Our efforts are not only to commemorate the fled and murdered Jews from East Prussia, but also to bring back the people erased from history into the history books. Individual former East Prussians had begun to write down the history of their Jewish neighbours. But the task is complicated for everyone, because there are only very few contemporary witnesses, the geopolitical situation in this area has always been locally different, changeable and therefore difficult to understand. And access to the region has long been denied or very difficult. So descendants all over the world have hardly been able to develop a historical regional identity.
We very much welcome the fact that there is now a new entry on Rabbi Adolf Ehrlich (1837-1913) in Tilsit in the German-language Wikipedia. We also advocate that the Jewish aspect be added to the cities of the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the former neighbouring region of East Prussia (that is often missing in the German Wikipedia).
Dr. Abraham-Abele Adolf Ehrlich
Link to the German Wikipedia >>
Link to the Hebrew Wikipedia >>
His grandson was the Israeli composer and teacher Prof. Abel Ehrlich (1915-2003). He travelled to the city of a childhood in today’s Sovietsk and composed in the 90s after his impressions the work “My Journey to Tilsit”.