Discovery to Diaspora is a fascinating family journey which breathes life into the times of Jews in Lithuania and Latvia. The Jewish roots in the Baltic Sea region are rife with dualities. In one sense, the region is a beautiful coastal area with large sandy beaches and busy ports. Yet, these same attractions have fraught the region with war and conflict. It is here where the Graudan Family was established. It was also the site in which German Nazis and Latvian collaborators mass murdered thousands of Jews during WWII, including some of the Graudans, (the local population numbered about 7,000 before the war and yet less than 30 Jews remained after the war). Others in the family, through marriage, and the foresight of early emigration survived. Through their individual stories we see their descendents enriching the world with their skills, love, and compassion for life. With the help of genealogy reports, published works, public records, memoirs, journals, diaries, notes, interviews, and personal stories, Keith W Kaye develops a holistic blueprint of Jewish life and times of the Graudan family from the eighteenth to mid twentieth century. Steeped in rich ancestry and history, the personal stories allow the reader to travel to the Baltic and experience past life there in a firsthand way. A vivid picture of Jewish life in Lithuania and in Latvia evolves as the history, politics, and people of the region are explored. Jews of Lithuania and Latvia: The Graudans is also an important contribution to current scholarship of Baltic region Jewry. Along the way, Keith shares his own techniques for discovering the historical and familial facts, his unexpected and enlightening encounters, and his exciting exploration into the depths of his family history.

The Lithuanian Jews, Litvaks, played an important and unique role not only within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but in a wider context of Jewish life and culture in Eastern Europe, too. The changing world around them at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first decades of the twentieth had a profound impact not only on the Jewish communities, but also on a parallel world of the "others," that is, those who lived with them side by side. Exploring and demonstrating this development from various angles is one of the themes and objectives of this book. Another is the analysis of the Shoah, which ended the centuries of Jewish culture in Lithuania: a world of its own had vanished within months. This book, therefore, "recalls" that vanished world. In doing so, it sheds new light on what has been lost. The papers presented in this collection were delivered at the international conferences in Nida (1997) and Telsiai (2001), Lithuania. Participants came from Israel, the USA, Great Britain, Poland, Russia, Belarus, Germany, and Lithuania.

What do we know about Latvia and the Latvians? A Baltic (not Balkan) nation that emerged from fifty years under the Soviet Union - interrupted by a brief but brutal Nazi-German occupation and a devastating war - now a member of the European Union and NATO. Yes, but what else? Relentless accusations keep appearing, especially in Russian media, often repeated in the West: "Latvian soldiers single-handedly saved Lenin's revolution in 1917", "Latvians killed Tsar Nikolai II and the Royal family", "Latvia was a thoroughly anti-Semitic country and Latvians started killing Jews even before the Germans arrived in 1941", "Nazi revival is rampant in today's Latvia", "The Russian minority is persecuted in Latvia. . ." True, false or in-between? The Finnish journalist and author Jukka Rislakki examines charges like these and provides an outline of Latvia's recent history while attempting to separate documented historical fact from misinformation and deliberate disinformation. His analysis helps to explain why the Baltic States (population 7 million) consistently top the enemy lists in public opinion polls of Russia (143 million). His knowledge of the Baltic languages allows him to make use of local sources and up-to-date historical research. He is a former Baltic States correspondent for Finland's largest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and the author of several books on Finnish and Latvian history. As a neutral, experienced and often critical observer, Rislakki is uniquely qualified for the task of separating truth from fiction.

Noted historian Rosin presents the history of 50 Jewish towns in Lithuania, providing information about the founding of the settlements, their development into vibrant communities, and their ultimate destruction in the Shoah (Holocaust).

This book offers sociological and structural descriptions of language varieties used in over 2 dozen Jewish communities around the world, along with synthesizing and theoretical chapters. Language descriptions focus on historical development, contemporary use, regional and social variation, structural features, and Hebrew/Aramaic loanwords. The book covers commonly researched language varieties, like Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, and Judeo-Arabic, as well as less commonly researched ones, like Judeo-Tat, Jewish Swedish, and Hebraized Amharic in Israel today.

A ground-breaking study that looks at why European nations sent troops to take part in Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.