Holocaust – Page 45 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Twelve Thousand Holocaust Victims Commemorated Near Ukmergė

The annual commemoration in fall of about twelve thousand Holocaust victims killed in the Pivonija forest near Ukmergė (Vilkomir) were commemorated at their mass murder site Sunday. The annual commemoration takes place at noon on the first Sunday in the month of September.

Members of the Ukmergė Regional Jewish Community and a significant group of Jews from Vilnius, Šiauliai and the Kaunas Jewish Community attended the commemoration of the third largest mass murder site in Lithuania. So did representatives of the Ukmergė Regional Administration and the US embassy.

Ukmergė Regional Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas spoke, recalling the sea of people who moved from Ukmergė to the Pivonija woods 79 years ago, including thousands of children.

2020-09-102020-10-02

Let’s Remove the “Nazi Chain” around Lithuania’s Neck

by Arūnas Gumuliauskas, chairman, Lithuanian parliamentary Commission on the Battles for Freedom and State Historical Memory

Every year there are echoes throughout Lithuania on disputes regarding judgments of partisans and other freedom fighters. Different organizations, circles of intellectuals and ethnic minority representatives file complaints and express dismay over the fact Lithuania honors her heroes who laid down their lives for the ideal of independence. Sometimes more loudly, sometimes more quietly.

So this summer as well a wave of discontent and slander went out regarding the announcement of a year to commemorate the noble partisan Juozas Lukša-Daumantas. It’s frequently difficult to understand why this is happening. Many of us also fail to understand, it seems, because it’s not the most important issue with that story.

But, like it or not, a person can’t just be satiated. He must respect himself and be respected by others. That applies even more so to the state. That’s why our history is rewritten and always in a way intending to desecrate those who contributed to history, and you must begin to listen. Very rarely does something happen coincidentally in politics. So after a decade of the constant attempt to convince Lithuania she is a country of fighters stained with blood and of Jew-shooters, one has to understand the reasons for this and oppose it appropriately.

2020-09-102020-09-24

Who Is That Gaon?

by Sergejus Kanovičius. Photo by Evgenia Levin/Bernardinai.lt

Soon the Year of the Vilna Gaon will end: the news websites will stop carrying out the internet education plans dedicated to Jewish history and the school curricula will remain as they always were: impoverished, and with the suppression of history. Everything will depend on the teacher’s initiative, again. The statues to the Gaon and Tsemakh Shabad will stare out, with acid poured over them. Plaques will hang commemorating the “desk murderer” in Vilnius and the statue to a murderer of Jews will continue to stand in the center of Ukmergė, and schools will continue to be named in their honor. The center tasked with researching genocide will offer jobs to people who think the “Lithuanian Activist Front would have found it easy to agree with Zionists.” Only suppressing the fact the LAF helped those Zionists travel into the bosom of Abraham.

Virtual internet reality will never coincide with true reality, and the proposition of living in two worlds will continue to be proposed. The official one will soon mourn at Paneriai and on Rūdninkai square because that’s what’s required. Actually, the pandemic in the true sense of the word helped save a pile of money which would have been used for those pompous but failed events. I would ask, couldn’t the money saved be used to change the school curricula so that a student who reads a headline or title “The Vilna Gaon…” doesn’t have to search the internet to find out who he was and why he’s important?

The best surrogate education–sampling Jewish foods–takes place via the stomach, and via internet. In both cases the effect of learning is equal to the time spent by the learner chewing a bagel or reading about some shtetl lost to oblivion, sipping coffee while reading the screen. There’s no need to even raise the question of enduring value or the long-term effect…

2020-09-092020-09-25

Kaunas Jewish Community Greets Fall with Renewed Pledge to Remember

The Kaunas Jewish Community ushered out the waning summer and greeted the fall by remembering those who have gone before and the tragic loss of life in the Holocaust. In the last week of August Community members visited Prienai and remembered the victims there and in surrounding areas. The Kaunas Jewish Community would like to thank Prienai District Administration staff, representatives of the Balbieriškis (Balbirishok) Tolerance Center and students for caring that the Holocaust tragedy is their tragedy, too, with all its agony and loss, and for coming together without being told to hold a commemoration of those who once lived in the area as neighbors and perhaps even as friends of their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.

As the summer days fade into fall and under a dreary and drizzling sky Community members also visited and remember the victims of the mass murder of the Jews of Petrašiūnai and the victims from the Kaunas ghetto of the intellectuals’ aktion also murdered there. The Kaunas Jewish Community would like to thank violinist Jonė Barbora Laukaitytė for braving the weather and performing her melody to which resonated so clearly with out own heartstrings.

The end of summer also saw the premiere of Aleksandras Rubinovas’s one-man-play “My Father” which was supposed to happen back on March 13, and the Kaunas Picture Gallery is still featuring a show of Samuel Bak’s paintings until September 13.

2020-09-082020-09-16

LJC Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky Meets with Klaipėda Regional Administration mayor Bronius Markauskas

Klaipėda Regional Administration mayor Bronius Markauskas visited the Lithuanian Jewish Community and spoke with LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky about continuing cooperation. The two spoke during the meeting about plans to construct a bus station at Gargždai (Gorzhd), a town located about 15 kilometers east of the city of Klaipėda within the Klaipėda district, near the site where around 500 resident Jews were murdered during at least three mass murder operations on June 24 and September 14 and 16, 1941.

2020-09-08

West Hollywood City Council Unanimously Condemns Lithuanian Holocaust Distortion

The city council of West Hollywood has passed unanimously a resolution condemning Lithuania for minimizing and denying Lithuanian participation in the Holocaust.

2020-09-022020-09-02

Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium Principal Ruth Reches Greets Teachers, Students and Parents for New School Year

This school year is a challenge for all of us. I have been asking myself why I as the new principal am always facing unexpected obstacles which have to be overcome. But this is more of a rhetorical question, because I feel new challenges are interesting. They aren’t frightening because I see I have not been left on my own to overcome them. ALL school staff are working to insure the school year begins smoothly.

The members of our collective stay at school into the late evening, come to work on Saturday and solve work questions by telephone and on vacation, and late into the night without being asked. Just because they care. I feel very strong support with this team in place and I know we will all lead the school forward together no matter how the situation changes.

Thinking about the public tension the corona virus has caused, the lack of clarity on how the education process will take place if there is a second wave of the virus which might cost lives, I remember the book by the renowned thinker, humanitarian and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl describing his experiences during the Holocaust. Frankl was a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna in Austria as well as a practitioner and world-class thinker. In describing his experiences, he also pointed to significant things which helped him survive.

2020-09-012020-09-10

AJC Tells Lithuanian Government: This Hypocrisy Must End

by Vytautas Bruveris

Back to the drawing board: Lithuania again has become the target of a wave of international criticism because of the country’s relationship with the Holocaust. This time, because of the appointment of publicist and public activist Vidmantas Valiušaitis to the leadership of the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania [Genocide Center].

The country’s Jewish community as well as an influential international organization, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), reacted sharply to this announcement. Leaders at the AJC even called the Lithuanian Government’s actions in the area of Litvak history and Holocaust commemoration hypocritical.

At the same time the Genocide Center is getting an ever darker reputation in the international area, that of an ideological right-wing nationalist bunker rather than an authoritative and academically objective institution.

2020-08-312020-09-08

Valiušaitis’s Appointment Worries Historians and Jewish Community

Photo: honoring victims of Soviet-era occupation, genocide and repression. Photo courtesy J. Stacevičius/LRT.

by Modesta Gaučaitė, LRT.lt

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and historians are raising questions about Vidmantas Valiušaitis’s new appointment as an advisor at the Center for the Study of the Resistance and Genocide of Residents of Lithuania [Genocide Center]. Valiušaitis says he won’t try to vindicate himself because he says his work speaks for itself.

New Genocide Center director Adas Jakubauskas took over two months ago and began assembling his team. Besides a deputy director, Jakubauskas also appointed two advisors, one them being Vidmantas Valiušaitis, a long-time journalist, publicist, author of books, for several years the director of the Laisvoji Banga radio station and who in 2017 began working as a methodologist and researcher at the Documentary Heritage Research Department of the Lithuanian National Martynas Mažvydas Library.

His new appointment has caused dissatisfaction on the part of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and has raised questions for historians.

2020-08-272020-08-27

Simnas Celebrates Title of Tiny Capital of Lithuanian Culture for 2020

On August 23 the largest event so far this year took place in Simnas, Lithuania: the Simnas church celebrated its 500th anniversary and the town of Simnas celebrated its recognition as the Tiny Capital of Lithuanian Culture for 2020.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and Catholic cardinal Sigitas Tamkevičiusattended events there, which included a book launch, consecration of a new cross at the church, Catholic Mass, a performance by opera singer Rasa Juzukonytė and a performance by the Lithuanian Ground Forces orchestra. A procession left the church for the town square where the formal opening ceremony of the event took place only then. There followed vocal and instrumental concerts and a fair featuring religious items, folk art and crafts.

A synagogue in Simnas has been restored and renovated. It was built in 1905. There was a school on the second floor and the prayer hall was arranged so worshipers prayed facing in the direction of Jerusalem. A Soviet palace of culture operated there after World War II, followed by an athletics hall. Consideration is on-going on how to utilize the synagogue space.

2020-08-252020-08-31

Bid for Righteous Gentile Monument Announced

A public tender has been announced for a conceptual sculptural and architectural project to erect a monument to Lithuanian residents who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.

The Vilnius city municipality and the Lithuanian Culture Ministry said the project is to be guided by principles of historical justice for honoring, commemorating and recalling at a national and international level Lithuanian residents who saved Jews during the Nazi occupation, for creating a respectful and socially effective solution in continuance of traditions of respecting the Jewish people, for representing appropriately the content and foundation of the site commemorating Righteous Gentiles, and for contributing to the education of the general public regarding history and the world.

Criteria for judging projects submitted include context, social efficacy, aesthetics, the quality of the space created, cost and financial soundness. The site selected for the monument is on Ona Šimaitė street near Maironis street in Vilnius where a commemorative stele stands announcing this as the location for a future monument to Righteous Gentiles, those who rescued Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

2020-08-252020-09-03

Field Trip to Alytus and Merkinė

Over a weekend in mid-August the Kaunas Jewish Community sponsored a field trip for its members to the town of Merkinė and the city of Alytus, the capital of the Lithuanian ethnographic region of Dzūkija in the southeast quarter of Lithuania.

Teacher and friend of the Community Meilė Platūkienė provided the travellers a tour of Alytus, including sites witnessing to the once-large Jewish community there. They took in the balconies of the former Singer family home there, entrance lions there, former movie theaters in the city and on Beiralas hill the restored synagogue and cemetery (the headstones have long since disappeared and the cemetery plot is only marked with an information stand). The tour also visited what is, sadly, a feature of every Lithuanian city, town and village: a Jewish mass murder site in the surrounding forest.

Travelling on to Merkinė, Merkinė Regional History Museum director Mindaugas Černiauskas provided a guided tour of the small but interesting museum collection and the history of the town, which included members of royal families and the once-large Jewish community there. A visit to the local manor estate featured a meeting with celebrity chef Vytaras Radzevičius who operates an eatery there and who entertained the travellers with his cooking, wit and energy.

2020-08-24

Lithuanian Jewish Community Concerned by Vidmantas Valiušaitis’s Appointment as Senior Advisor of Genocide Center

According to the official website of the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuanian (Genocide Center), the person occupying the post of senior advisor to the general director of the Genocide Center performs the following functions:

“…provides consultation on the physical and spiritual genocide of residents of Lithuania carried out by the occupational regimes between 1939 and 1990 as well as resistance to these regimes, and issues surrounding the processes of resistance to and the policies carried out by the occupational regime in the Vilnius district between 1920 and 1938, and consults on issues involving the direction of the Genocide Center’s research and programs regarding the genocide of residents of Lithuania and their resistance to the occupational regimes from 1939 to 1990” (source: http://genocid.lt/UserFiles/File/Pareiginiai/Direkcija/Vidmantas_Valiusaitis.pdf).

We would like to point out that in several recent publications Vidmantas Valiušaitis intentionally distorted the facts and publicized these falsehoods concerning the anti-Semitic activities of the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Lithuanian Provisional Government of 1941. Moreover, Vidmantas Valiušaitis basically denied the conclusions arrived at by the International Commission for Assessing the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Regimes in Lithuania regarding the clearly anti-Semitic views and actions of these organizations and their leadership directed against the Jews of Lithuania.

2020-08-212020-09-09

Tomas Venclova: Conscience is Greater Than Independence

by Gabija Strumylaitė, 15min.lt

After spending forty years in exile, the professor returned to Vilnius in 2018; here he actively participates in Lithuanian cultural life and courageously expresses his opinion on topics important to the country and the world. The website 15min.lt spoke with Tomas Venclova about the meaning of independence, principles of liberalism, historical memory, ethnic minorities and other issues.

This year has also been named the Year of the Vilna Gaon and of Litvak History. What do you think, do Lithuanians understand and appreciate sufficiently the Jewish legacy? What should we be doing to honor these people? Do we need, for example, to rebuild the Great Synagogue, or establish a modern museum of Jewish history?

In this regard I think we are doing better compared to the situation over ten years ago, never mind earlier periods. I’m not just thinking about Jewish affairs, but those of other ethnic minorities as well: Poles, Russians, Belarussians, Karaïtes, Tartars.

There is a large amount of latent distrust of minorities in Lithuania overall. I will mention another minority about which there has been a lot of concern lately: the Roma. The great majority of the Lithuanian public are prejudiced against them, and this is senseless and unnecessary, and needs to be corrected.

2020-08-11

Lauder on Leadership: You Have to Stand Up and Fight Every Single Day

If ever there were a Jewish leader who puts his money where his mouth is, it is Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and arguably the de facto leader of the Jewish world.

Thanks to him, thousands upon thousands of Jewish children in central and eastern Europe have received an education; the fight against continued and renewed antisemitism remains front and centre of the Jewish world’s priorities; enormous amounts of art, once looted by the Nazis, have been returned to many heirs of Jewish victims of the Holocaust; and funding has been put in place for both maintenance of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, and the proposed memorial to the dead at Babi Yar, the site of the notorious 1941 massacre of almost 34,000 Jews in Ukraine.

And yet, as Lauder, in his trademark New York growl, tells it, it could all have been so different. “What would have happened to me,” he wonders, “if I had not gone to Vienna?”

Full interview here.

2020-08-07

WJC Applauds Facebook Banning M’Bala for Anti-Semitism

NEW YORK–The World Jewish Congress (WJC) welcomes Facebook’s decision to ban Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, a French extreme political activist notorious for spreading anti-Semitic hate speech, Holocaust denial and violent ideology. Facebook informed the WJC of its decision to ban Dieudonné from Facebook and Instagram. Dieudonné has been condemned by French courts on several occasions and again recently for negationist and ant-Semitic statements. Previously YouTube removed a channel linked to Dieudonné.

WJC president Ronald S. Lauder said, “The World Jewish Congress has been on the forefront of urging social media platforms to exercise their authority to block those who disseminate anti-Semitic hate, including Dieudonné. Dieudonné has been using social media to do harm for far too long. Freedom of expression by no means gives anyone the right to incite hatred and anti-Semitism, online or anywhere else.

“While we welcome Facebook’s actions, Dieudonné is just one notorious case among many others. Countless others continue to spread hate and antisemitism on social media platforms. The World Jewish Congress urges Facebook and other platforms to prioritize banning those who spew dangerous anti-Semitic rhetoric. Our safety and future is dependent upon social media companies taking this hate seriously.”

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About the World Jewish Congress

The World Jewish Congress (WJC) is the international organization representing Jewish communities in 100 countries to governments, parliaments and international organizations.

2020-08-072020-08-07

Members of Panevėžys Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired Interested in Jewish History

The Panevėžys Jewish Community continues its educational outreach efforts despite difficult times. This time an elderly group from the Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community. They have been following the weekly installments in the newspaper Panevėžio balsas dedicated to Jewish life, and requested a face-to-face meeting to learn firsthand about Jewish history before the Holocaust. In late July Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman spoke to them about the prewar history, but also what happened during the war and after. The guests said they realized the idea of Jews as money-lenders was a stereotype and that many important and famous Jews had lived in Panevėžys. They expressed surprise when they were told about the Joint Distribution Committee. THey also learned of the famous rabbi Josef Kaufman who restored the Ponevezh yeshiva which still operates today in Israel.

The guests asked different questions and heard about Jewish businesspeople, teachers and doctors, including famous Panevėžys doctor Abraham Mer and others. Plans were made for a next meeting, and guests and hosts exchanged gifts. The guests left entries in the guest book.

2020-08-04

Šolom, Akmenė! Project a Big Success

Four-and-a-half-days and the results was, according to the local Akmenė newspaper Vienybė, “a great success.”

Participants and guests from Šiauliai and Vilnius said the same thing about the “Šolom, Akmenė” activities and events last week. There was the same positive reaction towards the Friday evening conference dedicated the remembering the shtetl, lessons on Sabbath traditions with treats and the concert.

There was a creative workshop for youth held before, with visiting and cleaning-up Jewish cemeteries in Vegeriai, Klykoliai, Viekšniai and Tryškiai, in a grand plan to digitize the grave epitaphs there.

2020-08-04

WJC Commemorates European Holocaust Remembrance Day

Press Release
July 31, 2020

In Memory of the 500,000 Sinti and Roma Killed in the Holocaust, World Jewish Congress Commemorates European Holocaust Remembrance Day

NEW YORK–The world is remembering the 500,000 Sinti and Roma murdered in Nazi-occupied Europe, in advance of August 2, which marks the tragic anniversary of the liquidation of the Zigeunerlager (“Gypsy camp”) at the former concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. On that day in 1944, the last 4,300 Sinti and Roma, despite their fierce resistance, were forced into the gas chambers by the SS, where they were murdered.

The World Jewish Congress (WJC) joins the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, the Association of Roma in Poland, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in observing European Holocaust Remembrance Day for Sinti and Roma on August 2. A short WJC video further explains the horrific history of the Romani Holocaust.

2020-08-03

Concentration Camp Guard Receives Two-Year Suspended Sentence

by Rūta Androšiūnaitė

The court of the city of Hamburg in northern Germany Thursday found a Nazi concentration camp guard guilty of being an accomplice in the mass murder committed during World War II and sentenced him to a two-year suspended sentence.

This could turn out to be one of the last such trials of surviving Nazi concentration camp guards. Bruno Dey, 93, was convicted for being party to the murder of 5,230 people at the Stutthof concentration camp which operated near Gdansk in Poland. He began working at the concentration camp at the age of 17.

Since he was 17 when he began working at Stutthof and the crimes of which he was accused happened when he was 18, Dey was tried in a juvenile court. Prosecutors asked he receive a sentence of 3 years while the defense called for exoneration. “How did you get used to the horror?” chief judge Anne Meier-Goering asked when she announced the court’s verdict. The trial began last October. Because of Dey’s advanced age, proceedings were limited to twice per week lasting not longer than two hours.

Full Lithuanian text here.

2020-07-31