There was a town here.

PabradėPabradė · Podbrodzie · פודברודז' · פּאָדבראָדזLithuania · 54.98°N 25.76°E

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1,000

On the eve of the war, about a thousand Jews lived here.

100

About a hundred of them survived.

This is their story, and these are their names.

  1. The town is founded where two rivers meet
  2. War breaks out. About a thousand Jews live in the town
  3. The German invasion. The first murders
  4. The ghetto is liquidated. The massacre at Poligon
  5. 13 Cheshvan. The massacre at Kemelishok
  6. Liberation. About a hundred survivors. The first memorial
  7. The monument at Holon cemetery
  8. TodayThe second and third generations remember
Tarbut school pupils, 1939The Story of the TownFrom its founding in 1863 to todayHeading of the list of the murdered from the Yizkor bookThe NamesThe martyrs of Podbrodzie who perished in the ShoahIn the forest on the way to Kemelishok, 1996Testimonies & StoriesFrom survivors and the second generation

Pabradė Jewish Community

And you shall tell your children

This site was built at the initiative of the second and third generations of the community, to preserve the memories, and to collect and keep the testimonies, photographs, stories, letters and documents of the families that remain from a thriving Jewish community of about a thousand people before the Second World War, almost entirely annihilated in the Holocaust.

It exists to fulfil the commandment “and you shall tell your children”: to pass on the heritage, to strengthen the bond, and to hand down to children, grandchildren and the generations to come the knowledge of their roots, tradition and culture. Our aim is to be the tribe’s campfire.

Embrace Me, Dawn

Mordechai Bartana (Bartnisky), born in Pabradė

Embrace me, dawn, and kiss my eyes,and whisper: it was only a deceiving dream.

free translation

Read the whole poem