Litvaks – Page 30 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Ninetieth Anniversary of Death of Daniel Dolskis in Kaunas

The Godo culture bar in Kaunas will mark the 90th anniversary of the death of interwar Lithuanian crooner and comedian Danliu Dolskis on Friday, December 3. Algirdas Šapoka and Kaunas city museum specialist Aušra Strazdaitė-Ziberkienė will talk about his life.

Event organizer Šapoka said: “The commemoration of his death will be constituted of two parts: we will talk about his personality with historians, after which there will be an evening of Lithuanian music. Just as he used to appear, here on a small stage in a restaurant or bar on Freedom Alley. The artist, after all, froze to death with a bottle of beer in hand.”

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2021-12-03

Condolences

Jenta Timukienė passed away Sunday. She was born in 1939 and was an inmate of the Kaunas ghetto. May her soul rest in peace. Our deepest condolences to her family, friends and fellow members of the Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners.

2021-12-01

2021-11-292021-11-29

Israeli Ambassador Visits Panevėžys

Panevėžys mayor Rytis Račkauskas held a reception for Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Yossi Avni-Levy. They spoke about projects taking place in the Lithuanian city and opportunities for cooperation.

“I thank the ambassador and the embassy for their attention to Panevėžys. For many years now we’ve enjoyed intense cooperation between the municipality and the Israeli embassy. I hope and believe our cooperation with our sister-city Ramla and with the embassy will only continue to grow in strength,” Račkauskas said.

The Israeli ambassador met with the Panevėžys Jewish Community and visited Jewish historical and commemoration sites including the former Rabbinate, yeshiva, Jewish high school and the Yavne school following the meeting with the mayor.

2021-11-25

A Bloody Story: They Were Murdered in Kaunas

Kauno.diena.lt

The tragic events of the Holocaust have left visible marks at the Ninth Fort. During World War II it was turned into one of the largest mass murder sites in Nazi-occupied Lithuania. From 1941 to 1944 Jews from Lithuania and transported here for Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, the Soviet Union and Germany were murdered here.

The mass murder began November 25, 1941 [sic]. That day 2,934 Jews were shot. The newspaper Kauno Diena presents our readers with a text by a former resident of Kaunas living in Germany concerning the blood-curdling events, commemorations of them and her feeling of guilt. Her grandparents’ home was right next to the Ninth Fort and the so-called road of death.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2021-11-25

Vilna Gaon Museum Launches Kalmanovich Book

The Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum is launching two editions of YIVO linguist Zelig Kalmanovich’s diary written in the Vilnius ghetto, in Lithuanian and English, titled Hope Is Stronger than Life. The book will be presented at 5:30 P.M. on Wednesday, November 24, at the Samuel Bak Museum, aka the Tolerance Center, at Naugarduko street no. 10 in Vilnius.

2021-11-242021-11-24

Rescuers Commemorated in Šarnelė

Rescuers of Jews have been commemorated in Šarnelė in the Plungė region. A street has been renamed for the Righteous Gentiles, with only one household of rescuers still remaining on that street, that of poet Vytautas Mačernis. Historians say the residents of this village rescued dozens of Jews from the Holocaust.

The stone monument stands on the edge of the village of Šarnelė in front of a house where Jews hid from the Nazis. Descendants of Juozapas and Adolfina Karpauskas say their grandparents provided safe haven for Jews for three and a half years.

Grandson Aleksandras Karpauskas said: “They rescued 16 Jews, and there was another family of 10, the 2 parents and eight children. So that’s 26 people. And usually on such a large farm there would be about four hired hands, so you can just imagine that there were 30 people around you every day.”

2021-11-232022-01-12

Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club Annual Report and Conference

The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club, an associate member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, held their annual conference and presentation of the past several years’ activities at the Bagel Shop Café in Vilnius on November 21. Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Žakas Gercas moderated the meeting of members of the board, athletes and special guests. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman delivered a welcome speech and noted the significance of the Makabi club for the Lithuanian Jewish Community as an athletic and cultural movement. She invited Makabi members to participate more in Jewish cultural life and holiday celebrations and to celebrate their Jewish roots.

Makabi president Semionas Finkelšteinas presented a report on the club’s activities over the last three years, noting good results from the Maccabee Games in Budapest, the annual Fun Run and continual operation during the global virus panic.

2021-11-22

Kaunas Jewish Community Celebrates Minkowski Brothers with Concert

The Kaunas Jewish Community is pleased to invite you to a concert called “Born in Kaunas, Renowned throughout the World: A Concert in Memory of the Brothers Oskar and Hermann Minkowski” at 6:00 P.M. on Monday, November 22, at the Kaunas State Philharmonic located at E. Ožeškienės street no. 12 in Kaunas.

Actor and director Aleksandras Rubinovas will tell the story of Oskar and Hermann Minkowski.

The concert will feature compositions by Litvaks and contemporary Israeli composers performed by the Vilnius St. Christopher Chamber Orchestra.

If you’d like to attend, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/modjciNNQ1eaixHt7

2021-11-19

Vilnius Ghetto Diary Donated to Schools More than a Book

The Lithuanian Jewish Community has donated a thousand copies of Yitzhak Rudashevski’s Vilnius Ghetto Diary. [Several days ago] the Lithuanian Ministry of Education and Athletics hosted a ceremony for the symbolic hand-over with education and athletics minister Jurgita Šiugždinienė, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, former culture minister Kindaugas Kvietkauskas, who translated the book from Yiddish to Lithuanian, and book designer Sigutė Chlebinskaitė participating.

It’s symbolic this is happening in the run-up to Rudashevski’s birthday on December 10, which will be a good opportunity for teachers and students to talk about him and his diary. The book has been included in the Lithuanian language and literature curriculum and Rudashevski is also mentioned in the history curriculum now undergoing revision.

“The simplest matter in embarking upon the path of Holocaust education is literature. It often facilitates better understanding of some of the matters involved than history textbooks can. Anne Frank’s diary is read around the world and is popular, and here in Lithuania we have a similar diary written by an adolescent. My assignment is to donate this book to schools, and it is the job of the education system to say, and there a million Yitzhak Rudashevskis,” Faina Kukliansky said.

2021-11-17

LJC Donates 1,000 Rudashevski Diaries to Lithuanian Schools

The Lithuanian Jewish Community has delivered 1,000 copies of Yitzhak Rudashevski’s “Vilnius Ghetto Diary” in Lithuanian translation to the Lithuanian National Education Agency for distribution to almost all primary school libraries across the country.

At the hand-over ceremony several days ago, LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said the gift will contribute to Holocaust education in Lithuania and that Rudashevski’s diary provides a personal perspective which children are able to grasp more easily. Rudashevski wrote the diary as a teenager from Vilnius. She presented one copy of the book personally as a symbolic gift to Lithuania’s education and athletics minister Jurgita Šiugždinienė on the occasion.

“While we provide the book to the schools, it’s important to remember there were thousands of Rudashevskis,” chairwoman Kukliansky said.

2021-11-16

Children’s Cooking Workshop at Community

It was quite a Sunday afternoon at the Lithuanian Jewish Community. We were not able to count the number of children in attendance nor the abundance of food made. We cooked, we baked, we sampled and we did it all over again numerous times. This was the fourth round of the Kinder Tish Sunday school activities. The chicken bullion–Jewish penicillin–was cooking in the pot since 8 in the morning. We’ll be meeting again in two weeks for the Miracle of Hanukkah. #BalabostaRiva

2021-11-15

Alanta Synagogue Renovated

The synagogue in the town of Alanta in the Molėtai region stands on slight hill side a little bit away from Ukmergės street on the right-hand side of the Alanta-Molėtai road. It is unique in Lithuania and Europe. It is one of only seventeen surviving wooden synagogues spread across Lithuania. Judging from its shape, it is thought it was built in the late 19th century. The Alanta synagogue is the only surviving synagogue from the Romantic period with an intact interior and interior stairs left in Lithuania.

The renovated synagogue will be handed over to the Molėtai regional administration for managing public use of the state-protected heritage site for cultural, educational and tourism activities including exhibits and tours teaching local Jewish history.

2021-11-152022-01-11

Kristallnacht in Königsberg and Lithuania Minor

The following was sent from the Lithuanian consulate in Tilsit, aka Tilžė in Lithuanian, in East Prussia to the Political Department of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry on November 10, 1938. The second page is a telegram from Königsberg to the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry dated November 12, 1938.

2021-11-11

Joe Slovo Remembered

by Alistair Boddy-Evans

Joe Slovo, the anti-Apartheid activist, was one of the founders of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC, and was general secretary of the South African Communist Party during the 1980s.

Early Life

Joe Slovo was born in a small Lithuanian village, Obelai, on May 23, 1926, to parents Woolf and Ann. When Slovo was nine years old the family moved to Johannesburg in South Africa, primarily to escape the increasing threat of anti-Semitism which gripped the Baltic states. He attended various schools until 1940, including the Jewish Government School, when he achieved Standard 6 (equivalent to American grade 8).

2021-11-082021-11-12

The Unknown Connection between Zambia and Ukmergė

by Rytas Sakavičius

One average day doing my usual thing, scrolling through facebook, an entry caught my eye about a European who is a national hero of Zambia. The most interesting part was his surname, Zukas.

It sounded familiar, but I didn’t really believe it: is it possible we wouldn’t know about this person? We so love stories about people whose ancestors came from Lithuania and it hardly matters whether they identified themselves with Lithuania. Not expecting much, I put “Simon Zukas” into a search engine. The results were suprising. Born July 31, 1925, in Ukmergė [Vilkomir], Lithuania. That’s when I got interested, thinking it strange such an important and exceptional African political figure might be completely unknown in his native land.

2021-11-032021-11-19

Silvia Foti at the Tolerance Center

Silvia Foti presented her book “The Nazi’s Granddaughter: How I Discovered My Grandfather Was a War Criminal” at the Tolerance Center of the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum October 29.

She spoke about her painful experience confronting and coming to terms with the fact her grandfather Jonas Noreika collaborated with the Nazis in Lithuania and committed Holocaust crimes. She said she regretted he is still revered in Lithuania as a hero and an example to follow.

The book will be published in Lithuanian translation by Kitos Knygos publishing house in 2022 under the title “Vėtra lietaus šalyje” [Storm in the Country of Rain].

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky took part in the discussion as well, saying: “I have no doubt at all that, despite the fact the media are ignoring this discussion, after this event we will hear heavy criticism from people who were not here and did not participate. But as I have said many times, Lithuania’s reputation is being tarnished not by those who speak the truth, but by those who hide it.” She said she understood how hard it was for Foti and how much courage and sincerity she had shown in telling the truth about a close family member.

2021-11-032021-12-05

European Days of Jewish Culture Lead to Regular Discussions

The #ŽydiškiPašnekesiai web discussion started as part of the European Days of Jewish Culture this fall, whose motto this year was “Dialogue,” has turned into real-life meetings and discussions. Starting now every second Wednesday of the month will be devoted to discussions of Jewish history and heritage, subtle aspects of history and the issues which came up last fall with political, educational and public figures, held at 5:00 P.M. at the Bagel Shop Café at the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius. There will also be relevant passages of music performed at these events.

The first such discussion is scheduled for November 10 under the title “Reflections of the Holocaust in Political Rhetoric and the Media.” The discussions will likely be held in Lithuanian. Founder of this new discussion club Arkadijus Vinokuras says: “Today only a small portion of Lithuanian society and especially politicians are able to speak at least respectfully about the tragedy which befell us all in the mid-20th century. Yes, all of us, all of Lithuanian society, without regard to ethnicity. It’s important to realize that ‘speaking respectfully’ about the Holocaust is one thing, and understanding the connections between the Holocaust and institutionalized anti-Semitism is another thing altogether. This kind of dualism arises often in speeches by politicians and is reflected in their actions. There are cases in the media (not just in Lithuania) where there is a lack of reflection and ‘innocent’ opinions are expressed, under the alleged right to ‘an alternative view of the holocaust.’ And no, writing the Holocaust uncapitalized is not an unintentional mistake here.”

2021-11-03

Condolences

Simon Zukas, one of Zambia’s independence heroes and most admired figures, has died aged 96. He passed away September 28, 2021 Zukas was one of the proponents of the reintroduction of multi-party politics and held several positions in the MMD government.

His family state that funeral arrangements will be announced later.

Mr Zukas and his family came from pre-war Lithuania to what was then the British colony of Northern Rhodesia because it did not employ quotas limiting Jewish settlers — unlike South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, later Zimbabwe.

2021-11-032021-11-12

LJC Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky Speaks at Commemoration of Grosse Aktion in Kaunas

Your excellency, the president of the Republic of Lithuania,
Honorable mayor of Kaunas,
Ladies and gentlemen,

The Passion, the path of suffering leads us to this place from Democrat Square, which eighty years ago was witness to a disgusting and horrific crime committed against ten thousand Jewish residents of Kaunas.

Earlier that same year the kommandant and the burgermeister of Kaunas issued order no. 15, point 4 of which evicted all Jews of Kaunas from their homes and lives: “All people of Jewish ethnicity living within the borders of the city of Kaunas without regard to sex or age must remove to the Kaunas suburb Vilijampolė between July 15 and August 15 of this year.”

2021-10-292021-11-25