From the Ground Up

Contstruction mogul Yehudi Gaffen is getting his hands dusty with a very personal project: restoring the dilapidated cemetery in his father’s Lithuanian shtetl.
By Zach Reff

In a small and overgrown Jewish cemetery 6000 miles away, Yehudi Gaffen found what he was searching for—a link to his past. Amongst overturned and crumbling headstones etched with epigraphs in Hebrew, Gaffen found the only remnants of a once vibrant Jewish shtetl in Skapiskis, Lithuania. And somewhere, in that very cemetery, his ancestors lay buried.

When Gaffen stumbled upon the cemetery in September of 2001, it had gone untouched for 60 years. It was the last remaining evidence of the history and presence of a Jewish community in Skapiskis, the town where his father had grown up. Like most towns and cities across Lithuania, the Jewish population of Skapiskis was decimated during World War II, leaving only dust and ruins. “Physical remainders of the Jewish community that was once there no longer exist. It’s as if the earth swallowed it all up,” said Gaffen.

“There was something precious in this village that had somehow remained intact,” said Gaffen, who was unsure what he would find when he visited Skapiskis. The cemetery may have been intact, but much of it was in a state of disrepair. Gaffen decided then that action must be taken to repair the crumbling gravesite. He took it upon himself to undertake and lead a difficult and costly project to restore the cemetery and preserve it for future generations, a project that is just now getting underway.

As he walked gingerly across the neglected burial ground, Gaffen felt a great responsibility both to his past and to the future. He knew that somewhere under his feet his grandfather, and possibly other relatives, lay buried. Gaffen realized that, without intervention, in a few years the cemetery would be so damaged by the weather, the environment and looting that it would cease to exist at all. And if the cemetery disappeared, it would be as if Jews never lived in Skapiskis. The history of his family would in a way be erased.

“There is value in a cemetery, not just as a site to remember the dead, but also as a place that defines what a community represented,” said Gaffen. The trip was an intensely emotional time for Gaffen, coinciding with the September 11th terrorist attacks. It was also his first visit to Lithuania, the result of nearly a decade spent wondering about his father’s life in Europe. Amidst his swirling emotions, the trip left him not only with the desire to insure that the Jewish history of Skapiskis was memorialized but also to engage the current population in learning about the village’s not so distant past as a shtetl.

“We have a duty to connect with the past and to not let it simply fade away,” he said.
Gaffen, who is simply known as “Gaf” to his friend and colleagues, was not always so interested in his past. Now the successful CEO and owner of the local construction management firm Gafcon Inc., Gaffen wasn’t terribly concerned about his ancestry during his childhood spent in South Africa. He later moved to America, but it was not until 10 years ago that Gaffen began to wonder about his father and the life he had led growing up in Lithuania.

His father immigrated to South Africa from his home in Skapiskis in 1910 at the age of 18. He died when Gaffen was only 8 years old, never giving his son the opportunity to ask about the life he lived in Lithuania. “I didn’t know a lot about his background,” said Gaffen. “My mother never told me, so I developed this interest in finding out where he was from and that’s what eventually led me to Lithuania.”

Gaffen’s mother grew up in neighboring Latvia, but according to him she was never willing to discuss her own past or his father’s. When Gaffen invited his mother to join him in traveling to the region, she flatly declined his offer.

In addition to traveling to Skapiskis, Gaffen also visited the shtetl where his mother was raised. While there was only a cemetery left evidencing the Jewish past of his father’s shtetl, there was nothing left in the town his mother once called home. “In my mother’s town the cemetery was totally destroyed. They (the townspeople) took every headstone and used them as paving stones,” said Gaffen. Indeed, the havoc perpetrated upon Jewish communities during the Second World War in the Baltic region was unimaginable.

Lithuania, the southernmost of the Baltic States, is a tiny country only slightly larger than West Virginia. Jews can trace their origins in Lithuania back more than 400 years to the 14th century. In 1941 the Jewish population of the country was roughly 250,000, or about 10 percent of the population. By the time the Holocaust ended it is estimated that as much as 95 percent of Lithuanian Jewry were killed—the highest percentage of any country involved in the war. Today, the total population of Lithuania is around 3.8 million, of which only 5,600 are Jewish. Small shtetls like Skapiskis are lucky to have any remaining Jewish artifacts within their borders, let alone living Jews. The majority of the small Jewish population today in Lithuania is clustered in the capital of Vilnius.

 


The current population of Skapikis is less than 1500 people, none of whom are Jewish according to Gaffen. According to the book Lithuanian Jewish Communities, by Nancy and Stuart Schoenburg, about 40 Jewish families lived there (215 people) at the onset of World War II. The village is poverty-stricken and of those few residents who are old enough to remember the Holocaust, many are still resentful of Jews for teaming up with the soviets after the war.

“In Lithuania those feelings are still very raw. Many are wary of the subject of the Holocaust being brought up, even if it has to do with a good cause,” said Sol Kempenski, the renovation project coordinator. “It’s sort of a minefield as how to do this.”

According to Cy Kuckenbaker, a friend of Gaffen and project member who spent years in Lithuania, first as a Peace Corps volunteer, and then as a Fullbright Fellow, the country has suffered a traumatic history including years under unwanted Soviet rule, the Holocaust, deportations to Siberia and difficulties with transitioning into a democracy. Kuckenbacker mentions that for years Lithuania had the highest suicide rate in the world. Given all these factors, it is no wonder that doing something like rebuilding a Jewish cemetery requires a lot of skillful maneuvering and engaging the population to acknowledge and reconnect with a forgotten Jewish past. Afterall, the Jews living in Skapiskis during the war were, first and foremost, Lithuanians.

“Lithuania is undergoing a restructuring of its identity, and sooner or later they’re going to have to face what happened in the Holocaust,” said Kuckenbaker. “For us, the Holocaust is easily the most horrible human event we know about. But if you ask them about their own lives, a lot of the older people will actually have experiences that they parallel to the Holocaust, like being deported. It changes the nature of the conversation quite a bit.”

The ambitious renovation project involves a lengthy list of repairs, to-dos, and education components. Top among these is, restoring the gravesites, headstones, pathways, walls and gates of the cemetery, and constructing a memorial detailing a history of Lithuanian Jewry and displaying the names of Jewish families who once called Skapiskis home. However, the single most important aspect of the undertaking according to those involved is educating and engaging the local population about why the project is worthwhile. “We want to use the cemetery as a means to build bridges,” said Kempenski.

The project team is concerned that, in 10 years if they don’t get the locals involved, the cemetery will once again fall into disrepair. Kempenski explained that because Gaffen’s dayjob is managing construction, he fully understands the importance of engaging a local community to insure the longtime vitality of a project. “The strength of this project isn’t the actual renovation of the cemetery,” said Kuckenbaker. “Actually engaging people is much more interesting than just the memorialization.”

The team has been talking to local high school officials in Skapiskis to arrange a class in which students will learn about the Holocaust and about Lithuanian Jewry. Each year there will also be a sponsored essay contest on a topic relating to the Skapiskis Jewish community, for which the winners will be awarded prizes. The team has also talked to Hillel of UCSD about creating a course on Lithuanian Jewry at the university that would conclude with a trip to visit the cemetery in Skapiskis.

The cost estimated to complete the project is over $20,000. $5000 of this cost has already been raised thanks to private donations and contributions from Gaffen, according to Kempenski. If all goes as scheduled, there will be a dedication ceremony at the restored cemetery on August 28th, 2006, featuring town officials, local school children, media, and members of the Lithuanian government.

“We hope this becomes a stopping place for people traveling Europe to see the Jewish story. We want to create a model for the sustainability of other surviving shtetls,” said Gaffen. “As Jews living today we have a responsibility to save what little is left.”

Further information on the Skapiskis Jewish Cemetery Resoration Project, including how to make donations, can be found online at www.skapiskis.blogspot.com

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