With deep sadness we report the death of Ida Vileikienė on October 17. She was born in 1942 in the Šiauliai ghetto. The Lithuanian Jewish Community sends our deepest condolences to her widower Petras, daughter Svajonė and son Donatas.
Quiz Series: Israeli Victories
This Sunday’s semi-regular quiz will be dedicated to hope. For the second week Israel is at war with the Hamas terrorist organization. Although many expect victory for Israel, many also expect it to be long in coming. This illustrates well the millennia-long history of the Jews which has been victorious but also very painful.
We invite everyone to come take part in the quiz, but also to spend some time together and talk. As usual, actor, writer and journalist Arkadijus Vinokuras will be master of ceremonies. The event will be streamed on facebook.
Time: 2:00 P.M., Sunday, October 22
Location: Bagel Shop Café
Kaunas Jews Deeply Worried about War in Israel
Photo from AFP
Kaunas resident Bella Shirin communicates with her relatives in Israel, which has turned into a kind of hell, day and night. She fears for her son, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are now spending most of their time in a hiding place in their apartment.
Eyes without Pity
Shirin returned to Kaunas from Israel seven years ago after experiencing two wars in Israel. She says she has looked into the eyes of an Hamas close-up.
All she saw there, she says, was hatred for Jews.
Statement by Lithuanian Jewish Community, All 32 Constituent Members, about the War in Israel and the Situation in Lithuania
When terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 the world witnessed acts of incomprehensible brutality where women, children, the disabled and the elderly were taken hostage and murdered, taken hostage and used as human shields, and publicly tortured and executed.
We say with no reservations at all that Israel is a sovereign state. No one has the right to attack Israel, to invade Israel’s territory and to murder the people of Israel. There can be no justification nor mercy of any kind for the murderers.
Today, 50 years later, the words of beloved Israeli prime minister Golda Meir sound prophetic: we had a secret weapon in the war: there was no alternative. Again Israel is fighting for survival.
This brutal war is especially painful to the members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, there is no Jewish family in Lithuania whose members haven’t been touched by these terrific events. Our close relatives are fighting on the front lines, healing the wounded, rescuing people buried in rubble, helping those who are stuck and who could die. We are extremely proud of them.
Our thoughts and hearts are with our parents, brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren and friends who remain in Israel. With every person fighting for our historical homeland. With everyone who is experiencing the horror and loss.
Unfortunately it isn’t just our relatives in Israel who have found themselves in danger, but also in Lithuania. In the country where we were born, grew up and work, the country which we love, whose citizens we are, anti-Semitism is spreading, not just on the social media and at protests, but from the podium at the Lithuanian parliament, and even children are being attacked: they are being threatened and hurt on purpose. Yesterday a Bolt taxi driver of dark complexion who didn’t speak Lithuanian asked a minor, a child, what his ethnicity was, and when he found out his passenger was Jewish, he refused to take him to school. This is certainly not the only and not the worst incident, but it’s very illustrative of the situation.
These kinds of incidents make our community feel unsafe, but we are concentrated and unified, we are unified both by our thousands of years of history, but also by the future.
We are inn close cooperation with the Lithuanian Police Department and other security structures. Ee are in continual contact with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Lithuanian embassy to Israel and international Jewish organizations. We are exchanging information and sharing data.
Despite the shock of it all, we are striving to help Lithuanian citizens stranded in Israel as well, and to help Israeli citizens in Lithuania to fly home. We are providing information, consulting, helping to provide solutions to the unexpected problems which have come up all at once.
We thank Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda, speaker of parliament Viktorija Čmilyte-Nielsen and prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė for the firm support for Israel and the Lithuanian Jewish Community they have expressed. We are very encouraged Lithuania has condemned unequivocally the actions of the terrorists and has stood for the right and just side.
We are extraordinarily grateful to the people of Lithuania as well who have sent us their messages of condolence and support and who are praying for our brothers and sisters taken hostage by the terrorists. At the same time we caution people should assess critically the information they receive and only share news from official Israeli institutions and agencies.
Am Yisral khai. The people of Israel live.
Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community
Lithuanian Parliament Adopts Resolution on Terrorist Attacks and Aggression against the State of Israel
During the morning sitting of the Lithuanian parliament on Tuesday, October 10, all 108 MPs present voted in favor of a resolution supporting Israel’s right to self-defense. Israeli ambassador Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein and the chargé d’affaires of the Israeli embassy in Vilnius were present for the discussion and poll.
Official press release:
Seimas adopts the Resolution on Terrorist Attacks and Aggression against the State of Israel
Press release
October 10, 2023
The Seimas has strongly condemned the recent bloody, unprovoked attacks carried out against the State of Israel by Hamas, an international terrorist group which is backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran and which took over the Gaza Strip in 2005, and has extended its sincere condolences to the people of the State of Israel for the numerous victims.
Lithuanian Schools Closed Due to Bomb Threats
Schools, kindergartens and universities across Lithuania were closed in the early afternoon Friday as numerous emails in Russian and Lithuanian were received claiming bombs had been placed at these locations. This followed the same threats made to schools in Klaipėda Thursday as Lithuanian military and security forces were scheduled to carry out drills on the marine liquified natural gas terminal located there. Police spokesmen said the same threats were made in Latvia and Estonia over previous days. They said the threatening emails in Lithuania were in Russian with some in Lithuanian and contained two separate demands: ransom for “de-mining” the schools, and political demands Lithuania stop supporting the Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.
The Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius decided several days ago to cancel in-school classes Friday and to conduct lessons via internet instead because Hamas had called upon supporters to attack Jewish institutions around the world on October 13. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman told Lithuanian media the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius was closed and almost all staff at the LJC were working from home. All events and programs scheduled at the LJC have been cancelled for now, according to LJC executive director Michailas Segal. Chairwoman Kukliansky said the regional Jewish communities had all been apprised of growing security concerns.
Lithuanian police had started making regular patrols outside the Sholem Aleichem school and the Choral Synagogue since the Hamas attack on southern Israel last Saturday.
Update: Around 1,500 schools and educational institutions received bomb threats again on Monday, October 16.
Pro-Palestinian Protests, Rash of Attacks on Jews around the World
Israel War: Hamas Attacks Lead to Rising Anti-Semitism
by Beth Bailey, October 12, 2023, Washington Examiner
As another devastating side effect of the deadly October 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israeli civilians, Jews around the world are becoming the targets of anti-Semitic hate. First came celebrations of the slaughter. In Cyprus; Sydney, Australia; Ontario and Toronto, Canada; Beirut; Damascus; Baghdad; Cairo and Ramallah supporters of Palestinian resistance came together to applaud attacks on the Israeli state.
The Anti-Defamation League tracked 39 anti-Israel rallies in the United States. They included events in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Tucson, Anaheim, San Francisco, Columbus, Tampa Bay, Albuquerque, Providence, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. In New York one reveler displayed pictures of dead Israelis on his phone. Another showed off a picture of a Nazi swastika. A speaker in Philadelphia attested that “every person who died yesterday wasn’t innocent. Every Israeli settler by default is a terrorist.” In Chicago, crowds chanted, “No Zionism in our town.”
“Make no mistake,” a speaker told crowds in D.C., “We are in celebration.”
These celebrations soon gave way to acts of outright anti-Semitism.
Opposition Joins Chorus Calling for MP’s Removal
In the on-going saga of the Lithuanian parliament’s attempt to remove MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis, opposition parties joined calls for his impeachment Tuesday following further statements by the MP on facebook. In May he made numerous statements against Israel and justifying violence against Jews.
“There are two ends to the stick, now the Israeli barbarians must suffer for murdering Palestinians,” Žemaitaitis wrote regarding Hamas’s attacks on Israel over the weekend. He said current events only confirm his earlier controversial statements on facebook, for which he is being currently being impeached.
Last week Žemaitaitis failed to appear on an internet conference held by the commission tasked with investigating him for possible impeachment. Žemaitaitis said he wasn’t obligated to appear and that the commission was formed in violation of statutory rules.
In Tuesday afternoon’s vote the Lithuanian parliament voted 88 in favor, 2 against and with two abstentions to continue the process by the impeachment commission for impeaching Žemaitaitis and removing him as a member of parliament.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
Intellectual Heritage of Vilner Jews
The Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities invite you to attend an international conference called “The Intellectual Heritage of the Jews of Vilnius” on October 10 and 11 at the Lithuanian Academy located at Gedimino prospect no. 3 in Vilnius.
According to the Lithuanian Academy’s press release:
“Thanks to the support of the Research Council of Lithuania, we were able to invite such world-renowned experts in Jewish history and culture as Israel Bartal, David Fishman, David Roskies, Benjamin Brown, Alex Lubotzky, Marcin Wodzinski, Jon Seligman, Avner Holtzman, Tsvia Walden, Mordechai Zalkin and others.
“The conference will also feature presentations by prominent Lithuanian scholars: Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, Lara Lempertienė, Jurgita Verbickienė and doctoral student Saulė Valiūnaitė.”
A program is available in English here.
For more information, visit the Lithuanian Academy’s website here.
Holocaust Monuments Vandalized in Palanga
Palanga Jewish Community chairman Vilius Gutmanas contacted the city mayor and police regarding the desecration of Holocaust monuments in the Lithuanian seaside resort town.
Lithuania marked both the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto and the Lithuanian Day of Remembrance of Jewish Victims of Genocide during the third week in September. On September 22 the Palanga Jewish Community, city representatives, teachers and students lit candles, placed stones inscribed with the names of victims and read passages from the history of the Jews of the city at a Holocaust monument there. The next day all the candles and stones had been removed.
“This came as an unpleasant surprise to me and visitors from Israel who had read about the event which took place the evening before,” chairman Gutmanas said.
He also surveyed markers and monuments in memory of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust in the area and discovered much damage, including a stele marking the mass murder and mass grave site of Jewish women and children from Palanga erected by British House of Lords member Greville Janner in the Kunigiškiai Forest, and the complete removal of a monument including its plinth on Vytauto street.
“This isn’t the work of some accidental passer-by. Someone really hates that Lithuania is commemorating Holocaust victims, that we are paying our respects to innocent citizens of our country who were brutally murdered, that we are telling young people the facts about this tragic period of history so they can learn from the mistakes of the past and not repeat them,” the chairman of the Palanga Jewish Community said.
Israel Urges Canada to Address WWII Nazi Immigration Policy towards Jews
Photo: Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, April 24, 2018. Photo credit: REUTERS/Chris Wattie
by Zvika Klein, October 3, 2023, Jerusalem Post
Israel’s envoy urges Canada to revisit WWII Nazi immigration and Jewish policy.
Resignation of Canada’s speaker of the House of Commons lower chamber is a “first step to acknowledging responsibility for this wrong,” Israel’s new special envoy for combating ant-Semitism, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, told the Jerusalem Post this week. She added that Canada needs to acknowledge its historic sin of not allowing enough Jews into the country during the Holocaust and immediately afterward while allowing Nazis to immigrate.
The speaker of Canada’s House of Commons lower chamber said last week that he would quit, a few days after he publicly praised a former Nazi soldier in Parliament in an incident that Russia said helped justify its war on Ukraine.
A week ago Anthony Rota told legislators he had made a mistake by inviting ex-soldier Yaroslav Hunka, 98, to attend a session in the House honoring Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky last Friday. Rota publicly recognized Hunka, calling him a hero.
Daring Dani Dayan and the Complicity of Lithuanians in the Holocaust
Photo: Chairman of Yad Vashem Dani Dayan at the memorial ceremony in the Ponary forest, remembering the over 200,000 Lithuanian Jews brutally murdered during the Holocaust, at this very site, courtesy X, formerly Twitter, used in accordance with clause 27a of US copyright law.
by Efraim Zuroff
The locals may never own what they did, but Yad Vashem’s chairman spoke truth to power, calling out their role in eliminating a vibrant Jewish world
During the past two decades, virtually every country in Europe, and many in the Western Hemisphere, have adopted a Holocaust memorial day, many inspired by the decision of the United Nations to do so in 2005. Quite a few have chosen to follow the example of the UN by commemorating the date of the liberation of Auschwitz death camp on January 27, 1945, but others chose dates that mark significant events in the history of the Shoah in their respective countries. In some cases, the choice is a reflection of the significance of specific Holocaust events for their societies, or the desire, or lack thereof, to emphasize the complicity of local Nazi collaborators.
Thus, for example, France chose July 16, the anniversary of the mass arrest in Paris in 1942 of 13,152 French Jews, who were deported to their deaths in Auschwitz by the local police. Similarly, Hungary chose April 16, the date of the initial orders for the ghettoization of Hungarian Jewry, the prelude to the deportation of 437,000 of them to Auschwitz in spring of 1944. Bulgaria, by contrast, chose March 10, the date on which the government revoked its original plan to deport the country’s entire Jewish population to Treblinka.
Will Lithuania Take Responsibility for Holocaust after Dayan’s Seimas Address?
by Silvia Foti
Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan addressed the Lithuanian Seimas on September 21, 2023, three days before the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. He took the opportunity to proclaim loudly and clearly the widespread knowledge of Lithuanian participation in the Holocaust, urging Seimas members to stop glorifying Holocaust perpetrators.
…
For me, the speech was electrifying because it was a vindication of so much hard work by so many people who have been beating the drum of Lithuania’s Holocaust distortion–including Rūta Vanagaitė, Efraim Zuroff, Dovid Katz, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Andrius Kulikauskas, Arkadijus Vinokuras, and the three of us who are mostly focused on my grandfather Jonas Noreika, namely Grant Gochin, Michael Kretzmer, and myself.
Full text here.
Yad Vashem Accuses Lithuania of Glorifying Nazi Collaborators
Photo: Lithuanian auxiliary forces carried out many murders of the country’s 141,000 Holocaust victims.
by Lianne Kolirin, Thursday, September 28, 2023, The Times of London
Streets and schools are named after citizens who colluded in the Holocaust
The head of Yad Vashem called for an end to the “glorification of war criminals associated with the massacre of Jews” in an address to Lithuania’s parliament.
Dani Dayan, chairman of the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, was invited to address the Seimas in Vilnius to mark the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the city’s ghetto in 1943.
According to Yad Vashem, Lithuania welcomed the Nazis, “seeing them as liberators from Soviet occupation.” About 141,000 of Lithuania’s 168,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, with “a significant part carried out by Lithuanian auxiliary forces,” its website states.
Canada’s Speaker of Parliament Resigns after Lauding Waffen-SS Veteran
Anthony Rota, speaker of Canada’s lower house of parliament or House of Commons, has resigned following an incident last week where he pointed to a former Nazi Waffen-SS soldier in the chamber and singled him out for praise as a Ukrainian freedom fighter who “fought the Russians then, and is fighting them now.”
The entire audience including prime minister Justin Trudeau and deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland gave Jaroslaw Hunka a prolonged standing ovation. Trudeau later called the incident embarrassing to Canada and fodder for Russian propaganda.
Rota, a member of Trudeau’s Liberal Party, fell on his sword to save the Trudeau government sagging in the polls in recent months, while commentators pointed out every single MP and member of the cabinet at the special sitting of the House of Commons should’ve been able to do the basic math and conclude Hunka, whose Canadian immigration documents use the alternate surname Gunka, had fought on the side of the Nazis, Canada’s declared enemy during World War II. In point of fact Hunka served in a Waffen-SS detachment in the province of Galicia (Galitsiya) in the Ukraine under the command of Stepan Bandera, the 14th Grenadiers aka Galicia Division, and committed atrocities and mass murder against Jews and Poles.
Israeli Ambassador’s Speech at Ponar
Israeli ambassador to Lithuania was among the speakers September 21 at the annual commemoration of Holocaust victims at Ponar outside Vilnius. The annual commemoration marks Lithuania’s Day of Remembrance of Jewish Victims of Genocide and officially falls on the nominal date of the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto, September 23, although the actual liquidation lasted several weeks.
She said:
Ladies and gentlemen, Madam Speaker, Madam PM, the Chairman of Yad Vashem, honorable Ministers, Members of Parliament, esteemed leaders of the Jewish community, dear Holocaust Survivors and families.
Today, we gather here in Ponar, the last stop of tens of thousands of men, women, and children, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto. We come together to remember the tragic events of the past and honor the enduring spirit of survival and resilience.
Žemaitaitis News
Photo: Remigijus Žemaitaitis, © 2023 ELTA/Dainius Labutis
On Tuesday Lithuanian media reported Lithuanian MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis, under fire for anti-Semitic comments he posted to facebook, had formed a new political party following his expulsion from his former party:
Žemaitaitis Claims Formed New Party
Parliamentarian Remigijus Žemaitaitis, now facing impeachment proceedings in parliament for anti-Semitic statements, says he and fellow travellers have formed a new party. The controversial member of parliament says the political entity being formed will participate in all upcoming elections.
“We plan to participate in all of them,” Žemaitaitis told ELTA.
Presentation of Book about Lives of Jewish Rescuers at Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community
The Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community located at Višinskio street no. 24 in Šiauliai will host a public presentation of the short book “Gyvenimo istorijos. Žydų gelbėtojai” [Life Stories: Jewish Rescuers] as the final events in the Laptai Gallery’s project “Cultural Sketches of Litvaks” at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, October 3.
This is the third short book in the “Gyvenimo istorijos” series and focuses on testimonies from eye-witnesses and relatives about the Righteous Gentiles who rescued Jews from the Holocaust in the Šiauliai region.
The presentation will include the reading of passages by Šiauliai State Drama Theater actress Jūratė Budriūnaitė, recollections by living witnesses and their relatives and musical accompaniment performed by Arijus Ivaškevičius. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (8) (41) 200-642 (which is equivalent to +370 41 200 642 on mobile phones).
Yad Vashem Director Addresses Lithuanian Parliament
Yad Vashem director Dani Dayan addressed a special sitting of the Lithuanian parliament convoked to mark the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilnius ghetto. He called on Lithuania to stop heroizing murderers of Jews and to commemorate better the tragedy of the Holocaust.
“Hundreds of thousands of Lithuanian Jews were murdered in this country by the Germans and by their Lithuanian collaborators. And to a significant extent by the local population, characteristically distinct to Lithuania,” he told 112 MPs gathered for the special sitting.
“(A)n anti-Semite, especially a murderer of Jews, cannot be considered otherwise a good person. … For sure he cannot be considered a hero. In addition to refraining from attributing public honor to such butchers, Lithuania must consistently acknowledge that many of the Lithuanian Jews massacred in the Holocaust, died at the hands of their Lithuanian co-nationals, and that Lithuanians also took part in the extermination of Jews in neighboring countries. The zero-tolerance policy must apply also towards glorification of war criminals associated with the massacre of Jews. Such names as Noreika, Škirpa, Krikštaponis do not add to the honor of your nation, nor to its adherence to international norms of appropriate national remembrance,” he continued.
MAD Magazine and the Holocaust
by Grant Gochin
MAD Magazine was a staple of American satire for generations. It was a formative architect of American humor, spawning an untold number of artists, journalists, creators, humorists, movies, and television shows. I ascribe my own particular sense of humor to having been fascinated by MAD Magazine in my youth.
Al Jaffee was best known as the American political cartoonist who contributed to MAD Magazine from the 1950s until 2020. From 1927 to 1933 he lived in provincial Lithuania, in his parents’ native town of Zarasai.
Al Jaffe and MAD Magazine personify the Jews of Zarasai. Zarasai is today a tiny, irrelevant village, in remote Eastern Europe. From Zarasai, was formed the American sense of humor.
So, what happened to Jaffe’s Jewish community from Zarasai, Lithuania?