As part of commemorating Holocaust Day, the Tolerance Center of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum invites the public to attend a screening of a documentary film about Irena Sendlerowa, a Righteous Gentile. The Polish Institute in Vilnius and the embassy of the Republic of Poland are helping organize the event to be held at 5:30 P.M. Wednesday, April 11, at the Tolerance Center, Naugarduko street no. 10/2, Vilnius. The film is in Polish with Lithuanian subtitles.
Come Watch Meyn Vilne Film
You’re invited to a screening of the first part, “People and Stones,” of the documentary film “Meyn Vilne” at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, April 10, at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius.
This Time We’ll Respond to the Anti-Lithuanian Hysteria, Ambassador to Israel Says
Lithuanian ambassador to Israel Edminas Bagdonas. Photo: Reuters/Scanpix nuotrauka
© 2018 Lietuvos žinios
“We usually decide not to react to these sorts of things. There’s no reason to keep telling the same people–[Efraim] Zuroff and [Dovid] Katz–the same thing over and over again. We don’t have the desire to do so, neither do we have the time, and there’s no rationality at play. But this time we will respond,” Lithuanian ambassador to Israel Edminas Bagdonas told Lietuvos žinios
When the Lithuanian parliament began considering banning the sale of goods which distort or belittle Lithuanian history or threaten Lithuanian statehood, there was a reaction in other countries. The Israeli press carried articles that this was allegedly aimed at books such as Rūta Vanagaitė’s “Mūsiškiai” about the Holocaust in Lithuania. This isn’t the first case in recent times where the shadow of anti-Semitism has been cast on Lithuania and Lithuanians. There was a report in March Lithuanians are the least favorable towards Jews in Eastern Europe. An American newspaper ran an article on March 30 accusing Lithuania of trying to hide the Holocaust.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
Condolences
Sara Ginaitė-Rubinson died April 2. She was born March 17, 1924. She joined the underground resistance in the Kaunas ghetto, fought as a Jewish partisan, married a fellow partisan and was a professor of political science at Vilnius University after the war. She moved to Canada with her two daughters in 1983 following the death of her husband. She was the author of numerous books and was an outspoken proponent of Holocaust education in Lithuania. Her book “Resistance and Survival: The Jewish Community in Kaunas, 1941–1944” was published in Canada and won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Holocaust History in 2008. She wrote several books about the Holocaust and lost Lithuanian Jewish communities in Lithuanian, including “Žydų tautos tragedijos Lietuvoje pradžia” [The Beginning of the Tragedy of the Jewish People in Lithuania].
The Lithuanian Jewish Community sends its deepest condolences to Sara’s entire family in Canada and her many friends in Lithuania. Her deep commitment to the memory of those murdered lives on.
Kalvarija Municipality to Renovate Synagogue Complex
Vilnius, April 2, BNS–Leaders from the Lithuanian municipality of Kalvarija have decided not to break off an agreement on the utilization of the synagogue complex there as they had planned and are considering how to continue with renovation, following a meeting with the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department.
Financing pathways using EU structural funds were presented to municipal leaders at the meeting with discussion of financing from the Cultural Heritage Department as well.
Under the project drafted by the LJC several years ago, the total cost of work to fix the synagogue complex came to just under 2 million euros, but no funding was found.
The municipality and the LJC signed a use agreement in 2014, under which the municipality pledged to protect and utilize appropriately the buildings until financing was found to begin restoration to adapt the complex for public cultural, educational and academic use, for tourism and other uses.
“We really don’t have this kind of money, this is a small municipality and we can’t save up such sums or spend that much on synagogues,” Kalvarija mayor Vincas Plikaitis told BNS.
Lithuanian Jewish Community Responds to Proposed Legislation to Censor “Goods”
The Lithuanian Government has sent proposed amendments on the consumer-protection law to parliament for consideration which would ban sales of goods which “distort the historical facts of Lithuania or belittle Lithuania’s history, independence, territorial integrity and constitutional order.”
Proponents of the amendments say they’re needed to stop sales of toys which allegedly commemorate the incorporation of the Crimean Peninsula into the Russian Federation. Lithuanian legal, trade and consumer experts say the amendments aren’t specific and that anything which is sold is a “good,” meaning the law could be used to censor books.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky has made the following statement regarding the matter:
“These kinds of amendments without precise explanation raise well-founded concerns and recall the dark times of government censorship. History and the writing of annual chronicles are two different things. Historical memory, especially concerning our country’s greatest historical tragedy, the Holocaust, is still in its beginning stages and probably won’t ever be final. These sorts of foolish, misguided attempts by the Government to protect consumer rights have given rise to anger, with foundation, in the international Jewish community. In Europe, where anti-Semitism is on the rise, and especially in Central and Eastern Europe, where laws are being passed on the ‘appropriate’ interpretation of history, Lithuania must remain open and democratic. Freedom of speech and human rights must be insured in our country just as actively as the calls to fight for the protection of consumer rights through these amendments.”
Tolreance Center Holocaust Commemoration Event
Dear friends of the Museum,
We kindly invite you to an event for Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom ha-Shoah), a screening of the documentary film “The Story of Irena Sendler” and to meet historian Dr. Marcin Urynowicz on April 11 at 5.30 P.M. at the Tolerance Center (Naugarduko street no. 10/2, Vilnius). The event is being organized together with the embassy of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Institute in Vilnius.
Discovering Jewish Roots in Panevėžys
For the second time a group of 18-and-under young people from Odessa, Kiev, Minsk, Gomel, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kherson and Krasnoyarsk–85 people in all–have visited Panevėžys as part of a project called Return to Roots. The goal of the journey was to learn about the culture, heritage and history of Litvaks in Panevėžys and Lithuania. Visiting surviving cemeteries, the synagogue and the school, the students witnessed Jewish heritage with their own eyes. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman told the story of the destruction of a Jewish cemetery in 1966 to exploit the headstones as construction material. He said the local Jewish community had gone to great efforts to have the stones returned to the cemetery where the “Sad Jewish Mother” monument now stands. The students showed keen interest in the history of the Jews in the city and World War II. The delegation visited the former Ponevezh yeshiva established by the famous rabbi, Josef Kahaneman. After touring the city the students visited the town of Subačius and the Jewish cemetery there, where rainfall prevented any clean-up work. Alderman Vidmantas Paliulis came to meet the students there. Paliulis has exerted enormous efforts to clean up and maintain the Subačius Jewish cemetery, nicknamed “Paris.” He explained it was called that because of the name of the small neighboring village Paryžius.
The students were then received warmly and fed at the Panevėžys Jewish Community.
Jewish Theater in Inter-War Lithuania
An event to launch the new book “Žydų teatras tarpukario Lietuvoje” [Jewish Theater in Inter-War Lithuania] by Dr. Ina Pukelytė will be held at 6:00 P.M. on the second floor of the Grand Dukes Hall in Kaunas on Wednesday, April 4.
All theater and book lovers are invited to attend to learn more about Jewish activities in Lithuania and other countries in the period between the two world wars, the place Lithuanian Jewish theater holds abroad and about the evolution of Lithuanian theater after the war.
Head of Vytautas Magnus University’s Theater Studies Cathedral Dr. Edgaras Klivis is to moderate the event.
Public Launch of Rudashevski Vilnius Ghetto Diary at LJC
The Lithuanian Jewish Community hosted a second, more public launch of the new Lithuanian translation of the Yitzhak Rudashevski Vilnius ghetto diary Tuesday, following last month’s and exclusive initial presentation at the Vilnius Book Fair.
Rudashevski was 14 when he and his parents were imprisoned in the Vilnius ghetto. He celebrated his 15th birthday there. The family hid during the ghetto liquidation, were discovered and then murdered, presumably at Ponar outside Vilnius. Over the last two decades Rudashevski’s diary has emerged as one of a handful of testimonies by children. It was initially published in extracts in the original Yiddish in Israel, and then in English in 1973. An older and newer French translation ha4xandra Zapruder’s books about children in the Holocaust and in a documentary on the same topic aired on MTV.
Lithuanian Magazine Reprints Markas Petuchauskas’s Article about Samuel Bak
The latest issue of the Lithuanian magazine Kultūros barai has reprinted Markas Petuchauskas’s article “The Return of Samuel Bak,” recounting the author’s relationship with the Litvak painter beginning in the Vilnius ghetto, through the opening of the Samuel Bak museum and up to the present time. The article was first published on this website.
Kaunas Jewish Community Honors Most Active Members
The Kaunas Jewish Community has been honoring its most active members for over two decades now. This year KJC chairman Gercas Žakas invited such members to an evening party to thank them for their sincerity, presence, communication and individual contributions of the most varied sort, including contributing homemade pastry for the Hesed Club, cakes cooked with love for various occasions, furthering traditions and the Yiddish language, honoring Holocaust victims, broadening individual horizons through excursions and cultural events, sharing memories and experience, participating at sporting events and extending a helping hand to other members of the community.
Live musical performances contributed to the fun with performances by the collective including Mihail Javič on saxophone, Arvydas Joffė on percussion, Rolandas Babraitis on keyboard and the young vocalist Viktorija. We all know small gifts can cement friendships and everyone who attended received valuable books.
Rudashevski Vilnius Ghetto Diary Presentation March 27
The literary monument of a fifteen-year-old chronicler of the Jewish ghetto to the suffering of the Holocaust, Yiddish culture, the will to survive and hope. For those who haven’t yet had a chance to learn about the Vilnius ghetto diary of Yitzhak Rudashevski, we invite you to come to the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 6:00 P.M. on March 27, 2018, for a public books launch. Participants: LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, translator Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, designer Sigutė Chlebinskaitė, Holocaust historian Neringa Latvytė-Gustatienė. Dr. Lara Lempert will serve as moderator.
Zionist Political Aspirations
Photo: Students and reporters from Lithuania at the 17th World Zionist Congress, Berlin, 1931
The LJC webpage is publishing a series of articles by Dr. Eglė Bendikaitė called “Zionist Priorities in the Struggle for Lite (1916-1918)” dedicated to marking the 100th anniversary of union of Zionist organizations in Lithuania. The first part was published here February 15 here.
The World Zionist Organization was established at the August, 1897, meeting of the First World Zionist Congress in Basel. Lithuanian Zionism disappeared as a subject of inquiry along with the Lithuanian Jewish community slaughtered in the Holocaust. Following Lithuanian independence more scholarly attention is being paid to the movement.
The word Zionism comes from Mount Zion, where the original Temple was built in Jerusalem. Early in Jewish history it came to serve as a synonym for Jerusalem and the Land of Israel. As a symbol of the desire to return to the Promised Land, it was an element of Jewish prayers for centuries. It was only towards the end of the 19th century it acquired a political meaning and began to stand for a social movement whose goal was to create a political home for the Jewish people in their historical homeland, in other words, to reestablish a Jewish state.
Condolences
Edmundas Ruvinas Zeligmanas passed away March 22. He was born February 25, 1931. He was a member of the Vilnius Jewish Community and the Union of Concentration Camp and Ghetto Prisoners. Our deepest condolences to his widow Janina, his daughter and all his many friends and family.
Zeligmanas was the sole survivor of the mass murder of the Jews of Šilalė. He was 10 when war broke out in Lithuania. He came from a religious family; his father was a cantor and studied at the Telzh yeshiva. Zeligmanas attended a religious school at the synagogue as a child. After losing his entire family in the Holocaust, he went on to study physics, taught physics, worked as an engineer at a counting machine factory and taught electronics at the Construction Technicum. He lived to have great-grandchildren. A frequent face at the synagogue in Vilnius while his health allowed, he was a regular member of the minyan there. May he rest in peace.
Invitation
A ceremony to unveil a memorial plaque commemorating German Jews sent to the Ninth Fort in Lithuania and murdered on November 25, 1941, will be held at 11:30 A.M. on April 13, 2018, at the Ninth Fort Memorial Complex, Žemaičių highway no. 75, Kaunas. You are invited.
Sabbath Celebration
The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you to a Sabbath celebration with Righteous Gentile Ona Landsbergienė’s great-grandson Gabrielius Landsbergis. LJC executive director Renaldas Vaisbrodas will moderate.
The Sabbath ceremony will be held on the second floor of the LJC at 6:30 P.M. on Friday, March 23. The number of seats is limited and registration is required. Call 8 678 81514
Lithuanian Public Television Begins Righteous Gentiles Series
Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT has begun airing a series called “Righteous Gentiles,” presenting the stories of Lithuanians who rescued Jews from the Holocaust. Almost a thousand Lithuanians have now been officially recognized as Righteous Gentiles, per capita the largest percentage in any country. According to the national television broadcaster’s site, the series will tell hitherto unknown stories of Lithuanian heroism during the Holocaust.
Video and more information in Lithuanian available here and here.
Academic Ethics Ombudsman Fired for Anti-Semitism
Virgilius Sadauskas has been fired at academic ethnics ombudsman.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community welcomes this win for common sense and is grateful to the 29 MPs from the Liberal, Conservative, Social Democratic and Peasants factions for initiating a vote of confidence in Sadauskas.
The LJC feels the actions by this public servant, offering a monetary reward for collecting information “about people of Jewish ethnicity who contributed to deportations and torture,” incited ethnic discord and fall under the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism adopted by the European Parliament on July 1, 2017.
We hope this decision becomes an example of best practices in the continuing fight against anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred in our country at the national and community level.
In a secret poll, 77 MPs voted in favor of firing Sadauskas, 17 voted against and 13 abstained. Three ballots were ruined.