Kėdainiai Old Jewish Cemetery (Lithuania)
Kedainiai Atzalynas gymnasium is not only providing an academic education, it is also fostering its students' awareness how to bring history to life by preserving Jewish memory.
Our gymnasium has been home to the long-lasting project ‘’Tiltai- Bridges -בריקן’’ for over a decade.
The project "Maceva", initiated by the Keidaner Ben-Tsion Klibansky, began in June 2018. Not only were the students of the gymnasium cleaning the headstones in the Old Jewish cemetery in Keidan, where there have been 583 burials, but they also took photos of every single headstone and sent them to Ben-Tsion Klibansky in order for him to read and translate the inscriptions. All data is collected and is shared on this website. Those with roots in Keidan will have the opportunity to experience the serenity of the Keidan Old Jewish Cemetery virtually.
Thanks to Ben-Tsion Klibansky we started this great project.
Characteristics of Kedainiai Old Jewish Cemetery
The Keidan Jewish cemetery is one of the largest and most well-kept cemeteries in Lithuania. The project of thorough cleaning of its tombstones by the Kedainiai Atzalynas Gymnasium students and teachers made it possible to read the inscriptions of many of them. However, there are quite a few tombstones whose inscriptions are not yet read in part or in full. These are mainly raw-stone tombstones, the inscription of which is very difficult to read today despite the close-up photographs taken by the students. Compared to these raw-stone tombstones, there are many gravestones made of marble or smooth stone; The caption on many of them is well preserved, and often easy to identify and read.
What was the period when local Jews were buried in this cemetery?
From the identified tombstones, it can be determined that Jews began to be buried in this cemetery in the 1880s, and the first tombstone identified is from late 1879 (H39). The burials in the 1880s were mostly done in row H. However, there are some graves from those years in other rows as well.
Local Jews continued to be buried in this cemetery even in the 1930s, and the last tomb identified is from early 1940 (C1).
Were Jews buried in this cemetery during the First or Second World Wars?
World War I: As is well known, the Jews of Keidan, like the other Jews of the Kaunas Province, were expelled from their homes by the Russian Tsar on the eve of Jewish Pentecost 1915, and were forced to migrate to the Ukrainian Provinces of the Pale of Settlement. The deported Jews were allowed to return to their homes only after the signing of the repatriation agreement between Soviet Russia and independent Lithuania in 1920. And here, tombstones of Jews from the war years, 1915–1919, can also be identified in the cemetery. An explanation for this will be found in the possibility that some of the deported Jews were unable to travel far away to Russia; After the German occupation of the Kaunas and Vilnius Provinces in the summer of 1915, these deported Jews returned to their homes. Materially, these were very difficult years, so even among the few Jews who returned to Keidan, the dead were numerous.
World War II: Almost all the Jews of Keidan were murdered in the death pit on the outskirts of Keidan, and after the war no more Jews lived in the town. Yet, an unusual, double tomb from 1945 (B2) can be identified in the cemetery. According to the inscription on this tombstone, it was a married couple who were murdered after the war and buried in this grave. (Ben-Tsion Klibansky)
A very convenient link to the inscriptions of the tombs of the cemetery, arranged according to the cemetery rows A-Z. Every such row is searchable!
