Members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community remembered the victims of World War II on May 9. Thank you to all the heroes who fought the Nazis from 1939 to 1945 for the sake of freedom and peace, for our future and for the opportunity given us today to take joy in each new day.
On May 9, Israel will celebrate Yom Yerushalayim. Tell us more about this day and its significance.
Prior to the founding of the State of Israel, Jerusalem had different rulers, but it was always part of the prayer and the identity of the Jewish people. We have always called Jerusalem our eternal capital.
All the synagogues of the world are built in such a way that the prayers are directed towards Jerusalem, and during our two most important festivals–Pesach and Yom Kipur—we wish to meet each other in Jerusalem next year. Today, Jerusalem is also mentioned in our anthem: “The Land of Zion and Jerusalem” (in Hebrew, Zion is used as a synonym for the city of Jerusalem and the land of Israel).
On June 27, 1967, Israel won the Six-Day War and regained its historic capital, Jerusalem, which was later recognized as the official capital of Israel by the country’s parliament. Twenty years later, on the 28th day of the month of Iyar in 1998, Yom Yerushalayim was declared a public holiday.
On May 6 the Atomic Bunker military heritage museum in Kaunas put on display three exhibits featuring items from museum founder Julius Urbaitis’s personal collection which he called a part of the history of Kaunas as the Lithuanian provisional capital in the interwar Republic.
The three exhibits are:
1. Goods and items from the D. Rozmarin manufactory and colonial goods [dried and canned goods and non-perhishables in general] store;
2. Ironworks and smithing equipment from the heirs of B. Rabinovitch;
3. Charming amateur and academic works commemorating anniversary of grand duke Vytautas the Great celebrated in 1930.
Kaunas mayor Matijošaitis, LJC chairwoman Kukliansky, Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Žakas, Volfas Engelman brewery general director Horbačauskas, Rūta company director Pridotkas and other honored guests attended the opening of the three exhibits.
Our respect and gratitude go to Julius Urbaitis for his concern for Jewish history and the contribution Jews made in establishing the first independent Republic of Lithuania. LJC chairwoman Kukliansky presented Urbaitis the commemorative medallion of the Lithuanian Year of the Vilna Gaon and Litvak History for this initiative of his and its implementation.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky personally visited World War II veterans in their homes to congratulate them on Victory Day. There are only six such veterans known to be resident in Vilnius. Warm wishes and congratulations to RIva Spiz, Aleksandr Asovski, Boris Lipnicki, Fania Brantsovksaya, Eliziejus Rimanas and Tatyana Arkhipova-Efros.
Holocaust survivor and historian and Jewish partisan Yitzhak Arad died May 6 at the age of 95 in Israel. He was one of the founders and the first director of the Yad Vashem memorial institute in Jerusalem. He also achieved the rank of brigadier general in the IDF. He was born in Švenčionys (Shventsian), Lithuania, in 1926, moved with his parents to Warsaw and escaped back into Lithuania with his sister at the onset of World War II. He escaped the Švenčionys ghetto and joined partisans in the forests in Belarus. In 1945 he went to Israel where he fought in four wars and was later appointed director of military education. He served in the Israeli military for 25 years and was appointed to head Yad Vashem in 1972. He earned a doctorate at Tel Aviv University and taught Jewish history, authoring numerous books about the Holocaust.
Our deepest condolences to his family and friends for their loss.
A small, closed ceremony will be held at noon on May 7 to commemorate the victims of World War II at the Sudervės road Jewish cemetery in Vilnius. LJC chairwoman Fainia Kukliansky, LJC representatives and foreign diplomats are scheduled to attend a wreath-laying ceremony at monuments commemorating ghetto victims and lost children. Because of wide-spread fears of viral contamination the ceremony won’t be open to the public and no further official commemoration ceremony to mark Victory Day will be held in Vilnius this year.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community sincerely thanks Team 10 of the King Mindaugas Riflemen of the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union for heeding our call for help and turning out to clean up the Sudervės road Jewish cemetery in Vilnius.
Thank you!
Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis visited the site of the Lost Shtetl Museum being built in Šeduva in central Lithuania May 4.
“The future modern museum in Šeduva will better showcase the extraordinarily rich history and legacy of the Litvaks for Lithuanians and the world. I sincerely thank the initiators and executors of the project,” he said.
The private initiative is supported by the Šeduva Foundation created by Jews with roots in the town and is being carried out in cooperation with the Radviliškis regional administration.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky sends a big thank-you to all the students, parents and family members of students who responded to the call by the principal and teachers of Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium to come help clean up the Jewish cemetery on Sudervės road in Vilnius. The winter wasn’t kind to the cemetery and visitors have been few. Despite the cool weather and the fact it was Mother’s Day in Lithuania, many helpers arrived to pick up garbage and fallen branches and generally tidy the graveyard up for spring in the Lithuanian tradition of talka, a joint volunteer effort to put the environment in order. Students at Sholem Aleichem can also use the experience to get credits now required for community service, so to those of you who couldn’t make it, don’t be shy next time!
Thank you!
That’s the question the news service of the LNK television channel in Lithuania faced Friday when they were investigating the case of a mysterious Holocaust site which vanished somewhere along the Kaunas-Vilnius highway during reconstruction.
The mass murder site in the Strošiunas forest, aka Vladikiškės forest, near Bačkionys village in the Kaišiadorys region is the mass grave of about 1,800 women and children from Žiežmariai, Žasliai, Kaišiadorys, Rumšiškės and the surrounding areas murdered on August 29, 1941, according to Lithuania’s Cultural Heritage Department. The Lithuanian Holocaust Atlas says the number was 784 people from the same locations, with other, larger mass murder and mass grave sites in the same immediate area.
The paved road to the Holocaust memorial was fenced across and the sign announcing it as a mass murder site was removed about six months ago during reconstruction of Lithuania’s busiest highway. This is the only access to the site in the Kaišadorys region near Žiežmariai. LNK said they received a complaint from the Lithuanian Jewish Community and looked into it. After receiving mixed comments from Lithuania’s Department of Vehicle Routes Directorate, the fencing blocking access was removed within two hours–just in time for the evening news broadcast–with the promise to replace the road sign marking the Jewish mass grave in the immediate future.
LRT.lt
The Lithuanian Culture Institute and the Contemporary Arts Center in Vilnius are preparing to show a video documentary called “Jewish Vilnius in the Work of Artist Eglė Ridikaitė,” the Lithuanian Culture Institute announced in a press release.
The story directed by Mikas Žukauskas looks at the work of Lithuanian National Culture and Art Prize recipient Eglė Ridikaitė and at her artistic method of confronting difficult topics. Her cycle of paintings “We Are Guests” pictures fragments of the Great Synagogue in Vilnius uncovered by archaeologists and her sense of space within the razed synagogue. This is one of the rare cases where Lithuanian contemporary art addresses Jewish historical memory and heritage. Her works have drawn international attention.
The premiere of the short on April 28 will include a discussion titled “In Jewish Vilnius and Elsewhere: Contemporary Art and Historical Memory.” Participants will include professor of architecture Amnon Bar Or and the artist Dora Zlek Levy from Israel, Vilnius Museum director Rasa Antanavičiūtė and art history professor Adakhiar Zevi from Israel. Architecture historian Ūla Tornau, cultural attaché to the United Kingdom, will moderate.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
April 23 is the traditional date of the birthday of the Vilna Gaon, the most outstanding scholar of sacred Jewish texts in the modern era. Last year Lithuania was supposed to celebrate his 300th birthday with fanfare, but public events were canceled due to fears for public health.
YIVO’s Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe says the Gaon, also known by the acronym GRA, was a spiritual giant, an example to future generations, a source of inspiration and the central figure in Litvak culture.
Hirsh Glik authored the words to the Jewish partisan hymn Zog Nit Keynmol. He was born on April 24, ca. 1921 according to the US Holocaust Museum, in Vilnius and belonged to the Yungvald circle of Yiddish poets. Later imprisoned in the Vilnius ghetto, he and fellow ghetto inmate and Vilnius native Rokha Margolis, both youth members of the FPO Jewish partisans group operating there, set his words to music and presented the song to the FPO leadership. He is thought to have been killed in 1944.
The March issue of the magazine “Kaunas pilnas kultūros” [Kaunas Full of Culture] featured the history of the Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club.
Gercas Žakas, chairman of the Kaunas Jewish Community, wrote on his facebook profile:
“I believe a number of Kaunas residents have discovered and come to love the publication ‘Kaunas pilnas kultūros’ which is published monthly in a small format but with rich content (incidentally, it’s free! While they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, if you get this magazine with your lunch at a café, it’s worth the cost of your meal 
).
“Sports was the theme for March, and I had the honor of being interviewed as well. We spoke about youth, soccer, the Jewish community, the history of the Makabi Athletics Club and about its resurrection in Lithuania. I am grateful to Kotryna Lingienė for the initiative, to Monika Balčiauskaitė for the sincere discussion and to Arvydas Čiukšys for his photographs and warm communication. I was echanted by these enthusiastic young people who are keen on their country’s history and seek to show the multiculturalism which enriches it.”
Berelis Vaineris passed away April 19. He was born in 1923 and was a veteran of World War II, having served in the 16th Lithuanian Division. Our deepest condolences go to entire his family suffering this painful loss and to his wife Jelena and son Raimondas.
The BBC television interview program HARDtalk interviewed granddaughter of Lithuanian Nazi Jonas Noreika on April 16, 2021, and has been airing the episode this week.
The description for the episode called “Silvia Foti: When truth trumps family loyalty. Silvia Foti on grappling with family responsible for the Holocaust” reads:
“Silvia Foti’s grandfather was a Lithuanian man hailed as heroic patriot who paid with his life resisting the Soviets. But according to her, Jonas Noreika was no hero–he had the blood of thousands of Jews on his hands. She’s chosen to speak out, angering many in Lithuania. What happens when truth trumps family loyalty?”
Interviewer Stephen Sackur pressed Silvia Foti for documentary proof her grandfather was responsible for the murder of around 1,800 in Plungė–the entire Jewish population–in 1941. Foti went further and said she had reliable documents and sources showing Noreika was responsible for mass murders of Jews in Plungė, Telšiai and Šiauliai. Sackur was interested in Foti’s journey from that of a proud Lithuanian-American to the point where she had to confront Holocaust crimes within her immediate family. Foti countered the problem was much more widespread than her family, that the perpetrators and their descendants were still covering up the Holocaust in present-day Lithuania, and cited the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania as one party involved in the nation-wide cover-up. She said her and Grant Gochin’s legal battles to have the plaque commemorating Noreika on the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences building in Vilnius was really a battle for the soul of Lithuania. Sackur asked whether Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center was correct in calling Lithuania the locomotive in the train of Holocaust distortion in Eastern Europe. Foti admitted she didn’t know the situation in Eastern Europe in general, but that this was possible.
An audio recording of the interview is available here and here.
Photo: The Jewish cemetery on Sudervės road in Vilnius
Following winter and the spring thaw, we’ve noticed the effects of the weather and neglect, with toppled trees and fallen branches having knocked over several headstones, and there are fewer visitors due to restrictions on movement. Now that the quarantine restrictions have been eased, please visit your relatives’ graves and put them in order if need be and to the extent you are able.
We are asking those who are tending to graves to dispose of used candle containers, leftover plastic and other waste at the places intended for this. Also, if you leave tools or other items at the grave used to put sites in order, please make sure these don’t intrude on others or detract from the general tone of the cemetery. We would also like to invite people in charge of the following graves to take special care because the headstones have suffered in the last storm and so far no one has done anything to put them back in order:
Малинкович Лев Вениаминович 1897-1974
Шульман Гирш Абрамович 1881-1978
Fridman Chaja Zlata Jantelevna 1921-1978
Бер Иосиф Беняминович 1902-1985
Шмуйлович Рива Янкелевна 1903-1978
Бунис Люся 1922-1964
Серебрянный Лёня 1973-1975
For more information, contact the Vilnius Jewish Cemetery Administration, Sudervės raod no. 28, Vilnius, tel. +370 670 25750
Milan Cheronskis passed away April 14. He was born in 1937 and grew up on Sakhalin Island in the Soviet Far East. Our deepest condolences to his wife Svetlana, daughter Polina and many, many friends within the Jewish community.
Cheronskis was a director at the Yiddish People’s Theater and a journalist. He was graduated from the Leningrad State Theater, Music and Comedy Institute in 1964. He directed the Yiddish People’s Theater in Vilnius from 1979 to 1999.
Besides serving on the board of directors of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Milan was the force behind the Community’s long-time press organ, Jerusalem of Lithuania, which was at one time published in four languages simultaneously. The newspaper was published from 1989 to 2010. Following the newspaper’s cancellation and his retirement, Milan continued to fight against Holocaust distortion and the falsification of Lithuanian history in the press and on the internet.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community in cooperation with the Vilnius city municipality will light up three bridges in the Lithuanian capital on the evening of April 14 to celebrate the 73rd Israeli independence day.
From Wednesday evening to sundown on Thursday blue and white lights will illuminate the White, Green and King Mindaugas Bridges. These colors were chosen for the flag of the state of Israel by Dovid Volfson who was born in the small town of Darbėnai in Lithuania in the mid-19th century.
“Around the world Vilnius is known as the Jerusalem of the North because of the important Jewish cultural and historical figures who were born, grew up and studied here. A number of them actively contributed to the creation of fortification of the independent state of Israel, forging extremely strong and deep ties between Vilnius and Israel and its people,” LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said.
Photo: Restored Jewish cemetery in Šeduva, Lithuania.
Mazl tov to Maceva, the Litvak Cemetery Catalogue, which is celebrating a milestone: ten years of activity documenting, cleaning, digitizing, and restoring Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania.
“Beit Olam, cemeteries are the house of living. It is the place were our memory comes to life,” the non-profit organization, established in 2011, said in an anniversary statement on its facebook page.