Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky made a trip to the city of Ukmergė, known in Yiddish as Vilkomir, to address several issues there.

Her first order of business was to make contact with Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas and the new mayor, Darius Varnas.

“I came with the desire of increasing cooperation. We would like to take part in city holidays and to invite Ukmergė to take part in international projects which our Community is coordinating in Lithuania. This would give the city an opportunity to be more visible in Europe, to present and take pride in its material heritage,” Kukliansky said.

The primary issue for the visit was to encourage local leaders to revisit the issue of public commemoration in the form of a statue of Lithuanian Nazi Juozas Krikštaponis. Kukliansky said she hoped the newly-elected mayor would take a different position on the controversy, but after meeting with Varnas commented the problem had not been solved.

Another issue was vandalism of the Pivonija III Holocaust memorial just outside Ukmergė in the Pivonija Forest where 11,000 Lithuanian Jews were murdered. Kukliansky and Taicas visited the site and found graffiti from months ago hadn’t been cleaned up, there was garbage on the ground and the problem of people turning their vehicles around on top of the mass grave hadn’t been solved yet. It appears off-road recreational vehicles had made the tracks on this occasion.