Balbieriskis, Lithuania

 
 
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By Sage Marmet


My Horowitz ancestors moved to Balbieriskis, Prenai, and Lazdjai from Poland and Bohemia in the mid 1700s, adjusting the spelling of their name to be Gurvich or Gurwitz to better reflect Russianized Lithuania.


My more immediate Gurvich male ancestors’ names were: Eliezer Avram, Movsha, Shabtai (Sheftel), Yosef Gurvich, and Lyza Gurvich (Marmut). While the first surname “Halevi” does not appear on any official documents of my more immediate family, in letters, photos, and journals they all refer to themselves as Halevi Gurvich––a reflection of their Levite heritage.


We believe the name adjustment was in order to avoid antisemitism which was prevalent during their lives in Lithuania. Yoseyf Gurvich (Josefas Gurvicius in Lithuanian), my second great-grandfather, and his father Shabtai/Shepsal (Shevel Gurvicius in Lithuanian) established a farm and brewery that they called “Kotkishok” outside of Lazdjai, working to teach other Jews farming techniques so that they could go to Israel and found some of the first Kibbutzim.


In addition, my Yoseyf Gurvich worked at the Hebrew Gymnasia/school in Balbieriskis/Lazdjai. He was an avid believer in the necessity of a Jewish State and attended many Zionist conferences with Theodore Herzl across Europe. After Yoseyf's death in the early 1900s his wife Bela Rutshetyn and her children Lyza Gurvich, Gidalya Gurvich, Olga Gurvich, and Yisroel Gurvich moved to Kaunas and sold Kotkishok. The younger children Olga and Gidalya did not attend the Hebrew Gymnasia and instead attended the local Lithuanian school in Kaunas––the connections that the younger two siblings made with local Lithuanian children helped Olga Gurvich to escape the Kaunas ghetto and survive the Holocaust in hiding.


Yisroel Gurvich moved to Chicago in the late 40s after fighting in the resistance, and Lyza Gurvich (Lyza Gurvicaite in Lithuanian) along with her husband Nachum Marmut (Nachumas Marmutas in Lithuanian) and their two children Ruvim Marmut (Roma Marmutas in Lithuanian) and Yoseyf Marmut (Josefas Marmutas in Lithuanian) fled Lithuania in 1941 and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio.


To our knowledge, the remaining Gurvich relatives that stayed in Lithuania during the Holocaust were moved to the Kaunas ghetto and were killed in the Ponary Poland Massacre. 


Thank you so much. 


Best wishes,


Sage Marmet

Gurvich: A Short History