Holocaust – Page 94 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Austria Adopts IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism

Dear Friends,

For those who missed this information on our website and newsletter, we are happy to inform you that on April 25, 2017, the Austrian Government, at the initiative of its minister of foreign affairs Mr Sebastian Kurz, adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism.

The Austrian Government noted this working definition was the first to be approved by an intergovernmental organization and should aid in the identification of and combating anti-Semitism.

Austria follows the United Kingdom in adopting the definition.

Source: https://holocaustremembrance.com/media-room/news-archive/austrian-government-adopts-working-definition-antisemitism

Best regards,
The EJC team

European Jewish Congress (EJC)
Tel : +3225408159
Fax : +3225408169
Web : www.eurojewcong.org

2017-05-082017-05-08

US Public Television Airs Documentary on Jewish Vilna

Photo courtesy PBS

by Geoff Vasil

Owen Palmquist’s documentary on two sites in Jewish Vilna aired last week on the US public television network PBS’s NOVA program. According to the director, there are rumblings of a broadcast in Lithuania, but so far there are no concrete plans to show it here.

The documentary is called Holocaust Escape Tunnel and focuses on two sites in and near Vilnius: the former Great Synagogue, which was damaged in World War II and torn down by the Soviets in the early 1950s, and the Ponar mass murder site outside Vilnius, where more than 70,000 people were murdered during the Holocaust.

Obviously Ponar got top billing. Last summer as director Owen Palmquist was shooting the footage with his crew, he said they hadn’t settled on any definite title and hadn’t decided what to feature yet, but he had the idea he wanted to talk about the rich Litvak Jewish culture of Vilnius. Focusing on the Holocaust actually makes more sense within the American context, since Lithuania is generally seen as one of the more enthusiastic societies to take up arms and murder Jews during World War II. It’s an easier sell to media managers. Litvak history is complicated and spans centuries; the Holocaust is immediate and “in your face.”

2017-05-052017-05-26

Lithuanian Jewish Community Invites Veterans to Celebrate Victory Day May 8

Come mark the 72nd anniversary of Victory Day at the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 2:00 P.M. on Monday, May 8, 2017. The program includes dinner and concert. For more information please contact Žana Skudovičienė by telephone at +370 67 881 514.

2017-05-042017-05-10

Lithuanian Jewish Community Appeal on UNESCO Resolution

Lithuanian Jewish Community
Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius

To: His excellency, the minister Linas Linkevičius,
Lithuanian Foreign Ministry

APPEAL

May 2, 2017

Honorable minister,

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and world Jewish organizations please ask you to consider new draft proposals for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s) resolution “On Occupied Palestine,” which condemn the State of Israel for “military operations taking the lives of civilian victims in the Gaza Strip” and proclaiming that historical holy sites of the Jewish people, Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs, belong to Palestine.

The content of the resolution, in opposition to UNESCO’s mission, displays a specific political tone, is extremely unfair to Israel and serves the interests of only one set of the parties, closing the door on bilateral negotiations between the State of Israel and Palestine. UNESCO is being exploited as a political instrument, exacerbating already strained relations between the states involved.

We ask you please in casting the vote of the Republic of Lithuania at the meeting of the UNESCO executive board to make a decision not opposed to the most progressive democracy in the Near East and the cultural, scientific and educational partner of the Republic of Lithuania.

Respectfully,
Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman

2017-05-042017-05-10

Old Jewish Cemetery in Šeduva Receives Special Mention in Europa Nostra Heritage Protection Awards

Šeduvos žydų kapinių įamžinimą įvertino Europos Komsijos įkurta Europa Nostra!

Work in Šeduva, or more precisely work already completed, hasn’t gone unnoticed by Europa Nostra, the heritage protection organization established by the European Commission.

Europa Nostra under a jury selected by the European Commission awarded the Lost Shtetl Project special mention.

Special mentions in the EU Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Awards 2017 were made public today by Europa Nostra and the European Commission. This year the jury granted special mention to 13 heritage achievements from 11 European countries taking part in the EU Creative Europe program.

Special mention goes to outstanding contributions in the conservation and enhancement of European cultural heritage which are particularly appreciated by the jury but did not make it into the final selection to receive an award.

Old Jewish cemetery in Šeduva, Lithuania

In restoring and maintaining the Jewish cemetery in the town of Šeduva, the local community has succeeded in its efforts to restore, commemorate and respectfully maintain the memory of members of their community who, since the Holocaust, no longer live in the town.

For more information, see:
http://www.europanostra.org/2017-eu-prize-cultural-heritage-europa-nostra-awards-special-mentions/

2017-05-042017-05-11

Lithuania Again Supports Israel in UNESCO Dispute with Palestinians

Israeli ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama-Hacohen draped in Israeli flag speaks at UNESCO HQ in Paris May 2

Vilnius, May 2, BNS–Lithuania Tuesday voted against a UNESCO resolution condemning Israel’s actions in Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip Tuesday. Positions of EU member-states on the issue differ, but a document tabled by Arab member-states of UNESCO passed with a majority of votes. The UNESCO resolution calls Israel an occupational power in Jerusalem, condemns earth-works conducted by Israel in the Old Town there and condemns Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

Members of UNESCO’s executive council voted on the resolution. Lithuania remains a member of the executive body until 2019. The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry expressed opposition to attempts to exploit the UNESCO format for political purposes.

“We appreciate the efforts of the authors of the UNESCO resolution ‘Occupied Palestine’ to find compromise. We understand the special significance of the holy sites (of the Old Town of Jerusalem) for the monotheistic religions,” press representative for the Lithuanian foreign minister Rasa Jakilaitienė said in comment sent to BNS.

“We are certain protection of the world cultural heritage in the Palestinian territories and Jerusalem demands the involvement of all the interested parties. We are in favor of balanced actions and the avoidance of politicization. Attempts to exploit the UNESCO format for political purposes could serve to discredit this organization,” the Lithuanian diplomat stated.

2017-05-042017-05-10

High Accolades from EU for Project to Restore Old Jewish Cemetery in Šeduva

Lithuania was mentioned at the 2017 European Union awards ceremony for cultural heritage protection. The Lost Shtetl Project was one of three restoration projects in Europe to receive honorable mention. The Lost Shtetl Project has restored the old Jewish cemetery in Šeduva, Lithuania.

Jews of Šeduva were interred there until World War II and about 1,300 headstones and fragments were discovered there, following restoration of about 800 grave stones, of which 400 have been identified, the oldest going back to 1812 and the newest 1936.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2017-05-042017-05-11

Condolences

With sadness we report the death of Chaim Rostovskij, a member of the Šiauliai Jewish Community, on April 30. He was born May 5, 1934. Our sincere condolences to his loved ones.

2017-05-04

Commentators Posting Insults to Jews Subject to Class Action, Real Consequences Could Follow

After the scandal over an invitation posted to the internet to celebrate Shrovetide in Naisiai, Lithuania, which contained anti-Semitic overtones, impassioned comments ensued. Some commentators went far out of bounds and took to insulting ethnic minorities.

After witnessing the hate storm, a group of concerned citizens formed including Jews, Russians and Poles from Lithuania but also ethnic Lithuanians. They filed a complaint with the Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office calling for a criminal investigation.

According to a representative of that group, this is the first such case where a group of citizens assembling voluntarily rather than an existing organization or a specific individual has filed such a complaint.

“We aren’t seeking the punishment of any specific person, we just want to show there are many people who don’t want to look on in silence when this sort of public disgrace occurs,” one group representative said.

2017-05-042017-05-10

Who Needs the Myth of the Judaeo-Bolshevik?

by Donatas Puslys, bernardinai.lt

“Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning” by Yale historian Timothy Snyder is extremely important in several respects. For one thing, it provides a good examination of Adolf Hitler’s policies and reveals why it is wrong to think of him as a German national socialist when in fact he was a zoölogical anarchist [sic] whose priority was the struggle of the races and survival of the fittest in slicing off more so-called lebensraum. It also provides a good overview of Hitler’s policy innovations later exported to the conquered territories which brought about tragic consequences: hybridization of institutions, the export of anarchy [sic], the destruction of states in the creation of lawless zones which provided the opportunity for the mass murder of the people made stateless, exploiting the card of the globalization [sic] of the Jews of Germany for propaganda claiming the Nazi war was an anti-colonialist effort to liberate the world from alleged Jewish domination, and changes in the concept of war rejecting all conventions, above which dominated the will of the führer for the domination of the master race.

The book rejects the myth all citizens of Central and Eastern Europe were hardened anti-Semites who were only waiting for the chance to make a reckoning with their Jewish neighbors. It demonstrates the extent of the Holocaust was most horrific in the territories which experienced double occupations, a Soviet occupation followed by a Nazi one.

Full opinion piece in Lithuanian redefining the concepts of anarchy and Nazi ideology according to Snyder’s most recent speculations available here.

2017-05-04

Kaunas Community Marks One Year since Death of Yudel Ronder

A year has passed since the Kaunas Jewish Community lost one of our most senior and most honored members, Yudel Ronder. His memory was honored with a prayer before Sabbath began, and later over dinner many shared their memories of the extraordinary man. Highly intelligent, cultured, warm, sincere and honest, his bright wit and wisdom accompanied him even during grave illness at hospital until the last moment of his life. He was extremely active and interested in a broad range of subjects. He began many projects and activities. Even in the dark Soviet era, he sought out rescuers, told their stories and concerned himself with making sure they were honored and taken care of. He also looked for Holocaust perpetrators and without fear met with them, trying to get inside their consciences and disturb their peaceful sleep. He was one of the first Jews involved in volunteer club activities during the Soviet era, the enthusiastic director of a drama group whose performances attracted scads of viewers. The performances were in Yiddish and he sought out actors fluent in the language. The current chairman of the Kaunas Jewish Community, Gercas Žakas, who knows Yiddish well, was invited to join the troupe and became one of main actors there. Ronder took care of his people and organized welfare for the poor. He made contact with German welfare organizations, earned their highest respect and received funding for material aid for members of the Kaunas Jewish Community.

Originally from Kėdainiai (Keydan), he lost his family and relatives in the Holocaust. He survived by being evacuated to the Soviet Union and served in the 16th Division. Ronder dedicated all his energies and devoted his heart to others. People who had the opportunity to make his acquaintance have never forgotten him and his warm stories about his grandfather. Yudel’s grandson Dovydas remembers them well and he came from Germany especially to mark the one-year anniversary of Yudel’s death. Kristina, the daughter of Yudel’s long-time care-giver Stefa Ancevičienė who became very close to him, also remembers his stories well.

2017-05-04

Trump Copies Holocaust Proclamation from Museum Web Page

by Olivia Beavers

Trump Holocaust remembrance proclamation uses wording similar to Holocaust Museum website’s

President Trump’s Holocaust remembrance proclamation uses similar wording to the Holocaust Museum website’s “Introduction to the Holocaust” page.

“The Holocaust was the state-sponsored systematic persecution and attempted annihilation of European Jewry by the Nazi regime and its collaborators,” a Monday release from the White House reads.

2017-05-022017-05-10

The Roma Trail of Tears

Romų kančių keliai

The historian Ilja Lempertas said: “There was not a Jewish Holocaust and there was not a Roma Holocaust. There was one Holocaust. It began when back before the war all the efforts of one country were concentrated for exterminating people of other ethnicities.”

There is an abundant literature testifying to the Jewish experience of the Holocaust, but much less about the Roma experience. Materials collected by V. Beinortienė ir D. Tumasonytė from Roma survivors of the concentration camps and their families, including photographs and archival documents, will fill that gap partially.

With permission of the authors, we present some excerpts from Beinortienė and Tumasonytė’s book “Exploring the Untold Suffering of the Roma People of Panevėžys: 1941–1945.”

2017-05-012017-05-04

Meeting with Actors from Moscow’s Vakhtangov Academic Theater

In mid-April a meeting with an overflow audience was held at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius to meet the actors of the famous Vakhtangov Academic Theater in Moscow who are performing the play “Nusišypsok mums, Viešpatie!” [Smile upon Us, O Lord] under the direction of Rimas Tuminas. Actors at the meeting included Sergey Makovetsky (playing the character Efraim Dudak), Aleksei Guskov (Shmule-Sender Lazarek), Yevgeniy Kniazev, Viktor Suhorukov (Avner Rosental) Julia Rutberg (Ožkytė) and Viktor Dobronravov (playing Hloyne-Geneh).

Twenty years after its premiere at Vilnius’s Small Theater, the play was performed at the Yevgeniy Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow in 2014, where Tuminas has been director since 2007. The tour of the play in Lithuania this time is dedicated to the late actor Vytautas Šapranauskas, who died in 2013 and was unable to play again the role of Chloinė Genech in Tuminas’s presentation of the drama in Moscow. The play originally performed at the Little Theater on Gedimino prospect in Vilnius travelled around the world, winning numerous awards at drama festivals. In 1995 Tuminas won the title of best Lithuanian director for his direction of the play and the prestigious Kristoforas statue. Drama score composer Faustas Latėnas and Gediminas Girdvainis, who created the character of Avner Rozental, also won the same awards in separate categories.

The new production of the play is also a world traveller and has been seen in New York, Toronto and Tel Aviv.

2017-04-302017-05-04

Vilnius City Council Names Samuel Bak Honorary Citizen

Samuel Bak, the famous Litvak painter, has been named an honorary citizen in his hometown, Vilnius. Bak now becomes only the 15th honorary citizen of Vilnius. The award is granted based on exceptional contributions to Lithuania and her capital city. Bak was nominated for the title by the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. Bak is planning to travel to Vilnius this year and present 100 of his works to the museum.

Bak was born in Vilnius August 12, 1933. At the age of 9 he and his parents were imprisoned in the Vilnius ghetto. There he had his first exhibition, of his drawings. In 1945 he lived in a displaced-persons camp in Germany. In 1948 he made aliyah to Israel. Later he lived in France, Italy and Switzerland. In 1993 he moved to Weston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Since 1959 he has exhibited his works in galleries and museums in Montreal, Jerusalem, London, Paris and Rome. His second exhibition in Vilnius took place in 2001. He holds the degree of honorary doctor of the visual arts at the Massachusetts College of the Arts.

Samuel Bak portrays his experience of the Holocaust in his pictures.

Although the world-renowned artists is truly a “citizen of the world,” he has never forgotten his hometown, Vilnius, and what he experienced here, which gave rise to his artistic career. His work is characterized by his personal style combining details of perfect Renaissance-type figures with metaphysical spaces, an individual interpretation of iconography and a deep symbolism.

Honorary citizens of Vilnius include the architect Algimantas Nasvytis, late former US president Ronald Reagan, father Kazimieras Vasiliauskas, composer Mstislav Rostropovich, disgraced former speaker of the US House of Representatives Dennis Hastert, the writer Czesław Miłosz, Lithuanian writer Justinas Marcinkevičius, the anti-Communist Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski, Lithuanian mathematician Jonas Kubilius, Lithuanian rock musician Algirdas Kaušpėdas, the writer and philosopher Tomas Venclova, the late former Israeli prime minister and president Shimon Peres, late former Lithuanian prime minister and president Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas and former Icelandic foreign minister Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson, the first Western government official to recognize the reaffirmation of Lithuanian independence in 1990.

2017-04-282017-05-10

Goodwill Foundation Press Conference

Gerosios Valios fondo spaudos konferencijoje

by Paulius Gritėnas, 15min.

A meeting of the executive board of the Goodwill Foundation for Disbursing Compensation for Jewish Religious Community Real Estate met in Vilnius Thursday. The board decided how to use monies allocated by the government to fellow Jewish citizens for losses incurred during the Holocaust. Board chairwoman and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said: “Rather sensitive issues were discussed. Issues such as the rebuilding of the Great Synagogue in Vilnius, cemetery protection, Holocaust education.”

“It’s wonderful that the large world Jewish organizations are returning to Lithuania. Many of them have Litvak roots,” Kukliansky noted, pointing to Andrew Baker, director for international Jewish affairs for the American Jewish Committee who also serves as co-chair of the Goodwill Foundation’s executive board.

Baker said the issue of the Great Synagogue was especially important. “Lots of discussions are taking place on what should be at that site, but whatever happens, it must reflect the historical and cultural moment which that site is,” Baker commented.

“I know there are legal arguments which could be employed, we could assert our rights and became the owners of the site. Our board resolved we should go that route,” Baker said.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2017-04-282017-05-03

Lithuanian and American Jewish Reps: Museum at Palace of Sports Impossible

Vilnius, April 27, BNS–The Palace of Sports, built above old graves in the old Jewish cemetery in the Šnipiškės neighborhood of Vilnius, is not an appropriate place for a museum of Jewish history, according to Lithuanian and American Jewish representatives.

“There’s agreement the Jewish cemetery is not an appropriate site for a museum,” American Jewish Committee representative Andrew Baker, who is a leading executive in a fund for disbursing compensation for Jewish property, told reporters Thursday.

“We believe there should be a kind of presentation of the history of the cemetery and of the people buried there,” he added. Baker is a chairman on the executive board of the Goodwill Foundation which supervises monies paid in compensation for Jewish religious community property. Under a law adopted in 2011 Lithuania is obligated to pay out 37 million euros over ten years in compensation for property seized by totalitarian regimes.

2017-04-282017-05-10

Old Jewish Cemetery No Place for Jewish Museum

by Laima Žemulienė, ELTA

“Today’s agenda for the meeting of the Goodwill Foundation was connected with Jewish heritage and its use in Lithuania. There are issues, however, which the Goodwill Foundation would like to solve with the Lithuanian Government. These include the rebuilding of the Great Synagogue in Vilnius, a Jewish History Museum in Lithuania, cemetery protection and education, especially Holocaust education. There are issues for which the international Jewish communities can make recommendations, and we are using those recommendations. Many of the people in those communities have Litvak roots. The Goodwill Foundation is in contact not just for allocating monies, but also with international Jewish organizations,” Faina Kukliansky said.

The Great Synagogue which stood on Jewish street in Vilnius was the center of the Jewish community.

“I know there are specific legal considerations which could be used for us to take ownership of that site. Our executive board decided we should go that route. The most important interest for us is how the site will be used, how it will be respected,” Rabbi Andrew Baker said.

2017-04-282017-05-10

Play Silenced Muses in Panevėžys

The Rokiškis Theater Association of the Juozas Miltinis Gymnasium presented the play Nutildytos Mūzos [Silenced Muses] directed by Neringa Danienė in Panevėžys April 21 to commemorate Holocaust victims. The play was based on real events. The original play was written using the diary of the young Jewish girl Matilda Olkin and the memoirs of her contemporaries. The moving story about the fate of the family of the pharmacist Naum Olkin from Panemunėlis in the Rokiškis region of Lithuania and the muse silenced before its time just as it was about to bloom in the young and talented poetess Matilda is topical in the context of ever-growing dangers in the world today, and compels us to think about the senselessness of war and the fragility of this day.

2017-04-27