Julija Patašnik is planning to hold her final Israeli dance lesson of the summer season at the Israeli street food kiosk in Petras Cvirka Square this Friday with beginners at 5:00 P.M. and more advanced dancers at 6:00 P.M. The food kiosk is closing for fall this Sunday evening. Stay tuned for more classes and workshops with Julija at other locations.
Arkadijus Vinokuras, who counts among his professions that of clown as well as author and journalist, will present a quiz on Jewish humor at the outdoor Israeli street food kiosk in Petras Cvirka Square located across the street from the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius at 5:00 P.M. on Sunday, September 10.
The quiz will be live-streamed here: https://www.facebook.com/zydubendruomene/live_videos/
The Panevėžys Jewish Community will hold a series of ceremonies on Friday, September 22, to remember the victims of the Holocaust in Lithuania. Participants will gather at the Sad Jewish Mother monument on Memory Square in Panevėžys located at Vasario 16-osios street next to the Vyturis pre-gymnasium.
Program:
2:00 P.M. Opening ceremony, wreath- and stone-laying at the monument, addresses;
2:40 P.M. Travel to the mass murder site in Kurganava Forest where approximately 8,000 Ponevezh Jews were murdered;
3:30 P.M. Travel to Žalioji Forest where approximately 5,000 Ponevezh Jews were murdered;
5:00 P.M. Conference and screening of Holocaust films from Yad Vashem at the Panevėžys Jewish Community located at Ramygalos street no. 18 followed by coffee and tea.
Everyone is invited to attend any and all of these events.
The Panevėžys Jewish Community is proposing a picnic in the Community’s courtyard as part of celebrations of the Jewish New Year, 5784, located at Ramygalos street no. 18 in Panevėžys. The plan is to meet at 4:00 P.M. on Sunday, September 17, at the Panevėžys Jewish Community. If the weather is good the picnic will take place outside with holiday treats, food, gifts for children and Jewish calendars for members. If the weather isn’t good events will move inside. The event is free and open to the general public.
A camping trip will be held from September 15 to 17 called “The Secrets of the Green Forest in Panevëžys at the Žalioji or Green Forest for scouts aged 6 to 18. The cost is 15 euros per scout, with a discount of 12 euros each for two or more scouts from the same household. Guides and volunteers are also being asked to contribute 10 euros each. The cost includes food, scouting equipment and the program of events. Transportation will be provided with details to be provided to participants and parents later. Registration should be made before or on September 9 with payment via bank transfer to be received not later than September 12.
Register here: https://forms.gle/FiGJv5kMc1D2nraD8
Payment should be made to Lietuvos skautijos padalinio Panevėžio kraštas via bank transfer to the account LT387044060002754214.
The Klaipėda Jewish Community will present a program of events to celebrate European Days of Jewish Culture beginning Sunday afternoon on September 10 at the Klaipėda Jewish Community located at Sinagogų street no. 13 in the port city.
The Shtatil theater troupe is to perform a play about Jewish stories and events in Klaipėda city and district, formerly known under East Prussian rule as Memel and Memelland (or Memelgebiet), respectively. The performance won’t be confined to the theater: players promise a tour through the city to illustrate the fictional stories about Jewish life which could have happened there.
The play concludes at the Klaipėda Puppet Theater at Turgaus street no. 9, followed there by a presentation of more Jewish stories, namely fairy tales, for the whole family, narrated by Klaipėda Jewish Theater director Nerijus Gedminas and actors.
#EDJC2023 #Atmintis #Memory #AEPJ #UNESCO #Lietuvos žydų bendruomenė ##KlaiėdosŽydųBendromenė #OurCommunities
The Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community invites the public to an open house this Friday as part of the Šiauliai Days currently being celebrated. This is an opportunity to learn more about what the Community does and Šiauliai (Shavl) Jewish traditions, and to tour the interior as well as the museum, to get to know members and to view the exhibition “Wooden Synagogues of Lithuania.”
Time: 11:00 P.M., Friday, August 8
Location: Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community, Višinskio street no. 24, Šiauliai
After a great start in Vilnius, the European Days of Jewish Culture move on to Vilkomir (Ukmergė) with a series of interesting and perhaps moving events. The two-day program promises to enrich the public’s knowledge of Jewish culture and hopefully to teach them about the rich Jewish heritage inherent in their local area.
At 2:00 P.M. on Thursday, September 7, there will be a reading of the names of Holocaust victims at the location where the Great Synagogue once stood in Vilkomir (Vienuolyno street no. 2).
At 7:00 P.M. on Thursday, September 7, the Ukmergė Tolerance Center (Vasario 16-osios street no. 11) will open an exhibit of photography by Jurga Jackevičiūtė called “Įmelsta žemė” [Pierced Land] including a presentation by the photographer of her trips to Jerusalem.
At 5:00 P.M. on Friday, September 8, the Ukmergė Tolerance Center will screen a documentary film by Loic Salfati called “Secrets of the Great Synagogue of Vilnius” which includes documented historical facts, a large number of interviews and findings from archaeological digs at the site of the former Grand Synagogue in 2019 and 2021 to tell the hitherto little-known true history of the synagogue which mostly survived the Holocaust and World War II only to be razed in the 1950s. There will be a discussion with the French filmmaker following the screening.
The first Sunday in September is the traditional time to commemorate the Jewish victims murdered in the Holocaust in the Pivonija Forest outside Vilkomir (Ukmergė) and this year marked the 82nd anniversary of the mass murder. As usual, the commemoration began at 12 noon.
Members of the Ukmergė Jewish Community and fellow Jews from the Vilnius and Kaunas communities gathered at the mass murder site for the ceremony.
Also attending the ceremony were Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein, American embassy chargé d’affaires Tamir Wasser, UK ambassador Brian Olley, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas, Ukmergė regional administration mayor Darius Varnas and others.
Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas initiated the ceremony, saying: “Every year we remember this tragedy, we gather here not only to honor the dead, but also in order to ensure this tragedy never happens again, and with the aim of telling the truth about the tragic events of 1941.”
The Israeli street food kiosk at Petras Cvirka Park in Vilnius is opening the fall season with the start of a new series of Blue Mondays live music events. Tonight, Monday, September 4, vocalist Erica Jennings and piano virtuoso Petras Geniušas will share the stage. After the duet, guitarist Kopcevas will delight the audience with his enchanting airs. Entry is free and open to the public. It all starts at 7:30 P.M. at Petras Cvirka Park across the street from the Lithuanian Jewish Community located at Pylimo street no. 4 in Vilnius.
The Šiauliai Jewish Community is hosting a kosher food-making class at the Šiauliai Jewish Community at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, September 5. Tatjana Bekermeister is the manager of the 7:40 kosher café and will be teaching the class. Everyone is welcome and those who attend will receive an edible surprise.
by Arkadijus Vinokuras, Times of Israel, September 2, 2023
Director of the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania [hereinafter Genocide Center] Arūnas Bubnys in refusing to carry out the decision from the so-called De-Sovietization Commission to remove a monument commemorating murderer of Jews Juozas Krikštaponis, under pressure from public anger, has ordered the municipal administration of Ukmergės [Vilkomir] to remove the bas-relief image and name of Juozas Krikštaponis and to rededicate the monument to local Lithuanian partisans.
Finally, some initiative has been shown, although the law was grossly violated. Nonetheless, the issue of what influence the National Unification Party [Nacionalinis susivienijimas] and other interest groups have over Genocide Center commemorative policies remains unanswered.
The situation is absurd: Genocide Center director Arūnas Bubnys acting as sovereign has come up with his own pseudo-rules and has refused for months to follow the order from the De-Sovietization Commission, an order which, according to Lithuanian law, must be carried out within 5 days.
The Sabbath begins at 7:54 P.M. on Friday, September 1, and concludes at 9:06 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
September 1 is a national holiday in Lithuania, Back-to-School Day. The first Monday in September, September 4 this year, is also Labor/Labour Day, a national holiday in the United States and Canada, and their embassies in Vilnius will be closed.
Bavaria’s governor says his deputy has not done enough to prove he wasn’t responsible for an anti-Semitic flyer as a high school student
BERLIN (AP)–The governor of the German state of Bavaria said Tuesday [August 29] that his deputy had not done enough to prove he wasn’t responsible for an anti-Semitic flyer as a high school student and ordered him to answer a detailed questionnaire to clear himself of any possible involvement in the scandal that caused an uproar in Germany.
Daily newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Friday that when deputy governor Hubert Aiwanger was 17 he was suspected of writing a printed flyer calling for entries to a competition titled “Who is the Biggest Traitor to the Fatherland?”
Photo: Jews in the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania are boarded onto trucks during a deportation action to a work camp c. 1942 (Image: US Holocaust Memorial Museum)
by Justin Amler, August 30, 2023
Our People: Discovering Lithuania’s Hidden Holocaust
by Rūta Vanagaitė and Efraim Zuroff
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 240 pp., A$49.99
Under the terms of the secret protocols of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940. After the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union, Lithuania was occupied by the Germans in June 1941.
Caught in the middle were the country’s Jews.
Our People is a book about a journey in search of truth in the face of authorities who want to take that truth and distort it into something quite different.
One of the greatest myths of the Holocaust was that it was Hitler and the Nazis alone who committed the atrocities against the Jews. But this is, at best, misleading. While the Nazis were the driving force behind the genocide of the Jewish people, they could not have succeeded without the collaboration of willing local citizens across many countries.
Times of Israel staff, August 28, 2023
Speaking to Israeli TV about her film role as Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, the star actress declares she would join anti-government protest movement if she had the chance
British actress dame Helen Mirren believes Israel must exist forever, saying it was a lesson learned from the Holocaust, though she opposes the direction the current government is taking the Jewish state.
In an interview aired by Channel 12 on Sunday Mirren spoke about her leading role in “Golda” depicting Israel’s first and only female prime minister, Golda Meir, during the period of the fateful 1973 Yom Kippur War. The interview was recorded in July when Mirren was in Israel for the premiere of the movie at the Jerusalem Film Festival.
“I believe in Israel, in the existence of Israel, and I believe Israel has to go forward into the future, for the rest of eternity,” Mirren said. “I believe in Israel because of the Holocaust.”
She revealed there were those who had tried to talk her out of making the film due to Israel’s controversial position on the world stage, but, she said, “I’ve met such extraordinary people in Israel.”
“I know there is a base, a foundation of deep intelligence, thoughtfulness, commitment, poetry even, in Israel that is very, very special, I think,” said Mirren.
Full article here.
The Nechama Lifshitz Song Contest is back and scheduled for several days in mid-September. A big hit last year, we expect it will draw even more attention this third time around.
Nechama, or Nekhama according to a stricter transcription, was an amazing Yiddish-language songstress sometimes called the Jewish Nightingale who began her professional career in Vilnius and Kaunas, going on to fame in the Soviet Union and world renown with concert tours abroad.
The best voices from Lithuania and abroad will meet at the Lithuanian Music and Theater Academy performance hall from 11:00 A.M. till 6:00 P.M. on September 17. The hall is located at Tilto street no. 16 in central Vilnius. That same evening Jazz Cellar 11 at Aušros vartų street no. 11 in Vilnius will host popular music vocalists starting at 8:00 P.M.
On September 18 there will be a concert performed by prize winners at the Old Town Hall in Vilnius starting at 6:00 P.M. The same evening the party continues at Jazz Cellar 11 with the closing ceremony for the song contest.
“I grew up in a Jewish setting. We lit candles during Hanukkah as did everyone, we ate home cooking. Only now, thinking about how that food was prepared, so I realize this was kosher food. We were surrounded by Jews, Jews came over as guests, when you got sick it was Jews who treated you. When I was small I didn’t even know things could be any other way. I only saw girls dressed colorfully next to the Gates of Dawn in Vilnius, and I wanted those kinds of clothes, too, but my grandmother wouldn’t let me, saying only Polish girls dressed that way,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman and attorney Faina Kukliansky recalled about her early childhood.
“Later on life changed, school, studies, new people, new homes where you couldn’t keep chickens with their legs tied as in my grandmother’s kitchen. One important thing, however, didn’t change: the Yiddish language which we used at home, all our relatives and closest friends…” …
Simas Levinas will deliver a lesson in basic Yiddish at 11:00 A.M. on September 3 in the kitchen of the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius. Everyone is welcome to attend the free event which is part of the European Day of Jewish Culture celebrations in Lithuania.
You’re invited to a presentation and discussion of the book “Вильнюсский еврейский Народный театр 1971-1999” [Vilnius Jewish Folk Theater 1971-1999] with the author Betsalel “Tsalik” Frank from Israel. Boris Kirzner will serve as moderator for the Russian-language event. Following the event, the author will invite the audience to share a glass of wine and celebrate Sabbath together. The event will take place in the Jascha Heifetz Hall at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius at 6:00 P.M. on Friday, September 8.
The entire Lithuanian Jewish Community wishes Fayerlakh director Laurisa Vyšniauskienė a very happy birthday. May your days be filled with health, appreciation of your important work, talented people and many happy moments. Mazl tov. Bis 120!