Registration is underway for the first modern Litvak scouting summer camp called “History Continues”
When? July 28-August 2
Where? Kernavė forest (coordinates 54.857231, 24.868243)
Who? renginiai@lzb.lt, telephone 867216114
Lithuanian Jewish scouts will have their own sub-camp at the summer camp of the Kernavė group of Lithuanian scouts.
Cost:
First stage of registration (by July 7):
Mass deportations to Stalin’s camps began on this day in 1941.
About 17,500 people were deported from Lithuania between June 14 and 18, 1941, (the fates of 16,246 have been determined so far), a number derived from the 4,663 arrested and 12, 832 people officially deported. The deportations were a huge loss and tragedy for Lithuania. Not all those deported were ethnic Lithuanians: about 3,000 Jews, according to various sources, were also deported and about 375 Jews died at the camps and in exile.
Jews deported to Siberia resisted the brutality and terror of the oppressive Soviet organs with a deep spirituality and faith. In 1941 about 1.3 percent of the total Lithuanian Jewish population were deported, and as a percentage constitute the largest group by ethnicity deported from Lithuania.
Santariškės Children’s Hospital doctor Rozalija Černakova tells the story of what happened to her grandfather and family. Her grandparents were deported with their families. Rozalija’s parents were still children when they were deported: her mother 11 and her mother’s brother 8. They were sent to the Altai region. That’s where Rozalija was born.
Grant Gochin, an LA-resident Litvak as well as a Lithuanian citizen and a member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, has reported the Lithuanian Supreme Court will hear his appeal of a lower court’s dismissal of his case against the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania regarding the latter’s finding WWII-era Lithuanian captain Jonas Noreika was not culpable in Holocaust crimes. As reported earlier, Gochin has been waging a battle for several years now to have the finding reversed and a commemorative plaque to Noreika removed from its location in central Vilnius. Following the earlier court’s finding Gochin didn’t have “standing,” the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania issued a non-attributed document which the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) said fell within its definition of anti-Semitism.
IHRA response here.
Gochin’s appeal here.
The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and the Lithuanian Jewish Community invite the public to attend an unveiling ceremony of a plaque to commemorate the site of the former headquarters of YIVO in Vilnius at 3:00 P.M. on June 20 at the building now located at Vivulskio street no. 18 in Vilnius. YIVO, the most significant center for the study of Jewish culture, history and languages in Eastern Europe, was located near this site from 1925 to 1941. Its founder moved its activities to New York which became world headquarters following the German invasion in 1941.
Participants at the ceremony are to include YIVO director Jonathan Brent and YIVO board of directors deputy chairwoman Irene Pletka.
Lithuania’s Memory of the World registry now contains the manuscripts of the Vilna Gaon and a manuscript fragment by Simonas Daukantas, the Lithuanian National Martynas Mažvydas Library reported.
The 18th century manuscripts of Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the Vilna Gaon, are a collection of works published in different cities and countries of Europe between 1799 and 1940. They include several very rare publications and almost all of them exist as a single copy in Lithuania.
The library said the Vilna Gaon never published any of his texts, but his teaching was scrupulously written down and compiled by his students, sons and sons-in-law and were edited and published after his death.
For a number of years now the Lithuanian Jewish Community has been inviting artists and special guests to celebrate Sabbath with the community. Last Friday LJC executive director Renaldas Vaisbrodas presented Lithuanian designer Agnė Kuzmickatė to members. She holds a doctorate and is sometimes called butterfly queen because of her use of her butterflies in her designs.
Renaldas led the discussion and tendered questions to the famous young designer, starting with questions about her family. Her father is the philosopher Bronislovas Kuzmickas, PhD, who was a founding member of Sąjūdis, the Lithuanian independence movement, who went on to become a member of parliament, a signatory to the Lithuanian declaration of the restoration of independence and served as deputy to parliamentary speaker Vytautas Landsbergis.
Agnė Kuzmickatė’s grandmother Gita Jekentienė was at a children’s summer camp in Palanga, Lithuania, when World War II arrived. She and some of the other children were evacuated to safer locations in the Soviet Union. When she spoke of her family, Agnė Kuzmickatė repeatedly returned to her grandmother Gita’s experience and said she only know understood how her grandmother’s environment shaped her. She said she and her grandmother often spoke about Jewish identity, about the Yiddish language and the tragic loss of family, all of whom, except for her grandmother’s brother, were murdered at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas. Returning to Lithuania after the war, her grandmother experienced all sorts of bullying and name-calling because she was Jewish. Agnė Kuzmickatė said she had never experienced this and everyone at school respected her because of her father’s activities on behalf of independent Lithuania.
URM.lt
The Lithuanian Embassy to South Africa presented a mobile exhibit at the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town June 6 called “One Century Out of Seven. Lithuania, Lite, Lita.” The installation informs viewers of different aspects of Jewish history in Lithuania from the time of the Grand Duchy to the present. The exhibit travelled to South Africa’s second-largest city from the Holocaust and Genocide Center in Johannesburg.
Lithuanian ambassador Sigutė Jakštonytė welcomed the large audience including members of the Cape Town Jewish community and members of the parliament of the Republic of South Africa. She told them the Lithuanian parliament had named 2020 the Year of the Vilna Gaon and Litvak History in appreciation of the Litvak contribution to the Lithuanian state and to preserve the memory of Holocaust victims. The ambassador also thanked the museum in Cape Town for four years of close cooperation.
The exhibit at the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town runs till the end of June.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community sends warm birthday wishes to Michael Schneider, who just turned 80.
Michael Schneider served as Executive Vice-President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) from December 1987 until May 2002. In this capacity he directed one of JDC’s largest operations in the field of Rescue, Relief and Reconstruction. Schneider, who was born in South Africa, began his career with JDC in 1978 after ten years of service as Chief Welfare Officer of the London Jewish Welfare Board. His first posting was as resident Country Director for Iran where he was based during and after the Khomeini revolution. After leaving Iran he continued to work on behalf of Iranian Jewry from JDC’s offices in Rome. In December 1979 and 1980 respectively, he became Country Director for the Iron Curtain countries of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and for Yugoslavia. In 1982 he was sent to Ethiopia following the expulsion of ORT by the Mengistu regime and obtained permission for JDC to work among the Jewish villages in Gonder Province.
Read more here.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community will host an event dedicated to celebrating the 130th birthday of the Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova and discussing Jewish influences in her life. The event will take place at the LJC beginning at 1:00 P.M. on June 5. At least five speakers will present various topics. A screening of a film about Isaiah Berlin will punctuate the program of speakers, with a discussion with the audience following the last speaker. The event is expected to be held mainly in Russian.
In the period between the two world wars, the Jewish population was the majority population in Kalvarija, Lithuania. The architecture of the old town, a unique synagogue complex (with a winter and summer synagogue and the Talmud school) and the only surviving Jew, Moishe Segalis–all of this stands as a testimony to that time. For four Saturdays in a row now, as spring blossoms forth, there have been readings from Icchokas Meras’s novel “Lygiosios trunka akimirką” held near the synagogues in Kalvarija and in their courtyards. Lithuanian Jewish Community executive director Renaldas Vaisbrodas attended the final reading on May 24.
Students and soloists from the Sonantem choir in Kalvarija read from the work about the life of the Vilnius ghetto and about life which can be decided by the movement of a single piece on the game board.
A youth initiative invited the local community to an informal meeting with the relatives of those who once lived in Kalvarija, with our ancestors and neighbors.
President-elect of Lativa Egils Levits, 63, has Jewish roots. His father Jonass was Jewish but his mother was not, he said in an interview last month for the Delfi news channel. He and his parents were allowed to move away from the USSR to West Germany in 1972. His father Jonass was a Jewish engineer and his mother Ingeborga Levita (née Barga, nom-de-plume Aija Zemzare) a Latvian poetess. Egils earned degrees in political science and law before returning to Latvia in 1990 to help draft the Latvian declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. In 1993 he was elected to the Latvian parliament and went on to serve as Latvia’s justice minister and ambassador to Switzerland, Austria and Hungary. Levits was appointed Latvia’s representative at the European Court of Human Rights in 1995 and is currently the Latvian representative at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. He was elected president of Latvia by the parliament on May 29.
Speaking on Latvia’s Radio 1, Levits said he spends all his free time in Latvia with his family. “I like to walk around and meet ordinary people. I will get to know Latvia that way more profoundly and more personally than many of the politicians resident in Riga.”
Many Levits in Riga and Latvia hail from Panevėžys and Pabradė in Lithuania. Egils Levits, who likely has distant Litvak roots, has said Latvia should follow Lithuania’s example in supporting Jewish culture and history issues.
15min.lt
A New, Free Tourist Route: Why Vilnius Was Called the Jerusalem of the North
With those who fled coming back and traditional Jewish holidays again becoming part of city life, Jewish culture is experiencing a renaissance in Vilnius. Now there will be another opportunity to discover why Vilnius was called the Jerusalem of the North. A free new tourist route called “Discover Jewish Heritage in Vilnius” will help tell the stories of the Jews who lived and worked in Vilnius, according to a press release from the Vilnius municipal tourism and business growth agency Go Vilnius, which has compiled this guidebook as a way to learn about the world-famous Litvaks whose humble origins were in Vilnius, to discover what traces of them remain and to learn about the history of the Jewish community of Vilnius, including the best of times and the most tragic of times.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
bernardinai.lt
Before World War II a large Jewish community lived in Vilnius whose cultural, religious and social traces are only recalled today in statues and commemorative plaques. It’s a rare resident of the city who knows why Vilnius was called the Jerusalem of Lithuania, who knows what an active community life bustled on the narrow streets of the Old Town and how the tragic events of World War II changed forever the face of the Lithuanian capital.
For many years Vilnius was a Jewish spiritual and academic center. Besides some faded inscriptions in Hebrew characters on buildings which were part of the Vilnius ghetto, there are more surviving traces of the history of this people. Before World War II Jews accounted for more than a third of all city residents.
Today we invite you to discover with us some small details of this history, small but important to our city.
Full text in Lithuanian here.
The Kaunas Jewish Community enthusiastically celebrated Victory Day marking the victory against Nazi Germany, continuing a long-time tradition. This year no World War II veterans attended, but their widows and children, who heard their stories firsthand of the battles and horrors, did.
Many of those attending were personally freed by the Allies and their victory marked the end of their inhumane suffering and degradation. For them, this day is both one to commemorate the dead, but also an opportunity to celebrate life and its joys. Vocalist Aleksandras Rave performed his own songs and Michail Javič on saxophone enlivened the ceremony which was funded by the Goodwill Foundation.
I’d like to expand on the information about the book presentations in Germany by talking about the topics which were discussed at the Leipzig International Book Fair and the presentation held at the Lithuanian embassy where, besides Grigorij H. von Leitis, Lithuanian honorary consul professor Wolfgang von Stetten and Michael Lahr, the executive director of the Lahr von Leitis Academy and Archive, also took part.
I talked about the presentations of the Vilnius ghetto theater which have lodged themselves so colorfully in my memory, about the people who started that theater, the remarkable artists of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. Their figures loom large among the ranks of the great Litvaks of the world: Chaim Soutine, Jacques Lipchitz, Neemija Arbit Blatas, Ben Shahn, Emmanuel Levinas, Jascha Heifetz, Romain Gary and others.
Much space in the book is devoted to the branch of the Petuchovski (Petuchowski, Petuchauskai) family who in the second half of the 19th century moved to Germany and attained world-renown as active rabbis and philosophers of the Litvak persuasion.
The first of those to speak about the Vilnius ghetto theater, I demonstrated how that cramped stage was able to contain a vast cultural continent, a unique theater now widely recognized as such. Thanks to the theater, the ghetto became a symbol of spiritual resistance to the Nazis. The ideas of patience, tolerance and unity came to the fore in the spiritual resistance of the Vilnius ghetto. These ideas called out with the entire experience of the European Holocaust, urging unity against Naziism, giving form to the goal of nations recognizing the principles of Western democracy to come and join together.
Markas Petuchauskas
Author of Der Preis der Eintracht [German translation of The Price of Concord]
May 21, 2019
The Lithuanian embassy in Germany on May 15 hosted a presentation of Markas Petuchauskas’s memoires The Price of Concord now translated into German as Der Preis der Eintracht, published by the LIT Verlag publishing house in Germany. Mark Roduner translated the book which was originally published in English. The director Grigory von Leit, with Litvak roots, read excerpts from the book. A discussion with the author followed. The vent was organized by the embassy of the Republic of Lithuania to Germany in cooperation with the Lietis Academy and Archive and the Lithuanian Culture Institute.
This isn’t the first time the German translation of Litvak drama critic Markas Petuchauskas was presented in Germany. Back in March there were two presentations of the book at the Leipzig International Book Fair.
The Price of Concord is a compendium of more than five decades of conversation with a number of theater figures, artists and musicians in which keen observations and sudden realizations and correspondence with different well-known personalities turn into a seamless book, one of whose sections contains complex moments of a fairly diverse life. Petuchauskas goes beyond discussion of episodes remembered from childhood and loss of family members leading to the pain experienced during occupation, and recalls the goodness, understanding and help of so many people encountered in the course of life.
A delegation of 26 Jews from the Republic of Ireland visited Lithuania last week and attended a special Sabbath celebration held Friday for them at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius.
The tour was organized by the Irish Jewish Community with help from Irish ambassador to Lithuania David Noonan and his Lithuanian counterpart in Dublin, ambassador Egidijus Meilūnas. Most Irish Jews are descended from Litvaks with the major wave of immigration before World War I. Since then there has been little contact between Litvaks and Ireland and Litvaks in Lithuania. The Irish delegation is re-establishing contact while exploring their own roots, visiting their ancestral shtetls. Not all members of the delegation belong to the Irish Jewish Community, but all do share a connection with it.
Ambassador Noonan said: “I am very happy to see the visit taking place–the connection between the Jewish communities is one of the earliest connections between Ireland and Lithuania and deserves greater exploration. I was honoured to join the group on Friday for dinner and the Sabbath service; it was not my first time in the Synagogue but it was the first time I attended a service there. To attend with my fellow Irishmen and women made it a very special occasion indeed.”
Vilnius Jewish Religious Community chairman Simas Levinas said the Irish party had Sabbath dinner on the second floor of the synagogue and everyone was very satisfied with the event. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said the Irish Jewish delegation were very religiously devout and did all the proper things to mark Sabbath. Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon also attended the Sabbath celebration.
The German translation of Markas Petuchauskas’s book “The Price of Concord” (Der Preis der Eintracht) will be presented at the Lithuanian embassy in Berlin May 15. The event will be moderated by theater director Gregorij H. von Leitis who is known for his work presenting and promoting Jewish culture. Von Leitis has Litvak roots.
This is not the first presentation of Petuchauskas’s book in Germany. Back in March it made a splash at the Leipzig International Book Fair with well-known personalities leading a panel discussion about the Litvak drama critic’s main work published originally in English.
The Kaunas Jewish Community continued this year its spring tradition of commemorating those who rescued Jews from the Holocaust.
Rescuers and the rescued came together again in a warm celebration of friendship and humanity. Professor Saulius Kaušinis who spoke at this year’s event said it and the stories behind could serve as an example of peace and peaceful coexistence in today’s world troubled by conflict, hate and terrorism.
This year the commemoration coincided with Holocaust Day and six candles were lit in memory of the six million Jews murdered in Europe.
Tenth-grade Art Gymnasium student Patricija Pugžlytė performed a piece from Schindler’s List on cello. Actress Kristina Kazakevičiūtė, herself the daughter of a rescuer, helped create an atmosphere of reflection and at the same time joy, and after all the point of the ceremony was to celebrate life. The saxophonist Michail Javič also performed.
It was sad to note the dwindling ranks of both the rescuers and the rescued, but at the same time it was a great joy to see their children and grandchildren there who were eager to share their family stories.