Roza Bieliauskienė has died. She was born in 1956 in Vilnius to Holocaust survivors from a shtetl just outside the city. She grew up speaking Yiddish at home and hearing it on the street. Trained as an engineer, she eventually immersed herself in research, writing and teaching about the Holocaust, Yiddish and Jewish topics. She worked at the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Community from its inception for 20 years and taught at the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius. She worked on the translation of the Grigori Shur Holocaust diary, numerous other books published by the Vilna Gaon Museum, translated a number of children’s books, translated genealogies in Yiddish and was working on a book about the Jewish history of Lithuania at the time of her death. Our deepest condolences to her many friends, colleagues and family members.
Our Home Town Vilne Is 700
Today Vilnius begins celebrating its 700th birthday with a series of events over the coming year. Over its entire 700 years of history the Jewish people have lived, built, created, started families, studied and achieved major milestones in culture, medicine, business, the arts and many other fields of human endeavor.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky remarked: “Today there remains only a very small Vilna Jewish community, but the contributions made by many generations of Jews to the success and thriving of this city called the Jerusalem of the North won’t allow us to forget.”
The Lithuanian Jewish Community has published a calendar to mark Vilnius’s 700th anniversary with a special Vilnius 700 logo and collages from old Jewish Vilne. The designers of the calendar were Victoria Sideraitė Alon and Albinas Šimanauskas from the creative group JUDVI & AŠ.
“The 700th anniversary of the founding of the city of Vilnius is a wonderful and significant day for all residents of the city and beyond. Sadly, in the excitement in preparing for this holiday, few remember who built the capital of Lithuania, who contributed so significantly to giving birth to this pearl of UNESCO,” chairwoman Kukliansky commented.
Lithuanian Prime Minister on the Death of Grigoriy Kanovich
Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė expressed her condolences on the death of the writer, dramaturg and translator Grigoriy Kanovich.
“Grigoriy Kanovich’s work gave a voice to entire generations of Litvaks who died and raised the curtain for the painful 20th century for a view into the profound, rich culture fostered for centuries in Lithuania, and at the same time, by presenting the agonies society experienced from the Holocaust, he formed the modern reader’s understanding and sympathy. Grigoriy Kanovich will remain in our memories as a person who carried the light through his works and through his always penetrating, respectful and hope-filled way of seeing. We have lost one of the great writers who was just as concerned with the present as with the past, with being able to live in harmony, in the emergent commonality, in what is shared rather than the categorical. I extend my sincere condolences to Grigoriy Kanovich’s loved ones during this difficult time of loss,” the Lithuanian prime minister wrote in her letter of condolence.
Full statement in Lithuanian here.
Condolences
The writer Grigoriy Kanovich has passed away at the age of 93. Our deepest condolences to his sons Sergejus and Dmitrijus, wife Olga and his many friends and fans around the world. He served as chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community from 1989 to 1993, when he moved to Israel.
Clubs Celebrate Hanukkah
The various clubs at the Lithuanian Jewish Community are planning Hanukkah celebrations of their own.
The Yiddish-language Mameloshen Club is holding a Yiddish Hanukkah for members on December 18, call *37067881514 to register and for more information.
Knaifaim Club for adolescents aged 13 to 17 plans to hold a Hanukkah celebration at a special location at 8:00 P.M. on Friday, December 16. Contact Mark at margaris146@gmail.com or Elanas at Elan.Chackelevic@gmail.com.
Ilan Club for children aged 7 to 12 will hold a Hanukkah celebration at 12:00 noon on December !8. Contact Mark at margaris146@gmail.com or Elanas at Elan.Chackelevic@gmail.com.
Dubi Club for chilren from 4 to 6 will also hold a Hanukkah celebration at 12:00 noon on December !8. Register by contacting Margarita at +37061800577.
Dubi Mishpoha Club for children from 0 to 3 will hold a Hanukkah celebration at 11:00 A.M. on Wednesday, December 21. Register by contacting Aleksandra at +37067250599.
Upcoming Vilnius Jewish Public Library Events
The Vilnius Jewish Public Library presents a lecture by Oleksii Chebotarov called “Topography of Pogroms: Spatial and Social History of Anti-Jewish Violence on the Imperial Peripheries” on December 15.
On December 22 the library will feature an evening of poetry and music by Leonard Cohen.
On December 29 the library will screen the made-for-tv documentary film “The World Was Ours” (2007) about the pre-WWII Jewish community of Vilnius. According to imdb:
“A documentary chronicling the rich, vibrant history of the Jewish community of Vilna (then Poland, now Lithuania) known as ‘The Jerusalem of Lithuania’ before its destruction in World War II.”
For more information, send an e-mail to vzvbvjpl@gmail.com or call 8 604 15765.
Alejandra Czarny Yiddish Music Concert in Kaunas Great Success
Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas reports the concert of Yiddish music by vocalist Alejandra Czarny and Michel Gonzalez on guitar in Kaunas was a great successe with the audience.
The concert was part of a series the Kaunas Jewish Community has been putting on called “Yiddish Hear Again in Kaunas.” This concert was called “Inspired by Grandmother’s Songs.” Czarny’s grandmother and that side of the family all came from Kaunas. She’s a transplant to south Florida from Argentina and charmed the audience with tango melodies along with Yiddish favorites, which became sing-alongs with the audience, and Alejandra Czarny’s own creations which at times evoked Venezuelan music, according to Gercas Žakas.
Alejandra Czarny and Michel Gonzalez were also scheduled to perform at the restored synagogue in Alytus on November 30.
Split Identity: Jewish Scholarship in the Vilna Ghetto
Photo: Exterior of YIVO building in Vilnius, ca. 1933. Courtesy YIVO.
by David E. Fishman
ABSTRACT
In this essay David Fishman draws a comparison between yidishe visnshaft, or Jewish studies scholarship, and Judenforschung, the Nazi field of anti-Semitic Jewish studies used to justify the persecution and extermination of Jews in scientific terms. He examines the work of Zelig Kalmanovitch, who had been a well-known scholar and co-director of YIVO before World War II, during the time when he was forced to produce scholarship as a member of the Jewish slave labor brigade assigned to the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in Vilna. Fishman notes the remarkable scholarly accomplishments Kalmanovitch was able to achieve in a time of enormous adversity. He also demonstrates several junctures in which Kalmanovitch, a meticulous scholar, omitted facts or altered scholarship in order to save lives. These dual impulses of preserving historical truths about Jewish communities and a willingness to obscure facts over which people could be killed contribute to Fishman’s assessment that Kalmanovitch’s scholarship emerged from erudition, love and dedication to the Jewish people about whom he wrote, the very opposite of the purposes for which his scholarship was obtained by his Nazi slave masters.
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On June 16, 1942, Herbert Gotthardt, a staff member of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in Vilna, instructed Zelig Kalmanovitch to prepare an essay and bibliography on the Karaïtes. Kalmanovitch, a well-known scholar and co-director of YIVO before the war, was a member of the Jewish slave labor brigade assigned to the ERR which segregated Jewish and other books, manuscripts and documents into two categories: valuable items to be sent to Germany, and valueless items to be destroyed. The former YIVO co-director was an expert bibliographer in this work brigade, nicknamed the paper brigade, based in the YIVO building at 18 Wiwulskiego Street. The brigade was headed by librarian Herman Kruk and consisted of twenty physical laborers and twenty intellectuals, including the Yung-Vilne poets Abraham Sutzkever and Szmerke Kaczerginski.
Holocaust and Home: The Poetry of David Fram from Lithuania to South Africa
Cover: Hazel Frankel, “Holocaust and Home: The Poetry of David Fram from Lithuania to South Africa.” Legenda, 2021. 230 pp.
My mother started learning Yiddish late in life. I felt as if she was reaching out to her dead parents, trying to connect with them. Both her mother and her father were immigrants to South Africa from Lithuania, one from the town of Shadova, the other from Pokroy. My grandfather, Abe, who came from a long line of yeshiva bochers, attended the famed Telz yeshiva. Intellectually curious, he read War and Peace in the original Russian. Later, at the Claremont shul in Cape Town, he gave many of the Saturday afternoon shiurim, written in Yiddish but delivered in English.
His wife, Anne, for who I am named, was nine years his junior. They owned a dress shop in Cape Town and, before the war, Abe went on business trips to Europe to buy the latest fashions, often with specific customers’ needs in mind. Both Abe and Anne died in their fifties, several years before I was born. I know them only from photographs. Their sepia-toned wedding photo hung in our breakfast room, where we ate all our meals. Abe was short, wore glasses, and gazed solemnly at the camera. Anne seemed softer, gentler, and had a twenties-style headdress that looked like a shower cap. There were odd flecks of white on the image that I always imagined was confetti but must have been blemishes on the photographic paper or the camera lens.
New Yiddish Classes
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Mameloshn Club invite you to attend Yiddish classes taught by Rosa Beliauskienė from 12 noon to 1:30 P.M. on Sundays at the LJC in Vilnius. For more information and to register, write zanas@sc.lzb.lt or call +370 678 81514.
Yiddish Concert in Kaunas
The Kaunas Jewish Community invites you to their concert “Yiddish Heard Again in Kaunas: Inspired by Grandma’s Songs” at 5:00 P.M. on Sunday, November 27 at the Kaunas Artists’ House located at V. Putvinskio street no. 56 in Kaunas.
Alejandra Czarny of Argentina and more recently the United States with firm family roots in Kaunas will sing accompanied by Michel Gonzales on guitar, including Litvak Yiddish from different periods and Yiddish songs from Argentina and South America. Besides singing Yiddish her entire life, she also has her own radio program and is a cantor for synagogues located in South Florida, where she lives.
The concert is free and open to the public, but prior registration is required by filling out the form here:
World of Trakai Executed in Varnikai Forest: A Fancy Menorah, a Mad Mob and a Leather Briefcase
Photo: Trakai in 1952. From the personal collection of Algimantas Dočkus courtesy LRT.
by Rasa Kalinauskaitė
“Sir, I report that while inventorying the Jewish property taken to the synagogue I discovered seven fur coats suitable for police service. Three of them are of a yellow and unlined falling to below the knees, four are lined with cloth material, coming down to the knees. I request an order these fur coats be seized for police officers to wear as they perform their duties.”–from report by chief of Trakai police department to chief of district police, October 17, 1941.
I and a contingent of Trakai residents as well as two people who came from further off went on a tour of the Trakai Old Town, visiting sites recalling the Jews who lived here before World War II, stopping at former Jewish homes which are still standing. We became fellow travellers, in that those who toured Trakai in earlier times have shared their memories from many decades ago in the photographs they took, which show a town which has now completely changed. I wanted to share this with those who were not able to come, so I will attempt to describe this trip.
This is a journey through memory, because that same day, September 30, was the day in 1941 when the Jews of Trakai, Aukštadvaris, Lentvaris, Rūdiškės, Onuškis and Žydkaimis, 1,446 people of whom 597 were children, were murdered in Varnikai Forest.
Full article in Lithuanian here.
Yiddish Again Heard in Kaunas
The first concert in the Kaunas Jewish Community’s Yiddish song project was called “The Jewish Nightingale from the Provisional Capital,” dedicated to the late Yiddish songstress Nehama Lifshitz’s 95th birthday, ended with the promise made by everyone to meet again five years from now to celebrate Nehama’s 100th birthday, perhaps with a two-part concert, perhaps even with an orchestra.
It’s not enough to say this was a wonderful concert, that would be an understatement. It was an extraordinary evening with so much love, inspiration, light, humanity and the victory of life, overcoming all the world’s misfortunes. The entire experience was good and those special emotions will remain with us for a long time. At least this morning the music heard yesterday evening is still echoing through mane hearts and minds.
We are so thankful for this concert, for this miracle created, to Svetlana Kundish for her thanksgiving and hymn to her teacher, and to the accomplished team of musicians including Patrick Farrell, Rasa Vaičiulytė, Dainis Buika and the young female soloist Ramunė Buikaitė.
The spirit of Nehama, fragile and gentle, firm and fearless singing of life, truly visited the Kaunas State Philharmonic concert hall last Monday evening.
Humor in Yiddish Poetry
Miglė Anušauskaitė presents Humor in Yiddish Poetry: Meetings with Jews, at 5:30 P.M. on Thursday, October 27, 2022, at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library in Vilnius.
Jewish history and cultural heritage researcher and translator Miglė Anušauskaitė will read and comment on humorous poetry written in the Yiddish language in an event which is part of the “Meetings with Jewish Literature” series.
Jewish Nightingale from the Provisional Capital: Concert Celebrates 95th Birthday of Nehama Lifshitz
The Kaunas Jewish Community invites you to a concert to celebrate the 95th birthday of Nehama Lifshitz, the Yiddish songstress from Lithuania’s second city.
Time: 6:00 P.M., October 24
Place: Kaunas State Philharmonic, Ožeškienės street no. 12, Kaunas
A group of performers from around the world will perform Jewish folk songs performed by Nehama and some of Nehama’s own songs as well.
Entry is open to the public and entirely free.
Jewish Partisan Who Fought Nazis Battles to Preserve Forest Fort Where Resistance Group Lived
by Felix Pope and Karen Glaser, Jewish Chronicle
Fania Brantsovsky, now 100, escaped the Vilna Ghetto to join the Avenger group. Now she’s fighting to save their woodland camp so the next generations can learn of their struggle
in 1943, 21-year-old Fania Brantsovsky escaped from the Vilnius Ghetto through a gap in a wall and fled to a forest 12 miles away. For the next year, she lived with 100 other Jews in a wooden bunker deep in the woods, from where they launched attacks against the Nazis.
Today, Mrs Brantsovsky, who turned 100 in May, is the only surviving member of the group of partisans led by the poet Abba Kovner who called themselves the Nokmim, Hebrew for “Avengers”.
Now Mrs Brantsovsky has called for the now rapidly disintegrating fort in the swampy Rudnicki Forest to be preserved as an international Jewish heritage site.
Full story here.
Concert by Winners of the Nehama Lifshitz Song Contest
The Lithuanian Jewish Community will host a concert to celebrate the winners of the Nehama Lifshitz (Nechama Lifšicaitė) song contest at 6:00 P.M. on November 3. Performers: Marija Maminskaitė, Lukrecija Šiaulytė, Estera Reches, Emilija Lopaitytė, Alfredas Miniotas,
Elzė Liškauskaitė and Deividas Bartkus under the direction of Rūta Mikelaitytė-Kašubienė and professor Nijolė Ralytė.
The same program will be performed on November 7 at the concert hall at the Einav Center in Tel Aviv together with performers from the Nehama Lifshitz Yiddish song studio in Tel Aviv.
Lithuanian MP Proposes Day to Commemorate Rescuers
Photo: Paulė Kuzmickienė by J. Stacevičius, courtesy LRT.
Lithuanian MP Paulė Kuzmickienė has proposed naming March 15 a national day of remembrance of rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. March 15, 1966, was the date Vilnius University librarian Ona Šimaitė was awarded the title of Righteous Gentile by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Commemoration and Studies Institute in Jerusalem. She was the first Lithuanian to receive the distinction.
“Rescuers of Lithuanian Jews deserve exceptional attention from the state and society. These were people who often didn’t appear different from others on the surface, but were dignified by their values and remained human even during the most difficult circumstances, did not collaborate with the Nazis and saved others at risk to the freedom and the lives of themselves and their families,” Kuzmickienė said.
Lithuanian MPs Paulė Kuzmickienė, Stasys Tumėnas, Radvilė Morkūnaitė-Mikulėnienė, Emanuelis Zingeris and Liudvika Pociūnienė have signed off on the proposal for this new Lithuanian commemorative day on March 15.
Israel Cohen’s Vilna Translated to Lithuanian
by Olga Ugriumova, Lithuanian Radio and Television Russian service
Vilnius publishing house Hubris has published a Lithuanian translation of British writer and early proponent of Zionism Israel Cohen’s book “Vilna.” The author was born in London to a family of Jewish immigrants from Poland. He worked as a correspondent for the Times and the Manchester Guardian in Berlin, and also collaborated with Manchester Evening Chronicle and Jewish World, among many other publications. The book “Vilna” was first published in 1943 by the Jewish Publication Society of America as part of their Jewish Community Series showcasing Jewish communities in various countries for English speakers.
Full article in Russian here.
Publisher’s page here.
Snapshots from European Days of Jewish Culture Events in Vilnius
Our annual series of events to mark the European Days of Jewish Culture saw a good turnout all day Sunday, which turned out to be sunny but framed by clouds. There was cantorial song at synagogue, a tour of Jewish Vilna, a panel discussion on echoes of Jewish culture in modern Lithuania’s cultural scene, we baked challa and slowly cooked the legendary floimen tsimes and there was singing, playing and dancing for all. For some snapshots from different events, concerts, workshops and lectures, see below.