LJC member Mordche Rostovskis has passed away at the age of 86. He was born in 1936. We send our deepest condolences to his relatives and loved ones.
Polish Senate Approves Bill Limiting Holocaust Restitution
Photo: Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid lashes out at bill last June. Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images
The law would prevent Holocaust survivors from regaining property seized after World War II. It triggered sharp criticism from Israel and the United States.
Poland’s parliament late Wednesday passed legislation that would put an end to most legal claims for properties confiscated after World War II.
The bill states that administrative decisions can no longer be challenged in court after the expiration of a 30-year period, essentially preventing Jews from recovering property seized by Poland’s Communist-era authorities.
The legislation, which passed earlier in the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, still has to be signed by president Andrzej Duda before taking effect.
Full story here.
Lithuanian State Television Takes Offense at “Star of Covid” at Protest
Photo: Protestors at Lithuanian parliament and national library wear stars of David with poster saying “No ghetto for the unvaccinated.” Photographer J. Stacevičius, courtesy Lithuanian state radio and television broadcaster LRT.
Lithuanian state television LRT reported protestors against Lithuania’s so-called quarantine restrictions crossed the line and made light of the Holocaust, according to the people they talked to about Tuesday’s protest in front of the nation’s parliament where some donned yellow stars of David and called the government’s shutdown of economic and social life genocide.
The first secretary at the Israeli embassy to Lithuania also provided negative comments to LRT regarding the use of Holocaust symbols. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky cautioned the use of the star of David and other symbols isn’t in itself anti-Semitic, but added that it’s important to look at the context in which they are used.
“I’ve seen criminals sitting in court who put on a yellow star [of David], and saying you are a Jew is no justification for committing crimes or that you can’t be tried or convicted because you are a Jew. Everything depends on how the symbol is used. Still, people who do use this symbol should understand what it means in general and what it means to Jews. Often people fail to look more deeply into the meaning of this symbol,” LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky told LRT state television.
Condolences
Moishe Gegužinskis passed away in Frankfurt at the age of 97 on June 7. He was born in Kaunas in 1924. He was part of the resistance in the Kaunas ghetto and was deported to Dachau. He came back to Lithuania after liberation and lived and worked in Vilnius. He published his memoirs in Yiddish called “My Memories: The Tragic and Tumultuous Life Path of a Litvak.” He went to live in Germany in 1997. Our deepest condolences to his immediate family and many friends and relatives.
Holocaust Procession in Biržai
Last Sunday a Road of Memory procession commemorated the 80th anniversary of the onset of the Holocaust in the northern Lithuanian town of Biržai.
Participants marched from the town’s Memory Square to the Pakamponys Forest where approximately 2,400 Jews including about 900 children were murdered in 1941.
Full announcement in Lithuanian here.
Ukmergė Regional Jewish Community to Mark 80th Anniversary of Holocaust
The Ukmergė Regional Jewish Community invites you to commemorate Holocaust victims on Holocaust Victims Remembrance Day at noon on September 5 in the Pivonija Forest in the Ukmergė district.
News from the Kaunas Jewish Community
I am endlessly grateful for the friendship and fruitful cooperation from the very beginning with the Kaunas 2022 team (and especially the Memory Bureau team) and I am thankful for the honor bestowed me as a member of the consultation committee for the Litvak Forum to take place in 2022.
I am so very glad because it is always pleasant to communicate with open, tolerant people who are hungry for knowledge and who are striving to insure our society might also become more open, more tolerant and more accepting.
I am glad because we are joined in a common goal: to encourage recognition of the multicultural history of our city and to appreciate what we have, while not averting our gaze from painful episodes.
Panevėžys Jewish Community Receives Visitors
With virus restrictions eased, the Panevėžys Jewish Community received some foreign visitors interested to learn more about their relatives, their biographies and their fate.
Yeir and his wife, both from Israel, visited us on July 25. He’s the great-grandson of famous Panevėžys rabbi Rabinovitch, the ilui who lived and worked here for more than 20 years. Yeir was keen to learn more about religious life in Panevėžys in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He experienced the city and visited Jewish heritage sites here.
According to archive documents from 1857, eight synagogues in Panevėžys are mentioned, with a few more synagogues located in private residences. Religious life in Panevėžys is the subject of a forthcoming book called “Žvilgsnis į praeitį: Panevėžio žydų istorija ir palikimas” [A Glimpse into the Past: The History and Legacy of the Jews of Panevėžys], already printed and soon to be launched.
Shalom, Akmenė
On August 4, 1941, the Jews of the Akmenė region who were being detained in the town of Akmenė were taken to Mažeikiai and murdered. An event called “Shalom, Akmenė” was organized and held to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust there on August 4. A new monument marking the site of the former synagogue in Klykoliai village was unveiled and the victims were remembered at the town square in Akmenė with a reading of names, sung prayers and kaddish. The ceremony there ended with a procession along Stoties and Viekšnių streets to the Akmenė town cemetery. Old Jewish cemeteries on the Tirkšliai-Mažeikiai highway were also visited.
Participants included members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community, Lithuanian MP Kasparas Adomaitis and others. Our gratitude goes to the organizers, Diana and Marijus Lopaitis and the Akmenė History Museum.
Remembering the Jews of Šeduva
Kupiškis Remembers Onset of Holocaust 80 Years Ago
On July 30 organizers and guests of the “Road of Memory 1941-2021” project and local residents assembled at the Kupiškis Ethnographic Museum where museum historian Aušra Jonušytė moderated events.
United States embassy to Lithuania representative Wartenberg welcomed visitors in the name of US ambassador Robert Gilchrist and Lithuanian Foreign Ministry ambassador Marius Janukonis and veteran Conservative Party politician, former minister and MEP Rasa Juknevičienė as well as others participated and spoke at the event whose main organizer was Lithuania’s International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes, whose deputy director Ingrida Vilkienė also delivered an address to the audience. Kupiškis regional administration mayor Dainius Bardauskas also spoke.
A procession bearing banners and flags walked to the mass murder site at the Freethinkers’ Cemetery in Kupiškis with marchers bearing flowers, candles and stones inscribed with the names of the murdered. The commemoration included a reading of the names of the victims and descriptions of their lives and families.
Marking Roma Genocide Remembrance Day
August 2 is observed as the day of remembrance of the genocide committed against the Roma in Europe.
“Roma, as with Jews, the disabled, homosexuals and Communists, were considered unworthy to live by the German Nazi regime. They were persecuted, deported as forced labor and murdered. It is believed about one-half million Roma were murdered during the Holocaust. … Only in 2015 did the European Parliament adopt a resolution recognizing the genocide committed against the Roma during WWII and naming August 2 as the day of remembrance of the Roma genocide. In 2019 the Lithuanian parliament included August 2 on Lithuania’s list of observed commemorative days.”
Lithuania’s Roma Community Center can be found here.
Lithuanian Jewish Community Kids Enjoy Summer Camp
Two LJC children’s summer camps took place in July, full of activities and fun. Not only did the kids have a chance to shake off state restrictions for fighting the virus by getting a little wild, they also learned a lot. The LJC camps among other things taught Jewish history and tradition. The kids learned to make challa, visited the Ninth Fort Holocaust site in Kaunas and engaged in other learning activities.
Table of Truth Web Event
About the event
Learn about the extraordinary connection to one chess table with Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman, Lithuanian Jewish Community; Shulamit Rabinovich, San Francisco engineer; Dudu Fisher, Israeli-based world-renowned entertainer; Grant Gochin, South African wealth Manager and Silvia Foti, Chicago journalist.
We will reveal recently discovered facts about the Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust denial by the Lithuanian Government, and present new paths to education about the horrors of the past.
The table WILL talk.
We will conclude the program with Dudu Fisher chanting Kaddish.
When: 10:00 A.M. PST, 1:00 P.M. EST, 7:00 P.M. South Africa, 8:00 P.M. Israel, September 12, 2021
Representatives of the Lithuanian Government have also been invited to attend and speak.
For more information and to register, see http://israelusa.org/table-of-truth/
Black Honey: A Film about Abraham Sutzkever
The Vilnius Jewish Public Library will screen the film Black Honey about Vilnius partisan and Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever created by his granddaughter and actress Hadas Kalderon of Israel. She will retell stories she heard directly from him and talk about film and filming. The screening is open to the public and will take place at 7:00 P.M. on August 8. The Vilnius Jewish Public Library (not affiliated with the Lithuanian Jewish Community) is located at Gedimino prospect no. 24 in Vilnius with entry through the alley and to the right.
Register by calling (8-5) 219 77 48 or sending an email to info@vilnius-jewish-public-library.com
The film is in English, Hebrew and Yiddish with English subtitles.
Evening of Poetry and Music
The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you to an evening of poetry and music at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, August 11. Sergejus Kanovičius will read selections of his prose and poetry accompanied by Boris Kirzner on violin.
US Seizes Scrolls, Manuscripts Stolen from Jews during Holocaust
A US Army chaplain examines one of hundreds of Jewish Torah scrolls, stolen from all over Europe by Nazi forces, in Frankfurt, Germany in 1945. Photo: Irving Katz/US Army Signal Corps/FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Seventeen scrolls, manuscripts, and community records [pinkasim] which were stolen from Jewish communities in Eastern Europe during WWII have been recovered, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.
Why it matters: “The Scrolls and Manuscripts that were illegally confiscated during the Holocaust contain priceless historical information that belongs to the descendants of families that lived and flourished in Jewish communities before the Holocaust,” acting US attorney Jacquelyn Kasulis said in a statement.
• “This Office hopes that today’s seizure will contribute to the restoration of pre-Holocaust history in Eastern Europe.”
The big picture: The documents were found through a Brooklyn auction house which had them for sale. In addition to the 17 artifacts recovered, four more are believed to exist: three in upstate New York and one in Israel.
• The records date from the mid-19th century to World War II and were looted from Jewish communities in Romania, Hungary, Ukraine and Slovakia.
• According to an affidavit in the case, the artifacts were believed to be “lost for all time” prior to being offered for sale at the New York auction house.
Full article here.
Jewish Scouts Camping
The Jewish scouting troupe is camping beside a lake in the Trakai region, enjoying the sun, the great outdoors, friendship and scouting activities.
Scout leader Renaldas Vaisbrodas reported: “The Jewish scouts have invited me for a new adventure. Somehow naturally it has become my calling. I believe in the scouting movement and I hope Jewish young people in Lithuania would revive one of the largest youth organizations in Lithuania in the period between the two world wars. Why? Because life is stronger than death. This hike is special. For one day an artifact from 1931 will return to the town of Žiežmariai connected with local Jewish scouts. The most important thing is to have fun with a goal, no matter what the weather.”
Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community Marks Holocaust, Ghetto Anniversaries
Members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community marked the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust in Lithuania and the 77th anniversary of the liquidation of the Šiauliai ghetto on July 15.
In late June of 1941 the extermination of Jews began in Lithuania. In the second half of July the perpetrators set up the Šiauliai ghetto, which was “liquidated,” meaning all inmates were murdered, beginning on July 15, 1944.
Members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community held a brief ceremony at the monument commemorating Holocaust victims where the ghetto gate once stood, remembering lost family members and friends and laying flowers and the stones at the site, as well as lighting candles in memory of the victims. A minute of silence was observed.
Josifas Buršteinas spoke of the events of that time and Ida Vileikienė, who was born in the Šiauliai ghetto, shared her memories as well.
Šiauliai deputy mayor Simona Potelienė attended the ceremony.
Sergejus Kanovičius: Why the LAF Didn’t Invite My Grandfather to the June Uprising
by Sergejus Kanovičius, poet and essayist
I always find it difficult to talk about the subject of the Holocaust in Lithuania. And not just talk about it – it is difficult for me to think about it, too. It is the biggest crime ever committed on the Lithuanian soil. We all play our part in history, we all–from historians to history fans, political figures, the general public–have our own interpretation of it. I am a writer, a descendent of Lithuanian Jews and Holocaust survivors, a child of Lithuania.
And I am honestly confused. And I don’t think I am the only one. The cautious statements that the Holocaust in Lithuania was a tragic page in our history, the popular expression of pseudo-empathy when fallen Lithuanian Jews are referred to as fellow citizens; but at the same time, no one is ever mentioning–even at the parliament–who their executioners were, and the list of people who have been identified as collaborators in that crime, remains hidden.