The Jewish research institute YIVO has awarded Lithuanian Jewish Community chair Faina Kuklianksy for her contributions in strengthening the Jewish community in Lithuania. Former US ambassador to Lithuania Anne Derse was also recognized for her leadership, and former Vilna ghetto inmate, partisan, historian and former head of Yad Vashem Yitzhak Arad, originally from Švenčionys, Lithuania, was also given an award for a lifetime of achievement.  YIVO bestows the awards annually upon people from  around the world for achievements in Jewish history and culture and contributions to the Jewish communities.

This year the awards ceremony was held in New York, where YIVO headquarters were relocated from Vilnius during World War II. Kukliansky has received a number of awards previously from the Lithuanian state, including the Order of the Knight's Cross "For Contributions to Lithuania." YIVO was founded in Vilnius in what was then Polish territory in 1925 as the first secular Jewish research institution in Eastern Europe. The institute moved its base of operations to New York in 1940. At the present time the YIVO archive and library conserve 24 million documents and more than 385,000 books, including the largest collection of Yiddish-language materials in the world.