X-Nico

unusual facts about Vilna



Abraham ben Elijah of Vilna

Of his numerous manuscripts which contained glosses to the Talmud, Midrash, Shulkan 'Aruk, and explanatory notes to his father's works, a commentary on the introduction to the Tikkune Zohar (Vilna, 1867), a commentary on Psalms I-C באר אברהם (Warsaw, 1887), Sa'arat Eliyahu, exegetical notes and biographical data about his father (Jerusalem, 1889), and Targum Abraham, notes on Targum Onkelos (Jerusalem, 1896), have been published.

Allan Nadler

His direct negotiations with then-President of Lithuania, Algirdas Brazauskas, led to the release, to the New York offices of YIVO for reproduction and cataloguing, of archives that had belonged to YIVO in pre-war Vilna (today, Vilnius, Lithuania), after extensive international coverage of the story.

Bostanai

Lehmann, Bostenai (fiction), in his Aus Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ii.1; translated into Hebrew under the same title by S. J. F. (Fuenn, Vilna, 1881);

Chanoch Henoch Eigis

When the Second World War broke out, as a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact large numbers of yeshiva students streamed into Vilna from all corners of Lithuania.

Some reports indicate that his was killed in Vilna itself, while other reports indicate that he was first taken to Ponar, where he was killed by the Einsatzgruppen.

Eliezer Poupko

Rabbi Poupko married Pesha Chaya, a daughter of the Rabbi of Kenna near Vilna and subsequently of Saratov.

Hillel Noah Maggid

He early joined the Progressionists of Vilna, among whom were Samuel Joseph Fuenn, Lebensohn, and M. A. Günzburg.

His father was a bibliographer, and his grandfather Phinehas was rabbi at Polotsk and Vilna, the emissary of Elijah of Vilna in his struggle with the Hasidim, and the author of nine exegetical works.

Hirsch Schwartzberg

But Vilnius/Vilna - before the German invasion - was a predominately Jewish and Polish city - after the genocide in Lithuania, the Jewish society and community to which Schwartzberg previously belonged did not exist anymore.

Jacob ben Abraham Kahana

Jacob was the son-in-law of Rabbi Issachar of Vilna, brother of the Vilna Gaon.

Jacob Lestschinsky

He was a founding member of YIVO (Institute for Jewish Research) in Vilna, (then in Poland) starting its Section for Economics and Statistics.

Józef Baka

Some time in late 1730s or early 1740s, Baka left Vilna for the town of Kraslaw (now Latvia, then Inflanty Voivodeship).

Judah Leib Cahan

Judah Leib Cahan (1881, Vilna, Lithuania – 1937, New York City) was a Yiddish folklorist.

Klooga concentration camp

Jews constituted a vast majority after large numbers of them forcibly relocated in August and September 1943 from the ghettos of Kovno and Vilna in Lithuania and Salaspils in Latvia; smaller numbers were from Estonia, Russia and Romania.

Lukiškės Prison

One of the most distinctive buildings in the complex was the Orthodox St. Nicholas Church, one of the finest Orthodox churches in Vilna.

Luninets

In 1888, while under Russian sovereignty, a railway junction was built in Luninets, linking it by rail to Warsaw, Rivne, Vilna and Homel, and a proper railroad station was added in 1905.

Meḳiẓe Nirdamim

It was re-established at Berlin in 1885 under the supervision of Abraham Berliner (Berlin), Moses Ehrenreich (Rome), Joseph Derenbourg and David Günzburg (Paris), S. J. Halberstam (Bielitz), A. Harkavy (St. Petersburg), Marcus Jastrow (Philadelphia), David Kaufmann (Budapest), and M. Straschun (Vilna).

Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland

In Kolonia Wilenska, Sister Anna Borkowska hid men from the Jewish underground from the Vilna ghetto.

Nochum Shtif

In August 1925, along with Max Weinreich and Elias Tcherikover, he helped establish in Vilna the Yiddish Scientific Institute, commonly called YIVO.

Paul List

He drew a match (+4 –4 =1) with Grigory Levenfish in 1910, he tied for 3rd place at Odessa 1910 (Boris Verlinsky won), tied for 15-16th at St. Petersburg 1911 (Stepan Levitsky won), and tied for fourth with Ilya Rabinovich in the seventh All-Russian Masters' Tournamenr (Hauptturnier) at Vilna 1912, Lithuania (then Russian Empire).

Pyotr Dmitrievich Sviatopolk-Mirskii

After Sipiagin's assassination (1902) Sviatopolk-Mirskii resigned as Assistant Minister but was persuaded to accept the position of Governor-General of the North-Western province that included gubernias of Vilna, Kovno and Grodno (that is modern-day Lithuania and most of the Belarus).

Rachel Zilberberg

The first was to bearing the message, as an eye witness, of the methodical extermination of Jews in Punar, near Vilna; her fellow Jews had not heard these details until then.

Samuel Bak

1944 On 2–3 July, forced laborers rounded up at the city’s camps, among them his father, are shot to death at the Ponary killing site, ten days before Vilna’s liberation.

Sergei Konstantinovich Gershelman

He continued as Moscow's Acting Governor General until April 15, and then moved to Vilna.

Solomon Globus

He took 6th at Vilna (Wilno, Vilnius) 1909 (the 6th All-Russian Masters' Tournament, Akiba Rubinstein won), and took 13th at Vilna 1912 (the 7th RUS-ch, B-tournament, Karel Hromádka won).

Soviet–Lithuanian Peace Treaty

Modern Belarusian historiography regards the treaty, especially the cession of ethnic Belarusian territories to Lithuania (primarily Hrodna, Shchuchyn, Lida, Ashmyany, Smarhon, Pastavy, Braslaw, but also the contemporary Vilnius Region with Vilna) as a unilateral act by the Soviet authorities that disregarded the national interests of the Belarusian people, aimed at immediate military and political gains.

Western Krai

After 1819, Grodno, Vilnius (rus. Vilna, pol. Wilno), Minsk, Volhynia (pol. Wołyń), Podolia (pol. Podole) governorates and the Belostok Oblast remained under the chief administrative management of the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich of Russia.

Zalman Sorotzkin

He did not accept the position and was shortly after appointed as Rabbi to Voranava, Belarus (near Vilna).


see also