Grateful

Righteous Gentiles Speak at LJC Press Conference

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Funds collected from a benefit concert in Munich organized by the Order of Malta Relief Organization will go to support Righteous Gentiles in Lithuania, of whom there are currently 87 living. The idea to help the rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust in this way came from Order of Malta ambassador to Lithuania baron Christian von Bechtolsheim and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky. “It was of great concern to us that our rescuers in their old age would get at least a little relief and be cared for,” Kukliansky said at a press conference held at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius April 6. “There’s no such thing as being too grateful, neither can there be too much material thanks. We wanted to materialize at least a little that which we feel towards our rescuers,” she explained.

Order of Malta Relief Organization in Lithuania secretary general Eitvydas Bingelis said some of the monies generated from the benefit concert, which totaled over 123,000 euros, will be added to debit cards for the Righteous Gentiles to purchase medicine not covered by national healthcare and medical goods, with another portion held in the fund for use for the individual needs of each Righteous Gentile.

Photos from the press conference:

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Report of New Righteous Gentile Awards to the Blažaitis Family

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The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and Commemorative Authority has reported plans to award the title of Righteous Gentile or Righteous among the Nations to the Lithuanian family of Antanas Blažaitis, Adelė Blažaitienė and Valentina Blažaitytė for saving Jews during the Holocaust at the risk of losing their own lives. The names of the new Righteous Gentiles are to inscribed on the wall of the museum. The medals and certificates will be sent through the Israeli embassy which will host a ceremony to present the awards.

Yad Vashem report available here.

Order of Malta Benefit Concert in Munich Raises 123,000 Euros for Righteous Gentiles in Lithuania

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Faina Kukliansky, Christian von Bechtolsheim and Aloyzas Žukauskas

Vilnius, April 6, BNS–A benefit concert by the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Order of Malta held in Germany has raised over 123,000 euros for Righteous Gentiles living in Lithuania.

Ambassador of the Order of Malta to Lithuania baron Christian von Bechtolsheim presented the symbolic check for the full amount to go to the Righteous Gentiles at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius Wednesday.

“Righteous Gentiles are the true heroes of that time, they risked their own lives and those of their loved ones providing haven to people who would have been murdered by the Nazis. They hid them, fed them, provided a roof, and all of this demonstrates a human face during the darkest times in Europe,” the ambassador said.

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Order of Malta to Aid Lithuania’s Righteous Gentiles

April 6, 2016–Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė met Wednesday with Righteous Gentiles, or people who rescued Jews during World War II in Lithuania. The ambassadors of the Order of Malta, Germany and Israel and the leaders of the Order of Malta Relief Organization and the Lithuanian Jewish Community attended the meeting.

During friendly conversation over tea, the outstanding achievements of these brave Lithuanians were remembered and thoughts were shared on their problems, concerns and the help they need. The Order of Malta project to aid Righteous Gentiles in Lithuania was presented. All Righteous Gentiles still living in Lithuania are quite elderly and many of them live in isolation and need help.

A benefit concert was held in Munich to raise money for the Righteous Gentiles in Lithuania. More than 123,000 euros were raised for this purpose from that concert.

Baron Christian von Bechtolsheim, the ambassador of the Order of Malta to Lithuania, said: “The Maltese in Lithuania take care of many ill, elderly and isolated people. But Righteous Gentiles are special. These noble and courageous people were not afraid and risked their own lives to rescue their neighbors and countrymen from death. Now it’s our turn to help them.”

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Thank You

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The Kaunas Jewish Community expresses their heart-felt thanks for the timely ordering and delivery of matzo for the community. Our gratitude to Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Social Center director Simas Levinas, accountant Asta Rainytė, program coordinators Michailis Segalis, Ema Jakobienė, Rašelė Šeraitėi, project leader Lauras Sabonis, administrator Rokas Dobrovolskas and Indrė Rutkauskaitė.

Holiday greetings to all!

Lithuanian Prime Minister Thanks Fayerlakh Ensemble

To the Vilnius Cultural Center Jewish song and dance ensemble

Fayerlakh

Dear guardians of ethnic tradition,

There is no doubt the identity of a people resides in the depths of their folklore where a unique world of music beckons to us and symbolic meanings cavort. For many a year now the Fayerlakh ensemble in their concerts have brought lovers of folklore together and have popularized Yiddish culture wonderfully.

Inventive musicians, great singers and expressive dancers have come together nicely under the Fayerlakh flag. And so your concerts are dominated by a sense of beauty and cohesion. Your playful appearances are eagerly awaited by many admirers around the world.

You are probably the only ensemble in Europe who so creatively, cleverly and tightly present your own musical sources and roots.

I sincerely congratulate the entire Fayerlakh collective on the beautiful 45th anniversary of your establishment.

Let your music ring out widely across the nations for many centuries. Celebrate and preserve your foundational values. I wish you great success, creative talent and many happy meetings with the real lovers of folklore on all continents.

Algirdas Butkevičius
March 22, 2016
Vilnius

A Letter of Thanks to the Fayerlakh Ensemble from the Lithuanian Jewish Community

Celebrating their 45th anniversary, the Jewish song and dance ensemble Fayerlakh provided a real celebration for the people of Vilnius with their performance, and a packed hall of spectators applauded, swayed to the beat and tapped their feet because the musicians enchanted them and warmed everyone’s hearts. The Lithuanian Jewish Community is grateful to and proud of the Vilnius Cultural Center Jewish song and dance ensemble Fayarlakh, whose name is Yiddish for “little flames.”

Let the creative fire of this ensemble led by Larisa Vyšniauskienė continue to burn, reminding everyone of the rich culture of the Litvaks. It is extremely important to our community that the ensemble with Yiddish songs and dances which over many years has achieved a highly professional level has preserved our dear Jewish cultural legacy. Thank you, our thanks to the ensemble and their director, to the wonderful performers, for the program The Shtetl Once Upon a Time, which is now being offered to audiences in Lithuania and abroad. The program is about the small town, or shtetl in Yiddish, where until the Holocaust Jewish people and people of other ethnicities lived together in harmony. The mood of the concert is one of happy songs, dances, music which gives rise to good emotions, nostalgic and exciting, in everyone’s hearts. We appreciate that the ensemble celebrates the Yiddish language and that Jewish works in this language are performed in concert. It fills us with gladness to see all the ensemble’s groups, from children to senior citizens, on stage. Our sincerest gratitude to all of you.

Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community

Thank You

Thank you to Žana Skudovičienė, Julija Lipšic, Ninelė Skudovičiūtė, Monika Antanaitytė and Olga Masarskaja for the wonderful organization and preparation of the Purim celebration at the Vilnius Choral Synagogue.

S. Levin, chairman
Vilnius Jewish Religious Community

Thank You Letter

Ms. Kukliansky,

On behalf of the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program at Brandeis University, thank you so much for meeting with us last month on our trip to Lithuania. It was such a pleasure to learn about and experience Vilnius’ modern Jewish community. We are so grateful that you were able to share your experiences, the community’s successes and challenges, and to introduce us to your new Rabbis. We know that as a full-time professional and volunteer leader, your time is valuable, and we really appreciate you spending some of that with us. We wish you all the best, and hope that Vilnius’s Jewish community can achieve its goals.

Sincerely,
David Korenthal

Kaunas Jewish Community Honors Most Active Members

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Continuing a long-standing tradition, the Kaunas Jewish Community invited its most active members to a party to thank them. Participants in various clubs, students of Yiddish, people seeking a deeper knowledge of Jewish history and traditions and volunteers in different campaigns, events and cultural activities gathered for a dinner, live music and lively conversation. Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas thanked everyone and said since Jews are known as the People of the Book, he was passing out books as well, about Jewish history and other Jewish topics.

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Vytautas Mikuličius, Journalist and Son of Righteous Gentiles, Has Died

With deep sadness we note the passing of journalist Vytautas Mikuličius who with his parents Petras and Ona rescued Julija Remigolskytė-Flier, now a Canadian violinist, during World War II.

Petras and Ona lived with their three children at Minkovskių street no. 110 in Kaunas. Jews from the Kaunas ghetto were used as forced labor near their home, including Klara Gelman. During the winter of 1942-1943 Klara asked Ona and Petras to save her two-year-old daughter Julija. Petras and Ona took her in and raised her as their won. The little girl quickly learned to speak Lithuanian, and her foster parents told the neighbors she was the daughter of Ona’s dead sister.

From Vytautas Mikuličius’s recollections:

Our family had many friends and acquaintances. Our mother was very involved with the women in the area especially. Russians, Jews, Poles… When the Nazis put their regime in place, mother didn’t drop her girl friends, but visits became brief and secret.

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American Jewish Committee Thanks Lithuanian Jewish Community

On behalf of David Harris and AJC delegation I would like to once again thank the Lithuanian (Litvak) Jewish Community and you personally for your help and hospitality during our visit to Vilnius last month.

I wanted to let you know that AJC is exploring the possibly of establishing an office in Warsaw that would serve as a regional hub for our work in the Baltic states as well. We envision this center as a means to advance AJC’s geopolitical priorities in this increasingly important part of the world. Our presence would, we believe, help complement our cherished cooperation with the Lithuanian Jewish Community, and we would hope to be even more available to support your own efforts as you deem appropriate. Our main priority areas, consistent with AJC’s global mission, would be: EU relations, trans-Atlantic ties, regional security issues, and the ongoing instability in the Middle East. We believe this office could serve as a first step towards deepening our ties and advancing our shared interests.

We would welcome any thoughts or suggestions on the topic, and shall look forward to our ongoing partnership and friendship.

With best regards,
Sam Kliger

Hundredth Anniversary of Birth of Vladas Varčikas, Rescuer of Jews, Teacher, Violinist

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The Kaunas Jewish Community and the Sugihara Foundation “Visas for Life” invited friends who knew Vladas Varčikas and all who wanted to pay their respects to this gigantic figure, a rescuer of Jews, humanitarian, teacher and violinist, to celebrate hsi 100th birthday with a concert in the Grand Hall at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. The hall was filled to capacity and overflowing despite the frozen weather.

Kaunas Jewish Community member Stasys Makštutis began to tell the story of Varčikas and the story was continued by his grandmother, Elena Andriuškevičienė, who was rescued from the Kaunas ghetto by Varčikas and survived to later become his colleague. Varčikas’s students, students of his students and their children performed music and shared their memories of the man. Actress Kristina Kazakevičiūtė, whose daughter was a student of Varčikas, read out director Kama Ginkas’s recollections of Varčikas, the man who saved him. She also read passages from Reinhard Kaiser’s book about Edwin Geist, whose compositions were rescued for posterity by Varčikas.

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When Czesław Miłosz Met Chiune Sugihara, Sort of

by Geoff Vasil

Czesław Miłosz is sometimes called Lithuania’s Nobel Prize winner, although he never claimed to be Lithuanian. Neither did he call himself Polish exactly. His “national identity” was as complex as that of his uncle, Oskar Miłosz, the “French symbolist poet” who was the son of a father from a noble family from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and a Jewish mother.

Czesław Miłosz was born in the village of Šeteniai (Szetejnie) just outside Kėdainiai on June 30, 1911, a period when Lithuania was firmly inside the Russian Empire. He moved to Vilnius and attended the Sigismund Augustus Gymnasium, then studied law at Stefan Batory University (Vilnius University), visiting his uncle Oskar in Paris in 1931. Oskar Miłosz ran in exalted literary circles including some very famous names from the period. This might have influenced the younger Miłosz in helping found the Polish literary circle Żagary in Vilnius that same year. After being graduated from the law faculty he went back to Paris for a year, and then worked at Radio Wilno when he returned to Vilnius.

He spent the period right up to World War II in Vilnius before removing himself to Warsaw, where he helped rescue Jews and was eventually recognized as a Righteous Gentile as well as later becoming a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He describes the period when Lithuania and Vilnius hung in geopolitical limbo in a chapter in his 1959 autobiography, Rodzinna Europa, published in English as Native Realm in 1968, called “Peace Boundary,” the name then used by both sides to describe the Molotov-Ribbentrop line under the peace agreed by Hitler and Stalin.

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Thank You!

Now that the Mini Limmud 2015 educational conference on Judaism has ended, I would like to thank with all my heart all the supporters, speakers, partners and colleagues for their priceless help and good advice in preparing the conference.

A huge “thank you” goes out to:

The European Jewish Fund
The Goodwill Fund
The Lithuanian Jewish Community

Faina Kukliansky, Maša Grodnikienė, Simas Levinas, Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon, Feliksas Puzemskis, Gercas Žakas, Josif Burštein, Junona Berznitski, Irina and Arkadijus Goldinas, Lara Lempertienė, Julija Lipšic, Artūras Navickas, Monika Antanaitytė, Lauras Sabonis, Michail Segal, Irina Frišman, Genė Nachumovienė, Rašelė Šeraitė, Diana Paškovaitė, Irina Slucker, Emanuelis Ryklys, Elina Nolan, Uri Zer, Regina Pats, Markas Babot, Rabbi Kalev Krelin, Rabbi Efraim Prijampolski, Devora Prijampolski, Anna Keinan, Saulius Šaltenis,Giedrius Jokūbauskas, Kama Ginkas, Anna Avidan, Galina and Sergejus Libenštein, Jurijus Tabak, Daumantas Todesas, Eugenijus Bunka, Ala Segal, Ruth Reches, Adelina Nalivaikaitė, Alina Azukaitis, Samuelis Garas, Valdis Liakas, Valentinas Solomiak, Pavel Guliakov and the entire team of wonderful Lithuanian Jewish Community youth counselors, the West Express company and Avital Maizel, Nira Koltun, Gdalij Reches, Daina Vrubliauskienė, the Conti Hotel and Semionas Ceitlinas, the Rishon Restaurant and Aleksandras Arončikas, Grimo Akademija and Eglė Pališkienė, Margarita Gurevičienė, the Vilnius Grand Resort Hotel and Ekskomisarų Biuras.

Žana Skudovičienė, Mini Limmud coordinator

When Chiune Sugihara Celebrated Hanukkah in Lithuania

Hanukkah, 1939.
Kaunas.

I told him the story of how Judah Maccabee led his men into war against the powerful Greeks, who had defiled the temple, and how their tiny force defeated the much greater armies of Antiochus. Judah and his followers liberated Jerusalem, and set about rededicating the temple, but when they went to light the lamps they could find only enough oil to burn for one day. Keeping the faith, they used the one small cruse they had, and God made the oil burn for eight full days. This is how Chanukah became the festival of lights. Each evening the shammers, the one candle used to light all the others, was used to light one more candle, until on the eighth day all eight candles were burning.

The tables were laden with the best of food and drinks, including some Japanese food which [aunt] Anushka supplied from her shop. We also had veal with small roasted potatoes, roast duck in orange sauce, and many other wonderful things.

Mr. Sugihara also asked me about our family life and my hobbies. When I told him that I collected stamps, he invited me to come and visit him at the consulate. He said he would give me some stamps from Japan.

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Thank You!

The Lithuanian Jewish Community would like to thank chairman of the Kaunas Jewish Community Gercas Žakas and director Ieva Černevičiūtė for their great organizational work in putting on the seminar “I and Others” held in Druskininkai for representatives and staff of the Lithuanian Jewish Community.

Thank You, Junona Berznitski

The Lithuanian Jewish Community is grateful to Junona Berznitski for her
alomst 14 years of work at the community. We were used to having Junona
organize the Limmud conferences, an event of great importance to the LJC
whose organization took months and which was anticipated as almost a
holiday, attracting families and children to interesting lessons and
treats and a weekend of making friends and seeing old friends.

We hope this important work will be taken over by a good team. Junona with
a group of friends also set up the Gesher Club for adults. Now Junona
Berznitski has chosen to return to serious academic work, to the
discipline of psychology, and will not be available for organizational
work at the community. We wish her the highest success and thank her for
her great work.

Jewish Community Thankful for Help

Events to mark Lithuanian Holocaust Remembrance Day have ended. All week long civics lessons, social campaigns and other events were held throughout the Kaunas region to remember and honor Holocaust victims.

At the final event Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas passed on a message from Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, singling out and thanking for their contributions in preserving the Jewish cultural legacy leaders of the Kaunas municipality and regional administration, the aldermen of Babtai, Čekiškė and Garliava districts as well as of Vilkija, Vandžiogala and Zapyškis; the director of the public library; folk artist Arūnas Sniečkus, Jonučiai Gymnasium director Valentinas Padriezas and Urban Planning Department deputy director Rūta Černiauskienė for her active cooperation with the Jewish Community.

Gercas and Kaunas mayor Makūnas agreed that more than money is needed to safeguard history. “Since joint efforts and good will are needed. All of the dead were Lithuanian Jews, which is to say, Lithuanians, who, like you, fought for the country’s independence, studied, worked and lived in common with everyone else,” Gercas said.