History of the Jews in Lithuania

Never Give Up

There’s a song sung in Israel, and when the first bars ring out, most people stand. It’s called by several names–Zog Nit Keynmol, Don’t Say Never, We’re Still Here, the Partisan Hymn or Anthem–but the title isn’t important. The content is. And the content comes from the Vilna ghetto, a poem in Yiddish by the young Hirsh Glik, put to music by his friend Rachel Margolis, a young blonde, blue-eyed Jewish girl who joined the underground, survived, and spent much of the rest of her life engaged in Holocaust education.

Glik died during the Holocaust; Margolis passed away only a few years ago. According to Margolis, Glik read the poem to her on a cold winter day on a corner in the Vilnius ghetto where Rudninkų square is now located. She said there were buildings there then. As Glik read the poem, she began to hear music between the lines, from a Russian film she had seen. Both young people went to the FPO, the underground partisan organization in the ghetto, and asked permission to make the words and music the official anthem of the FPO youth section. The leadership agreed.

Now there’s a project for Jewish day schools around the world to teach the song to a new generation of young people. Eli Rabinowitz of Perth, Australia, is teaching children in Australia, Israel and South Africa and there are plans for new performances around Yom haShoah, Holocaust Day commemorated in Israel, this year on April 23.

The Jewish press in South Africa and Australia has done extensive coverage of the Partisan Hymn Project and the Vilnius ORT Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium in Vilnius is a pioneer in making the project happen. The World ORT organization is supporting the project and plans to post some video performances before Yom haShoah.

For more information, see here.

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Benefits of Lithuanian Citizenship from the South African Litvak Perspective

by Claire van den Heever, the Lithuania Tribune

“South Africa is more Litvak than Lithuania itself,” Markas Zingeris, the Lithuanian playwright and novelist once remarked. And as one of very few members of Lithuania’s Jewish community to remain in the country he would know. The vast majority of Lithuanian Jews have found good reason to leave at one time or another in history, whether it was unrest in Europe between 1868 and 1914, or the economic hardship that characterized the period from Lithuania’s independence in 1918 until June 1940 when the Soviet army took control. It was during this time that thousands of Lithuanians came to South Africa in search of a more peaceful life. And it is here where many have remained.

“Today 80% of South Africa’s 70,000 Jews are of Lithuanian descent, making this country the third largest Lithuanian diaspora community in the world,” says Gary Eisenberg, an acclaimed immigration lawyer and Lithuanian citizenship specialist at Eisenberg & Associates.

In Lithuania, Jewish culture underwent decades of systematic destruction during both the Soviet and the Nazi regime. In South Africa it found space to breathe and fluoresce. Zingeris himself recognized this fact, remarking that “we see our culture and society have been preserved there.”

Full story here.

Holocaust Escape Tunnel

At ground zero for the final solution, scientists uncover a story of hope and bravery.
Airing April 19, 2017, at 9 P.M. on PBS

Program Description

For centuries, the Lithuanian city of Vilna was one of the most important Jewish centers in the world, earning the title “Jerusalem of the North” until World War II, when the Nazis murdered about 95% of its Jewish population and reduced its synagogues and cultural institutions to ruins. The Soviets finished the job, paving over the remnants of Vilna’s famous Great Synagogue so thoroughly that few today know it ever existed. Now, an international team of archaeologists is trying to rediscover this forgotten world, excavating the remains of its Great Synagogue and searching for proof of one of Vilna’s greatest secrets: a lost escape tunnel dug by Jewish prisoners inside a horrific Nazi execution site.

PBS program announcement here.

For more, see:
http://www.lzb.lt/en/2016/07/01/picking-up-the-pieces/
http://www.lzb.lt/en/2016/07/24/israeli-antiquities-authority-reports-major-finds-in-lithuania/
http://www.lzb.lt/en/2017/01/02/new-york-times-ponar-top-science-story-in-2016/

Shlisl Challa

Schlissel challah

There is an interesting tradition still followed in some Ashkenaz Jewish communities of baking challa in the shape of a key for the first Sabbath after Passover. The challa may be shaped as a key, the dough be impressed by actual keys or it may contain a real key inside. It is called shlisl challa, from the Yiddish word for key. The tradition is still followed in Lithuania, Poland and Germany.

According to one version, shlisl challa is connected with a Passover prayer. The key recalls the door to Heaven or Paradise. It is said the upper gates of Heaven open during Passover, and after they close again. To open them, Jews place a key inside the challa loaf. Other Jews object to the entire practice as misguided, superstitious or even idolatrous.

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Great Attendance at LJC Seder

About 200 people gathered for the Lithuanian Jewish Community Passover Seder at the Radisson Blu Hotel Lietuva in Vilnius Saturday. LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky gave a short welcome speech, large flower bouquets were passed out to a number of Community members whose volunteer work has been outstanding and Rabbi Shimshon Isaacson led the assembly in the Passover rituals, without a microphone since Sabbath hadn’t ended yet. Žana Skudovičienė and Julija Lipšic really gave their all as organizers and made sure everyone felt welcome and got what they needed. Žana Skudovičienė also helped the rabbi with the ritual. Jewish song and dance ensemble Fayerlakh performed as well. There were no new faces, just regular attendees from past years, although former acting LJC executive director Simonas Gurevičius unexpectedly attended with his wife. Gurevičius is contesting the post of chairman in upcoming elections within the Community, but the evening wasn’t about politics of the current day and everyone seemed to get along great. There were fewer children this year than at previous LJC Seders but a sufficient number to conduct the treasure hunt.

More photos here.

AJC Delegation Tours Žiežmarai Wooden Synagogue


LJC chairwoman Fainia Kukliansky and Kaišiadorys mayor Tomkus, Žiežmarai, April, 2017

The ruined wooden synagogue in Žiežmarai, Lithuania, is being reborn for a new life. During the Holocaust it was used as a concentration point for imprisoning Jews awaiting execution. A large number of Jewish houses still stand near the synagogue, whose owners were murdered. The wooden synagogue is still an important heritage site, even if there is no one left to pray there. The Lithuanian Jewish Community contacted the mayor and council of Kaišiadorys about reconstructing the synagogue. Initially that request was denied, the council objected, and it took much effort to convince the local government the old synagogue really is a heritage site which besides holding interest to Jews around the world would also attract tourism and could be put to public use by the local population.

The Kaišiadorys city council approved the idea of adapting the building for public use in 2015 and applied for EU structural funds for renovation. A technical plan for renovating the Žiežmarai synagogue using funds from the Lithuanian state budget and the Goodwill Foundation was prepared and necessary studies conducted. After renovation the synagogue will serve as a monument to the murdered Jewish communities in Kaišiadorys and surrounding areas, and will be maintained to serve cultural functions for the local population.


An AJC delegation visiting Lithuania toured the synagogue site.

According to the Architecture and Urban Studies Center of Kaunas Technical University, the first synagogue in Žiežmariai might have appeared in 1690 following the granting of a charter of rights to the Jewish community there. This synagogue is mentioned in 1738. A 1782 description of the local church district and town says the synagogue was built under the grant of rights by Jan Casimir (noting it had to have been obtained before 1668) and that were two Jewish cemeteries. In 1868 Žiežmariai had a population of 1,190, of whom 604 were Jews, the majority. In 1897 there were 2,795 residents in Žiežmariai, of whom 1,628 were Jews. It is mentioned that all three synagogues in Žiežmariai suffered from the fire in 1918.

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Europe Greatest Diplomatic Challenge for Israel

Israeli political veteran, deputy minister to Benjamin Netanyahu on diplomatic issues and former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren is considered by some to be one of the ten most influential—some even say one of the five most influential—Jews in the world. The Lithuanian magaine Veidas presented his views on the greatest challenges, threats and victories facing Israel.

by Rima Janužytė

You are rather critical of Europe. What are your greatest complaints against the continent, or more precisely, against its politicians?

Israel is undergoing a foreign-policy revolution. I view everything through the lens of history. Not just because I’m an historian, but also because I have seen so much with my own eyes. I was very young when the peace treaty with Egypt was signed. Back then we didn’t have diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and had almost no relations with Africa. No relations with China, India. We didn’t have a strategic relationship and weren’t friends with the USA. We had specific relations with the Soviet bloc, including Lithuania. Since then everything has changed completely. Now there are close relations with China, and our prime minister just visited China with the largest business delegation ever. India is now a close partner. With Russia it’s complicated, but I’ll come back to that.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

AJC Supports Idea of Jewish History Museum in Vilnius


Vilnius March 31, BNS—The American Jewish Committee supports the idea of establishing a Jewish history museum in Vilnius, representative Sam Kliger says.

Speaking at a press conference Friday, the committee director of Russian affairs said his organization believes it is an important initiative which could become real with the Lithuanian Government’s help. He recalled his delegation’s visit to a museum in Warsaw a few days prior and called it impressive. A Jewish museum would be a good start or a good continuation of Lithuanian-Jewish relations, he told reporters. He also said Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon expressed support for the idea during a meeting Friday.

Chairwoman of the AJC board of directors Harrieta P. Schleifer said the museum should cover more than the Holocaust and include Lithuania’s rich Litvak legacy. It should include history from the beginning through the present to the future, not just the Holocaust, she said.

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Vilnius Seniors Visit Panevėžys

A group of members of the Vilnius Jewish Community’s Seniors Club, directed by Žana Skudovičienė, visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman spoke about the history and life of the Panevėžys Jewish Community in a pleasant setting, sipping tea around a table with fresh bagels brought from the Bagel Shop Café in Vilnius. Several of the Vilnius members’ parents had lived and worked in Panevėžys and were greatly interested in the Panevėžys Jewish Community’s Museum of History. Mutual interest led some of the seniors to tell about the life and fate of their parents in greater detail.

Guests visited the site of the Panevėžys Jewish cemetery and heard about its tragic destruction in 1966, and how headstones were used as decoration for the wall of the Juozas Miltinis Theater.

Žana Skudovičienė in the name of all club members expresses their gratitude for the warm reception.

Most Brutal Lithuanian Holocaust Mass Murder Operation Remembered

To never forget, to always remember and to seek to make sure it never happens again–these are our duties. We often repeat these words in commemoration Holocaust victims. We repeated them again in the afternoon on Friday, March 24, in Kaunas when we remembered the victims of the most horrific mass murder operation in the Kauinas ghetto, the Children’s Aktion.

Horrific also because, as Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon said at the commemoration, it is incomprehensible how a human being can turn into a murderer of innocent children, of babies who don’t even understand what is going on in the world around them. Horrific and painful because it impossible to imagine what the parents felt when they returned home to the ghetto after forced labor and found their only joy, their children, were missing. Administrative director of the Kaunas municipality Nijolė Putrienė cried speaking about the unrealized dreams of the murdered children, about the murder of their futures and about Lithuanian citizens who could have made a difference. Survivor of the Children’s Operation Ela Glinskienė spoke of her memories. Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas led the event and long-time Kaunas Jewish Community friend, the daughter of a rescuer of Jews, actress Kristina Kazakevičiūtė and flautist Artūras Makštutis provided music and poetry.

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Vilnius Synagogue Map Launched

“When we speak of Jewish cultural heritage, we don’t mean a foreign people who lived apart from everything and one day decided to move. We’re talking about what was in Lithuania, about the Lithuanian nation’s heritage, not just of the Jews,” Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon said Friday at the launch of map of the synagogues of Vilnius held at the ambassadorial residence. One of the goals of the map project was to show just how interconnected Jewish and Lithuanian history is.

Of 135 Synagogues, Only One Remains

The map contains a total of 135 sites of synagogues which operated before the Holocaust. Most of the synagogues were located in the Vilnius Old Town, around the Jewish area of the city centering on the Great Synagogue and spreading along Vokiečių, Gaono and Stiklių streets. There were more than 30 synagogues located in that compact area, but none of them remain. The synagogues were razed and other buildings built in their place, or the sites were used as public spaces.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Condolences

Donald Jay Rickles passed away at his home in Beverly Hills, California, April 6 from kidney failure at the age of 90. He is survived by his wife Barbara Rickles (formerly Sklar), his daughter Mindy Rickles and two grandchildren Ethan and Harrison Mann. His wife was at his side as he died. Their son Larry, born in 1970, passed away in 2011.

He was born to Jewish parents in Queens, New York, on May 8, 1926. His father Max Rickles emigrated in 1903 with his Litvak parents from Kaunas (then Kovno in the Russian Empire) and his mother Etta Feldman was born in New York City to Austrian immigrant parents. Rickles grew up in Jackson Heights, New York.

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Vilna Gaon Museum on New Jewish Museum Proposal

The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum has issued a statement via press release about a recent proposal by Lithuanian officials to set up a Holocaust-free new Jewish museum in the Palace of Sports or next to it on land which contains the centuries-old historic Jewish graveyard of Vilnius.

Let’s Create a Strategic Strategy for Jewish Heritage, Not Disneyland

The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum was disappointed by information appearing in the press last week about plans by government institutions to establish another Jewish museum in the Lithuanian capital instead of assuring support for existing projects.

The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, whose sections are housed in authentic buildings closely connected with the Jewish history of Vilnius, has recently been undergoing an intense and productive period. We host international events at the highest level, for example, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance conference held on March 22 and 23, and the number of visitors is constantly growing. New permanent exhibitions are being created for installation in our historic buildings, including the opening this fall of a new Samuel Bak Museum, showcasing the Litvak painter’s life and works, and in the near future we also intend to open the Museum of Lithuanian Jewish Culture, aka the Litvak Center and a dedicated Lithuanian Holocaust and Vilnius ghetto memorial museum, which has attracted the attention of international museum organizations including ICOM.

The latter museum is to be housed in the historical building on Žemaitijos street (former Strashun street) which was listed as a cultural treasure last month. This is the building which housed the Mefitsei Haskalah library before World War II and the Vilnius ghetto library during the war. which organized cultural events inside the ghetto and served as a secret meeting place for members of the ghetto resistance organization. In 1945 Holocaust survivors established the short-lived Jewish Museum in the building, quickly shut down by the Soviet government. The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum intends to reutilize the building for Holocaust education. After the museum has these additional sections, a unique route will be created for the visitor to explore Jewish Vilna.

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Vilnius Mayor, Lithuanian PM Decree: And There Shall Be Built a Jewish History Museum Next to the Palace of Sports

Vilnius, March 30, BNS–Lithuanian prime minister Saulius Skvernelis said there are deliberations on changing the project for the reconstruction of the Palace of Sports to include a equip a building to host a Jewish history museum and for conferences. There was consideration on holding concerts and other cultural events in the project initiated by the former Government.

Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius proposed setting up a Litvak History Museum next to the Palace of Sports which the Government is planning to renovate. “I think the Government has done the right thing in halting the untransparent bid begun earlier. But there should be a conference center there without any doubt. We just discussed that it would be more sensible if next to the conference center or partially integrated with the conference center there were a museum of Litvak history. It is probably this could be accomplished wonderfully and would become an attraction. We agreed to develop the idea further. I’m glad my opinion and the prime minister’s coincide on this,” the mayor of Vilnius told BNS after meeting with Lithuanian prime minister Saulius Skvernelis Thursday.

“It should be able to be used for conferences. Now there is a concept, a conference and concert hall, so it should be conferences and a museum,” the prime minister told reporters at parliament.

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Recovering Memory: Vilnius University Memory Diploma Graduation Ceremony

Event at 3:00 P.M. on April 3, 2017

Vilnius University will host a Memory Diploma Graduation Ceremony in the small auditorium at Universiteto street no. 3, Vilnius. The ceremony is intended to honor students, staff and members of the university community who were marginalized, thrown out, not allowed to finish their education or academic work and otherwise repressed because of the actions of the totalitarian regimes or local collaborators.

The university was compelled to rethink its relation with the past after receiving a letter from Israeli professor of medicine Moshe Lapidoth in the summer of 2016, requesting a symbolic commemoration of his uncle Khlaune Meishtovski who was a student at the Mathematics and Natural Sciences Faculty of Vilnius University before the war. After eight successful semesters studying chemistry and physics, he was expelled July 1, 1941 because he was a Jew.

In 2016 the university formed a commission to do a historical study and decide selection criteria for people who were unfairly deprived of an education there. A symbolic Memory Diploma was established to remember these people. It is hoped the graduation ceremony will become a university tradition.

After preliminary study, the university determined about 650 Jews and 80 Poles were forced out as well as a professor whose wife was Jewish during the beginning of the Nazi occupation. Several hundred Lithuanians were also deprived of university study and employment.

There will be a live-stream on facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/events/898366480305748/

LJC Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky Speaks at National Equality and Diversity Awards Ceremony

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and other ethnic communities and public organizations appreciate the National Equality and Diversity Awards includes a nomination for “Dialogue between Peoples.”

As a member of an ethnic minority, I feel a more enlightened view in society on topics such as the Holocaust and xenophobia. People are slowly coming around to asking questions, engaging in discussions and thinking about the issues. Four years ago the Lithuanian Jewish Community began the Bagel Shop tolerance campaign which opened the Community’s doors to the public and made Jewish culture and history more accessible and, of course, more attractive. When the Community opened its doors, the public opened their hearts to the Community. I would like to thank everyone who took an interest and participated in this tolerance initiative which I believe marked the beginning of a small “dialogue between peoples” revolution. I present the highly esteemed candidates for the “Dialogue between Peoples” award:

Marius Ivaškevičius, the force behind the March of Memory dedicated to the murdered Jewish community of Molėtai. A record number of people turned out to remember and honor those killed, up to 3,000 participants marched along the last route taken by the victims of genocide perpetrated by Lithuanian hands.

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Lithuania’s Shoah Whitewash Project

Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem has said the Lithuanian authorities were “very culpable.”


A derelict shul in Vilnius (Getty Images)

Lithuanian parliamentary ombudsman Augustinas Normantas has refused to open an investigation into a complaint that his country’s Genocide and Resistance Center presents a revisionist version of wartime history.

Instead, the ombudsman said that the center itself must address the issue first, and “if its answer is disputed, then in a court of law.”

The complainant, Grant Gochin, has challenged the Genocide Center’s description of Lithuania’s wartime treatment of its Jews, calling it “a distortion of history and an insult to the Jewish citizens of Lithuania.”

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New American Jewish Committee Office in Warsaw to Work on Jewish Issues in Baltic States, Too

Warsaw, March 28, AP/BNS–In Warsaw Monday an official ceremony opened the new American Jewish Committee (AJC) office there. The AJC has been operating for 111 years with headquarters in New York but has long been operating in Central and Eastern Europe as well.

It was the first Jewish organization which called for the unification of East and West Germany when the Berlin Wall fell. It also supported the aspirations of Central and Eastern European states to join NATO and the EU. Poland’s president Andrzej Duda welcomed the AJC to Poland and said Poles “until today with gratitude remember your support for our goals.”

“I am certain this will give further impulse to trans-Atlantic cooperation,” the president of Poland said in a press release which was read out at the ceremony Monday evening by a presidential advisor. The organization says it is pledged to support democracies because it believes open and tolerant societies provide greater safety for Jews and other minorities.

The new AJC bureau in Warsaw will concern itself with Jewish issues in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Its priority is supporting good relations with Israel and the United States and says these relationships are an essential matter in insuring geopolitical security for Jews.

Anti-Semitism in Soviet Lithuania: The Case of the Vilnius Money-Changers

Antisemitizmas Sovietų Lietuvoje. Vilniaus „Valiutininkų byla“

Bernardinai.lt

by Justas Stončius, doctoral candidate and lecturer at the Institute of the History and Archaeology of the Baltic Region, Klaipėda University

Fifty-five years ago on March 22, 1962, death sentences were issued to three Jews from the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. They were accused of violations in exchanging currency. The local press reported the trial in detail and the Western press covered it as well, viewing it (correctly) as traditional anti-Semitism, whose existence in the USSR was denied. Klaipėda University doctoral candidate Justas Stončius discusses the motivations and history of the Vinius Money-Changers Case.

The trial of the “Vilnius money-changers” lasted from January 30 to March 22, 1962. The Supreme Court of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic tried eight people of Jewish ethnicity who were accused of violating the rules for exchanging currencies and of currency speculation. The decision was made to hold a public trial and a special group of correspondents was formed to cover the trial in newspapers and magazines. Invitations were distributed at Vilnius city factories to the more active workers and activists in the production sector. During sentencing the death sentence was given Aron Reznitsk, Mikhail Rabinovich and Fyodor Kaminer, while Basia Reznitsk was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment, decreased to 10 years 6 years later.

The Vilnius Money-Changers Case received much attention in the West. On April 17, 1962, French newspaper Le Progrès reported “by order of the Vilnius Tribunal three Lithuanian Jews have been put to death” and noted the events had caused unrest in the Jewish community of the Soviet Union. France’s Le Monde newspaper stated Jews of the USSR were afraid “that they, too, might become scapegoats for the rampant lack of food stuffs in the Soviet Union…”

Full story in Lithuanian here.