Wooden Synagogue in Alanta Renovated
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LJC, International Comminission and Olga Lengyel Institute Holding Holocaust Seminars for Teachers
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LJC Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky Speaks at Commemoration of Grosse
Aktion in Kaunas
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Šiauliai Opens Righteous Gentile Square at the Intersection of Vilniaus and Ežero Streets at Former Ghetto Gates
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"Symphony from Jerusalem of the North” Mark Day of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide in Presidential Courtyard
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The renovated synagogue in Žiežmariai will become a new cultural center. The first synagogue in appeared sometime between 1690 and 1696. In the 19th century there three synagogues. Not surprising, since the majority of the population were Jewish. This synagogue which has survived and has now been renovated stands in the southern part of town between Vilniaus and Žalgirio streets, with the Strėva river flowing from southeastward from there.
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The Lithuanian Post Office has issued a stamp commemorating 300 years since the birth of the Vilna Gaon
The Lithuanian Post Office has issued a stamp commemorating 300 years since the birth of the Vilna Gaon
with a face value of 0.81 euros, enough to mail letters abroad.
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Lithuania Marks 300th Anniversary of Birth of Vilna Gaon, 2020 Named Year of the Gaon and Litvak History.
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Most important events at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in 2018
Most important events at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in 2018
Revival of Jewish Scouting in Lithuania: The first new Litvak scouting camping trip with children from Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Panevėžys and Molėtai took place August 24 to 26.
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Jewish newspapers and advertisements from Vilnius in the period between the two world wars. Jews and other minorities were given equal rights in the reconstituted Lithuanian state. Yiddish thrived with many newspapers and books published in the language.
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Lithuanian Nationalist Youth March Protests Migrants

The annual march by “Lithuanian Nationalist Youth” in Kaunas on February 16, Lithuania’s pre-war independence day, decided to go with the slogan “Lithuania is ours” this year, to protest the movement of refugees into Lithuania.

Julius Panka, deputy chairman of the Lithuanian Union of Nationalist Youth, told reporters: “The slogan of this march is ‘Lithuania is ours’ because we see a complicated geopolitical situation, a complicated situation in the EU where in fact the EU is teetering on the brink of dissolution. Hordes of hungry and angry immigrants are already knocking at our gates. Therefore we simply wanted to emphasize that Lithuania is the home of our people, that little patch of land which we must respect, love and fight for.”

Speaking to the crowd later, Panka said rapists, murderers and benefits-seekers should be allowed into Lithuania. During the march marchers chanted: “If you don’t want immigrants, clap your hands” and “Lithuania for Lithuanians.”

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Lithuania Must Confront Its Past

by Dr. Efraim Zuroff

Until now, the glorification of the Lithuanian heroes who had played a role in Holocaust crimes was only one of several themes featured at the marches.

Baltic neo-Nazi/ultranationalist/fascist march-month is upon us once again. This Tuesday, February 16, the first of the marches will take place along the central avenues of Lithuania’s prewar capital of Kaunas, (Kovno) on one of the country’s two Independence Days, this one to mark the liberation from Czarist Russia in 1918. The second on March 11 marks independence from the Soviets, and will be the date of a similar march in the current capital of Vilnius (Vilna). Both marches are sponsored by the Union of Lithuanian Nationalist Youth. The two additional marches will be taking place in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, on February 24, Estonian Independence Day, and the last march will be held in the Latvian capital of Riga on March 16, the date of an important battle fought by the Latvian SS Legion. It is the only one of the marches which is not held to mark the achievement of independence.

In Estonia, the march is being organized by Blue Awakening, the youth wing of the Estonian People’s Party, whereas the march in Riga is sponsored by SS veterans and their political supporters.

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Happy February 16!

Happy February 16!

Dear community members,

Today we celebrate the 98th anniversary of the restoration of the Lithuanian state. Our greetings to you all on this, one of the most important dates in Lithuanian history, February 16. This holiday symbolizes the spiritual power of our country. Then as now, our highest hope is for our family, relatives, friends and countrymen to live in a free country. Freedom has become our everyday reality now and we often take it for granted without considering how much was sacrificed and how much freedom and democracy cost for us to live free and independently. A happy holiday!

Vampires in Medieval Jewish Texts: What Are They Doing There?

Vampires in Medieval Jewish Texts: What Are They Doing There?

Haaretz reports on an unexpected find in old Hebrew texts and commentaries from Europe.

Secure in their monotheism, Jews may scoff, but some of the earliest texts on vampires were written in Hebrew by their coreligionists.

by Elon Gilad

The vampires which abound in popular culture today are, for the most part, a literary embellishment of an old Slavic belief that under certain circumstances, the dead can rise from their graves at night and kill their neighbors, friends and family.

Modern Jews might scoff at vampire culture, secure their monotheism rules out belief in such nonsense. But they should hold their tongues. Some of the earliest texts on vampires were written in Hebrew by their coreligionists, albeit after learning about the plague of the undead from their neighbors.

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Social Center Jewish Family Center Distributes Donations to Needy

Donated toys, shoes, clothing and accessories were distributed last Thursday and Friday at the Lithuanian Jewish Community. The items were collected last year by Jewish Lithuanian Student Union chairwoman Amit Belaitė and others.

Jewish Family Center clients (young families with children and the temporarily unemployed) were personally invited by the coordinator to come and select clothing and footwear. About 80 people were invited.

Lithuanian Jews, Fostering Lithuanian Independence since 1918. An excerpt from Vilius Kavaliauskas’s book

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Election poster. Vote for List Number 13–the Jewish List.

A translated excerpt from Vilius Kavaliauskas’s book “Pažadėtoji žemė – Lietuva,” or “Lithuania, the Promised Land”:

After independence was reestablished and the Lithuanian state was established on democratic principles on February 16, 1918, one of the most important events in Lithuanian Jewish history was the Jewish Affairs Institute established by the independent state in 1919, which in essence performed the functions of a government ministry. Dr. Maksas Soloveičikas became minister without portfolio.

From 1918 to 1926 Lithuania’s Jewish population successfully involved themselves in the country’s governance structures and actively ran for posts in elections to municipal bodies and the parliament of the Republic of Lithuania. There were a number of Jewish members of the ministerial cabinet of the Lithuanian government as well: minister without portfolio for Jewish affairs [sic] Jokūbas Vygodskis, Maksas Soloveičikas, Bernardas Fridmanas (from Panevėžys, judge at the Panevėžys District Court in 1925) and Simonas Rozenbaumas.

Doctor of philosophy Maksas Soloveičikas (1883-1957) was exceptional for his erudition and education. He studied in Petropol [Petrograd, Leningrad, Saint Petersburg. etc.], Germany and Switzerland. He was an active member of the Zionist movement and a Jewish press correspondent. He spoke Russian with his fellow ministers. In 1921 he was elected to the World Zionist executive committee in London.

The cabinet of ministers tolerated the Jewish community’s aspiration to turn the ministry into a political institution while the Vilnius question remained unsolved. When the Christian democrats came to power in 1924, the accreditation for the ministry was withdrawn and the ministry ceased to exist.

Valdas Balčiūnas Named Person of Tolerance of the Year for 2015

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February 13, BNS–The Person of Tolerance of the Year for 2015 was named Saturday at a ceremony in Kaunas, the Sugihara Foundation informed BNS. Chiune Sugihara’s son Nobuki presented the award to the recipient. Recipients usually receive a commemorative medal designed by the sculptor Edmundas Frėjus and a certificate. The award is made annually to people who through their words and deeds stand against xenophobia and anti-Semitism and the persecution of members of minority ethnicities, religions and schools of thought, and who speak out against violence and radicalism in Lithuanian public life. This year the Sugihara Foundation had a field of five candidates to choose from, including businessman Valdas Balčiūnas, Lithuanian Lutheran bishop Mindaugas Sabutis, editor and journalist Rimvydas Valatka, psychologist Paulius Skruibis and author and activist Sergejus Kanovičius.

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Chess Tournament to Celebrate Lithuanian Independence Day Held at LJC

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A chess tournament held by the Rositsan and Maccabi elite checkers and chess club dedicated to celebrating February 16, Lithuania’s pre-war independence day, began at the Lithuanian Jewish Community on schedule at 11:00 A.M. on February 14.

Tournament director and FIDE master Boris Rositsan welcomes contestants and gave the floor to Vytautas Landsbergis, the first chairman of the independent Lithuanian parliament, Lithuanian independence leader and avid chess player. Not only avid, but good: he won a match against Marytė (Marija) Kartanaitė, Lithuanian chess master many times over, at the LJC. “Playing chess, it’s important not to lose the initiative and not to give up,” Landsbergis said. “It’s important how much space you occupy. The opponent, it seems, is pressuring you to give up, but don’t lose the initiative. It’s nice chess players are honoring February 16, and that Boris Rositsan wants to demonstrate Lithuanian history through chess. Chess is the school of life and part of the culture of our country, and influenced our independence,” he commented.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky spoke and characterized chess players as educated and honorable people. This year has been named the Year of Kazys Grinius, the interwar Lithuanian president and a Righteous Gentile who was also a fine chess player, and who rescued chess player Dima Gelpern from death during the Holocaust.

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Vilnius Woman Who Posted Anti-Semitic Internet Comments Convicted

Vilnius, February 12, BNS–The Vilnius Municipal District Court Friday issued a verdict finding a woman from Vilnius guilty of openly calling for violence and of openly deriding and denigrating a group of people based on ethnicity.

The woman, D. B. L., born in 1944, was sentenced to 33 days imprisonment, but the court found her sentence had already been served, because she was temporarily jailed in December and January and was held in jail for failure to show up for court.

The court said the woman posted comments to the internet about Jews using computers located at Vilnius libraries.

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Lithuanian Jewish Community Proposes Publishing Information on Holocaust Perpetrators

February 12, BNS–Friday the Lithuanian Jewish Community proposed publishing “information of a general nature” on more than 2,000 people who, according to a study by historians, might have been complicit in the Holocaust during World War II. This proposal was presented Friday in a letter by LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky to the Office of Prosecutor General and the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania. The head of the community proposed announcing which group of people on their list participated directly in mass murder, how many participated indirectly, how many in total were convicted and whether there are people on the list who were honored in some way by the state, and under what agencies they worked. Kukliansky told BNS Friday she thinks it’s important to the public to receive explanations about the list. In her opinion, it is possible to publish the names of those whose cases have been tried.

“The Lithuanian Jewish Community believes refusal to release the List could have negative repercussions at the international as well as national level and could give rise to various theories which would damage the reputation of the Lithuanian state,” her letter said. She also called upon the prosecutor’s office to look into how many people on the list hadn’t been convicted but who are still alive, and if such exist, to begin criminal cases against the,

The Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania has prepared a list of about 2,000 people who were complicit in Holocaust crimes. It has been turned over to the Government.

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Keeping an Implicit Promise

by Geoff Vasil

It was interesting to watch the publicity machine surround Ruta Vanagaite’s new popular account of the Lithuanian Holocaust swing into gear to sell her new book. The publisher Alma Littera seemed to adopt an “artificial scarcity” marketing plan with an initial print run of only 2,000 copies, a plan which appears at this point to have been very successful. The next print-run is slated for 6,000, a humble figure given all the press and discussion of the book.

Initial confusion about the book–Jerusalem Post reported it as Efraim Zuroff’s new work–and some surprising comments by Vanagaite herself regarding Zuroff on national television softening his demonized image among the Lithuanian public gave way to a more general call for the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania to stop dragging their feet and finally publish a “list of names” of Lithuanian Holocaust perpetrators.

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LJC Letter to the Prosecutor and the Genocide Center

Lithuanian Jewish Community
No, 179, February 11, 2016

To:
The Honorable Evaldas Pašilis
Office of Lithuanian Prosecutor General

The Honorable Birutė Burauskaitė
Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania

Re: Possible actions connected with the list comprised of 2,055 people who are alleged to have committed or contributed to the murder of Jews during World War II

February 11, 2016, Vilnius

The Lithuanian Jewish Community, seeking the restoration of historical justice and commemoration, and honoring the principles of the rule of law, equality before the law and the presumption of innocence, proposes:

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Musicians of the Symphony of the Lie

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by Sergejus Kanovičius

Rūta Vanagaitė’s book has raised several more unpleasant matters. Although it seems to talk about victims and perpetrators, neither side making comments about the book seem to care. What does interest the Genocide Center and the manipulators of history who stand behind it is the status quo of the center’s immunity, which has been seriously threatened recently, and the Jewish Community doesn’t seem to care either, because its chairwoman has voluntarily fallen into the same orchestra pit where, faking the notes, the Genocide Center symphony orchestra is performing, the shining white knights cavorting with television entertainment figures out for ratings, and someone in the background whining about Holocaust education. But the people who were pushed below the turf 75 years ago still lie there as they lay before. Usually nameless, very often surrounded by used hypodermic needles, condoms and plastic beer bottles. As nameless as their murderers. Trying to name the latter causes great controversy, and again all sorts of “I do this for you, you do that for me” deals begin to find voice, after which prosecutors are supposed to suddenly confirm a list already confirmed long ago by historical fact of those who did the shooting or helped shoot almost all Lithuanian Jews to the very last individual.

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More Than 59% of French Think Jews Responsible for Anti-Semitism

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More than 59% of French people believe members of the Jewish community are at least partially responsible for anti-Semitism, according to a poll the Fondation du Judaisme Français and IPSA conducted via the internet. One-thousand and five people were queried over 9 days and were asked if they thought Jews should accept some responsibility for anti-Semitism in France.

Fifty-nine percent of those polled said yes, 3% felt Jews had severely contributed to it and 14% said they had contributed “in large part.” More than half of those questions said the Jewish people were very powerful and Jews are richer than French middle class. Thirteen percent of informants claimed there are too many Jews in France, despite statistics showing Jews account for less than one percent of the population.

The number of reports of anti-Semitic crimes in France more than doubled from 2014 to 2015. Human rights organizations caution the increase in attacks and crimes is a rising wave of violence.

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Opening of Exhibit “YIVO in Vilnius: The Legend Begins”

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You are invited to the opening of the exhibit “YIVO in Vilnius: The Legend Begins” at the Lithuanian National Museum at Arsenalo street no. 1 in Vilnius at 4:00 P.M., February 18. Exhibit curators: Dr. Lara Lempertienė and Dr. Giedrė Jankevičiūtė.

The exhibit was created to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the creation of YIVO in Vilnius. It includes previously unseen material from Lithuanian state collections on the history and work of YIVO. It demonstrates how YIVO’s work gave stimulus to the intellectual life of the Jews of Vilnius and the wider Central and Eastern European arena. It also presents the city and urban community as a source of inspiration and as the historical and cultural hearth and sustenance for the institute’s work. The exhibit was first shown at the Galicia Jewish museum in Cracow from September 30 to November 8, 2015. The exhibit to open in Vilnius contains additional material.

Come Meet Author and Art Historian Kristina Sabaliauskaitė

The Destinies series invites you to come meet Dr. Kristina Sabaliauskaitė at a presentation/seminar called

Jewish Motifs in the Art of Kristina Sabaliauskaitė

This will be the 24th seminar in our series and will be moderated by teacher and essayist Vytautas Toleikis.

Time: 6:00 P.M. on Wednesday, February 17
Place: Jascha Heifetz Hall, third floor, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius

Series organizer and MC: Lithuanian Jewish Community deputy chairwoman Maša Grodnikienė

Maestro Saulius Sondeckis Has Gone

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A man has gone who dreamt of Grand Lithuania. Grand not in size, but in thought, imagination and creativity. A man has gone who himself worked for such a Lithuania for decades. Professor Saulius Sondeckis is gone.

The period between the encouraging words of Herbert von Karajan to the young musicians Saulius Sondeckis conducted to the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra which put Lithuania on the world map included the entire epoch of Lithuania’s cultural renaissance. Many of the foreign maestros who came to Lithuania sought out professor Sondeckis because he was sort of a symbol of the talent of our country. A void has appeared in the national culture now without the professor, although it is being filled by hundreds of Saulius Sondeciskis’s students.

And a man has left us for whom everything mattered in Lithuania. Raised by his father and standing firmly upon Lithuanian Social Democratic roots, he invited us all not to look away from the individual, and he was deeply concerned with the continuation of social democratic thinking in Lithuania.

In saying goodbye to the Maestro, I express my sincere condolences to his family, his students and his friends, and to the entire cultural community of Lithuania. Our work for Lithuania and culture will be the implementation of his dreams.

Algirdas Butkevičius
Prime minister of Lithuania
Chairman of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party

New Book about Jews of Ukmergė

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by Daiva Zimblienė, lrytas.lt

A new book called “Ukmergės žydų bendruomenės istorija” [History of the Jewish Community of Ukmergė] is being passed around from hand to hand in Ukmergė. The almost 500-page book published in Lithuanian and English contains many important historical dates, interesting facts, documents and quotations about the Jews who lived in Ukmergė.

“I am not an artist, only a collector of historical facts. For about 15 years I carefully selected and accumulated different facts about the history of the city and district of Ukmergė. One computer folder began to grow quickly with material about the Ukmergė Jewish community. And that makes sense, because Jews were for several centuries the largest ethnic community in Ukmergė, you could say the dominant one,” author Julius Zareckas, deputy director of the Culture and Public Relations Department of the Ukmergė Ukmergė regional administration, said.

He said the new book is the second book of the same title which first appeared in 2008, with additional material and much more solid research.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

World Jewish Congress on Social Media

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Dear friends and colleagues,

The World Jewish Congress has made enormous leaps with its social media profiles since I joined the WJC three years ago, becoming an important and ever-present fixture on the digital platforms viewed and used by people of all ages, all over the world.

Thanks to our growing and expanding presence on widely used platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+, the WJC is maintaining its relevance in far reaches of the world for Jews and non-Jews alike: we are considered an important and well-respected source of news about Jewish communities and their activities everywhere; people turn to us for in-depth analyses and commentaries on a range of issues including anti-Semitism, Holocaust remembrance, Israel advocacy, Jewish traditions and Judaism in general.

The World Jewish Congress’ Facebook pages–available in four languages–are among the most popular of all Jewish organizations and have more posts and engagements with users than any other Jewish organization.

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