History of the Jews in Lithuania

Lithuanian Liberal Union Party: Worst Wave of Anti-Semitism in 20 Years, at Least on Facebook

Lithuanian Liberal Union Party: Worst Wave of Anti-Semitism in 20 Years, at Least on Facebook

The Lithuanian news site delfi.lt published an opinion piece on July 7 co-authored by Lithuanian MP and head of the Liberal Union Party Eugenijus Gentvilas and Marijus Gailius, the party’s press representative, outlining patterns they found leading to anti-Semitism on facebook among Lithuanians:

Disinformation Conglomerate: How Anti-Vaxers Become Anti-Semites

A strong wave of anti-Semitism has swept over the country over the last two months, whose dimensions and harm are comparable to what took place 20 years ago when publisher Vitas Tomkus published his series of articles in his newspaper Respublika called “They Rule the World” back in February of 2003. This time, though, the anti-Semitic attack is probably more dangerous, because it isn’t being sown by a single unethical writer, but by a large group of people, be they evil-minded or naïve, on the social networks. Furthermore the anti-Semitic campaign continues and there is no end in sight.

At the tip of the spear of the anti-Semitic narrative crafted and continuing to be promoted is member of parliament Remigijus Žemaitaitis. On May 9 he posted and later repeated a line of Lithuanian folk anti-Semitism. Since then the MP has posted more than 10 posts and entries disparaging the Holocaust and, without an history education, tendentiously “researching” the role play by people of Jewish ethnicity in the commission of crimes against the Lithuanian people. Historian Nerijus Šepetys provided a frank assessment of the politician’s version of history: “He will say anything at all and mixes it all up.” On July 4 the parliamentary faction leaders from the ruling coalition parties condemned Žemaitaitis’s “intentional and directed anti-Semitic attacks which trivialize the Holocaust, hatred sown for one ethnicity and provocation of public and national disorder.” They called for a procedure to be initiated to make an inquiry into the MP’s alleged breaking of his oath of office and his constitutional accountability.

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Congratulations to Lara Lempertienė

Congratulations to Lara Lempertienė

Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda presented the Lithuanian medal “For Merit” to Lara Lempertienė, director of the Judaica Research Center of the Lithuanian National Library, on July 6, Lithuania’s State Day, Coronation of Mindaugas Day. She received the award in recognition of her work at the Center going beyond textual research and including exhibits, publications, presentations at international conferences and presenting the Litvak cultural legacy in Lithuania and abroad. The Lithuanian Jewish Community congratulates Lara on yet another Lithuanian state award and wish her continued success.

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Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and chairwoman Faina Kukliansky wish a very happy birthday to Algirdas Malcas, chairman of the Vilnius Jerusalem of Lithuania Jewish Community. May you always remain so energetic and full of ideas for fostering and commemorating our rich Jewish cultural legacy. May you remain in good health and be filled with the joy of life. Mazl tov. Bis 120!

Honored Guests Visit Panevėžys Jewish Community

Honored Guests Visit Panevėžys Jewish Community

Williams Tcath, the president of the Gendel/Hendel family association, and a group of fellow travellers visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community this June. His grandfather Salomon Hendel was a merchant of pre-made clothing and died in 1916. His descendants have banded together to form an association of families who left Panevėžys after 1919 with 416 members.

Mr. Tcath looked through the archives and photo albums of the Panevėžys Jewish Community, and left an inscription in the guest book.

The point of their trip to Panevėžys was to collect information and photographs concerning the families belonging to their association and to make known the contributions made by these families to life in Panevėžys at that time. Members of the delegation had numerous documents which they gave to the Panevėžys Jewish Community. They only had one day in Panevėžys and then travelled on to Vilnius.

Israeli Ambassador to Lithuania Commemorates Holocaust Victims in Jurbarkas

Israeli Ambassador to Lithuania Commemorates Holocaust Victims in Jurbarkas

Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg-Silverstein visited the western Lithuanian town of Jurbarkas, or Yurburg in Yiddish, on July 3, according to the Jurbarkas Regional Administration webpage jurbarkas.lt.

The ambassador began her visit at the V. Grybas Museum where Jurbarkas regional mayor Skirmantas Mockevičius and museum director Rasa Grybaitė received her.

At the Jurbarkas Regional Library the ambassador met with regional administration director Rūta Vančienė, culture and sports department director Aušra Baliukynaitė, senior department specialist Akvilė Sadauskienė and library director Rasida Kalinauskienė. They discussed opportunities for cooperative work.

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Greetings on Coronation of Mindaugas Day

Greetings on Coronation of Mindaugas Day

Greetings on Lithuania’s Coronation of Mindaugas Day, or State Day, July 6.

For centuries Jews and Lithuanians with others have created and built Lithuania, and have worked hard for the country’s welfare and success.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and chairwoman Faina Kukliansky send our greetings to everyone on this holiday and wish you peace, happiness and concord.

Lithuanian MP Scoffs at Ultimatum: Apologize or Face Impeachment

Lithuanian MP Scoffs at Ultimatum: Apologize or Face Impeachment

Parliamentary whips of the parties in the ruling coalition issued an ultimatum Tuesday to MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis to either apologize for anti-Semitic statements he made on facebook before the NATO summit meeting in Vilnius on July 11 or face impeachment and removal from parliament.

Opposition parties refused to sign on to the statement.

Žemaitaitis said in response: “I don’t see why I should apologize.”

“They can go bravely forward and initiate my impeachment, but let’s wait and see what the European Court of Human Rights and the people have to say about that,” he added.

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Classical Music Concert

Classical Music Concert

Photo: Violinist Atis Bankas and pianist Victoria Korchinskaya-Kogan.

The Vilnius Jerusalem of the North Jewish Community and the Lithuanian Jewish Community invite you to a free concert of classical music performed by violinist Atis Bankas and pianist Victoria Korchinskaya-Kogan.

Born in Kaunas, Atis Bankas moved to Canada in 1981 and joined the national symphony orchestra in Toronto. Korchinskaya-Kogan is the heiress of a family of famous violinists and began playing piano at the age of 5, performing a public concert at the age of 6 in Moscow.

Time: 6:30 P.M., Tuesday, July 18
Place: Lithuanian Jewish Community, Vilnius

Nazi Hunter’s Long Search for Hidden War Criminals

Nazi Hunter’s Long Search for Hidden War Criminals

Photo: Efraim Zuroff and Simon Wiesenthal at the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Photo courtesy the Simon Wiesenthal Center

Efraim Zuroff, an American Israeli historian and Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), has been tracking down thousands of Nazi war criminals hiding out in all corners of the world since 1978. In a phone call from Jerusalem where he currently resides he told the Jewish Press: “I’m the only Jew in the world who prays for the good health of the Nazis. Of course, only the ones who can be brought to justice.”

Zuroff was instrumental in getting laws passed in Canada, Australia and Great Britain which enabled prosecution of Nazi war criminals who came to those countries under false pretenses. He’s been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in Serbia and granted honorary citizenship of the Serbian city of Novi Sad [bombed by NATO in 1999 in contradiction to the vote in the UN Security Council] for exposing a Hungarian police officer who rounded up thousands of Serbian civilians and was accused of taking part in executing them. He has also been honored with the Order of Duke Trpimir for his work combating Holocaust revisionism in Croatia, and received the Gold Medal for Merit in Serbia for exposing the truth about the suffering of World War II victims.

Born in 1948 in Brooklyn to an Orthodox family, Zuroff’s yeshiva upbringing was extremely important to him. He explained: “I’m from a family of people who devoted their lives to Yeshiva University.” Zuroff received his PhD in Holocaust history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem after graduating from YU with honors in history. The focus of his dissertation was the Vaad Ha-Hatzalah committee who rescued Orthodox rabbis and yeshiva students from the Holocaust, about which he later wrote a book titled “Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States: The Activities of the Vaad Ha-Hatzalah Rescue Committee, 1939-1945.”

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Garage Victims Remembered

Garage Victims Remembered

The annual commemoration of the Jewish victims tortured and murdered at the Lietūkis garage in Kaunas took place last week at the site on Miško street with kaddish performed for the dead as well at the Jewish cemeteries in the Slobodka and Žaliakalnis neighborhoods.

The Lietūkis garage massacre became one of the most notorious episodes in the Holocaust in Lithuania. Jewish men were rounded up at random and brought to the automobile service station were they were attacked with picks, crowbars and shovels, and water houses were stuffed down their throats and turned on till their stomachs burst. Around 68 Jews were killed there after enduring hours of torture.

According to German statistics from 3,500 to 4,000 Jews were murdered in Kaunas between June 24 and June 30, 1941, but the peculiarity of the Lietūkis garage atrocities was that they were committed by local Lithuanians rather than Nazis. German soldiers appeared only as spectators and didn’t intervene. The names of most victims and perpetrators remain unknown. The German Wehrmacht photographer who was there recalled:

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Holocaust Victims Commemorated in Palanga

Holocaust Victims Commemorated in Palanga

A ceremony to commemorate the Jews murdered in the Holocaust was held in Palanga on June 27 at the monument in Birutė Park. Jews settled in Palanga in the latter half of the 15th century. A Hebra Kadish or Jewish funeral society was established there in 1487. In the 17th century Jews comprised a significant section of society there and contributed heavily to the development of the city. In 1540 King Sigismund I the Elder granted a charter to the Jews to build the first synagogue and other religious structures there. The Jewish cemetery appeared that same year. In 1662 around 40 Jews called Palanga home. In 1693 Palanga’s Jews received the right to purchase and own land, build houses and engage in trade. Jews pioneered the tourist industry there with property and room rentals, hospitals and boarding houses. These economic activities led to the city becoming a summer resort destination. Palanga had a Jewish Bank, Hebrew language schools or heder and the synagogue. When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Jews were rounded up and killed en masse in Palanga. Hundreds were murdered with more than 300 individuals murdered on June 27 and around that number again on October 12.

World Premiere at Vilna Ghetto Judenrat to Celebrate Vilnius’s 700th Birthday

World Premiere at Vilna Ghetto Judenrat to Celebrate Vilnius’s 700th Birthday

Contemporary composer Michael Gordon will present the premiere of his work Resonance in the courtyard of the Youth and Lėlė Theaters accessible at Arklių street no. 5 at 9:00 P.M. on July 5. The courtyard was the home of the Judenrat in the Vilnius ghetto, the Jewish council set up by the Germans. The composer’s family came from Vilnius. The composer will give a talk the next day at Rūdininkai square across Rūdininkų street from the Judenrat at 2:00 P.M. on Thursday, July 6.

Tickets for the concert may be purchased here: https://shorturl.at/gE178

Prosecutor Seeks Expert Opinion on MP’s Anti-Semitic Statements

Prosecutor Seeks Expert Opinion on MP’s Anti-Semitic Statements

by Milena Andrukaitytė, BNS, June 28, 2023

Lithuanian prosecutor general Nida Grunskienė says the decision on whether controversial statements by Lithuanian MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis might have sown discord can only be made after receiving conclusions from experts.

“There are two pre-trial investigations launched. They haven’t been combined at this time, tasks have been assigned to experts and in one case expertise has been requested from the Court’s Expertise Center in order to determine if the statements by the member of parliament is incitement to hatred of a certain group of people. Only after receiving the finding, the expertise protocol, can the prosecutor make a decision,” Grunskienė told reporters at the Lithuanian parliament Wednesday.

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Roaring 20s Return to the LJC

Roaring 20s Return to the LJC

The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites those aged 18 and over to an evening of entertainment based on the idea of a return to the roaring 20s, or at least the style and elegance displayed in public in the period between the two world wars. The musical repertoire will reflect the period. For more information, contact mishel.katrina@gmail.com or dovydas.sotland@gmail.com. You may register here:

https://forms.gle/ur5qqFjQHKXxDdX68

When: 7:00 P.M., July 5.
Where: LJC, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius.
Dress: interwar period, flapper girl or otherwise.

Lithuanian Archivist Seeks Lost Documents among Cape Town Litvaks

Lithuanian Archivist Seeks Lost Documents among Cape Town Litvaks

Lithuanian state radio and television reports on efforts by Juozapas Blažiūnas, the director of the Lithuanian Literature and Art Archive, for making a working trip to South Africa following expeditions to Australia and New Zealand as well as Argentina and Uruguay to seek a legacy of lost documents, netting the archive over 800 kilograms of paper.

In an article entitled “Kraštas, kuriame ‘pinigai semiami saujomis,’ arba, ką PAR [sic] veikė 2015 žemaičių” [The Country Where ‘Money Is Taken by the Fist-Fulls,’ or, What Were 2,015 Žemaitijans Doing in the Republic [sic] of South Africa?], chief archivist Juozapas Blažiūnas writes:

“Why did we travel there? About 90% of the 80,000 Jews living in South Africa are of Lithuanian origin (the so-called Litvaks), and this is the largest Litvak community in the world. And it wasn’t just Jews, Lithuanians also travelled to the distant country seeking success, for example, according to the newspaper Lietuva, from 1892 to 1895 some 2,015 Žemaitijans [an ethnic subgroup in Lithuania] travelled to South Africa just through the port of Bremen [Germany] alone.”

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Litvak Artists in Paris

Litvak Artists in Paris

Lithuanian state radio and television reports on a new exhibit in Vilnius called Litvak Artists in Paris, demonstrating for the first time here a comprehensive exhibit of works of art by the Litvak ensemble living in Paris before and between the two world wars. Lithuanian state media spoke with Litvak art expert and curator of the exhibit Vilma Grandinskaitė, PhD.

Q.: What story does Litvak Artists in Paris tell?

A. The exhibit talks about the Litvak artists, the wave of Lithuanian Jewish migration to Paris, with Paris the destination most desired by artists at that time. We can differentiate three different waves of migration. The first was in the latter half of the 19th century with Mark Antokolski, the first Jewish sculptor from our Lithuania. Antokolski set up a studio in Paris. Many artists soon flocked to it, his followers. The second wave was students from the Vilnius School of Drawing, including Marc Chagall, Michel Kikoïne, Jacques Lipchitz, Emmanuel Mane-Katz and Chaïm Soutine. Gradually with Chagall the news spread of Paris as the Promised Land, a Mecca of the arts, and one after another artist began moving there. The third wave involves Lithuania in the interwar period when Arbit Blat, Max Band [Maksas Bandas] and Jacob Messenblum [Jacques Missene] left.

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Library Named after Litvak Novelist in Home Town

Library Named after Litvak Novelist in Home Town

The public library in Jonava, Lithuania, has been renamed the Grigoriy Kanovitch library. The late Litvak writer came from Jonava originally.

At the naming ceremony the writer’s son, Sergejus Kanovičius, also a writer, quoted from an interview made with his father several years ago:

Q.: If you could be anywhere in an instant, which location do you hold most dear?
A.: I’d go back to my childhood. To Jonava, on the banks of the Vilija [Neris River].

Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky both attended the ceremony at the town hall as well. Both women thanked the city council and the library for the name-change. The library awards a Gigoriiy Kanovitch literary prize annually.

“A few days ago my father would have celebrated his 94th birthday and tomorrow would be exactly 82 years since he and his family were forced to leave Jonava, as he believed, for life. I am extraordinarily grateful that after so many years you have brought his memory back to Jonava, to his childhood on the banks of the Vilija,” his son said.

ICAN Issues Travel Advisory for Vilnius NATO Summit 2023

ICAN Issues Travel Advisory for Vilnius NATO Summit 2023

Advisory Includes Interactive Maps and Guides to Ensure Culturally Sensitive Visit to Vilnius

June 21, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C.–The Israeli-American Civic Action Network (ICAN), a leading U.S.-based non-governmental organization, is launching a culturally sensitive website and issuing a travel advisory for attendees of the NATO Summit 2023 in Vilnius, Lithuania. The advisory aims to provide attendees with crucial information about certain sensitive historical sites within the city, fostering an environment of intersectionality and understanding.

“ICAN is committed to promoting understanding and respectful engagement during the NATO Summit,” said Dillon Hosier, ICAN CEO. “Our travel advisory and website resources are designed to help attendees navigate Vilnius in an informed and sensitive manner, acknowledging the internalized oppression that can result from historical distortions.”

The travel advisory identifies several locations in Vilnius associated with Holocaust denial and distortion. These sites, which include monuments and plaques, present a distorted view of historical events, leading to a dangerously corrosive form of cultural appropriation further undermining Lithuania’s already vulnerable Jewish population. ICAN encourages attendees to avoid visiting these locations during their stay in Vilnius to ensure focus remains on the important discussions and collaborations of the NATO Summit.

Full advisory here.