Dear members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community,
I wish you a sweet 5778! I greet you wish you as much peace, goodness and calm as possible in your families and in the community, and to enter the New Year with a smile. The most important thing is that there be the least amount of anger possible, and that our health and moods might be better. May concord, understanding and a good communal feeling lead you.
This article could (and should) have been published a year ago, in August 2016, if I had treated more seriously the brief article I wrote in Russian about the new edition of the book “Vilnius: In Search of Traces of the Jerusalem of Lithuania.”
All Sources (apart from the New York Times) Say Abba Kovner Was Born in Sevastopol
All sources I’m aware of, with the one exception of the New York Times, state Abba Kovner (Yiddish: קאוונער אַבאַ) was born in Sevastopol [Crimean Peninsula]. Here I will give some examples of the most important publications:
1. A monograph entirely dedicated to Abba Kovner’s life and work.
Porat, Dina. “Fall of a Sparrow. The Life and Times of Abba Kovner” (originally published in Hebrew in 2000). Translated and edited by Elizabeth Yuval. English translation 2010. Stanford University Press.
The first chapter “Childhood in Sevastopol and Youth in Vilna” starts with the statement “Abba Kovner was born in Sevastopol…” (p. 3).
Note: This is not supported by a reference to an archival excerpt from the register of births of Jews born in Sevastopol in 1918.
The granddaughter of Helmut Rauca, the notorious war criminal from the Kaunas ghetto who hid in Canada for years before being deported to West Germany to stand trial in 1983, has paid a visit to the Kaunas Jewish Community. Rauca, the top SS official in occupied Kaunas, was personally responsible for selecting those doomed to be murdered at the Ninth Fort on Democrat Square in the Kaunas ghetto on the day over 10,000 Jews were killed, the Grosse Aktion or Great Action. Reglindis Rauca only learned of her grandfather’s crimes against humanity relatively late in life. The shock led her to write a book about it. The author and actress wanted to meet eye-witnesses and Holocaust survivors in Kaunas. Although initially she appeared nervous about the meeting, her warmth, simplicity and sincerity were obvious and overcame any potential barriers to communication and mutual understanding.
You can find out more about Reglindis Rauca and her novels here and here.
More about Helmut Rauca in Canada here.
Wednesday, September 20
Traditional Rosh Hashana celebration from 5:00 P.M., religious service starts at 6:30. Presentation of calendar for 5778 and traditional Rosh Hashana treats.
On September 21 and 22 services begin at 9:30 A.M.
This evening we will not only have fun, try food and look at the new Jewish calendar for 5778, we’ll also renew our knowledge of this sweetest of Jewish holidays. Be there, 6:00 P.M., Tuesday, September 19, on the third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community.
The Jewish Virtual Library is the go-to source my students use for fact-based research pertaining to Judaism, Israel and the Holocaust.
We hear this all the time from teachers because the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) is at the forefront of online Jewish/Israel education. We have worked hard to build the Jewish Virtual Library to include nearly 25,000 entries covering everything from anti-Semitism to Zionism. We are also proud to have reached more than 30 million visitors from more than 200 countries in the last three years.
In January, we gave the JVL a new look. We’ve made it easier to navigate and to find the information you need. We’ve also optimized the library so it is compatible with your smartphone and tablet. We have much more planned, including an App and material packaged for high school educators.
We need your help!
by Barb @ 1 Sentence Diary
The photo above is my shofar, an instrument made out of a ram’s horn, which is a traditional part of the Rosh HaShanah ceremony. Personally, I am unable to make any sound come out of the shofar, but both of my kids are quite adept at it. Don’t ask me how they learned it–I have no idea!
Today is the Jewish holiday of Rosh HaShanah, which is the Jewish New Year. According to Jewish tradition, Rosh HaShanah is the anniversary of the creation of the world. In Hebrew, we say L’shana Tova U’metuka (שנה טובה ומתוקה), meaning, for a sweet new year.
As the New Year, Rosh HaShana is a celebratory holiday, but there are deeper meanings as well.
Dear friends,
Georg Friedrich Hegel was to modern thought what Plato was to Greek philosophy. Most of the ideological movements of the 19th and 20th century see themselves as his heirs: from Marxists to nationalists and from existentialists to psychoanalysts, they all imbibed Hegel’s philosophy and methodology, especially the “dialectic”: thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
But we Jews were, as usual, a thorn in Hegel’s side.
Hegel developed, among many other things, a neat model of the life cycle of peoples. A group–say, the ancient Greeks–will develop its particular spirit (volkgeist) until they make their unique contribution to the universal spirit (weltgeist). Then they will fall into decadence, fade into history, and disappear. Jews, mused Hegel, had made their unique contribution, monotheism, but they stubbornly refuse to disappear.
by Arkadijus Vinokuras
photo © 2017 Edvard Blaževič
Alfa.lt
Lithuania remembers the victims of the Holocaust on September 23. The beastly crime carried out by the Nazis during World War II was directed namely against one people, the Jews. The goal was obvious: the final destruction of the Jewish people. The extermination was industrialized. We find no analogue in human history to this scale of mass murder as an assembly line, in gas chambers. On the other hand history is full of seemingly good neighbors suddenly becoming murderers of innocent men, women and children.
Lithuania was not able to escape this painful experience. Nor was Lithuania able to avoid another tragedy, the Soviet occupation, mass murders and deportations of Lithuanian citizens to the gulags. Judging from the fact flags hung on every building feature a black ribbon in memory of the deportees but that these flags are not flown to honor the victims of the Holocaust (although by law they should be), it’s clear something very bad lurks in the Lithuanian mind regarding these historical tragedies.
Put another way, the ethnic Lithuania is afflicted by the story of two sufferings, in which one, the Holocaust, is still alien, still someone else’s suffering. No place is left for sympathy for the other’s agony and it is still having a difficult time making inroads in the psyche of fellow Lithuanian citizens.
How could this have happened? How could the political, spiritual and commercial elite of the Lithuanian state restored in 1918 manage to foster such hatred by Lithuanians for their fellow Jewish citizens that a decorated Lithuanian soldier, farmer or attorney would volunteer to take part in the mass murder and looting of 1941-1944? Even the priest consecrated the weapon used for the mass murder of innocent people, never mind the illiterate class or bandits who took part in the Bacchanalia of the mass murder of innocent people. In which people got drunk not on wine, but from the orgy of blood.
September 19, 6:00 P.M., Jascha Heifetz Hall, LJC, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius. Educational Rosh Hashanah evening. Besides having a good time, sampling foods and seeing the new calendar for 5778, we’ll also renew our knowledge of this sweetest of Jewish holidays.
September 20, 5:00 P.M. Traditional Rosh Hashanah celebration at the Choral Synagogue. Service begins at 6:30 P.M., with services on September 21 and 22 at 9:30 A.M.
September 22, 5:00 P.M. Art & Weisen concert in Heifetz Hall, LJC. The German quartet will perform subtle and enchanting interpretations of Eastern European and klezmer tunes.
Important note to members and visitors: on September 21 and 22 the Community administration and Social Programs Department will be on holiday.
September 24, 12 noon, Choral Synagogue. St. Christopher chamber orchestra concert “From a Forgotten Book.” For an invitation, call (8 5) 2613 003 or 867881514
September 24, 2:00 P.M. Rosh Hashanah for kids and young people at the Community.
September 25, 8:30 A.M. International conference “Diaspora and Heritage: The Shtetl,” building III, Lithuanian parliament. Registration required and identification required for entry. Registration open till September 21. Conference program here.
VILNIUS, September 14, BNS–Yuli-Yoel Edelstein, the speaker of the Israeli Knesset, honored the family of Ignacy and Katarzyna Bujel who saved the life of a young Jewish woman during World War II at a ceremony in Vilnius, the Israeli embassy reported.
Edelstein and Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon presented the award to the Bujels’ daughters, Kristina Kovalevska and Leokadija Chaninovic, during a ceremony Wednesday.
The Bujel family were honored as Righteous among the Nations for saving the life of Feiga Dusiacka, then a 24-year-old resident of Vilnius. Feiga and her mother and sister together with a group of Vilnius ghetto prisoner were taken to Ponar just outside of Vilnius to be executed. When the shooting began Feiga fell into the pit and lay among dead bodies. The bullets did not hit her and when the police left she got out of the hole and ran to the village of Vaidotai and found the home of the Bujels where she used to spend childhood summers together with her brothers and sister. The family hid the young woman when policemen came to their house apparently looking for Jews.
Among those present in the ceremony at the Sholom Aleichem school were Feiga Dusiacka’s daughters, Ana and Kotia Dobiecki, who came to Vilnius from Paris, according to an embassy press release.
The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial has recognized around 900 Lithuanians citizens as Righteous among the Nations for risking their lives to rescue Jews during World War II.
An international conference called Diaspora and Heritage: The Shtetl will be held at the Lithuanian parliament September 25 dedicated to the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Jews of Lithuania and the European Day of Jewish Culture.
Representatives of the Lithuanian and foreign Jewish community, scholars and heritage protection experts will give presentations and discuss Litvak history, memory and heritage. Conference participants and guests will have the opportunity to view a new exhibit financed by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry called “One Century from Seven: Lithuania, Lite, Lita,” which will later travel to Lithuanian embassies. The new Lithuanian Jewish Community calendar for the year 5778 will also be presented. This year’s calendar features the wooden synagogues of Lithuania.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Cultural Heritage Department under the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture are organizing the conference. The event is jointly financed by the Goodwill Foundation and the Cultural Heritage Department.
You are invited to attend. Please find the program for the conference and register at the following internet address:
https://www.lzb.lt/registracija-i-zydu-paveldo-konferencija/
Program in English also available here.
Speaker of the Israeli Knesset Yuli-Yoel Edelstein visited the Lithuanian Jewish Community and met with members who listened to his warm words for the community. Community members were also able to meet the speaker at the Vilnius Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium Wednesday afternoon at a ceremony to honor the Bujel family who rescued Jews from the Holocaust.
Edelstein’s visit is a big and important event for Lithuania and the Lithuanian Jewish Community. Relations between Israel and Lithuania this year are the best and closest in history. Both countries are interested in strengthening existing cooperation and expanding the friendly relationship. This was demonstrated in the Knesset speaker’s meetings with all of Lithuania’s top leaders.
Visits by high-ranking Israeli leaders, begun four years in 2013 with Shimon Peres’s visit, are very important to Lithuanian Jews, imparting morale to the community as well as honor, but most of all they’re important because, for however brief a time, there is an opportunity to listen to one another. “The democratic state of Israel is a second homeland for Lithuanian Jews,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky remarked at the meeting at the LJC. Edelstein in turn praised the Community’s activities.
The chairman of Israel’s parliament said Lithuania after independence cares much more about remembering the Holocaust now, and that Vilnius–the Jerusalem of the North–was one of the most important cities for Jews. Paying his respects at the Ponar Holocaust memorial, Knesset speaker Edelstein called upon Lithuania “to remember honestly” that there Nazis, Lithuanian collaborators but also rescuers of Jews in this country during the Holocaust. “This is history, you can’t rewrite it, you cannot cross it out,” he said. Changes begun in Lithuania several years ago in Holocaust consciousness have led to better relations with Israel. Edelstein told BNS this was thanks decisions made by the Lithuanian Government. He also told BNS he hoped Lithuanian leaders would maintain this line, and said it was the task of the Lithuanian Government to insure there are not xenophobic and anti-Semitic sentiments in the country.
BNS reports Israeli Knesset speaker Yuli-Yoel Edelstein speaking at the Ponar Memorial Complex outside Vilnius called on Lithuania to pay more attention to commemorating Jewish history and preserving Jewish heritage, and said the country needs to insure it has rid itself of xenophobia and anti-Semitism.
According to BNS, he said independent Lithuania is more concerned about Holocaust commemoration than the Soviet government was, but the situation can still be improved.
“Definitely, in comparison with the period of Soviet Union, when all the Jewish heritage, Holocaust remembrance, everything was wiped out, we see positive developments,” BNS quoted the speaker of the Israeli parliament telling reporters in Vilnius after visiting the Ponar memorial to Holocaust victims Wednesday. “But there’s never enough. As I said, the heritage was great, the contribution was great. Let’s not forget, Vilna was called Jerusalem of Lithuania, Jerusalem of the North, [and] was one of the most meaningful Jewish cities,” he was quoted as saying.
Edelstein called on Lithuanians “to honestly remember that there were Nazis, there were their collaborators, Lithuanians, there were courageous Lithuanians saving Jews during the Holocaust”.
“This is history, you can’t rewrite it, you cannot cross it,” he said according to BNS.
He reportedly called on Lithuania to pay attention to the historical memory of Lithuanian Jews, their life until the Holocaust and their contribution to Lithuania’s history, culture, art and business. He said the people who were murdered weren’t numbers and had names, according to BNS, and said the challenge for the Lithuanian Government, the local Jewish community and local non-Jews was to collect the names, remember the names and to celebrate the commemorative sites around the country, according to BNS.
Edelstein last visited Vilnius in 2009 as the Israeli minister of public diplomacy and Diaspora affairs. BNS reported he was told not to go on that trip to Lithuania by Litvak Holocaust survivors, who claimed he had no right to go. Edelstein noted a complete change in the situation over the intervening years which he said were down to the decisions of the Lithuanian Government and due to relations between the two countries, BNS reported.
Edelstein expressed the hope Lithuanian leaders would maintain that course and stressed it was the task of the Lithuanian Government to insure no xenophobic and anti-Semitic sentiments are left in the country.
“I never think that it’s a sign of friendship to Israel or special relations with Israel. It’s an internal Lithuanian task,” he was quoted as saying by BNS.
The speaker of the Knesset also called for moving to practical steps for fortifying Israeli-Lithuanian friendship and said he discussed those kinds of steps with Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė, prime minister Saulius Skvernelis and the speaker of the Seimas (parliament) Viktoras Pranckietis.
“We can’t just stay forever with this phrase about friendship and positive relations; we have to do practical things. In all my meetings here, we discussed how to strengthen the economic ties, cultural ties [and] tourism that is on the rise,” BNS reported he said.
“On Sunday at three o’clock the streets of the ghetto were closed. A group of three hundred Jews from Salos and Smurgainys left for Kaunas with a large crowd of Jews from the countryside at the railroad station. Standing at the gate I saw how they packed their things. Happy and in a good mood, they got on the train. Today terrible news reached us.
“Eighty-five cars with Jews, almost 5,000 people, were not taken to Kaunas as promised; instead the train took them to Ponar where they were shot. Five-thousand new victims of brutality. The entire ghetto is upset as if struck by lightning. People are consumed by the sense of butchery… Everything is so horrible.”
These are the thoughts fifteen-year-old Yitskhok Rudashevski wrote down in Yiddish in his school notebook. The thoughts of someone mature beyond his age, or perhaps thoughts made old through violence, suffering and waiting for death… Yitskhok’s life ended here, as did those of many Vilnius ghetto inmates, in one of the pits of Ponar turned into human sacrifice sites.
Lithuanian school children and young adults have not had the opportunity so far to read Yitskhok’s diary, and the several pages included in history textbooks do not reflect the horror of the Holocaust, or the 700 years of Lithuanian Jewish history, or my people’s contribution to fortifying Lithuanian statehood. Little is said of Lithuanian collaboration in the Holocaust, and heads are bowed and statues raised not always to the true heroes of Lithuania. The Holocaust is passed on as a crippling tragedy of from one generation to the next, and from a different generation to the next as horrible guilt, at the subconscious level. The time has come to recognize the common historical memory of Jews and Lithuanians. Lithuanians and Litvaks have one shared history in which Lithuanians and Jews intertwine, and the paths of Israel and Lithuania crisscross. Zionism, or Jewish patriotism, a very strong tradition in Litvak history, saved many Jewish families from death. Am Yisrael khai. Mir zainen do!
For perhaps the first time at this event in Ponar, Jewish partisan Fania Brancovskaja will not speak. The entire Community says, Get well soon, Fania!
This reminds us of the passage of time, the worth of a human life, its fragility and transitory nature, and it encourages us to act, while we can, to keep memory alive. Only historical memory and truth will help the older generation to know, give the younger generation the chance to learn, and help build the bridge of memory between peoples and countries.
Eli Rabinowitz interviews Phillip Maisel, 95, Survivor of the Vilna Ghetto, and friend of Hirsh Glik in Melbourne, Australia. August 22, 2017
Hirsh Glik, 20, wrote the poem, Zog Nit Keynmol, in Yiddish in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943. Its powerful words are about hope, heroes and resistance. It became immediately popular and spread quickly. Hirsh was killed in Estonia the following year.
Two Jewish Russian brothers, Dmitri and Daniel Pokrass, had composed a march for a movie in 1938. This was later matched with the poem. After the Holocaust, this song became the anthem of the Survivors and has been sung ever since at annual Yom Hashoah commemorations, mostly in Yiddish, and in Hebrew in Israel.
Many school children now sing Zog Nit Keynmol at commemorations in Yiddish, the lingua franca in 1943, but hardly spoken today. Most do not understand the meaning, inspiration and context of the words. This was brought to my attention in January by Rabbi Craig Kacev, the Head of Jewish Studies at South Africa’s largest Jewish Day School, King David. Three weeks later, 1000 of his high school students attended my audiovisual presentation consisting of short YouTube clips. It was a resounding success and the start of my remarkable journey taking me to South Africa, the UK, Lithuania, Poland, Israel, the US, Canada and back home to Australia in six months!
The Kaunas Jewish Community accepted an invitation from Viktoras Klepikovas, monument specialist for the Jurbarkas (Yurburg, Georgenburg) regional administration’s infrastructure and property department, to attend the seminar Klepikovas organized called “Life and Diaspora in the Shtetl of the Jews of Jurbarkas” held at the regional public library. A large, overflow audience listened to deputy director of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute Rūta Puišytė who spoke about the Jewish history of Jurbarkas, daily life for Jews there and good neighborly relations between Jews and Lithuanians. She said Jews constituted 42 percent of the population before the Holocaust.
Viktoras Klepikovas presented the second speaker, Rita Vaiva Begenat, who finally grew weary of the apathy of local officials and all the bureaucratic obstacles, and so in 2003 began cleaning up the old Jewish cemetery in Jurbarkas herself. She cleaned up the grounds, cleaned headstones and renewed inscriptions. She said she needs help reading the inscriptions now.
KJC chairman Gercas Žakas spoke at the seminar and thanked the organizers for the meaningful event. Also attending were KJC members Judita Mackevičienė and Dobrė Rozenbergienė, both originally from Jurbarkas. KJC members toured the old Jewish cemetery and a mass murder site. The KJC delegation stopped at nearby Panemunė castle on the way home and were intrigued by the yellow star on the coat of arms of its former rulers, the Gelgaudas (Giełgud) family.
Dear members and friends,
You are invited to join Knesset speaker Yuli-Yoel Edelstein in commemorating Holocaust victims at the Ponar Memorial Complex on Wednesday, September 13. A bus will provide transportation from the Lithuanian Jewish Community building at Pylimo street no. 4 and will depart at 2:20 P.M. sharp, so please don’t be late, and of course the number of seats is limited.
At 5:45 P.M. speaker Edelstein will visit the Community and you’re welcome to join us on the third floor. Opera soloist Rafailas Karpis and pianist Darius Mažintas will perform a short concert there as well.
Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė met Israeli parliament (Knesset) speaker Yuli-Yoel Edelstein. They discussed bilateral relations, Israeli cooperation with the EU, the security situation and geopolitical tensions caused by Russia, and the Near East peace process.
information from the Press Service of the President of Lithuania
Vilnius, September 13, BNS–Lithuanian parliamentary speaker Viktoras Pranckietis met Israeli Knesset speaker Yuli-Yoel Edelstein Wednesday and discussed the need for direct flights between the two countries.
Pranckietis said following their meeting: “The Knesset speaker said it would be a very good thing, that this is to be sought and, it appears, it can happen in the future. It would stimulate tourism.” He said about 20,000 tourists from Israel visit Lithuania annually.
“And our people could travel to get warm. As they said in an informal conversation, our sea is the coldest, but theirs is the warmest. Our people could continue vacations and summer in that country,” Pranckietis speculated.
Currently only the budget airline Wizz Air flies between Tel Aviv and Vilnius.