reached Balbierkis by mid-afternoon.  There was not much evidence of a Jewish past left, but there was an existing Jewish cemetary just outside of the town.  According to directions I found on the web:

"The Jewish cemetery is in a pasture just off the Alytus-Balbieriskis road, to the right before one reaches the town heading north. No road or path exists to the cemetery, so one must walk through a cow pasture to reach it. A wooden fence encloses the cemetery. The entrance is through a concrete archway marked with a plaque in Hebrew, Yiddish and Lithuanian reading "Old Jewish Cemetery." About 50 gravestones date from the 19th and 20th centuries, many with last names."

In spite of the great directions, we couldn't find the cemetary.  We drove through the town, and found an old man who knew were it was.  It was about 1/4 mi (or km?) south of the town, not very visible from the road.  The above account was written in 1997;  in 2004 there was some overgrowth, and the archway had lost its plaque.

arch in
arch out

I took as many photographs as I could, but unfortunately the sun was very bright and the sunlight hit the tombstones directly, so that some of Hebrew text is very difficult to see.  In addition, there was a lot of moss covering the tombstones, I tried to brush off as much as I could, but some text remains obscured.   I felt a little uneasy stepping on the graves of my forefathers, for some reason I kept muttering "forgive me grandfather".

grave 1
grave 63
BalbGraveyard_s.JPG


BalbGrave02 BalbGrave03
BalbGrave04
BalbGrave05
BalbGrave06
Sarah Miriam bat Moshe
BalbGrave07
BalbGrave08 BalbGrave09 BalbGrave10 BalbGrave11
BalbGrave12
Devora ??tel bat Dov
BalbGrave13
Eta Miriam Tsharny
BalbGrave14
Nechama bat Aryit Cohen
BalbGrave15
BalbGrave16
BalbGrave17
BalbGrave18
BalbGrave19
BalbGrave20
Esther bat Shlomo
BalbGrave21
BalbGrave22
BalbGrave23
BalbGrave24
BalbGrave25
BalbGrave26
BalbGrave27
BalbGrave28
BalbGrave29
BalbGrave31
BalbGrave32
BalbGrave33
Menchem Mendel ben Zeev Finkelshtein
BalbGrave34
BalbGrave35
BalbGrave36
BalbGrave37
BalbGrave38
BalbGrave39
BalbGrave40
BalbGrave41
BalbGrave42
BalbGrave43
BalbGrave44
BalbGrave45
BalbGrave46
BalbGrave47
BalbGrave48
BalbGrave49
BalbGrave50
BalbGrave51
Miriam Fink bat Yakov
BalbGrave52
BalbGrave53
Feiga Horowitz
BalbGrave54
BalbGrave55
BalbGrave56
BalbGrave57
BalbGrave58
BalbGrave59
BalbGrave60
BalbGrave61
BalbGrave62

Some of the gravestones are legible, if any one can provide any translations, please let me know.

The old gentleman who led us to the site said that this was actually the old Jewish graveyard, the new Jewish graveyard no longer existed.  There was also a Shul that had been torn down by the Soviets and replaced by a "modern" building, I took photos of both locations:

New Graveyard site
Shul site

We took one final photo before we left:

me in Balbieriskis

We drove off to Kaunas, where I was to rejoin the tour group;  I thanked Neringa and Genadius and we parted ways.