That statue commemorating the notional residence of the Vilna Gaon and the shulhoyf where the Great Synagogue and a number of other shuls once stood, built around the Gaon’s residence, was vandalized on June 26 using acid.
Don’t Speak in Our Name, Mr. President of the Russian Federation
We read the article “The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II” by Russian president Vladimir Putin in the American conservative magazine National Interest and reprinted by media representing the Russian opposition and pro-government position.
We feel the need to share our thoughts with readers on the fate of Jews, citizens of Lithuania, as red totalitarianism was replaced by brown totalitarianism in our country.
Many of my relatives, those of the chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and those of many citizens of Litvak origin were imprisoned in the Stutthof (liberated by the USSR) and Dachau (liberated by American forces) concentration camps. My mother and Faina Kukliansky’s mother miraculously survived Stutthof.
Kaunas Jewish Community Invites You to Remember Victims of Lietūkis Garage Massacre
The Kaunas Jewish Community will hold a commemoration of the victims of the Lietūkis garage massacre at Miško street no. 3 at 4:00 P.M. on June 26. Joris Rubinovas will perform Maurice Ravel’s Kaddish and Gabrielė Jocaitė will perform a song in member of the victims. The public is invited and encouraged to attend. Following the ceremony we will move to the Slobodka (Vilijampolė) Jewish cemetery on Kalnų street and then the Žaliakalnis Jewish cemetery on the Radvilėnų highway.
How It Happened
Lithuanian writer Rūta Vanagaitė and German historian Christoph Dieckmann presented their new book called “How Did It Happen?” at a launch ceremony held at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius on June 25.
Dieckmann delivered what amounted to a lecture on the topic of the Holocaust in Lithuania lasting about one hour, and proposed rejecting some accepted Holocaust terminology as judicial rather than historical. He said looking through the lens of ethnicity creates a false picture, even though the actors at the time did so. He also said the idea of perpetrators, victims, collaborationists and so on should be revisited and the true picture is more complex, with people collaborating with the Nazis at one point and the same people resisting them at another. He said the grey cover of the Lithuanian-language edition of the book reflects this ambiguity.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky served as moderator and challenged Dr. Dieckmann’s seeming rejection of the legal aspects in favor of the historical truth. Dieckmann responded saying so much of the narrative is dominated by legal defense and prosecutorial arguments that it’s difficult to see what really happened.
New Attraction in Lithuania: Catcher in the Rye Commemorated by Statue in Sudargas
A new sculpture has gone up to celebrate J. D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye.
Kenneth Slawenski in his Salinger biography said the family came from Sudargas, a small Jewish village near the Polish-Lithuanian border which belonged to the Russian Empire at the time.
Salinger’s grandfather came from the Sudargas area in the Šakiai district and the statue commemorating Catcher in the Rye was unveiled there in a ceremony held on June 19. A press release for the ceremony said: “The Sudargas area is rich in its history. This was where the book smugglers operated. The famous people who come from here are famous not just in Lithuania, but around the world. We are happy there is yet another attraction where Catcher in the Rye will be commemorated. This will encourage tourists and all of us to remember again this work, and perhaps to read it again. When the novel became popular, our country was occupied. The young people didn’t have a chance to feel the spirit which surrounded the protagonist Holden Caufield in America.”
Sudargas area alderwoman Rita Grigaitienė said the book is still topical among youth because it addresses the problems youth still face. She said adults who read the book will gain insight into the problems young people face.
Full text in Lithuanian here.
Statue to J. D. Salinger to Appear Near Ancestral Home Friday, June 19
American novelist J. D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye will be commemorated with a statue near the family’s ancestral home in the Sudargas area of Lithuania Friday. Lithuanian Jewish Community member Geršonas Taicas looked into the man’s genealogy more deeply, using information from Lithuanian and American archives.
The parents of the great-grandfather of Jerome David Salinger were Solomon Zalinger and Sara Kan.
Stop European Holocaust Denial, Focus on Lithuania
Please join us for a special online town hall event Stop European Holocaust Denial Focus: Lithuania co-hosted by ICAN and the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (AAJLJ).
Tuesday, June 23, at 8 PM EDT | 5 pm PDT
Watch live!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ICANAction/videos/285276522660390/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v6KNnjikfs
Please join us for a special live event, a virtual town hall featuring Grant Gochin and Silvia Foti speaking about state-sponsored Holocaust denial in Lithuania. Grant Gochin asked the question: “Who actually murdered my family during the Holocaust?” and discovered the fact that the murderer is a current national hero of Lithuania. Silvia Foti was asked by her mother to write the biography of her national hero grandfather, only to discover that he was one of the worst genocidal murderers of Jews during the Holocaust. Silvia Foti’s grandfather murdered Grant Gochin’s family. They have come together to tell the awful truth of how their families have been connected for the past 100 years, and how the Lithuanian government has engaged in a massive cover-up to implement the tenth stage of genocide: denial. In this town hall meeting, we will discuss with Gochin and Foti their paths to discovery of this cover-up, and how it impacts the real world today.
This Country Would Never Have Become the Jerusalem of Lithuania Had It Not Been a Safe and Tolerant Place
Just before quarantine was announced the Bagel Shop received an important visitor. The interview done several months ago remains just as important and perhaps even more so now. We spoke about the importance of ethnic food to Jews living in Lithuania and about a people’s right to have ethnic foods. We await the re-opening of the Bagel Shop Café with bated breath and hope to continue this conversation in front of an audience.
Bagel Shop Interview with Meghan Luckett, Cultural Attaché at the US embassy in Vilnius
Interview by Dovile Rūkaitė, LJC project manager.
Do you like bagels? What’s your favorite kind?
Yes, of course we love bagels. My favorite are everything bagels, we buy them at your bagel shop and in the market and eat them almost every week. We make bagel sandwiches with baked egg, spices and all kinds of stuff. One of our colleagues is a great cook, she makes us homemade bagels. Once we brought her some from Trader Joe’s and she made us excellent everything bagels. My wife is a great cook, she bakes sometimes, but we usually buy them because they are very good.
Jewish Culture Week in Krakės: Let’s Learn about the Krakės Jewish Community
Photo: Krakės Jewish cemetery
The Jewish Culture Week in Krakės: Let’s Learn about the Krakės Jewish Community project will take place from June 16 to 18 in Krakės in the Kėdainiai district of Lithuania. More information is available here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/2751960485049357
Robertas Dubinka, director
Krakės Cultural Center
Laisvės alley no. 1, LT – 58242, Krakės, Kėdainiai region
tel. 8 347 38274, mob. 8 615 85084
email: krakiukc@gmail.com
Culture Historian Violeta Davoliūtė’s Population Displacement in Lithuania in the 20th Century
by Jūratė Juškaitė
Historians calculate about 17,000 people were deported from Lithuania during the first Soviet occupation. They were sent into Russia on cattle cars from June 14 to 18, 1941, and many didn’t survive their first winter. Most people who live here know these facts, but the tragedy turns out not to be uniquely Lithuanian.
Violeta Davoliūtė’s book “Population Displacement in Lithuania in the Twentieth Century” was recently completed and will appear soon [it appeared in 2016], in which the culture historian recalls the tragedy and attempts to put the deportation of Jews at the same time within the general Lithuanian context again. She says the story which appeared during the Lithuanian independence movement was ethnocentric and often way too “Catholicized.” Although official commemoration policies appear complex to say the least, and more complicated by the prevailing stereotype of the “Judaeo-Bolshevik,” Davoliūtė says these and similar stereotypes don’t divide deportees, who formed a close-knit community of shared experience.
Full text in Lithuanian here.
Monument to Catcher in the Rye to Rise at Salinger Ancestral Seat
by Jūratė Žuolytė DELFI.lt
The novel Catcher in the Rye by American writer Jerome David Salinger published in 1951 has become well-known around the world and teenage protagonist Holden Caulfield with his unique perspective on events is a household name in at least 24 languages. The author, who passed away in late January, 2010, always avoided fanfare and said little of himself publicly, but his inveterate fans figured out his Livtak forefathers hailed from the Sudargas district of Lithuania, coming to America in the 19th century. Now, this June 19, a monument will be unveiled in the Lithuanian village of the same name to commemorate the author, his works and his roots for future generations.
Two years ago producer Rolandas Skaisgirys, who comes from the same area, came up with the idea to erect the monument . “People have all sorts of idées fixes. Native country is important to everyone, but to me, inside, I always thought home village was more important, I think that’s where everything begins. The Zanavykai region of Šakiai region has many varied cultural and historical memorial sites and many famous people have come from here, for example, I have made documentary films about the signatories to the 1918 Lithuanian Act of Independence Jonas Vailokaitis and Saliamonas Banatis. And then a few years ago Audrius Siaurusevičius told me Salinger’s great-grandfather was from Sudargas, which is close to where I grew up, and then we decided there must be a way to mark this fact, to build a statue or do an installation,” Skaisgirys said. They moved quickly to make this happen with people who felt the same way, including the producers Lauras Lučiūnas and Justinas Garliauskas and others. When they received confirmation from the Sudargas aldermanship expressing high approval for the idea and permission to erect a statue near the Sudargas earthen mound, they contracted sculptor Nerijus Erminas to make the monument.
On the Article “Did Kazys Škirpa Rescue a Jewish Rabbi?”
by professor Pinchos Fridberg
Vilnius, obzor.lt
Information for my webpage readers
For your consideration, the article “On the Article ‘Did Kazys Škirpa Rescue a Jewish Rabbi?'”
This article of mine was created simultaneously with the Russian version “По поводу публикации «Kazys Škirpa išgelbėjo žydų rabiną?» Казис Шкирпа спас раввина?” of June 1, 2020, at obzor.lt
You might well ask, “Why did you post a Lithuanian text on a Russian instead of a Lithuanian newspaper internet site?” I will tell you frankly:
Lithuanian sites won’t publish me.
It is a strange thing that the New York Times and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty quote me, and yet I am an undesirable author on Lithuanian sites.
Would you believe that in 2013 Artūras Račas, who was then the director of the Baltic News Service news agency, wrote an article about me called “Dear Jewish ‘professor,’ your anti-Semitism is wearisome: dedicated to Pinchos Fridberg” in which he passed on to me some great advice:
“Dear Pinchos, you who call yourself ‘professor,’ …
“stick a gag in your mouth, crawl under the table and be quiet.”
This Year Marks 160th Anniversary of Birth of Famous Litvak Writer, Yiddishist, Journalist and Politician Abraham Cahan
Abraham “Abe” Cahan (July 7, 1860 – August 31, 1951) was Jewish American socialist newspaper editor, novelist, and politician. Cahan was one of the founders of The Forward, an American Yiddish publication, and was its editor-in-chief for 43 years. During his stewardship of the Forward, it became a prominent voice in the Jewish community and in the Socialist Party of America, voicing a relatively moderate stance within the realm of American socialist politics.
Abraham Cahan was born July 7, 1860, in Podberezhie in Belarus (at the time in Vilnius Governorate, Russian Empire), into an Orthodox Litvak family. His grandfather was a rabbi in Vidz, Vitebsk, his father a teacher of Hebrew and the Talmud. The devoutly religious family moved to Vilnius in 1866, where the young Cahan studied to become a rabbi. He was attracted by secular knowledge and clandestinely studied Russian, ultimately demanding that his parents allow him to enter the Teachers Institute of Vilnius from which he graduated in 1881. He was appointed as a teacher in a Jewish school funded by the Russian government in Velizh, Vitebsk, in the same year.
Letter from LJC Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky to Lithuanian MP Audrys Šimas
Dear parliamentarian,
The Lithuanian Jewish Community received your apology regarding the use of a Nazi salute during a vote in a parliamentary committee. We most likely don’t have to repeat that raising an arm in this way (with two fingers raised higher) is associated without a doubt with the glorification and worship of Hitler and at the same time with the brutal degradation and murder of Jews.
We would very much like to believe your apology is sincere. At the same time, we are surprised by statements made in your letter to the effect the situation has been escalated artificially, and that there was the attempt to draw the Lithuanian Jewish Community into “unfair political games which do harm to the reputation and ethical stature of politicians.”
I can say firmly the LJC is an independent organization and no one is manipulating it. For many years now we have been following reports of possible expressions of anti-Semitism and providing this sort of information about expressions of anti-Semitism and the response by state institutions to international institutions battling anti-Semitism.
About 95% of Jews living in Lithuania were murdered here during World War II and in total 6 million of my people died in the Holocaust. These numbers have not been and will not become tools for political games. It is the Community’s duty to preserve their memory and to attempt to insure the times of the Nazis and the Shoah are never repeated.
In pursuing these goals, one of the most important roles is played by public education, something to which you, too, can contribute. You could, for example, hold lessons by historians on the Holocaust for the public in your Biržai-Kupiškis voting district, set up meetings with ghetto survivors, and so on. The LJC supports these kinds of public initiatives and would gladly become a partner in organizing these activities. We believe these kinds of events and similar initiatives with the involvement of Lithuanian members of parliament would contribute to encouraging tolerance, better mutual understanding and a better understanding of history.
Therefore we call upon you not to limit your apologies to letters and words, but to show true leadership through real action.
Lithuanian Post Office to Issue Stamp Commemorating 300th Birthday of Gaon Friday
The Lithuanian Post Office will issue a special stamp commemorating the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Vilna Gaon on Friday, June 5. The nominal value of the stamp is 81 euro cents, meaning it will be valid for sending letters abroad.
The stamps have a print-run of 20,000. The issue will also feature a first-day release envelope for sale. Post-marking stamps on the first day of issuance will take place at the Central Post Office in Vilnius, located at Gedimino prospect no. 7, on Friday.
The JUDVI & AŠ design group (Victoria Sideraitė-Alon, Jūratė Juozėnienė and Albinas Šimanauskas) designed the postal stamp celebrating the Vilna Gaon.
The letter shin (ש) appears near the top of the postage stamp with a stylized crown atop the final branch symbolizing the spiritual authority of the Vilna Gaon. According the gematria the value of this letter is 300, as Lithuania celebrates the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Gaon this year. Underneath is a stylized Torah scroll along with an open book, an allusion to the Decalogue, the two slabs of stone Moses received on Sinai inscribed by God with His Commandments, and at the same time representing the tradition of a pair of windows on the façade of the synagogue. The coloring of the symbols and characters and the graphic design was based on the stylization of the decor of ancient Jewish writings.
Pinchos Fridberg to MP Laurynas Kasčiūnas: As a True Lithuanian Patriot, Don’t Let Russia Respond First, Nip It in the Bud
I would like to inform you your colleague Arūnas Gumuliauskas’s dissertation “The Activities of the Lithuanian Communist Party in the Development of the Art of Theater in the Republic (1966-1980)” has been recognized worthy of the degree of doctor of philosophy in independent Lithuania.
I would like to learn your opinion about this.
Pinchos Fridberg
May 30, 2020
Vilnius
P.S. You may find further details in Lithuanian, English and Russian here:
Голый факт: в Независимой Литве текст «Аллилуйя КПСС» признали достойным степени доктора наук
Happy Birthday to Roza Bloch
Dear Roza,
The Lithuanian Jewish Community greets you on your birthday and wishes you great health, happiness, joy, that you remain young at heart and that your future always be bright!
Mazl tov! Bis 120!
§§§
The following text was posted by the Kaunas European Capital for 2022 project’s Memory Bureau internet site:
MEMORY OFFICE: R. BLOCH
Roza Gapanavičiūtė Bloch, a Litvak born in Kaunas in 1930, talks about her family’s experience during the Second World War in Kaunas ghetto, and later – in the Stutthof concentration camp. The Holocaust took almost all her loved ones – mother Anna, father Markus, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins… Roza ran across her brother Boris in the empty Laisvės Alėja in Kaunas, where she returned to after the war.
Statement on Anti-Semitic Activities
Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, LT-01117 Vilnius, telephone (8) (5) 261 3003, fax (8) (5) 2127915, email info@lzb.lt
to:
Office of Prosecutor General,
Rinktinės street no. 5A, LT-01515 Vilnius
email: generaline.prokuratura@prokuraturos.lt
cc:
President of the Republic of Lithuania Gitanas Nausėda
email: kanceliarija@prezidentas.lt
Speaker of the parliament of the Republic of Lithuania Viktoras Pranckietis
email: Viktoras.Pranckietis@lrs.lt
Statement
On Anti-Semitic Activities
May 27, 2020
Vilnius
The Lithuanian Jewish Community constantly monitors information about expressions of anti-Semitism and provides the corresponding information on these expressions and the reaction by state institutions to it to international institutions fighting anti-Semitism.
Recently the LJC learned two members of the Lithuanian parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee at the committee’s sitting of May 20, 2020, raised their arms in salute to one another in the fashion which prevailed in Nazi Germany (an excerpt of the meeting was posted on youtube at https://youtu.be/2ZATZiDvSdI). Raising the arm in this manner (with two fingers raised higher) unavoidably leads to Jewish people associating the salute with the worship and lionization of Hitler and the intentional and brutal degradation and extermination of Jews.
Following thorough examination of this video material one has to come to the conclusion it contains public derision, degradation and incitement to hatred of Jews based on their ethnicity (and perhaps other ethnic groups as well who were persecuted by the Nazis). It is clear from the recording that members of the parliament of the Republic of Lithuania, to whom high moral standards are applied, are performing this action.
For some reason their colleagues at the sitting (other members of the National Security and Defense Committee and members of cabinet) tolerated this in silence, neither disciplining nor condemning their two “fellow thinkers.”
We do not gainsay the possibility the recording was fabricated. In that case it incurs no lesser liability, because this sort of recording also seeks the same aims, to divide the ethnic communities living in Lithuania.
It should be noted the excerpt from the meeting which carried the date and the appellation “Nazis in the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania” was neither composed nor posted by the LJC.
Article 25 of the constitution of the Republic of Lithuania enshrines the right to express one’s convictions and the right to provide information which cannot be restricted except by law when it is necessary to protect public health, personal honor and dignity, privacy, public morality or for the defense of the constitutional order, while part 4 of this same article provides freedom of expression does not include criminal actions such as sowing ethnic, racial, religious or social discord, calls to violence and discrimination, slander and libel and disinformation.
One instance of restriction on the freedom of self expression is contained in article 170 of the criminal code of the Republic of Lithuania. Incitement against any ethnic, racial, religious or other group of people doesn’t necessarily include the call to commit a specific violent or criminal act; public derision and degradation are sufficient grounds, something which we observe in the aforementioned video material.
Attempts against people committed with offense, derision or slander against specific groups and groups of people is sufficient grounds for state institutions to assign priority to fighting racist statements in terms of irresponsible use of the right to self expression which does harm to the dignity or even safety of a portion of society or groups of people (European Court of Human Rights in the case Tor Fredrik Vejdeland and others vs. Sweden, February 9, 2012).
The composition of the crimes defined in both parts 2 and 3 of article 170 of the criminal code are formal: they are help to have been committed by the public performance of the acts enumerated, without regard to the consequences of these acts.
Therefore, based on the arguments and information above, we request you initiate a pre-trial investigation for the anti-Semitic crimes alleged in this statement (the act defined in article 170 of the criminal code or other crimes defined in the criminal code).
Appended: photographs (2) from the May 20, 2020, meeting of the National Security and Defense Committee of the parliament of the Republic of Lithuania.
Respectfully,
Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Request to Investigate Video
May 26, 2020
To:
Viktoras Pranckietis, speaker of parliament, pirmininko.sekretoriatas@lrs.lt
Dainis Gaižauskas, chairman, National Security and Defense Committee, Dainius.Gaizauskas@lrs.lt
Request to Investigate Video
For at least several days now there has been a video posted to youtube in which two members vote by raising their hands in the manner done in the Third Reich during a meeting of the Lithuanian parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee. The video is accompanied by an audio track in which a member of parliament seems to warn these two the meeting is being filmed.
The video appears under the title “Naciai LR Seime” [Nazis in the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania] with the note it comes from the May 20, 2020, meeting of this committee.
This video recording has caused great concern in the international arena and raises suspicions anti-Semitic sentiment is growing rapidly in Lithuania. It is becoming dangerous for Jews to live here because these sorts of salutes were used by the Nazis and their collaborators (who were also Nazis) when the Jews were exterminated in Lithuania and Europe.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community requests an inquiry into whether the two MPs did vote with a “sieg heil” salute and whether the other MP really did warn them as heard in the audio, and to report the results of this investigation to the LJC.
Comments under the youtube posting name one of the MPs who apparently gave the Nazi salute as Audrys Šimas, a member of the Peasants and Green Union faction in parliament.
The video seems to show another MP, identified as Arūnas Gumuliauskas, returning the salute. The MP warning the two not to do that because the meeting was being filmed, according to the audio track, was conservative Laurynas Kasčiūnas.
Please check this information and make a determination on the identity of the MPs involved.
Whether the recording is real or fake, it does harm to the reputation of the Lithuanian parliament and moreover the entire country. It has caused concern and anger among Jews in Lithuania and around the world.
We do not find it credible that in Lithuania only Jews have seen this video nor that members of parliament and law enforcement institutions whose job it is to respond have not seen it. We very much hope an investigation is already underway.
The video is posted here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZATZiDvSdI
Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community
Story of the Rescue of Sisters Khaya and Estera from Darbėnai
The Chaim family from Darbėniai. Front row from left: Khaya, Yehoshua, Tsipora and Estera, back: Rokha and Reuben. 1932, from the Chaim family archive.
Another example of heroism and sacrifice by the people of Žemaitija. The December 21, 1965, issue of the Vakarinės naujienos newspaper published in Vilnius and the June 4, 1966, issue of the newspaper Mūsų žodis published in the Skuodas region of Lithuania carried a story which had been long forgotten, the heroes of the story having passed on, and their resistance activities during the brutal time of the Nazi occupation still hasn’t been fully appreciated.
The Chaim family who lived before the war at Palangos street no. 15 in Darbėnai, Lithuania, were much like the other families around them, dreaming of a better life for their children and a bright future for Lithuania.