It's not quite true. Though their numbers are pitifully small, and their future painfully uncertain, tidy communities of Jews still exist, ironically isolated in what once was the heartland of Yiddishkeit. Since the Soviet collapse, moreover, Jews in the newly independent Eatern European nations such as Lithuania have regained the right to a life that the Communists denied them. They can organize, create schools and cultural organizations, and strive for some belated measure of justice. Here a former communal building is returned to Jewish use; there a cemetery or monument to the Shoah's victims is restored and maintained. Just short of complete extinction, they are still holding on, bearing witness to what we all have lost in the tragic and devastating last century.
- Andrew Cassel
