Learning

Concert by Winners of the Nehama Lifshitz Song Contest

Concert by Winners of the Nehama Lifshitz Song Contest

The Lithuanian Jewish Community will host a concert to celebrate the winners of the Nehama Lifshitz (Nechama Lifšicaitė) song contest at 6:00 P.M. on November 3. Performers: Marija Maminskaitė, Lukrecija Šiaulytė, Estera Reches, Emilija Lopaitytė, Alfredas Miniotas,
Elzė Liškauskaitė and Deividas Bartkus under the direction of Rūta Mikelaitytė-Kašubienė and professor Nijolė Ralytė.

The same program will be performed on November 7 at the concert hall at the Einav Center in Tel Aviv together with performers from the Nehama Lifshitz Yiddish song studio in Tel Aviv.

Rethinking Trauma: What We Don’t Know about the History of Roma and Jews in the Baltics

Rethinking Trauma: What We Don’t Know about the History of Roma and Jews in the Baltics

The Martynas Mažvydas Lithuanian National Library hosted an international conference called “Rethinking Trauma: Studies of Roma and Jewish History in the Baltic States and the USA.” Academics from the United States and the Baltic states who gave presentations pointed out Roma and Jewish history is often neglected and talked about how this history affects the present.

The goal of the conference was to explore the social, cultural and political mechanisms behind how the Roma and Jewish communities rethink the trauma experienced during the Holocaust and what significance this trauma holds today in the Baltic states and the United States.

The conference was organized by the multicultural children’s and youth center Padėk Pritapti, the Roma Social Center, the Lithuanian Jewish Community, the Department of Ethnic Minorities, the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania, the Social Anthropology Center of Vytautas Magnus University and the Lithuanian Roma Community. Partial financing came from the US embassy in Vilnius, the Baltic-American Freedom Fund, the Vilnius municipality, the EVZ fund and the Active Citizens Fund.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Exhibit of Pastel Works by Solomonas Teitelbaumas

Exhibit of Pastel Works by Solomonas Teitelbaumas

The harvest has been gathered, Jews have built sukkas and are celebrating with friends and family. That is what was, but now there are only echoes, to keep the traditions and to survive, thanks to our rescuers, for whom there are no statues.

The difficult, crowded and confusing streets of Vilnius remind us of our shared pain. This pain envelopes a Jew and makes him try to share it with, with a Lithuanian, a Pole or some foreign visitor. But without malice, with love for his neighbor, but always remembering, so it might never happen again.

An exhibit is being prepared for the traditional gallery on Pylimo street. This will be diaries with pastel in hand, recording life as it is, but also with an eye to the philosophic and the tragic. Stay tuned for more information.

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Lithuanian Makabi Club Invites Competitors to Lithuanian Makabiada

Lithuanian Makabi Club Invites Competitors to Lithuanian Makabiada

The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club invites competitors who play badminton, indoor soccer, volleyball, basketball and/or ping-pong to apply to play in the continuing tradition of the Lithuanian mini-Makiabada. Send an email to info.maccabilt(at)gmail.com before October 23 if you’d like to participate and for more information.

The Fate of Lithuanian Volunteer Soldier Liba Mednik from Širvintos

The Fate of Lithuanian Volunteer Soldier Liba Mednik from Širvintos

The first volunteer Lithuanian soldiers who fought for the country’s independence are today undeservedly forgotten. They were often simple village boys or hired hands, less frequently Tsarist army recruits, who defended our right to live as free people. What’s most interesting is that it wasn’t just ethnic Lithuanians who fought in those battles for independence, there were groups of people of other ethnicity who fought. The idea of freedom was cherished by women as well. Among those who received the Order of the Cross of Vytis were women. Širvintos was and is a town with a diverse ethnic make-up and the location of one of the fiercest battles for independence. Lithuanian Radio and Television tells the little-known story and reveals unknown aspects of these battles for independence.

Program in Lithuanian viewable here.

Sukkot Begins Next Week

Sukkot Begins Next Week

Sukkot, or Sukkos in Ashkenazic, begins at 6:17 P.M. this Sunday, October 9.

The Festival of Sukkot–literally meaning booths, tents, tabernacles–is celebrated for seven days in Israel and eight days in the Diaspora, starting on the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei. It is one of the three festivals during which Jewish men were required to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the times of the Holy Temple.

Commemorating Holocaust Victims in Švenčionys

Commemorating Holocaust Victims in Švenčionys

On October 3 a ceremony was held in the Švenčionys city park to mark the anniversary of the onset of the mass murder of Jews in the region in the first week of October, 1941. In total over the course of the Holocaust approximately 8,000 Jews from the city and surround district were murdered.

Kristina Sizonova moderated the event. Speakers at the ceremony included Lithuanian Jewish Community executive board member Ela Gurina who is the chairwoman of the Holocaust Victims Commission, Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro, Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium principal Ruth Reches, Polish ambassador to Lithuania Urszula Doroszewska, deputy mayor of the Švenčionys district Violeta Čepukova, Pabradė’s Rytas Gymnasium history teacher Danguolė Grincevičienė and others.

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Yom Kippur at the Choral Synagogue

Yom Kippur at the Choral Synagogue

Yom Kippur at the Choral Synagogue, Pylimo street no. 39, Vilnius:

Monday, October 3:

6:30 P.M. Preparations for Yom Kippur, lesson on the holy day, kapparot ritual

Tuesday, October 4:

5:30 P.M. Supper before fast
6:10 P.M. Kol Nidre
6:30 P.M. Fast begins

Wednesday, October 5:

10:00 A.M. Shacharit morning prayer
12:00 noon Izkor
5:30 P.M. Mincha prayer
7:30 P.M. Niila prayer
7:38 P.M. conclusion of fast, dinner

Katharina von Schnurbein Calls for More Attention to Litvak Cultural and Historical Sites

Katharina von Schnurbein Calls for More Attention to Litvak Cultural and Historical Sites

Katharina von Schnurbein, the European Commission’s coordinator for implementing strategies to combat anti-Semitism and foster Jewish life in Europe, visited the Vilnius ghetto and other memorial locations Wednesday, the Lithuanian Jewish Community reported.

She called attention to the poor state of monuments during the tour and called for more care and maintenance of such sites in Lithuania.

LJC staff member and guide Viljamas Žitkauskas provided the guided tour and told the visiting official about the 700-year history shared by Lithuanians and Jews, the importance of Vilnius as the Jerusalem of the North and the ruins left in the wake of the Holocaust.

LJC chairwoman Fainia Kukliansky accompanied von Schnurbein on the walking tour and said: “Vilnius is special in that it’s not enough to just see it. The buildings, the statues, even the paving stones have a deep and significant history. You have to hear Vilnius. I am pleased von Schnurbein found time in her busy schedule to visit the most important sites and to learn about our history, culture and traditions.”

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First Litvak Scouting Jamboree

First Litvak Scouting Jamboree

Following a pause in activities, the first general meeting or jamboree of Litvak scouting groups will take place at 2:30 P.M. on October 6 at the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius. For more information, please write skautai@lzb.lt.

In Kaunas, British Artist Shines Light on Holocaust Massacre Forgotten by Locals

In Kaunas, British Artist Shines Light on Holocaust Massacre Forgotten by Locals

Photo: Artist Jenny Kagan’s immersive exhibition “Out of Darkness” in Kaunas, Lithuania, July, 2022 (photographer Gražvydas Jovaiša).

Near the site of one of the genocide’s most heavily photographed atrocities, lighting designer Jenny Kagan brings the city’s wartime past “Out of Darkness”

by Matt Lebovic, Times of Israel, October 1, 2022

The 1941 Lietūkis garage massacre in Kaunas, Lithuania, was among the Holocaust’s most heavily photographed aktions against Jews, but many of the city’s current inhabitants have never heard of the atrocity.

On June 27, 1941, a group of pro-German Lithuanian nationalists tortured and murdered at least 50 Jews at the city’s Lietūkis garage. During the massacre, a German soldier took photos of dozens of Lithuanians, including children, cheering while a man called “the death dealer” beat Jews to death with a crowbar.

Among the Jewish men murdered that day was British artist Jenny Kagan’s grandfather, Jurgis Stromas, who owned the Pasaka (Fairytale) cinema in town. At one point during the public slaughter, the “death dealer” climbed atop a mound of corpses and performed the Lithuanian national anthem with an accordion.

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Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community Marks Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide

Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community Marks Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide

The Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community marked the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide September 23 with a ceremony at the monument commemorating the former gates of the Šiauliai ghetto. The ceremony was attended by members of the Jewish community, teachers and high school students and deputy mayor Egidijus Elijošius. People laid wreaths of flowers and placed stones on the monument, after which participants moved on to Righteous Gentiles Square where Lithuanian rescuers of Jews were remembered. Later members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community went to the mass murder site in the Pročiūnai forest were hundreds of people of different ethnic backgrounds were murdered during the Holocaust. They then went to the monument to the Jews from Šiauliai and the surrounding area murdered in Kužiai village.

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Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community Ushers In Rosh Hashanah with Musical

Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community Ushers In Rosh Hashanah with Musical

Members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community and the general public ushered in the Jewish new year last week with a musical/dramatized concert called “About Her and about Us” at the Šiauliai chamber concert hall, a project of the Šalom, Akmene! initiative dedicated to the memory of Nechama Lifshitz and performed by young students from Akmenė and Joniškis regional art schools and by opera singer Rafailas Karpis. The concert was followed by a buffet.

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New Film Exposes Lithuanians’ Brutality, Enthusiasm in Holocaust Crimes

New Film Exposes Lithuanians’ Brutality, Enthusiasm in Holocaust Crimes

by Michael Kretzmer

For the last three years my life has been entirely absorbed in the making of a documentary film that attempts to tell the truth about the Lithuanian Holocaust. This has been a terrible task, an entirely unwanted one, and one that has exacted a significant personal price. Many times I have bitterly regretted taking it on, but once started there could be no turning back: the injustice of what happened to our people, and even more importantly, what is happening today in Lithuania, cannot be ignored.

The most painful task was the journalistic duty to forensically research and report the depraved cruelty of our persecution. Nothing can prepare you for the incomprehensible, sordid detail: the celebratory murder of children in front of parents; the delicate physics of smashing babies’ skulls against trees (thousands of them); the horror carnival of small, terrified girls being loaded onto trucks for deadly rape parties by Lithuanian gangs; the imprisonment of thousands of Jews in their own synagogues and their slow murder either by fire or by starvation and thirst amidst human filth and the stench of their loved ones’ rotting bodies; the beheadings, the immolations, the thousands of deadly humiliations; the destruction of this dazzling 600-year-old civilization–220,000 Jews slaughtered, the highest murder rate in all of Holocaust Europe; and above all, the thought of our depraved Lithuanian tormentors laughing at our pain and humiliation. And the knowledge that the Lithuanian government is still, politely, laughing at us today.

I am a journalist and film-maker by profession but for months I struggled to find the narrative voice that could tell this terrible story. And one day I found that voice. It was obvious, the only voice that matters. The voice of the murdered. This is why I have called my film J’Accuse! It is their cry for justice from the killing pits of Lithuania.

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Lithuanian MP Proposes Day to Commemorate Rescuers

Lithuanian MP Proposes Day to Commemorate Rescuers

Photo: Paulė Kuzmickienė by J. Stacevičius, courtesy LRT.

Lithuanian MP Paulė Kuzmickienė has proposed naming March 15 a national day of remembrance of rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. March 15, 1966, was the date Vilnius University librarian Ona Šimaitė was awarded the title of Righteous Gentile by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Commemoration and Studies Institute in Jerusalem. She was the first Lithuanian to receive the distinction.

“Rescuers of Lithuanian Jews deserve exceptional attention from the state and society. These were people who often didn’t appear different from others on the surface, but were dignified by their values and remained human even during the most difficult circumstances, did not collaborate with the Nazis and saved others at risk to the freedom and the lives of themselves and their families,” Kuzmickienė said.

Lithuanian MPs Paulė Kuzmickienė, Stasys Tumėnas, Radvilė Morkūnaitė-Mikulėnienė, Emanuelis Zingeris and Liudvika Pociūnienė have signed off on the proposal for this new Lithuanian commemorative day on March 15.

Kabalat Shabat on September 30

Kabalat Shabat on September 30

A Kabalat Shabat ceremony and dinner according to the tenets of progressive Judaism will be held at 6:30 P.M. on September 30 with the main ceremony the third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius and kiddush downstairs at the Bagel Shop Café. The price is 10 euros, children and minors 16 and under are free. For more information and to register, contact Viljamas by writing viljamas@lzb.lt or call +370 672 50699.