Learning, History, Culture

Jewish Street in Vilnius to Get Trilingual Street Sign

Žydų gatvė (Jewish street, aka Yidishe gas, aka ulica Żydowska), where the traditional Jewish quarter and the Great Synagogue of Vilnius was located, is about to get signs in Yiddish and Hebrew.

The special event to unveil the new sign is scheduled for 11:30 A.M., Tuesday, September 20 at Žydų street no. 2.

The program includes a performance of a piece by the Jewish song and dance ensemble Fayerlakh, followed by Vytautas Mitalas, chairman of the Vilnius municipal council’s culture, education and sports committee, presenting Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius. Šimašius is to present a small speech. Mitalas will then introduce Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, who will also deliver a small speech. The mayor and the chairwoman will then unveil the new street sign. Fayerlakh is then scheduled to perform another song.

The historic street and a neighboring street were cleared of their mainly Jewish residents in 1941 when the Nazis and Nazi collaborators set up the Vilnius ghetto. The residents were murdered and a large population of Jews from other parts of the city were forced into the cramped quarters there. It was part of the so-called Small Ghetto in Vilnius, liquidated in October of 1942. Žydų gatvė was the site of the Shulhof, the collection of buildings built around the location of the residence and study of the Vilna Gaon and the Great Synagogue.

I’m Not Jewish: A Western Response

Some Call Lithuania First Eastern European Country to Admit Holocaust Complicity

The Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper printed an editorial on August 29 positively portraying Lithuanian attempts to speak openly and honestly about the Holocaust. Lithuanian ambassador to Germany Deividas Matulionis pointed to the many friendly and constructive comments left under the article in German.

Warsaw-based Frankfurter Allgemeine correspondent Gerhard Gnauck’s feature article of August 29 is provided in rough translation below.

Commemoration in Lithuania
Our Own People

 

Lithuania commemorates the mass murder of the Jews, and even the president wants to be there. This is a big step in a land silent for so long about the pogroms.

litauen-stellt-sich-seiner
Lithuania faces her past: remembering Holocaust victims in Vilnius in May. Some 70,000 Jews were murdered at Paneriai.

For forty years Lithuanian writer Marius Ivaškevičius in his own words “had been living for 40 years in complete ignorance, on the margins of a gigantic tragedy without even sensing it existed.” Ivaškevičius was born in 1973 in Molėtai, a small and seemingly idyllic town about an hour’s drive north of the capital Vilnius. A paradise of dachas surrounded by lakes. But then something must have gotten into him, he was stung by a wasp. Or at least his fellow residents thought so.

Last week the time had come for Ivaškevičius to declare: “I’m not Jewish,” and that was the title above the text he posted on the popular Baltic Internet portal delfi.lt. It wasn’t a wasp, it was a tick which had bitten him at the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, the author wrote ironically. Since his visit there he had been “infected.” He concerned himself with the history of his hometown, Molėtai, where two-thirds of the residents were murdered 75 years ago, on August 29, 1941. Lithuanians wielded the weapons.

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Lithuanian Jewish Community Demands Halt to Construction Work

Lithuanian Jewish Community

 

September 7, 2016 No. 319
September 6, 2016 No. 1-/6/P-007

To:

Tomas Pauliukonys, director
Vestata
V. Kudirkos street no. 18, Vilnius 03105

Arvydas Avulis, chairman of board of directors,
Hanner
Konstitucijos prospect no. 7, Vilnius 09308

cc:

Diana Varnaitė, director
Cultural Heritage Department under the Ministry of Culture
Šnipiškių street no. 3, Vilnius 09309

REGARDING WORK AT RINKTINĖS STREET NO. 3, VILNIUS

 

It has come to our attention that by order of companies under your direction during the last days of August of this year there was earth dug without permission during demolition and construction at the site of the former Žaligiris Stadium within the protected zone of the old Vilnius Jewish cemetery in Šnipiškės (cultural heritage register number KVR 31812, henceforth “Cemetery”). This is a gross violation of the signed agreement on the terms of the cultural heritage protection of the protective buffer zone of the Cemetery (henceforth “Terms”) adopted on August 26, 2009, as well as the agreement between the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Vesata company and the Archeoligijos centras public organization (henceforth “Agreement”).

We demand an immediate halt to all work within the territory of the Cemetery and its protected zone until representatives of the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe (henceforth “Committee”) are able to assess the situation and decide appropriately regarding further work at the site.

According to our information, the earliest date a Committee representative could arrive is from September 12 to 15 of this year. Please respond quickly as to whether this date is appropriate for a visit, and as to whether you are willing to pay all costs associated with it.

[signed]
Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman

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Reminder about Cemetery Clean-Up

Dear LJC members participating in the September events,

This is to remind you that we are going to the Jewish cemetery on Sudervės road in Vilnius at 2:30 on September 20 to do a clean-up. The bus will leave from the Lithuanian Jewish Community at Pylimo street no. 4 in Vilnius.

Please wear clothing appropriate for the work and the weather!

Thank you for taking part! If you have any questions, please contact us.

Sincerely,
Lithuanian Jewish Community administration

telephone: +370 5 261 3003
email: info@lzb.lt

Same Problem Every Year at Jewish Mass Murder Sites

Kiekvienais metais ta pati problema prie žydų žudymo vietų

Every year the Panevėžys Jewish Community writes the municipal and regional administrations regarding the most tragic sites in Jewish history, sites which need continual upkeep and maintenance, the Jewish mass murder sties in the city, district and region of Panevėžys. And also in other towns such as Kupiškis, Pasvalys, Biržai, and smaller towns such as Krekenava, Pumpėnai, Raguva, Obeliai, Ramygala, Vabalninkas and others.

A large number of municipal and regional administrations consider all our requests in a spirit of goodwill and are engaged in solving the problem of maintenance at these places of tragedy, but, unfortunately, there are also a number of administrations who discover all sorts of reasons not to fulfill our requests. We believe there needs to be a common stance by government so that every year, especially in summer, cemeteries and the mass murder and mass grave sites are mowed and cleaned up. The municipal bodies of the towns of Kupiškis and Rokiškis are paying attention to the problem, while we have to beg and cajole the Pasvalys administration constantly to maintain and clean up the mass murder site in the Žadeikiai Forest there. The Jewish cemeteries in Krekenava and Raguva are in extremely bad repair.

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Club Birthday Chess Tournament!

elite2

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Rositsan and Maccabi Elite Chess and Checkers Club invite you to a chess tournament to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the club at 11:00 A.M. on September 18, 2016 at the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius.

Tournament director: FIDE master Boris Rositsan

For further information and to register, please contact:

email: info@metbor.lt
telephone: +3706 5543556

Vilkaviškis Jewish Life before World War I

Vilkaviškio žydų gyvenimas prieš Pirmąjį pasaulinį karą
Seventy percent of Vilkaviškis residents were Jewish. Photo from Ralph Salinger’s archive

from http://www.santaka.info/ Santaka: Newspaper of the Vilkaviškis Region

On September 23 Vilkaviškis will also mark the Day of Genocide of Jews of Lithuania. Jewish history researcher Ralph Salinger who has donated so very much historical material about the Jews who once lived in our town and region will again visit. This man has collected where possible from Israeli museums and has allowed us as well as our regional history museum to use the material.

Thanks to him we can now share with our readers interesting stories from our town’s past. We present to you the history of the Jews who lived here, and of course Lithuanians as well, from 100 years ago.

This long story are recollections written in 1890 in Vilkaviškis by Harold Fryd, a Jew born and raised here, translated from English. His grandson David Perl has preserved these memoirs and has agreed to share them. The photographs next to the articles are from a later period, since photography wasn’t very developed or very widespread at the time. The photographs Ralph Salinger has sent are from 30-50 years later in the life of the town, but one realizes while reading the text that the town hadn’t changed much in the intervening period. Some of the memories are perhaps known to us, but some appear rather incredible and unexpected.

They Did Farming and Trade

At that time in my town, Vilkaviškis, there were about 8,000 people living there, of whom 70 percent were Jews. The rest were Lithuanians, Poles, Russians and a few Germans.

Translation to be continued.

Lithuanian original here.

Support the Lithuanian Jewish Community

Even your small donation today can help the Lithuanian Jewish Community achieve great things tomorrow.

The Lithuanian Jewish community has roots going back 700 years. Only a remnant survived the Holocaust. Although the current community is small, we are extremely active and are working hard to foster Jewish identity, maintain traditions and culture, commemorate Holocaust victims, provide social services to our members and promote tolerance in society.

We invite you to contribute to reviving at least a small portion of the legendary Jerusalem of Lithuania. Perform your mitzvah (good deed) today!

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Award

Apdovanojimas

Lieutenant Artūras Jasinskas, commander of the Lithuanian military’s volunteer defense forces, awarded Nicholas Benjamin Israel, head of Baltic regional military information operations support team of US special operations in Europe, for his exceptional personal contribution to expanding and strengthening cooperation between the US military and Lithuania’s volunteer defense forces Friday, September 9.

The name of the Lithuanian military medal is “For Distinguished Service.”

Israel’s cousin, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, attended the ceremony.

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I’m Not Jewish

marius-ivaskevicius
by Marius Ivaškevičius

That’s what I want to tell everyone who the last three months have tactfully asked this of my friends and relatives. I am not Jewish at all, I don’t have a drop of Jewish blood. So why is he casting his lot with those Jews, what wild insect bit him? That’s another question heard often.

I can answer it almost by rote: I was bitten by a tick. Three years ago I filmed one scene at the old Jewish cemetery in Warsaw and it sucked my blood there. Furthermore, I got Lyme disease. And it so happened, or perhaps it was decided beforehand by that treacherous Jewish tick, that when I was taking antibiotics I became interested in the Jews in my town, their fate in my native Molėtai. And my hair stood on end and I got goose-bumps when I realized I had been living for 40 years in complete ignorance, on the margins of a gigantic tragedy without even sensing it existed. I knew there had been Jews, they had lived here, because their old cemetery still exists in Molėtai, as does their old “red bricks,” a long building, the oldest in the town, of connected shops, a sort of shopping mall of the period. I knew some unknown number of them had been killed, since, as I thought, some of them had been involved in Communist activities.

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New Bagel Shop Menu

The Community’s kosher café the Bagel Shop invites you to come in and try some of new menu items for fall, including new bagels, Israeli salads and fresh-squeezed juice. Our new menu is displayed below and you can download it as well, or just stop by at Pylimo no.4 in Vilnius during regular business hours and see if you don’t find something which makes your mouth water. Oh, and we’re baking fresh challa bread every Friday.

Download

LJC Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky Thanks European Day of Jewish Culture Organizers

LŽB pirmininkė F. Kukliansky dėkoja Europos žydų kultūros dienos Lietuvos žydų (litvakų) bendruomenėje organizatoriams
Photo: Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, director, Lithuanian Literature and Folklore Institute, reads poems by Abraham Sutzkever

The European Day of Jewish Culture was celebrated September 4 in Vilnius with a klezmer music concert and Yiddish poetry readings. We are glad it was such a real holiday, and proud of its organizers!

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky thanks everyone who contributed to organizing the event and who sacrificed their time for the Jewish community’s benefit.

Faina sveikina

“Thank you to the staff of the Bagel Shop Café who prepared special Jewish treats for everyone. Only though joint effort can our small community organize celebrations of such high caliber and take pride in them along with a large group of friends and guests. Thank you to the small group of volunteers who truly helped. Thank you to the Vilnius Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium, fostering students who honor and are interested in their roots and culture, the young Europeans for whom understanding of tolerance and civic-mindedness is an urgent matter. Thank you to the gymnasium students who took part in the celebration,” chairwoman Kukliansky said.

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Film Gitel Looks at Lithuanian Holocaust

gitel

A cinematic premiere has been added to list of important events to honor Lithuania’s Holocaust victims. British director Robert Mullan’s film Gitel, filmed in Lithuania and elsewhere, will open at cinema theaters September 23. The film looks at the mass murders of 1941 through the eyes of a female survivor who has lost her family.

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Litvak Wit in Yiddish Sayings

Dita Sperling2 2016

It’s important for people to hear the sound of Yiddish. There are many interesting sayings. My grandma used to say “one butt can’t be at two fairs at once.” Takhrikhim is a linen cloth used as a burial shroud. I remember I had this rich uncle who was stingy. Something needed to be purchased for the bathtub, but he’s not buying it. I said to him: “Uncle, takhrikhim have no pockets. And what do we keep in our pockets? Money. When they are burying you, you can’t take your money with you.” After I said that, uncle went and bought everything right away. Incidentally, pockets in Yiddish are “keshenes,” almost the same as Lithuanian “kišenės.”

Aphorisms, sayings and etc.

On Sunday I thought I’d go on Monday, but I put it off, and I didn’t go on Tuesday, either, because there was market on Wednesday. And why should I go on Thursday, since Friday is the start of Sabbath?

When the mouse is full, the flour is bitter.

No man scratches his head without reason: either he has worries, or lice.

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Molėtai Holocaust Procession Draws Record Crowd

eisena-skirta-iszudytiems-moletu-krasto-zydams-pagerbti-faina

More than 2,600 and perhaps as many as 4,000 people attended a rally and walked the route along which 2,000 Jews were marched to their deaths 75 years ago in the sleepy Lithuanian town of Molėtai Monday. The population of Molėtai was roughly 6,400 when last counted in 2011.

The town center and surrounding streets were filled with local residents and people from around the world, including Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Many Lithuanians brought their children and there were people from Estonia and a number of Lithuanian officials in the crowd. One group of young people waved Polish flags–the Polish Armia Krajowa operated in the area in 1944. A small group of Lithuanian boy and girl scouts attended, while another small group carried a Lithuanian flag, and others sported Israeli flags. A monk in black robes stood by the stage, on the other side of which there was a long line of people holding posters with names, faces and descriptions. A central area contained about twenty folding chairs for elderly and distinguished guests, including Vytautas Landsbergis and Holocaust survivor Irena Veisaitė. Lithuanian MP Emanuelis Zingeris, a Litvak, also attended. The priest Tomas Šernas was also there, as was Lithuanian Jewish partisan Fania Brancovskaja. Other distinguished guests included Conservative Party and parliamentary opposition leader Andrius Kubilius, Lithuanian defense minister Juozas Olekas and deputy foreign minister Mantvydas Bekešius.

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Record Turnout for Biržai Holocaust Commemoration

Around 200 people attended an annual commemoration of the Holocaust victims of Biržai, Lithuania Sunday, August 28, 2016. In prior years those travelling to the rural town near the Latvian border numbered in the dozens. Only members of four families survived the Holocaust in Biržai. Their descendants now live in other locations in Lithuania and Israel and have been making the pilgrimage back to honor their murdered relatives since the end of World War II.

A Holocaust historian who attended said larger interest this year was likely the result of publicity for the Molėtai Holocaust commemoration on August 29.

Ten speakers spoke at the commemoration, including a moving speech by Lionginas Virbalas, the Catholic archbishop of Kaunas who was born and grew up in Biržai. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky also spoke eloquently about the past and the future. Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon spoke and a representative from the US embassy whose Jewish family roots are in Biržai also participated.

There wasn’t a formal march to the killing site. Instead there was a walking tour of Jewish sites in Biržai, including the former synagogue, Jewish houses and buildings and the old Jewish cemetery, where a portion of the Jews of Biržai were murdered. The group then moved to the killing site about 2 kilometers outside town where prayers were said by representatives of different religious communities.

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Israeli Embassy Invites You to an Exhibit of Children’s Drawings

ldj

Children’s Art Exhibit Let’s Draw Jerusalem

The Israeli embassy and municipalities of Vilnius and Elektrėnai have the pleasure of inviting you to attend the opening of the Let’s Draw Jerusalem exhibition of drawings by children in the second-floor foyer of the Vilnius Municipality building at Konstitucijos prospect no. 3, Vilnius at 2:00 P.M. on September 12.

The artwork is the result of a student contest the Israeli embassy and the municipality of Elektrėnai sponsored in April of 2016 called “Let’s Draw Jerusalem.” The idea was to combine symbolically the past and the future and the children were instructed to draw anything they associate with Jerusalem and Vilnius, Israel and Lithuania and the history and legacy of Litvaks. Come take a look at the wonderful pictures they came up with!

The exhibit will run till September 23.

Thank You Card for Ema Jakobienė

A thank you card to Ema Jakobienė for her contributions as one of the directors of the LJC project to support Lithuania’s aging Righteous Gentiles.

padėka

Dear Ema,

We thank you very much for your wonderful project, for your concern and your love of your fellow human beings.

Thanks to you, we received a [debit] card–this is a great gift and support to our family.

Thank you!

So please keep going, keep working and touch those people who are already slipping from our fingers…

May God grant you health, strength of soul and smiling eyes…

In gratitude,

Antanas Poniškaitis
Staselė Poniškaitienė
September, 2016

Rays of Light from the Violin Star of the World

Pasaulinės smuiko žvaigždės spinduliuose

lzinios.lt

The year 2017 will mark 30 years since the death of Jascha Heifetz, the 20th century’s answer to Paganini. His name is inscribed indelibly in the history of music and there is no dispute that many new listeners will come to admire him in the future. Unfortunately his colorful name is not always associated with Vilnius and Lithuania. But it could be, since the master was born and took the first steps upon his incredibly important career here, in Vilnius, called the Jerusalem of Lithuania. But it will be all different this season. Internet registration for the Jascha Heifetz violinist contest has already begun. The most talented, the most courageous and the most resolute fiddlers from around the world are already in a rush to sign up for this prestigious tournament and the news has reached young virtuosi in almost 100 countries. Registration is open all during the fall. Then the applications and select video recordings will be handed over to an esteemed commission of professors from the Lithuanian Music and Theater Academy. Thirty–that’s the total number who will be judged worthy to perform in this contest held every quarter. You can find the winners on the contest website on January 2, 2017.

© 2016 Lietuvos žinios

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Events by Tolerance Center of Dukstyna Grade School in Ukmergė for September 23

Program of events by the Tolerance Center of Dukstyna Grade School in Ukmergė (Vilkomir) for September 23:

8:00-9:00 traditional “Memory Track” jog in Pivonija woods; candle lighting ceremony to honor the dead;

11:00 Ukmergė Old Town Architecture: Past, Present, Personal Stories (walking tour of sites)

12:00 Lesson at regional history museum; screening of parts of the film The Dark with discussion to follow; meeting Stasė Staputienė, daughter of Righteous Gentiles Kazimieras and Marcijona Ruzgys.

Information provided by Tolerance Center coordinator Vida Pulkauninkienė