Sukkot, or Sukkos in Ashkenazic, begins at 6:17 P.M. this Sunday, October 9.
The Festival of Sukkot–literally meaning booths, tents, tabernacles–is celebrated for seven days in Israel and eight days in the Diaspora, starting on the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei. It is one of the three festivals during which Jewish men were required to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the times of the Holy Temple.
Giršas Rafael is celebrating his birthday October 6 and we wish him the very best. He has been an active member of the Šiauliai Jewish Community since its inception in 1988 and has served as a member of the executive board of the Šiauliai community and the Lithuanian Jewish Community in past years, achieving much of significance. Mazl tov. Bis 120!
On October 3 a ceremony was held in the Švenčionys city park to mark the anniversary of the onset of the mass murder of Jews in the region in the first week of October, 1941. In total over the course of the Holocaust approximately 8,000 Jews from the city and surround district were murdered.
Kristina Sizonova moderated the event. Speakers at the ceremony included Lithuanian Jewish Community executive board member Ela Gurina who is the chairwoman of the Holocaust Victims Commission, Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro, Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium principal Ruth Reches, Polish ambassador to Lithuania Urszula Doroszewska, deputy mayor of the Švenčionys district Violeta Čepukova, Pabradė’s Rytas Gymnasium history teacher Danguolė Grincevičienė and others.
Yom Kippur at the Choral Synagogue, Pylimo street no. 39, Vilnius:
Monday, October 3:
6:30 P.M. Preparations for Yom Kippur, lesson on the holy day, kapparot ritual
Tuesday, October 4:
5:30 P.M. Supper before fast
6:10 P.M. Kol Nidre
6:30 P.M. Fast begins
Wednesday, October 5:
10:00 A.M. Shacharit morning prayer
12:00 noon Izkor
5:30 P.M. Mincha prayer
7:30 P.M. Niila prayer
7:38 P.M. conclusion of fast, dinner
Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky on Yom Kippur:
Katharina von Schnurbein, the European Commission’s coordinator for implementing strategies to combat anti-Semitism and foster Jewish life in Europe, visited the Vilnius ghetto and other memorial locations Wednesday, the Lithuanian Jewish Community reported.
She called attention to the poor state of monuments during the tour and called for more care and maintenance of such sites in Lithuania.
LJC staff member and guide Viljamas Žitkauskas provided the guided tour and told the visiting official about the 700-year history shared by Lithuanians and Jews, the importance of Vilnius as the Jerusalem of the North and the ruins left in the wake of the Holocaust.
LJC chairwoman Fainia Kukliansky accompanied von Schnurbein on the walking tour and said: “Vilnius is special in that it’s not enough to just see it. The buildings, the statues, even the paving stones have a deep and significant history. You have to hear Vilnius. I am pleased von Schnurbein found time in her busy schedule to visit the most important sites and to learn about our history, culture and traditions.”
Following a pause in activities, the first general meeting or jamboree of Litvak scouting groups will take place at 2:30 P.M. on October 6 at the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius. For more information, please write skautai@lzb.lt.
Natalija Dvorakovskaja passed away October 2. She was born in 1949. She was a long-standing member of the Klaipėda Jewish Community. We send our condolences to her husband Alekandras and the family members she leaves behind.
Photo: Artist Jenny Kagan’s immersive exhibition “Out of Darkness” in Kaunas, Lithuania, July, 2022 (photographer Gražvydas Jovaiša).
Near the site of one of the genocide’s most heavily photographed atrocities, lighting designer Jenny Kagan brings the city’s wartime past “Out of Darkness”
by Matt Lebovic, Times of Israel, October 1, 2022
The 1941 Lietūkis garage massacre in Kaunas, Lithuania, was among the Holocaust’s most heavily photographed aktions against Jews, but many of the city’s current inhabitants have never heard of the atrocity.
On June 27, 1941, a group of pro-German Lithuanian nationalists tortured and murdered at least 50 Jews at the city’s Lietūkis garage. During the massacre, a German soldier took photos of dozens of Lithuanians, including children, cheering while a man called “the death dealer” beat Jews to death with a crowbar.
Among the Jewish men murdered that day was British artist Jenny Kagan’s grandfather, Jurgis Stromas, who owned the Pasaka (Fairytale) cinema in town. At one point during the public slaughter, the “death dealer” climbed atop a mound of corpses and performed the Lithuanian national anthem with an accordion.
The Sabbath begins at 6:40 P.M. on Friday, September 30, and concludes at 7:48 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
The Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community marked the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide September 23 with a ceremony at the monument commemorating the former gates of the Šiauliai ghetto. The ceremony was attended by members of the Jewish community, teachers and high school students and deputy mayor Egidijus Elijošius. People laid wreaths of flowers and placed stones on the monument, after which participants moved on to Righteous Gentiles Square where Lithuanian rescuers of Jews were remembered. Later members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community went to the mass murder site in the Pročiūnai forest were hundreds of people of different ethnic backgrounds were murdered during the Holocaust. They then went to the monument to the Jews from Šiauliai and the surrounding area murdered in Kužiai village.
Members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community and the general public ushered in the Jewish new year last week with a musical/dramatized concert called “About Her and about Us” at the Šiauliai chamber concert hall, a project of the Šalom, Akmene! initiative dedicated to the memory of Nechama Lifshitz and performed by young students from Akmenė and Joniškis regional art schools and by opera singer Rafailas Karpis. The concert was followed by a buffet.
As reported earlier, the city of Telšiai has been restoring the world-famous Telshe (Telz) yeshiva there over the last few years. A reader sent in some snapshots of the interior at the re-opening, below.
by Michael Kretzmer
For the last three years my life has been entirely absorbed in the making of a documentary film that attempts to tell the truth about the Lithuanian Holocaust. This has been a terrible task, an entirely unwanted one, and one that has exacted a significant personal price. Many times I have bitterly regretted taking it on, but once started there could be no turning back: the injustice of what happened to our people, and even more importantly, what is happening today in Lithuania, cannot be ignored.
The most painful task was the journalistic duty to forensically research and report the depraved cruelty of our persecution. Nothing can prepare you for the incomprehensible, sordid detail: the celebratory murder of children in front of parents; the delicate physics of smashing babies’ skulls against trees (thousands of them); the horror carnival of small, terrified girls being loaded onto trucks for deadly rape parties by Lithuanian gangs; the imprisonment of thousands of Jews in their own synagogues and their slow murder either by fire or by starvation and thirst amidst human filth and the stench of their loved ones’ rotting bodies; the beheadings, the immolations, the thousands of deadly humiliations; the destruction of this dazzling 600-year-old civilization–220,000 Jews slaughtered, the highest murder rate in all of Holocaust Europe; and above all, the thought of our depraved Lithuanian tormentors laughing at our pain and humiliation. And the knowledge that the Lithuanian government is still, politely, laughing at us today.
I am a journalist and film-maker by profession but for months I struggled to find the narrative voice that could tell this terrible story. And one day I found that voice. It was obvious, the only voice that matters. The voice of the murdered. This is why I have called my film J’Accuse! It is their cry for justice from the killing pits of Lithuania.
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.
A Kabalat Shabat ceremony and dinner according to the tenets of progressive Judaism will be held at 6:30 P.M. on September 30 with the main ceremony the third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius and kiddush downstairs at the Bagel Shop Café. The price is 10 euros, children and minors 16 and under are free. For more information and to register, contact Viljamas by writing viljamas@lzb.lt or call +370 672 50699.
On August 5 the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Lithuanian parliament approved the idea of providing the Sugihara House in Kaunas 150,000 euros annually to keep the museum open.
This followed a plea by museum director Ramūnas Janulaitis, appointed in the wake of the death of the museum’s founder and director Simonas Dovidavičius in December of 2019, for help maintaining the museum after a steep reduction in tourist visits because of the virus panic and the Ukrainian war.
Ambassadors from Japan, Israel, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland to Lithuania responded to the plea with a joint letter to Lithuania’s minister for culture and minister for science, education and sports. In their letter they said Chiune Sugihara’s legacy was important for building democracy, tolerance and human values.
Students in the 8th and 9th grades at the King Mindaugas School in Švenčionėliai in southeast Lithuania got a special lesson and tour on September 23, the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide proclaimed by the Lithuanian parliament in 1994. They gather in the foyer of the Švenčionėliai Cultural Center to hear history teacher Stanislava Černiauskienė’s lesson on the history of the Jewish people in Lithuania, and to hear Milda Petkevičienė-Dečkuvienė’s performance on violin.
The class then went to the local mass murder and commemoration site where history teacher Ona Orechovienė recounted how local Jews were murdered there and in surrounding areas.
The special history lesson for September 23 was arranged by King Mindaugas School assistant principal and history teacher Nijolė Kapačinskienė, Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Šapiro and the Švenčionėliai Cultural Center.
Local residents commemorated Righteous Gentiles Elena and Juozapas Markevičius at the cemetery in the town of Palėvenė September 23 with flowers and candles, after which a prayer was held at St. Dominykas’s church for priests who rescued Jews, including father Zenonas Karečkas who hid the Jewish girls Mira Burdė and Irma Degon who had fled the Vilnius ghetto in a local monastery, and the priest Antanas Juškas, who passed Feigė Kaganaitė off as the Catholic nun Teresė during the Holocaust. Prayers were also said for the Markevičius family who rescued nine Jews. Kupiškis regional administration mayor Dainius Bardauskas attended the Mass, following which local historian and museum specialist Aušra Jonušytė presented an exhibition of photographs called “Remembering the Rescuers of Jews from the Palėvenė Parish.” She said the local rescuers experienced repression and exile after the war under Stalin’s rule.
Aldona Ramanauskienė, the head of the local chapter of the Lithuanian Catholic Women’s Union, spoke about the Markevičius family. Litvak guide from Kaunas Chaim Bargman spoke about the priest Antanas Juškas. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman also spoke about Righteous Gentiles. Vidmantas Markevičius thanked everyone for remembering his grandparents.
“Today we remember those who were condemned to death by spiritual darkness and insane brutality. When Lithuania lost her people, beloved and appreciated members of the community, noble people who created our cities and country. We lost helpless elderly and children who never had the chance to grow up. Realizing the horror of those days, we speak about it every year, in order to remember, so that oblivion will not cover up this tragedy. Let member protect us, let there be no tolerance for violence, let there only be space for violence left in the darkest pages of history,” deputy Panevėžys mayor Valdemaras Jakštas said at the “Sad Jewish Mother” statue there after he lay a wreath and lit candles to mark the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide on September 23.