We wish LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky a very happy birthday today.
Dearest Faina,
Your life sets an example and is an inspiration to so many people. Thank you for your work and sacrifice for the betterment of the Community and the entire country. May this birthday bring you joy, love and health, and may the coming year be filled with new opportunities and happiness. Mazl tov. Bis 120!
The Regional History Museum of the Jonava Culture Center has put on a new exhibit of photographs by Iveta Bajorinaitė called Mirages of the Shtetl accompanied by texts by the late Grigoriy Kanovich showcasing the Lithuanian town and Jewish shtetl then and now. Renowned Litvak writer Kanovich grew up in Jonava.
During the opening ceremony last week, Iveta Bajorinaitė spoke about her quest to locate and photograph locations in the current urban landscape which correspond to with archival photographs.
Šeduva Jewish History Museum aka the Lost Shtetl senior curator Milda Jakulytė-Vasil, Kėdainiai Regional History Museum director Rimantas Žirgulis and Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas continued the opening ceremony with a panel discussion called “How Do We Tell the Story of the Shtetls?” Among the other ideas shared, they agreed the most important answer to that question was taking the initiative and working steadfastly towards that goal. They shared their personal experiences in organizing exhibitions and events and utilizing urban spaces.
The Regional History Museum of the Jonava Culture Center’s project “Stories of the Shtetls” is financed by Lithuania’s Cultural Heritage Department and the Jonava regional administration with the Šeduva Jewish History Museum aka the Lost Shtetl as a partner in the project.
Celesta and Harriet Sollod from San Francisco visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community recently. Their grandfather was Isaac Neviarsky who with his brother was Nathan and sister Yeta left Ponavezh in 1895 and travelled to Baltimore in the United States. Their father was Hirsh Aaron who was deported with other Jews from the Kovna guberniya during the First World War in 1915. He went to Petrograd where a maternal relative of the Semakovich family lived, becoming a renowned medical doctor to the Russian tsar.
Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman received the visitors and spoke to them about the history of the Jews of Panevėžys and the Community’s activities. The two women then went to view Jewish sites in the area including the Jewish cemetery and several Jewish mass murder sites.
The state of the old Jewish cemetery in the New Town section of Panevėžys requires emergency action, according to Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman.
The cemetery is thought to have been established for the burial of the first Jewish and Karaïte settlers in the northern Lithuanian city and surrounding areas.
The Panevėžys regional administration adopted a resolution for maintaining the old Jewish graveyard back in 2019 but hasn’t followed through on the ground. Time, disregard and the weather have since taken a greater toll, which prompted Kofman to seek additional redress from the Panevėžys regional administration.
“The main section of the old Jewish cemetery in the New Town neighborhood has been abandoned and allowed to fall into ruin, with fallen trees knocking over headstones, overgrown grass and shrubbery, felled trees and branches left unremoved. We would be grateful if administration staff could come, formulate a maintenance plan and finally care for this unique historic city location,” Kofman said.
Valeri’a Klezmer Chariot from Sweden is holding their premiere concert in Lithuania in Vilnius. The band’s repertoire runs the gamut of musical genres, blending klezmer with jazz, funk and Balkan rhythms. The band includes Valeria Conte doing lyrics and clarinet, Sara Fridholm on accordion, Stian Grimstadt on tuba and Tomas Norberg on drums.
Lithuanian Jewish Community members have the unique opportunity to win two tickets to the concert by going to https://rb.gy/sxmpm5 and indicating their name and the name of their other preferred concert goer. Winners will be announced Saturday. Other LJC members will receive a discounted ticket price of 15 euros by registering here. Tickets can also be purchased at Bilietai.lt with the first 30 tickets going for 39 euros.
For further information, media contacts and etc. call any of the following numbers:
+370 677 00699, +37064536403, +370 61801331, +370 671 76502.
Time: 7:00 P.M., Sunday, September 15
Place: Third floor, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius
People gathered at noon on the first Sunday in September for the annual commemoration of the approximately 12,000 Jews murdered in the Pivonija Forest outside Ukmergė (Vilkomir) this year as in years past. Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas began the ceremony with an address and Kaunas Jewish Community member Iseris Šreibergas said kaddish. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kuklianksy, members and heads of regional LJC affiliates, local politicians, local school children and ambassadors to Lithuania including Israel’s Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein attended the ceremony.
Brendan Cohen from Melbourne, Australia, visited the Panėvežys Jewish Community August 30. He had sent genealogical documents to the Community before his trip. Cohen sought to learn which of his relatives had been murdered in the Holocaust in Panėvežys and surrounding areas. Chairman Gennady Kofman received the guest and shared the results of searches of the Community’s archives.
Last Sunday two events were held in honor of Chaim Frenkel in Šiauliai: a stele marking the first soccer stadium in Šiauliai was unveiled in the central part of the city and the fourth Chaim Frenkel soccer tournament was attended by 10 soccer teams including Šiauliai Makabi. Frenkel helped build the soccer stadium in the period between the two world wars..
A music and dance play based on Jievaras Jasinskis’s “Symphony from the Jerusalem of the North” is returning to the stage for two performances.
Time: 6:00 P.M., September 19
Place: Alytus Town Theater, Alytus, Lithuania
Time: 6:00 P.M., September 24
Place: Saulė Concert Hall, Šiauliai, Lithuania
The Sabbath begins at 7:39 P.M. on Friday, September 6, and concludes at 8:50 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Monday, September 9, is also the Day of the Victims of the Holocaust and of Racial Violence in Slovakia, commemorating the day in 1941 when the puppet government of the Nazi protectorate of Slovakia issued a decree on the legal status of Jews in the country. This decree, known as the Jewish Codex, led to the deportation of Jews from the country, ultimately resulting in the murder of approximately 70,000 Slovak Jews.
BERLIN–Police in Munich say they thwarted a potential attack on Jewish targets Thursday after they shot and killed a man who was firing a rifle near the Israeli Consulate and a museum documenting Nazi Germany.
Police have not offered details on the suspect. Some German media outlets reported he was a juvenile from Austria police had previously investigated for alleged ties to Islamic extremism.
Germany’s public broadcaster Deutsche Welle verified the authenticity of cell-phone videos shared online which show a younger male carrying a rifle fitted with a bayonet before and during the shootout.
Last Nazi Hunter Efraim Zuroff Resigns from Simon Wiesenthal Center, Vows to Fight Anti-Semitism
by Eyal Green, Jerusalem Post, September 4, 2024
Efraim Zuroff, the last Nazi hunter, steps down after 38 years at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, pledging to continue fighting anti-Semitism.
Unofficially known as the last Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff has stepped down as director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office after 38 years, Zuroff announced September 3.
Efraim Zuroff was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1948 and dedicated his life to identifying and bringing to justice Nazi war criminals who had evaded justice for decades. His interest in Holocaust studies began early, and after earning a degree in history from Yeshiva University, he moved to Israel in 1970 to work at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, the Jerusalem Post reports.
An exhibit of photos and bios of Lithuania’s Righteous Gentiles opened this week in the courtyard of the Šiauliai District Jewish Community in Šiauliai this week, attended by the Israeli ambassador to Lithuania, local politicians, members of the Jewish community and the general public.
Mother and son Eudenta and Samull Virine from Canada visited the Nalšia Museum in Švenčionys on August 21 where Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro gave them a guided tour including viewing implements and artifacts from Jewish homes, the history of the region and a new exhibit on the fate of the Jews of Švenčionys. Eudenta’s mother was born in Švenčionys.
They sought archival information about the families of Leiba and Abraham Alperovitch and Mengel Bushkanietz with the help of historian and museum specialist Nadežda Spiridonovienė. The museum has very little information regarding these surnames but they are recorded as living in Švenčionys in a Russian Empire census conducted before World War I.
The two visitors also viewed the Menorah statue in the town’s central park. They went on to visit a Jewish mass murder site in nearby Švenčionėliai.
The Kaunas Philharmonic was packed for a concert last week ending a series of commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Kaunas ghetto. The Kaunas Jewish Community thanked all involved in making the final concert a success including former resident of Kaunas now of Toronto Atis Bankas and the audience.
On Tuesday the Vilnius Regional Court began hearing a criminal case against former MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis who is accused of inciting hatred. Prosecutor Justas Laucius speaking on behalf the state prosecution noted that in his facebook posts, the politician spoke disparagingly of people of Jewish origin, accusing them of committing a massacre in the village of Pirčiupiai and the “Holocaust of Lithuanians,” ELTA reports.
Žemaitaitis stated in court he is currently unemployed and registered with the Employment Service. He also said he is currently a candidate for parliamentary elections to be held in the fall.
Prosecutor Laucius read out the indictment, indicating that Žemaitaitis is accused of inciting hatred towards persons of Jewish nationality, mocking persons of Jewish nationality and publicly approving of international crimes, denying them or grossly belittling them.
Last week the Šiauliai Jewish Community received a guest from Australia. Brendan Conen from Melbourne came searching family roots. Specifically, his grandparents and great-grandparents who were born in Šiauliai, Pašalotas, Pumpenai and Varniai. He was looking for their addresses in order to view their homes. On Sunday he planned to visit the Šiauliai Jewish Community to help in the group-cleanup of the courtyard and garden and to help out in receiving visitors to the Righteous Gentiles exhibit which just opened.
This year’s topic is family.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is celebrating the European Day of Jewish Culture this Sunday, September 1, with a full day’s program of events, lessons, workshops, discussions and exhibits. All events are free and open to the public, but registration is required for most of the events below.
Here’s the program:
11:00 A.M.-12:30 P.M. First Hebrew lesson for the whole family with Ruth Reches at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius. Ruth will soon be forming new classes for studying Hebrew. Register here: https://bit.ly/4g5jZbW
Film suggests Nazis’ lead propagandist had role in 1939 massacre
Letter in Leni Riefenstahl archive appears to claim her set instructions led to deaths of Polish Jews, says director
A new documentary on the Nazis’ favorite film-maker and lead propagandist Leni Riefenstahl suggests she was a direct witness to murderous crimes of the Third Reich she later claimed to have known nothing about and might even have contributed to one atrocity herself.
The film Riefenstahl which premieres at the Venice film festival at the end of August also claims the propagandist admired the party and its henchmen until her death at 101 in 2003, a sentiment which ran counter to her insistence she was not signed up to the Nazi cause.
Written and directed by Andres Veiel, the documentary is the first to have had full access to Riefenstahl’s estate. It gives fresh details about claims that the film-maker was witness to one of the first massacres of Polish Jews while briefly working as a war reporter.
Riefenstahl followed Adolf Hitler to Poland at the start of the second world war in September of 1939 and saw the atrocity take place in Końskie, a town in south-central Poland.
The Jonas Šliūpas Museum and the Palanga Jewish Community invites you to a day of Jewish culture this Sunday with circus and drama director, street-theater creator and comedian Adrian Schvarzstein from Argentina and Lithuania’s historical dance expert and choreographer Jūrate Širvytė who will present the street-play Arrived.
Arrived was born in Sri Lanka in 2015 and was first performed in Lithuania in 2017 under the title Malina.
Actor and comedian Schvarzstein will follow the play up with a discussion on Yiddish humor at the Jonas Šliūpas Museum. In between the play and the discussion the Palanga Jewish Community and the Bella Toscana bakery are promising to provide Jewish culinary heritage treats to attendees. All events are free.
Time: 2:00 P.M. to 3:30 P.M., September 1.
Location: The street-play begins at the Ramybė Café at Vytauto street no. 54, followed by Litvak treats in the courtyard of the Jonas Šliūpas Museum at Vytauto street no. 23a and the discussion at that same location in Palanga.