Yiddish – Page 22 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Commemoration of the Holocaust in Šeduva, Lithuania

UPDATE: Event organizers are providing transport from Vilnius and several free seats are left! Please register for a place before August 23 by sending an email to info@lostshtetl.com

You are invited to an event to commemorate the Šeduva Jewish community murdered in the Holocaust. The event is on on August 30 and will be a kaddish at the 3 mass murder sites and the old Šeduva Jewish cemetery.

Commemorative program

9:00–9:30 Kaddish at the Jewish mass murder site in Pakuteniai forest
https://goo.gl/maps/tdN5Y3mrWJw

9:45–10:15 Kaddish at Liaudiškiai Jewish mass murder site I
https://goo.gl/maps/fhjnq5ubSfk

10:30–11:00 Kaddish at Liaudiškiai Jewish mass murder site II
https://goo.gl/maps/mYLnGLUmVuK2

11:15–11:45 Kaddish at the Šeduva Jewish cemetery
https://goo.gl/maps/ZuHGdK9EHvF2

12:00–12:30 Coffee break at the Šeduva Culture and Crafts Center

12:45-1:30 Mass at the Holy Apparition of the Cross Church in Šeduva

1:30–2:15 Yiddish song concert by Rafailas Karpis and Darius Mažintas at the church in Šeduva

Download PDF format event program

More here.

2016-08-182016-09-02

In Memoriam Fira Bramson

In an article published on the website of the literary and arts magazine Literatura ir Menas, Mindaugas Kvietkauskas shares his memories of the late Fira Bramson.

Esther’s Scissors
by Mindaugas Kvietkauskas

Nuotrauka iš asmeninio archyvo

I will call her by a biblical name, Esther. Now I may. That was how the rabbi called her to eternity so recently his prayer uttered before the first three handfuls of earth were sprinkled on her shrunken body, cut off from the world of the living.

In life it was different: she was Fira, sometimes Firochka. I smile when I think how unrecognizably the name of the queen of Persia, meaning morning star, has changed in our lands, in the daily language of the Yiddish dialect washed by the great Slavic languages. But now that she has entered a time of more perfect reckoning, Fira has again become Esther, the daughter of Israel, the morning star, Ester bat Israel.

Bramson Esfira Fira Bramson in 1949

Full piece in Lithuanian here.

2016-08-16

Jakub Wygodzki, Vilnius Doctor

Vygodskis Jakovas

In her memoirs Alexandra Brushtein, the only child of famous prewar Vilnius doctor Jakub Wygodzki, said her father was the only person who could explain to her why one or another person is stupid. She said it was sad her father didn’t have time to talk with her because he was a busy doctor.

Besides being a doctor, Wygodzki was a member of the council for the restoration of Lithuanian statehood, the minister for Jewish affairs in the first government and the chairman of the Vilnius Jewish Community.

But he is best known because of his good heart and selflessness. He treated poor patients and came back from operations at night so tired he couldn’t eat. Later, in old age, he saved Jews fleeing persecution, and his life was cut short at the Gestapo prison in Vilnius.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2016-08-14

Clarification

To whom it may concern,

In light of Mr. Gary Eisenberg’s recent article about Lithuanian citizenship for Litvaks published in Israel and South Africa, the Lithuanian Jewish Community states for the record:

1. There is no special legislation or program for recruiting Litvaks for Lithuanian citizenship. This is disinformation. The existing legislation on applications for Lithuanian citizenship by prewar citizens of Lithuania and their offspring was only reworded slightly to prevent misinterpretations of the intent of legislators by public servants to the detriment of Jewish applicants and applicants of other ethnicities. As far as we are aware, there is no “Lithuanian Citizenship Programme” for Litvaks in Lithuania or anywhere else, despite what was written in Mr. Eisenberg’s article.

2. The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius with the Vilnius Religious Jewish Community are firm followers of the traditions of the Vilna Gaon and have nothing to do with Chabad Lubavitch or their rabbi. We have a rabbinate of two rabbis who are firmly within the mitnagedic tradition. Mr. Eisenberg’s statements he celebrated Sabbath with Chabad Lubavitch Rabbi Krinsky, followed by the statement he visited the Choral Synagogue, could mislead some readers into thinking the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius is a Chabad Lubavitch center, which it is not.

Sincerely,

Faina Kuklianskay, attorney,
chairwoman,
Lithuanian Jewish Community

2016-08-122016-08-23

Yiddish Vegetarian Potluck

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As another successful summer program of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute at Vilnius University wound down, writer Ellen Cassedy and the students, faculty and staff held a vegetarian potluck August 10.

Cassedy gave a brief presentation in Yiddish about the remarkable prewar vegetarian cookbook by Fania Lewando and spoke about her life and her vegetarian restaurant which was located on what is now Vokiečių street in Vilnius. Using slides Cassedy showed period photographs and pictures of foods featured at the restaurant, occasionally clarifying her remarks in English.

A full classroom of perhaps 30 people listened intently as latecomers filtered in, some bearing plates and bowls of food. A long table in front of the podium enticed the eye with a variety of dishes made by the students and staff themselves.

2016-08-112016-08-23

Maya Pennington Concert

Mayos Pennington koncertas Vilniuje, Lietuvos žydų (litvakų) bendruomenėje

Maya Pennington’s concert at the Lithuanian Jewish Community August 4 drew a large crowd.

Maya spoke about her Litvak roots, her tender feelings for Vilnius which she is visiting for the second time to study Yiddish and her love of music.

Maya said music is the best international language.

2016-08-09

A Jewish Culinary Legend Reborn: Fania Lewando’s Vilnius

Lewando Fania2
by Jūratė Važgauskaitė Šaltinis, manoteises.lt

If you happened to be walking on Vokiečių street in Vilnius eighty years ago, you would surely have noticed the sign for the Dieto-Yarska Yadlodaynia restaurant, and if you stepped inside you would probably have bumped into Marc Chagall, the famous artist, as well as discovering good food. The vegetarian restaurant beloved of connoisseurs belonged to Faina Lewando-Fiszelewicz aand her husband Lazar Lewando. These members of the Vilnius Jewish community established their Dieto-Yarska Yadlodaynia (“Dietary/Vegetarian Cafeteria”) in the building that was marked no. 14 on Vokiečių street then and created a food revolution in Vilnius at that time, then called Wilno.

A vegetarian restaurant in the 1930s was a big sensation. Although vegetarian dishes were nothing new in the Jewish culinary traditions of Eastern Europe, they were often eaten by solitary diners or if no other kosher food choice was available. A vegetarian restaurant was extraordinary.

Ashkenazi food traditions, named after the word for Jews living in Eastern and Northern Europe, dominated the city and entire region when Faina Lewando opened her vegetarian restaurant and a culinary school right next to it in Vilnius. These traditions made much use of meat products and fat and heart meat dishes for holidays and to warm up during winter, without which the Jewish dinner table was inconceivable. It was to be expected that a luxury vegetarian restaurant in interwar Vilnius would create so much wonder and interest among the public.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2016-08-082016-08-23

Lithuanian Parliament Passes Amendment to Ensure Citizenship for Litvaks

The Lithuanian parliament Thursday adopted amendments to Lithuania’s citizenship law to ensure the rights to citizenship of Jews who left Lithuania between the two world wars and their descendants. The vote was 98 for, none against and four abstentions. The amendments will come into force after president Dalia Grybauskaitė signs them into law. The new legislation was introduced to parliament this week and were scheduled for fast-track consideration and debate. The new language specifies citizenship is restored to an individual who left Lithuania before March 11, 1990, the date Lithuania formally declared independence from the Soviet Union, except for cases where the individual left Lithuania to live in another part of the Soviet Union after June 15, 1940, the date the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania. The current law on citizenship allows those who left Lithuania before March 11, 1990, to hold dual citizenship.

“I very much welcome the change in the law, and I am certain the Lithuanian state has lost nothing at all, and on the contrary, has received much more, a good name and living potential,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky told BNS.

One of the authors of the new language, conservative opposition leader MP Andrius Kubilius, noted the current regulations needed to be better defined because Migration Department staff and the courts had begun to demand Litvaks provide proof they or their ancestors were persecuted in Lithuania between the wars. The new language makes it explicit that “withdrawal” or “flight” from Lithuania and “leaving the country” are all used synonymously and people in both alleged categories are included in the right to restoration of citizenship.

2016-08-012016-08-23

Maya Pennington at the Lithuanian Jewish Community Thursday

mayapenn

Maya Pennington and the Hive!

Come… Hear… Fall in Love!

At 6:00 P.M. this Thursday, August 4, at the Lithuanian Jewish Community (Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius)

About Maya

Singer, actress, composer.

Born in Jerusalem, Maya began learning music when she was 5. She graduated from the Ruben Academy for music and dance High School (majoring in Baroque flute), later studyied jazz voice and multi-disciplinary composition at the Academy of Music and Rimon. In order to supplement her acting training, she took part in courses held by Sadna’ot Habama with teachers from the Royal Academy of Music and Guildford and with teachers specializing in various acting methods. She toured internationally with the a cappella group Voca People (2009-2013), and performed as a soloist with a wide variety of performances, ranging from several performances with the Be’er Sheva sinfonietta to the international Red Sea Jazz Festival 2008, the Jerusalem Jazz Festival 2006, etc. and as a recording artist on several albums, including Ittai Rosenbaum’s “Between Waters and Waters” (2009).

2016-08-012016-08-09

Sulamita Lermanaitė-Gelpernienė Would Be 90 Tomorrow

photo: Antanas Sutkus

Sulamita Lermanaitė-Gelpernienė would have celebrated her 90th birthday tomorrow, July 28. People who knew her remember her.

§§§

…After being graduated from the Vilnius Conservatory, she became a pianist, a concert performer and a concert master at the Lithuanian Conservatory.

Lithuanian Music Academy professor and cathedral head Leonidas Melnikas told [the magazine] Muzikos Barai about Sulamita Lermanaitė-Gelpernienė whom he met when he went to work at the Music Academy as a young man. The professor spoke with the reporter Asta Linkevičiūtė. An excerpt is provided below.

What sort of person, colleague, fellow worker was she?

This was a person to whom you could always go to ask for help of a professional nature, whom you could ask about something, who always sincerely offered advice. She gave advice on how to come up with a repertoire, what material to teach during the school year, how to educate students. Professional communication with her was important human communication and also very pleasant. She was an active member of the cathedral, a real patriot of the collective, she was a fan of the cathedral and the students. The people around Gelpernienė always felt her attentiveness, interest and support.

2016-07-272016-08-03

Preparations Under Way for Švenčionėliai Mass Murder Site Renovation

Ruošiamasi Švenčionėlių masinių žydų žudynių vietos tvarkymui

Work to renovate the Švenčionėliai mass murder site under the current plan is scheduled to begin in August and September, Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moisiejus Šapiro says. The period from June to November of 1941 was the most horrible and tragic period in the genocide, when about 80% of Jews in Lithuania were murdered. A ghetto was established in Švenčionys and mass murder operations were begun there. According to different sources, 7,000 to 8,000 Jews were shot across the Žeimena River in Švenčionėliai. A memorial marks the site.

Determining the exact identity of those murdered and buried near Švenčionėliai has been fraught with difficulty. After approaching numerous archives, only the names of seven Holocaust victims buried there were found. Chairman Moisiejus Šapiro is asking Holocaust survivors from the Švenčionys region and the small shtetls there and their children, grandchildren and relatives, wherever they might live now, to tell their stories and send him the names and surnames of those murdered at Švenčionėliai

He can be reached by email at moisa50@mail.ru

2016-07-24

Israeli Antiquities Authority Reports Major Finds in Lithuania

2.Historical with team
Photo: Ezra Wolfinger/NOVA

Historical Discovery in Lithuania: The Escape Tunnel of the “Burning Brigade” in Ponar (Paneriai) Has Been Rediscovered

For the first time since the Holocaust the famous tunnel used by the prisoners of Ponar to escape from the Nazis has been located using new technologies for underground predictive scanning.

In an exciting new discovery using electric resistivity tomography at the Ponar massacre site near Vilnius in Lithuania, the escape tunnel used by the so called “burning brigade” to elude captivity and certain death at the hands of the Nazis has been pinpointed.

Some 100,00 people, of whom 70,000 were Jews originating in Vilna and the surrounding area, were massacred and thrown into pits in the Ponar forest near the Lithuanian capital during World War II. With the retreat of the German forces on the eastern front and the advance of the Red Army, a special unit was formed in 1943 with the task of covering up the tracks of the genocide. In Ponar this task was assigned to a group of 80 prisoners from the Stutthof concentration camp.

At night the prisoners were held in a deep pit, previously used for the execution of Vilna’s Jews, while during the day they worked to open the mass graves, pile up the corpses on logs cut from the forest, cover them with fuel and incinerate them. All the while their legs were shackled and the worked in the full knowledge that on the completion of their horrendous task, they, too, would be murdered by their captors. Some of the workers decided to escape by digging a tunnel from the pit that was their prison. For three months they dug a tunnel some 35 meters in length, using only spoons and their hands. On the night of April 15, 1944, the escape was made. The prisoners cut their leg shackles with a nail file, and 40 of them crawled through the narrow tunnel. Unfortunately they were quickly discovered by the guards and many were shot. Only 15 managed to cut the fence of the camp and escape into the forest. Twelve reached partisan forces and survived the war.

2016-07-24

Ponar Escape Tunnel Found

Mokslininkai Lietuvoje rado tunelį, kuriuo žydai bėgo nuo nacių

An international group of scholars has completed nearly two weeks of archaeological digging at two sites of importance to Lithuanian Jewish history. They looked for a tunnel known from Holocaust testimonies and attempted to confirm information about the Great Synagogue and surrounding buildings in Vilnius. They used new non-invasive techniques: ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistivity tomography. The international group of scholars included scientists from Israel, Canada, the US and Lithuania. Project leader Dr. John Seligman is the head of the archaeological digging department of the Israeli Antiquities Service. US student volunteers helped at the sites. Some were in Eastern Europe and Lithuania for the first time.

Full story in Lithuanian on Vilnius University’s web site.

2016-07-24

Ellen Cassedy to Speak in Vilnius

The Jewish cultural and information center in Vilnius Old Town is proud to continue its brand new summer series of mini seminars in English for the local and international communities, a series of one-hour free and open forums where harmonious exchange of views, traditions and information becomes a fun part of your week.

All are welcome, free coffee at first event; cafe onsite with choice of bagel snacks and drinks available for purchase.

Meeting: Thursday night, July 28, 2016, from 6 to 7 P.M at the Jewish Cultural and Information Center, Mesiniu 3, Vilnius

website http://www.jewishcenter.lt/

facebook https://www.facebook.com/%c5%bdyd%c5%b3-kult%c5%abros-ir-informacijos-centras-136849083044494/

Topic: Jewish Vilne

a lecture, question and answer session with Ellen Cassedy, author of We Are Here, has explored Lithuania’s encounter with its Jewish heritage for ten years. Her book is the winner
of numerous awards. She is a frequent speaker about the Holocaust, Lithuania and Jewish culture.

www.ellencassedy.com

2016-07-212016-07-22

Opening Ceremony for Yiddish Summer Course

Vilniaus Jidiš institute, esančiame Vilniaus universitete, liepos 17 prasidėjo vasaros programa 2016

Students, teachers and staff and other interested parties gathered at an opening ceremony for the summer course of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute at Vilnius University Sunday. Director Dr. Šarūnas Liekis welcomed the new students and thanked supporters and teachers from around the world. The courses are arranged in four levels and will end August 12.

2016-07-18

Bagel Shop Café Draws Attention of ARD-1 German Public TV Crew

Vokietijos Visuomeninės televizijos ARD-1 kūrybinės grupės ypatingas dėmesys LŽB „Beigelių krautuvėlei“

German public television channel ARD-1 filmed footage at the Lithuanian Jewish Community on July 13 with a focus on the Bagel Shop Café for a program to be called “Berlin-St. Petersburg,” according to director Christian Klemke.

He said although the itinerary for the film crew had been decided carefully prior to their trip through Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia, they had encountered interesting sites along the way which they will include in the final production.

When they were considering what to film in Vilnius, they discovered Vilnius’s rich pre-war Jewish cultural and spiritual life. “I wanted to know what there is now, so many years after the Holocaust,” Klemke said. Local producer Karolis Pilipauskas told him about the Bagel Shop Café. The Lithuanian Jewish Community facilitated meetings with members of the older generation, including Holocaust survivors. “I was very interested to hear their stories. Young members of the Jewish community also came to the café,” Klemke said.

2016-07-182016-07-18

Yiddish Summer Course

The Vilnius Yiddish Institute at Vilnius University proudly announces

The 2016 Summer Program in Yiddish Language and Literature17 July — 12 August 2016

offering four levels of intensive language instruction:

YIDDISH I: for beginners YIDDISH II: intermediate
YIDDISH III: higher intermediate YIDDISH IV: advanced

more information from Indre Joffyte, info@judaicvilnius.com
(Coordinator of Programs at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute)

2016-07-12

Call for Recipes

Dear members,

This year the Lithuanian Jewish Community will be actively involved in the European Jewish Culture Day program and is organizing different events to present the Jewish languages and Jewish cultural heritage to the public. European Jewish Culture Day will happen September 4, 2016.

The Bagel Shop Café will have on offer Jewish culinary heritage and is asking you to recall dishes made by your parents and grandparents, to find handwritten recipes (including in Yiddish) and to share them. We will prepare the best examples and offer them to the public during the event, and publish the recipes and descriptions.

2016-07-04

Picking Up the Pieces

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by Geoff Vasil

“Don’t get too close!” an attractive and sunburned young Lithuanian warned at the edge of a large pit just behind what was the Great Synagogue of Vilnius. He’s friendly and it quickly becomes clear he’s the lead archaeologist on the dig, but he’s just as quick to point out he’s formally the lead archaeologist, but Dr. Richard Freund of the University of Hartford in Connecticut is the real force behind the whole initiative.

Mantas Daubaras is doing his doctoral thesis at the Lithuanian Institute of History on a Neolithic site far to the west in Lithuania. He has no personal connection to Jewish Vilna and approaches it as he would any site, dispassionately.

“Yesterday we found what we think is the ritual bath,” he explains, pointing to a small hole in the top of what looks like a vaulted brick ceiling. They sent a camera in to take a look and found a large space terminated by rubble and fill. Does it connect to the Great Synagogue? He doesn’t know yet, but it looks as if it extends right up to the line where they think the back wall of the synagogue once stood.

2016-07-012016-07-24