BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

30/05/2005

Students feel shock, pride as they visit Jewish Belarus

By Lev Krichevsky

MINSK, Belarus, May 30 (JTA) ? For Ira Elshanskaya, a recent trip to see Jewish sites in Belarus brought some unpleasant surprises.

?It was a shock when in one place we were told that Jews once made up over one-half of the town?s population, and even many non-Jews there were fluent in Yiddish. And now there is almost no one left,? said Ira, a 10th-grader from Moscow Jewish School No. 1311.

Ira was one of 380 high school students across the former Soviet Union who recently toured Belarus, a former Soviet republic that was once one of the major centers of Jewish life in Europe.

The students, from 14 schools operated by World ORT, came to Belarus last month for a four-day tour to explore...

Source:

http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=15465&intcategoryid=2&SearchOptimize=Jewish+News