Litvak family.
Lithuanian Jews or 'Litvaks ' are Jews born in Lithuanian, Belarus, Latvia, two north eastern regions of Poland, and some border areas of Russia and Ukraine . Today very few remain. Those who escaped in 1941 mostly fled to Russia. My great grandfather Harry Rubin immigrated to Canada around 1910. Thanks to the DNA test I'm here to discover my Litvak ancestry, in the landscape, in the collective memory, and in my soul. My mountaineer friend Ken immediately called my journey to Lithuania a Pilgrimage. And that's what it's been, all six weeks, and not a single blister. The pilgrimage started in Gdansk in July, drifted over the Polish border to a monastery near Kaunas , and meandered down to the south west of Lithuania to my great grandfathers village, Seirijai. This village was the original goal of my 'pilgrimage.' I believed my fathers family had escaped from Seirijai on foot to Poland (then immigrated to the US), but it turned o...