We are sad to report the death of our volunteer, medical doctor and otorhinolaryngologist (head and neck medicine) Valentina Barsukaitė on July 13. She was born in 1938. We extend our deepest condolences to her daughter, Veronika, and her many friends and colleagues.
Who Are the Degenerates Now?
Grant Gochin
In a study by the UN titled ”History under Attack,” António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, stated: “Understanding the history of the Holocaust is crucial to safeguarding our future. This is particularly crucial as we see some seeking to rewrite history or to whitewash and rehabilitate those who committed crimes against humanity. If we fail to identify and confront the lies and inhumanity that fueled past atrocities, we are ill-prepared to prevent them in the future.” This article borrows heavily from this UN study.
UN Findings
The UN finds that Holocaust distortion is just as pernicious as Holocaust denial. Holocaust distortion depends upon and spreads antisemitism. It threatens the ability to remember and learn from the past by misrepresenting the historical record. It is an attack on truth and knowledge. It feeds on and spreads antisemitic tropes and prejudices, and threatens our understanding of one of the most tragic and violent histories–the genocide of six million Jews.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Netflix Hit Stranger Things Slammed for Nazi Prison
by Emma Myers
Netflix has come under fire for using the sites of past atrocities as locations or inspiration for its nostalgic hit show Stranger Things, including a plan to let fans book a themed cell in a former Holocaust prison on AirBnB.
Two of the locations in its fourth season–the final episodes of which were released last week–have dark roots in the real world.
Russian prison scenes were filmed in a former Lithuanian prison used by Nazis during the Holocaust while the show’s fictitious mental hospital was inspired by an infamous U.S. asylum with a similar name.
Mental health and Jewish advocates have criticized the streaming giant for what they see as exploitation of a brutal history. Both locations are also now tourist attractions.
New Condo Ad in Kaunas: “Lietūkis: A Building with History”
A building built between the two world wars on Vytautas prospect in Kaunas is now undergoing renovation. The architect was Karolis Reisneris, the same architect who designed the Church of the Assumption in Kaunas. Advertisements to purchase apartments have caused controversy because of the phrase “Lietūkis: A Building with History,” recalling the Lietūkis garage massacre in Kaunas in late June of 1941.
Artist Paulina Eglė Pukytė spotted the advertisement on facebook and was surprised by it.
“If the ad campaign is mentioning history, then how can it ignore completely some of the blackest pages of 20th century history connected with the word Lietūkis? The advertisement suggests ‘touching history.’ How should we touch it, and which history?” she said to 15min.lt.
Between the two world wars the compound word “Lietūkis,” made up of Lietuva or Lithuania, shortened to Liet-, followed by ūkis, meaning economy, farm or household, was the name adopted by the Union of Lithuanian Agricultural Cooperatives, which operated in Kaunas from 1923 to 1940. Their headquarters were located at no. 43 on Vytautas prospect. The daylight pogrom and mass murder of Jews was perpetrated at the garage, actually an automobile service and repair station, located on Miško street in Kaunas and still known as the Lietūkis garage, despite abolition of the Lietūkis organization, the Union of Lithuanian Agricultural Cooperatives, prior to that.
Painted in Sound: An Interview with Samuel Bak
by Karolis Vyšniauskas, photographs by Ieva Lygnugarytė, sound engineer Adomas Zubė
Samuel Bak is a miraculous survivor of Vilnius Ghetto. Now 88 at his studio in Massachusetts, the prolific painter recalls lost Jewish life in Vilnius for a NARA podcast.
For many decades Samuel Bak didn’t want to come back to Vilnius. It is the city where his father, grandparents and even his best friend, a child at the time, were killed.
But eventually through an initiative by local Lithuanians he returned to the place which formed his childhood memories. Now Vilnius hosts the Samuel Bak Museum, to which the painter has donated more than 50 of his works.
Full text and audio file of interview here.
Happy Birthday to Mina Frišman
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners wish Mina Frišman a very happy birthday. Our heartfelt wishes for her endless health and many happy days ahead with her children and grandchildren.
One Hundred and Seven Years Late for Dinner
by Grant Gochin
When your grandmother’s last words make it clear that she’s not who you thought she was, you are willing to move all the mountains in Europe to get to the truth
Dinner between cousins was scheduled for Shabbat on Friday, May 14, 1915. How was I to know that the Shabbos meal never took place? Without warning, Russian forces launched a genocidal mass deportation of Baltic Jews deep into Russia. Families were torn apart, lives were destroyed and communities of Jews devastated.
The first inkling I had was on my grandmother’s deathbed. Her final lucid words to me were: “I wish I knew my name. I wish I knew who my family was.” We thought we knew her name–Bertha Lee Arenson. We were wrong.
Kaunas Jewish Community to Commemorate Lietūkis Garage Victims
The Kaunas Jewish Community will commemorate the victims of the Lietūkis garage massacre at 4:30 P.M. on Monday, June 27, at the monument to the victims located at Miško street no. 3 in Kaunas. Following that commemoration participants will go on to the Vilijampolė (Slobodka) Jewish cemetery on Kalnų street and the Žaliakalnis Jewish cemetery on the Radvilėnų highway to commemorate Holocaust victims.
On June 27, 1941, around 50 Jewish men were tortured to death in front of crowd of on-lookers at the Lietūkis garage. The men were simply grabbed at random off the street for the public execution and included people from all walks of life. They were derided and brutally tortured with crow bars and high-pressure water from hoses. The names of most of the victims and executioners remain unknown, although one of the victims was Jurgis Štromas, who had been the director of the Industry and Trade Department at the Lithuanian Finance Ministry.
By the Grace of the Game: Basketball Star Dan Grunfeld’s Holocaust Burden
Vytautas Bruveris’s Presentation at Fifth World Litvak Congress
Lithuanian journalist Vytautas Bruveris gave a presentation at the Fifth World Litvak Congress held in Vilnius last month called “Jews in Lithuania: A Still-Undiscovered or an Already-Lost Shared History?”:
Many here have spoken about the war in the Ukraine. That’s natural, because it is continuation and horrific metastasis of the same story we are all talking about. I would like to talk about a different aspect, however, about empathy. Lithuanian society is showing they are very capable of human empathy and solidarity. We see that especially clearly in the huge and praise-worthy movement to receive war refugees from the Ukraine.
A question arises in this context, however, for me: is it not true that Lithuanian society are most able to feel empathy for those whom they understand as their own people, as participants of the same history?
Jews of Kaunas Honor Rescuers
On June 9 the Kaunas Jewish Community honored those who rescued Jews from the Holocaust and their family members at an informal gathering.
“When you save one person, you save an entire world,” Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas said.
Child Born in Basement
Several dozen people came to the dinner at the Višta Puode restaurant in Kaunas. They shared their thoughts and impressions and generally chatted. There were songs performed in Yiddish and Hebrew using the Lithuanian folk instrument the kanklės, saxophone and harpsichord. Juozas Straupis was there with his granddaughter Monika. He had only just turned 4 when his mother and father, Bronislava and Juozas, later named Righteous Gentiles, rescued 24 people. They took seven into their home and found safe places for the others among their neighbors. Priests and the community helped take care of these people.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
Faina Kukliansky: June 14 Recalls Agony of All Lithuanian Citizens
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky participated in a commemoration at the Lithuanian parliament to mark the Day of Mourning and Hope and the Day of Occupation and Genocide, and also attended a ceremony at a memorial in Naujoji Vilnia.
“Lithuanian Jews didn’t just experience the tragedy of the Holocaust, but also the repressions of the Soviet regime. The system sought to do away with the Jewish national spirit and the values. All sorts of means were used to achieve this, including the deportations already mentioned, but also communal and personal property seizures, the monument at Ponar blown up because it bore an inscription in Yiddish, synagogues nationalized and the closure of the YIVO institute. The Sovietization of the educational system dealt a huge blow to Jews, with private and communal schools banned. Some of the Jewish schools were destroyed, others were made into state schools where Hebrew was no longer taught and the traditional ethnic curricula–Jewish curricula–formed over many years were abolished. In their place new subjects were introduced, including mandatory Russian language and classes on the constitution of the USSR. The goal was obvious: to erase and replace the identity of the Jewish people. So when we talk about these horrific days in June, we are talking about a tragedy for Lithuanian citizens, no matter what their ethnic identity,” chairwoman Kukliansky said.
June 14 to 18 are remembered in Lithuania as an especially brutal part of history which destroyed the lives of many people of Lithuania, including Lithuanians, Jews, Poles and Russians. There is a public misconception the deportations during those days in 1941 only affected ethnic Lithuanians. Actually more than 3,000 Jews from Lithuania were among the deportees. The Lithuanian Jewish Community marks this painful anniversary annually in common with all the people of Lithuania and we will not forget the pain inflicted on Lithuania during this period in 1941.
Play “Ghetto” at Kaunas Drama Theater
Next Sunday, June 19, the two-part play “Getas” [Ghetto] will be performed at the Kaunas Drama Theater, directed by Gintaras Varnas.
Lithuanian Roots of Holocaust Denial and Distortion
by Evaldas Balčiūnas
Reading through the writings of various Lithuanian historians engaged in “historical memory policy” (an interesting term recalling totalitarian order in and of itself), texts which distort and even deny the Holocaust, I often wonder when it began. It began before the mass murder of Jews in Lithuania.
For instance, the Lithuanian Activist Front’s call to action “Dear enslaved brothers” appeared March 19, 1941, and was published in several versions. At least, two different versions have survived.
Marking 100th Anniversary of Birth of Matilda Olkinaitė
The 100th anniversary of the birth of Matilda Olkinaitė took place June 6. She was a Lithuanian Jewish poet from Panemunėlis who was murdered with her family and the neighboring Joffee family in July of 1941 at the Sahara peat bog in the Rokiškis region before larger mass murders began there.
Events to mark the date at the Rokiškis Regional History Museum began with the play “Nutildytos mūzos” [Silenced Muses] by the Rokiškis People’s Theater. This was followed by a screening of the films “Atrandant Matildą” [Finding Matilda] and “Dangaus stulpai – skambančios sinagogos” [Pillars of Heaven: Singing Synagogues], and the opening of a museum exhibit.
Other events were held in her native town Panemunėlis just outside the city of Rokiškis. Rokiškis librarians set up a folk-art monument to honor Olkinaitė on the lawn of the Panemunėlis railroad station near Olkinaitė’s house. People from the Rokiškis People’s Theater also placed a stone monument at the site of Holocaust mass murder victims at the Sahara peat bog where Olkinaitė’s family and the Joffee family were murdered. Flowers were also laid at their family graves.
Discussion Club #ŽydiškiPašnekesiai with Arkadijus Vinokuras
Back in the time of King David, 3,000 years ago, the king was considered the best singer, and under his reign the professional musicians dynasty of the Levites from the tribe of Levi began. Music schools were established for singers of hymns and players of instruments. Hymns and instrumental music accompanied rituals for the offering of sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem built by Solomon in 959 BCE. During sacred rituals the priests blew 120 trumpets at the same time.
Of course we won’t go that deep into history. We’ll just discuss the period of Jewish music from Smetona’s Lithuania till today, discussion club #ŽydiškiPašnekesiai initiator Arkadijus Vinokuras promises.
The next discussion is called “Jewish Music: What Is It, and Why Doesn’t It Ever Grow Old?” on June 14, 2022.
The club will meet outside this time at the site of the former statue to Petras Cvirka where the Cvi in the Park Israeli street food kiosk is operating for the summer. The meeting will take place inside the Bagel Shop Café due to rain at 5:00 P.M. It’s open to everyone and will be live-streamed on the LJC facebook page.
Participants are to include Leonidas Melnikas, Boris Traub, Boris Kizner and Masha Dushkina, moderated by Arkadijus Vinokuras. The discussion will likely take place in Lithuanian.
Silvia Foti Releases Paperback Edition Renamed “Storm in the Land of Rain”
A year after the publication of Silvia Foti’s book about her Lithuanian Nazi grandfather Jonas Noreika, she has published a paperback version renamed “Storm in the Land of Rain: A Mother’s Dying Wish Becomes Her Daughter’s Nightmare.” According to the press release, it is already available from internet vendors and the plan is to offer it for sale at supermarket chains including Costco, HEB, BJ’s, Target, Fred Meyer, Kroger and Meijer.
Full press release here.
Daughter’s Dedication Speech for Saul Kagan Welfare Center
Julia Kagan Baumann, the daughter of the late Saul Kagan, delivered the following speech at the Lithuanian Jewish Community on the occasion of the opening of the Saul Kagan Welfare Center there on May 24, 2022:
I am deeply honored to be here at the dedication of the Saul Kagan Welfare Center at the 5th Litvak World Congress in Vilnius, the city of my father’s birth. I speak for myself; for his sister, Dr. Emma Kagan Rylander; for my beloved stepmother Eleanor Kagan, who is 97; for my cousin Dr. Frances Koblenzer, who is here today from my mother Elizabeth’s side of the family, which embraced my dad. And also for my family of marriage, the Baumanns, who were from Strasbourg in France. My late husband Philippe’s father, Raymond Baumann, co-founded ARIF (the Association for the Restoration of Jewish Works and Institutions in France) to support the Jewish community of France during and after World War II from America. My stepdaughter, Andrea Baumann Lustig, is ARIF’s current president.
Fifth World Litvak Congress Participants Visit Panevėžys, Pakruojis, Šeduva
A delegation of participants from the Fifth World Litvak Congress travelled to Panevėžys May 25 and were met there by members of the Panevėžys Jewish Community and the local municipality.
Panevėžys city municipality deputy director of administration Žibutė Gaivenienė said: “It is nice to welcome today guests arriving in Panevėžys from the Fifth World Litvak Congress and members of the city’s Jewish community. Panevėžys has long been a multi-ethnic and multicultural city, and the Jewish community has played an important role in the life of the city and the whole district. At certain periods of history Jews constituted a very significant part of the population of the city and were active participants in the city’s economic and service sectors. A larger Jewish community formed in the city in the second half of the 18th century. In the mid-19th century Jews constituted about 60 percent of the city population, and in the early 1920s Jews accounted for about 35 percent of the population. So the Jewish community’s contribution to the development of Panevėžys, and especially its transformation into a modern city, is a great one, and the Jewish legacy in different forms still operates in our daily life.”
Ben Tsiyon Klibansky: Lithuanian Holocaust Perpetrators Turned into Heroes
Lithuanian State Television and Radio LRT.lt interview with Ben Tsiyon Klibansky
Lithuanians are still heroizing people who took part in the Holocaust, regrets historian and author Ben Tsiyon Klibansky. It’s up to the nation’s leaders to start a long-overdue conversation about these painful pages from the country’s history.
Ben Tsiyon Klibansky teaches at Tel Aviv University and researches Eastern European Jewry. This is now a lost world, and the Jews of Lithuania were the cornerstone in this world, Klibansky tells LRT.lt, something he feels it to be his duty to research.
You were born in Lithuania, Vilnius, but now, you live in Israel. Could you tell me more about your connection to Lithuania?
My family was a traditional family. My grandfather was a spiritual leader of the community. … I was a student at the Antanas Vienuolis School for two years, then my parents got permission to leave Lithuania and immigrate to Israel, which had been their dream for many years.
You should understand that it wasn’t because they hated Lithuania, but because of the prophecies of the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, who promised one day we will return to the land of Israel and settle there again. They tried to get permission to leave Lithuania and go to Israel, but it was Soviet Lithuania and the Soviets didn’t let them to go. It took them 13 years, from 1956 when they returned from Siberia until 1969. …
After I finished high school in Israel I started studying at Tel Aviv University. I studied electronic engineering. I joined the army and served for many years. I was a high-ranking officer in the army and when I finished my army service, I got a very good contract in the industry.