The Lithuanian Jewish Community wishes Samuel Bak a very happy milestone birthday. We think you are one of the most remarkable painters of the 20th century. You cut right to the heart of human nature in your work, infusing even the most tragic historical events with meaning and recalling for the world the lost world of Jewish Vilna. Mazl tov. Bis 120!
The #ŽydiškiPašnekesiai Jewish discussion club is to discuss the influence Litvak painters have had and do have on Western art styles. It’s not a one-way street, of course: Litvak artists were also influenced by primitivism, Renaissance realism, impressionism, surrealism, pop-art and so on. So of course one hour won’t suffice. We’ll have to go minimalist this time around. Panel speakers include Shmuel Tatz from New York, a serious art collector, and Raimondas Savickas, a serious artist, along with a number of other experts, thinkers and artists.
Location: Israel street food kiosk in Petras Cvirka Square, Vilnius.
Time: 5:00 P.M., Wednesday, August 16
We are sad to report Romanas Švarcas died today, August 10. He was born in 1937. He was a Lithuanian Jewish Community member of long standing and a member of the Abi Men zet Zich Seniors Club. We extend our deepest condolences to his widow Danutė and daughter Lina.
Last farewells can be made between 5:00 P.M. and 9:00 P.M. today, August 10, and between 10:00 A.M. and 2:00 P.M. tomorrow, August 11, at the Nutrūkusi Styga funeral home located at (Ąžuolyno street no. 10 in Vilnius. He will be buried at 2:30 P.M. at the Jewish cemetery located at Sudervės road no. 28 in Vilnius on August 11.
Isaakas Markusas passed away August 8. He was born in 1938. He was a long-time member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and a client of the Saul Kagan Welfare Center. Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and the entire Community extend our condolences to his widow Basia, son Leonidas and daughter Rimona.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is seeking to hire an administrator for the Jewish section of the cemetery on Sudervės road in Vilnius. The job entails serving visitors, working with burial documents and upkeep, maintenance and supervision of the Jewish cemetery. Applicants must be computer literate and speak Russian, Hebrew and English. Write info@lzb.lt or call +370 652 09915 for more information and to apply.
There are so few Litvaks left in the world that every encounter brings forth unexpected and extraordinary feelings and excitement. This time was even more unusual became the Lithuanian Jewish Community received an extraordinary visitor by the name of Marc Berenson.
He’s a professor at one of the most esteemed universities in the world, at King’s College London’s Russia Institute. He’s a specialist in Eastern politics and security who has written a number of academic works and speaks Russian and Ukrainian fluently. He’s also special to us because he’s related to Senda and Bernard Berenson. Senda Berenson Abbott was born in Butrimonys near Alytus in Lithuania and immigrated to America. She was the first champion of women’s basketball in the USA, the author of the first book on women’s basketball and is sometimes fashioned the mother of women’s basketball worldwide.
Her brother Bernard was one of the most renowned and influential audio-visual art historian and critic. Great-grandson professor Marc Berenson is in Vilnius looking for more information about his family history and roots. World Lithuanian Student Organization president Dovydas Šotland-Juzefovičius brought him to the LJC and introduced him to LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky. The professor expressed keen interest in current events, culture and Community activities as well as the past.
“It is a moving experience to return to where your family came from,” Berenson said.
The De-Sovietization Commission convened by the Lithuanian parliament has presented recommendations to the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania (hereinafter Genocide Center) that the statue commemorating the partisan Juozas Krikštaponis in Ukmergė (Vilkomir) be removed. Unfortunately, instead of taking concrete actions to remove this statue commemorating a person responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews, the Genocide Center has sent a request to the Lithuanian Office of Prosecutor General to rescind this man’s status as a Lithuanian partisan fighter. This is clearly an attempt to prolong the process and to place responsibility on a different agency.
“Krikštaponis’s culpability in the Holocaust is not disputed. This is shown by the documents the Genocide Center has collected and in their own finding of history concerning him. Carrying out mass murder is a crime which is not annulled by other good deeds. In marking the 80th anniversary of the anti-Nazi resistance and liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto, this monument to Krikštaponis is an insult to the memory of all the victims and to their surviving family members,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman and attorney Faina Kukliansky said.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community calls upon the Genocide Center to take immediate action based on the recommendations by the De-Sovietization Commission to remove this statue to Krikštaponis from the city center of Ukmergė.
Tuesday a small gathering met at the Ponar Memorial Complex outside Vilnius to remember Roma victims of the Holocaust, known as Samudaripen in Romany. The mass murder of Roma began in Lithuania in 1942. Although there isn’t precise information available, it is thought about 500 Roma, or every third Roma, was murdered in Lithuania.
Representatives of the Lithuanian and Estonia Roma communities, foreign ambassadors, Lithuanian Foreign and Culture Ministry officials, a representative of the Vilnius municipality and members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community attended the ceremony. Konsuela Mačiulevičiūtė sang the Roma anthem and Marius Jampolskis read passages from the book “I Am Karol” detailing the experiences of a Roma boy in a concentration camp.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky spoke, saying the fate of Jews and Roma was very similar during the Holocaust.
“Yesterday I was in a Lithuanian town where half the population were Jews until World War II. When I spoke with municipal government representatives there, it seems this was news to them. Of course that was 80 years ago, but someone is living in their houses even now. They might even be using their knives and forks when they eat,” she noted.
“It was just like this with the Roma who lived throughout Lithuania. If one day we just forget that these people were a part of our society, if we fail to mark the dates of mass murder, that will be horrible, we will impoverish ourselves. All the more so if we forget the people who were brutally murdered, who were deprived of life then, and who continue to be deprived of respect and memory. This must not happen,” Kukliansky warned.
As the Lithuanian Jewish Community counts down the days to the New Year 5784, the Bagel Shop Café has come up with some new menu items. One of them is rugelakh, the amazing pastry traditionally served during Shavuot and Rosh Hashanah. The name comes from the Yiddish root “rugel” meaning little twist or tie.
Although Lithuania’s De-Sovietization Commission sent a recommendation to the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania [hereinafter Genocide Center] for the removal of a statue commemorating [Nazi collaborator and Holocaust criminal] partizan Juozas Krikštaponis located in Ukmergė [Vilkomir], it appears a decision on the matter has been postponed. Genocide Center says since Krikštaponis’s status as a volunteer soldier hasn’t been annulled, it would be wrong to remove the monument stone honoring him. The Genocide Center says its leadership has asked the Lithuanian prosecutor general to remove his status as a volunteer soldier.
De-Sovietization Commission chairman Vitas Karčiauskas as well as people filing complaints about the statue are all unhappy with this decision by the Genocide Center and believe this is an attempt to postpone addressing the controversy. They say Krikštaponis’s role in Holocaust crimes is obvious and that the stone commemorating him needs to be removed.
Genocide Center deputy general director Vytas Lukšys reported the Genocide Center had signed a request to the Lithuanian Office of Prosecutor General Tuesday [July 25] for voiding Krikštaponis’s status as a volunteer soldier. He said they did so because it would be wrong to remove the marker commemorating Krikštaponis as long as he is recognized as having been a volunteer soldier.
Last week we bade farewell to outgoing US ambassador to Lithuania Robert Gilchrist. We thanked him for three and a half years of sincere friendship, genuine care, infectious energy and reliable partnership, as well as for his real interest in Litvak history and traditions, constant attention to culture and resolute support of the Lithuanian Jewish Community in all initiatives. We also saluted his lack of patience with all forms of anti-Semitism and discrimination. Immediately upon arrival, ambassador Gilchrist got involved with Holocaust commemoration and never passed up an invitation to attend a Holocaust event, even when COVID-19 was a threat. We thank him for his great contribution to sustaining the Jewish communities in Europe and for the attention he gave to regional Jewish communities as well. We wish him the best of luck and success in all his new postings and appointments. Until we meet again!
Aleksandras Rutenbergas has passed away. He was an active member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s board of directors and dedicated his life to preserving the Litvak legacy. Our deepest condolences to his son, family members and many friends. Those wishing to say farewell may attend the wake at the Nutrūkusi styga funeral home at Ąžuolyno street no. 10 in Vilnius from 4:30 P.M. to 9:00 P.M. Thursday, July 27. The burial will take place at 4:00 P.M. on July 28 at the Jewish cemetery on Sudervės road in Vilnius.
We wish a very happy milestone birthday to long-time member and Saul Kagan Social Center client Polina Sukolskaja. May you continue to enjoy good health and may many happy moments with loved ones fill your days. Mazl tov. Bis 120!
“This is the eighth act of vandalism in seven months. Although we’ve gone to all the authorities asking for protection for the memorial and the mass grave, this site continues to be vandalized,” Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas said.
Located just 4 kilometers outside Ukmergė (Vilkomir) the memorial in the Pivonija Forest marks the mass grave of 11,000 Jews murdered there.
Taicas said that his calls to police over earlier incidents went unheeded.
“Frankly, I don’t believe and I don’t believe in officials who think the desecration of graves is trivial,” Taicas added.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman brought up the issue at a meeting with Ukmergė mayor Darius Varnas in June.
“It’s difficult to believe the police with modern equipment for criminal investigations can’t track down the owners of four-wheel off-road vehicles who continually disturb this Jewish site of eternal rest. There really aren’t a lot of these vehicles around and it would be possible to check tire treads. Furthermore, mobile telephone records would show who was using them. There’s not just one or two solutions to this, there are many, so one begins to think this is being avoided intentionally,” Kukliansky commented.
Jefimas Libmanas died on July 25. He was a member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community for many years and a client of our Social Center. He was born in 1935. Our deepest condolences to his widow Tatjana as we grieve along with his many friends and family members.
Mendelis Askotskis passed away on July 24. He was born in 1928. He was a Community member of long standing and a client of the Community’s Saul Kagan Welfare Center. We extend our deepest condolences to his daughter Mira and all his many friends and family.
Thursday, July 27 is the ninth day of the month of Av, Tisha b’Av, on the Jewish calendar.
Tisha b’Av commemorates the destruction of the First Temple of Solomon ca. 587 BCE and the Second Temple in 70 CE in Jerusalem and is traditionally a day of fasting and mourning. Observance includes five prohibitions, the main one being a 25-hour fast. The Book of Lamentations is read in the synagogue followed by the recitation of kinos, liturgical dirges for the Temple and Jerusalem. Since the day has become associated with other major Jewish tragedies, some kinos recall other events, including the murder of the Ten Martyrs in ancient Rome, pogroms against medieval Jewish communities and the Holocaust.
According to tradition, the sin of the Ten Spies is the real origin of Tisha b’Av. In the Book of Numbers, 13:1-33 when the Israelites accepted their false report of the Promised Land, they wept, thinking God could not help them. The night the people wept and wailed was the ninth day of Av, which then became a day of weeping and misfortune for all time, according to tradition, following which the Jews were made to wander the desert for 40 years.
The small square–actually more of a triangle–on Basanavičiaus street in Vilnius with a sculpture of Litvak writer in French and diplomat Romain Gary as a boy was the sight of a fairly large protest Wednesday last week.
Several hundred people came to protest plans by the adjacent cafė to cut down some larger trees around the sculpture.
The cafė owner claimed the trees weren’t rooted in soil and had simply grown over pavement, and posed an obstacle to renovating the terrace there.
Protestors called for tree specialists to make a determination about root-depth. Last Friday the Vilnius city municipality rescinded permission to remove the nine trees until experts have had a chance to look at the situation.
BNS, July 23, 2023
Two new artistic installations now grace the Old Town in Anykščiai, Lithuania, north of Vilnius intended to commemorate the former Jewish population.
The Anykščiai municipality reports a sculptural relief by professor Romualdas Inčirauskas and Zita Inčirauskienė called “Memorial Marker for the Former Synagogues” was installed at the site of the former synagogue at Šaltupio street. It reportedly includes portion of a map of the town from 1925 with the sites of six former synagogues marked.
The same artists installed a bench in front of the building located at Baranauskas Square no. 7. There are seven human figure sculptures on top of the bench back to symbolize the days of the week with the Sabbath represented as a rabbi.
Photo: Panevėžys Esperanto club members with their club flag in 1930.
The Revo Esperanto Club in Panevėžys recently celebrated its 100th birthday and Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman delivered a greeting there from Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, wishing members success in their meeting. Kofman also delivered an address, quoting from a book that the first Esperanto enthusiasts in Panevėžys were Jewish and talking about Jewish contributions to the Esperanto movement.
Revo Esperanto Club director Vida Kulikauskienė presented a short history of the club and said Esperanto might have begun there with Lithuanian Esperanto pioneer Aleksandras Dambrauskas, also known as Adomas Jakštas. Of course the artificial language was invented by Lazer Zamenhoff writing under the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto. Zamenhoff lived at various times in Lithuania and Poland but published the initial book in Poland. It quickly became popular in Lithuania and especially among Lithuanian Jews. At a certain point Soviet authorities banned the Esperanto clubs in the Soviet Union as possible avenues for foreign espionage, but eventually lifted the ban.