No buyers have been found so far, as well as interested Belarusian officials, who, as a response to the initiative of the local community, would buy this house, renovate it, and create in Motal a historical centre of the famous fellow citizen Chaim Weizmann, Radio Svaboda informs.
The current owner of the house, a pensioner Alena Ptashyts, lives in the house with her mother. Alena’s children have left and live in different parts of the country. She is almost unable to maintain this big building.
The cost charged by Alena Ptashyts, USD 15,000, is rather customary for Motal. There are no persons willing to buy this building so far. However Alena does not lose hope. She believes she would be able to find a good customer. Moreover, many guests from Israel are coming to Motal recently.
“I will take even more than USD 15,000 if they offer,” Alena says. “It’s a big house. We are keeping it in good order, as we are living here. And excursions are visiting it, both Jews and others”.
The director of the local museum, Volha Matsukevich, is convinced that the state could have made an instrument to attract tourists from this house if there was such a desire.
“It would be good to found Chaim Weizmann centre of Jewish culture here. There are several houses of famous Jews in Motal. These houses’ architecture is particular. It would be nice to make a hotel out of one of them, and a synagogue in another, and a little restaurant with Jewish cuisine in the next. The house is situated in a picturesque place by the lake. It is such a nice place for having rest. It would be possible to visit all places related to Jewish culture at a time,” the director says.
Moreover, the local museum has all necessary exhibits for that – furniture, house articles and utensils, memoirs of Chaim Weizmann in Yiddish…
The leader of Pinsk Jewish community Josif Liberman is also convinced that the house of the Weizmanns should become a museum of the first President of Israel. “Needless to say that a museum must be created. But somebody should allocate finances for that. Besides, a good reconstruction and renovation of the building should be made. I spoke to Israeli Ambassador, and he said they do not have money for that. And where can I find money?” asks Josif Liberman.
Representatives of Motal citizens are not sure that the local budget would have enough money for buying the house, and still more unlikely, for its restoration.
Weizmann was born in Motal near Pinsk (Belarus) in a family of a merchant. Father wanted their house to be spacious and large. There were 14 more children in the family of the future President of Israel.
Like Chaim, all children got brilliant education in Europe. After finishing Pinsk grammar school, Chaim Weizmann studied in Germany and Switzerland, he was Professor in chemistry in England.
The family left Motal in 1894. Later the house had different owners. After the World War II different Soviet institutions were placed there. The house was reconstructed several times. In the end of the 1970-ies the wooden house was moved away from the central street. The house was now it has 6 rooms, while there were 8 rooms in the time of the Weizmanns. The place of the entrance door changes, the roof is different now. But still some elements have survived. For instance, outer walls with wood siding and windows decorated with wood-carving…"
Source: Charter 97 [source: Radio Svaboda], 2008-07-16
Work on the dictionary took 10 years. While working on the project, Astrauh studied dictionaries that were published in different countries in the 20th and 21st centuries, according to the BelaPAN News Agency. Astrauh, an ethnic Belarusian, is not Jewish, but is married to a Russian Jew, The Forward reported.
It is the second Yiddish-Belarusian dictionary in the country's history. The first, which included 8,000 words, was published in 1932. A collection containing 100,000 Yiddish words created by the Jewish sector of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences between 1920 and 1930 was destroyed during World War II."
Source: JTA Breaking News [source: BelaPAN], 2008-07-07
The commemoration was organized by the local government; Voluntas, a Belarusian-registered international charity; and US citizen Aaron Ginsburg. Fourteen relatives of the massacre’s victims arrived from the United States, Russia and South Africa to attend the ceremony, Franklin J. Schwarz, director of the Voluntas international relations department, told BelaPAN.
The park on the territory of the cemetery was renovated with donations from Jewish communities abroad and funds provided by the local government, Mr. Schwarz said. Aleh Pinchuk, chairman of the Dokshytsy District Executive Committee, initiated the renovation project, which included straightening up old gravestones, building a fence around the cemetery and putting up black marble stones and a memorial slab bearing an inscription that reads, in Belarusian, “Remember the Jewish life that once teemed here,” Mr. Schwarz said.
Ceremony participants visited the Dokshytsy general education school to thank its students for taking care of the park and the cemetery. They also expressed gratitude to local residents for honoring the memory of their ancestors and enabling the story of the Jewish community in Dokshytsa to become part of Belarusian history.
On May 23, 1942, most of the Jewish residents of Dokshytsy were herded into a ravine near the cemetery and shot dead."
Source: Naviny [source: BelaPAN], 2008-05-24
More that 100,000 Jews from Minsk and other Belarusian cities were put in the ghetto in the first days of the war. The agency prepared the excursion as part of events to mark the 65th anniversary of the end to the ghetto.
"Participants will be told about the resistance of ghetto prisoners and about how they fought for their human dignity, life and liberation," Maryna Mastashava, a departmental head at the agency, told BelaPAN. "In addition, tourists will learn about how residents of the Belarusian capital helped save those who managed to escape from the ghetto. There are several dozens people in Belarus recognized as righteous gentiles."
"Since the attention of many tourists visiting Belarus has been drawn to the Holocaust tragedy in the last decades, I think the excursion prove very popular," Ms. Mastashava said. "It will form the right understanding of our history during the occupation of Minsk and Belarus.""
correspodent: Anastasiya Yanushewskaya
Source: Naviny[source: BelaPAN], 2008-03-17