Excursion: East Prussia’s border regions with Lithuania Part 1

3-day excursion on Jewish history in East Prussia’s border regions with Lithuania. Part 1

Part 1 JUL 28 Klaipeda – Memel – there is still a Jewish community here that provides religious services and commemorates the Jewish history and culture of the port city through cultural activities. The religious center is located on the grounds of the largely destroyed cemetery, which was misused. Feliksas Puzemskis is the head of the Jewish community and reported on their activities and the challenges they face. Several exhibition projects are being planned in collaboration with “Jews in East Prussia.”

A subsequent tour of the old town showed where Jewish teaching and business activities took place in the city. Several educational institutions for young people made the region a center of the Zionist movement during the pre-war period.

Cover of Book, about Pioniers House Beit Hachalutz in Old City Memel Klaipeda

There are three regions that share a common history between East Prussia and Lithuania

Map of border region between East Prussia and Lithuania

1) The area that begins just before the border with Poland and extends to the Memel River – known as Suduva or Suvalkija

2) The former border region that extends from the Memel River to almost Latvia – the western part of the Zemaitija or Samogitia region.

Regions 1) and 2) had towns with a very large Jewish population close to the border with East Prussia (Schtetl).

3) The Memel region or Little Lithuania – the part of East Prussia north of the Memel River, which came under Lithuanian administration after World War I and had bilingual status until 1938. The center is the port city of Klaipeda (in German: Memel), which had a diverse Jewish community. As everywhere in East Prussia, individual Jewish shops and inns were scattered throughout the villages.

Travelers: Ralph Salinger, from Israel, runs the Jewish Vilkaviskis portal and has been coordinating the commemoration of the large Jewish community for decades. The town of Vilkaviskis is located in the middle of the Suduva region, between the border with Poland and the Memel River, on the road leading to nearby East Prussia (today the smallest Russian Federation, Kaliningrad Oblast). Irma Mauriene, from Vilkaviskis, is a cultural activist and specialist in the history of the local Jewish community. Michael Leiserowitz, who lives in Berlin, Warsaw, and Klaipeda, is involved in the association “Jews in East Prussia” to preserve the memory of their history.