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How Jews Wrote to the Jewish Minister
Translated by Theodore Steinberg

This is a section of a memorandum written in July, 1919, by Jews in the town of Gorzd to the Jewish Minister in the Lithuanian Cabinet of Ministers, Dr. M. Soloveichik. They wrote that after the war, they had great hopes for the section of [Woodrow] Wilson's Fourteen Points that spoke of national rights for minority peoples. They feel deceived because the Lithuanians in their town allow the Jews no governmental positions and have seized control of the city. They lay out a whole array of offenses by the Lithuanians regarding Jews, and they ask the minister to address their grievances. In the springtime of the Lithuanian government, the Jews enjoyed a broader national autonomy: a Jewish national council was formed that was chosen by general and proportional elections. There was also a Jewish ministry that employed Yiddish in its daily work. This Jewish autonomy gradually decreased. In the 1930s it remained only a narrow school autonomy.

--From the Vilna Archive of YIVO

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