Grateful

Thank You Card for Ema Jakobienė

A thank you card to Ema Jakobienė for her contributions as one of the directors of the LJC project to support Lithuania’s aging Righteous Gentiles.

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Dear Ema,

We thank you very much for your wonderful project, for your concern and your love of your fellow human beings.

Thanks to you, we received a [debit] card–this is a great gift and support to our family.

Thank you!

So please keep going, keep working and touch those people who are already slipping from our fingers…

May God grant you health, strength of soul and smiling eyes…

In gratitude,

Antanas Poniškaitis
Staselė Poniškaitienė
September, 2016

Thank You

Speaking on behalf of the Committee of Jews from Zarasai Living in Israel, Grisha Deitz deeply thanks Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky for her concern and help in organizing a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the destruction of the Jewish community of Zarasai, Lithuania, and for the presence of the rabbi at the ceremony in Krakynė Forest, where 8,000 Jews from the Zarasai region were murdered in 1941.

Book about Ona Šimaitė, Righteous Gentile

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Epistolofilija by Julija Šukys. Biography of Ona Šimaitė. Translated from English by Marius Burokas. Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla, Vilnius 2016. 256 pages

From 1941 to 1944 she visited the Jewish ghetto and work camps of German-occupied Vilnius and brought food, clothes medicine, money and forged papers to the people imprisoned there. She saved those who had lost hope, listening to their fears and replying to their letters, often the last letters ever written by these people. It is unknown how many lives she saved. It would have seemed strange to the librarian to count, and by intentionally forgetting the names and addresses of those she helped, she protected both herself and them. Instead of hard statistics, we have the personal stories, anecdotes and recollections of those who survived.

Full story in Lithuanian here

Lithuanian and Japanese Cities Join in Commemorating Righteous Gentile

Pasaulio tautų teisuolio atminimas sujungė Japonijos ir Lietuvos miestus ir žmones

Events to commemorate Chiune Sugihara, Japanese WWII-era consul in Kaunas and a Lithuanian festival were held in Sugihara’s hometown of Yaotsu, Japan, from July 31 to August 7.

Sugihara rescued thousands of Lithuanian Jews from the Holocaust and has been recognized as a Righteous Gentile and awarded the status of Righteous among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial authority in Israel.

The week of commemorations was opened by the signing of a memorandum of cooperation by Yaotsu mayor Masanori Kaneko and Kaunas municipality representative Inga Pukelytė.

Acting Lithuanian ambassador to Japan Violeta Gaižauskaitė noted the events came on the 25th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic ties between Japan and Lithuania and characterized ties between the people of Japan and Lithuania as sincere, and relations btween the two nations friendly. She also said both countries were dedicated to preserving the memory of the noble Japanese diplomat for future generations.

Happy 80th!

Liusia Sperling

On August 3, 2016, Liusia Šperling, the volunteer Community doctor of many years, turns 80!

For 15 years Dr. Šperling has volunteered in the Community’s Social Center.

We all wish her and her family perfect health!

President Signs Citizenship Amendment for Litvaks into Law

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Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė signed into law amendments to the country’s citizenship law on June 6, 2016. The parliament adopted the amendment to impose stricter language to insure Litvaks and others are able to obtain Lithuanian citizenship without greater bureaucratic obstacles. A copy of the act of law is provided below in Lithuanian.

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Judah Passow Thanks LJC Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky for Celebration for Return of Torah

Juda Passow dėkoja LŽB ir pirmininkei F.Kukliansky už Toros sugrįžimo šventę

“I just want to thank you once again for making possible such a moving and memorable day with the Lithuanian Jewish community,” Judah Passow said in the note.

“It was an honour and a privilege to be with all of you. I’m especially grateful to you for the time and effort you put into making what began as an idea a year ago into a reality,” he wrote.

Judah Passow’s father, professor David Passow at Philadelphia University, received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to commemorate Jewish life behind the iron curtain in 1960. When he went to Vilnius that same year, local Jewish leaders asked him to take away with him one of two Torah scrolls which were used in the Vilnius ghetto and survived the Holocaust intact, saying they were unsure what the future held for Jews in the Soviet Union. The Passows protected the Torah ever since then, for 56 years, and used it for three bar mitzvahs in the family. When he came to Vilnius last year for a showing of his photography work, Judah Passow met Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and the idea was fleshed out of returning the scroll to Vilnius. Just last week Passow returned the Torah dating from the time of Vilna Gaon, with a silver decoration his mother Aviva Passow made for the scroll.

Celebration to Welcome Torah Scroll at Choral Synagogue

Toros įnešimo šventė Vilniaus choralinėje sinagogoje vyko birželio 27d.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community is tremendously grateful to Judah Passow for his initiative in bringing the 350-year-old Torah scroll back to Vilnius.

Those assembled at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius June 27 waited in anticipation of something extraordinary: for the carrying in of a 350-year-old Torah scroll, from the period when the Vilna Gaon walked among us, a witness to the Vilnius of the 17th century, experiencing all the passages and changes together with the Jews, used for innumerable bar mitzvah ceremonies until it ended up in the Vilnius ghetto during World War II, and miraculously survived the Holocaust.

In 1960 professor Passow of the University of Philadelphia in the United States came to Vilnius after receiving support from the Rockefeller Foundation to commemorate Jewish communal life behind the iron curtain. Jews in Vilnius asked him to take with him one of two Vilnius ghetto Torah scrolls to survive the Holocaust, uncertain about the future of Jewish life in the Soviet Union. That’s how the Torah entered into the Passow family and was used in three bar mitzvahs. The family protected the scroll for 56 years. Last year the professor’s son, London-based photojournalist Judah Passow, came to Vilnius for an exhibition of his photographic works and spoke with LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky. This year he’s come back with the Torah scroll with a silver ornament his mother made.

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Thank You

The Kaunas and Šiauliai Jewish Communities thank Goodwill Foundation chairs Faina Kukliansky and Rabbi Andrew Baker as well as Vytautas Višinskis and Indrė Rutkauskaitė for their wonderfully organized and productive meeting of the Goodwill Foundation,

350-Year-Old Torah Scroll Returns to Vilnius

350 m. skaičiuojatis toros ritinys grįžta į Vilniaus choralinę sinagogą

The Vilnius Jewish Religious Community cordially invites you to celebrate this extraordinary event, the return of the Torah scroll, at the Vilnius Choral Synagogue.

This 350-year-old Torah scroll, which survived the destruction of the Vilnius ghetto during World War II and was taken out of the country to protect it, is finally coming home.

The ceremony of bringing in the Torah is to take place at 1:00 P.M. on Monday, June 27, at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius.

The Vilnius Jewish Community is tremendously grateful to Judah Passow for his initiative in returning the Torah scroll. The family of London-based photojournalist Judah Passow safeguarded the Torah scroll for 56 years after it left Vilnius. The ceremony will feature a short presentation of the history of the Torah and what this most important book means.

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Ten Years of Cooperation

It’s been 10 years now since the Panevėžys Jewish Community and the Rožynas Pre-Gymnasium first began carrying out joint projects to encourage tolerance, education and friendship between the peoples who call Panevėžys home. This time the project was about Holocaust commemoration in the Panevėžys region. It’s called “A Bridge between Past and Present.” The project is financed by the Goodwill Fund. Around 200 students from the upper classes participated and learned about the history of the Holocaust. The Panevėžys Jewish Community shared information with Rožynas Pre-Gymnasium pupils and administrators, history teacher Genutė Žilytė and pre-gymnasium principal Aida Adiklienė and provided the information the Panevėžys Jewish Community possesses about the Holocaust in the city and region of Panevėžys.

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Commemorating Sister Marija Rusteikaitė in Panevėžys

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A project to commemorate sister Marija Rusteikaitė was discussed with mother superior and general director Jūratė Marcinkevičiūtė and sister S. Klara–Hana Bivil of the God’s Love Monastery at the Panevėžys Jewish Community. The project to commemorate Rusteikaitė in Panevėžys and to teach city residents about her remarkable story in the rescue of 15 Jewish children during the Holocaust was prepared by the Panevėžys Jewish Community and presented to the city’s Architecture and Urban Planning Department.

The goal of the project is to commemorate Righteous Gentile Marija Rusteikaitė (1892-1949), the founder of the God’s Love congregation, by naming a new street after her and posting a memorial sign at the start of the street briefly describing her noble deeds.

Marija Rusteikaitė was an intellectual person, a social activist, a medic, a teacher and a nun who was very important to the city and area of Panevėžys. She grew up in the family of estate owners Stanislovas and Jadvyga, a family of nine children, four sons and five daughters. Marija was the third child. Her mother Jadvyga was dedicated to charity work, her children and homemaking. Both parents were extremely loving towards their children and guided their education, belief in God and moral development. The people of Vaiguva who knew her say her charisma was something akin to that of Mother Teresa in Calcutta. She spent her nights sitting up with sick patients, quietly praying.

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Panevėžys Jewish Community Marks Victory Day

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The Panevėžys Jewish Community marked Victory Day on May 8 and 9. On May 8 members laid wreaths at a monument to Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Candles were lit and honor was paid to the dead, both in the city and in Europe at large, to those who were murdered during World War II at mass murder sites in Panevėžys and more than 200 other mass murder sites around Lithuania. Almost no Jewish eyewitnesses survived in Panevėžys.

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Greetings to Our Veterans on Victory Day!

A group of women wearing dresses representing flags of the Allied powers (left to right: the USA, France, Britain and the Soviet Union) outside the Eglise de la Madeleine on VE Day in Paris, 8th May 1945. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman sends her greetings to members of the community on Victory Day, celebrated as Victory in Europe or VE Day in America and Europe on May 8.

I am grateful for the opportunity to honor our veterans and bow my head before them on this day. I wish you, dear friends, good health. You will not forget your heroism, the spiritual and physical suffering, the wounds and losses you experienced. The Community will take care of you to the utmost of its ability. We appreciate and are proud of you, and for living Jews, Victory Day, the victory against the Nazis, means they were rescued from concentration camps, Naziism was defeated, they survived and the shadow of death withdrew. Happy Victory Day, dear veterans, I congratulate you all!

Come Celebrate Victory Day!

The Lithuanian Jewish Community, the Social Center and the Abi Men Zet Zich Club wish you a happy Victory Day, also known as VE Day in the West, and invite you to come out and honor our veterans of World War II at a ceremony to be held at 3:00 P.M. on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius.

For further information please contact Žana Skudovičienė at 8 678 81514

Interwar Jewish Composers

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a concert dedicated to the memory of
Jan Zwartendijk
Dutch diplomat and Righteous Gentile

5:00 P.M., Friday, April 29
at the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius

Program:

Rosy Wertheim (1888 – 1949)
6 Morceaux de Piano

Erwin Schulhoff (1894 – 1942)
Suite dansante en Jazz (1931)

Gideon Klein (1919 – 1945)
Sonata for Piano (1943)

Alexander Tansman (1897 – 1886)
Sonatine Transatlantique (1930)

Szymon Laks (1901 – 1983)
Blues

Anatolijus Šenderovas (1945 – )
Sonatina (1973)

Leo Smit (1900 – 1943)
Deux Hommages

Dick Kattenburg (1919 – 1944)
Tempo di blues (1940)
Two Waltzes

George Gershwin (1898 – 1937)
3 Preludes for Piano (1926)

Katerina and Benediktas Bagdanavičius: Last Hope of the Jews of Darbėnai

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by Romualdas Beniušis

I recently discovered the case-file of the deportation of the Bagdanavičius family in the archives. It is a unique document from the Soviet period testifying to the will and sacrifice of the family during the Nazi occupation of 1941 to 1944 in rescuing completely innocent people of the small town of Darbėnai from genocide, and to the bitter lot of the deportees later.

Who were they, Katerina and Benediktas Bagdanavičius, the quiet heroes of the village of Būtingė who without regard to danger to them and their family reached out a helping hand to people condemned to death simply for having been born Jews?

Full story in Lithuanian here.