Long-time Community member Izrailis Šifrinas passed away May 18. He was born in 1938. Our deepest condolences to his widow, children and many friends.
LJC Chairwoman Greets Veterans
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman made home visits to greet WWII veterans on the occasion of Victory Day this year. Usually the LJC holds an event on May 8 and/or May 9, VE Day and Victory Day, respectively, at the LJC in Vilnius under the aegis of the Seniors Club, but our aging soldiers are finding it more and more difficult to make that trip, so chairwoman Kukliansky went to them instead. She visited 99-year-old Community member Eliziejus Rimanas and Aleksandras Asovskis who will celebrate his 102nd birthday in the next few days.
Seniors Club Meets
Last week the Seniors Club of the Lithuanian Jewish Community celebrated several holidays at once, including Lag b’Omer, the Bar Kokhba uprising against the Romans and Victory Day marking the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the Holocaust.
Seniors shared a meal and lit the traditional six candles in remembrance of those who have perished. LJC Social Commission doctor Ela Gurina spoke about her family’s experience in the Holocaust.
LJC programs director Žana Skudovičienė said one of the main goals of the meeting was just to bring old friends back together, contemporaries who might otherwise remain isolated.
Fayerlakh Celebrates Israel’s 75th
The Fayerlakh Jewish song and dance ensemble gave a special presentation dedicated to celebrating Israel’s 75th birthday called Promised Land. Friends from the Israeli embassy were there and took some nice photographs of the event.
Condolences
Musia Gleizer passed away May 15. She was born in 1938 and was a long-time member of the Šiauliai Jewish Community. Our deep condolences to her children Natalja and Edikas, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and many other friends and family members.
Pages from Music History: Anna Varshavski
Sarah Matz took the married name Anna Varshavski aka Anna Lvovna Warsaw. She was a singer and a philanthropist. She was born in Vilnius in December of 1896 when it was part of the Russian Empire. Her parents Jehuda and Fradel Matz owned a Jewish publishing house. She began studies at the Berlin Conservatory in 1920. In 1928 she set up an amateur choir in Kaunas which grew in reputation and size and eventually included around 50 members, coming to be known as the Jewel of Joel Engel Choir. They performed throughout Lithuania and on state radio. The choir disbanded in 1936. Varshavski also contributed to setting up the New Jewish Theater in Vilnius. She and her family were put in the Kaunas ghetto in 1941, and she was murdered at the Klooga concentration camp in Estonia in 1944.
http://yiddishmusic.jewniverse.info/varshavskianna/index.html
| Tsum Hemerl (Avrom Reisen – Avraham Moshe Bernstein) | Anna Varshavski & “Engel-Chor” | Columbia DMX 301 (WJLX 8) |
Jewish Scouts Attend Vilnius Regional Jamboree
Jewish scouts under scout leader Adomas Kofmanas joined more than 500 scouts from throughout the Vilnius region for a two-day jamboree over the weekend on the shore of Laumenas Lake. They learned rhetoric in debates and tried out different arts, crafts and skills including making jewelry, leatherwork and painting in acrylic. The paintings were mainly of the cat which has become the symbol of Vilnius’s Užupis neighborhood and were hung up in a sort of ad hoc art gallery/alley in the forest. They played capture the flag and sang around the campfire in the evening. The ever-growing number of Jewish scouts celebrated the Sabbath with prayer. Adomas Kofmanas’s group meets regularly at 3:00 P.M. on Sundays and young people who might be interested are encouraged to attend. For more information, write an email to skautai@lzb.lt.
What Do You Know about Litvak Writers?
Arakdijus Vinokuras’s monthly quiz asks that question at the next quiz scheduled for 2:00 P.M. on Sunday, May 21 at the Bagel Shop Café in Vilnius. This quiz will be dedicated to the three Litvak writers Icchokas Meras and the recently deceased Grigoriy Kanovitch and Markas Zingeris, may they rest in peace. It will be streamed on facebook as well.
Makabi Table Tennis Team Takes 2nd Place in Lithuanian Competition
The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club’s women’s table tennis team took second place in Lithuanian play-offs held last weekend in VIlnius, meaning they’re now in the upper league in Lithuania and will play next year against the top dozen teams. Neta Alon made a strong showing and won 3:0 against the favorite. Makabi team players won against the teams from Šiauliai and Utena and only lost to Jonava.
This is the first time Makabi ping-pong players have risen to the upper leagues in Lithuania.
Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium students Uosis Račinskas and Jokūbas Kačerginskis won in team-play championship in the under-12 category. They began playing two years ago under the tutelage of Neta Alon, and are now training under Khen Alon. In singles-play Uosis Račinskas placed 5th in Lithuania and Jokūbas Kačerginskis 6th.
Lithuania’s Self-Generated Problem
Photo: Poster honoring Kazys Skirpa. Translation: “A Nation which respects itself should know its heroes: Diplomat Colonel Kazys Skirpa First volunteer who raised the flag of Lithuania on Gediminas Tower on January 1, 1919, the head of the Lithuanian Activist Front, organizer of the June 1941 uprising. The Nation knows its heroes!”
Hate against minorities is supposedly illegal in Lithuania. Lithuanian MP Žemaitaitis spewed obscene tropes against Jews which did not make sense in the 1200s, nor in 1941, and not now, either. In subsequent posts, Žemaitaitis called for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Lithuania.
The Austrian, German, American and Israeli ambassadors issued statements condemning Žemaitaitis, as did the prime minister of Lithuania. The Lithuanian Jewish Community has requested Žemaitaitis be referred to the public prosecutor for hate crimes charges.
Superficially, the case is straightforward. The crimes are obvious, the law is clear, there is no question of his guilt. Hate is simply hate. But, the Government of Lithuania has a problem.
Happy Birthday
We wish a very happy birthday to Sergejus Kanovičius. Mazl tov. Bis 120!
Two Hundred Historians Back Polish Holocaust Expert under Attack
In a letter of support, historians and scholars worldwide said that the Polish attack on Holocaust scholar professor Barbara Engelking harmed attempts “to understand the processes that allowed the Holocaust to take place.”
Two hundred historians, including senior Holocaust scholars from Israel and around the globe, signed a letter in support of professor Barbara Engelking, a Polish historian who has been under attack in her homeland after she said the Poles did not do enough to help Jews during the Shoah.
“We, the undersigned scholars of the Holocaust Era, the Second World War, and Modern and Jewish History, express our firm support for Professor Barbara Engelking and for academic freedom, in the face of an unbridled and unfounded attack by politicians, media, and other public figures. … We can attest to the fact that she is a scholar of impeccable personal and professional integrity. Her scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards, for which she has earned worldwide esteem,” the historians wrote.
Lithuanian MP Denounces Israel for Razing Palestinian School EU Financed
Lithuanian MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis, chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party formed of two rival liberal parties to contest municipal elections in Vilnius in 2014, denounced Israel’s destruction of a school in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The US, Israeli and German ambassadors called for him to apologize for the remarks, first made on facebook on Monday, May 8, repeated in parliament Tuesday, the same day Israel started bombing the Gaza Strip in what it calls Operation Shield and Arrow. Despite the demands of the ambassadors and his fellow MPs, Žemaitaitis said he won’t apologize.
On Tuesday he told parliament assembled: “I want to emphasize this school was fully financed by the European Union, by Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria, Germany, Spain and the other countries. … And if we believe that it’s alright to allow in the 21st century some country to blow up or destroy these kinds of sites of another country, then ask yourselves, what sort of moral and political values do you live by today? Mine are much higher than you think.”
Litvak Community Leaders Mark Victory Day in Israel
On May 8, VE Day, or Victory in Europe Day, the heads of several constituent communities in the Lithuanian Jewish Community, including LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas and others, marked the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the capitulation of Nazi Germany to allies during a trip to Israel.
Shmuel Yatom, the chairman of the Vilnius Religious Jewish Community, performed a prayer prayed by victims on the way to Treblinka in Sderot, Israel.
The Litvak leaders are in Israel for workshops sponsored by the European Commission for more effective implementation of the EC’s strategy for fighting anti-Semitism and fostering Jewish life in the European Union.
They visited Sderot on the border with the Gaza Strip which saw Israeli counter-attacks last night and into the morning of May 9. The Israeli town is known as Israel’s bomb shelter capital because of frequent rocket attacks from Gaza. They also planned to meet the mayor of Ashkelon, and to take part in a ceremony honoring Mordechai Aneliwicz, an organizer of the Warsaw Uprising. The LJC is planning a joint conference with the Poland’s Jewish Historical Institute this fall to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilna ghetto.
Lithuanian Jewish TV Program Features Faina Kukliansky’s Herring Appetizer Recipe
The Jewish program Menora on Lithuanian state television has included a segment on the popular Jewish appetizer made with minced herring. This particular herring appetizer is truly Litvak in nature. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman put on a kitchen apron and shared her family recipe for making the snack with the Lithuanian television audience. The segment is included in the April 30 broadcast available in Lithuanian here.
Condolences
Vladimir Shevtsov passed away May 5. He was born in 1936. He is mourned by Moshe Shapiro, director of the Švenčionys Jewish Community to which he belonged, and the entire Lithuanian Jewish Community. We extend our deepest condolences to his family and friends. Rest in peace, Vladimir.
Markas Zingeris in Memoriam
The Jewish discussion club #ŽydiškiPašnekesiai invites the public to attend a special panel to remember Markas Zingeris, who died unexpectedly recently.
Over fifty years of work Markas has left us a rich inheritance: thoughts, ideas, texts, books, plays, poetry and the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum, where he served as director since its inception for several decades. His keen insights and very rational thinking had a deep influence on the development of Lithuanian society and politics following independence as well as before. He always demonstrated a spirit of openness, tolerance, rationality and ethical behavior.
Panelists to include Emanuelis Zingeris, Markas’s brother and MP; Emilis, Markas’s son; Violeta Davoliūtė, professor of philosophy and the history of ideas at Vilnius University, cultural historian, Holocaust researcher and colleague of Markas and Gytis Padegimas, a famous Lithuanian theater director who was a close confident (appearing via internet at the discussion club). Actor, popular writer and journalist Arkadijus Vinokuras will moderate the conversation which will be live-streamed on facebook with the help of his son Saulius.
The event is to take place at the Bagel Shop Café at Pylimo street no. 4 in Vilnius at 5:00 P.M. on Wednesday, May 10. The live-stream will be made available on facebook by following this short URL: https://rb.gy/uok94
Joint Statement on the Dialogue on Holocaust Issues
May 3, 2023
The text of the following statement was released by the Governments of the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany.
Begin Text
The Governments of the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany announce significant progress in their Dialogue on Holocaust Issues. Secretary of State Blinken and then-Federal Foreign Minister Maas launched the Dialogue in 2021 to counter the rise in Holocaust denial and distortion — a dangerous development that undermines freedom, democracy, and security — and to contribute to a world in which knowledge about the Holocaust is abundant, based on facts, and serves as a foundation for tackling today´s challenges at an early stage. The U.S. Department of State, the German Federal Foreign Office, the German Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum participate in the Dialogue. They have completed initial projects in three priority areas:
Noreika Shrine Removed for Repair
The plaque commemorating Lithuanian Nazi Jonas Noreika has been removed from the wall of the Vrublevskiai Library in central Vilnius along with the candles and flowers placed by worshipers at the base of the brick column there as the library prepares for repairing its exterior walls. According to the news site delfi.lt the plaque was given to the ultranationalist Pro Patria party for safeguarding and will be replaced following the completion of construction work at the library.
Hungarian City Restores Jewish Street Name
Street in Kőszeg Gets Back Historic Name
Hungary Today, May 3, 2023
When the name of a public space in a municipality changes, it is usually associated with a political change. Perhaps the most striking example of this was when, after the fall of Communism, the names of public spaces given during the Communist period were changed en masse for ideological reasons. In the western Hungarian city of Kőszeg, the former Zrínyi Miklós Street was renamed Schey Fülöp Street on Tuesday, but the reason for the name change is different.
Fülöp Schey, the former patron of the town, the builder of the synagogue and a prominent figure of the local bourgeoisie, was commemorated in Kőszeg yesterday. Fülöp Schey’s descendants living abroad, members of the Schey-Ephrussi-de Waal family, also took part in the commemoration day organized jointly by the Kőszeg Municipality and the Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg (iASK; Felsőbbfokú Tanulmányok Intézete).