The David Baazov Museum of the History of the Jews of Georgia opened an exhibition January 18 called “Lithuanian Jews behind the Iron Curtain” about the Lithuanian Jewish community during the initial Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940. Members of the local Jewish community, diplomatic personnel and lovers of history were invited to attend the opening of the moving and historically informative exhibition of photographs and historical documents. Lithuanian ambassador to Georgia Giedrius Puodžiūnas and Tblisi Jewish Community chairman Jamlet Khukhashvili opened the exhibit and the Georgian minister of culture, the minister of reconciliation and civil equality and the Israeli ambassador spoke. The main focus of the exhibit was on individual efforts to resist restrictions on freedom, identity and historical memory. The exhibit is based on primary sources and items from the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, documents from the Lithuanian Central Archives, the Lithuanian Special Archives and personal collections. The exhibit was prepared by the Vilna Gaon museum in Vilnius, 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 3
As shown by rather abundant surviving archival sources, memoirs and historiography, the pro-German (more accurately pro-Nazi, since in principle there existed no other Germany at that time operating in the international arena as real geopolitical power) concept and strategy of liberation from Soviet occupation and annexation and restoration of the Lithuanian state [1] began to form during the first days of the Soviet occupation, i.e., the end of June, 1940, mainly at the initiative of Lithuanian diplomat in Berlin colonel Kazys Škirpa, who, for several years, had maintained good and even friendly relations with high Nazi Party figures [2]. The process accelerated immediately upon the annexation of Lithuania. As Stalinist repression growing into state terror and radical socio-political reforms took hold in Lithuania [sic]. An organized anti-Soviet resistance quickly began to coalesce by early October of 1940 in Kaunas. The main author of this strategy and its main ideologue, however, was none other than Lithuania’s long-time military attaché in Berlin, colonel Kazys Škirpa. [3] It was at his initiative and due to his efforts that the Lithuanian Activist Front was established in Berlin on November 17, 1940. The LAF established headquarters in Lithuania in Kaunas and Vilnius. Besides Škirpa, the main LAF figures in Berlin and Lithuania were E. Galvanauskas, Klemensas Brunius, Antanas Maceina and Karolis Žalkauskas, Leonas Prapuolenis, Vytautas Bulvičius, Juozas Kilius, Adolfas Damušis, Jonas Pajaujis, K. Antanavičius, J. Vėbra and others. [4]
In cooperation and consultation with German/Nazi political, military and diplomatic figures–field marshals Wilhelm Keitel and Walter von Brauchitsh, chief of the Abwehr admiral Wilhelm Canaris and Abwehr agent in charge of contact with Baltic anti-Soviet resistance organizations lieutenant colonel Herman Gräbe–a program began to be drafted for liberation from Soviet occupation and annexation. Methods, tactics and political strategy for Lithuanian partisan warfare and insurgency against the Soviets were developed. [5]
You’re invited to a public meeting and discussion with Dr. Antony Polonsky (the Albert Abramson professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis and the chief historian of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw) called The History of the Jews in Lithuania, Poland and Russiaat 6:00 P.M. on Thursday, January 26, in the Jascha Heifetz Hall on the third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community (Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius).
An exhibit of photographs of upstanding and courageous Lithuanian Righteous Gentiles who rescued Jews from the Nazis, performing the highest service to their nation, will open at the Lithuanian National Radio and Television Gallery at Konarskio street no. 49 in Vilnius at 3:00 P.M. on Thursday, January 19. The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial authority and museum in Israel bestows the title Righteous among the Nations, or Righteous Gentile, on citizens of other countries who rescued Holocaust victims. This exhibition was shown earlier at the Lithuanian parliament. As readers will recall, the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s annual calendar features Lithuanian Righteous Gentiles this year as well, with a photograph of Lithuanian president Kazys Grinius and wife Kristina on the cover.
Writer Icchokas Meras, the winner of the Lithuanian National Prize for Art and Culture who was saved from the Holocaust by Lithuanians, wrote about the rescuers: “They were the blooms of the morality of the nation, the spiritual giants of the nation, no matter whether they were educated or simple people, whether they were illiterate, clergy who carried with them the true love of one’s neighbor or simple peasants broadcasting seed to the ground by hand. They, intentionally or unintentionally, opposed the destroying power of the Nazis and its tool: those who murdered. We should remember and honor their heroism based on conscience, goodness, love of one’s neighbor and simply human pity.”
January 27 marks the day in 1945 when the victims of the Auschwitz death camp were liberated. Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp set up by Nazi Germany where about 1.5 million people were murdered, including children, and approximately 1 million of the victims were Jews, according to the best estimates.
The Panevėžys Jewish Community will observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 26 at the “Sad Jewish Mother” statue on Memory Square at Vasario 16 street next to the Vyturis Pre-Gymnasium.
2:45 P.M. Wreath-laying ceremony at the statue “Ghetto Gate” (at the intersection of Klaipėdos and Krekenavos streets);
3:00 P.M. Forum dedicated to International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Panevėžys Jewish Community (Ramygalos street no. 18). Documentary film about the Holocaust.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is publishing a series of articles by the historian Algimantas Kasparavičius, a senior researcher at the Lithuanian History Institute.
Part 2
In the 20th century Lithuania without intermission lived through two bloody world wars and the psychological Cold War tensely lasting more than 40 years. The realities and outcomes of World War I corresponded with the political aspirations of the Lithuanians and set the groundwork for restoration of Lithuanian statehood. The confused ideology and daily horrors of World War II resulted in the loss of the Lithuanians’ nation-state, the de facto destruction of the first Republic of Lithuania. Hundreds of thousands of Red Army troops occupied Lithuania on June 15, 1940, And less than two months later, using the policy of total state terror and the services of local collaborators, the Stalinist Soviet Union annexed Lithuania along with her two northern neighbors.
Without going into all the factual trivia or fine details, or worse the political circumstances of alternate plans, looking at events in Lithuania generally and in the context of the entire political-ideological and geopolitical of Europe, we can say the Soviet occupation of the Republic of Lithuania and the forced, actual destruction of Lithuanian statehood in the summer of 1940 had two essential features.
Polish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman passed away at the age of 91 surrounded by family at his home in Leeds Monday following illness. Bauman was born in 1925 in Poznan (Posen) and in 1939 fled Nazi-occupied Poland for Soviet-occupied Poland. In the Communist Polish military Bauman did political education, took part in the battles for Kolberg (Kołobrzeg) and Berlin and worked in Communist security and espionage institutions.
Bauman took up sociology at the Warsaw Social Sciences Academy after the war and then transferred to philosophy at Warsaw University. He published his first book in 1960. Born to a non-observant Jewish family, Bauman left Poland during the anti-Semitic wave of 1968 and moved to Israel, teaching at Tel Aviv University. He soon moved from there to Leeds where he taught at Leeds University. Since the move to Leeds he wrote in English.
Bauman authored about 50 books and more than 100 articles on the topics of globalization, modernity, post-modernism, consumerism, morality and the Holocaust. His views concerning the Holocaust were extremely nuanced and included at times denouncements of Western Holocaust commemoration as a culture of death and a new religion with its own list of martyrs, “the Names,” intended to act as a sort of surrogate Judaism for the non-observant and Gentiles, or as a completely new religion but offering nothing of value to the human soul. Bauman’s most famous book, Modernity and the Holocaust (1989), draws upon Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno’s books on totalitarianism and the Enlightenment. Bauman argues he Holocaust should not be considered exclusively an event in Jewish history nor a regression to pre-modern barbarism. Instead, the Holocaust is deeply connected to modernity and its attempts to impose order. Procedural rationality, the division of labor into smaller and ever more specialized tasks, ever more refined taxa for species and seeing obedience as morally good all played a role in making the Holocaust possible. He said for this reason modern societies have not fully grasped the lessons of the Holocaust. It is viewed, according to Bauman’s metaphor, like a picture hanging on a wall, static, without utterance or meaning.
The late Lithuanian philosopher Leonidas Donskis counted Zygmunt Bauman among his friends and greatly respected his work. In 2007 Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas conferred an honorary doctoral degree upon Bauman.
Our condolences to his many friends and surviving family members.
The premiere of Ponar Oratorio is to open at 6:00 P.M. on January 25, 2017, at the Lithuanian National Philharmonic in Vilnius. The new musical work was composed by Max Fedorov. The author of the libretto is Edward Trusewicz. Different parts of the oratorio are to be performed by Maciej Nerkowski, the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic Choir and the Kaunas Symphony Orchestra. Martynas Staškus is to conduct.
“The motif of the oratorio is about the confession of a man who took the lives of many people at the Ponar forest. The executioner has kept silent for many years but has finally decided to show his blood-stained hands,” premiere producer Edward Trusewicz said.
The oratorio is to be performed in Polish with a running text translation in Lithuanian and English during the performance.
The Cultural Heritage Department has responded; their response is attached to this post.
The Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department will not do anything to remove the honors. They offer no explanations for how they come up with their decisions or why our facts were incorrect.
They say the plaque was installed in 1997 and belongs to the city, not the library. How do they know this when the city does not? Again they offer no backup.
Can you imagine a television program where the MC is a former speaker of the House of Representatives and where a former democrat congresswoman screams “sieg heil?” No. The only one above the figures who have the mandate of the nation is Mr. God Himself. Despite that, your former elected speaker of parliament, the closes ally of then-prime minister Kubilius and the nighttime tax coup of the liberals, hosts a program where a former member of his Resurrection Party jumps up, gives the Hitler salute and screams: “Jew! Jew! Jew!” The former speaker of the very European parliament didn’t even bat an eyelash.
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.
VILNIUS, January 8, BNS–The presidents of Lithuania and Israel on Sunday underlined the importance of preserving the heritage of Lithuanian Jews and of expanding business ties as they marked 25 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
“Everywhere you look, the ties between our two nations get deeper and stronger, the olive and oak, growing as one,” Dalia Grybauskaite and Reuven Rivlin said in a joint statement.
The two presidents underscored the need to ensure the Holocaust never happens again through remembrance and education.
“We have to commemorate the past by honoring the innocent victims and the righteous, by studying the perpetrators and collaborators as well as by building bilateral relations based on friendship and mutual respect,” they said.
Grybauskaite and Rivlin said: “There are numerous areas in which the relations between Lithuania and Israel are already quite strong and many more spheres in which the partnership could and will be expanded.”
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.
