Condolences

Condolences

Vladimir Iskovič passed away June 22. He was born in 1950. Our deepest condolences to his children and relatives.

Condolences

Dveira Gražinskaja passed away on June 21. She was born in 1933. She was a member of the Union of Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners. Our deepest condolences to her daughter Galina and her friends and relatives.

Condolences

Chanė Varkulevičienė passed away June 18. She was born in 1934. Our deepest condolences to her son Rimantas.

Condolences

Vladimir Savenkov passed away June 15. He was born in 1937. Our deepest condolences to his widow Olga.

Condolences

Aleksandr Šmidt died June 11. He was born in 1954. Our deepest condolences to his widow Vanda and brother Jurijus.

Condolences

With deep sadness we report the death of Olegas Feiginas on May 26. He was born in 1954. Our sincere condolences to his son Aleksas and other family members.

Condolences

Panevėžys Jewish Community executive board member and doctor Sergejus Amitonas has died following chronic illness. He was born in 1953 and achieved much in the field of medicine. Our deepest condolences to his sons Ruslanas and Georgijus as well as all his relatives and many friends.

Condolences

Jevgenija Ginzburg passed away May 24. She was born in 1932. We extend our deepest and most sincere condolences to her children who lost both their parents this month.

Condolences

The Lithuanian Jewish Community extends our deepest condolences on the death of long-time Lithuanian diplomat Edminas Bagdonas to his surviving family members.

Edminas Bagdonas, 58, passed away Saturday in Vilnius following a battle with illness. He was one of the most remarkable of Lithuanian diplomats after the country achieved independence in the early 1990s. Most recently he served as Lithuanian ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. He has been active in Lithuania’s diplomatic corps since 1994 and has served as ambassador to Israel and Belarus.

His admirers have called a “statesman with a capital S.” Litvaks in Israel remember him well for his communicability, professionalism and sense of duty.

Arie Ben-Ari Grozendsky, the chairman of the Association of Lithuanian Jewish in Israel, has sent the following condolences as well:

Condolences

We are ad to report the death on May 13 of long-time member Lidija Kazmina. She was born in 1927. We extend our deepest condolences to her children and grandchildren.

Condolences

Izrail GInzburg passed away May 8. He was born in 1929. We send our deepest condolences to his wife, daughters and loved ones.

Condolences

Holocaust survivor and historian and Jewish partisan Yitzhak Arad died May 6 at the age of 95 in Israel. He was one of the founders and the first director of the Yad Vashem memorial institute in Jerusalem. He also achieved the rank of brigadier general in the IDF. He was born in Švenčionys (Shventsian), Lithuania, in 1926, moved with his parents to Warsaw and escaped back into Lithuania with his sister at the onset of World War II. He escaped the Švenčionys ghetto and joined partisans in the forests in Belarus. In 1945 he went to Israel where he fought in four wars and was later appointed director of military education. He served in the Israeli military for 25 years and was appointed to head Yad Vashem in 1972. He earned a doctorate at Tel Aviv University and taught Jewish history, authoring numerous books about the Holocaust.

Our deepest condolences to his family and friends for their loss.

Litvak Philanthropist Eli Broad Dead at 87

Litvak Philanthropist Eli Broad Dead at 87

New York Times newspaper reports Eli Broad, a businessman and philanthropist whose vast fortune, extensive art collection and zeal for civic improvement helped reshape the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, died last Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 87.

Eli Broad was born in the Bronx on June 6, 1933, the only child of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. When he was 7 the family moved to Detroit, where his father opened a dime store, the New York Times reported.

Condolences

Condolences

Our deepest condolences to the people of Israel regarding the many victims of the Lag b’Omer tragedy, to the family and loved ones of the victims, and our best wishes for the speedy recovery of the injured.

Lithuanian Jewish Community

Condolences

Berelis Vaineris passed away April 19. He was born in 1923 and was a veteran of World War II, having served in the 16th Lithuanian Division. Our deepest condolences go to entire his family suffering this painful loss and to his wife Jelena and son Raimondas.

Condolences

Condolences

Milan Cheronskis passed away April 14. He was born in 1937 and grew up on Sakhalin Island in the Soviet Far East. Our deepest condolences to his wife Svetlana, daughter Polina and many, many friends within the Jewish community.

Cheronskis was a director at the Yiddish People’s Theater and a journalist. He was graduated from the Leningrad State Theater, Music and Comedy Institute in 1964. He directed the Yiddish People’s Theater in Vilnius from 1979 to 1999.

Besides serving on the board of directors of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Milan was the force behind the Community’s long-time press organ, Jerusalem of Lithuania, which was at one time published in four languages simultaneously. The newspaper was published from 1989 to 2010. Following the newspaper’s cancellation and his retirement, Milan continued to fight against Holocaust distortion and the falsification of Lithuanian history in the press and on the internet.

Yom haZikaron Marked in Vilnius

Yom haZikaron Marked in Vilnius

Today is Yom haZikaron. Yom haZikaron is memorial day in Israel, dedicated to remembering all Israeli soldiers who have fallen in battle. The holiday always falls one day before Yom haAtzma’ut, Israeli independence day on Iyar 5, but if Iyar 5 falls on the Sabbath as it does this year, independence day and thus memorial day are moved up one day.

#YomHaZikaron

Jews Remember Philip as Son of Righteous Gentile

Jews Remember Philip as Son of Righteous Gentile

Over centuries of persecution and viewing history “from the bottom,” most Jews have a healthy sense of criticism when it comes to celebrity, which is regularly reinforced by anti-Semitic statements issuing from the most unlikely people. The recent death of the United Kingdom’s prince Philip is different.

While Philip might have been, as Buckingham Palace likes to put it in hindsight, “authentically himself,” making off-the-cuff ethnic and racial statements deemed universally offensive, Jews are more likely to look back with respect and sadness on the passing of the queen’s consort. Philip’s mother princess Alice, wife of the Greek prince, rescued a Jewish family–the widow of Greek member of parliament Khaimaki Cohen and two of their five children–and hid them in her basement in Athens during the Nazi occupation.

The good deed might never have to come to light if not for a request from a member of the Cohen family to the Jerusalem municipality to name a street after princess Alice. Yad Vashem got involved, checked the facts and awarded the title of Righteous Gentile to the late princess. Prince Philip and his sister Sophia attended the awards ceremony and planted a tree at Yad Vashem in honor of their mother.

Strangely enough, Alice was reburied at the Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives in 1988, two years after her death but several years before being awarded the Yad Vashem title in 1993. This was reportedly done at her own request.

On the Jewish scale of values, one could say prince Philip came from a very good family, and deeds say so much more than words.

World Jewish Congress Mourns the Passing of Cardinal Cassidy

World Jewish Congress Mourns the Passing of Cardinal Cassidy

NEW YORK–The World Jewish Congress mourns the passing of Australian cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, long-time Vatican diplomat and former president of the Commission for the Religious Relations with the Jews, who died in Newcastle, Australia, at the age of 96.

Cardinal Cassidy served for 33 years in the diplomatic service of the Holy See before returning to Rome in 1988 to the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. In 1989 he was appointed president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, undertaking at the same time the role of president of the Commission for Religious Relations with Jews. In 1991 he was elevated to cardinal.

100-Meter Dash Champion Mykolas Preis Dead at 104

100-Meter Dash Champion Mykolas Preis Dead at 104

Mykolas Preis died at the age of 104 in Israel March 31. He was twice the Lithuanian champion of the 100-meter dash in the interwar period. He was buried at the Har haMenukhot cemetery in Jerusalem next to his wife Olia. Preis’s family emigrated to Israel in 1973. The Lithuanian Jewish Community remembers Mykolas Preis as an outstanding doctor and athlete. Our deepest condolences to his family.

Preis was the last interwar Lithuanian track champion. He took first place two years in a row, in 1939 and 1940, running the 100-meter dash in 11.5 seconds both times.

Preis was the senior medical doctor at the Sports Medicine Center located on Rožių alley in Vilnius in 1948. His contemporaries spoke of him as a great organizer as well as athlete. According to the Makabi records he came to prominence as a runner in 1938. Preis shared his memories of childhood and adolescence in the book “Lietuvos sporto klubo ,Makabi 1916–2016” [Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club, 1916-2016] and spoke about his many friends and the influence of his caring and warm teacher Rozalija Sondeckienė when he attended the Šiauliai Boys’ Gymnasium.