BNS reports Israeli Knesset speaker Yuli-Yoel Edelstein speaking at the Ponar Memorial Complex outside Vilnius called on Lithuania to pay more attention to commemorating Jewish history and preserving Jewish heritage, and said the country needs to insure it has rid itself of xenophobia and anti-Semitism.

According to BNS, he said independent Lithuania is more concerned about Holocaust commemoration than the Soviet government was, but the situation can still be improved.

“Definitely, in comparison with the period of Soviet Union, when all the Jewish heritage, Holocaust remembrance, everything was wiped out, we see positive developments,” BNS quoted the speaker of the Israeli parliament telling reporters in Vilnius after visiting the Ponar memorial to Holocaust victims Wednesday. “But there’s never enough. As I said, the heritage was great, the contribution was great. Let’s not forget, Vilna was called Jerusalem of Lithuania, Jerusalem of the North, [and] was one of the most meaningful Jewish cities,” he was quoted as saying.

Edelstein called on Lithuanians “to honestly remember that there were Nazis, there were their collaborators, Lithuanians, there were courageous Lithuanians saving Jews during the Holocaust”.

“This is history, you can’t rewrite it, you cannot cross it,” he said according to BNS.

He reportedly called on Lithuania to pay attention to the historical memory of Lithuanian Jews, their life until the Holocaust and their contribution to Lithuania’s history, culture, art and business. He said the people who were murdered weren’t numbers and had names, according to BNS, and said the challenge for the Lithuanian Government, the local Jewish community and local non-Jews was to collect the names, remember the names and to celebrate the commemorative sites around the country, according to BNS.

Edelstein last visited Vilnius in 2009 as the Israeli minister of public diplomacy and Diaspora affairs. BNS reported he was told not to go on that trip to Lithuania by Litvak Holocaust survivors, who claimed he had no right to go. Edelstein noted a complete change in the situation over the intervening years which he said were down to the decisions of the Lithuanian Government and due to relations between the two countries, BNS reported.

Edelstein expressed the hope Lithuanian leaders would maintain that course and stressed it was the task of the Lithuanian Government to insure no xenophobic and anti-Semitic sentiments are left in the country.

“I never think that it’s a sign of friendship to Israel or special relations with Israel. It’s an internal Lithuanian task,” he was quoted as saying by BNS.

The speaker of the Knesset also called for moving to practical steps for fortifying Israeli-Lithuanian friendship and said he discussed those kinds of steps with Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė, prime minister Saulius Skvernelis and the speaker of the Seimas (parliament) Viktoras Pranckietis.

“We can’t just stay forever with this phrase about friendship and positive relations; we have to do practical things. In all my meetings here, we discussed how to strengthen the economic ties, cultural ties [and] tourism that is on the rise,” BNS reported he said.

The Kaunas Jewish Community accepted an invitation from Viktoras Klepikovas, monument specialist for the Jurbarkas (Yurburg, Georgenburg) regional administration’s infrastructure and property department, to attend the seminar Klepikovas organized called “Life and Diaspora in the Shtetl of the Jews of Jurbarkas” held at the regional public library. A large, overflow audience listened to deputy director of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute Rūta Puišytė who spoke about the Jewish history of Jurbarkas, daily life for Jews there and good neighborly relations between Jews and Lithuanians. She said Jews constituted 42 percent of the population before the Holocaust.

Viktoras Klepikovas presented the second speaker, Rita Vaiva Begenat, who finally grew weary of the apathy of local officials and all the bureaucratic obstacles, and so in 2003 began cleaning up the old Jewish cemetery in Jurbarkas herself. She cleaned up the grounds, cleaned headstones and renewed inscriptions. She said she needs help reading the inscriptions now.

KJC chairman Gercas Žakas spoke at the seminar and thanked the organizers for the meaningful event. Also attending were KJC members Judita Mackevičienė and Dobrė Rozenbergienė, both originally from Jurbarkas. KJC members toured the old Jewish cemetery and a mass murder site. The KJC delegation stopped at nearby Panemunė castle on the way home and were intrigued by the yellow star on the coat of arms of its former rulers, the Gelgaudas (Giełgud) family.

by Loreta Ežerskytė, Gimtoji žemė, the newspaper of the Ukmergė region

For more than 60 years now the mass murder of 12,000 Jews has been marked on the first Sunday in September in the Pivonija forest near Ukmergė [Vilkomir]. The commemoration happens at noon at the mass grave. Those who cannot attend, whose family members or other loved ones are buried here, mark the tragedy by lighting candles and praying at home. On Sunday many candles burned in Israel, the United States, South Africa and other countries whither fate sent Jews from Ukmergė.

The commemoration of the third-largest Holocaust mass murder site in Lithuania was attended by members of the Ukmergė Jewish Community and a large contingent of Jews from the Panevėžys, Šiauliai, Vilnius and Kaunas Jewish Communities as well as from other cities and countries. Regional administration head Rolandas Janickas and municipal administration director Stasys Jackūnas attended, and US embassy Vilnius deputy chief of mission Howard Solomon attended for the second year in a row.

A group from the Dukstyna primary school and local residents also attended the commemoration. Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas told those in attendance about how Jews were brought in groups there 76 years ago: “They were brought by the Nazis and local collaborators. No one had any mercy for the women or children, never mind the men. They all suffered the same fate. They were murdered because they were Jews. Only a few individuals survived, those who were deported. In the Taicas family only my grandfather survived, and that’s why I am standing here…”

Dr. Aurelijus Zykas, the director of the Asian Studies Center of Vytautas Magnus University which formerly occupied the second floor of the Sugihara House museum in Kaunas, characterized Japanese diplomat and Righteous Gentile Chiune Sugihara this way in an interview granted to the “What’s Happening in Kaunas” webpage. Dr. Zykas was one of the organizers of the Sugihara Week celebration in Kaunas from September 2 to 9.

Full interview in Lithuanian here.