Litvaks – Page 35 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Litvak Isaac Herzog Elected President of Israel

Isaac Herzog has been elected Israel’s 11th president, with 87 votes of Knesset’s 120.

The Jewish agency head, former Labor chief and son of 6th president defeated educator Miriam Peretz and said he’ll work to “build bridges” within Israeli society and with Diaspora.

Isaac Herzog, the chairman of the Jewish Agency and former head of the Labor party, was elected Wednesday as Israel’s eleventh president.

Herzog defeated Miriam Peretz, a social activist who overcame the loss of two of her sons in battle to become an Israel Prize-winning educator, with 87 votes, the most a presidential candidate has ever won, to her 26.

In the secret election, in which all 120 MKs were eligible to cast votes, three abstained, three votes were disqualified and one lawmaker, Ra’am chair Mansour Abbas, did not vote.

2021-06-03

US Rep: Quisling Lithuanian PM Brazaitis Wasn’t Exonerated or Rehabilitated

United States representative Brad Sherman (D, Sherman Oaks, California) has asked the Lithuanian ambassador to the United States for clarification regarding claims by the Lithuanian Government the pro-Nazi prime minister in the Lithuanian Provisional Government of 1941 was somehow exonerated by the Congress in the 1970s.

Congressman-Sherman-to-Ambassador-Plepyte-Letter-Response1

Correspondence leading to the latest letter:

2021-06-012021-06-01

Help Mark the 80th Anniversary of the Beginning of the Holocaust in Lithuania This Year

Dear Community members,

This year we’ll mark the 80th anniversary of the onset of the Holocaust in Lithuania. The Lithuanian Jewish Community is creating a digital chronicle to help the broader public understand how Litvaks lived before the Holocaust and what happened to their communities beginning in 1941.

We are asking you to share the stories and photographs of your relatives who lived in the Lithuanian shtetls and died in the mass murders in 1941 or the years following.

Everyone is invited to participate by sending copies of photographs and short texts including biographies and descriptions of murders to info@lzb.lt or zanas@sc.lzb.lt

Please indicate the names of people in photographs, locations and dates if available.

2021-05-312021-05-31

From Lazdijai to Hollywood: The Achron Phenomenon

“From Lazdijai to Hollywood: The Joseph Achron Phenomenon” is a lecture celebrating Joseph Achron’s 135th birthday.

Joseph Achron (or Akhron, 1886-1943), the violin prodigy and composer born in Lazdijai, Lithuania, charmed audiences in Warsaw, Grodno, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Kiev and other cities around Europe, and went on to play Carnegie Hall. Having achieved fame in New York and Los Angeles, he remains little known in Lithuania. A close friend of Jascha Heifetz and Arnold Schönberg, he was humble on stage. He composed his greatest hit, Hebrew Melody, in barely an half hour.

How did his religious family support the young virtuoso’s musical career? What did Tsar Nikolai’s mother present as a gift to Achron? What did Achron contribute to the creation of professional Jewish music? Find out the answers and other interesting matters in Kamilė Rupeikaitė’s lecture “From Lazdijai to Hollywood: The Joseph Achron Phenomenon” at 3:00 P.M. on May 25.

2021-05-25

Condolences

The Lithuanian Jewish Community extends our deepest condolences on the death of long-time Lithuanian diplomat Edminas Bagdonas to his surviving family members.

Edminas Bagdonas, 58, passed away Saturday in Vilnius following a battle with illness. He was one of the most remarkable of Lithuanian diplomats after the country achieved independence in the early 1990s. Most recently he served as Lithuanian ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. He has been active in Lithuania’s diplomatic corps since 1994 and has served as ambassador to Israel and Belarus.

His admirers have called a “statesman with a capital S.” Litvaks in Israel remember him well for his communicability, professionalism and sense of duty.

Arie Ben-Ari Grozendsky, the chairman of the Association of Lithuanian Jewish in Israel, has sent the following condolences as well:

2021-05-242021-05-24

Happy Birthday to Fania Brantsovskaya

Happy birthday to Fania Brantsovskaya, our living link with former Lithuania before the Holocaust. A Jewish partisan, she kept fighting after the war, educating generations about the truth of what happened. Most of us at a certain age in adulthood begin to slow down, to rise more slowly from our chairs, to walk more cautiously. Fania never did. She still walks with a spring in her step as if she were a teenager, with a smile for everyone and ready to talk to anyone without regard for social status. Happy birthday, Fania. Mazl tov! Bis 120!

2021-05-222021-05-21

Litvaks in Israel Talk about Horrific Attacks

by Birutė Vyšniauskaitė, lrt.lt

“It was very cozy and even fun because all the neighbors gathered in one hiding place. We also took in a married couple from the neighboring building because they didn’t have anywhere to hide after the danger signal,” Litvak woman Dusia Lan Kretchmer told Lrytas.lt about the Hamas rocket attacks on Tel Aviv Wednesday night. She left Lithuania about 50 years ago.

Kretchmer said she was in disbelief Hamas rockets were targeting Lod, the city on the way towards Israel’s main Ben-Gurion International Airport, on Wednesday.

“I have taught chemistry for twenty years in this city. Over that entire time I have witnessed Jews and Arabs living together in peace. Many times I have celebrated holidays with the city’s communities, Arabs celebrated their holidays with Jews, Jews with Arabs. So many Arabs live there, I can’t wrap my head around why Hamas would take aim at their own people,” she said.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2021-05-14

Three Interwar Lithuanian Republic Exhibits Displayed for First Time in Kaunas

On May 6 the Atomic Bunker military heritage museum in Kaunas put on display three exhibits featuring items from museum founder Julius Urbaitis’s personal collection which he called a part of the history of Kaunas as the Lithuanian provisional capital in the interwar Republic.

The three exhibits are:

1. Goods and items from the D. Rozmarin manufactory and colonial goods [dried and canned goods and non-perhishables in general] store;
2. Ironworks and smithing equipment from the heirs of B. Rabinovitch;
3. Charming amateur and academic works commemorating anniversary of grand duke Vytautas the Great celebrated in 1930.

Kaunas mayor Matijošaitis, LJC chairwoman Kukliansky, Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Žakas, Volfas Engelman brewery general director Horbačauskas, Rūta company director Pridotkas and other honored guests attended the opening of the three exhibits.

Our respect and gratitude go to Julius Urbaitis for his concern for Jewish history and the contribution Jews made in establishing the first independent Republic of Lithuania. LJC chairwoman Kukliansky presented Urbaitis the commemorative medallion of the Lithuanian Year of the Vilna Gaon and Litvak History for this initiative of his and its implementation.

2021-05-072021-05-10

LJC Chairwoman Visits Veterans for Victory Day

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky personally visited World War II veterans in their homes to congratulate them on Victory Day. There are only six such veterans known to be resident in Vilnius. Warm wishes and congratulations to RIva Spiz, Aleksandr Asovski, Boris Lipnicki, Fania Brantsovksaya, Eliziejus Rimanas and Tatyana Arkhipova-Efros.

2021-05-07

Condolences

Holocaust survivor and historian and Jewish partisan Yitzhak Arad died May 6 at the age of 95 in Israel. He was one of the founders and the first director of the Yad Vashem memorial institute in Jerusalem. He also achieved the rank of brigadier general in the IDF. He was born in Švenčionys (Shventsian), Lithuania, in 1926, moved with his parents to Warsaw and escaped back into Lithuania with his sister at the onset of World War II. He escaped the Švenčionys ghetto and joined partisans in the forests in Belarus. In 1945 he went to Israel where he fought in four wars and was later appointed director of military education. He served in the Israeli military for 25 years and was appointed to head Yad Vashem in 1972. He earned a doctorate at Tel Aviv University and taught Jewish history, authoring numerous books about the Holocaust.

Our deepest condolences to his family and friends for their loss.

2021-05-07

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Visits Lost Shtetl Museum in Šeduva

Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis visited the site of the Lost Shtetl Museum being built in Šeduva in central Lithuania May 4.

“The future modern museum in Šeduva will better showcase the extraordinarily rich history and legacy of the Litvaks for Lithuanians and the world. I sincerely thank the initiators and executors of the project,” he said.

The private initiative is supported by the Šeduva Foundation created by Jews with roots in the town and is being carried out in cooperation with the Radviliškis regional administration.

2021-05-05

Litvak Philanthropist Eli Broad Dead at 87

New York Times newspaper reports Eli Broad, a businessman and philanthropist whose vast fortune, extensive art collection and zeal for civic improvement helped reshape the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, died last Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 87.

Eli Broad was born in the Bronx on June 6, 1933, the only child of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. When he was 7 the family moved to Detroit, where his father opened a dime store, the New York Times reported.

2021-05-05

Happy Birthday to Eta Gurvičiūtė

Dear Eta,

We congratulate you on your energy and vitality. The Lithuanian Jewish Community wishes you good health and warmth every year. You turned 100 last year and received greetings from the city in the name of all residents of Vilnius. This year you have enchanted us all and inspired everyone with your smile, sincerity, clear memory and unfading sense of humor. You are an example to all of us.

Mazl tov! Bis 120!

2021-04-282021-04-28

April 23rd Marked 301st Birthday of Vilna Gaon

April 23 is the traditional date of the birthday of the Vilna Gaon, the most outstanding scholar of sacred Jewish texts in the modern era. Last year Lithuania was supposed to celebrate his 300th birthday with fanfare, but public events were canceled due to fears for public health.

YIVO’s Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe says the Gaon, also known by the acronym GRA, was a spiritual giant, an example to future generations, a source of inspiration and the central figure in Litvak culture.

2021-04-262021-04-26

Hirsh Glik’s Birthday Was April 24

Hirsh Glik authored the words to the Jewish partisan hymn Zog Nit Keynmol. He was born on April 24, ca. 1921 according to the US Holocaust Museum, in Vilnius and belonged to the Yungvald circle of Yiddish poets. Later imprisoned in the Vilnius ghetto, he and fellow ghetto inmate and Vilnius native Rokha Margolis, both youth members of the FPO Jewish partisans group operating there, set his words to music and presented the song to the FPO leadership. He is thought to have been killed in 1944.

2021-04-26

Makabi Collective Consciousness

The March issue of the magazine “Kaunas pilnas kultūros” [Kaunas Full of Culture] featured the history of the Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club.

Gercas Žakas, chairman of the Kaunas Jewish Community, wrote on his facebook profile:

“I believe a number of Kaunas residents have discovered and come to love the publication ‘Kaunas pilnas kultūros’ which is published monthly in a small format but with rich content (incidentally, it’s free! While they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, if you get this magazine with your lunch at a café, it’s worth the cost of your meal ).

“Sports was the theme for March, and I had the honor of being interviewed as well. We spoke about youth, soccer, the Jewish community, the history of the Makabi Athletics Club and about its resurrection in Lithuania. I am grateful to Kotryna Lingienė for the initiative, to Monika Balčiauskaitė for the sincere discussion and to Arvydas Čiukšys for his photographs and warm communication. I was echanted by these enthusiastic young people who are keen on their country’s history and seek to show the multiculturalism which enriches it.”

2021-04-22

Battle for the Soul of Lithuania on BBC HARDtalk

The BBC television interview program HARDtalk interviewed granddaughter of Lithuanian Nazi Jonas Noreika on April 16, 2021, and has been airing the episode this week.

The description for the episode called “Silvia Foti: When truth trumps family loyalty. Silvia Foti on grappling with family responsible for the Holocaust” reads:

“Silvia Foti’s grandfather was a Lithuanian man hailed as heroic patriot who paid with his life resisting the Soviets. But according to her, Jonas Noreika was no hero–he had the blood of thousands of Jews on his hands. She’s chosen to speak out, angering many in Lithuania. What happens when truth trumps family loyalty?”

Interviewer Stephen Sackur pressed Silvia Foti for documentary proof her grandfather was responsible for the murder of around 1,800 in Plungė–the entire Jewish population–in 1941. Foti went further and said she had reliable documents and sources showing Noreika was responsible for mass murders of Jews in Plungė, Telšiai and Šiauliai. Sackur was interested in Foti’s journey from that of a proud Lithuanian-American to the point where she had to confront Holocaust crimes within her immediate family. Foti countered the problem was much more widespread than her family, that the perpetrators and their descendants were still covering up the Holocaust in present-day Lithuania, and cited the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania as one party involved in the nation-wide cover-up. She said her and Grant Gochin’s legal battles to have the plaque commemorating Noreika on the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences building in Vilnius was really a battle for the soul of Lithuania. Sackur asked whether Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center was correct in calling Lithuania the locomotive in the train of Holocaust distortion in Eastern Europe. Foti admitted she didn’t know the situation in Eastern Europe in general, but that this was possible.

An audio recording of the interview is available here and here.

2021-04-202021-05-10

Vilnius Bridges Lit with Israeli Colors for Israeli Independence Day

The Lithuanian Jewish Community in cooperation with the Vilnius city municipality will light up three bridges in the Lithuanian capital on the evening of April 14 to celebrate the 73rd Israeli independence day.

From Wednesday evening to sundown on Thursday blue and white lights will illuminate the White, Green and King Mindaugas Bridges. These colors were chosen for the flag of the state of Israel by Dovid Volfson who was born in the small town of Darbėnai in Lithuania in the mid-19th century.

“Around the world Vilnius is known as the Jerusalem of the North because of the important Jewish cultural and historical figures who were born, grew up and studied here. A number of them actively contributed to the creation of fortification of the independent state of Israel, forging extremely strong and deep ties between Vilnius and Israel and its people,” LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said.

2021-04-142021-04-27

Happy 10th Birthday to Maceva, the Litvak Cemetery Catalogue

Photo: Restored Jewish cemetery in Šeduva, Lithuania.

Mazl tov to Maceva, the Litvak Cemetery Catalogue, which is celebrating a milestone: ten years of activity documenting, cleaning, digitizing, and restoring Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania.

“Beit Olam, cemeteries are the house of living. It is the place were our memory comes to life,” the non-profit organization, established in 2011, said in an anniversary statement on its facebook page.

2021-04-142021-04-14

Remembering the Children’s Aktion of March 27, 1944

For three decades now the Kaunas Jewish Community has been commemorating in the last days of March the horrific operation for the mass murder of children in the Kaunas ghetto on March 27, 1944.

Over one day around 1,700 children and elderly were captured, taken out of the ghetto and murdered. The list of children murdered in the Kaunas ghetto is incomplete, it only contains a few names. The list was drawn up for the 70th anniversary of the Children’s Aktion with information from the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum and private individuals.

“We saw a bus. This noisy music was emanating from it which was supposed to mask the screams of the children, the mothers begging and pleading and the barking of the dogs. Drunk and angry Ukrainians (Ukrainian police of vlasovniki) waving axes and crow-bars hunted down the children and elderly people in their hiding places. All the atrocities ended with sundown.

“Returning from forced labor, the parents found the ghetto torn apart. The neighbor sister put a bag of clothes on a shelf and hid her three-year-old daughter inside. A German soldier looking for children jabbed the bag with a bayonet, but didn’t find anything. The cutting raised a cloud of dust and the soldier hurried out of the room. When the mother untied the bag she found her girl curled up with a deep wound in her back. The mother broke into tears but the little one, it seems her name was Gita, said: ‘Don’t cry, mommy, it doesn’t hurt.'” (testimony of J. Corefas’s father, from the book “Išgelbėti bulvių maišuose” [Saved in Potato Sacks].

We remember and we honor the victims of this terrific mass murder operation called the Children’s Aktion, and gathered to do so in a small group in line with quarantine rules in Kaunas.

2021-04-092021-04-20