You’re invited to take part in the March of the Living procession in Ponar at 1:00 P.M. on September 23, 2019. The march begins at the Ponar railroad station and concludes at the main memorial in the Ponar Memorial Complex, where a commemoration ceremony to remember the genocide of the Jews of Lithuania will begin at 1:15.
A bus will offer transport from the LJC to the memorial complex leaving at 12 noon. Registration begins September 16. To register, call 8 5 261 3003.
The Aušra Museum in Šiauliai will mark European Day of Jewish Culture on September 8, 2019. At 1:00 P.M. a game will be held on the grounds of the Frankel factory. At 2:00 P.M. the museum will open the exhibit “The Frankel Factory: A Symbol of Šiauliai Industry and Modernization” and screen a series of documentary films about Jews of Šiauliai called “Dingusio pasaulio pėdsakais. Žydiškieji Šiauliai” [Traces of a Lost World: Jewish Šiauliai] directed by Jūratė Sobutienė at the Chaim Frankel villa.
The game will requires teams of from 2 to 4 people with telephones or tablets with internet access. To register your team call 8 41 524 392 or send an e-mail to istorija@ausrosmuziejus.lt
More information:
www.ausrosmuziejus.lt
https://www.facebook.com/events/698501067290781
Augustė Labenskytė, acting director,
History Department, Aušra Museum
VILNIUS, September 1, BNS–Events were held to celebrate European Day of Jewish Culture in Vilnius on the first Sunday in September. Tours of the Lithuanian capital, lectures and authentic Jewish cuisine were offered to the public.
The events program included Jewish music in the Vilnius Old Town–the old Jewish Quarter–and restaurants offering authentic Jewish foods.
“Jewish cuisine is an inalienable part of Jewish culture, Jewish tradition and Jewish heritage. Jewish cuisine is a prerequisite part of any Jewish holiday,” Lithuanian Jewish Community projects director Dovilė Rūkaitė told BNS.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community celebrated the 20th European Day of Jewish Culture in the traditional Jewish Quarter of Vilnius September 1 with song, dance and food. The weather was beautiful. Restaurants in the Vilnius Old Town feature Jewish foods with traditional breakfast served at the Bagel Shop Café, restaurants and cafés on Žydų and Stiklių streets and other locations. DJs RafRaf, Akvilina and Marius Šmitas provided dance music with a 10-hour musical program at the Amadeus Bar.
LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky greeted celebrants and Vidmantas Bezaras, director of the Cultural Heritage Deparment, and Vida Montvydaitė, director of the Department of Ethnic Minorities, also spoke, noting there is no town or village in Lithuania without some sign of a Jewish presence. Vida Montvydaitė said this isn’t just Jewish heritage, it’s Lithuania’s legacy, and protecting it is becoming ever more important.
The writer Kristina Sabaliauskaitė spoke about her childhood memories of the Jews who still lived in central Vilnius then and with whom she made lasting friendships. She says interpersonal relationships are still one of the most important things in life to her.
by Evaldas Labanauskas 15min.lt
When you put “Sergejus Kanovičius” into a search engine, it comes back with “poet, essayist, translation…” There are also references to Grigoriy Kanovich, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday. The latter is a Writer with a capital W, and Sergejus also talks about his Father (also capitalized).
When I read one of your father’s works, “Žydų parkas” [Jewish Park], I got the impression that it was a monument to Litvak culture and civilization, spanning 700 years but now dead. What is the current situation of Litvaks in Lithuania? Do you think this culture/civilization is being reborn?
There are people who express the opinion there are certain parallels between the project which I lead and my father’s work. If one is a material monument to the culture of the Jews of Lithuania, then my father’s work is a literary monument to an extinct ethnos. I think the Jewish community in Lithuania is experiencing a period of transformation. The word “reborn” might be more appropriate if we were talking about what happened 30 years ago, when there were 20,000 Jews in Lithuania, but today there are barely 3,000 Jews in Lithuania. Any sort of activity is encouraging, but claiming there is some kind of very bright future–I, as a revolutionary pessimist, would refrain from that sort of evaluation. Honestly, I am very glad about what is happening, and as much as I’m able I contribute to the activities of the Jewish community, but… while there is a lot of action, there is the question: is there a future?
Members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community spent the day of August 20 touring the Akmenė visiting sites with once populous Jewish communities. The tour began in Šiauliai and continued on in Papilė, where wood carver, traveller, naturalist and geographer Steponas Adomavičius met the group and gave them a guided tour of Jewish residences from before the Holocaust. Members visited the old Jewish cemetery in Papilė, a cemetery which features a commemorative stone and which Adomavičius himself maintains without remuneration. He cuts the grass and hedges and plants small trees. A grateful Jewish man living in America installed a bench bearing Steponas Adomavičius’s name in the cemetery in order to thank him.
The group was unable to reach the Jewish mass murder site in the woods of the Papilė aldermanship because there was no path through the forest at all. Adomavičius spoke about new projects he’s doing in connection with preserving the memory of the Jewish people.
From Papilė the group went on towards Akmenė, where the teacher Rita Ringienė met them and imparted much important information. Some Jewish structures survive in Akmenė. The teacher and pupils from her higher classes have done a study called “Inscriptions on Headstones in the Akmenė Jewish Cemetery and Their Translation to Lithuanian.” The group visited the old Jewish cemetery in Akmenė.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you to come celebrate the 20th annual European Day of Jewish Culture, “Sabbath in the Jewish Quarter,” in the Vilnius Old Town on September 1.
World-renowned writer Chaim Grade called the Vilnius Old Town the Jewish Quarter ca. 1930, and wrote: “Long Fridays of Summer. The housewives go to the bakery to shop for Saturday: they buy dry bagels, dark cookies and pastries with poppy seeds, small little cakes with powdered sugar…” (from his Der shtumer minyen, or Silent Minyan).
On Sunday, September 1, restaurants and cafés located in the Vilnius Jewish Quarter will present a menu of Jewish dishes, Jewish music will play and there will be lectures and tours. LJC chairman Faina Kukliansky will open ceremonies with a welcome speech at 12 noon. Saulius Pilinkus will MC and new Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Yossi Avni Levy, Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department head Vidmantas Bezaras and Lithuanian Ethnic Minorities Department director Vida Montvydaitė will also welcome participants.
As part of the 20th annual European Day of Jewish Culture, the Lithuanian Jewish Community invites the public to visit the former Jewish Quarter of Vilnius. Recently several frescoes appeared on the walls there. The creators will lead a tour and talk about their surprising project The Walls Remember on September 1. Project author Lina Šlipavičiutė-Černiauskienė describes it this way:
“Vilnius had one of the largest and most active Jewish communities in our region. The horrors of World War II almost completely destroyed this community and this is without doubt one of the most painful losses for Lithuania and especially Vilnius. We don’t have the right to forget these people, and we do not forget them.
“But we forget too much the time when the people of Vilnius were simply happy. These bright memories should be visible: how these people worked, grew up, created families and grew old… How they shaped their lives in Vilnius whose streets we walk today, the same town we the current inhabitants of Vilnius love.
On May 21, teacher Nijolė Teišerskienė taught students about the history of the Šiauliai ghetto. Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community member Ida Vileikienė survived that ghetto and told the children her story, including how she was rescued by the Staškas family, how she lived in hiding and what she did after the war. She invited the children to learn to respect one another as a general life lesson.
On May 23 Inga Kvedariene of the Šiauliai territorial medical system met with community members and talked about the payment system hospitals use and which services are free to those who have social insurance. She then fielded questions from the audience.
On June 14 members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community visited the site of the former Lithuanian shtetl Zhagar (Žagarė) beginning with tours of the Žagarė Regional Park and the Naryškinas manor estate. Land management specialist Giedrė Rakštienė spoke authoritatively on the Jewish population of Zhagar and many community members learned new things about Jewish life there. Žagarė gymnasium geography teacher Alma Kančelskienė led the tour which included still-standing Jewish buildings which used to be synagogues, the house of the rabbi and a school, and members also visited the site of the former mikvah there. Members also visited the home of E. Vaičiulis. He is the owner now of the site of the former Jewish textile factory on the banks of the Švėtė river and of a wooden Jewish house where he now lives. Under several layers of wallpaper there are parts of old Jewish newspapers on his walls which the former owners glued there once upon a time. He has preserved the original exterior and the interior is decorated with period pots and dishes. Surrounded by a stone wall, Vaičiulis’s collection is a veritable museum of the former time when Jewish life was front and center in what is now a Lithuanian town. Pride of place is occupied by a Torah scroll discovered in Zhagar. Members also visited the Jewish cemetery and mass murder sites in and around the town.
The town of Merkinė, Lithuania, held a big celebration August 17 and 18, marking the 660th anniversary of the first mention of the town in the historical sources and the 450th anniversary of the town receiving autonomous Magdeburg charter rights. The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Fayerlakh group were invited to the celebration.
The project “Doors Are Opening” was dedicated to commemorating life in Merkinė during the period between the two world wars, when the majority of the population was Jewish. Before the Holocaust Jews accounted for about 80% of inhabitants. The old Jewish doors were donated for the celebration.
“It’s normal not to want to talk about the painful past, but it’s abnormal if we try to live our lives as if none of those experiences ever even existed,” Mindaugas Černiauskas, the director of the Merkinė Regional History Museum, said.
Sabbath in the Jewish Quarter, a lost tradition where every Friday evening the Jewish family sat down at the dinner table together, lit the candles, prayed and broke bread, followed by a day of rest on Saturday, and the beginning of the new week on Sunday.
Let’s rediscover the ferment, history, tastes, smells and melodies of the Jewish Quarter on the European Day of Jewish Culture.
Program here.
Registration here.
Merkinė Jewish school, ca. 1928-1930
by Mindaugas Černiauskas
“Decades have passed since I left you, Merkinė. You are always on my mind. Every day I walk your small crowded streets in my thoughts. I know it’s not real, but I haven’t learned to come to terms with the fact the terror of the Holocaust was also in my town.” –Dorit Blatshtein, refugee from Merkinė.
Exactly 78 years ago the Jews of Merkinė were marched to the sand pits in Kukumbalis forest and left there for the ages powerless and desecrated. The introduction of the book “Mano senelių ir prosenelių kaimynai žydai” [My Grandparents’ and Great-Granparents’ Jewish Neighbors] published in 2003 contains the line that “the destruction of the Jews of Lithuania was so blood-curdling and unexpected, so cynical and public, accomplished right here in view of all other residents, that it essentially touched in one way or another every member of society.”
It’s difficult not to agree with this, as it is difficult not to agree with the idea that traumatic experience is often pushed into the subconscious. It’s clear experience doesn’t disappear and can become a festering wound and neurosis, especially when we view history based on idealized versions of national history where we only want to see examples of goodness, beauty and harmony which make us proud.
Photo: © 2019 DELFI/Lukas Bartkus
In an interview conducted by the Lithuanian Telegraph Agency ELTA and published on the Delfi news site, outgoing Lithuanian European Commission commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis commented on the public controversy over the removal of a sign commemorating Jonas Noreika in Vilnius.
Question: Agitation has arisen in society because of the removal of the commemorative plaque for Jonas Noreika and the renaming of Kazys Škirpa Alley. In other words, conflict has arisen because of collective historical memory and this has provoked clear conflict between the Jewish community and [ethnic] Lithuanians. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky announced the closure of the synagogue and the community building due to threats received. The prime minister and the president immediately condemned expressions of hate, but the information had already been sent out to the international community that Jews are not safe in Lithuania. You are a highly educated person as well as an historian. As an historian, how do you view interference by politicians into historical memory? Do they have the right to do this?
Answer: The biggest complaint I have to make to the conservative ideologues is very clear: they politicize and rewrite history. Putin rewrites history, but this is being done in Lithuania by Landsbergis as well. Those who attempt to place an equal sign between the crimes of Stalinism and Nazi crimes–deportations, murders, exile–are also rewriting history. The Holocaust, however, is a unique Nazi crime, because the Nazi racial ideology is unique, one of a kind in the world. Communism was a universal system of beliefs … No distinction is made in Lithuania between Stalinist and Nazi crimes … The Holocaust of Naziism was a unique crime based on the Nazi ideology, based on an ultra-racist point of view, breeding people to create a superhuman breed and placing people in genetic categories: people, genetically deformed people and subhumans. Jews and Roma were subhumans, they were scheduled for extermination … This is horrific. Show me at least one Stalinist crime committed of this nature. The Stalinist concentration camps were crimes against humanity.
Full interview in Lithuanian here.
![Vytautas Landsbergis: “It Should Really Be Considered If He [Noreika] Was So Tainted He Should Be Publicly Humiliated”](https://www.lzb.lt/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Nuotrauka-pavadinimui.jpg "Vytautas Landsbergis: “It Should Really Be Considered If He [Noreika] Was So Tainted He Should Be Publicly Humiliated”")
by professor Pinchos Fridberg
The Lithuanian-language version of the internet site delfi.lt posted an article on July 29, 2019, called “A Man Who Gave His Life for Lithuania Is Not an Enemy of Lithuania.”
Lietuvos rytas, a television station, newspaper and website, broadcasted Tuesday an interview/discussion with Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and Conservative Party/Christian Democratic Union MP Laurynas Kasčiūnas on Saturday’s removal of a plaque commemorating Nazi collaborator Jonas Noreika from central Vilnius Saturday.
Kasčiūnas said he and people of like mind have asked the Lithuanian Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the removal of the plaque by Vilnius major Remigijus Šimašius for possibly violating the public interest and the principles of the rule of law. He quoted a finding by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania–a state-funded, state-administered historical research agency–claiming the Center found Noreika had not collaborated with the Nazis.
Kasčiūnas dominated the interview and spoke rapid-fire according to Conservative Party talking points, repeating claims made by other ultra-nationalists in recent days. When the hostess asked chairwoman Kukliansky to respond to Kasčiūnas’s initial barrage of falsifications, disinformation and half-truths, she asked whether anyone had finally determined who commissioned the Noreika plaque in the first place. Kasčiūnas claimed Šimašius had produced documentation showing the Vilnius city municipality commissioned and paid for the plaque in 1997 or 1998. This appears to be a key point in the entire story and could be of vital importance in legal challenges to Šimašius’s move in the future.
Note: The Vilnius municipality held widely-announced public discussions with a panel of historians and political figures on the subject of renaming and removing streets and monuments honoring Holocaust perpetrators at least twice in the last four years as well as engaging the public and concerned communities in Lithuania and abroad in numerous other ways regarding this issue.
Press release from the President’s Communications Group
Tuesday, July 30, Vilnius. Recently decisions made by the Vilnius city municipality have caused public discussion and have shown again historical memory shouldn’t be question for just one city or municipality to decide.
Wishing to solve this problem comprehensively rather than exacerbating the opposition between social groups holding a different view, Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda invites institutions and experts to come together in discussions which would serve as the basis for the formulation of the principles and regulation of a national commemorative policy which responsible parties who make decisions about the determination of commemoration of historical events should follow.
To the editorial staff of the website of the Lithuanian Jewish Community,
The Vilnius city council adopted a decision to rename “Kazys Škirpa Alley” “Tricolor Alley” on July 24 of this year.
A report about this on the Delfi.lt website caused us much concern. We quote:
Diaspora by Ilnit Chernic
By the late 19th and early 20th Century, the community was thriving with schools, synagogues and businesses, with Jews making up between 32% and 43% of the town’s population over the decades.
Jurbarkas’s Jewish community came to a tragic end, along with hundreds of years of Jewish history, when the Nazis invaded Lithuania in June 1941.
Honored guests and media representatives viewed the unique finds from this summer’s dig at the Great Synagogue complex in Vilnius July 18.
Lithuanian Government vice-chancellor Deividas Matulionis spoke at the press conference, stressing the special significance of the Great Synagogue complex, or Shulhoyf.
Deputy Lithuanian foreign minister Darius Skusevičius welcomed guests and reminded journalists 2020 has been named the Year of the Vilna Gaon and Litvak History. He expressed hopes for appropriate decision-making to preserve the site damaged during the war and razed by the Soviets for posterity.
Lithuanian Jewish Community and Goodwill Foundation chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said: “Probably Vilnius Jews are the happiest about what has been discovered during excavation of this Vilnius Acropolis. Some of the inscriptions which have now been uncovered on the bima of the Great Synagogue are truly sensational and we must thank this entire group of archaeologists who have worked so conscientiously throughout the digging and have found such incredible things. We don’t have the financial resources to allocate additional funds for continuing the excavation, but everything which has been discovered so far are finds of global significance.”
by Geoff Vasil
What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community hosted a presentation of Dr. Richard Freund’s book “The Archeology of the Holocaust. Vilna, Rhodes and Escape Tunnels” Tuesday evening with slide-show presentations by Harry Jol, Philip Reeder, Paul Bauman and Alastair Clymont as well as Freund. This group of archaeologists has been working on the Great Synagogue site in Vilnius for several years now, as well as Holocaust sites in Lithuania including their discovery of the escape tunnel of the burners’ brigade at Ponar, which became the main topic of a documentary aired by the Nova program on the PBS network in the United States.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky greeted the audience and introduced the topic and speakers, thanking the archaeologists for their important work on Lithuanian Jewish heritage.
Marcus Micheli, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Vilnius, spoke next. The US diplomat also called the archaeologists’ work crucial and said it had given rise to new conservations about the painful past.