A cinematic premiere has been added to list of important events to honor Lithuania’s Holocaust victims. British director Robert Mullan’s film Gitel, filmed in Lithuania and elsewhere, will open at cinema theaters September 23. The film looks at the mass murders of 1941 through the eyes of a female survivor who has lost her family.
The Israeli embassy and municipalities of Vilnius and Elektrėnai have the pleasure of inviting you to attend the opening of the Let’s Draw Jerusalem exhibition of drawings by children in the second-floor foyer of the Vilnius Municipality building at Konstitucijos prospect no. 3, Vilnius at 2:00 P.M. on September 12.
The artwork is the result of a student contest the Israeli embassy and the municipality of Elektrėnai sponsored in April of 2016 called “Let’s Draw Jerusalem.” The idea was to combine symbolically the past and the future and the children were instructed to draw anything they associate with Jerusalem and Vilnius, Israel and Lithuania and the history and legacy of Litvaks. Come take a look at the wonderful pictures they came up with!
The exhibit will run till September 23.
lzinios.lt
The year 2017 will mark 30 years since the death of Jascha Heifetz, the 20th century’s answer to Paganini. His name is inscribed indelibly in the history of music and there is no dispute that many new listeners will come to admire him in the future. Unfortunately his colorful name is not always associated with Vilnius and Lithuania. But it could be, since the master was born and took the first steps upon his incredibly important career here, in Vilnius, called the Jerusalem of Lithuania. But it will be all different this season. Internet registration for the Jascha Heifetz violinist contest has already begun. The most talented, the most courageous and the most resolute fiddlers from around the world are already in a rush to sign up for this prestigious tournament and the news has reached young virtuosi in almost 100 countries. Registration is open all during the fall. Then the applications and select video recordings will be handed over to an esteemed commission of professors from the Lithuanian Music and Theater Academy. Thirty–that’s the total number who will be judged worthy to perform in this contest held every quarter. You can find the winners on the contest website on January 2, 2017.
© 2016 Lietuvos žinios
Full story in Lithuanian here.
Program of events by the Tolerance Center of Dukstyna Grade School in Ukmergė (Vilkomir) for September 23:
8:00-9:00 traditional “Memory Track” jog in Pivonija woods; candle lighting ceremony to honor the dead;
11:00 Ukmergė Old Town Architecture: Past, Present, Personal Stories (walking tour of sites)
12:00 Lesson at regional history museum; screening of parts of the film The Dark with discussion to follow; meeting Stasė Staputienė, daughter of Righteous Gentiles Kazimieras and Marcijona Ruzgys.
Information provided by Tolerance Center coordinator Vida Pulkauninkienė
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street No. 4, Vilnius, September 4
Program:
10:00 Bagel breakfast Boker Tov-בוקר טוב – A guten morgn – Labas rytas!
Location: Bagel Shop Café, Pylimo street No. 4, Vilnius
11:00-11:45 Hebrew lessons for kids and parents with Ruth Reches, author of the Illustrated Dictionary of Hebrew and Lithuanian for Beginners, registration required
Meet at the Bagel Shop Café, Pylimo street No. 4, Vilnius
12:00-12:45 Rakija Klezmer Orkestar performance
Location: White Hall, LJC
by Akvilė Grigoravičiūtė, Germanic studies doctoral candidate, Sorbonne
We invite those interested in Lithuanian Jewish culture and heritage to participate in walking tours, attend exhibitions, meetings and concerts and take part in other cultural activities scheduled for Sunday, September 4. The point is to regain a portion of our own historical memory, to disrobe it from a mantle of suppression and to add color beyond black and white to a rather amicable and good-willed former life together.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
by Ieva Šadzevičienė
Jacques Lipchitz, a sculptor whose name became synonymous with cubism and who later invented his own baroque cubist style is without dispute one of the most famous artists to have lived in Lithuania. He was born in Druskininkai to a Litvak family in 1891 and has always been more famous outside Lithuania than at home, where Soviet art scholarship ignored him as a decadent modernist whose work lay outside the bounds of canonical artistic norms. Lipchitz stayed in contact with Lithuania and his correspondence with Vytautas Landsbergis and the sculptor Vladas Vildžiūnas has been preserved.
Currently the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum’s Tolerance Center is hosting an exhibition of his work called “Life in Sculpture: Jacques Lipchitz at 125” which follows his creative path from childhood in his native Druskininkai to his student period in Paris surrounded by creative people, to his later life in the United States.
Full article in Lithuanian here.
Lithuanian readers finally have the chance to read Israeli author A. B. Yehoshua’s “Woman in Jerusalem” in Lithuanian. This is a special opportunity to get acquainted with the high art produced by this author working in Hebrew.
The translation and publication is the fruit of the Israeli embassy, the Israeli-Lithuanian company Teva and the Lithuanian Cultural Agency. Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon said the successful cooperation will continue, and admitted it was hard for him to contain his emotions when speaking about the project. “Not so many years have passed since the great tragedy of the Lithuanian Jewish community. That was a time when Jewish books were destroyed and burned. It is my great honor to contribute to cooperation which has given exposure to Jewish Israeli authors and allowed the people of Lithuania to get to know and love them,” he said.
This is the first joint project between the embassy and the Sofoklis publishing house. They plan to continue by publishing a new translation of a book in Hebrew at least once per year.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
Artūras Taicas, chairman of the Ukmergė Jewish Community, reports there will be a public launch of a new mobile telephone application called Discover Jewish Lithuania on September 4 during a commemoration of Holocaust victims in Ukmergė. The app uses what’s called augmented reality to overlay graphics, text and information on mobile phone and tablet screens displaying live camera views. The app will aid in finding sites and then offers additional information about the location in one of five languages, Lithuanian, English, Hebrew, Polish and Russian. So far it works in Ukmergė, Vilnius, Kėdainiai, Joniškis, Žagarė, Valkininkai and the village of Degsniai.
Gathering in the Pivonija grove in Ukmergė on Sunday, September 4, 2016
Program
12:00-12:45 Commemoration of Holocaust Victims: minute of silence, introductory speech by Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas, presentation of Tolerance Center by director Vida Pulkauninkienė, statements by participants;
12:45 Meeting of participants at Big Stone Restaurant, Kauno street no. 5, Ukmergė: snacks and coffee or tea, presentation of mobile app Discover Jewish Lithuania;
2:00-2:20 Short tour of Old Town, end of event.
Antanas Sutkus, 2014. Photo by Jurga Graf
A little more than a month from now renowned Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus will exhibit his photos of Holocaust survivors at the White Space Gallery in London. Most of the works come from his series of two decades ago called “Pro memoria: gyviesiems Kauno geto kankiniams” [In Memoriam: Living Martyrs of the Kaunas Ghetto]. The photographer says we must not forget the Holocaust and discussion of it is needed today more than ever.
Izabelė Švaraitė conducted an interview with the artist.
Your grandparents told you about the Holocaust. What did they say?
Village people didn’t talk much. But they very severely condemned and felt deep disgust for those Lithuanians who shot, transported and guarded Jewish prisoners.
In the catalog for your exhibit “Pro memoria: gyviesiems Kauno geto kankiniams,” the writer Alfonas Bukontas wrote you feel shameful about what happened in the Kaunas ghetto and Ninth Fort. Why do you feel ashamed?
The Holocaust isn’t some sort of ordinary crime. It was the highest metastasis of Naziism. Consider, for example, I live at home and a family of guests comes to me. At night bandits come threatening to murder me, and take them out in the yard and shoot them. Among the murderers is maybe a neighbor of mine. Although I didn’t shoot these people, and I didn’t have an association with those bandits, the scene would be burned into my eyes for the rest of my life.
I would say I feel sorrow and contrition that some many people died in Lithuania. Practically all the Jews in the country were shot… If Lithuania had come to the aid of Herkus Mantas [during the Prussian uprising of 1260 to 1274) or if Lithuania had saved its Jews, we would have progressed very far as a state.
Full interview in Lithuanian here.
A showing of artworks by students in Raimondas Savickas’s latest “in plein air” outdoor art workshop will open to the public at a ceremony at 5:30 P.M. on August 25, 2016, at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius. Artworks are to include painting and ceramics. The ceremony and exhibit is open to the public and will be held on the third floor of the Community.
A march to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the mass murder of the Jews of Molėtai is scheduled for August 29 in Molėtai, Lithuania.
There will be a conference and exhibit at the Molėtai Art Gallery at 3:00 P.M.
A procession will then walk down Vilniaus street in Molėtai at 4:00 P.M.
Unveiling of a monument by Davidas Zundelovičius follows at 5:00 P.M. at the mass murder site and mass grave of the Jews of Molėtai. Teachers Ela Pavinskienė and Roza Bieliauskienė of the Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium in Vilnius have organized an exhibit about cleaning up the old Jewish cemetery in Molėtai with photographs by Yehuda Vagner and Maceva volunteer Marius Lukoševičius.
A series of events in Biržai, Lithuania, to commemorate the Jewish community murdered there during the Holocaust are scheduled to begin at 11:00 A.M. on August 28. The events include an initial “March of the Living”-type procession culminating in a conference and discussion. For more information, contact Sania Kerbelis at 370 698 85131 or Simona Ražinskienė at 370 699 03023. There is a possibility those needing a ride from Vilnius might be able to get one provided by the Lithuanian Jewish Community; contact info@lzb.lt to find out.
August 26, 2016, marks the 75th anniversary of the massacre which was perpetrated in the Krakynė Forest (Degučiai alermanship, Zarasai region) when 2,569 Jews from Zarasai region and surrounding areas were murdered.
The unveiling of a commemorative monument will take place where the Dusetos Synagogue once stood on Independence Square in Dusetos, Zarasai district, at 2:00 P.M. We will commemorate the Dusetos Jews who were murdered between 1941 and 1944, visit the mass murder site in Krakynė Forest and distribute a publication called “Desetų žydai” (Jews of Dusetos).
Zarasai regional administration
Dusetos aldermanship
A joint project by the Dusetos aldermanship and parish community
Come learn about the Jewish cultural and historical legacy. European Days of Jewish Culture, September 4. This time the theme is Jewish languages. Event begins at 2:00 P.M. on the third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius.
The Kaunas Jewish Community will mark the 75th anniversary of the murder of the Jews of Petrašiūnai and the Intellectuals Aktion on August 26, 2016. The ceremony will begin at 3:30 P.M. at the stele in memory of the Jews of Petrašiūnai. Then we will move to the Fourth Fort in Kaunas where the Intellectuals Aktion, the first mass murder of Jews imprisoned in the Kaunas ghetto, was perpetrated.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Rositsan and Maccabi Elite Chess and Checkers Club invite you to a chess tournament dedicated to the memory of Kaunas Chess Club director Abraomas Šulmanas at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius at 11:00 A.M. on August 21.
Tournament director Boris Rositsan, FIDE master
For further information and to register, contact:
info@metbor.lt
tel.: +3706 5543556
UPDATE: Event organizers are providing transport from Vilnius and several free seats are left! Please register for a place before August 23 by sending an email to info@lostshtetl.com
You are invited to an event to commemorate the Šeduva Jewish community murdered in the Holocaust. The event is on on August 30 and will be a kaddish at the 3 mass murder sites and the old Šeduva Jewish cemetery.
Commemorative program
9:00–9:30 Kaddish at the Jewish mass murder site in Pakuteniai forest
https://goo.gl/maps/tdN5Y3mrWJw
9:45–10:15 Kaddish at Liaudiškiai Jewish mass murder site I
https://goo.gl/maps/fhjnq5ubSfk
10:30–11:00 Kaddish at Liaudiškiai Jewish mass murder site II
https://goo.gl/maps/mYLnGLUmVuK2
11:15–11:45 Kaddish at the Šeduva Jewish cemetery
https://goo.gl/maps/ZuHGdK9EHvF2
12:00–12:30 Coffee break at the Šeduva Culture and Crafts Center
12:45-1:30 Mass at the Holy Apparition of the Cross Church in Šeduva
1:30–2:15 Yiddish song concert by Rafailas Karpis and Darius Mažintas at the church in Šeduva
Download PDF format event program
More here.
A memorial to Samuelis Petuchauskas, deputy mayor of Šiauliai from 1921 to 1940, is to be unveiled at the city of Šiauliai municipality at Vasario 16 street no. 62 at midday on August 29, 2016. Šiauliai mayor A. Visockas is to open the ceremony.
Šiauliai Jewish Community chairman J. Buršteinas and other members are scheduled to attend along with other notable local figures, representatives of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, members of the family of Jackus Sondeckis family and others.
More information to follow.