Presentation of Jews of Vilkaviškis at Lithuanian National Library

The Lithuanian National Martynas Mažvydas Library is hosting a presentation of the book “Dingusios tautos pėdsakais’ [Traces of a Lost People] by Antanas Žilinskas, the long-serving director of the Vilkaviškis Regional History Museum who has collected material about the Jews once resident in Vilkaviškis over many years, the contents of the book published in 2015. The event will also feature a meeting with Ralph Salinger, an Israeli historian specializing in the history of the Jews of Vilkaviškis. The public event is to be held in Lithuanian and English at 4:00 P.M. on May 12 at the library in Vilnius.

Jews were living in Vilkaviškis in the 16th century when queen Bona Sforza allotted a forest for the Jews to construct a synagogue. The Vilkaviškis synagogue appeared in 1623. There was a Jewish gymnasium in Vilkaviškis from 1919 to 1940. There were around 150 shops in the town, of which about 130 were Jewish. In 1939 there were officially 3,609 Jews living in and around the town, constituting 45 percent of the population.

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Kaunas Jewish Community Commemorates Victims of WWII

On May 9 the Kaunas Jewish Community commemorated the victims of the Holocaust and World War II and recalled victory and the joy of liberation from the Nazi terror. Memories sweet, bittersweet and sad were shared by the widows and children of veterans at the evening event, and Abraham Leizerson recalled his attempts to join the war effort as a very young man. Aleksandr Rave’s song performance unified and brought together the crowd, while Lucija Laverenova unexpectedly lightened the mood with a comedy routine. Basia Šragienė helped organize the event, as she did two years ago with her husband, now the late WWII veteran Shmuel Shrage, whose bright spirit lives on in our memory.

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Vilkomir Remembers Victory

The Ukmergė Jewish Community marked the 72nd anniversary of Victory Day commemorating the victims of mass murder in the Pivonija forest.

Community members also visited the graves of late members of the community and war veterans at the Old Believers cemetery.

Condolences

With sadness we announce David Stupelman died May 10. He was a member of the Klaipėda Jewish Community and Social Programs Department client. He was born December 21, 1930. Our condolences to his family in this sad time of loss.

First University Department of Holocaust Studies Opens in Germany

Deutsche Welle reports the first university chair in the country for Holocaust Studies has been created. The department will operate under the History and Philosophy Faculty at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Uni VP Manfred Schubert-Zsilavecz said the city is an appropriate fit for Holocaust studies and that his university has Jewish roots.

The new department will deal exclusively with the genocide of Jews under the Nazis in Germany and Europe. Historian Sibylle Steinbacher is to head the department. The German state of Hesse will finance the department to the amount of 150,000 euros annually.

Hesse state minister of science and education Boris Rhein called the establishment of the new department long overdue in Germany. Although 70 years have passed since the Nazis were driven from power in Germany, he says it will never be possible to fully comprehend the Holocaust. Rhein said while the current generation isn’t legally responsible for the crimes of the Nazis, it is part of the solution in the present and future. One of the priority fields of research at the new department will be research on the ethical and moral mechanisms for justifying and denying the Holocaust.

jewish.ru

Misha Breakfast Program at Choral Synagogue

Dear Community members,

Before his death, long-time client of the LJC Social Programs Department Avishalom Moishe Fishman left a last will and testament donating his savings to the Lithuanian Jewish Community who had cared for him in his latter years.

To honor Moishe Fishman’s wishes, LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky proposed using the funds for the needs of the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius.

In furthering Jewish traditions of charity, it was decided with Vilnius Jewish Religious Community chairman Simas Levinas to use the funds received to set up a free-breakfast program in the cafeteria on the second floor of the Choral Synagogue, Pylimo street no. 39, Vilnius.

Moishe lived alone and was a client of the Social Programs Department for about 18 years.

The Community and its members, and especially members of the seniors club, became his second home and family.

Let’s remember together this enlightened man beloved and honored by all who knew him.

For the first time a plaque will be placed on the wall of the synagogue to thank and remember a local philanthropist, rather than a donor from abroad.

Everyone knew him as Misha, so this has been dubbed “Misha’s Breakfast Project.” It will begin Monday, May 15. The breakfast program will take place at the synagogue from 9:00 to 10:00 A.M., Monday to Friday.

Abi Men Zet Zich Club Celebrates Victory Day

The Lithuanian Jewish Community celebrated Victory Day 2017 inviting the public to the Abi Men Zet Zich Club at the Community. The event included a ceremony to honor the heroes of World War II, our veterans and Community members.

An overflow crowd of about 140 people crammed into the hall and foyer to honor the memory of the fallen and to celebrate humanity’s victory over the Nazi death machine. Time has taken its toll on our veterans and now there are only 14 Jewish WWII veterans still living in Vilnius.

The event was organized by LJC Social Programs Department coordinator Žana Skudovičienė with the aid of volunteers and colleagues, with musical performances by Michailas Filipovas ( Jablonskis), Vadim Volkov and Rita Alterman. The Bagel Shop Café and Natali Restaurant catered the event and Arikas Krupas provided special beverages to the veterans as he has for many years now.

Our thanks go to everyone who took part and especially to the students in the woodwind orchestra of the Santara Gymnasium and Pre-Gymnasium in Vilnius and orchestra conductor Linas Avižienis.

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Thank You

LJC Social Programs Department coordinator Žana Skudovičienė thanks everyone who helped make this year’s Victory Day celebrations at the Community such a success for our members and veterans. About 140 people attended Community events for VIctory Day on May 8. A big “thank you!” goes out to the singers Michailas Filipovas ( Jablonskis), Vadim Volkov and Rita Alterman, and to the Bagel Shop Café and Natali Restaurant for the wonderful treats, and to Arikas Krupas who has provided and paid for special beverages for the veterans for many years now. Thank you!

Makabi Members Invited to Doubles Tennis Match

Dear Makabi members,

There will be doubles tennis matches held at 11:00 A.M., May 14, at the SEB Arena in Vilnius. We invite men and women to take part. Regulations for the competition will be set after total number of participants is known. Please register before 10:00 P.M. on May 11.

Registration: makabilita.duskes@gmail.com , telephone 8 698 19999

Michailas Duškesas, senior referee

Lithuanian Jewish Community Marks 72nd Victory Day

On March 8 Lithuanian Jewish Community members and veterans marked the 72nd anniversary of the Allied victory over the Nazis.

Victims of fascism, leaders of the ghetto resistance movements, teachers and children were remembered at the Vilnius Jewish Cemetery on Sudervės road. The names of murdered Jews of Vilnius are remembered on the gravestones of surviving members of their families. The Sudervės road Jewish cemetery is a working cemetery, although it is sometimes intentionally confused with the Šnipiškės cemetery for propaganda purposes in the foreign media when the topic is the alleged on-going “destruction of the Jewish cemetery.” In the near future the Sudervės road Jewish cemetery will feature monuments indicating remains removed from the Šnipiškės cemetery and reinterred here in earlier years.

Victory Day celebrations included a ceremony for veterans at the LJC headquarters in Vilnius in the afternoon, during which dinner was served and participants were treated to a concert.

Sampling Kosher Food in Ukmergė

Monday Ukmergė Jewish Community member Elena Jakiševa met Viktorija Marija Lukoševičiūte from Vilnius, a student from Vilnius University who is writing her final bachelor’s work on kosher food. She conducted an interview and then they both went to the hotel/restaurant Big Stone in Ukmergė (Vilkomir), which has kosher dishes on offer. Big Stone makes kosher dishes in cooperation with members of the Ukmergė Jewish Community, including Elena Jakiševa.

Condolences

Vilnius Jewish Community member Leonid Shchyeglov passed away May 4. He was born October 3, 1928. Our heart-felt condolences go to his loved ones in this time of shared loss.

South African Couple Visits Panevėžys Jewish Community

Panevėžio žydų bendruomenėje svečiai iš Pietų Afrikos Respublikos

South African attorneys Jonathan and Sheli Schlosberg visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community where chairman Gennady Kofman told them about the history of the Jews in the Panevėžys region, community events to teach Jewish history and other social, educational and cultural activities.

There are over 30 mass murder sites where Jews were shot and mass graves in the Panevėžys district. The guests were interested in the history of the Jewish graveyard in the city of Panevėžys. They made use of the opportunity to visit the cemetery site and learned in 1966 the cemetery was destroyed and the headstones used to decorate the walls of the Juozas Miltinis Drama Theater there.

Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman presented small token gifts to the guests including Jewish calendars and star of David ornaments. The guests expressed gratitude for the comprehensive survey he provided and wished success to the Panevėžys Jewish Community.

Lithuanian State Celebrates VE Day at Ponar Mass Murder Site

Paneriuose pagerbtas Antrojo pasaulinio karo aukų atminimas

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky attended a ceremony sponsored by the state of Lithuania to celebrate VE Day at the Holocaust mass murder site Ponar Monday. VE or Victory in Europe Day marks the date the three main allies in the anti-Nazi coalition, the United States, United Kingdom and Soviet Union, achieved victory against Nazi Germany. It is marked on March 8 in the West and March 9 in Russia and most other former republics of the USSR. At Ponar a Lithuanian honor guard laid wreathes in the name of the president. The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry sent invitations to the event to foreign embassies. The Lithuanian state held similar ceremonies at other grave sites as well.

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Austria Adopts IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism

Dear Friends,

For those who missed this information on our website and newsletter, we are happy to inform you that on April 25, 2017, the Austrian Government, at the initiative of its minister of foreign affairs Mr Sebastian Kurz, adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism.

The Austrian Government noted this working definition was the first to be approved by an intergovernmental organization and should aid in the identification of and combating anti-Semitism.

Austria follows the United Kingdom in adopting the definition.

Source: https://holocaustremembrance.com/media-room/news-archive/austrian-government-adopts-working-definition-antisemitism

Best regards,
The EJC team

European Jewish Congress (EJC)
Tel : +3225408159
Fax : +3225408169
Web : www.eurojewcong.org

Jews of the Vilna Guberniya: Recruits of the Tsar, Cantonists, Conscripts of World War I

Jews of the Vilna Guberniya: Recruits of the Tsar, Cantonists, Conscripts of World War I

The project contains a rich collection of early 20th-century photographs conserved by the Lithuanian State Central Archive. These are photographs of Jewish young people and conscripts to the Russian army from the Vilna guberniya from 1900 to 1915 with authentic inscriptions identifying the subjects, with surnames written on the photographs and confirmed by stamp and seal. The reverse sides of the photographs contain the signature of a Vilna guberniya police official confirming identity, and an oath to the that effect is sometimes attached to certain photographs.

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Israeli Independence Day Celebration at Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium

“I thank God He has sent us the sun. And I thank God we will be celebrating the 70th birthday of the State of Israel next year,” Miša Jakobas, principal of the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium told a large crowd of students, teachers, parents, prominent members of the Jewish community and well-wishers on Tuesday at a celebration of Yom haAtzmaut, Israeli independence day, in the athletics field behind the school.

Children assembled well before the official start of the celebration to practice singing and dance moves, and slowly the crowd coalesced into a ring around pupils performing songs in Hebrew, including haTikvah, the Israeli national anthem, and Yerushalayim shel zahav, Jerusalem the Gold, as a warm golden sun promised the belated onset of spring. Small plastic Israeli flags were distributed to everyone who wanted one. On the track field a group of primary-grade students performed a flag marching ceremony, followed by a group of speakers on the opposite side of the crowd where the children had sung.

Principal Miša Jakobas was followed by Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky who asked some of the wilder children to settle down, joking such behavior didn’t belong on the playground, although it is acceptable at synagogue. She pointed to a building in the back corner of the school yard and said if things go to plan, this would be a new Jewish kindergarten in Vilnius where Jewish children would receive priority of place. Currently the Jewish kindergarten in Vilnius, Salvija, just across the river from Sholem Aleichem, accepts a large number of non-Jewish children as well and promotes itself as a inclusive multicultural environment, although it emphasizes Jewish holidays and culture.

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US Public Television Airs Documentary on Jewish Vilna


Photo courtesy PBS

by Geoff Vasil

Owen Palmquist’s documentary on two sites in Jewish Vilna aired last week on the US public television network PBS’s NOVA program. According to the director, there are rumblings of a broadcast in Lithuania, but so far there are no concrete plans to show it here.

The documentary is called Holocaust Escape Tunnel and focuses on two sites in and near Vilnius: the former Great Synagogue, which was damaged in World War II and torn down by the Soviets in the early 1950s, and the Ponar mass murder site outside Vilnius, where more than 70,000 people were murdered during the Holocaust.

Obviously Ponar got top billing. Last summer as director Owen Palmquist was shooting the footage with his crew, he said they hadn’t settled on any definite title and hadn’t decided what to feature yet, but he had the idea he wanted to talk about the rich Litvak Jewish culture of Vilnius. Focusing on the Holocaust actually makes more sense within the American context, since Lithuania is generally seen as one of the more enthusiastic societies to take up arms and murder Jews during World War II. It’s an easier sell to media managers. Litvak history is complicated and spans centuries; the Holocaust is immediate and “in your face.”

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Goodwill Foundation Project: Jews of the Vilna Guberniya

Jews of Vilna Guberniya: Recruits of the Tsar, Cantonists, Conscripts of World War I

The project contains a rich collection of early 20th-century photographs conserved by the Lithuanian State Central Archive. These are photographs of Jewish young people and conscripts to the Russian army from the Vilna guberniya from 1900 to 1915 with authentic inscriptions identifying the subjects, with surnames written on the photographs and confirmed by stamp and seal. The reverse sides of the photographs contain the signature of a Vilna guberniya police official confirming identity, and an oath to the that effect is sometimes attached to certain photographs.

The collection is comprised of 1,222 portrait photographs. This is the largest portrait-photo collection preserved in the archive and is important part of the historical legacy of the Jews who lived in Vilna guberniya. The photographs are very expressive, young men dressed in their finest clothes, looking with hope and aspiration to the future. The fate of many is unknown: did they serve in the Russian army, were they cantonists, or did they manage to avoid serving? This unique period of Jewish history has been little studied and very few publications about it exist. Research on the origins and fates of the people in the photographs is a subject for a separate historical study.

Most of the portraits were taken in Vilna, but others were done in Warsaw, Minsk, Kiev and St. Petersburg. These century-old photographs taken in the salons of famous photographers of the period (Rembrandt, E. Binkovich, A. Straus, S. Fleri and others) are both cultural and historical treasures and an important part of the history of photography about which the general public knows very little at the present time.

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