The Panevėžys Jewish Community marked the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, the date UNESCO proclaimed the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust back in 2005, with ceremonies and educational outreach.
Students from local schools attended a quiz on the Holocaust at the Panevėžys Jewish Community. Community members and chairman Gennady Kofman also met with reporter Jogintė Četkauskienė to talk about Jewish life in the city and country during WWII.
“Today it is our duty to do all we can to ensure this tragedy never happens again. That means encouraging tolerance, there is enough air for everyone on our beautiful planet. It also means courageously fighting against anti-Semitism, which is the most urgent problem in the world today,” Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman told the reporter.
He also touched upon statements made by Lithuanian MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis during the interview.
“This politician’s apathy towards the tragedy of the Jewish people and his anti-tolerance are incomprehensible. How is it possible not to think about normal, friendly relations between the different ethnic communities in Lithuania?” Kofman asked the reporter.
Kofman spoke about the Panevėžys ghetto which was liquidated on August 15, 1941, with 13,500 Jews murdered. There are now memorial markers in the Kurganava Forest (where about 8,000 Jews were murdered), the Žalioji Forest (about 5,500 Jews murdered) and the Staniūnai Forest where the first groups of Jews from Panevėžys were murdered, but there are around 300 mass murder sites just in the Panevėžys district alone.
Kofman told the Delfi.lt reporter of the sad and ruinous state of many of the Jewish mass murder sites. They also spoke about Righteous Gentiles from Panevėžys. Vidmantas, the grandson of the rescuers Juozapas and Elena Markevičiai, shared memories of his grandparents and the Jews from the Kupiškis whom they helped.
The Panevėžys Jewish Community screened a documentary about two Lithuanian Righteous Gentiles, the Catholic priest Antanas Guoga and the nun Marija Rasteikaitė.
Kofman also called for better Holocaust education at the schools.
Participants visited mass murder sites, the location of the former ghetto gate and Jewish graves in Panevėžys, placing flowers and lighting candles.
Chairman Kofman also presented the book “Dedicated to the Victims of the Holocaust in Panevėžys,” which contains material Kofman collected, to the reporter.
