The rare books department of the Kaunas Public Library hosted the launch of the book “Vilkijos getas. 1941 metai” by Aleksandras Vitkus and Chaim Bargman. Vilkija deputy alderman Algimantas Smolenskas led the event.

Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas spoke about Lithuanian Jewish community activities before 1940 and the active participation of Jews in the country’s cultural, economic and social life.

Participants discussed current commemoration policies, Lithuanian and Jewish relations, what goes into determining Nazi collaboration, education and other topics.

The Jewish community formed in the village of Vilkija, just 30 kilometers from Kaunas, in the late 18th century. According to the censuses, there were 652 Jews in Vilkija in 1766, 789 in 1847 and 1,431 out of a total population of 2,012 in 1897.

Nerijus Brazauskas, PhD, has written a history of the destruction of the old Jewish cemetery in the Lithuanian city of Šiauliai up to 2016. The newspaper Šiaulių kraštas has published the study in Lithuanian on their website. He attempts to determine whether the former cemetery, which is state-protected heritage site, should be protected by the Šiauliai Jewish Community or whether it is a matter for the local municipal administration. He details the partial destruction of the cemetery, along with the complete destruction of the Lutheran cemetery, in the 1964-1965 period by the Soviet authorities and calls it an attempt to erase Jews from public memory. He concludes it should be restored and maintained as a sacred site of memory and says both institutional and civic efforts could be harnessed to that purpose.

Full paper in Lithuanian here.

Early in the morning on September 14 we went to the Pakruojis synagogue, where we were met by a cultural worker who received us warmly and spoke about the wooden synagogue built by the local Jewish community in 1801. Its function changed and it became a primary school as well as a house of prayer. After the Holocaust the synagogue was nationalized. During the Soviet period it was a theater, then an athletics gymnasium. The unique building fell into disrepair and ruin. In 2017 the synagogue was restored with its authentic interior, according to period photographs, which show playful drawings on the ceiling. Currently the synagogue serves as a space for cultural and other events. The second floor–the women’s gallery–houses an exhibit on the Jewish past, along with examples of the original walls.

Pakruojis was just the first part of the tour and we travelled on to the land of wind, Liepāja [Libave] on the Latvian coast. It is also a land of amber, a port and a holiday destination. The rustling and smell of the lime trees [liepos in Lithuanian, a folk etymology–trans.] give the city its name. But we weren’t there just to look at the pretty town, we were there to visit the largest Holocaust memorial in Latvia. About 7,060 Jews including about 3,000 Jews from Liepāja were murdered in the dunes around the town of Šķēde on the Baltic Sea. In total about 19,000 people of different ethnic backgrounds were murdered here. The site recalls one of the worst breakdowns in humanity in the preceding century. The memorial occupies a territory of 4,120 m² and is arranged in a menorah shape with contours formed of natural rocks and granite slabs, with the “lights” of the menorah represented by granite steles resembling gravestones with inscriptions in Hebrew, English, Latvian and Russia from the prophet Jeremiah. Members of the Panevėžys delegation honored the dead and left a wreath there.

by archbishop Gintaras Grušas, bernardinai.lt

A shared legacy and joint work intimately united the Jews and Christians living in Lithuania over many long centuries. Then as now the Ten Commandments have united Christians and Jews, demanding we worship one God and to honor the individual human and his life, to protect the family and not to bow to unfairness.

Exactly one year ago Pope Francis preparing to visit a monument to Holocaust victims called for in the Prayer to the Angel of the Lord to work together, to celebrate our friendship and to confess together in the face of the challenges of the world: “Let us ask the Lord to provide us the gift of insight so that we may in time recognize those pernicious knots and atmosphere from which the heart of unexperienced generations atrophies, so that they would not give in to the allure of the songs of the sirens.”

On September 23 we mark the destruction of the Vilnius ghetto and of thousands of Jews who lived with our compatriots in Lithuania. Some members of the Church, due to human weakness, fear or even for the sake of personal gain, came to terms with the occupational regimes and even served their slave masters. A significant number of Christians, however, guided by Christian love, saved the persecuted Jews. Today we mark their graves with the signs and symbols of Righteous Gentiles. We believe that the prevailing climate of friendship and dialogue today will help the Christian and Jewish communities to better understand one another and to work more closely together in areas important to both communities such as the defense of human rights and human life, family values, social justice and the fortification of peace in the world, so that God’s love would be seen and seen more explicitly by humanity. This is a common foundation and a common way forward.

Full text in Lithuanian here.