As part of a program of events to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the YIVO Jewish research institute in Vilnius, readings from Yitzhok Rudashevski’s diary in Lithuanian and Yiddish were held at the Piano.Lt concert venue. YIVO director Jonathan Brent, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and Jewish partisan and Vilnius Yiddish Institute librarian Fania Brancovskaja participated, and Klezmatics soloist Lorin Sklamberg sang songs composed as songs and poems in the Vilnius ghetto by Kaczerginski, Sutzkever and Wolkowski. A unique recording of Sutzkever reading his own poetry in Yiddish was played.

Welcoming members of the audience, LJC chairwoman Kukliansky pointed out the significance of YIVO celebrating its 90th birthday in Vilnius, “the Jerusalem of Lithuania,” where it was founded, in a city which has given the world so many accomplished Jewish scholars, religious leaders, artists, musicians and politicians. “We are so glad the LJC is one of the organizers of and partners for this event. The Community holds Jewish culture and the Yiddish language dear. The events begin with Rudashevski’s diary, through which we pay honor to the memory of all the children who died in the ghettos and concentration camps during the Holocaust,” Kukliansky said.

“We are proud to be able to celebrate the institute’s birthday in Vilnius, YIVO’s hometown,” institute director Jonathan Brent said, thanking the entire Community and chairwoman for the organizational work performed. “This cooperation is very important to us,” Brent said, adding Yitzhok Rudashevski wrote his diary when he was just 14 years old. “The boy left for us the most important document of the Vilnius ghetto witnessing to the terror of the Holocaust. YIVO’s task is to preserve the memory of the Jewish civilization which the Nazis destroyed.”

Yitzhok Rudashevski was born in Vilnius in 1927. His father worked as a printer and his mother as a seamstress. IN september of 1941, several months having passed since the Nazi invasion, he and his family were sent to the Vilnius ghetto. The boy was driven by a desire to record the details of the catastrophe which had overtaken him and his people so the world would someday know what happened, and began keeping a diary in his native Yiddish language. His talents as a writer not only helped illuminate the tragedy of daily life in the ghetto, but also described the intellectual and cultural activities among the Jewish youth in which he took an active part. Rudashevski’s talent is plain to see: his dairy is filled with insights beyond his years as he attempted to make sense of the horror which had arrived, to wrestle with the angel of death all around him, to endure, to write and to witness. Yitzhok and his family tried to hide in the autumn of 1943 when the Nazis liquidated the Vilnius ghetto, but were discovered two weeks later. The Rudashevski family and the others with whom they hid were sent to Ponar and shot. Only Sarah Voloshin, Yitzhok’s cousin, survived. After liberation she returned to the hiding place and recovered Yitzhok’s small notepad containing two hundred fully written pages. This was Yitzhok Rudashevski’s diary.