Solomonas Levinas has passed away. He was born in 1934. Our deepest condolences to his wife Valentina, sons Vladimiras and Leonidas and grandchildren. The members of the Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners will not be able to fill the gape left by your loss, but we want to take a share of your pain.
Children’s Safety Questioned after Swastika Appears at LJC
Children’s events, workshops, clubs and so forth are held often at the Lithuanian Jewish Community, as are Hebrew lessons, chess matches and Jewish holiday events attended by children. The safety of children attending events at the LJC is being called into question by the appearance of a swastika just meters from the front door. Its appearance coincided with the Peoples Fair inside, where children were preparing to give a concert. The goal of the Peoples Fair is to bring together the ethnic minority communities who call Lithuania home.
While the children were getting ready for the concert upstairs, down at the Bagel Shop Café a group of 43 elderly religious Jews from Jerusalem were holding prayers and waiting for breakfast when the swastika appeared, even closer to the front door of the kosher food outlet.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliaksy said there should actually be reverse discrimination for the Lithuanian Jewish Community considering how small it is now following the Holocaust.
No other state in Europe fails to provide protection and security for its Jewish community.
Swastika at the Lithuanian Jewish Community
A week before Lithuania marks its Day of Remembrance for Jewish Victims of Genocide in Lithuania, a swastika appeared on the sidewalk close to the main entrance of the LJC at Pylimo street no. 2, where some LJC security cameras are pointed.
Who did it and why? As Sergey Kanovich has written:
“It’s not really bad now is it? After all good come quickly after… and it was created by heroes. What after this, a broken window, a match? When the authorities remain silent, evil doesn’t sleep.”
There is no other Jewish community in Europe where the state doesn’t provide protection and security.
Meeting with Students from the Viltis Pre-Gymnasium in Panevėžys
The month of September is marked by a painful historical tragedy and is the month we mark the Day of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide. The Vilnius ghetto was liquidated over the course of the month of September.
Every year the Panevėžys Jewish Community organizes commemoration ceremonies at the mass murder sites in the Kurganava forest, the Žalioji forest, Krekenava, Raguva and other villages in the Panevėžys region.
The plan this year is to hold a quiz with students on September 24, show a film about the Holocaust from Yad Vashem and to introduce young people to Holocaust survivors. This meeting took place at the Panevėžys Jewish Community in early September with students from the Viltis Pre-Gymnasium.
Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman told the painful history of the Jews of the Panevėžys area.
Local Nazi collaborators murdered Jewish men, women and children throughout Lithuania, in Ukraine and in so many other European countries. Jews will never forget those people who helped and rescued them from the Holocaust.
One wonders why today a small group of Lithuanians is attempting to return to the past and to commemorate the collaborators who murdered and destroyed their fellow citizens.
University of Illinois at Chicago Hosts Discussion “Narratives of Pluralism in Lithuania Yesterday and Today”
Tuesday evening the University of Illinois at Chicago held a discussion called “Narratives of Pluralism in Lithuania Yesterday and Today.” Speakers included professor Tomas Venclova, Lithuanian minister of culture Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, YIVO director Jonathen Brent, with teacher of Polish literature and Polish-Jewish relations Karen Underhill moderating. Discussion focused on multiculturalism in Lithuania, changes in ethnic minority communities in Lithuania over the centuries, contributions the ethnic minorities made to founding the modern state and Litvak contributions to the nation’s cultural and political life, as well as Holocaust education and commemoration.
Lithuanian consul general Mantvydas Bekesius thanked professor Venclova, Lithuanian cultural attaché in New York Gražina Michnevičiūtė and all audience members and speakers.
Photos by Sandra Scedrina
Yeshiva Being Restored in Telšiai
by Gintaras Šiuparys
The city of Telšiai has been putting its Old Town in order and has begun restoration of the former yeshiva there.
The remains of the building standing on Iždinės street doesn’t bring to mind the former glory of the world-famous yeshiva. Rabbis from the US, Great Britain, South Africa, Hungary Uruguay and other countries came to learner here. After a fire early in the 20th century, the rebuilt and expanded was huge. At one time up to 500 rabbis and other students studied here.
One of the most famous Jewish religious schools, it operated until the occupation of Lithuania in 1940. Actually it was recreated and still operates across the Atlantic: since November of 1941 the Telshe yeshiva has been operating in Cleveland, Ohio. It follows the same program of study as the former yeshiva in Lithuania.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
Arkadijus Vinokuras: We Are Afflicted by Fear
Photo © 2019 DELFI/Andrius Ufartas
We are afflicted by Soviet recidivism, i.e., by fear. Fear of the past, fear of a dark history which demands we look upon our own scared face in the mirror. We are afflicted by fear of responsibility. When powerless people are afraid, that is one thing, but it’s entirely different when the people who are afraid are in power.
Gitanas Nauseda, as if he had just fallen to Earth, is proposing to create a Cultural Commission to solve matters of historical memory.
Mr. President, we have two expert institutions which have been doing this for 20 years now. The problem is that one institution, the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania, or Genocide Center for short, sees no reason to adhere to the international convention defining the crimes of genocide, to which Lithuania is a signatory. Otherwise Jonas Noreika and Kazys Škirpa would have been dethroned long ago. All that is needed is to follow the Convention and hundreds of other documents.
The fact is, the Genocide Center is under the guidance of the right, and thus there are these kinds of politicized decisions. Who will form a new forum? Again, nationalists on the right, who have spent the last 10 years reiterating again and again that the situation is still unclear? Or perhaps it would be more constructive and more credible to convoke independent historians who are not in the pocket of the state and therefore unafraid to issue unpoliticized conclusions?
Full editorial in Lithuanian here.
Keiko Borjeson Concert in Kaunas Honors Righteous Gentile
The Kaunas State Philharmonic held a concert September 6 to honor Righteous Gentile Ona Jablonskytė-Landsbergienė on what would have been her 125th birthday.
Actor and director Aleksandras Rubinovas presented a brief biography of the woman including how she hid Jews during the Holocaust. Her son was present and shared his memories of his mother’s deeds and views.
Jazz vocalist Keiko Borjeson (ボルジェソン ケイコ) of Japan, Arvydas Joffe on percussion, Mykolas Bazaras on bass and Tomas Botyrius on sax delivered a program of jazz standards, improvisation and Jewish melodies.
LJC Chairwoman Visiting Chicago
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky is visiting Chicago in the United States. She, Lithuanian minister of culture Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas and Tomas Venclova are to participate in a University of Illinois at Chicago seminar “Narratives of Pluralism in Lithuania’s Past and Present” on Tuesday. For more information, see https://www.facebook.com/events/368273490525689/
Kaunas Library Conducting Jewish Tours
The Vincas Kudirka Public Library in Kaunas invites the public to a series of tours in a project called Jewish Heritage in Kaunas. The tours will be conducted on September 6, 8 and 10 and will cover modern architecture, the Old Town, Slobodka and major achievements by Litvaks. Registration required. Call (37) 22 23 57 or send an email to renginiai@kaunas.mvb.lt
The guided tour on September 10 begins at 6:00 P.M. and will be led by local guide Asia Gutermanaitė.
Statement by Lithuanian Jewish Community Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky on the New Jonas Noreika Plaque
Thursday evening a plaque commemorating Jonas Noreika was erected on the outer wall of the Vrublevskiai Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in central Vilnius. A number of police observed the scene.
This is a wanton act by a mob. It demonstrates the attitude of the organizers of this event, of those who hung the plaque, towards the law and obeying the law.
We saw the organizers took the path of force, pushing their belief as the only correct one. We saw that before in Lithuania in 1941.
Despite the LJC’s critical view of Noreika’s actions during the Nazi occupation, it never occured to us over those 22 years the plaque stood there to come and simply take it down. We respect the laws of Lithuania.
I have no doubt that the events of Thursday evening have done harm to the nation’s reputation. High-lvel delegations from the United States are due to arrive in September alone and we will mark the day of remembrance of the genocide of the Jews of Lithuania on September 23. And will this plaque look on from its central perch as we mark the Year of the Vilna Gaon and of Litvak History declared in 2020?
It is crucial that the leaders of the Lithuanian state express their views and a principled position, and that the appropriate Lithuanian institutions take all necessary measures.
The only consolation seems to be that today, Thursday evening, as I watched this so-called action, I saw only a small group of people who truly do not represent the whole of Lithuania. There were no young people, no intellectuals on hand, whose voices have been lacking in this.
What we are demanding is very simple: 1) stop denying the Holocaust, 2) stop portraying Holocaust perpetrators as heroes, 3) honor the victims of the Holocaust and 4) follow the IHRA definition of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism adopted by Lithuania last year. If the IHRA definition isn’t followed it’s meaningless for Lithuania to remain a signatory to it or a member of IHRA.
I would like to remind the public again that my relatives were imprisoned in the Šiauliai ghetto, from which they never returned. I would like to quote the famous writer Sholem Aleichem, in whose honor a school is named in Vilnius. One of his works begins with the words: “How good it is that I am an orphan…” I would also like to say: “How good it is that I am an orphan and that my parents aren’t around to see the man who condemned their entire family to death in the Šiauliai ghetto celebrated and lionized.”
March of the Living
You’re invited to take part in the March of the Living procession in Ponar at 1:00 P.M. on September 23, 2019. The march begins at the Ponar railroad station and concludes at the main memorial in the Ponar Memorial Complex, where a commemoration ceremony to remember the genocide of the Jews of Lithuania will begin at 1:15.
A bus will offer transport from the LJC to the memorial complex leaving at 12 noon. Registration begins September 16. To register, call 8 5 261 3003.
Home Movies from Before the Flood
On Wednesday Kaunas Holocaust survivor Dita Zupavičienė-Šperlingienė spoke at the Vilnius Jewish Public Library and presented a home movie.
The silent film was a series of street scenes from Vilnius, Riga and Lvov before the war. Zupavičienė-Šperlingienė explained how her uncle Hanon, a medical student in Paris, used to come visit the family. In bed for over a week with scarlet fever, the young Dita was overjoyed when her physician uncle told the family she could get up and do things around the house without making it worse. Dita said she jumped out of bed at the first opportunity and from that time on Hanon became her favorite uncle.
Hanon was an amateur filmmaker and used an 8 mm camera on some of his travels. As the Nazis drew closer to Paris, he grabbed a bicycle and rode south, to Vichy France. Zupavičienė-Šperlingienė said he soon discovered life was dangerous for a Jew there, as well. After the Holocaust Hanon continued to live in Paris. Dita made it to Israel where it turned out she was, for whatever reason, one of the few Jews able to teach the German language. In the early 1970s she had the opportunity to improve her German teaching skills in West Germany, and visited Hanon in Paris during that trip. That’s when he mentioned he still had some of the footage he had taken before the Holocaust.
Reception for New Israeli Ambassador
The Lithuanian Jewish Community held a reception for Israel’s new ambassador to Lithuania Yossi Avni Levy and her team last week. Chairmen of the regional Lithuanian Jewish communities attended the event. LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky welcomed the new ambassador’s arrival and introduced him to members of the Community at the event.
Levy is an Israeli writer and diplomat. He has held various posts at Israeli embassies in Bonn, Berlin, Belgrade and Warsaw. His literary work has received the prize of the Israeli prime minister’s office.
Born in 1962, Levy’s mother has roots in Iran and his father in Afghanistan. He was graduated with honors by Hebrew University in Jerusalem in history of the Middle East and Arabic in 1983.
LJC Celebrates 20th European Day of Jewish Culture in Vilnius Old Town
The Lithuanian Jewish Community celebrated the 20th European Day of Jewish Culture in the traditional Jewish Quarter of Vilnius September 1 with song, dance and food. The weather was beautiful. Restaurants in the Vilnius Old Town feature Jewish foods with traditional breakfast served at the Bagel Shop Café, restaurants and cafés on Žydų and Stiklių streets and other locations. DJs RafRaf, Akvilina and Marius Šmitas provided dance music with a 10-hour musical program at the Amadeus Bar.
LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky greeted celebrants and Vidmantas Bezaras, director of the Cultural Heritage Deparment, and Vida Montvydaitė, director of the Department of Ethnic Minorities, also spoke, noting there is no town or village in Lithuania without some sign of a Jewish presence. Vida Montvydaitė said this isn’t just Jewish heritage, it’s Lithuania’s legacy, and protecting it is becoming ever more important.
The writer Kristina Sabaliauskaitė spoke about her childhood memories of the Jews who still lived in central Vilnius then and with whom she made lasting friendships. She says interpersonal relationships are still one of the most important things in life to her.
Holocaust Survivor Dita Zupavičienė-Šperlingienė to Speak at Vilnius Jewish Public Library
The Vilnius, Jerusalem of Lithuania Jewish Community invites the public to attend a meeting with Dita Zupavičienė-Šperlingienė, a living legend, a survivor of the Kaunas ghetto, the Stutthof concentration camp and other concentration camps and of the final death march. The meeting will include a presentation of unique footage from Kaunas in 1929, filmed by Dita’s uncle Honon who came for a short visit before going on to Riga and Lvov, which also feature in the film. Members of Dita’s family look at us through time and Dita will tell their stories and how the film itself made it through the war and came to her.
The meeting will take place at 6:00 P.M. on September 4 at the Vilnius Jewish Public Library.
Sergejus Kanovičius: Revolutionary Pessimist, Writer, Successful but Still Looking for His Calling
by Evaldas Labanauskas 15min.lt
When you put “Sergejus Kanovičius” into a search engine, it comes back with “poet, essayist, translation…” There are also references to Grigoriy Kanovich, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday. The latter is a Writer with a capital W, and Sergejus also talks about his Father (also capitalized).
When I read one of your father’s works, “Žydų parkas” [Jewish Park], I got the impression that it was a monument to Litvak culture and civilization, spanning 700 years but now dead. What is the current situation of Litvaks in Lithuania? Do you think this culture/civilization is being reborn?
There are people who express the opinion there are certain parallels between the project which I lead and my father’s work. If one is a material monument to the culture of the Jews of Lithuania, then my father’s work is a literary monument to an extinct ethnos. I think the Jewish community in Lithuania is experiencing a period of transformation. The word “reborn” might be more appropriate if we were talking about what happened 30 years ago, when there were 20,000 Jews in Lithuania, but today there are barely 3,000 Jews in Lithuania. Any sort of activity is encouraging, but claiming there is some kind of very bright future–I, as a revolutionary pessimist, would refrain from that sort of evaluation. Honestly, I am very glad about what is happening, and as much as I’m able I contribute to the activities of the Jewish community, but… while there is a lot of action, there is the question: is there a future?
Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community Tours Jewish Sites in Akmenė Region
Members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community spent the day of August 20 touring the Akmenė visiting sites with once populous Jewish communities. The tour began in Šiauliai and continued on in Papilė, where wood carver, traveller, naturalist and geographer Steponas Adomavičius met the group and gave them a guided tour of Jewish residences from before the Holocaust. Members visited the old Jewish cemetery in Papilė, a cemetery which features a commemorative stone and which Adomavičius himself maintains without remuneration. He cuts the grass and hedges and plants small trees. A grateful Jewish man living in America installed a bench bearing Steponas Adomavičius’s name in the cemetery in order to thank him.
The group was unable to reach the Jewish mass murder site in the woods of the Papilė aldermanship because there was no path through the forest at all. Adomavičius spoke about new projects he’s doing in connection with preserving the memory of the Jewish people.
From Papilė the group went on towards Akmenė, where the teacher Rita Ringienė met them and imparted much important information. Some Jewish structures survive in Akmenė. The teacher and pupils from her higher classes have done a study called “Inscriptions on Headstones in the Akmenė Jewish Cemetery and Their Translation to Lithuanian.” The group visited the old Jewish cemetery in Akmenė.
Sabbath in the Jewish Quarter September 1
The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you to come celebrate the 20th annual European Day of Jewish Culture, “Sabbath in the Jewish Quarter,” in the Vilnius Old Town on September 1.
World-renowned writer Chaim Grade called the Vilnius Old Town the Jewish Quarter ca. 1930, and wrote: “Long Fridays of Summer. The housewives go to the bakery to shop for Saturday: they buy dry bagels, dark cookies and pastries with poppy seeds, small little cakes with powdered sugar…” (from his Der shtumer minyen, or Silent Minyan).
On Sunday, September 1, restaurants and cafés located in the Vilnius Jewish Quarter will present a menu of Jewish dishes, Jewish music will play and there will be lectures and tours. LJC chairman Faina Kukliansky will open ceremonies with a welcome speech at 12 noon. Saulius Pilinkus will MC and new Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Yossi Avni Levy, Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department head Vidmantas Bezaras and Lithuanian Ethnic Minorities Department director Vida Montvydaitė will also welcome participants.
Lithuanian Prosecutor Issues Finding on Noreika Take-Down, Tricolor Alley
A letter from the prosecutor of the Defense of the Public Interest Section of the Vilnius district Prosecutor Office has been posted on the webpage of the Lithuanian Prosecutor’s Office regarding complaints over the take-down of a plaque commemorating Jonas Noreika and the renaming of a street honoring Kazys Škirpa in Vilnius. Both men were complicit in Holocaust crimes during World War II.
Investigation Performed for the Defense of the Public Interest on the Removal of the Commemorative Plaque and the Renaming of the Alley in Vilnius
August 28, 2019
After considering statements by members of parliament Audronis Ažubalis and Laurynas Kasčiūnas, the Union of Volunteer Founders of the Lithuanian Military, the Lithuanian Defense of Human Rights Association and other parties on the possibly illegitimate removal of the plaque commemorating Jonas Noreika/General Storm from the outer wall of the Vrublevskiai Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and the renaming of K. Škirpa Alley, the Vilnius district Prosecutor’s Office adopted a decision to decline to apply measures for the defense of the public interest. In adopting this decision, the Prosecutor’s Office looked at information from the Vilnius municipality, the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department, the Lithuanian Government representative for the Vilnius and Alytus districts and other information pertinent to the investigation. This decision only presents a legal and not an historical assessment.