Holocaust

WJC President: We Must Never Forget Babi Yar Massacre

Babi Yar: Kodėl Holokausto aukų atminimo išlieka svarbus?
by Menachem Rephun

World Jewish Congress leaders recently visited Ukraine in connection with the 75th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre, in which over 33,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis in 1941.

“Babi Yar is one of the most infamous pieces of ground in the entire world,” World Jewish Congress leader Ronald Lauder said. “Tens of thousands of our people were killed there for only one reason: because they were Jewish.”

Lauder noted Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis to murder Kiev’s Jews.

“While Babi Yar was organized by the Nazis, there were willing helpers in the Ukrainian militia,” Lauder said. “This happened all across Europe. In almost every occupied country, local people helped the Germans round up their Jews.”

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NCSEJ in Ukraine: Remembering Babi Yar

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KIEV, UKRAINE September 29, 2016–Today the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCSEJ) joined with government leaders from the U.S. and Europe and members of the Jewish community from around the world at an official ceremony to remember the 1941 massacre of Jews by Nazi forces at the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, Ukraine.

A delegation of over twenty NCSEJ officers and board members traveled to Ukraine this week to participate in the ceremony and attend commemorations relating to the Babi Yar anniversary.

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Babi Yar Anniversary Marked in Ukraine

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The Ukraine Thursday marked the 75th anniversary of the murder of about 34,000 Jews during the Holocaust in a Kiev suburb.

The Babi Yar mass murder site is a ravine in the capital Kiev and has been subject to intense controversy within the Ukraine about the role Ukrainians played in the Holocaust.

Story in Lithuanian here.

Lithuanian Jewish Community Position on the Reconstruction of the Great Synagogue in Vilnius

The following is an official letter sent by the Lithuanian Jewish Community to concerned government agencies.

September 27, 2016

To:
Remigijus Šimašius
mayor, city of Vilnius

Alminas Mačiulis
Government chancellor

Šarūnas Birutis
minister of culture

Linas Linkevičius
minister of foreign affairs

Diana Varnaitė
director, Cultural Heritage Department under the Ministry of Culture

On the Reconstruction of the Great Synagogue

As public interest has grown recently in the history and cultural legacy of Lithuanian Jews (Litvaks) and specifically regarding artifacts uncovered at the site of the Great Synagogue in Vilnius, we feel it our duty to again present our view, that of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, regarding the issue of the conservation of surviving parts and the possible reconstruction of the Great Synagogue, a building with extraordinary significance to the Lithuanian and the global Jewish community.

As we have said before many times, we support all meaningful initiatives to preserve, protect and commemorate the legacy and heritage of the Jews of Lithuania, but we do not support unreasonable projects to rebuild non-existing buildings which are carried out in the name of Jews. It seems that is what we are facing again in the idea developing over many years by certain government institutions and possibly including hidden business structures to rebuild the Great Synagogue complex in Vilnius.

In 2015 the municipal government enterprise Vilniaus Planas was commissioned by the municipality’s Urban Development Department to prepare draft construction proposals for a memorial to the Great Synagogue under pre-project proposals submitted by the architect Tzila Zak. The terms of reference of the planning task itself revealed the client’s attitude towards the rebuilding of the Great Synagogue as an attractve real estate development project: the primary task presented to planners was to submit a list of the buildings proposed for rebuilding, to name the rooms and premises slated for reconstruction and to calculate floor space.

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News from the Interwar Period in Jewish Lithuanian Newspapers

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Editorial board of Di Yiddishe Stime, 1924. Sitting, right to left: Nathan Goren, Roza Khazan-Feigin, Moshe Cohen, David Cohen, Reuven Rubinstein, Moritz Helman, Rafael Khasman. Standing, right to left: Ya’akov Feigin, Israel Zhufer, Moshe Rabinowitz, Eliezer Shibolet. Photo courtesy jewishgen.com

Jews were the largest ethnic and religious minority in Lithuania in the period between the two world wars. The Jewish culture of Lithuania, just like that of Eastern Europe as a whole, was multifaceted and diverse, and the Yiddish language was an important vehicle of communication. When Isaac Bashevis Singer received the Nobel Prize for Literature in December of 1978, he wasn’t just speaking in vain when he said: “There are some who call Yiddish a dead language, but so was Hebrew called for two thousand years. It has been revived in our time in a most remarkable, almost miraculous way. … It is a fact that the classics of Yiddish literature are also the classics of the modern Hebrew literature. Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and Cabbalists—rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget.

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Lithuanian President Awards Rescuers of Jews

VILNIUS, September 28, BNS–Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė Wednesday awarded nearly 50 persons with Life Saving Crosses for rescuing Jews from the Holocaust during World War II.

The majority, 44, were awarded posthumously.

Speaking at the ceremony at the President’s Office, Grybauskaite invited all participants to stand in a minute of silence to honor the memory of Israel’s former president Shimon Peres who passed away earlier that day.

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Shimon Peres: An Exceptional Intellect and a True Litvak

Sh.Peresas buvo išskirtinio intelekto žmogus ir tikras litvakas – F.Kukliansky

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky says late Israeli president Shimon Peres was a person of exceptional intellect and always stressed his ties with Lithuania.

“It’s important for us, for Lithuanian Jews, that he was one of our own, we always considered him a Litvak and he considered himself a Litvak. After all, he came from Vishnev, a village 70 kilometers from Vilnius in what is now Belarus but which was Lithuanian territory then. It was so nice for us that our countryman was so intelligent, so educated, such an erudite, and could speak on any and every topic even at a venerable age. Our entire community is in mourning. We know human life has an end, but when you encounter death, great sadness overtakes you,” Kukliansky said.

Peres visited Lithuania three years ago and Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė met him when she visited Israel last year. This last spring he was decorated with the Lithuanian order of the Great Cross “For Contributions to Lithuania.”

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Names of Holocaust Victims Read in Ukmergė

II Antakalnyje ir Ukmergėje skambėjo nužudytų žydų vardai
Ukmergė residents read 2,336 names of Holocaust victims at the old Jewish cemetery

gzeme.lt

The sixth annual reading of the names of Holocaust victims took place in Lithuania September 22 and 23 and this year Ukmergė (Vilkomir) joined the commemoration. Names were read at the edge of the Pivonija neighborhood there, at the old Jewish cemetery and at Antakalnis village in the Lyduokiai aldermanship. The latter site has no commemorative markers at all and has been abandoned and left to the elements. One-hundred and fourteen Jews from Ukmergė were murdered there in the summer of 1941.

Neringa Latvytė-Gustaitienė, director of the History Department of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, said she was happy the public had responded and assembled at this site where Jews were brought from the Ukmergė jail and murdered during the first days of World War II in Lithuania. “This location is not marked with informational signs or arrows, and has not been entered on the registry of cultural heritage. Neither local residents nor representatives of the aldermanship had even heard of the site until now,” she said.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Jewish Holocaust Victims Were Neighbors and Fellow Citizens

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The project is based on the fact that there are 227 Holocaust mass murder sites in Lithuania scattered all across the country.

I had never heard of Vėliučionys, a small village on the outskirts of Vilna (Vilnius) before Lithuanian author Rūta Vanagaitė and I set out in the summer of 2015 to visit sites of Holocaust mass murders for a book we wrote on Lithuanian complicity in Shoa crimes.

Our original list of destinations was compiled based on our biographies.

I chose the birthplaces of my maternal grandparents Samuel and Bertha Sar, and the towns in which they had grown up and studied, as well as the presumed site of the murder of my great-uncle Rabbi Efraim Zar, for whom I am named, his wife and two sons. Rūta chose the places where her grandfather Jonas Vanagas and her aunt’s husband Antanas Stapiulionis had played a role in the murder of Jews.

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Lithuanian Jewish Partisan Joseph Harmatz, “The Avenger,” Has Died

Mirė Lietuvoje gimęs ir Holokaustą išgyvenęs žydų „keršytojas“ J. Harmatzas

BNS and others

Jospeh Harmatz who led a Jewish attempt to take revenge on the Nazis has died at the age of 91. Harmatz’s son Ronel confirmed he had died Monday.

Harmatz was one of a handful of Jewish “avengers” who plotted to poison many SS officers held at an American POW camp in 1946. More than 2,200 Germans were poisoned during the operation, but none of them died from it as far as anyone knows.

Nonetheless the act took on symbolic meaning for the newly forming State of Israel: the day when attacks against Jews went unanswered had ended.

Harmatz was born in Lithuania and lost most of his family to the Holocaust. He gave an interview to AP shortly before his death in which he said he did not regret his actions or those of others in the Revenge brigade.

“We couldn’t understand why there shouldn’t be payback for that,” he said.

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Leonidas Donskis Dead at Age 54

Netekome Leonido Donskio

Leonidas Donskis, a Lithuanian philosopher, scholar and former member of the European Parliament, deputy chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, political activist, author and notable figure in Lithuanian society and academic and political life, died Wednesday morning.

He reportedly died at Vilnius International Airport from a heart attack.

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Prize Recipients Chosen for Best Final Academic Work on Ethnic Minorities in 2016

Išrinkti 2016 m. Premijos už geriausią baigiamąjį mokslo darbą tautinių mažumų tematika laimėtojai

On September 14 the Academic Council of the Lithuanian Department of Ethnic Minorities selected the winners of a new prize created this year for best final academic work on ethnic minorities.

Department of Ethnic Minorities director Dr. Vida Montvydaitė made the final decision on recommendations from her Academic Council and selected Julijana Leganovič in the first nomination category for her bachelor’s work “Comparative View of the Development of the Vilnius and the Kaunas Jewish Communities in the Interwar Period.”

The second category was for master’s work and the winners were Rūta Anulytė with her “Heritage Protection and Maintenance of Historical Jewish Cemeteries in Lithuania: Practice and Recommendations” and Mantas Šikšnianas with his “Jews of Švenčionys from the mid-18th Century to the mid-20th Century: Shtetl, Sabbath, Shoah.”

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Ponar: Thirty Meter Escape Tunnel Dug by Hand and Spoons

Trisdešimties metrų tunelis Paneriuose,iškastas rankomis ir šaukštais

by Jūratė Juškaitė
manoteises.lt

At the beginning of this century documentary film makers from Israel combed Ponar just outside Vilnius, looking for an answer to the question of why local residents did nothing when they saw columns of thousands being led to firing squads in the forest of Ponar. The filmmakers brought in Mordechai Zeidel. Unlike the locals, in 1943 Zeidel was among those condemned to death at Ponar. He was taken there by the Nazis to destroy evidence of their mass murder, and sometimes also to recognize corpses, including relatives. For more than two months Zeidel and another eighty prisoners hauled corpses out of the pits using cables and burned them. The remains of approximately 100,000 people were contained in those pits. The entire time, the prisoners used spoons and their hands to dig a tunnel thirty meters long, which brought Zeidel to freedom. Although only eleven of the forty escapees in total survived, the story has become the stuff of legend.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

The Bloody Stones of the Towns

by Aras Lukšas
lzinios.lt

On September 23, 1943, the Nazis and collaborators concluded the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto. Twenty-two years ago this date was officially made the Day of Remembrance of the Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide. Now let’s remember the Jews of the rural towns and villages whose entire communities were destroyed during the first four months of war. Keydan, Yaneve, Vilkomir, Zager, Shadeve, Nayshtot-Tavrig… What do these strange words mean? Most likely not everyone would know these are the names of Lithuanian towns: Kėdainiai, Jonava, Ukmergė, Žagarė, Šeduva, Žemaičių Naumiestis. This was how the Jews who lived here for centuries called their homes in their native Yiddish language. In many of the locations just mentioned, they constituted half or even the majority of the population. For instance, before the war half the population of Ukmergė was Jewish, and Jonava’s was 80% Jewish, including traders, craftsmen, artisans, butchers and dairymen, attorneys and doctors…

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Lithuanian President Awards 46 Rescuers

VILNIUS, September 26, BNS – Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė on Monday signed a decree to award Life Saving Crosses to 46 people who rescued Jews from the Holocaust during World War II.

Most of them were honored posthumously.

The president honors Jewish rescuers every year on the occasion of the National Memorial Day for the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews, which is marked on September 23 to commemorate the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto on that day in 1943.

The Nazis assisted by Lithuanian collaborators murdered more than 90 percent of the Lithuanian pre-war Jewish population of around 208,000 during World War II.

Around 3,500 Jews currently reside in Lithuania.

BNS_logotipas

Israeli President Sends Condolences over Death of Leonidas Donskis

VILNIUS, September 26, BNS – Israeli president Reuven Rivlin has expressed his condolences to Jolanta Donskienė, the wife of Lithuania’s late philosopher Leonidas Donskis.

“We grieve together with you and all people of Lithuania as the world has lost a remarkable man, a prominent philosopher, a devoted defender of human rights and civil liberties, a true humanitarian and an outstanding political figure, a great person, who always opposed violence in all its forms,” the president said in his letter to Donskienė, a copy of which was shared by the Israeli embassy with BNS.

Rivlin said that as a deputy chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Donskis “greatly contributed to preserving the country’s Jewish culture and heritage and promoted the highest human values of tolerance, love and respect toward every individual”.

“Professor Donskis was a great friend of Israel, who has never hesitated to stand together with our country. He will always remain in hour hearts,” he said.

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Vilnius Mayors Change, But None Can Find Suitable Place for Monument to Rescuers

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photo courtesy BNS

An interview by Nemira Pumprickaitė on the Lithuanian state television program Savaitė, www.LRT.lt

The Day of the Genocide of the Jews of Lithuania is marked on September 23. For long years there was silence on the topic of the Holocaust in Lithuania, and when [former late] Lithuanian president Algirdas Brazauskas apologized to the Jewish people, there was hardly unanimous support. Now even Germans are saying Lithuania is the first country in Eastern Europe to openly raise the question of its own citizens’ complicity. About a month ago the respected Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published a feature on Lithuania’s efforts to address the history of the Holocaust. Lithuanians didn’t earn condemnation alone during the Holocaust; there were those who risked their lives of those of the families to save Jews. The appellation Righteous Gentile has been awarded to 889 Lithuanian citizens. Experts say proportionally, according to population size, Lithuania has the most rescuers among the countries of Eastern and Central Europe. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky on the Lithuanian state television program Savaitė…

Full interview in Lithuanian here.

Lithuanian Parliaments Hosts Conference “They Rescued Jews, They Rescued Lithuania’s Honor”

Seime organizuota konferencija „Gelbėję Lietuvos žydus, gelbėję Lietuvos garbę“

Vilnius, September 25, BNS– The Lithuanian Seimas Sunday hosted a conference to mark the Jewish Genocide Memorial Day.

The conference called “They Rescued Jews, They Rescued Lithuania’s Honor” was organized by the Lithuanian Jewish Community, the parliament’s press service said.

Those taking part in the conference included Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Andrew Baker, director of International Jewish Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, and Howard Solomon, chargé d’affaires ad interim at the US embassy in Vilnius.

The program includes presentations by historian Alvydas Nikzentaitis on the life of Jews in Lithuania, Joachim Tauber of the University of Hamburg on “Hitler, Stalin and Anti-Semitism in Lithuania in 1939-1940” and historian Algimantas Kasparavicius on “Lithuanian Political Illusions, the ‘Policy’ of the Provisional Government of Lithuania and the Beginning of the Holocaust in Lithuania.”

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Holocaust Commemoration at Ninth Fort in Kaunas

Students from the Lithuanian Health Sciences University Gymnasium displayed a sensitive and moving artistic composition called Memory Road at the mass murder site. Kaunas deputy mayor Vasilijus Popovas, Ninth Fort Museum director Jūratė Zakaitė and deputy museum director Marius Pečiulis spoke of the need to remember and never forget painful and even shameful parts of history. Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas said it’s important for young people to get to know a different culture and a different ethnic group personally, because this sort of knowledge allows them to understand someone from a different ethnicity is still a person just like they are. Chairman Žakas thanked the students and teachers of the Health Sciences University Gymnasium and other Kaunas schools as well as school Tolerance Center directors for teaching pupils respect, tolerance, sympathy and historical memory.

Later there was a screening introduced by director of the Polish Institute in Vilnius Marcin Łapczyński of director M. T. Pawłowski’s film Touch of an Angel (2015) which is movingly narrated by a Jewish child in Auschwitz who survived the Holocaust with his family. In the film Polish Jew Henryk Schoenker revisits his childhood where the specter of war still lives, and talks about his family, hiding and tremendous efforts made to survive. Many members of the audience cried.

World Litvak Museum, Return of YIVO Proposed for Vilnius

Vilnius, September 25, BNS–A proposal has been made to establish a World Litvak Museum and reopen the Jewish research institute YIVO in Vilnius, and to commemorate Jews who contributed to the restoration of Lithuanian statehood at the Government, to pay homage to Jewish heritage.

The proposal was made at a conference at the Lithuanian parliament Sunday by the historian Alvydas Nikžentaitis. He said it would make sense to put the museum presenting the history of the Jews of Lithuania at the site of the former Great Synagogue in the center of Vilnius. “The most important goal of all would be to restore the Great Synagogue, the place where Jews, without regard to viewpoints, all gathered, where the most import things were deliberated. This is the place, I think, where the World Litvak Museum should be built,” the professor said at parliament.

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