Wandering Lithuanian Jewish refugees during the First World War: Hirsz Abramowicz and a Jewish perspective on the war

ENThe objective of this research is to understand the Jewish perspective of the First World War more profoundly, especially the experiences of the Lithuanian Jewish refugees and their relationships with non-Jewish Lithuanians during the period of German occupation. Therefore, the writings about the First World War of Hirsz Abramowicz, who was a prominent Lithuanian Jewish writer journalist, and educator, will be analyzed. According to his daughter, Dina Abramowicz, the suffering of the Lithuanian Jewish refugees and their lives during the war is overshadowed by the Holocaust today. Moreover, “in the inter-war years and especially after the Holocaust, Lithuanian Jews tended to regard the time of the German occupation during the First World War as a period of relative security and Prussian benevolence.” However, Abramowicz denies this positive attitude towards the war in his memoirs by depicting the intense relationships between non-Jewish and Jewish Lithuanians as well as by revealing the antisemitic behavior of the Russian military and Germany’s occupation policy. He states that “Jews were in a special category among the dispossessed,” and the military used to be antisemitic. [Extract, p. 189]

• Dusetos, Easter 1905: the story of one pogrom / Darius Staliūnas. Journal of Baltic studies. 2012, vol. 43, no. 4, p. 495-514.
• Lietuvos žydai / sudarytojai. Vilnius : Baltos lankos, 2012. 567 p.
• War land on the Eastern front : culture, national identity, and German occupation in World War I / Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2004. viii, 309 p.