Litvaks – Page 6 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Litvak Identity Museum Opening

Yesterday evening the Litvak Culture and Identity Museum opened next door to the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius.

LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky spoke at the opening ceremony, saying the long-awaited exhibits would finally be made public and should be very interesting. She said the history of the Litvaks didn’t begin and end with the Holocaust, that we have a rich history which hasn’t gone away and that the new museum will offer the public a view of that history.

“We are neighbors, the Lithuanian Jewish Community is based right here, on the other side of the wall, in the same building, the former Tarbut gymnasium. We are alive and are celebrating our Jewish identity, and everyone who learns something here at the museum, we invite them to stop by the Community as well, to try our bagels, listen to music and participate in our events. Food, culture and other Community activities of which we are proud–these are all part of the Litvak identity,” Kukliansky said.

Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg-Silverstein also spoke at the opening.

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Vilna Gaon Museum Opens New Litvak Culture and Identity Museum

Photo by I. Gelūnas

The Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum reopens its branch in the former Tarbut Gymnasium at Pylimo street no. 4a Thursday, January 18, following reconstruction and the installation of a new Litvak Culture and Identity exhibit.

The space used to house the museum’s History Department and Gallery of Righteous Gentiles, and has been undergoing renovation for several years. The third floor will now house a permanent exhibit on the life and work of Rafael Chwoles, the Litvak artist. Other exhibits feature Litvaks who found fame and achievement around the world in various fields of endeavor. The space includes four storeys accessible by stairs.

The Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum includes consists of several sub-museums and spaces including the Tolerance Center, the Holocaust Museum, an information space at the Ponar Memorial Complex outside Vilnius and soon an exhibit inside the former Jewish ghetto library in the Vilnius Old Town.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2024-01-182024-01-18

Congratulations to Young Composer

Photo: Simonas Gimelšteinas at premiere on left.

Congratulations to young composer and Lithuanian Jewish Community member Simonas Gimelšteinas who did the musical score for the Lithuanian documentary film “Irklais per Atlantą” [Rowing across the Atlantic] which premiered last week.

Simonas Gimelšteinas also created the sound track for the award-winning Lithuanian short film “Blausos” [Through the Gloom] back in 2022.

2024-01-18

Evening to Commemorate Israel Elyashev in Kaunas

The Kaunas Jewish Community invites you to an evening commemorating literary critic and writer Israel (Isidore) Elyashev.

Bal-Makhshoves as he was also known, “man of thoughts,” used that nom-de-plume in his Jewish writing at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The commemoration will be held in the former Jewish cafeteria near Elyashev’s home where he died 100 years ago on January 13, 1924. Speakers will touch upon his friendship with the painter Marc Chagall, Jewish life in Kaunas, Elyashev’s home street now known as Daukšos gatvė but formerly called Yatkever or Butcher’s street with five synagogues located along it, about the return of “evacuated” Jewish exiles in 1921 and about the shared and separate Lithuanian and Jewish cultural legacy in Lithuania’s interwar provisional capital Kaunas.

Speakers will also detail his family, including his sister Ester Veisbart who was an art critic, teacher and Lithuania’s first female doctor of philosophy who died in the Kaunas ghetto; the rest of his family who were killed in the Kaunas and Vilnius ghettos and Soviet labor camps and the members of his family to made it to Palestine and lived.

2024-01-112024-01-22

Art Exhibit in Inspired by Abraham Sutzkever

The Shofar Gallery of the Jewish Culture Information Center in Vilnius is hosting an exhibit of works by art and book restorer and artist Modestas Saukaitis inspired by Abraham Sutzkever’s poetry. Saukaitis’s works on exhibit are verre églomisé, an ancient technique which uses white gold painted on glass to produce an extraordinary effect.

The exhibit runs till December 23 and is open to the public during the gallery’s working hours, from noon to 6:00 P.M. on weekdays and from noon till 4:00 P.M. on Saturday. The gallery is located at Mėsinių street no. 3A in the Vilnius Old Town.

For more information, see here.

2023-12-21

Anniversary of Escape from Ninth Fort

On December 25, 1943, 64 prisoners at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas pulled off a daring escape. The Jews and Soviet POWs were the crew selected by the Nazis to exhume and burn corpses.

The Ninth Fort Museum in Kaunas has set up a special exhibit to mark the 80th anniversary of the escape featuring the testimonies of survivors.

Ya’arit Glezer’s father Pinia Krakinovski was one of the escapees and she came from Israel to speak at the opening of the new exhibition. Yakov Faitelson also spoke through an audio recording–his father Aleks was one of the escapees–as did Medel Deich’s son Grisha Deich. Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg-Silverstein attended the event and spoke to the audience about the importance of history in the context of current events.

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Strashun Street Library Space to House New Museum

Lithuanian construction company Infes reported they concluded a contract with the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum for help creating a museum inside the Vilnius ghetto library space located on Žemaitijos street, formerly Strashun street, where library director Herman Kruk wrote most of his Vilnius ghetto diary and where the FPO, the Vilnius ghetto partisan fighters force, had a shooting range in the basement.

Infes said they would undertake capital renovation of the building and do other construction there. According to their press release, the museum will teach visitors about the Vilnius ghetto and the Holocaust in Lithuania and will feature unique items from the Vilna Gaon Museum’s collections.

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Lost World Photo Exhibit

December 13 the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture opened an exhibit of 15 specially selected photographs of the former Jewish quarter and Great Synagogue by pre-war photographer Jan Bulhak as part of closing ceremonies in the celebration of Vilnius’s 700th birthday, the newspaper Lietuvos Rytas reports on its website lrytas.lt

Culture minister Simonas Kairys, former culture minister Arūnas Gelūnas who now directs the Lithuanian National Art Museum which selected the photographs for the exhibit, Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg-Silverstein, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and others attended the opening. Boris Kizner provided Jewish airs on violin.

Gelūnas told Lietuvos Rytas television only two of the fifteen photographs contain human beings because the photographer thought empty streets and vacant sidewalks showed off the architecture better and presented a more romantic picture of the city.

“In a way he was prophetic in this: after World War II all these streets were emptied of people,” Gelūnas noted. He added the lessons of history haven’t been learned, anti-Semitism is alive and well in the world and people still cling to authoritarianism.

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Maria Krupoves Lecture and Concert

Eastern European folklore and folk-song expert and performer Maria Krupoves-Berg will present a lecture and concert at the Lithuanian National Library’s Hall of Statehood at 6:00 P.M. on December 14. The event is free and open to the public.

The event called “The Sounds of Eastern European Jewish History and Music” sponsored by the National Library’s Judaica Studies Center will talk about and demonstrate genres of Yiddish song and how some songs became a kind of national anthem, accompanying Ashkenazi and especially Litvaks at crucial points in history, reflecting yidishe neshama, Jewish identity. Krupoves will perform with Boris Kizner on violin. The scheduled duration is one and a half hours.

2023-12-07

Concert in Remembrance of Grigoriy Kanovitch

The Šalom, Akmenė! project with the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum are holding a concert to remember the late novelist Grigoriy Kanovitch. It is to include students from art schools in the Akmenė and Joniškis regions and students from the Song Cathedral of the Music Academy of Vytautas Magnus University. The program includes songs in Yiddish.

Time: 3:00 P.M., Sunday, December 3
Place: Tolerance Center of the Vilna Gaon Museum, Naugarduko street no. 10, Vilnius

The concert is free and open to the public.

2023-12-01

Eightieth Anniversary of Liquidation and Uprising of Vilnius Ghetto: International Conference “Ideologies of Hate and Hope in Modern Jewish History”

You’re invited to the final event in our commemoration of the 80th anniversary of liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto this year, the international conference “Ideologies of Hate and Hope in Modern Jewish History” in Constitution Hall in Building 1 at the Lithuanian parliament on Tuesday, November 28, 2023.

Participants must register by internet before 3:00 P.M. on Monday, November 27, here: https://bit.ly/40NAUZ3

The conference will be conducted in Lithuanian and English with translations. It is being held through the efforts of the Polish Jewish History Institute, YIVO and the Lithuanian Jewish Community. It will be streamed on the LJC’s facebook page.

Program:

2023-11-222023-11-23

Scout Hike

Scouts and parents are invited to a fall hike Sunday, November 26. The hike is a free event and open to all children and their parents. Please register by internet before midnight, November 24, by clicking here: https://forms.gle/fbDdB1HDhBUQKw976

For more information, contact hike leader Adelina Kofman by telephone at 860581922 or write skautai@lzb.lt.

2023-11-222023-11-22

Standing with Israel in Pakruojis

The Pakruojis wooden synagogue hosted an event yesterday to support Israel, organized by the Šiauliai Jewish Religious Community.

Before the Holocaust the wooden synagogue–one of only a handful still standing in Europe–was the center of Jewish life and religion.

The one-day photography exhibit there was actually two related exhibits: 22 photographs out of the 724 victims to mark the 80th anniversary of the Kinder Aktion or children’s mass murder operation in the Šiauliai ghetto collected and arranged by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Authority in Israel and the Šiauliai Jewish Religious Community, and pictures of the 242 hostages taken by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, including babies, children, adolescents, adults and the elderly.

2023-11-212024-02-26

Pakruojis Wooden Synagogue Hosts Photo Exhibit on Kinder Aktion and Hamas Hostages

The Šiauliai Jewish Community is holding a half-day photography exhibit at the wooden synagogue in Pakruojis on November 20 detailing the painful past of the Jewish people and current events.

The first part of the exhibit is a joint project between the Šiauliai Religious Jewish Community and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to mark the 80th anniversary of the Kinder Aktion or children’s mass murder operation at the Šiauliai ghetto. It only contains a small number of photographs of victims conserved by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.

The second section features the 240 people taken hostage by Hamas and held in the Gaza Strip, including fathers, mothers, children, teenagers, the elderly and the disabled.

Time: 11:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., Monday, November 20
Place: Pakruojis synagogue, Kranto street no. 8, Pakruojis, Lithuania

2023-11-202023-11-21

Algirdas Davidavičius to Speak at Darna Festival

Philosopher and ethics teacher Algirdas Davidavičius will share his ideas about harmony and tolerance at the Darna Festival to celebrate International Day of Tolerance at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius on Thursday, November 16.

“At the current time it isn’t sufficient for being a good person to speak abstractedly of good behavior, to criticize or comment on military actions from a safe distance. We are all moral if not actual soldiers for a better common culture. Each one of us must choose which values we defend, because if we don’t defend them we will become hostages and participants of regimes of superstitious fear and violence,” Davidavičius said.

The Darna Festival opens at 6:30 P.M. and is free and open to the public.

2023-11-162023-11-16

One Hundred and Two Holocaust Survivors Ask Australians to Denounce Anti-Semitism and Hatred

Photo: Members of the Australian Jewish community participate in a rally in Sydney in late October. Photograph: David Gray/AFP/Getty Images

by Daisy Dumas, November 9, 2023

The broader Jewish community in Australia this week marked 30 days since the October 7 Hamas attacks with vigils and candle-lighting ceremonies

More than 100 Australian Holocaust survivors have united to denounce a wave of “senseless and virulent” anti-Semitism that they fear is growing in the country.

The “last witnesses to the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi regime,” many in their 90s, have penned a letter against abusive incidents that have targeted the Jewish community as Israeli retaliations continue after the brutal Hamas attacks and kidnappings of October 7.

“We are witnesses to the anti-Semitic propaganda that turned our friends, neighbors and the general public against us in Europe. We remember the six million Jewish lives lost because of this hatred,” the 102 Australian survivors wrote in the letter published in the Australian on Thursday.

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