Yiddish

Lithuanian Prime Minister Sends Birthday Greetings to Markas Petuchauskas

Premjeras sveikina Marką Petuchauską jubiliejaus proga

Lithuanian prime minister Algirdas Butkevičius has sent birthday greetings to art history and theater scholar Markas Petuchauskas on the occasion of his 85th birthday.

“You are an important creator of the cultural history of Lithuania and have dedicated many years of your life to the study of art and art history, and especially the development of our theater. Led by mature wisdom and relying upon your wide erudition, you have revealed to us the unique nature of works by famous artists and have painted detailed and colorful pictures of celebrated personalities. You have always been a person of wide horizons and constructive dialogue, and therefore have contributed much to the understanding and to the good cooperation between the Jewish and Lithuanian peoples.

“I sincerely thank you for your great contribution to the spiritual fortification of our state and enrichment of cultural life,” the Lithuanian prime minister said in his birthday greeting.

Happy 85th Birthday to Markas Petuchauskas

The Lithuanian Jewish Community wishes professor habil. Markas Petuchauskas a happy 85th birthday! The doctor of art history has written many books on theater and drama over many years.

We wish him continuing health, continuing creativity and hope for another of his wonderful books. Let’s all wish him inspiration, success and love.

Today Markas Petuchauskas is the only person who can speak with real authority about the Vilnius ghetto theater which operated in 1942 and 1943. He was a ghetto prisoner and miraculously survived, as did his mother, after being rescued by good people. For many years he has sought to renew the interrupted dialogue between Lithuanians and Jews, which, he says, is best understood through art.

Happy Birthday! Mazl tov! May you live to 120!

Lithuanian Jewish Community Chairwoman Pays Last Respects to Shimon Peres in Jerusalem

VILNIUS, September 30, BNS – Lithuania on Friday is paying last respects to late Israeli president Shimon Peres.

Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė and foreign minister Linas Linkevičius attended his funeral in Jerusalem, and Vilnius residents and guests can express their condolences at the Israeli embassy.

“We bid farewell to a great man of the world, a man of peace, an example of tolerance, a man important to all, including Lithuania, because he considered Lithuania, this region, his birthplace and called himself a Litvak,” Grybauskaitė said.

“His visit several years ago marked a significant improvement in the relationship between our states, which is very important for us not only as we look to the future, but also as we reflect on our painful past,” she said.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky also attended his funeral in Jerusalem.

Peres was born only 100 kilometers from Vilnius in a small town in what then was Poland in 1923.

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News from the Interwar Period in Jewish Lithuanian Newspapers

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Editorial board of Di Yiddishe Stime, 1924. Sitting, right to left: Nathan Goren, Roza Khazan-Feigin, Moshe Cohen, David Cohen, Reuven Rubinstein, Moritz Helman, Rafael Khasman. Standing, right to left: Ya’akov Feigin, Israel Zhufer, Moshe Rabinowitz, Eliezer Shibolet. Photo courtesy jewishgen.com

Jews were the largest ethnic and religious minority in Lithuania in the period between the two world wars. The Jewish culture of Lithuania, just like that of Eastern Europe as a whole, was multifaceted and diverse, and the Yiddish language was an important vehicle of communication. When Isaac Bashevis Singer received the Nobel Prize for Literature in December of 1978, he wasn’t just speaking in vain when he said: “There are some who call Yiddish a dead language, but so was Hebrew called for two thousand years. It has been revived in our time in a most remarkable, almost miraculous way. … It is a fact that the classics of Yiddish literature are also the classics of the modern Hebrew literature. Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and Cabbalists—rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget.

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Shimon Peres: An Exceptional Intellect and a True Litvak

Sh.Peresas buvo išskirtinio intelekto žmogus ir tikras litvakas – F.Kukliansky

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky says late Israeli president Shimon Peres was a person of exceptional intellect and always stressed his ties with Lithuania.

“It’s important for us, for Lithuanian Jews, that he was one of our own, we always considered him a Litvak and he considered himself a Litvak. After all, he came from Vishnev, a village 70 kilometers from Vilnius in what is now Belarus but which was Lithuanian territory then. It was so nice for us that our countryman was so intelligent, so educated, such an erudite, and could speak on any and every topic even at a venerable age. Our entire community is in mourning. We know human life has an end, but when you encounter death, great sadness overtakes you,” Kukliansky said.

Peres visited Lithuania three years ago and Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė met him when she visited Israel last year. This last spring he was decorated with the Lithuanian order of the Great Cross “For Contributions to Lithuania.”

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Yiddish for Pirates

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No, it’s not the latest whacky facebook language option to spice up your social media experience, but a novel by Litvak Canadian author Gary Barwin which is up for the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize for best new novel or short story in English authored by a Canadian.

Yiddish for Pirates is one of six candidates for the annual prize, vying for the prestigious award with Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien, Wonder by Emma Donoghue, Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittal, Party Wall by Catherine Leroux translated from French and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad.

Every year the Giller Prize looks back at the previous year’s fiction and presents a winner from their shortlist. This year’s awards ceremony will take place in Canada on November 7.

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Prize Recipients Chosen for Best Final Academic Work on Ethnic Minorities in 2016

Išrinkti 2016 m. Premijos už geriausią baigiamąjį mokslo darbą tautinių mažumų tematika laimėtojai

On September 14 the Academic Council of the Lithuanian Department of Ethnic Minorities selected the winners of a new prize created this year for best final academic work on ethnic minorities.

Department of Ethnic Minorities director Dr. Vida Montvydaitė made the final decision on recommendations from her Academic Council and selected Julijana Leganovič in the first nomination category for her bachelor’s work “Comparative View of the Development of the Vilnius and the Kaunas Jewish Communities in the Interwar Period.”

The second category was for master’s work and the winners were Rūta Anulytė with her “Heritage Protection and Maintenance of Historical Jewish Cemeteries in Lithuania: Practice and Recommendations” and Mantas Šikšnianas with his “Jews of Švenčionys from the mid-18th Century to the mid-20th Century: Shtetl, Sabbath, Shoah.”

Full story in Lithuanian here.

The Bloody Stones of the Towns

by Aras Lukšas
lzinios.lt

On September 23, 1943, the Nazis and collaborators concluded the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto. Twenty-two years ago this date was officially made the Day of Remembrance of the Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide. Now let’s remember the Jews of the rural towns and villages whose entire communities were destroyed during the first four months of war. Keydan, Yaneve, Vilkomir, Zager, Shadeve, Nayshtot-Tavrig… What do these strange words mean? Most likely not everyone would know these are the names of Lithuanian towns: Kėdainiai, Jonava, Ukmergė, Žagarė, Šeduva, Žemaičių Naumiestis. This was how the Jews who lived here for centuries called their homes in their native Yiddish language. In many of the locations just mentioned, they constituted half or even the majority of the population. For instance, before the war half the population of Ukmergė was Jewish, and Jonava’s was 80% Jewish, including traders, craftsmen, artisans, butchers and dairymen, attorneys and doctors…

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Lithuanian Radio To Revisit Litvak Past

lrtradijas

Beginning September 25 Lithuanian state radio will broadcast a series about Lithuanian shtetls. Radio journalists will talk about nine small Lithuanian towns where only a few buildings stand in silent testimony to their once thriving Jewish life, and will interview people now in their 80s who remember that legacy from childhood.

The episodes in the series will be broadcast every second Sunday after the 11 o’clock news and during the Ryto garsai progream on Tuesdays at 9:00 A.M. The first episode for broadcast September 25 is about Molėtai.

Lithuanians and Jews lived in common in the shtetls before World War II and not only made a life for themselves, but contributed deeply to the creation of the Lithuanian state and the economic and cultural development of the towns. War and the Holocaust, which saw the complete destruction of entire Jewish shtetl communities, and the various roles played by Lithuanian neighbors, followed by decades of occupation, have largely pushed this part of history into oblivion.

Not all who remember the time of Jewish prosperity are eager to talk about it. Many people are still steeped in feelings of fear, guilt and shame. At the same time descendants of Holocaust survivors are coming back in ever greater numbers to the birthplaces of their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents and making sense of a land which for many years only kindled negative emotions. Some of them are working to strengthen Lithuanian-Jewish relations, others seek to preserve the memory of their ancestors.

This documentary series won’t be easy listening. Even 75 years later, witnesses to the Jewish tragedy aren’t able to quell their tears and many are unable or unwilling to understand this darkest period in Lithuania’s history. On the other hand, they also recall the happy life of Lithuanians and Jews before the war, including childhood friends, the many Jewish shops and the taste of fresh bagels.

Lithuanian national radio frequencies:

Vilnius 89.0 MHz

Kaunas 102.1 MHz

Klaipėda 102.8 MHz

Šiauliai 100.9 MHz

Panevėžys 107.5 MHz

First episode about Molėtai available in Lithuanian here.

LJC Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky Speaks at Ponar September 23, 2016

LŽB pirmininkės F. Kukliansky kalba Paneriuose Holokausto aukų pagerbimo ceremonijoje

Dear participants,

I am sincerely thankful that you have gathered here today together with the Jewish Community to honor the memory of Holocaust victims.

But can we truly speak about honoring Holocaust victims when multiple streets in Lithuania are named after Kazys Škirpa, there is a school named after Jonas Noreika and the monument to Juozas Krikštaponis has still not been torn down?

We don’t have public spaces named after Ozer Finkelstein, Katz Motel or Volf Kagan. How many know the name of Liba Mednikienė, a scout in the Lithuanian battles for independence? Despite her service, she was murdered by Lithuanians during the Holocaust.

This and similar fates awaited the victims at Ponar. Our younger generation still doesn’t know about 650 years of Jewish history in Lithuania, before, during and after the Holocaust. Will the history textbooks teach this to the young citizens of Lithuania someday?

The Lithuanian Jewish Community has more questions than answers. The only sure thing is that an irreversible process has taken place and the country will never again be what it was before the Holocaust. But the Jewish Community is still here, and as long as it is, it will seek justice. But the highest value, truth, can only be restored when Lithuania works up the courage to name the perpetrators of the Holocaust. To remain silent about the Holocaust perpetrators, to forget the victims of the Holocaust and to disregard the living Jewish community is the same thing as killing the Jews again.

Today we mark the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the mass murder of the Jews in Lithuania. Our hope is that the smaller towns of Lithuania will remember their lost Jewish communities all year round, not just during Holocaust commemorations. From sporadic, random and often simply superficial events, memory of the Holocaust needs to become general knowledge, to become an integral part of the worldview of every conscientious citizen of Lithuania.

Thank you all who are not indifferent to the memory of the Holocaust, the Jewish tragedy, Lithuania’s tragedy.

Seeking Holocaust Reconciliation in Lithuania, from Los Angeles

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The Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, occupies a stately stone building on a large, forested park in the city’s center. It is notably not a Holocaust museum. To find the Holocaust Exposition, look for a small, clapboard wooden building on a narrow side street.

Instead, the museum commemorates atrocities more often spoken of in Lithuania: the lethal brutality of the Soviet regime against citizens of the Baltic country, with Lithuanians as victims rather than perpetrators.

Half a world away, Grant Gochin, a wealth manager in Woodland Hills, has spent the better part of a quarter-century trying to bring about greater recognition for the genocide carried out largely by ethnic Lithuanians against their Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust.

Full story here.

Kaunas Jewish Community Visit Balbieriškis and Prienai

Kauno žydų bendruomenė lankėsi Balbieriškyje bei Prienuose.

The Kaunas Jewish Community visited Balbieriškis and Prienai, Lithuania at the invitation of Balbieriškis Tolerance Center director Rymantas Sidaravičius on the European Day of Jewish Culture, September 4. The delegation toured a Balbieriškis Tolerance Center exhibit on the history of the Jews of the town and reflecting the center’s current relationships and friendships with Jews from around the world. They also toured the town, where Jewish homes and buildings from before the war still stand, and honored the memory of the dead with a prayer at the old Jewish cemetery in Balbieriškis.

Representatives then went to Prienai and honored Holocaust victims there. In Prienai they attended a museum event dedicated to the European Day of Jewish Culture. The museum event included a stirring presentation of the history of the Jews of Prienai, funny stories from Jewish life from before the war, significant achievements, good relations between Jews and other town residents and the Holocaust. The event included passages in Hebrew and Yiddish. The hosts made the delegation feel right at home at every stop on their visit, as if they were visiting old friends.

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Exiled to Siberia: Mama Didn’t Have a Kopek

Tremtinys I. Šliomovičius: mama neturėjo nė kapeikos

Text and photo by Daumantė Baranauskaitė manoteises.lt

More than seven decades ago the livestock cars began to leave Kaunas. Four-year-old Iser Shlomovich watched his father growing distant in one of those train cars. Iser, a Jew, his twin brother, sister and mother would all be deported to Siberia, too. When Lithuania was still an independent country, father and mother Shlomovich spoke Yiddish at home but spoke Russian to the children, so they would learn flawless Russian. As later events showed, they bestowed a great gift upon their children. Although most people don’t realize it, Lithuanian Jews were deported along with ethnic Lithuanians in 1941.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

In New York You Can Register to Vote in Yiddish

voterregister

In further efforts by city’s Board of Elections to expand voter access, registration forms now available for Yiddish-speaking constituents

JTA September 20, 2016

The New York City Board of Elections has made voting registration forms available in Yiddish.

The forms were available starting Monday, according to a statement by state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn democrat.

Hikind, who is Jewish, said he requested in December that the Board of Elections provide the forms in Yiddish.

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Press Release

September 20, 2016

Events to mark the Day of Remembrance of Jewish Victims of Genocide in Lithuania and to honor those who rescued Jews during the Holocaust begin this week, running from September 20 to September 28. It begins Tuesday with a volunteer group clean-up of the Jewish cemetery on Sudervės road in Vilnius. On September 21 a tour of Jewish Vilna will be offered, and a screening of the film “Gyvybės ir mirties duobė” [The Pit of Life and Death] will be held at 6 P.M. On September 22 the Israeli vocalist group Adam le Adam will hold a free concert at the square in front of the Old Town Hall in Vilnius at 6 P.M. A monument to commemorate the children who died in the Vilnius ghetto will be unveiled in the Garden of Brothers at the Vilnius Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium. Then a ceremony will be held to commemorate Holocaust victims at the Ponar Memorial Complex outside Vilnius.

The conference “They Rescued Lithuania’s Jews, They Rescued Lithuania’s Honor” will be held at the Lithuanian parliament from 11:30 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. on September 25, followed by a presentation of the Lithuanian Jewish Community Jewish calendar for the year 5777. The events at parliament mark the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust in Lithuania and the 150th anniversary of the birth of Lithuanian president and Righteous Gentile Kazys Grinius. A ceremony to present awards to rescuers of Jews is scheduled for September 28 at the Lithuanian President’s Office.

“This year this special emphasis on the small towns whose tragedy affected all people living in Lithuania. The mass murder of the Jews of the shtetls has revealed the full dimension of the tragedy,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said. “Lithuania is changing, a much braver younger generation is coming of age who take a different view of the history of their nation. The German press has called Lithuania the first state in Eastern Europe to openly raise the question of its own citizens’ complicity in the Holocaust. Lithuania is coming of age; we hope the country sets an example for neighboring states.

“As we remember every year the extremely painful losses we Jews have experienced, we advocate for analyses of the historical facts, what happened, what the Provisional Government of Lithuania did, how the Lithuanian Activist Front behaved. The Lithuanian Jewish Community is not an academic institution, but as much as we are able, with help from the state, without fanfare and sensationalism, we strive to make sense of the facts and circumstances in the Holocaust, and to educate the Lithuanian public on the history of the Jews of Lithuania. Again and again we dive deeper into Lithuanian history trying to understand why and how neighbor could turn on neighbor and murder their innocent, until then peaceful, well-educated and cultured good neighbors, including men, women, children and the elderly. Then stealing their property, and for decades denying they took part in the Holocaust. Forever and ever, but especially today, we remember our honorable fellow citizens, the Lithuanians who rescued Jews,” chairwoman Kukliansky said.

Events program here.

www.lzb.lt

Jewish Street Gets New Sign in Yiddish, Hebrew

Vilniuje Žydų gatvės pavadinimas užrašytas dar dviem kalbomis – ir יידישע גאס (jidiš klb.), ir רחוב היהודים (hebrajų klb.)

Žydų gatvė (Jewish Street, aka Yidishe Gas, aka ulica Żydowska), where the traditional Jewish quarter and the Great Synagogue of Vilnius was located, got a new sign in Yiddish and Hebrew Tuesday.

This was one in a continuing series of new signs in foreign languages, a controversial effort by Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius to showcase the multicultural identity of the Lithuanian capital. Earlier signs in “minority” languages included ones for Islandijos [Iceland] street, Washington Square, Varšuvos [Warsaw] street, Rusų [Russian] street and Totorių [Tatar] street in Vilnius.

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Jewish Street in Vilnius to Get Trilingual Street Sign

Žydų gatvė (Jewish street, aka Yidishe gas, aka ulica Żydowska), where the traditional Jewish quarter and the Great Synagogue of Vilnius was located, is about to get signs in Yiddish and Hebrew.

The special event to unveil the new sign is scheduled for 11:30 A.M., Tuesday, September 20 at Žydų street no. 2.

The program includes a performance of a piece by the Jewish song and dance ensemble Fayerlakh, followed by Vytautas Mitalas, chairman of the Vilnius municipal council’s culture, education and sports committee, presenting Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius. Šimašius is to present a small speech. Mitalas will then introduce Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, who will also deliver a small speech. The mayor and the chairwoman will then unveil the new street sign. Fayerlakh is then scheduled to perform another song.

The historic street and a neighboring street were cleared of their mainly Jewish residents in 1941 when the Nazis and Nazi collaborators set up the Vilnius ghetto. The residents were murdered and a large population of Jews from other parts of the city were forced into the cramped quarters there. It was part of the so-called Small Ghetto in Vilnius, liquidated in October of 1942. Žydų gatvė was the site of the Shulhof, the collection of buildings built around the location of the residence and study of the Vilna Gaon and the Great Synagogue.

Vilkaviškis Jewish Life before World War I

Vilkaviškio žydų gyvenimas prieš Pirmąjį pasaulinį karą
Seventy percent of Vilkaviškis residents were Jewish. Photo from Ralph Salinger’s archive

from http://www.santaka.info/ Santaka: Newspaper of the Vilkaviškis Region

On September 23 Vilkaviškis will also mark the Day of Genocide of Jews of Lithuania. Jewish history researcher Ralph Salinger who has donated so very much historical material about the Jews who once lived in our town and region will again visit. This man has collected where possible from Israeli museums and has allowed us as well as our regional history museum to use the material.

Thanks to him we can now share with our readers interesting stories from our town’s past. We present to you the history of the Jews who lived here, and of course Lithuanians as well, from 100 years ago.

This long story are recollections written in 1890 in Vilkaviškis by Harold Fryd, a Jew born and raised here, translated from English. His grandson David Perl has preserved these memoirs and has agreed to share them. The photographs next to the articles are from a later period, since photography wasn’t very developed or very widespread at the time. The photographs Ralph Salinger has sent are from 30-50 years later in the life of the town, but one realizes while reading the text that the town hadn’t changed much in the intervening period. Some of the memories are perhaps known to us, but some appear rather incredible and unexpected.

They Did Farming and Trade

At that time in my town, Vilkaviškis, there were about 8,000 people living there, of whom 70 percent were Jews. The rest were Lithuanians, Poles, Russians and a few Germans.

Translation to be continued.

Lithuanian original here.

Support the Lithuanian Jewish Community

Even your small donation today can help the Lithuanian Jewish Community achieve great things tomorrow.

The Lithuanian Jewish community has roots going back 700 years. Only a remnant survived the Holocaust. Although the current community is small, we are extremely active and are working hard to foster Jewish identity, maintain traditions and culture, commemorate Holocaust victims, provide social services to our members and promote tolerance in society.

We invite you to contribute to reviving at least a small portion of the legendary Jerusalem of Lithuania. Perform your mitzvah (good deed) today!

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