LEVITAN Origin of surname

Isaac Levitan (1861-1900), painter, born in Kybartai, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). While he was still a boy his family moved to Moscow where he studied at the Art School. In 1889 Levitan visited Paris where he was deeply influenced by the prevailing mood in art, including impressionism. He became the major interpreter of Russian landscape in art and has been called the father of Russian landscape painting. In 1896 he was appointed professor of landscape painting at the Art Academy in Moscow. Among his great admirers was the writer, Anton Chekhov. He is known to have produced over a thousand paintings and studies, most of them in the decade 1887-1897.

Rietavas

A small town in the district of Memel (Klaipeda), Lithuania

Rietavas is situated between the Port of Memel and the town of Telsiai in the Zemaitija region (meaning "low country"), which is rich in marshland and lakes. The small town was founded on the banks of the river Jura, which flows into the Niemen river, an important waterway used mainly for transporting timber to Germany by rafts. Trading in flax and its seeds from which oil is extracted also developed in Rietavas.

In the past the small town belonged to a Polish nobleman, Oginski, who put in paved streets and electricity, but he abused the Jewish community and destroyed the synagogue. After the First World War, when Lithuania became independent, his heir, Count Zalucki, returned the land to the Jews ans his palace was turned into an agricultural school.

It is not known when Jews first settled in Ritova, although a community apparently existed there for several centuries. The community is mentioned in the records of the Council of the Land of Lithuania, an active body from the mid-16th century until 1764, as a gathering place for the communities of the region.

The Ritova synagogue ("Die Shul") was a specially designed wooden building visited by emissaries from yeshivot and from Zionist institutions. There exsisted also a beth midrash and a yeshiva, attended by numerous students from Ritova and the region.

Rabbi Abraham Ahron Burstein lived in the town at the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century he founded a yeshiva near Moscow. He later became a supporter of political Zionist and immigrated to Eretz Israel where he was appointed rosh metivta of Rabbi Kook's yeshiva Merkas Harav in Jerusalem. Rabbi Baruch Marcus ben Rabbi Mayer, a native of Ritova, immigrated to Eretz Israel at the beginning of the 20th century and became Chief Rabbi of Haifa. Rabbi Shlomo Ahron Zalmanowitz, who later became Chief Rabbi of Montreal, was known in his youth as the Matmid of Ritova. He studied together with Chaim Nachman Bialik at the Wolodzin yeshiva, and it is said that he was the source of inspiration for the latter's poem Hamatmid.

Professor Gezl Zelikowits a world known expert of Semitic languages and Egyptology, a novelist, poet and journalist, was born in Ritova and known there as a prodigy of the yeshiva.

Rabbi Izchak Eliahu Gefen was the town's rabbi at the beginning of the 20th century. The last rabbi of Ritova, Rabbi Shmuel Fondiler, took an active part in the life of the community and in shaping its institutions.

The town had a modern heder, where secular subjects were also taught, and a Hebrew school which the teacher Jacob Levitan from Copenhagen founded at the beginning of the 20th century. The textbooks were prepared by the school's teachers and printed in the town by Shimon Verkol. The Hebrew school ceased to exist during the First World War. In 1919 the educator and teacher Alter Levite founded a new Hebrew school in the town. There was also a public library which had thousands of books.

The community had its cemetery, hevra kadisha (burial society) and charitable and mutual assistance institutions, such as Linat Tzedek and Bikur Holim.

The Jews of Ritova were grocers and haberdashers, and traded plasterers, blacksmiths, tailors and shoemakers.

Difficulties in earning a living and the lack of future prospects caused young people to emigrate to various countries overseas, mainly to South Africa. Later on they helped their families who had stayed behind.

The People's Bank was founded in the early twenties. It was affiliated to the Central Jewish People's Banking Association of Lithuania with headquarters in Kovno, under the management of Zalman Abilov.

The Kovno and Suwalki regional Zionist conference in 1909 was attended by a delegate from Ritova, Rabbi Eliezer Pressman who headed a Zionist group of yeshiva students and received assistance from the Zionists in Kovno.

Many Jews in the small town spoke Hebrew, they organized lectures on Eretz Israel. There were also parties were money was collected on behalf of the Keren Kayemet and Keren Hayesod.

Hashomer Hatzair held Hebrew language courses and carried out cultural activities for the youth. Zvi Singer run the Maccabi sport organization of the town, with the support of Count Zalucki.

Licht, the first Ritova Oleh in Jerusalem in the 19th century; and Gabriel Grad, the musician, who arrived in 1924 and continued his work as a composer. He was a music teacher in Ritova, where he conducted the choir and played in the local orchestra.

Avraham Falkust was a Ritova artist, who died there at an early age; his paintings, depicting the fate of Jews in the diaspora, were exhibited in Israel.

250 Jewish families lived in Rietavas when world war two broke out. They constituted the majority of the population of the small town.


The Holocaust Period

On June 22, 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Germans entered Rietavas. They formed groups of Lithuanians who attacked and killed Jews. The town's rabbi, Rabbi Fondiler, was tortured and put to death. The synagogue and many Jewish homes in the small town were burned.

On June 27 all the Jews of Ritova were taken to the Gerol estate near Telsiai, where Jews from Telsiai and the neighboring towns had already been herded together by the Germans following an "aktion" in the area.

In July 1941 the Germans rounded up Jewish men from Ritova and the nearby towns and subjected them to brutal torture, eventually shooting them. Five camps for women were located in the Telsiai region and the women from Ritova and the vicinity were sent there. Younger women were taken to labor camps and the older and weaker women transported to a ghetto near Telsiai and murdered there.

Up to August 30 all women still alive in the work camps were killed. By the end of 1941 the Germans had wiped out the Gerol ghetto altogether.

The few Jews who survived the war immigrated to Israel. Six of the former Jewish community of Ritova gave their lives in the wars of Israel.