June 14 is officially the Day of Mourning and Hope in Lithuania but colloquially Black Ribbon Day, marking the beginning of Soviet deportations of Lithuanian citizens in early June, 1941. Jews were hugely overrepresented among the victims of the Soviet deportations to Siberia and Central Asia. Those who survived and managed to return to Lithuania found the entire Jewish community and their families had been slaughtered.
Photo courtesy the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum.
Following vandalism in January of 2022 to the commemorative plaque marking a former synagogue in Panevėžys, a new plaque has been placed on the building located at Valančiaus street no. 4.
That certainly wasn’t the only recent act of vandalism against Jewish sites in the area, including at Jewish cemeteries, at Memory Square and the “Sad Jewish Mother” monument to Holocaust victims where vandals poured paint. That’s been cleaned up as well and there are now video cameras monitoring the square.
The stone stele commemorating 100 years of activity by the Joint or Jewish Distribution Committee in Panevėžys and Lithuania was also vandalized.
Over the last decade anti-Semitic vandalism also occurred at the mass murder site in the Žalioji Forest and at the monument in the Kurganava Forest. Around 5500 Jews were murdered at the former and around 8000 Jews at the latter site.
Joana Viga Čiplytė, an historian who has written extensively about the history of the Panevėžys Jewish community, has been awarded the Gabrielė Petkevičaitės-Bitė medal “Tarnaukite Lietuvai” [To Serve Lithuania] in recognition of her work. Her first book was called “Mažosios Jeruzalės – Panevėžio žydų istorija. Holokaustas” [The History of Little Jerusalem, the Panevėžys Jewish Community: The Holocaust].
At the award ceremony Čiplytė said she was grateful to her family and to Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman for their support.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky took part in events as part of Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė’s working visit to Israel.
The delegation began the visit at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.
After speaking to the American Jewish Committee conference being held in Tel Aviv, Lithuanian PM Šimonytė met with Israel’s president Isaac Herzog, who expressed interest in the pace of restitution for stolen Jewish property in Lithuania.
Silvia Foti is scheduled to visit the Šiauliai Jewish Community on June 22 for a presentation of her book about her grandfather, Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika, followed by an open discussion. Jonas Noreika was appointed head of the Šiauliai district under the Nazis and was responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews from the city and region. The event starts at 6:00 P.M. and is free and open to the public.
by Canaan Lidor, Times of Israel, June 6, 2023
The decade-long controversy surrounding the Snipiškės (Shnipishok) Jewish cemetery in Lithuania’s capital appears to have reached a resolution: instead of building a convention center atop the burial ground, the Vilnius municipality will turn it into a monument for Lithuanian Jews.
The decision announced Thursday by Lithuanian National Art Museum director and former Lithuanian minister of culture Arūnas Gelūnas puts to rest concerns about disturbing the remains of Jews believed by some to be buried under a Soviet-era building authorities wanted to tear down and replace. The plan set off a highly publicized legal fight between some Jewish community members and authorities and Jewish groups.
“It’s a hugely welcome outcome to a dispute that has been going on for too many years,” Michael Mail, chief executive of the Foundation for Jewish Heritage non-profit working to preserve such sites in Europe and the Middle East, told Times of Israel Monday.
A bas-relief commemorating Herman Perelstein, the founder of the Ąžuoliukas choir, will be unveiled at the Lithuanian National Philharmonic in Vilnius at 5:00 P.M. on June 15.
A very happy birthday to Fruma Kučinekienė in Kaunas, beloved by the entire Lithuanian Jewish Community. She lost her entire family to the Holocaust and yet has endured and lived a meaningful and even happy life. We wish you the very best health, many happy moments with friends and many more milestone birthdays to come. Mazl tov. Bis 120!
Dovydas Leibzonas passed away Monday, June 5, at the age of 88. He was born in 1936. He was a member of the Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners and a Lithuanian Jewish Community Social Center client. Our deepest condolences to family members and friends.
The Sugihara House museum in Kaunas has opened a special Jan Zartendijk room to celebrate the Dutch Righteous Gentile who worked hand-in-hand with Righteous Gentile Chiune Sugihara to rescue Jews from the impending Holocaust, according to the Russian-language obzor.lt webpage. Although the two men reportedly never spoke, they both issued visas for Jews. Japanese ambassador Sugihara issued visas for transiting through Japan, but Jews needed a visa for a final destination, which Dutch consul Zwartendijk furnished by stamping passports with a fictitious visa for the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean, which at that time didn’t require visas from travellers.
According to obzor.lt, museum staff had considered including a period typewriter in the exhibit, but Zwartendijk’s daughter told them he never used the device.
Full story in Russian here.
On May 29 scout leader Adomas Kofmanas, young Jewish scouts and a number of their parents all got together for a meet outdoors with games and a barbecue by outdoorsman Audrius Vainonis. Plans for this summer were also a main topic of discussion, including the world jamboree scheduled for July 8 to 16 in western Lithuania called Tarp trijų vandenų [Between Three Bodies of Water]. So far over 2,000 scouts from around the world have registered for the big jamboree and of course Jewish scouts and their parents are invited to attend. The young people are getting close to restoring the pre-Holocaust Lithuanian Jewish scouting movement with closer cooperation with the Scouts of Lithuania organization. For more information on any of these topics or others, please write skautai@lzb.lt.
Vocalists aged 10 to 35 are invited to register for the Nechama Lifshitz Vocalist Contest to be held in Vilnius in September. The goal of the competition is to inspire creativity and talent in the younger generation, to popularize vocal Jewish music and to discover talented young Jewish performers and song writers. The contest is named after renowned singer Nechama Lifshitz who was born in Kaunas and was sometimes called the Jewish nightingale. She became famous throughout the Soviet Union and the world.
Register here: https://www.competition.lt/registracija/
The International Publishers Association and the Lithuanian Jewish Community invite you to an academic and practical conference on the significance of Litvak literature on the Lithuanian cultural heritage. Besides presentation by individual scholars and thinkers there will also be readings of texts and some more personal commentaries. The conference will be conducted in Russian and is free and open to the public.
The #ŽydiškiPašnekesiai Jewish discussion group led by author and actor Arkadijus Vinokuras is to discuss Jewish cuisine at the Israeli street food kiosk located in the former Cvirka scquare across the street from the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius at 5:00 P.M on Thursday, June 8. The panel is scheduled to include Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Vilnius Religious Jewish Community chairman and Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yaatom, lecturer Natalja Cheifec, Cvi Parkas Israeli food kiosk director Rafaelis Gimelšteinas, a professor of communications from Vilnius University who has written several books about the history of cooking.
The outdoor discussion is free and open to the public and will be streamed live on facebook as well. It will be conducted in Lithuanian.
The Vilnius Jewish Public Library is to screen the film J’accuse with Lithuanian subtitles at 5:30 P.M. on June 19. Author Silvia Foti featured in the film is scheduled to attend the screening and discuss the film and the Holocaust in Lithuania with the audience.
More information available here.
For the first time since World War II the wooden synagogue in Žiežmariai has hosted a bat mitzvah ceremony. Aleksandra and Viljamas Žitkauskas’s daughter Ariana read from the Torah in the ceremony conducted by Rabbi Nathan Alfred and cantor Alan Brava accompanied by Brian Drutman.
The wooden synagogue fell into disuse after the Holocaust and was used as a warehouse. In 2016 the Lithuanian Jewish Community began renovation work there in cooperation with local municipalities and Lithuania’s Cultural Heritage Department. In September of 2021 it ceremoniously reopened for European Days of Jewish Culture events. The wooden synagogues in Žiežmariai and Pakruojis have been fully renovated and restored by the LJC, local governments and the Lithuanian government agencies and are scheduled for use as venues for cultural events and exhibitions by their respective local populations.
While the Lithuanian Jewish Community is never empty and devoid of activity, over the last few days the halls, corridors and every nook and corner have seen a flood of seventh graders from the Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium preparing for their bat mitzvah and bar mitzvah ceremonies. Besides reading portions from the Torah, their classmates have been planning a program of events for several months now, and are preparing for the ceremonies down to the last detail. Bar and bat mitzvahs are coming-of-age rituals ushering Jewish young people into adulthood. In this case Rabbi Nathan Alfred from the United States is presiding over the ceremony. The young people have to demonstrate in public their ability to read from the Torah in the original language to show they are ready to engage in religious and public life. The tradition has grown up of turning the ceremony into a kind of party with gifts, the utterance of good wishes and applause. The Lithuanian Jewish Community is proud to welcome the next generation into the community and adulthood.
Mirjam Abelovičienė has died at the age of 70. She was born in 1954. A member in long standing of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, she formerly worked at the Vilna Gaon State Jewish History Museum. Our deepest condolences to her son Jakovas and her many friends and relatives.
Netanyahu mourns the loss of “a great scholar and leader” ahead of what is expected to be one of Israel’s largest funerals ever.
Israeli spiritual leader Rabbi Gershon Edelstein died Tuesday at the age of 100 in the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak.
He was the head of the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, where a funeral procession was scheduled to depart in the afternoon. Hundreds of thousands are expected to participate.
Edelstein became the leader of the Lithuanian stream of Ashkenazi Orthodox Judaism following the passing of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky in Bnei Brak on March 18, 2022. He was also president of the Council of Yeshivas, an organization that supports Lithuanian-style yeshivas in Eastern Europe, and the president of the Council of Torah Elders of the Ashkenazi haredi political party Degel HaTorah.
A commemorative plaque was unveiled on an important Jewish site in Kaunas from the period before and between the two world wars. The former orphanage building is located at the intersection of Gruodis and Smolensk streets in Lithuania’s second city which served as the provisional capital in interwar Lithuania.
The orphanage was for boys aged 7 to 18 who were left parentless or found themselves in dire circumstances. The orphanage opened in 1905 as part of a network of Jewish orphan houses. It was called Jewish Sirot House, but was better known as the Yitzhak Spector Orphanage, being tied in with the synagogue as an institution of education, primary education for the youngsters and evening classes for older people.
The commemorative plaque was the fruitt of efforts by the Benayahu and Blumenthal families in Israel to commemorate this historical institution. The unveiling ceremony was attended by Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas, representatives from the Israeli embassy to Lithuania and from the city of Kaunas and guest from overseas. Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yaatom performed a prayer.