The Abi Men Zet Zich Seniors Club meets regularly on Wednesdays and last Wednesday fell on the one-month anniversary of Hamas’s attack on Israel. Many club members have family in Israel and some serve in the military. Our seniors, many of them Holocaust survivors, lit candles and said kaddish for the Israeli soldiers who have died and for the hostages.
Am Yisrael khai.
The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club invites you to take part in our tennis tournament from 10:00 A.M. till 1:00 P.M. on Sunday, November 16, at the SEB Arena, Ąžuolyno street no. 7, Vilnius. The format will depend on the number and level of participants. Registration is required by November 16 by writing manovilnius99@gmail.com or calling 8612 81088. See you there!
Photo: German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier and chancellor Olaf Sholz attended a ceremony to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms at the synagogue of the Kahal Adass Jisroel Jewish complex attacked by Molotov cocktails last month.
BERLIN (AP)–Across Germany, in schools, city halls, synagogues, churches and parliament, people came together Thursday to commemorate the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass in 1938 in which the Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Germany’s main Jewish leader Josef Schuster spoke at an anniversary ceremony at a Berlin synagogue that was attacked with firebombs last month.
“Jews have been particularly affected by exclusion for centuries,” Scholz said in his speech.
“Still and again here in our democratic Germany, and that after the breach of civilization committed by Germans in the Shoah,” they are being discriminated against, the chancellor added.
“That is a disgrace. It outrages and shames me deeply,” Scholz said. “Any form of anti-Semitism poisons our society. We do not tolerate it.”
Photo: Members of the Australian Jewish community participate in a rally in Sydney in late October. Photograph: David Gray/AFP/Getty Images
by Daisy Dumas, November 9, 2023
The broader Jewish community in Australia this week marked 30 days since the October 7 Hamas attacks with vigils and candle-lighting ceremonies
More than 100 Australian Holocaust survivors have united to denounce a wave of “senseless and virulent” anti-Semitism that they fear is growing in the country.
The “last witnesses to the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi regime,” many in their 90s, have penned a letter against abusive incidents that have targeted the Jewish community as Israeli retaliations continue after the brutal Hamas attacks and kidnappings of October 7.
“We are witnesses to the anti-Semitic propaganda that turned our friends, neighbors and the general public against us in Europe. We remember the six million Jewish lives lost because of this hatred,” the 102 Australian survivors wrote in the letter published in the Australian on Thursday.
We are sad to report Galina Knyš passed away November 8. She was a member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and a client of the Saul Kagan Social Services Center. We extend our deepest condolences to her daughters Nina and Marina, and to her many friends and family members.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community in concert with the Cvi Park enterprise again invite you to the Darna Festival of live music, poetry and photographic exhibits to celebrate UNESCO’s International Day of Tolerance.
The program includes an exhibit of photographs by Antanas Sutkus, Bartosz Frątczak and Andrey Kezzyn, snacks and drinks with live music at the Cvi Parkas kiosk in Petras Cvirka Square across the street from the LJC, a performance by students from the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium, a performance by Australian vocalist and musician Skye Magnus, Algis Davidavičius speaking on the topic of tolerance, poetry by Indrė Valantinaitė, piano music by Darius Mažintas and Duettissimo with Glebas Pyšniakas playing cello and Dalia Dedinskaitė on violin.
Cvi Parkas will serve vegetable dishes and desserts, natural wine and craft beer for customers. The event itself is free and open to the public. It starts around 6:00 P.M. on Thursday, November 16, on the third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius.
After a brief hiatus, Ruth Reches’s Hebrew classes for the general public are back. Classes will be held for beginner, intermediate and advanced levels at the Sholem Aleichem school in Vilnius starting Sunday, December 3. For more information and to register, write ruthreches@gmail.com
by Geoff Vasil
While Europeans have been looking on as their streets are taken over by belligerent mobs of pro-Palestinian and/or pro-Hamas protestors, with concomitant protests and violence against Israel supporters in the United Kingdom, there has also been a rising wave of anti-Jewish protests, attacks and violence across the Anglosphere beyond the UK, the rest of the English-speaking world.
In the extreme leftist stronghold of Seattle, Washington, in the United States, where the evening news carries openly sympathetic explanations of Hamas’s violent attacks against civilians in southern Israel on October 7, massive pro-Palestinian protests were followed by a series of mailings to four synagogues of white powder with threatening notes. Seattle police, fire and now the FBI are investigating this as an act of terrorism. The mailings were followed by white powder and threats mailed to four county election offices still engaged in counting the November 7 ballot results. An accompanying note said “End the election now.” Traces of fentanyl were found in two samples from the Seattle and Spokane areas mixed with baking soda.
In nearby Tacoma pro-Hamas activists blocked the loading of a military cargo at the port there for 10 hours, in solidarity with a similar blockade at the Port of Oakland in California which lasted 17 hours, organized by the same pro-Palestinian NGO. JTA reported a Jewish man was killed in Los Angeles when a pro-Palestinian activist hit him in the head with a metal megaphone on November 5.
The United States House of Representatives voted in favor Tuesday of a resolution censuring Palestinian-American representative Rashida Tlaib (Democrat from Michigan) for comments she made on youtube, calling US president Joe Biden’s (Democrat) support for Israel genocide and including footage of demonstrators chanting “from the river to the sea,” an old Palestinian slogan calling for genocide, for driving the Jews out of Palestine from the Jordan River and into the Mediterranean. Calling for the commission of genocide is part of the crime of genocide under the UN Convention for the Prevention of Genocide and international jurisprudence. The motion to censure was brought by Republicans in the House and didn’t enjoy Democrat support, with 212 Republicans voting in favor, just 22 Democrats in favor, 4 Republicans against and 184 Democrats against. One Republican and 3 Democrats voted “present,” in effect abstaining, and 7 representatives from both parties didn’t vote.
The failure of House Democrats to come out in favor of fellow party-member Biden’s Israel policy during multiple rounds of “shuttle diplomacy” by Democrat secretary of state Antony Blinken comes as Biden sinks below Trump in polls by even the most left-leaning pollsters for the upcoming 2024 presidential election.
Tlaib is one of four extreme leftist activist representatives known as the Squad and sometimes as the Gang of Four in reference to Communist China’s Cultural Revolution.
Full story here.
Visitors had the chance to delve into the world of renowned Litvak artist Simon Karczmar and his artist son Natan last Tuesday evening in Vilnius where a new exhibit of works opened at the Old Town Hall.
The artwork features a romanticized take on daily life in the Dievenishok (Dieveniškės) shtetl and the Bohemian life in Paris.
Attendees were unable to escape the present, however–the brutal war and hostages taken–and sang the Israeli national anthem, HaTikva, “The Hope,” in solidarity with all our friends and family in the Jewish homeland.
Am Yisrael khai.
The Ąžuoliukas choir performed at an event held by the Kaunas Jewish Community, the Kaunas city municipality and the Kaunas State Philharmonic to celebrate the 100th birthday of the late Herman Perelstein, the founder of the choir, at the Kaunas State Philharmonic on the evening of November 6, 2023. A short video filmed by a member of the audience has been posted to youtube, viewable below of the choir’s performance with Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas’s introductory address.
The 22-year-old Palestinian icon is arrested on another night of Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces have arrested Ahed Tamimi, a prominent 22-year-old Palestinian activist, for “inciting terrorism.”
They announced the arrest on Monday following another round of overnight raids and fighting in the occupied West Bank. Violence has been spilling over into the territory since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last month.
The activist “was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence and terrorist activities”, an army spokesperson said. “Tamimi was transferred to Israeli security forces for further questioning.”
Israeli media reported that Ahed Tamimi had called for the murder of settlers in the West Bank in an Instagram post. An Israeli security source shared the alleged Instagram post with AFP when questioned about the reason for her arrest.
Full story here.
On November 6, 1943, around 725 Jewish children were abducted from the Šiauliai (Shavl) ghetto and sent to their deaths in Auschwitz.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, chairmen from the Šiauliai, Kaunas, Palanga, Panevėžys and Švenčionys Jewish Communities, Israeli ambassador Hadas Wittenberg-Silverstein, German ambassador Cornelius Zimmermann, Lithuanian MPs and members of the Jewish Community and general public and students and teachers came together to mark the 80th anniversary of this atrocity in Šiauliai November 6.
We wish our favorite journalist, publicist, writer, quiz master, actor and professional clown Arkadijus Vinokuras a very happy and meaningful birthday! Mazl tov. Bis 120!
The Kaunas Jewish Community is holding a concert to celebrate the 100th birthday of Herman Perelstein, the renowned choir director and professor. The concert and birthday party is being called Šefas, Lithuanian for boss. It happens at 7:00 P.M. Monday, November 6, at the Kaunas State Philharmonic, Ožeškienės street no. 12, Kaunas. It will include a performance by the Ąžuoliukas boys choir Perelstein founded, other performances and recollections from students about the man. It is free and open to the public. The Kaunas Jewish Community thanks the Kaunas city municipality and Goodwill Foundation for making this event possible.
Members of the Kaunas Jewish Community and the general public turned out on the last weekend in October to mark the anniversary of the Grossaktion, the mass murder operation during which around 10,000 Jews were taken from the Kaunas ghetto and murdered at the Ninth Fort in a 25-hour period on October 28 and 29, 1941.
The entire population of the Kaunas ghetto was assembled on Democrat Square inside the ghetto where Gestapo officer Helmut Rauca personally selected many of the victims. Rauca later found refuge in Canada, where he opened a holiday resort on a lake in Ontario. He was never tried.
Photo: Marilyn Sinclair’s Holocaust education group Liberation 75 is sending free copies of a middle school title To Hope and Back: The Journey of the St. Louis to 6th grade classrooms across Ontario as part of an initiative named for her father Ernie, a Holocaust survivor. Photo by Nazima Walji/CBC.
As Holocaust Education Becomes Compulsory in Some Provinces, Advocates Call for Wider Adoption
Curriculum changes in Ontario and British Columbia to take effect in 2025
by Jessica Wong, CBC News, November 6, 2023
Marilyn Sinclair says she’s feeling “pretty great” about Ontario’s new requirement that sixth-graders learn about the Holocaust.
Sinclair, founder of Holocaust education organization Liberation 75, is responding to more than 8,000 requests for copies of a book from 6h grade teachers across the province. Told from a child’s perspective, the book recounts the real-life story of the St. Louis, a ship filled with Jewish refugees that fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and was turned away from Cuba, the US and Canada.
The free books from Sinclair’s organization will also come with a toolkit of teaching resources, information about a forthcoming speaker series with the author,and links to an online book club where educators can trade teaching strategies.
“[The package] was our way of saying, ‘Don’t be scared, we’re here. We’re going to provide you with the resources you need,'” Sinclair said. “Teachers have a lot to teach in the curriculum. We want to make it as easy and as pleasant for them as possible.”
A building in the Jewish section of Vienna’s Central Cemetery was set ablaze and a swastika and inscription about Hitler were spray-painted on its outer walls on the night of October 31, according to multiple media sources. The fire consumer prayer books, Torah scrolls and pews. Over the weekend an Israeli flag was torn down at the entrance to the main synagogue in Vienna, the Stadttempel, without the removal of an Austrian flag flying next to it. The British-based Jewish charity Community Security Trust which monitors anti-Semitic attacks in Europe reports a 300% increase in Austria, a 240% increase in Germany and a 320% rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Great Britain since October 7. Attacks include the attempted fire-bombing of a synagogue in Berlin, the marking of Jewish homes and businesses with stars of David in Paris and the physical assault of at least one person carrying an Israeli flag by pro-Palestinian agitators in London, with Community Security Trust reporting 47 physical assaults in Europe overall between October 7 and November 3. November 10 to 11 is usually marked as the anniversary of the Night of Broken Glass or Kristallnacht when Nazis ransacked Jewish homes and businesses and assaulted and killed Jewish people people across Germany and Austria in 1938.
Latest report available here.
Jewish Chronicle report on attacks in Vienna here.
Photo: Left: Simon Karczmar and wife
The Old Town Hall in Vilnius will open an exhibit of paintings by Litvak artist Simon Karczmar (1903-1982) at 6:00 P.M. on Monday, November 6. Originally from Dieveniškės, Lithuania, Karczmar moved to Jerusalem later. The exhibit runs till November 30.
The Sabbath begins at 4:21 P.M. on Friday, November 3, and concludes at 5:34 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.