Litvaks – Page 54 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Panevėžys Jewish Community Tours Historic Jewish Sites in Liepāja

Early in the morning on September 14 we went to the Pakruojis synagogue, where we were met by a cultural worker who received us warmly and spoke about the wooden synagogue built by the local Jewish community in 1801. Its function changed and it became a primary school as well as a house of prayer. After the Holocaust the synagogue was nationalized. During the Soviet period it was a theater, then an athletics gymnasium. The unique building fell into disrepair and ruin. In 2017 the synagogue was restored with its authentic interior, according to period photographs, which show playful drawings on the ceiling. Currently the synagogue serves as a space for cultural and other events. The second floor–the women’s gallery–houses an exhibit on the Jewish past, along with examples of the original walls.

Pakruojis was just the first part of the tour and we travelled on to the land of wind, Liepāja [Libave] on the Latvian coast. It is also a land of amber, a port and a holiday destination. The rustling and smell of the lime trees [liepos in Lithuanian, a folk etymology–trans.] give the city its name. But we weren’t there just to look at the pretty town, we were there to visit the largest Holocaust memorial in Latvia. About 7,060 Jews including about 3,000 Jews from Liepāja were murdered in the dunes around the town of Šķēde on the Baltic Sea. In total about 19,000 people of different ethnic backgrounds were murdered here. The site recalls one of the worst breakdowns in humanity in the preceding century. The memorial occupies a territory of 4,120 m² and is arranged in a menorah shape with contours formed of natural rocks and granite slabs, with the “lights” of the menorah represented by granite steles resembling gravestones with inscriptions in Hebrew, English, Latvian and Russia from the prophet Jeremiah. Members of the Panevėžys delegation honored the dead and left a wreath there.

2019-09-252019-09-25

Let Us Pray: Never Again. A Homily on the Lithuanian Day of Jewish Genocide

by archbishop Gintaras Grušas, bernardinai.lt

A shared legacy and joint work intimately united the Jews and Christians living in Lithuania over many long centuries. Then as now the Ten Commandments have united Christians and Jews, demanding we worship one God and to honor the individual human and his life, to protect the family and not to bow to unfairness.

Exactly one year ago Pope Francis preparing to visit a monument to Holocaust victims called for in the Prayer to the Angel of the Lord to work together, to celebrate our friendship and to confess together in the face of the challenges of the world: “Let us ask the Lord to provide us the gift of insight so that we may in time recognize those pernicious knots and atmosphere from which the heart of unexperienced generations atrophies, so that they would not give in to the allure of the songs of the sirens.”

On September 23 we mark the destruction of the Vilnius ghetto and of thousands of Jews who lived with our compatriots in Lithuania. Some members of the Church, due to human weakness, fear or even for the sake of personal gain, came to terms with the occupational regimes and even served their slave masters. A significant number of Christians, however, guided by Christian love, saved the persecuted Jews. Today we mark their graves with the signs and symbols of Righteous Gentiles. We believe that the prevailing climate of friendship and dialogue today will help the Christian and Jewish communities to better understand one another and to work more closely together in areas important to both communities such as the defense of human rights and human life, family values, social justice and the fortification of peace in the world, so that God’s love would be seen and seen more explicitly by humanity. This is a common foundation and a common way forward.

Full text in Lithuanian here.

2019-09-242019-09-25

Andrius Navickas: Hate Is Always the Cowardly Choice

On September 23 we mark the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide, honoring the victims of the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto in 1943. This was a blood-curdling day when the last surviving Jewish residents of Vilnius were either murdered or sent to concentration camps [sic, the liquidation took place over several weeks–trans.].

From that day onward there were officially no Jews left in Vilnius, only those who hid with families who dared preserve humanity, and also those remained who joined the Soviet partisans in the forests. The Jerusalem of the North had been strangled and we were all left the poorer.

Christians know the resurrection is impossible without the crucifixion. To raise the history of the Holocaust on the cross of our memory, first we have to confess in our hearts that it wasn’t THEIR agony and tragedy but OUR agony and tragedy. This is not the story of an oppressed people who demand vengeance.

Full text in Lithuanian here.

2019-09-242019-09-24

Ponar 2019 by Sergejus Kanovičius

Memory cannot survive from one commemoration to another. Members of the Commission of Historical Memory are laid here and in pits in another hundred small Lithuanian towns and villages. To them it’s completely clear: no one defended them then. However strange it might seem, they have to be defended today, too. At that point in time one group chose to save people, while the other chose the path of Satan. They told my people in 1941 they would be safe in the ghetto. They lied. Today, eight decades later, as then, again they are telling us persistently that the ghettos were good, and those who helped set them up were heroes, or almost saints. Is there anyone today who will speak up and say clearly and without ambivalence that this is immoral? Who, where, when did they say this?

“History can never be left to the politicians, whether they be democratic or autocratic. History is not the property of a certain political doctrine or regime. History, when it is understood truly, is the symbol of our daily moral choices.” And I would add to these words of the late professor Leonidas Donskis: our attitude towards this tragedy, towards its victims, the rescuers, the desk murderers, its direct perpetrators and their unlimited worship–these reflect the state of our ability to remember. And today there are clear signs there is an attempt to make our memory and our moral choices sick. There is only one way to heal our memory: to tell the truth finally. If we want THEM to not just rest in peace, but in honor and dignity.

I wrote this poem 30 years ago:

2019-09-232019-09-26

Lithuania’s Jewish Victims of Genocide Remembered in Ponar

Lithuania’s Day of Remembrance of Jewish Victims of Genocide was marked at Ponar September 23 in a March of the Living event. Although some of the traditional March of the Living Litvaks resident in Israel attended, they were far outnumbered by Lithuanians and especially by Lithuanian high school students.

As usual, people gathered on the west side of the railroad tracks in the town of Paneriai or Ponar just outside Vilnius to march the kilometer or so into the Ponar Memorial Complex for the ceremony at the central monument there. This year, however, hundreds of students arrived by train and walked in on the pedestrian overpass over the railroad. Also new this year was the Lithuanian honor guard who led the procession.

Poles, Russians, Lithuanians and Soviet POWs were also murdered at Ponar, albeit in significantly lower numbers than Jews. This year a Polish delegation and Catholic priest awaited the procession at the Polish monument at the entrance to the memorial complex.

2019-09-232019-09-25

Town of Darbėnai Deciding How to Commemorate Jewish Past, Some Ideas Divisive

by Jovita Gaižauskaitė, LRT TV

Residents of the town of Darbėnai in the Kretinga region are deciding how to commemorate the former Jewish population of about 550. The proposals so far have stirred up division in the town: no one wants to showcase that Jews were murdered there.

About 550 Jews lived in Darbėnai before World War II. Now the marked mass murder sites witness to their fate.

There is a plaque commemorating the Zionist Dovid Volfson, considered the inventor of the Israeli flag and the man who gave the modern shekel its name, on one of the houses in the Lithuanian town. Local residents keep coming up with more ideas to commemorate other Jews who lived there.

2019-09-18

On Photography and Memory: Antanas Sutkus Exhibit Pro Memoria to Mark the 7th Anniversary of the Destruction of the Kaunas Ghetto

by Paulius Jevsejevas

Šiaurės Atėnai (No. 17, 2019)

Antanas Sutkus has photographed a wide variety of people over his career, from famous figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Jonas Mekas and Marija Gimbutienė to deaf and blind children living on the margins of society.

Even so, the photography in Pro Memoria disturbed me and wouldn’t allow me to build on earlier experience. Not because of some characteristic of the people portrayed, not because of the artistic choices the photographer made, and not because of my own attitudes as viewer. I am disturbed probably because I don’t have any definite words at hand to describe the general photographic situation I found myself in standing in from of these portraits. As I stood looking at those faces at least two different inner voices appeared and engaged in an unnerving inner dialogue.

On one side, we all now know that the people portrayed in this photographs along with hundreds of thousands of others for several long, seemingly endless years were placed beyond the bounds of society, intentionally separated and finally condemned to death. So these people, unlike other Lithuanian people photographed by Sutkus, these people didn’t have any social status at all. The people in the portraits survived, but I cannot forget all those who were murdered, even if I can’t see them: Every face, hand, glance in the series of portraits stands before me like a living body and at the same like a text which contains a story of the dead.

Full text in Lithuanian here.

2019-09-18

US Diplomat Tells Lithuania Not to Glorify Holocaust Collaborators

Photo: Protesters reinstall controversial Noreika plaque in Vilnius. Photo by J. Stecevičius/LRT

US diplomat Cherrie Daniels has warned the glorification of Holocaust collaborators in Lithuania undermines the country’s reputation and the memory of its true heroes, and promotes anti-Semitism.

“Lithuania has been shaped into the proud democracy it is today because of the valiant actions of countless heroes throughout its history,” Cherrie Daniels, special envoy for Holocaust issues at the US State Department, tweeted Monday. “But every country has its dark moments”.

“When confronting difficult issues of the past, it’s important to objectively review the actions of historical figures to determine the impact of their actions, both positive and negative,” she said.

2019-09-172019-09-20

Exhibit on Tadeusz Romer and Jewish Refugees in Far East

The exhibit “Polish Ambassador to Japan Tadeusz Romer and Jewish Refugees in the Far East” will open with an event in the Jascha Heifetz Hall on the third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 6:00 P.M. on September 19.

This mobile exhibit from the Polish Institute was first shown last March at the Sugihara House museum in Kaunas. The authors of the exhibit Dr. Olga Barbasiewicz and Barbara Abraham are to take part in this opening. The exhibit will run till October 19.

2019-09-17

Children’s Safety Questioned after Swastika Appears at LJC

Children’s events, workshops, clubs and so forth are held often at the Lithuanian Jewish Community, as are Hebrew lessons, chess matches and Jewish holiday events attended by children. The safety of children attending events at the LJC is being called into question by the appearance of a swastika just meters from the front door. Its appearance coincided with the Peoples Fair inside, where children were preparing to give a concert. The goal of the Peoples Fair is to bring together the ethnic minority communities who call Lithuania home.

While the children were getting ready for the concert upstairs, down at the Bagel Shop Café a group of 43 elderly religious Jews from Jerusalem were holding prayers and waiting for breakfast when the swastika appeared, even closer to the front door of the kosher food outlet.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliaksy said there should actually be reverse discrimination for the Lithuanian Jewish Community considering how small it is now following the Holocaust.

No other state in Europe fails to provide protection and security for its Jewish community.

2019-09-152019-09-17

Meeting with Students from the Viltis Pre-Gymnasium in Panevėžys

The month of September is marked by a painful historical tragedy and is the month we mark the Day of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide. The Vilnius ghetto was liquidated over the course of the month of September.

Every year the Panevėžys Jewish Community organizes commemoration ceremonies at the mass murder sites in the Kurganava forest, the Žalioji forest, Krekenava, Raguva and other villages in the Panevėžys region.

The plan this year is to hold a quiz with students on September 24, show a film about the Holocaust from Yad Vashem and to introduce young people to Holocaust survivors. This meeting took place at the Panevėžys Jewish Community in early September with students from the Viltis Pre-Gymnasium.

Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman told the painful history of the Jews of the Panevėžys area.

Local Nazi collaborators murdered Jewish men, women and children throughout Lithuania, in Ukraine and in so many other European countries. Jews will never forget those people who helped and rescued them from the Holocaust.

One wonders why today a small group of Lithuanians is attempting to return to the past and to commemorate the collaborators who murdered and destroyed their fellow citizens.

2019-09-12

University of Illinois at Chicago Hosts Discussion “Narratives of Pluralism in Lithuania Yesterday and Today”

Tuesday evening the University of Illinois at Chicago held a discussion called “Narratives of Pluralism in Lithuania Yesterday and Today.” Speakers included professor Tomas Venclova, Lithuanian minister of culture Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, YIVO director Jonathen Brent, with teacher of Polish literature and Polish-Jewish relations Karen Underhill moderating. Discussion focused on multiculturalism in Lithuania, changes in ethnic minority communities in Lithuania over the centuries, contributions the ethnic minorities made to founding the modern state and Litvak contributions to the nation’s cultural and political life, as well as Holocaust education and commemoration.

Lithuanian consul general Mantvydas Bekesius thanked professor Venclova, Lithuanian cultural attaché in New York Gražina Michnevičiūtė and all audience members and speakers.

Photos by Sandra Scedrina

2019-09-122019-09-17

Yeshiva Being Restored in Telšiai

by Gintaras Šiuparys

The city of Telšiai has been putting its Old Town in order and has begun restoration of the former yeshiva there.

The remains of the building standing on Iždinės street doesn’t bring to mind the former glory of the world-famous yeshiva. Rabbis from the US, Great Britain, South Africa, Hungary Uruguay and other countries came to learner here. After a fire early in the 20th century, the rebuilt and expanded was huge. At one time up to 500 rabbis and other students studied here.

One of the most famous Jewish religious schools, it operated until the occupation of Lithuania in 1940. Actually it was recreated and still operates across the Atlantic: since November of 1941 the Telshe yeshiva has been operating in Cleveland, Ohio. It follows the same program of study as the former yeshiva in Lithuania.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2019-09-112019-09-17

Arkadijus Vinokuras: We Are Afflicted by Fear

We are afflicted by Soviet recidivism, i.e., by fear. Fear of the past, fear of a dark history which demands we look upon our own scared face in the mirror. We are afflicted by fear of responsibility. When powerless people are afraid, that is one thing, but it’s entirely different when the people who are afraid are in power.

Gitanas Nauseda, as if he had just fallen to Earth, is proposing to create a Cultural Commission to solve matters of historical memory.

Mr. President, we have two expert institutions which have been doing this for 20 years now. The problem is that one institution, the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania, or Genocide Center for short, sees no reason to adhere to the international convention defining the crimes of genocide, to which Lithuania is a signatory. Otherwise Jonas Noreika and Kazys Škirpa would have been dethroned long ago. All that is needed is to follow the Convention and hundreds of other documents.

The fact is, the Genocide Center is under the guidance of the right, and thus there are these kinds of politicized decisions. Who will form a new forum? Again, nationalists on the right, who have spent the last 10 years reiterating again and again that the situation is still unclear? Or perhaps it would be more constructive and more credible to convoke independent historians who are not in the pocket of the state and therefore unafraid to issue unpoliticized conclusions?

Full editorial in Lithuanian here.

2019-09-102019-09-15

Keiko Borjeson Concert in Kaunas Honors Righteous Gentile

The Kaunas State Philharmonic held a concert September 6 to honor Righteous Gentile Ona Jablonskytė-Landsbergienė on what would have been her 125th birthday.

Actor and director Aleksandras Rubinovas presented a brief biography of the woman including how she hid Jews during the Holocaust. Her son was present and shared his memories of his mother’s deeds and views.

Jazz vocalist Keiko Borjeson (ボルジェソンケイコ) of Japan, Arvydas Joffe on percussion, Mykolas Bazaras on bass and Tomas Botyrius on sax delivered a program of jazz standards, improvisation and Jewish melodies.

2019-09-09

LJC Chairwoman Visiting Chicago

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky is visiting Chicago in the United States. She, Lithuanian minister of culture Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas and Tomas Venclova are to participate in a University of Illinois at Chicago seminar “Narratives of Pluralism in Lithuania’s Past and Present” on Tuesday. For more information, see https://www.facebook.com/events/368273490525689/

2019-09-092019-09-12

Kaunas Library Conducting Jewish Tours

The Vincas Kudirka Public Library in Kaunas invites the public to a series of tours in a project called Jewish Heritage in Kaunas. The tours will be conducted on September 6, 8 and 10 and will cover modern architecture, the Old Town, Slobodka and major achievements by Litvaks. Registration required. Call (37) 22 23 57 or send an email to renginiai@kaunas.mvb.lt

The guided tour on September 10 begins at 6:00 P.M. and will be led by local guide Asia Gutermanaitė.

2019-09-092019-09-10

Statement by Lithuanian Jewish Community Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky on the New Jonas Noreika Plaque

Thursday evening a plaque commemorating Jonas Noreika was erected on the outer wall of the Vrublevskiai Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in central Vilnius. A number of police observed the scene.

This is a wanton act by a mob. It demonstrates the attitude of the organizers of this event, of those who hung the plaque, towards the law and obeying the law.

We saw the organizers took the path of force, pushing their belief as the only correct one. We saw that before in Lithuania in 1941.

Despite the LJC’s critical view of Noreika’s actions during the Nazi occupation, it never occured to us over those 22 years the plaque stood there to come and simply take it down. We respect the laws of Lithuania.

I have no doubt that the events of Thursday evening have done harm to the nation’s reputation. High-lvel delegations from the United States are due to arrive in September alone and we will mark the day of remembrance of the genocide of the Jews of Lithuania on September 23. And will this plaque look on from its central perch as we mark the Year of the Vilna Gaon and of Litvak History declared in 2020?

It is crucial that the leaders of the Lithuanian state express their views and a principled position, and that the appropriate Lithuanian institutions take all necessary measures.

The only consolation seems to be that today, Thursday evening, as I watched this so-called action, I saw only a small group of people who truly do not represent the whole of Lithuania. There were no young people, no intellectuals on hand, whose voices have been lacking in this.

What we are demanding is very simple: 1) stop denying the Holocaust, 2) stop portraying Holocaust perpetrators as heroes, 3) honor the victims of the Holocaust and 4) follow the IHRA definition of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism adopted by Lithuania last year. If the IHRA definition isn’t followed it’s meaningless for Lithuania to remain a signatory to it or a member of IHRA.

I would like to remind the public again that my relatives were imprisoned in the Šiauliai ghetto, from which they never returned. I would like to quote the famous writer Sholem Aleichem, in whose honor a school is named in Vilnius. One of his works begins with the words: “How good it is that I am an orphan…” I would also like to say: “How good it is that I am an orphan and that my parents aren’t around to see the man who condemned their entire family to death in the Šiauliai ghetto celebrated and lionized.”

2019-09-062019-09-25

March of the Living

You’re invited to take part in the March of the Living procession in Ponar at 1:00 P.M. on September 23, 2019. The march begins at the Ponar railroad station and concludes at the main memorial in the Ponar Memorial Complex, where a commemoration ceremony to remember the genocide of the Jews of Lithuania will begin at 1:15.

A bus will offer transport from the LJC to the memorial complex leaving at 12 noon. Registration begins September 16. To register, call 8 5 261 3003.

2019-09-052019-09-23

European Day of Jewish Culture in Šeduva September 15

A lesson on how to bake traditional challa bread will be held at 3:00 P.M. on September 15 at the Šeduva Crafts and Culture Center located at Vilniaus street no. 1 in Šeduva. Chefs from the Bagel Shop Café will share the secrets of traditional Litvak holiday customs and cuisine.

2019-09-05