Learning, History, Culture

Greetings on February 16, Lithuanian Independence Day

Greetings on February 16, Lithuanian Independence Day

Students, staff and teachers of the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius marked Lithuanian Independence Day February 16 with a full day of events.

The program included song and dance in the late morning and afternoon Friday to celebrate the day in 1918 102 years ago when the modern state of Lithuania was born. Pupils performed Lithuanian folk dancing and sang the national anthem.

Acting principal Ruth Reches said: “Children of different nationalities attend our gymnasium and one of our aims is to teach them citizenship, and to teach both the children and young people dates and holidays important to both Jewish and Lithuanian families. The day of the restoration of Lithuanian statehood celebrated on February 16 is very important to all of us, to our freedom and self-expression, and we, the entire school community, celebrated this independence day enthusiastically and ethnically.”

Righteous Gentile, Librarian and Local Legend Ona Šimaitė Commemorated at Former Workplace

Righteous Gentile, Librarian and Local Legend Ona Šimaitė Commemorated at Former Workplace

A commemorative event was held in honor of Righteous Gentile Ona Šimaitė February 12 in the Vilnius University library where she once worked.

As a librarian, Šimaitė carried books back and forth into and out of the Vilnius ghetto, and also messages. She also hid Jews and Jewish cultural treasures. Risking her life every day to help others, she was eventually discovered, arrested and tortured, but survived. She was one of the first Lithuanians to receive Yad Vashem’s Righteous among the Nations award in 1966.

Those attending the commemoration included Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Julija Šukys, poet, writer and translator Marius Burokas, editor Saulius Repečka, Judaica Studies Center director Dr. Lara Lempert, poetess Aušra Kaziliūnaitė, writer Saulius Stankevičius, literary critic Virginija Cibarauskaitė, members of the Jewish community and numerous others. Modestas Saukaitis, who does art restoration professionally, unveiled his own portrait of Šimaitė in the antechamber of the Lithuanian Studies Reading Room at Vilnius University during the commemoration.

Israeli PM Netanyahu Calls for Wuhan Virus Vaccine

Israeli PM Netanyahu Calls for Wuhan Virus Vaccine

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has tasked the country’s medical experts and scientists with creating a vaccine for the Wuhan corona virus. “I instructed the Biology Institute and the Health Ministry to undertake the creation of a vaccine for the new coronavirus,” he told Israeli media.

Netanyahu made the statement following a discussion held in Jerusalem on February 2 on stopping the spread of the new virus. “We have just concluded a deep and broad discussion with all members of the Israeli cabinet on how to fight the coronavirus outbreak,” Netanyahu said.

He said the main goal of the Israeli leadership at the current time was to “postpone” the corona virus’s entry into the country. “I say postpone, because its arrival is inevitable,” Netanyahu explained.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Eugenijus Bunka Named Tolerant Person of the Year

Eugenijus Bunka Named Tolerant Person of the Year

Eugenijus Bunka was named Tolerant Person of the Year February 2 in Kaunas. Bunka is the creator of the Litvak Memorial Garden, a regional historian, writer and journalist. At the awards ceremony he said he was carrying on the work of his father, Jakovas Bunka. The Bunka welfare and support fund finances children’s camps, meetings at schools and other events.

The award comes from the Sugihara Foundation/Diplomats for Life, which has been giving the award since 2001. They said Bunka received the distinction for his many years directing the Jakovas Bunka fund and carrying out civic and educational initiatives, commemorating the Jews of Plungė, Žemaitija and Lithuania both in his own region and around the world.

The foundation said Bunka in 2019 undertook active educational work, refuting the wartime and postwar stereotype of Jews as Communists specifically in the administration in Plungė using arguments and facts. They also noted his research into Louis Armstrong’s Litvak foster parents in America, Leiba and Tilė Karnovskiai from Vilkija, Lithuania.

Israeli Ambassador Yossi Levy Visits Kaunas

Israeli Ambassador Yossi Levy Visits Kaunas

Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Yossi Levy visited Kaunas at the end of January, where he visited the Ninth Fort Museum and honored Holocaust victims there. He also visited Sugihara House, the museum where Japanese diplomat and Righteous Gentile Chiune Sugihara lived and worked.

Ambassador Levy also paid his respects at the memorial at the Lietūkis garage site where Jews were tortured and murdered on June 27, 1941. After that he went to the site of the former residence of Litvak poetess Lea Goldberg in whose courtyard is an art installation commemorating former Jewish life.

Ambassador Levy and deputy ambassador Adi Cohen-Hazanov met with Kaunas mayor Visvaldas Matijošaitis and the mayor’s team. Later the Israeli delegation met Daiva Citvariene and her team from the Atminties biuras [Office of Memory] group working on the Kaunas 2022 European Cultural Capital program. They discussed ways to commemorate the history of the Jews of Kaunas together.

Donskis Prize Winner Linas Vildžiūnas’s Acceptance Speech

Donskis Prize Winner Linas Vildžiūnas’s Acceptance Speech

LRT.lt

The Leonidas Donskis prize was awarded this year to Linas Vildžiūnas, the director of the “7 meno dienos” [Seven Days of Art] weekly newspaper, by the board of directors of the Sugihara Foundation/Diplomats for Life and Jolanta Donskienė.

On February 2 the Sugihara Foundation/Diplomats for Life announced their annual award for Tolerant Person of the Year at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. This year that person was Eugenijus Bunka. They also awarded the Donskis prize to Linas Vildžiūnas. Leonidas Donskis was a philosopher, professor, the author of numerous books, a television personality, an advisor to the Lithuanian president and an important voice in the modern Republic of Lithuania.

Vildžiūnas was awarded the distinction “for his meaningful presence on the cultural scene which was unaffected by regime changes and fashion, and for his continuous reminder culture is a fundamental value whose quality is enriched by supporting dialogue and discussion. [And] for his long-time battle against forgetfulness, reminding us that only the maintenance of memory, however uncomfortable it might be, strengthens dialogue and empathy, that the memories of our grandparents and great-grandparents is of value for the younger generation rather than a fading memory. [And] for his belief and the example he set, showing that a strong civic attitude is able to withstand tendentious attacks, manipulations and efforts to ‘nationalize’ it.”

This is the speech Linas Vildžiūnas gave on acceptance of the Donskis prize:

§§§

Dear Mrs. Jolanta Donskienė, honored members of the board of directors of the Sugihara Foundation/Diplomats for Life, ladies and gentlemen,

In accepting from your hands this honorable award in recognition of my humble efforts, I am deeply moved and at the same time disturbed. The Leonidas Donskis prize set a very high standard, bearing in mind his irreplaceable role in our public life and academic discourse and his novel insights which have added to our lexicon of philosophy and sociology (take just for example his and Zygmunt Bauman’s idea of “liquid evil” in the final book coauthored by both thinkers). We all feel that void which appeared in public life on the loss of Leonidas Donskis, who was the most remarkable and sometimes the only voice of our intellectual elite.

Jewish Quarter of Vilnius: From Grand Duke’s Privilege to Soviet Demolition

Jewish Quarter of Vilnius: From Grand Duke’s Privilege to Soviet Demolition

Photo: Antokolskio street, 1940/Mečys Brazaitis

The spacious square by Žydų (Jewish) Street in central Vilnius now contains little else than a children’s playground, parking lots and a derelict kindergarten, but it was densely packed with houses before World War Two. Most of the houses were occupied by Jews and the area was the center of the city’s Jewish quarter.

Lithuania has dedicated the year 2020 to the Vilna Gaon and the History of the Jews of Lithuania. LRT English together with Vilnius University and Jewish Heritage Lithuania bring you a series of stories exploring Litvak history.

The official beginnings of the Jewish quarter of Vilnius date back to the 17th century when king of Poland and grand duke of Lithuania Wladyslaw Vasa granted a privilege [charter] to the Jews to reside in this quarter. Jewish Street had this name even before that, so it is likely Jewish residents already lived there.

Full story here.

Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community Commemorates Holocaust Victims

Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community Commemorates Holocaust Victims

Local Jews and others gathered to commemorate International Holocaust Day on January 27 at a monument marking the ghetto gate at the intersections of Trakų and Ežero istreets n Šiauliai.

Members of local Jewish organizations, representatives of the Šiauliai municipal and regional administrations, students and non-Jewish local residents participated. Among those attending were Holocaust survivors Ida Vileikienė and Romualda Každailienė, former inmates in the Šiauliai ghetto.

Participants lit candles and laid rocks and flowers at the ghetto gate marker, and took photos for the #WeRemember International Holocaust Day campaign.

LJC Members Gather to CommemorateInternational Holocaust Day

LJC Members Gather to CommemorateInternational Holocaust Day

In 2005 the UN General Assembly proclaimed January 27 the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. On that day in 1945 the Red Army liberated the prisoners at the Auschqitz-Birkenau death camp.

All survivors were invited to invited to come to the commemoration at the Lithuanian Jewish Community.

An exhibit of paintings by Levas Saksonovas called Holocaust was unveiled on the third floor of the LJC, at the initiative of active LJC member, doctor and photo artists Robertas Skalskis and social programs director Žana Skudovičienė. The artist’s son Danilias and art historian and researched Vera Kalmykova presented the exhibit.

Lithuanian Foreign Ministry Commemorates Holocaust Victims

Lithuanian Foreign Ministry Commemorates Holocaust Victims

On January 28 the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and the Lithuanian Jewish Community held a commemoration of International Holocaust Day at the ministry.

“The Holocaust is a horrid scar on humanity, on the face of Lithuania. It is a wound which likely will never heal. Let’s hope and try so that humanity never experiences this again. We are endlessly grateful to all the survivors of the Holocaust who are with us here today. In celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Vilna Gaon, we hope Vilnius will again become a center of gravity for the Jews of the entire world, as the Jerusalem of Lithuania once was,” foreign minister Linas Linkevičius said after presenting red roses to Holocaust survivors attending the event.

A student choir from the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium performed three songs in Yiddish and Lithuanian.

Lithuanian President Commemorates Holocaust Victims in Poland

Lithuanian President Commemorates Holocaust Victims in Poland

Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda and his wife Diana Nausėdienė attended a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland on the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. Fifty heads of state, royal family members, government representatives and ambassadors attended the ceremony.

“I came to Oświęcim, to Poland, to express sincere respect for the millions of Jews who lost their lives during the Holocaust in World War II. I bow down in memory as well of more than two hundred thousand victims of our nation. This is a tragedy for Lithuania and the entire world. We cannot bring the innocent victims back to life, nor can we minimize the pain their families experienced. All we can is to preserve the memory of these people and to seek for historical justice,” the Lithuanian president said.

Lithuanian Parliamentary Speaker Says Participation at World Holocaust Forum Was Appropriate

Lithuanian Parliamentary Speaker Says Participation at World Holocaust Forum Was Appropriate

Lithuanian public radio and television radio program Ryto garsai, January 27, 2020

Speaker of the Lithuanian parliament Viktoras Pranckietis en route to a Holocaust commemoration at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp told LRT.lt this was a day for commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camp. He said Lithuania’s participation both at Auschwitz and the World Holocaust Forum in Israel were steps which strengthened bilateral ties with the Jewish community.

The United Nations declared January 27 the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust in 2005 in a resolution condemning all forms of Holocaust denial.

The Lithuanian speaker of parliament said the day is important to other peoples besides Jews.

Israeli Litvaks Protest Lithuanian MP Gumuliauskas in Tel Aviv

Israeli Litvaks Protest Lithuanian MP Gumuliauskas in Tel Aviv

Photos: Dr. Andrejus Aron from Vilnius, resident in Israel

Litvaks held a protest January 24 at the Lithuanian embassy to Israel in Ramat Gan, a neighborhood of Tel Aviv.

The Association of Lithuanian Jews Living in Israel under the leadership of former Vilnius resident Arie Ben-Ari Grodzenskis sponsored the protest, which was mainly attended by elderly Litvaks, most of whom were born after the war, their grandparents having been murdered in Lithuania in the Holocaust.

Despite cold weather and rain, they gathered to remember the 220,000 Jews who lived in Lithuania before the Holocaust and built the Jerusalem of Lithuania.

The picket was aimed specifically against Lithuanian MP Arūnas Gumuliauskas, the chairman of the Lithuanian parliament’s Battles for Freedom and State Historical Memory Commission who announced in mid-December he was drafting a parliamentary resolution proclaiming the Lithuanian state and nation innocent of participating in the Holocaust, because the state and the people were under occupation, first by the Soviets and then by the Nazis.

One of the signs at the protest read: “Gumuliauskas: no law can wash away Jewish blood.”

Lithuania’s Holocaust Memory: “Reliable” or “Unreliable?”

Lithuania’s Holocaust Memory: “Reliable” or “Unreliable?”

by Grant Gochin

Many South African Jews are descended from an immigration wave from Lithuania in the 1920s. Our grandparents seldom explained the context; here it is.

During World War 1 when the current territory of Lithuania was part of Russia, the Tsarist army conducted a mass ethnic cleansing of Jews. During that period, especially in the spring of 1915, a number of Lithuanians took an active part in murdering old Jewish men, women, and even children, and plundering Jewish assets. Lithuania claims the Russians were entirely responsible for the actions of ethnic Lithuanians. Lithuanians retained the stolen Jewish property.

Betrayal after betrayal followed and Jews began to leave for greener pastures. It was the lesser-educated and unemployed Jews who left Lithuania, while the intelligentsia stayed on, hoping life would improve. Instead, they were slaughtered.

The world knows of the genocide perpetrated in Lithuania in 1941 in which Jonas Noreika was responsible for the murder of about 14,500 out of the 200,000 murder victims (including my own family). The sharing of Jewish property was widespread and once again Lithuanians were enriched by Jewish property.

Condolences

Isaakas Demantas passed away in late January. We have lost an amazingly sensitive and sincere friend. Orphaned by the Holocaust, he made his own way in life from the age of 13. An active member of the Jewish community and the Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp inmates, he passed away at the age of 91.

Our deepest condolences to his soulmate Mina Frišman and sons Arkadijus and Vladimiras, to his grandchildren and to his friends Ieva and Monia who came to his aid when misfortune struck and Isaakas was hospitalized.

Who Are You, Dr. Gumuliauskas? Fat Strokes for a Portrait of the Chairman of the Parliament’s Freedom Battles and State Historical Memory Commission

Who Are You, Dr. Gumuliauskas? Fat Strokes for a Portrait of the Chairman of the Parliament’s Freedom Battles and State Historical Memory Commission

by Pinchos Fridberg, Holocaust “historian”

My slogan my whole life:
lakhn iz gezunt.
Laughter is health.

Who Are You, Dr. Gumuliauskas? Fat Strokes for a Portrait of the Chairman of the Parliament’s Freedom Battles and State Historical Memory Commission

Introduction

I’m forced to repeat that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty called me an Holocaust historian (in an article in Russian). I won’t pretend the appellation isn’t soothing to the ear, but it is not true, unfortunately. That’s why I put the word “historian” in quotation marks after my name.

Unlike me, professor Arūnas Gumuliauskas is a “professional historian.” I’ll explain the use of quotation marks below.

His lucky star rose at exactly 12:59 P.M. on December 28, 2019. That’s the moment when his sensational article appeared on the website 15min.lt, whose daily audience is almost one half of a million readers:

Speech by Markas Petuchauskas at Commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Speech by Markas Petuchauskas at Commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day

The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and the Lithuanian Jewish Community held a commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 28. Markas Petuchauskas, the noted theater expert, art historian and professor as well as Holocaust survivor, spoke. Here is a translation of the speech he delivered to the overflow audience of Foreign Ministry staff, diplomats and members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community at the hall at the Foreign Ministry.

Perhaps the smallest of all is small group of former Vilnius ghetto inmates who survived. As a member of that group, I thought it would be best here today to share with those gather how I feel today and how I sense things. I feel good now. Because here prevails the solid principles of foreign minister Linas Linkevičius and his great spirit of courage. Linkevičius has never bent with the changing “line”…

Five years ago the Foreign Ministry, not the Culture Ministry, hosted the presentation my book in English, “Price of Concord.” From here it spread to the largest public and prestigious university libraries across Europe and all the continents. Beginning in North and South America and ending in the Republic of South Africa and Japan… Last spring the German translation was launched at the Leipzig International Book Fair and then it was presented in Berlin, again, at our embassy there. I’m not saying this to brag. The book preserves for the future the heroic spiritual resistance of many famous Litvak artists who ended up in the Vilnius ghetto. They opposed Hitler in their artistic work and his desire to tread upon the human dignity of the ghetto inmates.

International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust

International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust

The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you to remember the victims on the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust with a special ceremony at 1:00 P.M. on Monday, January 27, 2020, on the third floor of the LJC in Vilnius. The program includes lighting candles, the opening of Lev Saksonov’s Holocaust exhibit and an opportunity to speak with living witnesses of the Holocaust and relatives of rescuers.

Yad Vashem Publishes What Would Have Been Lithuanian President’s Speech

Yad Vashem Publishes What Would Have Been Lithuanian President’s Speech


Lithuanian public radio and television posted an article on their news website containing what appears to be the speech Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda would have delivered at the Fifth World Holocaust Forum commemoration at Yad Vashem in Israel Thursday. The Lithuanian president canceled his trip there at the last minute apparently in solidarity with Polish president Andrzej Duda, who declined the initial invitation to the event saying it was strange he wouldn’t be allowed to speak there while Vladimir Putin would. Lithuanian public radio and television or LRT quoted the Lithuanian president from “a book published by Yad Vashem.”

“I want to express the deepest respect for the millions of Jews murdered in the Shoa. I bow my head in honor and memory of the two hundred thousand who were my countrymen. The tragedy of the Jews of Lithuania is Lithuania’s tragedy.

“We don’t have the power to raise from the dead the innocent victims, the men, women and children. We probably cannot ease the pain of those who lost their family members and loved ones. Even 75 years after the suffering is still felt, it is alive. There is only one thing which we can and must do. That is honoring the memory of the victims of the Shoa. Each of us can do that in his own way, by lighting a candle and saying a prayer. We can pledge to discover the historical truth. The only way to come to terms with history is to find the truth and to proclaim it loudly.”

Miša Jakobas Retires

Miša Jakobas Retires

Miša Jakobas has retired as principal of the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius. Lithuanian public radio and television conducted the following in-depth interview with him about education, life and his thoughts about the future.

Miša Jakobas Talks about Problems in Lithuanian Education after Leaving Jewish Gymnasium

by Aida Murauskaitė, LRT.lt

At the beginning of January the former Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium principal and mathematics teacher took on a new job having nothing in common with the school, except that it does have something in common with Jews and math. He is now the executive director of the Lithuanian-Israeli Chamber of Commerce.

After half of a century you have left your job as teacher and the gymnasium which you yourself established three decades ago. How did you come to this decision?