When Conrad Philip Kasnetz left his tiny Lithuanian shtetl of Trashkun in 1927 at the age of 17 to work in his uncle’s grocery business in New York, he didn’t know he would never see most of his family again.
Nearly a century later, Kasnetz’s daughter, Owings Mills resident Beverly Feig, and his granddaughter, Shana Alter, returned to his native land and hometown to better understand their family’s history and legacy, and to honor those relatives and others who perished during the Holocaust.
“It was very weird and surreal,” Feig, 76, said of their recent pilgrimage to Lithuania. “Almost 100 years later, I was standing in the place he always talked about.”
Born Khone Kozhenetz in January of 1910, Conrad Kasnetz was the second eldest of five children to Ayzik Kozhenetz and his second wife, Chaya Beyla Kremer. Kasnetz’s mother died when he was only 11.
The decision to leave Lithuania and work for his uncle in New York — and later to settle down in Baltimore and work in a relative’s dairy business — most likely saved Kasnetz’s life. (Kasnetz died in Baltimore in 1986 at the age of 76.) Many of his relatives who remained in Lithuania were killed during the Holocaust, including his youngest sister, Bunka (Bina), who was murdered at the Ponary (Paneriai) Forest, southwest of the capital of Vilna (now known as Vilnius).
More than 70,000 people — most of them Jews — were executed by the German Einsatzgruppen and their collaborating Lithuanian auxiliaries at Ponary during the course of the war.
Other family members of Kasnetz managed to escape to Siberia before returning to Lithuania after the war and eventually immigrating to Israel. Feig — who is named after her murdered aunt Bina — recently read her cousin Beryl Glezer’s account of surviving the war in Siberia and returning to Lithuania in 1946, only to discover it was too late to save most of her family members.
“I always wanted to go,” Feig said of visiting Lithuania. “Shana and I joked about it [over the years] and then it finally happened.”
The trip, planned to coincide with Alter’s 50th birthday, largely focused on Lithuania’s rich Jewish heritage. The mother and daughter visited former shtetls such as Trashkun, old Jewish cemeteries, Holocaust memorials and the Lost Shtetl Museum in the town of Šeduva, which opened last September and recreates Jewish life before World War II.
“It was a sensory experience because you could smell and touch it,” Alter, who lives in Baltimore, said of the museum and its exhibits.
Feig and Alter also walked through the Old Town of Vilnius, once known as “the Jerusalem of the North,” where they visit the historic Jewish Quarter that served as the epicenter of Jewish commerce, craftmanship and religious scholarship for more than six centuries. They also visited the Ponary forest where Feig’s aunt was killed.
“It was a beautiful country,” Feig said of the bittersweet journey, “and all these horrible things happened there.”
Sharing the trip with her daughter made the experience particularly poignant and meaningful, said Feig. “I wanted to share this with her,” she said. “I knew she would appreciate it.”
Today, Feig’s grandchildren have selected Conrad Kasnetz’s life story for their Jewish history projects because it is the side of the family that they know best.
“Our family story is just one,” said Feig. “My father was very fortunate to get out when he did.”
She said she hopes sharing stories like her family’s will help younger Jewish generations understand and appreciate the rich Jewish life that once existed in Europe and why preserving those memories still matters.
“This is how we have to fight antisemitism,” she said.
Harper Goldberg is a local freelance writer.
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