July The road from Kaunas, in central Lithuania, to Vilkaviskis, a town near the western border with Russia, looks like Vermont. Pastoral farmland, dairy cows, woods of birch and pine. Inside tiny grocery stores in the church-villages dotting the road, old women sit behind large wooden abacuses. This incongruity spills out onto the sidewalks. Many still dress in drab Soviet costume. The youngs wear T-shirts or smart-looking suits. They speak English. One of these twentysomethings โ a pony-tailed Vilnius entrepreneur โ runs an agency for foreign tourists.
He arranged for a car, a driver and a tour guide to meet my wife and me in Kaunas, and take us to Vilkaviskis.
Chayim met us with a small Israeli flag in his hand. He is fiftyish, short and gregarious. An engineer by training, he makes a living teaching Hebrew and showing tourists the historical Jewish sites of western Lithuania. Of about 6, Jews living in Lithuania in , 5, are in Vilnius โ or Vilna โ and most of the rest in Kaunas โ or Kovno โ the second-largest city.
Of the 96 synagogues that once stood there, only one remains. It is especially difficult now, as dementia rapidly extinguishes his remaining memories. In , Lithuania is palpably in the afterglow of sudden freedom. After decades of Soviet oppression, its native language, culture, and politics are newly predominant.
The monuments and Lithuanian-language plaques are new and shiny. But this shininess illuminates some ugly, once-hidden historical truths.
