Holocaust – Page 13 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

New Installations in Anykščiai Mark Jewish Heritage Sites

BNS, July 23, 2023

Two new artistic installations now grace the Old Town in Anykščiai, Lithuania, north of Vilnius intended to commemorate the former Jewish population.

The Anykščiai municipality reports a sculptural relief by professor Romualdas Inčirauskas and Zita Inčirauskienė called “Memorial Marker for the Former Synagogues” was installed at the site of the former synagogue at Šaltupio street. It reportedly includes portion of a map of the town from 1925 with the sites of six former synagogues marked.

The same artists installed a bench in front of the building located at Baranauskas Square no. 7. There are seven human figure sculptures on top of the bench back to symbolize the days of the week with the Sabbath represented as a rabbi.

2023-07-252023-07-25

Panevėžys Esperanto Club Celebrates 100 Years

Photo: Panevėžys Esperanto club members with their club flag in 1930.

The Revo Esperanto Club in Panevėžys recently celebrated its 100th birthday and Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman delivered a greeting there from Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, wishing members success in their meeting. Kofman also delivered an address, quoting from a book that the first Esperanto enthusiasts in Panevėžys were Jewish and talking about Jewish contributions to the Esperanto movement.

Revo Esperanto Club director Vida Kulikauskienė presented a short history of the club and said Esperanto might have begun there with Lithuanian Esperanto pioneer Aleksandras Dambrauskas, also known as Adomas Jakštas. Of course the artificial language was invented by Lazer Zamenhoff writing under the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto. Zamenhoff lived at various times in Lithuania and Poland but published the initial book in Poland. It quickly became popular in Lithuania and especially among Lithuanian Jews. At a certain point Soviet authorities banned the Esperanto clubs in the Soviet Union as possible avenues for foreign espionage, but eventually lifted the ban.

2023-07-25

Condolences

Abramas Goldfarbas, a client of the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s Saul Kagan Social Center, passed away July 15. He was born in 1934. Our deepest condolences to his widow, family members and friends.

2023-07-18

Commemoration of the Liquidation of the Šiauliai Ghetto

July 15 was the 79th anniversary of the extermination of the Šiauliai or Shavl ghetto where around 6,000 Jews were then imprisoned from a total population of 14,000 Jews on the eve of war, including refugees from Poland, this remainder having already been murdered by that time.

Members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community gathered at the monument marking the location of a former gate to the ghetto, which consisted of two sections, as had the ghetto in Vilnius. The victims were remembered with flowers, candles and stones.

2023-07-18

Commemorating the Liquidation of the Kaunas Concentration Camp

On July 13 a ceremony to commemorate the liquidation, meaning the mass extermination, of the Kaunas concentration camp was held in the formerly Jewish neighborhood of Slobodka in Kaunas at a monument located at the intersection of Linkuvos and Kriščiukaičio streets, the location of the former gates to the ghetto later transformed into a concentration camp. Survivors and relatives of victims spoke, retelling horrific stories of violence.

“It’s impossible to imagine and understand the horrific things which happened here. We cannot forget those events, we cannot forget those many people who were imprisoned here and then murdered,” Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas said.

Full article in Lithuanian (with inaccurate dates and some questionable facts) here.

2023-07-18

Sweden Allows Public Torah Burning

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman and attorney Faina Kukliansky highly condemns a decision by the Swedish courts to allow the burning of the Torah in front of the Israeli embassy in Stockholm. Police stood by earlier as the Bible was burned publicly, and before that the Koran wrapped in pork in front of a mosque.

“The burning of any book, but especially sacred texts, is an act of barbarity which cannot be excused as freedom of speech. Democracy also has certain red lines and in this case they were transgressed. History shows book-burning result in pogroms and mass murder. Unfortunately not everyone remembers these painful lessons, so it is our duty to remind them,” chairwoman Kukliansky said.

The European Jewish Congress also condemned the Swedish legal system’s decision to allow extremists to burn holy books. EJC president Ariel Muzicant said in an official statement: “These kinds of provocative, racist, anti-Semitic and sick actions have no placed in civilized society. Insulting people’s deep religious and cultural feelings is the clearest indicator which could be sent that minorities are not wanted and not respected. These actions are Sweden’s shame and any democratic country should put a stop to this.”

2023-07-17

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.

2023-07-12

Lithuanian Jewish Leaders Call on Biden to Make Clear the Ukraine’s Accession to NATO

2023-07-112023-07-11

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.

2023-07-07

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.

2023-07-072023-07-07

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.

2023-07-05

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.”

2023-07-032023-08-08

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:

2023-07-03

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.

2023-07-03

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

2023-07-03

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.

2023-06-292023-06-29

EJC, Bulgarian Jewish Community Condemn Neo-Nazi Vandalism in Sofia

The European Jewish Congress and the Bulgarian Jewish Community have condemned neo-Nazi vandalism in the center of Sofia after their violent disruption of an LGBT festival.

Supporters of the far-right group Vazrahdane prevented the broadcasting of a film that was part of the program of the LGBT festival Sofia Pride and vandalized shops with swastikas and stars of David.

Chairman of the Shalom organization of Jews in Bulgari Alexander Oscar condemned the far right group and its leaders and called public authorities to take action.

The European Jewish Congress expressed their deep concern over rising nationalism and anti-Semitism in Bulgaria in a post on their website dated June 26.

Full text here and here.

2023-06-282023-06-28

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.

2023-06-262023-06-26

Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel Speaks Out

2023-06-26

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.

2023-06-22