Yiddish

ORT and Non-ORT Schools Join in Partisan Anthem Project

With each Yom haShoah the number of Survivors dwindles making the challenge of engaging new generations more difficult and more urgent. We have found a way to involve ORT students across the former Soviet Union.

We have started an international push to popularise the partisan song Zog Nit Keynmol by linking ORT and non-ORT schools in an online programme to not only learn its Yiddish – and Hebrew – words but also to delve into its meaning and historical significance and to share what they learn.

The result has moved groups of students at World ORT schools in Kiev, Odessa, Kishinev, Vilnius, Chernivtsi, Tallinn, Moscow, Kazan and Samara to prepare videos for Yom haShoah singing the anthem written by the Vilna poet Hirsh Glik to a melody by the Soviet-Jewish composers Dmitri and Daniel Pokrass.

This is a powerful statement and shows that we can link the generations this way and honour the legacy of the Survivors.

World ORT has added a new video: A Song for Yom haShoah:

The next stage will evolve into a program in which our youth learn about their family histories within the context of our Jewish cultural history.

Find out more about my project here:
http://elirab.me/teaching-the-partisan-song-to-a-new-generation/

Best regards,
Eli Rabinowitz

Kaunas Jewish Community Celebrates Inventor of Esperanto

Zamenhof’s grave in Warsaw, visited by members of the Kaunas Jewish Community

The Kaunas Jewish Community marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, the inventor of the artificial international language Esperanto who sought to bring the races and linguistic groups of the world closer. Dr. Zamenhof sought to make Esperanto the world’s second language. The residents of Kaunas are proud L. L. Zamenhof called the city home for a time and proud of the legacy he left the world in the form of Esperanto.

According to wikipedia: “By 1878, his project Lingwe uniwersala was almost finished. However, Zamenhof was too young then to publish his work. Soon after graduation from school he began to study medicine, first in Moscow, and later in Warsaw. In 1885, Zamenhof graduated from a university and began his practice as a doctor in Veisiejai and after 1886 as an ophthalmologist in Płock and Vienna. While healing people there he continued to work on his project of an international language.”

More about Zamenhof and the language he created is available in the Lithuanian language:

Zamenhof and Kaunas
http://mokslolietuva.lt/2014/01/zamenhofas-ir-kaunas/

What happened to Esperanto?
http://www.bernardinai.lt/straipsnis/2015-10-23-kas-nutiko-esperanto-kalbai/136454

Website for learning Esperanto and learning about the history of the language.
https://lernu.net/lt

How is Lithuania connected to Esperanto?
http://www.yrasalis.lt/naujienos/kas-sieja-lietuva-ir-esperanto/

Silenced Shtetl of Divenishok Speaks Again

by Ieva Elenbergienė

A conversation with Dieveniškės Technological and Business School director Ilona Šedienė

Ilona, tell me about “your” Jews.

Today there are none left alive in Dieveniškės [Divenishok]. The amount of history we revive, that’s the amount we’ll have. The surviving historical material isn’t generous. We only know the center of Dieveniškės was one of many Lithuanian shtetls. In Jewish history a shtetl doesn’t mean just any town, the term is applied to towns where the Jewish population was truly large and was part of the life of the entire town. Most of ours were craftsmen. They also had their own synagogue, but the think was it was at the bottom of the hill so it didn’t stand above the Catholic church.

A significantly lesser amount of information remains about Dieveniškės than, say, Eišiškės [Eyshishok]. For those seeking information, the internet page Jews in Lithuania, zydai.lt, explains all shtetls in Lithuania were more or less similar. There was a customary order to life, a specific rhythm, and they were to a greater or lesser extent the same. Read about other ones and you’ll find they are similar to yours. But authenticity is always wanted… We’ve discovered material from local collectors, we’ve translated a portion of memoirs by Jews, and when we had a bit better picture put together, we staged an exhibit about the life, history and present situation of the Jews of Dieveniškės.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

#AtmintisAtsakomybeAteitis

Project supported by:
evz

Zog Nit Keynmol: The Partisan Song Project

Imagine a high school student in 2017, singing a Yiddish song with confidence and understanding. It may seem like an impossible dream, but Eli Rabinowitz is making it a reality.

Rabinowitz, who is ex-South African and resides in Perth, is passionate about Jewish education, genealogy and history. On a recent trip to South Africa, he was asked by Rabbi Craig Kacev (Head of Jewish Life at King David Schools) to address over 1000 students on the meaning of ‘Zog Nit Keynmol’ (‘Never say this is the final road …’) – known as the Partisan Song or the Holocaust Survivors Anthem or Hymn.

The words may be familiar to an older generation as they are often recited at Yom Hashoah ceremonies, but Rabbi Kacev felt that young Jewish students had no understanding of the meaning or inspiration of the song. By teaching them the words and their meaning, a legacy and a link could be created between young Jews and Holocaust survivors.

Indeed, when Eli Rabinowitz presented this to a group of Holocaust survivors in Johannesburg, they were thrilled and very moved. Inspired by their enthusiasm, he decided to encourage organisations and schools around the world to teach the song to students, in the hope that they will perform it at Yom Hashoah ceremonies across the globe on 23/24 April.

Rabinowitz took the initiative one step further in Cape Town, where he hosted a live ‘online classroom’ with six schools. These included Herzlia High School and a range of schools in Lithuania, Moldova and the Ukraine. This technological feat was achieved using ‘Google Hangouts’ and YouTube, with the expertise of Steve Sherman of Living Maths.

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Nechama Lifšicaitė Has Died

The Lithuanian Jewish Community is sad to announce the death of Nechama Lifšicaitė (Nekhama Lifshits, נחמה ליפשיץ) and we send our condolences to her daughter Roza. The older Litvak generation remembers well Nechama’s enchanting voice and her lyrical-coloratura soprano song. As we express our condolences, we say: let the ground be soft for her, and recordings of her songs will remind us all of the wonderful songstress and her interesting personality for a very long time to come.

Nechama was born in Kaunas in 1927 and grew up in a traditional Jewish family. She attended a Jewish school where her father Yehuda Tzvi was principal from 1921 to 1928. He later became a doctor. During World War II Nechama and her family found shelter in the Soviet Union and lived in Uzbekistan. They returned to Kaunas after the war. From 1946 to 1951 she studied at and was graduated from the Vilnius Music Conservatory. She performed concerts of her songs in Yiddish beginning in 1956. According to Solomon Atamuk, “Both in Lithuania and throughout the [Soviet] Union, Lifšicaitė provided refreshing national and spiritual sustenance to the Jews thirsting for their culture. Nechama’s songs expressed the deepest experiences and aspirations of the Jews of the Soviet Union; they were moving and spiritualizing.”

Overcoming limitations on doing her repertoire was not a simple matter during the Soviet era, but Nechama Lifšicaitė was able to turn her concert tour across many Soviet cities into a wake-up call for cultural and ethnic identity. Despite the negative view taken by government agencies towards the ethno-cultural activities in which Nechama Lifšicaitė was engaged, she was recognized in 1958 for her exceptional artistic expression and vocal abilities with first prize in the Soviet music maestro competition, and was granted permission to tour abroad. She performed in Austria, Belgium and France. Her songs were released on two records in 1960 and 1961, which were reissued several times in later years.

Nechama Lifšicaitė and her family made aliyah to Israel in 1969 where two more records of her songs were released that same year. She performed in cities and villages, on the radio and on television. Her appearances were great successes. In the period from 1969 to 1972 she did concert tours of the United Kingdom, Canada, the USA, Mexico, Venezuela, Brasil and Australia. In 1976, without retiring from her musical career, she completed library science studies at Bar-Ilan University and became director of the historical archive of the Tel Aviv Municipal Music Library.

Never Give Up

There’s a song sung in Israel, and when the first bars ring out, most people stand. It’s called by several names–Zog Nit Keynmol, Don’t Say Never, We’re Still Here, the Partisan Hymn or Anthem–but the title isn’t important. The content is. And the content comes from the Vilna ghetto, a poem in Yiddish by the young Hirsh Glik, put to music by his friend Rachel Margolis, a young blonde, blue-eyed Jewish girl who joined the underground, survived, and spent much of the rest of her life engaged in Holocaust education.

Glik died during the Holocaust; Margolis passed away only a few years ago. According to Margolis, Glik read the poem to her on a cold winter day on a corner in the Vilnius ghetto where Rudninkų square is now located. She said there were buildings there then. As Glik read the poem, she began to hear music between the lines, from a Russian film she had seen. Both young people went to the FPO, the underground partisan organization in the ghetto, and asked permission to make the words and music the official anthem of the FPO youth section. The leadership agreed.

Now there’s a project for Jewish day schools around the world to teach the song to a new generation of young people. Eli Rabinowitz of Perth, Australia, is teaching children in Australia, Israel and South Africa and there are plans for new performances around Yom haShoah, Holocaust Day commemorated in Israel, this year on April 23.

The Jewish press in South Africa and Australia has done extensive coverage of the Partisan Hymn Project and the Vilnius ORT Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium in Vilnius is a pioneer in making the project happen. The World ORT organization is supporting the project and plans to post some video performances before Yom haShoah.

For more information, see here.

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Holocaust Escape Tunnel

At ground zero for the final solution, scientists uncover a story of hope and bravery.
Airing April 19, 2017, at 9 P.M. on PBS

Program Description

For centuries, the Lithuanian city of Vilna was one of the most important Jewish centers in the world, earning the title “Jerusalem of the North” until World War II, when the Nazis murdered about 95% of its Jewish population and reduced its synagogues and cultural institutions to ruins. The Soviets finished the job, paving over the remnants of Vilna’s famous Great Synagogue so thoroughly that few today know it ever existed. Now, an international team of archaeologists is trying to rediscover this forgotten world, excavating the remains of its Great Synagogue and searching for proof of one of Vilna’s greatest secrets: a lost escape tunnel dug by Jewish prisoners inside a horrific Nazi execution site.

PBS program announcement here.

For more, see:
http://www.lzb.lt/en/2016/07/01/picking-up-the-pieces/
http://www.lzb.lt/en/2016/07/24/israeli-antiquities-authority-reports-major-finds-in-lithuania/
http://www.lzb.lt/en/2017/01/02/new-york-times-ponar-top-science-story-in-2016/

Vilna Gaon Museum on New Jewish Museum Proposal

The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum has issued a statement via press release about a recent proposal by Lithuanian officials to set up a Holocaust-free new Jewish museum in the Palace of Sports or next to it on land which contains the centuries-old historic Jewish graveyard of Vilnius.

Let’s Create a Strategic Strategy for Jewish Heritage, Not Disneyland

The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum was disappointed by information appearing in the press last week about plans by government institutions to establish another Jewish museum in the Lithuanian capital instead of assuring support for existing projects.

The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, whose sections are housed in authentic buildings closely connected with the Jewish history of Vilnius, has recently been undergoing an intense and productive period. We host international events at the highest level, for example, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance conference held on March 22 and 23, and the number of visitors is constantly growing. New permanent exhibitions are being created for installation in our historic buildings, including the opening this fall of a new Samuel Bak Museum, showcasing the Litvak painter’s life and works, and in the near future we also intend to open the Museum of Lithuanian Jewish Culture, aka the Litvak Center and a dedicated Lithuanian Holocaust and Vilnius ghetto memorial museum, which has attracted the attention of international museum organizations including ICOM.

The latter museum is to be housed in the historical building on Žemaitijos street (former Strashun street) which was listed as a cultural treasure last month. This is the building which housed the Mefitsei Haskalah library before World War II and the Vilnius ghetto library during the war. which organized cultural events inside the ghetto and served as a secret meeting place for members of the ghetto resistance organization. In 1945 Holocaust survivors established the short-lived Jewish Museum in the building, quickly shut down by the Soviet government. The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum intends to reutilize the building for Holocaust education. After the museum has these additional sections, a unique route will be created for the visitor to explore Jewish Vilna.

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Klaipėda Jewish Community Celebrates Purim with Concert in Yiddish

The Klaipėda Jewish Community held a concert March 22 by the Klezmasters led by Lev Sandiuk and vocalist Alina Ivakh with solo performances by Mikhail Blinkov on clarinet and Aleksei Rozov on violin. The group performed songs in Yiddish as well as Hebrew, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian and even Azeri. The concert was held as a sort of joint celebration of Purim, the happiest of Jewish holidays, and the International Day of Happiness. The Purim holiday was presented to the multicultural audience. The concert went late into the night and Klaipėda municipal officials and members of the various ethnic communities in Klaipėda thanked the organizers for the good time had by all.

For more, see here.

Former Vilnius Ghetto Library Receives Protected Status

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Vilnius, March 22, BNS–The building of a former Jewish library in Vilnius has been entered on the registry of cultural treasures and there are plans to house a Vilnius ghetto museum there.

The Cultural Heritage Department announced the building with a commemorative plaque at Žemaitijos street no. 4 is being provided legal protection for its valuable archaeological, architectural and historical characteristics. The first council for assessing real estate cultural heritage at the department made the decision.

Cultural Heritage Department director Diana Varnaitė the surviving building which was part of the Vilnius ghetto and where the Mefitsei Haskalah library operated and later the Vilnius ghetto library is not currently being used and belongs to the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum.

“At [the museum’s] initiative there are plants to set up a museum commemorating the Holocaust in Lithuania and the Vilnius ghetto which will exhibit the vast Jewish cultural heritage and the history of the Holocaust in Lithuania. The names of Holocaust victims are read out there annually to mark the day of Jewish genocide,” director Diana Varnaitė said.

Žemaitijos 4 250px-Vilna1

Special Celebrations at the Šiauliai Jewish Community

Last weekend was special for the Šiauliai Jewish Community. Friday many members of the community gathered to celebrate the Sabbath conducted properly by Rabbi Kalev Krelin. The men went for prayer to the synagogue and the women lit the candles to the kiddush and challa. We had a special guest: Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon paid an unofficial visit.

At the culmination of the evening the entire community enjoyed kosher floimen-tzimmes.

Early Saturday morning the men gathered again for prayer at synagogue with the rabbi.

In the evening all members of the community dressed up in carnival costumes and masks and gathered to celebrate Purim. Rabbi Kalev Krelin read from the Book of Esther and all of us, together and loudly, wiped the name of Haman from history.

This year the holiday coincided with the 27th anniversary of modern Lithuanian independence and the community didn’t neglect that holiday either, singing the Lithuanian national anthem (and Hatikvah).

With our feasting and fun we celebrated Purim according to all the Jewish traditions.

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Lithuanian Jewish Community Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky’s Greetings on March 11, Day of Restoration of Lithuanian Independence.

I wish all members of the community a happy holiday!

For Litvaks Lithuania is the land of our ancestors, and March 11, the day 27 years ago when Lithuanian independence was restored, is an important holiday for us, marking as well the beginning of the rebirth of the surviving Jewish community. March 11 is for each of us an exceptional and dear day, and we cannot allow ourselves to forget how important the state where we live and where our children grow is to us. In 1918 as the first Republic of Lithuania was being born her Jewish citizens volunteered to fight for Lithuanian freedom, and went on to foster the economic and social welfare of this state.

In the run-up to March 11, significant activity by the Lithuanian Jewish initiative group took place in 1988 dedicated to the rebirth of Jewish culture. After the Lithuanian independence movement Sąjūdis was established, Lithuanian Jews were faced with the dilemma of how Jewish relations with the Lithuanian national movement would develop as the wounds of the Holocaust remained painful, recalling the tragedy which took place in this country.

Along side the rebirth of Lithuanian independence, first came the rebirth of Jewish cultural activity, and the Jewish Cultural Association was the first to hold a congress, beginning the conversation about the destruction of the Jewish community during the Holocaust in 1989, for the first time since the decline of the Soviet era in Lithuania. I have to say Jewish-Lithuanian relations in the historical context, their evaluation and research began exactly with the rebirth of independence when there had to be an assessment of the Holocaust and the active role played by Lithuanians in it had to be admitted. There were also efforts made to help Jews restore their Jewish identity.

The Jewish communities in the shtetls were exterminated in the Holocaust, the shtetls are gone and Yiddish is no longer spoken in Lithuania. Currently the Jewish communities in Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai, Panevėžys and Švenčionys have been re-formed. We still dream of a revival of the Yiddish language.

In the recent past we have sensed the emergence of a new generation in Lithuanian society who are interested in Jewish history and the life of the Jews in Lithuania, and slowly but surely stereotypical thinking is fading away.

When we speak of the values of March 11, we underline human rights and freedoms and their necessary consolidation and growth. We hope for the generation who understand their importance and who cherish and protect these rights and freedoms, and who connect love for their native land with self-respect and respect for all of its citizens.

Was Hebrew Ever a Dead Language?

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Frequent VYI summer course student Sonya Yampolskaya at her doctoral defense in Russia

Frequent student at the Yiddish summer courses at Vilnius University Sonya Yampolskaya has successfully defended her doctoral dissertation casting serious doubt on the alleged morbidity and revival of the Hebrew language.

If Hebrew were a “dead language” before its revival as the official language of Israel, as is commonly accepted, then why was it being used by Russian Jews who were even opening new Hebrew newspapers right into the 20th century?

The first chapter of Yampolskaya’s dissertation at St. Petersburg State University details both the genesis of the myth of the death of Hebrew and its alleged “resurrection” by Ben-Yehuda, and a discussion of the concepts of “dead” and “alive” as they are used in different scientific paradigms, and especially their usage in linguistics and biology. The first chapter also explores developments within Ashkenazic Hebrew in the 19th and 20th centuries. Chapters Two and Three get down to the nitty-gritty, detailing the process of lexical borrowings into Ashkenazic and what is called the T-V (tu, vous) distinction in linguistics to demonstrate both innovations and the loss of traditional forms in the language in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Yampolskaya says Ashkenazic did undergo a kind of extinction in public use in the Soviet Union ca. 1925-1926, but that its rapid development from the 1850s to the 1920s resulted in publications in Latvia, Lithuania, Bessarabia (Moldova), Poland and the Ukraine besides Russia, whose output of text vastly outweighed Hebrew-language publications from Palestine, the Americas and Western Europe. The way words were borrowed from foreign languages carried over into the method used in modern Israeli Hebrew, Yampolskaya found. The idea Hebrew was a dead language, as might be said of Latin and classical Greek, found proponents in the Yiddish side of the battle between Hebrew and Yiddish for the soul of the Jewish people. Yampolskaya also notes the seemingly Christian symbolism ironically involved in the semi-official myth of Hebrew’s death and resurrection by the State of Israel ca. 1948 following 2,000 years of its alleged morbidity. Besides the use of Ashkenazic Hebrew in “high register” venues such as religious books and its “mid-level” use in the periodical press, Yampolskaya discusses its use as an everyday language among Russia’s Jews.

Yampolskaya’s dissertation at the Oriental Studies department of St. Petersburg State University is the first one in 50 years on Hebrew.

Dissertation in Russian with extensive English translation available here.

Photos and details of the doctoral defense in Russian here.

State-of-the-Art Jewish Museum Planned in Šeduva

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Preliminary design concept for the Lost Shtetl Museum

Plans have been announced for a state-of-the-art Jewish museum scheduled to open in 2019 as part of the Lost Shtetl memorial complex in Šeduva, Lithuania.

The museum complex is to be designed by the Finnish company Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects who also designed the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. POLIN won the 2016 European Museum of the Year Award. They are towork together with local partner Studia2A established in 1994 and headed by Vilnius Art Academy dean of architecture Jonas Audejaitis.

The museum is to be located next to the sprawling Šeduva Jewish cemetery, completely restored and opened in 2015 as part of the memorial complex. The complex includes memorials at three sites of Holocaust mass murders and mass grave sites and a symbolic sculpture in the middle of the town. A study of the Jews of Šeduva was conducted as part of the project and is to result in a documentary film called Petrified Time by film director Saulius Beržinis.

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Memorial statue in Šeduva. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Sergey Kanovich, founder of the Šeduva Jewish Memorial Fund, said the Lost Shtetl Museum will employ advanced technologies to teach visitors the history and culture of Šeduva and similar Litvak shtetls. It is expected to serve as an educational and cultural center.

“Visiting the Lost Shtetl will be a history lesson which will allow national and international visitors to learn about the lost Litvak shtetl history and culture,” he said.

“Lifestyle, customs, religion, social, professional, and family life of Šeduva Jews will serve a center point of the Museum exhibition,” he said. Visitors to museum will learn “the tragedy of Šeduva Jewish history which in the early days of World War II ended in three pits near the shtetl.”

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Lithuanian Women’s Magazine Features Amit Belaitė on Cover

16486907_10154232463426867_5335691874283383955_oA popular magazine for young Lithuanian women has featured Amit Belaitė, the head of the Lithuanian Union of Jewish Students, on its February cover, with a long interview with her and a series of fashion photographs inside.

“Cover girl: Amita honors her people’s past with deeds,” the cover proclaims.

The feature on page 10 is called “Living History”:

“The Jewish girl Amita Belaitė (24) is completing her studies this year at Vilnius University. During her university career this active defender of human rights was able to establish the Lithuanian Union of Jewish Students, to become the vice president and a member of the executive board of the European Union of Jewish Students, to start a Jewish history project called Mayses fun der Lites/Stories from Lithuania, to become a Living Library volunteer and for all of those activities to receive a tolerance award. Amita, who selected social health studies as her major, said her professional career over those years would have been much more difficult if not for her love of her cherished boyfriend, the economist Rokas Grajauskas (31).”

More information in Lithuanian here.

Sole Jewish Survivor of Holocaust in Šilalė Says Old Jewish Cemetery Cattle Pasture Now

Until World War II, the majority of the residents of the western Lithuanian town of Šilalė were Jews. The brick synagogue was built sometime around 1910 to 1914 at what is now the corner of V. Kudirkos street and Maironio street. There is a hardware store there now. The old Jewish cemetery is now pasture for livestock, with just the Holocaust mass murder site next to it fenced off.

Zeligmanas

Lithuanian Jewish Community member Ruvin Zeligman is the sole survivor of approximately 1,500 Šilalė Jews murdered in the Holocaust. He was 10 when World War II began in Lithuania in 1941.

Although he hasn’t lived in Šilalė for many years now, when he speaks he still falls into the western Lithuanian dialect. His wife also comes from the region and they speak in dialect at home.

Zeligman remembers the great fire which ravaged the town in 1939, burning down his family home and the entire street, taking a terrible toll on the town’s mainly wooden buildings.

How do you remember Šilalė when you lived there with your parents and family?

At that time about 60% of Šilalė’s population was Jewish. My father was a religious figure: the cantor, mohel [performer of circumcision], a religious teacher and a reznik [a man educated in the rules of kosher slaughter]. My father graduated from the famous Telz yeshiva. He was a respected man and he helped the local residents of Šilalė with his knowledge of medicine, healing the sick. There were four of us children in the family. Mother took care of the home and the children. We lived well, back then each of us, the four children, had a golden goblet at home and mother used to bring out a silver candleholder for holidays.

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Zeligman lights candles for the murdered Jews of Šilalė at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius

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Kaunas Jewish Community Celebrates 120th Birthday of Yudl Mark

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The Yiddish Club of the Kaunas Jewish Community is celebrating the 120th birthday of Litvak-American Yiddish philologist, educator and author Yudl Mark (1897-1975). Mark taught at the Vilkomir Jewish Gymnasium and was one of the founders of YIVO. He moved to the United States in 1936, and to Israel in 1970. Among his many great works stands the 12-volume Groyser verterbukh fun der yidisher shprakh (Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language), which caused dispute with YIVO over the use of non-YIVO orthography.

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Lithuanians Rediscover Their Own Anne Frank


Estera Kverelytė second from left

Romualdas Beniušis writing in the newspaper Lietuvos žinios tells the story of Estera Kverelytė, a Jewish girl from Darbėnai (Drobyan or Dorbyan in Yiddish), Lithuania, who kept a diary in the months leading up to her murder at the hands of postman and policeman Vladas Jašinskas presumably in early July of 1941. Kverelytė’s diary has been lost but is known to have existed and was used in a documentary called “Nebaigtas dienoraščio puslapis” [Unfinished Page of a Diary] released by the Lithuanian Film Studio in 1964 and still available for viewing on the internet archive of Lithuanian National Radio and Television, according to the author. Beniušis is trying to locate the diary and is asking the public for help.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

A Mekhaye Winter Children’s Camp 2016

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The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Joint Distribution Committee traditionally hold the A Mekhaye winter camp for Children and did so late last year in 2016 as well. The camp is held in Dubingiai, Lithuania. It usually includes about 90 children who spend the holiday period together. This year as in earlier years we assembled a great team, people who know their work and who have been part of camp staff for several years now.

This year the theme was “Hanukkah in the shtetl,” since the camp coincided with the holiday. Each day camp counselors introduced a new topic and taught the children about it. Besides just being fun, the camp is very educational, even if information comes through games, as it often does. The children and staff say they feel right at home in Dubingiai now, as if it were their second home.

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