On July 15 people gathered in Šiauliai to remember the liquidation of the ghetto there on July 15, 1944, when the surviving approximately 3,000 Jews imprisoned there were sent to Dachau and Stutthof for extermination.

Faina Kukliansky’s mother was imprisoned in the ghetto. She recalled: “I am here not just as the chairwoman of the the Lithuanian Jewish Community. I am the daughter of a female prisoner of the ghetto. My grandmother miraculously was able to save two of her daughters, but not the third one. I was named after her, Feigele, little bird.”

She said we were in the debt of the ghetto prisoners and the Jews who died for their concord and unity, and so their sacrifice will not have been in vain.

“Here in my home town we have gathered on an important albeit sad occasion to mark the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Šiauliai ghetto. This is a time to remember there is no such thing as another person’s pain. That there is no statute of limitations on the human conscience. And that in today’s world which is more and more frequently showing us its dark side, it is so important to turn back to the basic human values. To remember we are people. And we are people to the extent that we are able to overcome our dark side,” Lithuanian parliamentary speaker Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen said at the commemoration.

The LJC would like to thank everyone who came together in Šiauliai to honor the victims of the Holocaust in Luponiai Forest.