Dear members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community,
Although this year we will celebrate Purim at home, we invite you to share moments from the holiday and to take part in the traditional Purim costume contest.
Don your carnival attire, take a snapshot and send it to zanas@sc.lzb.lt by February 28.
Your photos will be considered for awards in the following categories:
Most original costume
Best family costume
Best mask
Winners to receive valuable prizes!
NEW YORK–Today Pope Francis made a Shabbat visit to Edith Bruck, an 89-year-old Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor, at her home in Rome.
“I have come here to thank you for your testimony and to pay homage to the people martyred by the insanity of Nazi populism,” the Pope told her, according to the Vatican.
World Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder applauded the Pope:
“I am deeply appreciative of Pope Francis’s tremendous compassion in visiting Edith Bruck who survived the horror of several Nazi concentration camps, lost her family who were murdered in the Holocaust and has bravely shared her story. The Pope has demonstrated a sincere commitment to both personal kindness for the experiences of others and to the urgency of continuing to draw attention to the inhuman atrocities of genocides including the Holocaust. At a time when neo-Naziism, anti-Semitism and other bigotries are resurgent in many parts of the world, Pope Francis’s moral integrity and sense of history set the standard for other faith, political and community leaders to follow.
“My gratitude goes as well to Mrs. Bruck for her courage in telling the world about her trauma and in dedicating her life to educating people about the horrible truths of the Holocaust. As survivors age, their testimonies become increasingly priceless, and we owe our understanding of the very worst of humankind to the individuals who have taken it upon themselves to bear witness to all they have endured. Through such comprehension, we pray that such evil shall never happen again.”
CNN–A Tennessee resident who was a guard at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II has been deported to Germany, the US Justice Department said in a statement Friday.
Friedrich Karl Berger, a 95-year-old German citizen, was ordered removed from the US in February of 2020 when a US immigration judge determined his “willing service” as a guard of concentration camp prisoners “constituted assistance in Nazi-sponsored persecution,” the Justice Department said.
Berger was eligible for removal from the US under the Holtzman Amendment which prohibits anyone who participated in Nazi persecution from living in the US. The Board of Immigration Appeals upheld the ruling in November of 2020.
Full story here.
A special joint internet Sabbath celebration was held between Vilnius and Cape Town, South Africa last Friday, February 19.
Cape Town Rabbi Greg Alexander greeted the internet celebrants in both cities and presented Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman to those in South Africa.
The Sabbath was ushered in with song. The rabbi and Millian Rivlin sang and played guitar, after which prayers were delivered. Despite the distance between the two cities, communication was almost instantaneous, and it felt as if everyone were in the same room at home.
The vast majority of Jews living in South Africa were and are Litvaks. That affinity was clear during the internet Sabbath.
Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas speaks with Olga Ugriumova in Lithuanian about how the Kaunas Jewish Community and members are getting through quarantine.
The prosecutor at the Vilnius District Office of Prosecutor has decided not to begin a pre-trial investigation of statements made by member of parliament Valdas Rakutis in his article “International Holocaust Day and Historical Memory.” The prosecutor said the decision was made based on the lack of an act of a criminal nature, a press release said.
The decision not to initiate a pre-trial investigation was made following a statement from the chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community which indicated historian and MP Rakutis published the article on International Holocaust Remembrance Day on an internet site which allegedly incited hatred against Jews and their people, and possibly engaged in Holocaust denial.
The informant asked the prosecutor to consider whether or not the statements made in the article constituted the criminal act defined in article 170, part 2 of the Lithuanian criminal code, “incitement against any national, racial, ethnic, religious or other kind of group of people,” and article 170-2, part 1, “public approval for international crimes, crimes committed by the USSR and Nazi Germany against the Republic of Lithuania or residents thereof, and their denial or gross trivialization.”
The decision to decline beginning a pre-trial investigation stated the criminal acts defined in article 170, part 2, and article 170-2, part 1, can only be committed by direct intention.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community notes with sadness the death of Bernard Lown on February 16, 2021. He was born in Utena, Lithuania, on June 7, 1921, to Nisson Lown and Bella Lown née Grossbard and lived in Lithuania till he was 14. Bernard Lown passed away following a long struggle with illness at his home near Boston just a few months before his 100th birthday. He made major achievements in cardiology and was the founder of the group Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War which was awarded the Nobel peace prize for opposing nuclear proliferation in 1985.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Ilan Club invite parents and children to spend Sunday morning with culinary chef Andžejus Žukovskis. We’ll bake hamentashen, the traditional Purim treat, together. It all begins at 12 noon on Sunday, February 21, via Zoom. To register send an email to sofja@lzb.lt and together with the Zoom code we’ll send you a list of ingredients needed. For more information you may also call Sofja at +370 601 46656.
The Bagel Shop Café will make hamantash available for Purim from February 23 to 25, made in the traditional manner with poppy seeds and raspberry jam. The cost will be 12 euros per kilogram (about 30 to 35 individual hamantashen) and smaller orders are also possible. Please reserve your pastry now or at least by February 23 so we’ll know how many to make. The Bagel Shop Café itself is closed for repairs so customers will be able to pick up their orders in the foyer at the main entrance to the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius. Pick-up will begin on February 23 and run till February 25, from 12 noon to 4:00 P.M. Payment may only be made by bank card.
Reservations: https://forms.gle/YhmP2nt82uoUALbc8
Photo: NYTimes.com
BOSTON (AP)–Dr. Bernard Lown, the Massachusetts cardiologist who invented the first reliable heart defibrillator and later co-founded an anti-nuclear war group who were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, died Tuesday at the age of 99.
The Boston Globe reported the Lithuanian-born doctor’s health had been declining from congestive heart failure. He died at his home near Boston.
Lown was a professor at Harvard College and physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He advanced cardiac treatment.
He was one of the first doctors to emphasize diet and exercise in treating heart disease, and introduced the drug lidocaine as a treatment for arrhythmia, the Globe reports. In 1962 Lown invented the direct-current defibrillator, or cardioverter, which uses electric shocks to get the heart to resume beating.
He was also an outspoken social activist, founding Physicians for Social Responsibility in 1960 and later co-founding International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in the 1980s, the newspaper reports.
The international anti-war group called for a moratorium on testing and building nuclear weapons. They were awarded the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness about the consequences of nuclear war during the height of Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. At its peak the group had more than 200,000 members and chapters in more than 60 countries.
Full obituary here.
by professor Rimvydas Petrauskas, rector, Vilnius University, for DELFI.lt
Recent discussions on the topic of historical memory and policy have brought to the fore the issue of the role the professional historian plays in shaping the public’s historical memory. This text is about history, historians, historical memory and the historian’s mission.
History and Historians
The noted French historian Jacques Le Goff who died a few years ago spoke about the relationship between history and the present, soberly saying history can at one and the same time be that which connects, and that which afflicts. It can be utilized for the most different ends, to encourage healthy patriotism and to justify the annexation of another country, and those are just two of the more extreme poles. At the same time, Le Goff explained, the discipline of histry should help people live their lives and in communal life, help them navigate between a rich legacy of the past and what is sometimes a dangerous nostalgia.
He knew what he was talking about. In 1942 his teacher Marc Bloch, founder of the Annales School of French social history, had lost his job, books and some of his old friends in occupied France, but authored what is probably the most optimistic explanation of history ever, calling for seeking out historical truth in the face of historical tragedy. This member of the French Resistance was shot two years later by the Nazis.
Full text in Lithuanian here.
The Lithuanian public radio and television program Menora featured a story about Choral Synagogue cantor and Torah reader Shmuel Yatom:
15min.lt
Historian Dariusz Stola says there is a campaign underway in Poland to frighten historians who speak about Holocaust crimes committed by Poles. The result, he says, is invisible: books and articles which are never written. Stola says 10 years ago he was sure it would only get easier to talk about these complex historical events as time passed. Now something has changed, and it might be related to the growth of social media.
Stola is a professor of history at the Polish Academy of Sciences and served earlier as the director of Poland’s Jewish History Museum POLIN.
After five years directing POLIN Stola submitted an application to be rehired and received 11 of 15 votes by judges on the hiring commission, but the Polish minister of culture refused to appoint him director again.
We caught up with Stola a few days after a Polish court ordered two of the country’s leading historians to apologize to the niece of a village alderman who claimed Polish historians Barbara Engelking and Jan Grobowski libeled her relative in the monograph they coauthored where they wrote he was an accomplice in the mass murder of Jews.
Indirect Government Intervention
In remembrance of signatories of conscience
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky’s observations on the eve of the 103rd celebration of February 16
We live in good times, incomparable to those which the Lithuanian Jewish community experiences eight decades ago. We live in a time of great achievements and at the same time there is still much to achieve. We live at a time when we still have to explain and defend ourselves, and we do this patiently but resolutely. We live at a time when society is crossing swords over ideas, attitudes and, most significantly, statues. Let this be the tale of two statues which don’t exist.
We are about to celebrate February 16, Lithuania Day, for the 103rd time. When we name the names of the signatories to the Lithuanian Act of Independence, this shows that the date for us is not just an historical day, but the triumph of the personal decision made by specific people whose result–a free and sovereign country–we all enjoy and take pride in. In the context of February 16, let’s also remember another group of people, a group I call signatories of conscience, the people whose decision resulted in hundreds of lives saved.
During the different Holocaust commemorations we often hear people taking pride that over 900 Lithuanians have been named Righteous Gentiles, but I don’t hear their names or their stories. I see the lack of context. And the context is very simple: the citizens of the first Republic of Lithuania, the same people who forged the young state, heard the Jews’ cry for help and responded. Do you think about the fact that generation which hid persecuted Jews on their farms, in their apartments and basements were the same people who created the first Lithuanian Republic? That they are the same generation whose achievements in art, learning and politics we take pride in today, whose deeds and lives we cite today as examples in the creation of the state? They include the family of February 16th signatory and engineer Steponas Kairys, and Lithuanian president Kazys Grinius, and the daughter of M. K. Čiurlionis, one of Lithuania’s greatest artists, Danutė Čiurlionytė abd her husband Vladimiras Zubovas, the family of Lithuanian writer Balys Sruoga, the family of writer Kazys Binkis, and professor Pranas Mažylis, the grandfather of Liudas Mažylis who rediscovered the original Lithuanian proclamation of independence German archives. They include Ona Jablonskytė, the daughter of the founder of the standard Lithuanian language Jonas Joblonskis, and his daughter-in-law advyga Jablonskienė. And not just presidents and professors, but simple village people were able to make the right choice. These are names which are inseparable from the history of Lithuania. Why don’t we want to erect a statues to these people, Lithuania’s signatories of conscience?
Katarzyna Markusz was questioned on suspicion of violating a law against defaming the country after an anonymous complaint about an article from 2020. She faces up to 3 years in jail.
Polish police are probing a local journalist who wrote last year about Polish complicity in the Holocaust.
Katarzyna Markusz, who runs the Jewish.pl website and writes for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, was questioned last Thursday on suspicion that she violated Article 133 of the Polish constitution, which subjects those who “publicly insults the Nation or the Republic of Poland” to up to three years in prison.
An anonymous complaint was filed against Markusz, which led to her detention and interrogation, according to Oko.press.
In October, 2020, Markusz wrote in an article: “Will we live to see the day when the Polish authorities also admit that hostility toward Jews was widespread among Poles, and that Polish complicity in the Holocaust is a historical fact?
by Mingailė Jurkutė, chief historian, Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania
The current director of the Genocide Center is trying to give the impression all that is happening are just internal department disputes, depot against depot, one faction of historians against another, or maybe historians vs. museum specialists, or maybe even brave, ambitious and mobile visionaries of the new administration against the academics at a small bureaucratic institution who long for stagnation and a light work-load. This is a terrific and naked lie.
Center historians are productive and their academic production and other specific Center production, for example, writing brief–barely two pages long–and exact findings of history, which often require examining just as much material as for an article in the normal academic format. And they want reform, they are proposing reforms themselves. This story is a very successful technique when you want misconstrue and hide what is going on, for example, as Soviet ideologues went to extremes to explain the partisan war was really a class war, or a civil war, and in any case… an internal social dispute.
But I want to return the real players (the sides) to center stage, because they are getting lost due to the noise, agitation and intentional mud-slinging (of which an example is the letter the administration drafted to defend the administration, not without pressure from direct bosses to staff to sign on in telephone calls made outside working hours, forcing employees to arrive in person at the workplace to sign in the midst of the pandemic).
by Vytautas Bruveris, Lietuvos rytas
Even representatives of different camps within the ruling majority are set to cross swords. This war of positions will come to the fore in parliament because of the activities of the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania currently besieged by scandal.
Tomas Raskevičius, chairman of the Lithuanian parliament’s Human Rights Committee and a member of the ruling Freedom Party, believes the Office of State Auditor needs to thoroughly investigate the Genocide Center and says there could be many different problems there.
The Human Rights Committee exercises parliamentary supervision of the Genocide Center, but the Lithuanian parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee chaired by conservative Laurynas Kasčiūnas has taken the reins over the Center into its own hands. Further, a special working group empaneled by parliamentary speaker Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen is set to begin investigating the activities of the Genocide Center, a working group which will also feature a diversity of opinions.
Delfi.lt
Charges have been laid in Germany against a 100-year-old former concentration camp guard accused of complicity in the murder of 3,518 people as the country rushes to bring the last living people who worked for the Nazis to justice, AFP reported Monday.
The male suspect is accused of “consciously and willingly” aiding in the murder of Jewish prisoners at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg north of Berlin between 1942 and 1945. Despite the accused’s advanced age, he was found to be able to stand trial according to prosecutors, who said the trial would be televised. These charges following those made in recent days against a concentration camp secretary accused of being an accomplice in the murder of 10,000 people. This is the first such case in recent years made against a woman who worked at a Nazi concentration camp.
Reader’s question: Will the Lithuania and the EU find the will to try or condemn members of the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Lithuanian Provisional Government who adopted the Nazis’ plan to exterminate Jews and carried it out, who voluntarily elected to take part in the Holocaust?
Full text in Lithuanian here.
Photo: Lithuanian deportees en route to Siberia. Center: Family of B. and I. Jablonskiai. The only known photograph in Lithuania of a deportation cattle wagon.
by Romualdas Beniušis
This year marks 70 years since the third large post-war deportation operation Osen (Autumn) carried out by the Soviet security structures (MGB) on October 2 and 3, 1951, during which more than 16,000 people deemed “bourgeoisie,” including 5,000 children, were packed into cattle cars and deported to Siberia.
At that time, 39 children didn’t reach their places of exile. Their deaths marked the way along which Lithuanians were deported to Siberia. This time, the lists of deportees were entrusted to the local government administration and Party committees because it had become ever more difficult to find the “bourgeoisie” needed for carrying out the deportation plans. Thus the opportunity arose to include on the list of people to be deported those the local government didn’t like, the more educated, and even people who lived in the cities, carrying out personal grudges and to seize the property of the deportees.
Since only a few days passed between the confirmation of the lists and the beginning of deportations, the deportations began to be carried out without formal deportation cases which were drawn up later. The barely-literate locals who compiled the lists and usually foreign MGB officials who drafted the formal cases made endless mistakes in those documents, distorting surnames, dates of birth and so on, but this did not become an obstruction on the way to Siberia.
15min.lt
Speaker of Lithuanian parliament Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen met representatives Tuesday of universities and the Lithuanian History Institute to discuss the situation at Lithuania’s Genocide Center, following a boycott of Genocide Center announced by these institutions. Lithuanian History Institute director Alvydas Nikžentaitis said the problem is not just a domestic one and needs a final solution.
Historians from Vilnius University, Vytautas Magnus University, Klaipėda University and the Lithuanian History Institute sent the speaker a letter complaining the new leadership of Genocide Center under Adas Jakubauskas after he was appointed in February of 2020 had led to a primitive politicization of sensitive and painful events of the past without taking sources into account. They said they could no longer work with Genocide Center under those conditions, and didn’t agree with unprofessional statements made by representatives of the Genocide Center.
Nikžentaitis said there had been indications very long before Jakubauskas’s appointment that things weren’t right at the Center, and that his colleagues had made numerous complaints. Nikžentaitis said some of them were even persecuted for expressing their opinion regarding the Center. Nikžentaitis listed among other complaints that there were allegedly discussions inside Genocide Center that if the current director of the Center’s Department of Historical Research [Arūnas Bubnys] withdrew from the post, he would be given a different post, while behind the scenes agreement was reached on replacing him with another person more obedient to the leadership.
“So basically this was preparing the ground, let’s say, for preparing opinions very far from academic at the Center, so that the Center would be ready to carry out specific propaganda goals,” Nikžentaitis said.
On the meeting with the speaker of parliament, Nikžentaitis said they discussed how to change the existing situation. He added that in a certain sense the problems at Genocide Center were pre-programmed from its very inception.
Full article in Lithuanian here.