Ona Šimaitė in Israel. Courtesy Vilnius University Library
lzinios.lt
One hundred and twenty-three years have passed since the birth of Ona Šimaitė, who rescued dozens of Jews of Vilnius from death during World War II. Let’s recall the quiet heroism of this Righteous Gentile. Her name isn’t uttered often in Lithuania. Her commemoration consists of a plaque at Vilnius University and a small and narrow street named after her, winding from Kūdrų park at the edge of the Užupis district up, ending in steep steps leading to the Old Town. To the place which became the symbol of suffering and death to thousands of our fellow citizens 70 years ago who were fated to be born Jewish. To the Vilnius ghetto, where at the will of the Nazi occupier those condemned to die spent their final days. To the place whence the humble librarian Ona Šimaitė, without fear of death, rescued many who had lost hope.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky believes, as does the entire Lithuanian Jewish community, the position taken by Lithuanian Radio and Television director general Audrius Siaurusevičius and by the national broadcaster LRT in response to gestures depicting Hitler made by actress Asta Baukutė on the LRT television program “Atspėk dainą” is the right one and expresses the state’s position regarding its Jewish citizens. “I have to say Lithuanian National Radio and Television have demonstrated consistently and professionally their view on the centuries-long history of the Jews of Lithuania and have raised ‘uncomfortable’ Holocaust issues, something which even officials responsible for education haven’t done for many years. Also, LRT radio journalists are currently doing programs about painful historical events which to the present time influence life in the small towns after the destruction of the shtetls. I give them my gratitude for the work they’re doing and ask them to continue the radio series. No one should be afraid to say the word ‘Jew,’ but it’s important to understand and never forget what happened and how their Lithuanian fellow countrymen acted during the Holocaust, and why the Litvak community is so small today, and sensitive to all signs of anti-Semitism and Naziism,” chairwoman Kukliansky stated.
Vilnius, January 7, BNS–Lithuanian National Radio and Television director Audrius Siaurusevičius says the behavior of actress Asta Baukutė was intolerable in a program broadcast in Lithuania Friday where she made gestures mimicking Adolf Hitler, and so the television series has been canceled on the national network.
“We truly do not tolerate this thing and decisions were made yesterday, the show is canceled. Since people are behaving without any sense of responsibility, grave measures were applied. I consider this a personal insult to all my principles,” Siaurusevičius told BNS. He said the national broadcaster broke all contractual ties with television show producer Modestas Karnaševičius’s company Viena Planeta [One Planet] and is not planning to renew any business relations with the company in the future.
“I think we will have nothing to do with them. Our trust has been broken. We work on the basis of trust and cannot supervise everything. They don’t meet the requirements which we demand inside LRT,” the director of LRT said.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community reports with deep sadness the death of Rav Moshe Shapiro, the Petirah of Hagaon, the Litvak ultra-Orthodox community’s spiritual leader in Israel. The author of numerous seforim and the noted rosh yeshiva of Jerusalem’s Yeshiva Pischei Olam passed away January 6 at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital at the age of 82 following a lengthy illness.
His father Rav Meir Shapiro with his brother Rav Simkha Ziselom left Lithuania for Israel to study Torah at the Hebron yeshiva. Rav Moshe Shapiro studied both in Panevėžys and at the Hebron yeshiva. His mentors were the Rav Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler and Rav Yitzchok Hutner.
By the age of 18 Shapiro already new the entire Babylonian Talmud by heart. The Rav Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz recommended he intensify his study of the Talmud.
Rav Moshe Shapiro is one of the first contemporary rabbis who performed Jewish outreach, returning Jews to the faith of their fathers and teaching Judaism.
Rav Shapiro visited Lithuania last year and spent some time in towns and cities connected with his family history. When he and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky met then, he told her the Lithuanian Jewish Community has a great future ahead.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is deeply saddened by the death of Rav Moshe Shapiro and express our deepest condolences to his family, friends and students.
As Hitler’s Mein Kampf again becomes a bestseller in Europe, Russian-American journalist Mikhail Klikushin writing in the New York Observer, owned by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner who is scheduled to leave publishing in order to devote all his time as president Trump’s senior advisor, wonders why Lithuanian politicians haven’t come forward to condemn former MP Asta Baukutė’s strange behavior on Lithuanian state television.
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Lithuanian Official Gives Nazi Salute on Live TV Show
by Mikhail Klikushin
Ex-MP grins, yells “Jew! Jew! Jew!” while saluting the führer as tensions mount to Russia’s west
This year, Mein Kampf, Hitler’s autobiography, in which he laid the groundwork for a policy of extermination against the Jews, became a bestseller in Europe.
Having taken a look at what has been going on within recent additions to the European community—including former Soviet republics that broke loose from Russian dominance—one begins to see why the brutal dictator is experiencing a renewed wave of popularity.
Last Saturday, for example, it became known that the Lithuanian Radio and Television broadcasting corporation (LRT), funded by the Lithuanian government, temporarily took off the air the popular TV show Guess the Melody after a scandalous video surfaced causing public outrage, Delfi reported.
According to LRT assistant director Rimvydas Paleckis, on Friday night during a live broadcast of the show one of the participants—popular Lithuanian movie and theater actress Asta Baukutė—having recognized the melody, became so excited that she victoriously shouted “Yeah! Yeah!” and jumped up from her seat.
She was about to win the contest.
Standing to her full height in her leather coat and dancing out of excitement, she put both the index and middle finger of her left hand to her upper lip—to indicate Hitler’s mustache—and raised her right hand in a Nazi salute high into the air.
She could not contain herself.
“Žydas! Žydas! Žydas!” (Jew! Jew! Jew!) she yelled in Lithuanian—letting it be known to the cheering studio audience and the show host that the melody in question belonged to Lithuanian composer Simonas Donskovas.
Donskovas, as readers already might have figured out, is a Jew.
“I am in shock,” LRT assistant director Rimvydas Paleckis said the next day.
Baltic News Service reported Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky responded after actress Asta Baukutė performed a gesture intended to imitate Adolf Hitler on a television program on Friday called Atspėk dainą [Name That Tune], saying the behavior was in poor taste.
“Since I haven’t looked into it, I can’t say that this is offensive, but my question would be, who needs to joke like that? There are a million other topics and perhaps this was a joke which failed. I don’t understand that kind of joke and likely others do not either, so a completely unfunny response is possible. In my understanding these sorts of things should be avoided generally. … Perhaps a little more talent and a deeper understanding is needed to pull this off, improvisation doesn’t really work. It’s even impolite and in poor taste,” Kukliansky was quoted as saying by BNS.
Friday Baukutė on the broadcast of Atspėk dainą guessed the tune by Simonas Donskovas, lept to her feet and apparently made gestures intended to imitate Hitler. The program was not live and was broadcast from material shot earlier.
Kukliansky, according to BNS, said she didn’t find Baukutė’s actions humorous and wondered why it was included in the final edit for the show.
“After seeing the initial information about, she acted very strangely. Or maybe I don’t have enough of a sense of humor, but it wasn’t funny to me at all. There might be a different subtext at work in the show which I didn’t get. I don’t understand in general why this is necessary. Aren’t there other topics? All the more since this was recorded, and perhaps there should be more caution exerted with respect to certain social groups, and more effort to make sure the program isn’t misinterpreted. Most likely Ms. Baukutė didn’t intend anything bad, she was probably making fun of Hitler, but she didn’t manage to pull it off completely successfully,” Kukliansky told BNS.
BNS was unable to reach Baukutė for comment. On Saturday she told the internet news site 15min.lt she was sorry about her behavior on the Lithuanian National Radio and Television program. “This is a normal democratic state. I think it’s allowed to make jokes. In our wonderful Lithuania these kinds of talented ethnicities may establish schools and perform in show business. This is a country which shouldn’t get hung up because of that gesture, I didn’t have that intention. There was no politics in my gesture at all. I think we can be happy that such things as Jew-baiting do not happen in Lithuania. If someone wants to create a conflict, which I certainly do not, and if someone perceived a bad subtext, I truly apologize,” the actress told the news site.
The Lithuanian National Radio and Television radio program Radijo dokumentika [Radio Documentary] for Sunday, January 8, rebroadcast Tuesday, January 10 after the morning news program at 9:00 A.M. The small area at the confluence of the Neris and Nemunas Rivers created by the Radziwiłłs in the 17th century, Slabada, a “serfdom-free zone,” was originally smaller and is called a village in the documentation, but by the second half of the 18th century the shtetl was a competitor in arts and crafts and trade with the city of Kaunas across the rivers. Industry developed quickly in the 20th century. Slobodka, as it came to be called, was the home to the world-famous Slobodka Yeshiva. Known in Lithuanian as Vilijampolė, the city on the Viliya River [a synonym for the Neris], the district became part of the city of Kaunas before World War II.
This is the eighth episode in a series dedicated to the Jewish shtetls of Lithuania in Lithuanian National Radio and Television’s retrospective on the forgotten past of the Jews of Lithuania.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is publishing a series of articles by the historian Algimantas Kasparavičius, a senior researcher at the Lithuanian History Institute.
Part 1
In Lithuanian historiography and in the public socio-cultural discourse, Lithuania’s greatest tragedy is often considered the Soviet occupation of 1940, which quickly turned into annexation and the loss of statehood. While not denying the historical significance of this catastrophe for modern Lithuanian statehood, considering the wider and deeper historical view, this is not entirely fair or moral historically. The greatest 20th century tragedy really came upon Lithuania not in June of 1940, when freedom and statehood was lost, but a year later when the Holocaust began in Nazi-occupied Lithuania. The greatest 20th-century tragedy for Lithuania is the destruction of the Jewish community which had lived for half of a millennium and had created a civic Lithuanian identity. Even the loss of national statehood is not an irreversible process, as shown by the experience of many peoples. When a nation loses statehood during critical historical circumstances, after the geopolitical situation changes for the better it is possible to restore it. That’s what Lithuania did as well on March 11, 1990. But the former Lithuanian Jewish Litvak community, rich in all senses, will never be restored, unfortunately. And that can only mean one thing, that our Lithuania, which for many Lithuanians still represents, as Dr. Jonas Basanavičius said, “the home of the people,” will remain diminished, darker, emptier, weaker and more fragile. In terms of civilization. Emotionally. Culturally. Demographically. Geopolitically.
You could characterize Vilnius today as a city emerging from post-traumatic stress syndrome, covered with the wounds of war still visible to the naked eye, or sometimes only visible under profound examination, scars testifying to the city’s losses, slicing through the street plan but every year receding into the distance, into oblivion. To really understand Vilnius, one must consider the totality of losses, summing up what the capital lost during the war.
Walking through the city looking for the “heritage” of the war, it’s useful to define several categories for what the Lithuanian capital lost during the war. The one to begin with is not cultural, but rather personal losses, from the loss of people who were an indivisible part of the city of Vilnius. Consider the most painful loss—the Holocaust of Vilnius Jews, which deprived the city of one of its greatest portions of identity, so significant that in Jewish culture Vilnius was bestowed the title of Jerusalem of the North. Although this text talks mainly about Jews, death hovered above everyone in Vilnius without regard to social status or religious or political conviction.
News of the unexpected death of Ruvinas Taicas has reached the Lithuanian Jewish Community. He was born May 19, 1950, and passed away January 4. Our deepest condolences to his family and many friends.
Ruvinas Taicas, a Litvak with deep family roots in Ukmergė (Vilkomir), was one of the last native Jews in his hometown where he spent his entire life, working for many years in a furniture factory.
The entire Community mourn his loss and send our condolences to his widow Fausta, sons Artūras and Mantas, his brothers and all his relatives, friends and colleagues. We wish you strength and fortitude in overcoming the pain of our shared loss.
Executive board of Association of Biržai Firefighters, 1936. First person sitting on left: Boruch Michelson. Third seated from left: G. Belickas. First standing from left: S. Chaitas. Fifth from left standing: I. Masas. Photo courtesy Sėla Museum.
by Borisas Januševičius
This is a greeting among Jews. It is the wish for peace, spiritual peace and security. Lithuanian “sveikas” corresponds to “shalom aleichem,” peace to you [sic]. I heard these types of greetings often in my childhood. Parents—neighbors, Jews—of my friends (in Jewish jargon khebra: meydal and bakhur) used to use them. We also used this jargon, Kučinskų Aliukas, Kėkštų Zenka, Karpuškų Liolė and others, including me. Our chebra, our friends of darker extraction have been lying in the ground in Pakamponys for 75 years now. Their memory is fading fast into the past.
Conflicted Thoughts against the Backdrop of Noble Action
For some time now I have been watching the burgeoning interest in the Jews who lived so numerously in Biržai between the wars. Their mysterious codes are deciphered, projects are planned and carried out and the attempt is made to provide a background of international significance to this activity. The Israeli ambassador, the deputy US ambassador, Lithuania’s chief rabbi [sic], the chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, the president of the Brooklyn Synagogue, Lithuanian members of parliament, Kaunas archbishop Lionginas Virbalas, representatives of the Jewish communities of certain cities and many others all rushed to Biržai. The men of Biržai donned Jewish “yarmulkes.” The sorrowful hymn of the cantor rang out across the Jewish cemetery. Some of the guests only then learned that there is a place called Biržai in this world with its unique Jewish and Karaite cemetery.
Unfortunately, Sheftel Melamed was not among those who turned, who used to call himself the only surviving Jew in Biržai. Melamed died more than a year ago. Sheftel and his brother went to Russia in June of 1941 and that’s how they survived. When he came to his hometown in 1945 he didn’t find his parents’ home on Vytauto street, it had burned down. Neither did he find the relatives he had left here four years earlieir. His mother Paya, his father Peisach and his brother Hirsh were shot in Pakamponys.
The discussion rages on on the social networks about the wisdom or folly of lighting large menorah displays in non-Jewish cities, whether or not to say the blessing, and how much authentically Jewish is really left in the holiday of Christmukkah, as images of square and overturned Christmas trees with branches forming menorahs are exchanged. In respect to all this, we could turn back again to the historical opposition between Greek and Jew and the Jewish victory. The more salient aspect today, though, having in mind the different possible interactions of a religious or ethnic minority with the dominant host culture, is the history of what happened “Post-Hanukkah.”
It’s ironic that, as researcher Erich Gruen points out, after the Hasmoneans won the independence of the state of Judea and established a royal dynasty, and after they established the Torah as the law of the land (or constitution), the Hellenization of the country only increased, and accelerated throughout the period of the kingdom. Martin Hengel also believes the Judaism of Judea in the period was highly Hellenized, although he tries to frame it within “the conflict between the Judaism of Palestine and the spirit of the age of Hellenism” and is forced to explain the crisis of the Maccabee era did lead to a reaction in Judea which put a halt to syncretism, channeled intellectual activities to Torah study and blocked any criticism of the cult and the law. As many authors note, the influence of Hellenism in Judea is obvious, while literature written in the Land of Israel clearly differs from that written in the Diaspora. There Hellenistic literature was neither completely assimilated, nor was it entirely rejected. (As an analogue one might think about contemporary Israel which includes a completely modern secularism differing in none of its essentials from that of the West, and also extremely segregated religious communities.)
Historian Louis H. Feldman presents different artifacts discovered by archaeologists in the Land of Israel from Hellenistic times. Among them are representations of different Greek gods and figures in synagogues, private homes and other locations. Feldman says, based on Rab Gamaliel (first century CE) in the mishnah tractate Avoda Zara, the rabbis of the period weren’t frightened of the pagan deities and didn’t believe they could somehow engage Jews in the pagan cults. Gamaliel says the bath h went to was not the ornament of Aphrodite, but on the contrary, Aphrodite was the ornament of the bath, a mere decoration. This view might have been the one prevailing among the sages of Judea at the time, namely, that the use of Greek gods and other Greek elements in daily life was a degradation of these gods, in modern terms perhaps their “commodification,” and in no way their worship. Feldman shows third-century rabbi Yohan was likewise unopposed to mosaics portraying Aphrodite.
This year marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of famous Litvak poet Osip Mandelshtam. At the LJC’s Mini Limmud conference held in November, one of the lectures was dedicated to the work of the famous poet. The lecture was by Ellena Suodienė, who is the author of 16 books of poetry and defended her doctoral thesis on the Russian poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva. Suodienė was awarded the Golden Quill diploma of the European Arts and Literature Institute and taught at the Kaunas Liberal Arts Faculty of Vilnius University until the year 2000. She published three books of poetry while she was teaching. She is the currently the hostess of the Nadezhda Russian Meeting Club in Kaunas. Suodienė has dedicated much of her time and research to the life and work of Osip Mandelstam and even wrote a poem about him.
On the 125th anniversary of his birth we are again reminded Osip Mandelstam is one of the most famous Litvaks on the world stage. Many remember him as a brilliant poet who suffered under the persecution of the Stalin regime. Suodienė calls him a martyr to poetry.
Deputy speaker of parliament and former prime minister Gediminas Kirkilas sends holiday greetings to the Lithuanian Jewish Community. Unofficial translation:
Dear ladies and gentlemen,
I greet you on the occasion of the coming holiday, the most beautiful holiday of the year and the coming New Year, 2017. This is a special time to remember all of you, to take joy in our having spoken, shared, sympathized and learned from one another. This is a time for sincere and heartfelt greetings. May harmony prevail in your home, may your hearts be filled with warmth and may success follow upon your new endeavors.
Yours,
[signed]
Gediminas Kirkilas,
deputy speaker,
chairman of the European Affairs Committee
Lithuanian Parliament
One beautiful December afternoon director Vida Pulkauninkienė and members of the Dukstyna Tolerance Education Center travelled to Vilnius to meet with Jewish Community member Geršonas Taicas. The knowledgeable Taicas took them on a tour of the Vilnius Old Town and told them about famous Jewish personalities.
During the walking tour Taicas took them to the remnants of the old city wall where in the early 17th century the Bastillion was built at the Subocz Gate. This is a defensive fortification consisting of a tower, an artillery section and a tunnel connecting them. From there they walked to a location where the city and its surrounding areas are clearly visible and took in the view.
On Strazdelio street they saw the building where the Romm publishing house operated.
They also saw the building where Jascha Heifetz, the famous 20th century violinist, studied.
Jewish forced laborers dug a tunnel from this holding pit near Vilnius, Lithuania, into the surrounding forest. Photo: Ezra Wolfinger for NOVA
In a look back at the top science stories of 2016, the New York Times science desk included non-invasive archaeology last summer at Ponar outside Vilnius. In “Evidence of a Great Escape” (not to be confused with The Great Escape at Stalag Luft III in Poland), New York Times science writer Nicholas St. Fleur talks about the discoveries made there.
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In 1943, the Nazis forced 80 Lithuanian Jews to dig up the rotting bodies of their murdered neighbors, pile them on top of wood and burn them.
They were then ordered to mix the ashes with sand and bury the remains so no one would know of the atrocities committed at Ponar, an extermination site where the Nazis executed more than 100,000 people.
On December 30 the Panevėžys City and Ukmergė Regional Jewish Communities celebrated Hanukkah together at the restaurant Vakarinė žara, where they have held such celebrations for several years now. The event was heavily attended by members of both communities, their families and honored guests, including Panevėžys mayor Rytis Račkauskas, Panevėžys Jewish Community patron Yuri Grafman, the historian Vidmantas Janukonis and city council members Galina Kuzmienė and Alfonsas Petrauskas, among others. Attendees appeared to have a wonderful time and there was much conversation and many greetings. Participants enjoyed traditional Hanukkah treats including latkes and doughnuts.
The Hanukkah celebration at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius yesterday was both moving and fun with many esteemed guests and traditional Hanukkah foods including latkes and doughnuts. A warm and happy atmosphere prevailed and the klezmer group Rakija Klezmer Orkestar contributed to the festive mood with great performances of Jewish song. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky greeted celebrants of the Hanukkah miracle. The miracle of this year’s Hanukkah, she said, was Lithuanians celebrating the Jewish holiday with Jews at the synagogue and Lithuanians and people of other ethnicities performing Jewish music there. It is a blessing to be able to celebrate together with the Jewish community in one’s own land, she said.
Lithuanian parliamentary speaker Pranckietis, Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon, Lithuanian ambassador to Israel Bagdonas and US embassy deputy chief of mission Solomon attended.
The Talmud (Shabbat 21b) speaks rather laconically of the origins of this holiday:
“Kislev 25, the days of Hanukkah which are eight, there is no mourning, there is no fasting during these days. When the Greeks came into the Temple, they polluted all the oil in the Temple, and when the Hasmonean dynasty overcame and defeated them, they checked [the Temple] and found just one jug of oil, which was in its place, and was sealed with the seal of the High Priest. But in it there was oil [only sufficient] for burning for just one day. A miracle occurred in connection with it: it burned for eight days. The next year they established them [these days] as holy days for giving glory (hallel) and thanks.”
The retelling isn’t as comprehensive as found in the Christian Bible where the two Books of the Maccabees written in Greek are found. They tell a longer story of Jewish persecution during the reign of the Hellenistic king of Syria Antiochus Epiphanes, the Jewish revolt under the brothers Maccabee and their victory. The Greek telling is full of rhetorical details speaking to how widespread Greek culture had taken root throughout the nation, even among the priesthood of the Temple in Jerusalem: “Now such was the height of Greek fashions, and increase of heathenish manners, through the exceeding profaneness of Jason, that ungodly wretch, and no high priest; That the priests had no courage to serve any more at the altar, but despising the temple, and neglecting the sacrifices, hastened to be partakers of the unlawful allowance in the place of exercise, after the game of Discus called them forth; Not setting by the honors of their fathers, but liking the glory of the Grecians best of all” (2 Maccabees 4:13-15). Athletics were practiced in the nude, and so displayed the evidence of circumcision, which caused shame, since it didn’t fit with the Greek ideal of manly virtue, kalokagathia. It tells how the Temple was looted and desecrated, and renamed Jupiter Olympus. Demands by the “Greek” regime to violate the Torah are also enumerated, and the story of the martyrs who refused to do so is provided. Many of the details of the stories are unclear to historians, but a general picture of the times is more or less provided. And this includes not just the brutal actions of the Hellenistic regime, but also the attraction and endless temptation Hellenistic thought and the Hellenistic lifestyle exerted.
