May 8 is VE Day, marking the victory of the Allies against the Nazis in Europe. At a monument to Vilnius ghetto underground resistance leader Yitzhak Vitenberg and partisan Sheina Madeisker in the Jewish cemetery on Sudervės road in Vilnius, veterans and members of the Jewish community gathered Tuesday to pay their respects to those who fought and died, and the victims of the war.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said it was difficult for Jews to call the day a holiday. “Is it a holiday when you have lost most of the members of your family?” she asked in her brief speech at the monument. “Those who survived carry within the pain of loss. The only thing which can be called a holiday is the end of the horror of war, and to thank Almighty God for that,” she added.

Shmuel Yatom, cantor at the Choral Synagogue, performed kaddish.