The Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum Wednesday kicked off a three-day seminar with speakers from around the world for sharing ideas with Lithuanian teachers teaching the Holocaust.
Museum director Markas Zingeris welcomed the audience and said the Holocaust has become topical in the news media again because of a convergence of events: Islamic fascists carrying out acts of terror on European streets and the response by right-wing extremists to the influx of refugees and others from Middle Eastern countries.
Danius Junevičius, roving ambassador-at-large from the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the history of Lithuanian Jews is inseparable from general Lithuanian history, and the lessons of the Holocaust are needed now more than ever, and that history must not repeat itself.
Rimantas Jokimaitis, chief specialist at the Lithuanian Ministry of Education and Science, said that Holocaust education was not only much needed in society at large, but especially at the grade school and high school level, to teach tolerance and to insure that the Lithuanian educational system isn’t exploited by dark forces of hatred and extremism.
Ronaldas Račinskas, executive director of Lithuania’s International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania, briefly welcomed the unusually large audience of mainly school teachers, many of whom he recognized from earlier events and workshops, affectionately calling some of them “old wolves” in Holocaust education in Lithuania. The majority of the audience appeared to be female school teachers.
French ambassador Philippe Jeantraud spoke about the need for Holocaust memory and education to fight extremism and cited current events in France as an example.
Bruno Boyer, head of international relations for Mémorial de la Shoah, the co-sponsor of the seminar, also spoke passionately in French with simultaneous translation provided to the audience via wireless headphones about the urgency and importance of teaching the facts of the Holocaust, and the shared yet different experiences of Western and Eastern Europe.
The first speaker after the welcome speeches was Dr. Georges Bensoussan of Mémorial de la Shoah who spoke about the roots of xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Europe.
The seminar is scheduled to run from January 20 to January 22 at the Tolerance Center of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum in Vilnius. A program has been provided in English, available below. Organizers expressed regret Dr. Christoph Dieckmann of the Fritz Bauer Institut in Germany, who has written extensively about the Holocaust in Lithuania, will not be able to attend due to a matter which arose suddenly.