Learning – Page 52 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

EJC President Applauds EU Declaration to Fight Anti-Semitism at All Levels

Brussels, December 2, 2020–European Jewish Congress president Moshe Kantor applauds the European Union Council Declaration on mainstreaming the fight against anti-Semitism across policy-areas, adopted unanimously by EU member states.

“This is an important decision, one that appreciates the sad growth of anti-Semitism and how it not only targets Jews, but is corrosive for any society,” Kantor said. “The EU firmly states that anti-Semitism is against European values and commits itself to a holistic program to eradicate it from the continent.”

“We are delighted that our strong message that fighting anti-Semitism robustly at all levels, that we have consistently delivered in our meetings and activities, is received.”

“The declaration adopted by the German presidency of the Council affirms several principles, including that anti-Semitism is an attack on European values, that protecting Jewish life and making it more visible as part of Europe’s identity is essential and that it is necessary to combat anti-Semitism head-on in all its forms, including in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“The importance that the EU is placing on protecting and emboldening Jewish life is also very important,” Dr. Kantor continued. “Jews have been a part of Europe for millennia and continue to contribute at all levels, so it is very gratifying to hear that our leaders will ensure that Jewish life will not only be protected but making it more visible.”

2021-05-07

Happy Birthday to Adasa Skliutauskaitė

We wish Adasa Skliutauskaitė a happy birthday this milestone year and have sent her a bouquet of flowers in the name of the Community.

We sincerely congratulate the accomplished painter, graphic artist and puppeteer and wish her many warm moments in daily life, wonderful pictures and that she continue to enchant us with her extraordinary enthusiasm and colors. May the passage of the years never change the warmth of your eyes and heart. We wish you a long and beautiful life.

Be healthy and happy.

Mazl tov. Bis 120!

2021-05-06

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Visits Lost Shtetl Museum in Šeduva

Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis visited the site of the Lost Shtetl Museum being built in Šeduva in central Lithuania May 4.

“The future modern museum in Šeduva will better showcase the extraordinarily rich history and legacy of the Litvaks for Lithuanians and the world. I sincerely thank the initiators and executors of the project,” he said.

The private initiative is supported by the Šeduva Foundation created by Jews with roots in the town and is being carried out in cooperation with the Radviliškis regional administration.

2021-05-05

Virtual Sabbaths Continue with European Union for Progressive Judaism

The Lithuanian Jewish Community’s series of virtual Sabbath telebridges continues this Friday, May 7, at 8:00 P.M. with a Zoom meeting with Rabbi Nathan Alfred of the European Union for Progressive Judaism. To participate, register here.

2021-05-05

Thank You to the Students, Parents and Teachers of Sholem Aleichem

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky sends a big thank-you to all the students, parents and family members of students who responded to the call by the principal and teachers of Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium to come help clean up the Jewish cemetery on Sudervės road in Vilnius. The winter wasn’t kind to the cemetery and visitors have been few. Despite the cool weather and the fact it was Mother’s Day in Lithuania, many helpers arrived to pick up garbage and fallen branches and generally tidy the graveyard up for spring in the Lithuanian tradition of talka, a joint volunteer effort to put the environment in order. Students at Sholem Aleichem can also use the experience to get credits now required for community service, so to those of you who couldn’t make it, don’t be shy next time!

Thank you!

2021-05-042021-06-04

Sabbath with the IDF

Viljamas Žitkauskas and the Lithuanian Jewish Community invite you to attend a virtual Sabbath discussion called “The Road from Underground Fighters and Self-Defense Units to the Israeli Defense Forces” in Lithuanian starting at 7:00 P.M. on May 1 as Israel staggers from the Lag ba’Omer tragedy. Registration is required, click here.

2021-04-302021-04-30

April 30 is Lag ba’Omer

Lag ba’Omer is a minor Jewish holiday celebrated with bonfires and an occasion for weddings and cutting children’s hair. It happens approximately one month after Passover, and the name means the 33rd day of the of the Omer count, on the 18th day of the Jewish month of Iyar, which is about the midpoint in time between Passover and Shavuot.

Lag ba’Omer, according to tradition, was the day on which the plague that killed 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s disciples stopped (Yebamoth, 62:72). For this reason it is customary to cease mourning customs of the Omer period, which include prohibition of marriages, cutting hair, and public expressions of joy such as singing and dancing. Some traditions hold that the period of mourning ends at Lag ba’Omer and others end it three days before the holiday of Shavuot.

2021-04-30

Greece Takes Over IHRA Presidency from Germany

“As the years pass it is our duty to tell this story. To preserve memory, to learn the lessons, to never, never forget,” Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a video address on the occasion of Germany passing the IHRA presidency to Greece on April 1.

In the virtual ceremony ambassador Michaela Küchler handed over the role of IHRA chairman to ambassador Chris J. Lazaris, who stated: “The thread running through this presidency will be teaching the Holocaust, including combating denial and distortion in the new fields now opened by the net.”

The Greek deputy prime minister, the minister of foreign affairs and the minister of education and religious affairs added voices of support in the video, underlining Greece’s strong commitment to the mission of the IHRA.

2021-04-28

Documentary about Eglė Ridikaitė and Jewish Culture

LRT.lt

The Lithuanian Culture Institute and the Contemporary Arts Center in Vilnius are preparing to show a video documentary called “Jewish Vilnius in the Work of Artist Eglė Ridikaitė,” the Lithuanian Culture Institute announced in a press release.

The story directed by Mikas Žukauskas looks at the work of Lithuanian National Culture and Art Prize recipient Eglė Ridikaitė and at her artistic method of confronting difficult topics. Her cycle of paintings “We Are Guests” pictures fragments of the Great Synagogue in Vilnius uncovered by archaeologists and her sense of space within the razed synagogue. This is one of the rare cases where Lithuanian contemporary art addresses Jewish historical memory and heritage. Her works have drawn international attention.

The premiere of the short on April 28 will include a discussion titled “In Jewish Vilnius and Elsewhere: Contemporary Art and Historical Memory.” Participants will include professor of architecture Amnon Bar Or and the artist Dora Zlek Levy from Israel, Vilnius Museum director Rasa Antanavičiūtė and art history professor Adakhiar Zevi from Israel. Architecture historian Ūla Tornau, cultural attaché to the United Kingdom, will moderate.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2021-04-282021-04-28

April 23rd Marked 301st Birthday of Vilna Gaon

April 23 is the traditional date of the birthday of the Vilna Gaon, the most outstanding scholar of sacred Jewish texts in the modern era. Last year Lithuania was supposed to celebrate his 300th birthday with fanfare, but public events were canceled due to fears for public health.

YIVO’s Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe says the Gaon, also known by the acronym GRA, was a spiritual giant, an example to future generations, a source of inspiration and the central figure in Litvak culture.

2021-04-262021-04-26

Hirsh Glik’s Birthday Was April 24

Hirsh Glik authored the words to the Jewish partisan hymn Zog Nit Keynmol. He was born on April 24, ca. 1921 according to the US Holocaust Museum, in Vilnius and belonged to the Yungvald circle of Yiddish poets. Later imprisoned in the Vilnius ghetto, he and fellow ghetto inmate and Vilnius native Rokha Margolis, both youth members of the FPO Jewish partisans group operating there, set his words to music and presented the song to the FPO leadership. He is thought to have been killed in 1944.

2021-04-26

Makabi Collective Consciousness

The March issue of the magazine “Kaunas pilnas kultūros” [Kaunas Full of Culture] featured the history of the Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club.

Gercas Žakas, chairman of the Kaunas Jewish Community, wrote on his facebook profile:

“I believe a number of Kaunas residents have discovered and come to love the publication ‘Kaunas pilnas kultūros’ which is published monthly in a small format but with rich content (incidentally, it’s free! While they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, if you get this magazine with your lunch at a café, it’s worth the cost of your meal ).

“Sports was the theme for March, and I had the honor of being interviewed as well. We spoke about youth, soccer, the Jewish community, the history of the Makabi Athletics Club and about its resurrection in Lithuania. I am grateful to Kotryna Lingienė for the initiative, to Monika Balčiauskaitė for the sincere discussion and to Arvydas Čiukšys for his photographs and warm communication. I was echanted by these enthusiastic young people who are keen on their country’s history and seek to show the multiculturalism which enriches it.”

2021-04-22

Lithuanian Educator Defends Lithuanian Nazis

The Lithuanian biweekly newspaper Karštas Komentaras, which describes itself as a sort of insider’s view of Lithuanian politics, published as its main article in the current issue for April 16 to 30 an editorial titled on the cover “Let’s Not Be Afraid to Be Ourselves” by professor Gediminas Merkys, PhD habil. The subheading is “Will We Celebrate and How Will We Celebrate the Anniversary of the June, 1941 Uprising?” The cover image is a combined portrait of Lithuanian Nazi collaborators Jonas Noreika and Kazys Škirpa.

The newspaper singled out the following lines in the article for special attention as a separate text box:

The current colonial Lithuanian administration, it is to be believed, received an informal request from the supreme international master class to insure this important date not be marked officially in any way, i.e., in the name of the Lithuanian state. It was namely the competent patriotic director of the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania [former director Adas Jakubauskas] and the Center itself which would have posed an obstacle to fulfilling this aforementioned order of political servility. For that reason the leadership of the Center had to be changed quickly and the institution itself immediately reformed.

2021-04-202021-07-21

Battle for the Soul of Lithuania on BBC HARDtalk

The BBC television interview program HARDtalk interviewed granddaughter of Lithuanian Nazi Jonas Noreika on April 16, 2021, and has been airing the episode this week.

The description for the episode called “Silvia Foti: When truth trumps family loyalty. Silvia Foti on grappling with family responsible for the Holocaust” reads:

“Silvia Foti’s grandfather was a Lithuanian man hailed as heroic patriot who paid with his life resisting the Soviets. But according to her, Jonas Noreika was no hero–he had the blood of thousands of Jews on his hands. She’s chosen to speak out, angering many in Lithuania. What happens when truth trumps family loyalty?”

Interviewer Stephen Sackur pressed Silvia Foti for documentary proof her grandfather was responsible for the murder of around 1,800 in Plungė–the entire Jewish population–in 1941. Foti went further and said she had reliable documents and sources showing Noreika was responsible for mass murders of Jews in Plungė, Telšiai and Šiauliai. Sackur was interested in Foti’s journey from that of a proud Lithuanian-American to the point where she had to confront Holocaust crimes within her immediate family. Foti countered the problem was much more widespread than her family, that the perpetrators and their descendants were still covering up the Holocaust in present-day Lithuania, and cited the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania as one party involved in the nation-wide cover-up. She said her and Grant Gochin’s legal battles to have the plaque commemorating Noreika on the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences building in Vilnius was really a battle for the soul of Lithuania. Sackur asked whether Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center was correct in calling Lithuania the locomotive in the train of Holocaust distortion in Eastern Europe. Foti admitted she didn’t know the situation in Eastern Europe in general, but that this was possible.

An audio recording of the interview is available here and here.

2021-04-202021-05-10

Condolences

Milan Cheronskis passed away April 14. He was born in 1937 and grew up on Sakhalin Island in the Soviet Far East. Our deepest condolences to his wife Svetlana, daughter Polina and many, many friends within the Jewish community.

Cheronskis was a director at the Yiddish People’s Theater and a journalist. He was graduated from the Leningrad State Theater, Music and Comedy Institute in 1964. He directed the Yiddish People’s Theater in Vilnius from 1979 to 1999.

Besides serving on the board of directors of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Milan was the force behind the Community’s long-time press organ, Jerusalem of Lithuania, which was at one time published in four languages simultaneously. The newspaper was published from 1989 to 2010. Following the newspaper’s cancellation and his retirement, Milan continued to fight against Holocaust distortion and the falsification of Lithuanian history in the press and on the internet.

2021-04-152021-05-21

IHRA Recommendations on How to Teach the Holocaust in Schools

The Recommendations aim to deepen the understanding of the Holocaust by asking crucial questions concerning the historical context of the Holocaust, its scope and scale and why and how it happened.

Download the full IHRA Recommendations for Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust here.

Educators should be confident that the Holocaust can be taught effectively and successfully with careful preparation and appropriate materials. The section “How to teach about the Holocaust” discusses possibilities and challenges for teaching and learning about the Holocaust by presenting practical approaches and methods to apply in both formal and informal educational settings.

No single “correct” way of teaching, no ideal methodology appropriate for all educators and their learners exists for any subject. The recommendations offered here are, however, based on practical experiences and intended to be useful to schoolteachers and other educators in constructing their own schemes of work, taking into account the learning needs of individuals.

2021-04-152021-04-29

Vilnius Bridges Lit with Israeli Colors for Israeli Independence Day

The Lithuanian Jewish Community in cooperation with the Vilnius city municipality will light up three bridges in the Lithuanian capital on the evening of April 14 to celebrate the 73rd Israeli independence day.

From Wednesday evening to sundown on Thursday blue and white lights will illuminate the White, Green and King Mindaugas Bridges. These colors were chosen for the flag of the state of Israel by Dovid Volfson who was born in the small town of Darbėnai in Lithuania in the mid-19th century.

“Around the world Vilnius is known as the Jerusalem of the North because of the important Jewish cultural and historical figures who were born, grew up and studied here. A number of them actively contributed to the creation of fortification of the independent state of Israel, forging extremely strong and deep ties between Vilnius and Israel and its people,” LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said.

2021-04-142021-04-27

Happy 10th Birthday to Maceva, the Litvak Cemetery Catalogue

Photo: Restored Jewish cemetery in Šeduva, Lithuania.

Mazl tov to Maceva, the Litvak Cemetery Catalogue, which is celebrating a milestone: ten years of activity documenting, cleaning, digitizing, and restoring Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania.

“Beit Olam, cemeteries are the house of living. It is the place were our memory comes to life,” the non-profit organization, established in 2011, said in an anniversary statement on its facebook page.

2021-04-142021-04-14