The Kaunas Jewish Community invite you to come and remember the 75th anniversary of the Lietūkis garage massacre in Kaunas in the early days of the Holocaust. We will gather at the monument to the memory of the victims at Miško street no. 3 in Kaunas at 3:00 P.M. on June 24, 2016.
A concert to honor the victims will be held at the Kaunas State Philharmonic at 6:00 P.M., June 26, 2016 with the male quartet Quorum. The event is free and open to the public.
by Geoff Vasil
Sometimes you open a door and walk into a room expecting nothing, and the strangest things happen. I went to the Rositsan Elite Chess and Checkers Club chess tournament dedicated to the memory of chess enthusiast and interwar Lithuanian president Kazys Grinius at the Lithuanian Jewish Community on Sunday morning, June 19, and thought I saw the president himself, although he died many years ago in exile in America.
At the chess tournament held in his name, there were tables with timers and boards set up both inside the Jascha Heifetz hall and in the foyer and people of all age groups from pre-teen to people in their 80s waiting for the games to begin. I expected some sort of formal nod of the head to the former president, a cursory commemoration after which the players would get down to business. The organizers had a much different idea of what it means to honor someone. Multiple speakers took the podium, gifts were lavished, chess medallions were passed out and there was a sincere recollection of the man himself.
Borisas Gelpernas, former chess champion, spoke about how Kazys Grinius rescued his mother and father from the Kaunas ghetto. At first his father refused the offer of help, not wanting to put Grinius in danger, but the former Lithuanian president kept insisting, and after the actions–mass shootings of Jews–began, he and his wife did hide in Grinius’s own apartment for several months, along with Kristina, Kazys’s second wife.
By Raimonda Ramelienė
The Lithuanian parliament has heard complaints from Jews who left Lithuania between the wars and their descendants over their inability to restore Lithuanian citizenship and has begun amending Lithuania‘s law on citizenship.
Several parliamentary committees have been trying to determine since spring why the Migration Department has been rejecting requests by Litvaks and their descendants living in Israel and South Africa for restoration of Lithuanian citizenship.
Although members of parliament determined bureaucratic obstacles were hindering the process, they decided to put an end to conflicting legal opinions by amending the law. The initiator was oppoisition conservative leader Andrius Kubilius, aided by European Affairs
Participating: professor Richard Freund (Hartford University) and Dr. Jon Seligman (Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalem)
This team of renowned investigators began work on the Ponar mass murder site near Vilnius in early June. Using non-invasive archaeological methods, they examined a large portion of the site of the largest mass murder in Lithuania.
The archaeologists focused on the tunnel excavated by burners’ brigade and other items of high interest according the museum specialists. A film crew travelled with professor Freund to Lithuania and plan to release a documentary called Lost Vilnius.
The Israeli-American duo also looked at the site of the former Great Synagogue in Vilnius.
The Tolerance Center of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum will host their presentation of their findings June 22. The public is invited to attend. The event will be held in Lithuanian and English. The Tolerance Center is located at Naugarduko street no. 10, Vilnius.
At a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Soviet mass deportations of citizens of the Baltic states held in Los Angeles June 12, Latvian consul in California Dr. Juris Bunkis spoke out strongly for remembering the Jews in the Baltics who were murdered during the Holocaust.
“We are here to commemorate evil–evil like the mass shootings that took place earlier today in Orlando,” Dr. Bunkis said. “We gather today to commemorate a brutal event in our histories, the mass deportations of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians from their illegally and forcefully occupied countries to Siberia by the Soviet Union that began on June 14, 1941. Unfortunately, this was just the first in a series of mass Soviet deportations of tens of thousands of victims from the Baltics, occupied Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova,” he continued.
Thirty road signs have gone up in the area around Šeduva, Lithuania with star of David designs to show the way to the different sites which are part of the Lost Shtetl project by the Šeduva Jewish Memorial Foundation, including a renovated Jewish cemetery and monuments at three mass grave sites. This has never been done before in Lithuania.
“We’re glad we were able to set a precedent without any complications at all, so that now people who don’t understand Lithuania will understand how to reach the sites connected with Lithuanian Jewish history by following the signs,” Sergejus Kanovičius, founder of the Šeduva Jewish Memorial Foundation and head of the Lost Shtetl project, said.
Kanovičius said he hopes this simple decision will soon spread throughout Lithuania. At the end of 2018 the foundation plans to open its Lost Shtetl museum next to old Jewish cemetery in Šeduva.
For more information, see www.lostshtetl.com
Full article in Lithuanian here.
by Gintarė Vasiliauskaitė
The Rakija Klezmer Orkestar is a band of five young men playing Gypsy music, music from the Balkans and Litvak klezmer. Klezmer is a genre of secular Jewish music which almost disappeared from Lithuania after World War II. Currently the young men are travelling around Lithuania looking for people who lived through the war who might be able to help in some way resurrect authentic Litvak klezmer. Here is an interview with the accordion player and creative leader of the band, Darius Bagdonavičius. He talks about touring and the difficulties encountered by the group trying to play music on the edge of vanishing, as well as plans for the future.
Full interview in Lithuanian here.
Molėtai regional administration head Stasys Žvinys invited deputy Lithuanian foreign minister Mantvydas Bekešius and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky to a meeting June 10, during which they discussed protection of Jewish heritage and the renovation and upkeep of the old Jewish cemetery in Molėtai and Holocaust mass graves by the regional administration. They also spoke about the need to present rescuers of Jews, increased public sensitivity to Jewish issues and the organization of a March of Memory scheduled for August 29 in the town.
After the meeting the guests inspected the old Jewish cemetery and mass grave sites in the municipality of Molėtai.
“We are responding to the United Nations resolution calling for protection of the memory of Holocaust victims and it’s very important to us that these locations–the old Jewish cemetery, the mass grave sites–be solemn and be appropriately cared for. We have also contributed and will continue to contribute to holding the March of Memory in August to remember the death march in Molėtai seventy-five years ago, because it is very important to us that it take place smoothly in our city,” regional administrator Žvinys commented after the meeting.
Over the entirety of Lithuania’s 25 years of independence the Lithuanian Jewish Community hasn’t had the opportunity to share our thoughts publicly during the marking of the Day of Mourning and Hope at the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania. Seventy-five years have passed since the beginning of the mass deportations of Lithuanian citizens. For the Jewish people, who suffered prophetic exile from the times of the Assyrians, Babylonians and Romans, the experience of exile could be considered part of our historical identity. Seventy-five years ago about one precent of the Lithuanian Jewish community at that time were deported, and as a percentage represent the largest group to be deported from Lithuania. State repression did not put an end to Jewish identity: Zionist organizations operated underground, there was a Hebrew educational system, and all sorts of measures were employed to enable members of the Jewish community to leave for Palestine.
According to Jewish historiography, during the deportations of June, 1941, alone about 3,000 Jews were deported, including Jewish activists from the left and right side of the political spectrum and owners of large industrial enterprises and factories, with about 7,000 people being deported in total during the first year of Soviet rule. On the eve of the first Soviet occupation the majority of Lithuanian Jews were involved in different cultural, social and political organizations and associations. The tradition of Zionism, however, has always been especially strong in the Lithuanian Jewish community; in Lithuania between the two world wars members of the Jewish conservative cultural orientation were the most active and influential, and spoke out for the creation of an independent Jewish nation-state in Palestine. In this regard the confrontation with the Soviet system was especially vivid.
Solomon Atamuk reports there 16 Jewish daily newspapers, 30 weeklies and 13 non-periodical publications as well as 20 collections of literature being published in Lithuania before World War II. After the June 14, 1940 ultimatum to Lithuania and the consequent occupation the Jewish community soon experienced social and cultural repression. All newspapers, belong both to organizations on the Jewish political left and the right, were shut down. Even the Folksblat newspaper, popular with Communists and issued by the Jewish People’s Party, was closed.
by Violeta Davoliūtė
Seventy-five years after the deportations from Lithuania on June 14, 1941, it’s important to remember they were multiethnic, and that deportees included Lithuanian Jews. Jewish families also appeared on the lists of “socially unreliable elements” and “class enemies” and, with children and infants, were stuffed into the same livestock cars. Most men were immediately separated from their families and sent to camps, while mothers and children were forced to endure a long and torturous journey to Russia’s northern wastes. Many died of hunger and suffering. This chapter in the history of the Jews of Lithuania is still little known by the public today. Yes, there is a study or two, statistics, lists, but, unfortunately, the perception still dominates that Lithuania’s Jews suffered only in the Holocaust, and the myth that all Jews supported the Soviet regime lives on, while society believes the deportations of 1941 are an exclusively ethnically Lithuanian historical experience. If you ask a high school student or even a professional working in higher education to name even one Lithuanian Jew deported by the Soviets, chances are many could not.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the mass deportations of Lithuanian citizens which began on June 14, 1941. The Russian regime then began by rounding up intellectuals, members of the educated elite, wealthy businessmen and well-to-do farmers, sending them deep into the interior of Russia. In total about 132,000 people were deported, and 28,000 people died in exile.
Jakovas Mendelevskij lived as a child in Ukmergė in an affluent and happy family. He was 9 that early morning of June 14, 1941, when the knock came at the door and the family was ordered to get ready to be deported. Many Jews were deported in Ukmergė that morning. They were taken by truck to Jonava, summarily separated from his father, and he, his mother and brother were loaded onto train cars like livestock and carried off. His father was arrested and tried, and received a sentence of 10 years in one of Stalin’s camps under article 58 of Soviet law. He was taken to a camp in the Krasnoyarsk region.
Fira Bramson-Alpernienė
December 18,1924-June 12, 2016
Estera Bramson-Alpernienė, whom everyone knew as Fira, has died. With her dies a bit of Litvak history. She belonged to a world of 20th century Jewish personalities, looming figures such as that of Shimon Dubnov, Max Weinreich and Tsemakh Shabad. She came from the famous Bramson family whose members have played a key role in Lithuanian Jewish and European Jewish life. The Bramsons were a center of gravity to Jewish intellectuals in Kaunas before the war. Fira was educated at the Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium with Yiddish as the language of instruction. For Fira family and school were holy, although her school life didn’t last long.
In 1941, before she could graduate from high school, the war forced her to bid a hasty farewell to family, to leave her only sister, to flee from the Nazi terror. Fira didn’t come back to Kaunas after the war because there was no one waiting for her there. Her entire family was at the Ninth Fort. She started a new life in Vilnius. In the late 1980s there was a movement in Vilnius to revive the Lithuanian Jewish Community. Fira was among the founders of that movement. Finally she could come back to her Yiddish roots and cultural hearth so important and crucial to her spiritual life. Some of her most important work since that time has been with Jewish books at the former Palace of Books, and with that collection now removed to the Lithuanian National Library. Her pride and joy became these surviving books, along with a small number of books from the private collections and libraries from before the war belonging to survivors of the Holocaust. Fira was one of the first conservators of this heritage and presented the legacy she protected to the Jewish community, but also to the wider audience in Lithuania and the world. She held exhibits and lectures, facilitated cooperation with academics and students and helped make use of this priceless inheritance. She wrote about what she achieved in her work of many years in the book “Prie judaikos lobių” [“Next to the Treasures of Judaica”].
Fira Bramson could be called the white knight of Yiddish culture. This woman, slight of build, fragile, driven and principled, fought for the protection and preservation of cultural treasures. Not only did she fight, she won. Even in difficult circumstances she never relented because she saw her life as a mission to safeguard that Yiddish culture so dear to her parents and ancestors, and to pass on memories of that culture to future generations. When she spoke at conferences and seminars, when she was part of educational programs in Lithuania, Europe and the USA, Fira would first speak not of herself, but about the founders of Yiddish culture. The grief of losing Fira Bramson is somewhat mitigated by the realization she lived a long, interesting and productive life and generously shared with others her love of Jewish culture. She was of keen intellect, a person with a warm heart whom, if you ever met her, you will never be able to forget. Let our vivid memory of her live on.
A wake will be held at the Nutrūkusi Styga funeral home Tuesday from 10:00 A.M. The coffin will be carried out at 3:45 P.M.
Vilnius, June 9, BNS–The Lithuanian Office of Prosecutor General reports they can’t open investigations in line with a request by the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania into Holocaust crimes allegedly committed by people named in a list handed over to them because none of the people on the list of 2,039 are still alive, the 15min.lt news site reported.
“The information possessed is insufficient to begin a pre-trial investigation. After becoming acquainted with the list, it is stated that these people are no longer alive, and therefore criminal prosecution is impossible,” Elena Martinonienė, head of the communications department of the Lithuanian Office of Prosecutor General, said.
Dear friends of the Tolerance Center,
As Romania takes over the presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the Romanian embassy in Vilnius and the Tolerance Center of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum will present the film Gruber’s Journey (Calatoria lui Gruber, Romania, 2008) to the public at a free screening at 6:00 P.M., June 15, 2016, at the Tolerance Center, Naugarduko street no. 10/2, Vilnius.
The film centers around the pogrom in the city of Iasi in Bessarabia (Moldova) from June 27 to 29, 1941. Film in Romanian with Lithuanian and English subtitles.
Invitation here.
A delegation from World Jewish Congress Israel visited the Lithuanian Jewish Community. The delegation included WJC Israel chairman Shai Hermesh (former MK), member of the board of directors J. Moshe Leshem, foreign relations council director Dr. Laurence Weinbaum, Knesset Christian Allies Caucus chairman MK Robert Ilatov, MK Yakov Margi, KCAC director Josh Reinstein and WJC Israel director general Sam Grundwerg. WJC Israel visits national capitals annually to meet with members of national parliaments and Christian community leaders to establish contacts and discuss shared problems, set up Israeli support groups and increase understanding of Jewish problems. This sort of support is especially sought by Israel now, when the Jewish state is increasingly facing isolation in the international arena and especially in the EU. Last year delegations visited Russia, Poland, Latvia and Estonia.
On June 1 the delegation visited the Lithuanian Jewish Community, met LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and were greeted with a musical welcome of Jewish song and dance provided by the Fayerlakh ensemble, which warmed everyone’s hearts and facilitated better communication. Former MK, current vice president of the WJC and leader of WJC Israel Shai Hermesh shared with everyone heartwarming news he received on the trip to Lithuania.
photo: mass murder of Jews in Šiauliai in 1941
by Liepa Želnienė
It will perhaps never be known exactly how many Jews were murdered in Lithuania in the 1940s, or how many Lithuanians collaborated in perpetrating the Holocaust. Historians say we must first define whom we will include: those who pulled the trigger, those who stood guard at the mass murder sites, prepared the killing pits, or those who forced Jews into the ghettos, or those who stole Jewish property?
Full story in Lithuanian here.
by Mindaugas Jackevičius, www.DELFI.lt
Avoiding the subject of the Holocaust and research in this field, Lithuania is in danger of becoming a nation of Jew-killers in the eyes of the world. Statements like that were aired at a conference held at the Lithuanian parliament Monday, where participants reiterated we still don’t know the true number of Jews murdered, or of the people who rescued Jews in Lithuania. MP Arvydas Anušauskas said at the conference people tend be very conservative in talking about the number of Lithuanian Holocaust perpetrators. He said it was difficult to calculate who took part in mass murder operations, for example, some people’s names are duplicated because they participated at different locations. There was also discussion of who should be included as perpetrators: should they only include people who fired weapons, or also those who transported the victims to the mass murder sites or otherwise aided the process.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
Where: NGA Auditorium, Konstitucijos prospect no. 22, Vilnius
When: 6:00 P.M., Tuesday, June 7, 2016
On June 7-8 National Gallery of Arts presents the program of contemporary Isreali video art ‘The Floodgates Within: Video Art from Israel’ curated by Chen Tamir, curator at the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv. Chen Tamir will present two evenings of video from Israel. Designed to complement one another, these two events will situate Israeli contemporary art within historic, social, and political contexts, and offer a wide overview of experimental video-based art from this unique country.
VILNIUS, June 6, BNS–Not only those who pulled the trigger should be considered perpetrators of the Jewish genocide in Lithuania–they should include the individuals who transported Jews and guarded the sites of massacres, a local historian says.
Alfredas Ruksenas, a specialist of the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania, said that the number of genocide perpetrators could be calculated very roughly.
“Shooters of Jews should include all participants of the operations, even if they did not pull the trigger but facilitated the operations,” Ruksenas said at a discussion at the parliament on Monday.
In his words, the battalions that were conducting the genocide are known, however, establishing a specific person or contribution is a difficult task.
by Daniel Lutrin
It was gratifying to see a recent article regarding the plight that Jews of Lithuanian origin (Litvaks) are facing when applying to have their Lithuanian citizenship restored. The article, however, does not hone in on the critical matter at hand, namely the extent to which Lithuanian bureaucrats have gone to deny Jews of their ancestral right to citizenship.
In the background, a meticulous selection process has been underway which is nothing more than a modern manifestation of the same anti-Semitism which saw 95 per cent of Litvaks murdered in the Holocaust (the highest in all of Europe).
Denying Litvaks citizenship has been made easy in Lithuania by declaring, based on nebulous case law, that those Lithuanians who left the country during its years of independence (approximately 1919 to 1940) were not persecuted and are therefore not eligible for dual citizenship.