Condolences
Of Ghouls and Cemeteries
Geoff Vasil
Fresh from his attempt to turn a routine immigration check at an international point of entry into an international conspiracy against his person, former Lithuanian Chief Rabbi made good on his promise to whip up scandal against his former boss, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, by manipulating the Israeli media over mere plans to renovate the Palace of Sports complex in Vilnius last month.
Naive or facile reporting in Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Report relied either upon wikileaks leaked US embassy cables from years ago, or intentional misrepresentations of the scenario by the Yiddishist Dovid Katz writing on his website defendinghistory.com and apparently in personal contact with the reporters.
Exhibition “Missing Identity” in Latvia
Association “Shamir” and Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust museum invites you to visit the exhibition “Missing Identity” of the artist Silvia Levenson. The exhibition will open on September 9 and will last until September 27. The exhibition is devoted to the problem of militarization. Silvia Levenson wrote:
“I was part of a generation that fought to change an unjust society in which military dictatorships and short civil governments alternated. In March 1976 the military made their last and bloody military coup. I was 19 years old and in August that year my daughter Natalia was born. She is the same age that other young people whose identity the military stole. With unprecedented cruelty pregnant prisoners were killed after giving birth to their children and newborns were illegally given up for adoption.
In Missing Identity I investigate the space these children, today adults, have left in their original families and the society.
Condolences
It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of our dear friend and committed Council Representative, Uri Chanoch, z”l.The funeral will be held today, Thursday, September 3rd, at the cemetery in Kfar Shmaryahu at 6PM.Uri served as a Council Representative of WJRO, and as a Board member of the Good Will Foundation in Lithuania.Uri, a survivor of the Kovno Ghetto, and of Dachau, worked tirelessly as an advocate for survivors. He dedicated his time to a long list of organizations, and fought for the restitution of private-property for Lithuanian survivors through his work with WJRO and the Good Will Foundation.Below is a letter written by Julius Berman, President of the Claims Conference, illustrating Uir’s story and dedication.May his memory be a blessing. We extend our deepest condolences to his family.Abraham Biderman, Co-Chair
Gideon Taylor, Chair of Operations
Nachliel Dison, Acting Director General
In memoriam Shevka (Sheftl) Melamed (April 10, 1926-August 31, 2015)
The last Jew living in Biržai (Birzh), Lithuania, Shevka (Sheftl) Leiba Melamed died Monday, August 31, 2015. He was 89. His death brings to an end over 400 years of Jewish life in the Biržai region. The community there was annihilated during the Holocaust, but by some miracle Leiba Melamed, then still an adolescent, managed to flee to the Soviet Union with his brother Shalom, conscripted into the army, and survived. A little over a month later his family–his father Peisakh, mother Paye and his little brother Hirsh, just turned 7–had been murdered at Pakamponys forest next to Astravas, part of the city of Biržai on its northern outskirts.
The Melamed brothers were sent deep into Russia. Leiba worked on a collective farm. He later attended a Lithuanian arts and crafts school in Kuybyshev, Russia, and later worked at an airplane factory. In 1945 he returned to Biržai but found neither his home nor his friends. He did meet his brother Shalom in Biržai and they both went to live with his brother’s best friend Leonas Jukonis. Later Leiba moved to Klaipėda where he was employed in rebuilding the city. After some time he returned to Biržai and worked in a bakery. Here he met the love of his life, Genovaitė, started a family and had two daughters, Leta and Nelė. He had four grandchildren: Daina, Asta, Petras, Kristina and Dalia.
Have fun, ride safe
The Embassy of Israel to Lithuania organized a fun event, inviting everyone who wanted to ride bicycles together through the beautiful city of Vilnius.
Riding under the motto “Have fun, ride safe,” around 200 participants rode through the streets of Vilnius wearing t-shirts made especially for the event. At the end riders were treated to apples with honey, in anticipation of the upcoming Jewish New Year.
Bilateral Consultations Between Lithuanian and Israeli Experts
Bilateral consultations between Lithuanian and Israeli experts on issues of cooperation in Eastern Europe began today, September 1, 2015 in Vilnius. Two Israeli officials–director of the Eurasian Department of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Yaakov Livne and senior analyst of the Politicial Planning Department of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Alona Simon–are in Vilnius on a two-day visit.
Vilnius Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium Principal Miša Jakobas: “Is it my fault summer is over?”
Operating now since winter, the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in the Vilnius neighborhood of Žvėrynas has now opened its doors officially. The gymnasium acquired the school premises on Kraševskio street in mid-2013 and spent two years renovating the dilapidated classrooms, corridors and assembly halls. September 1, the traditional start of the school year, became a real holiday for the first graders whose faces lit up as they received First Grade passports and the principal gave them a gift: a trip to McDonalds.
“Is it my fault that summer is over?” gymnasium principal Miša Jakobas quoted a line of poetry as he began his welcome speech. The experienced teacher paused after the line, and the audience erupted into laughter and applause.
Jewish School Principal: “The Children Don’t Cry and There’s No Blood Here”
August 30, 2015 lrytas.lt
Until only recently, Kraševskio street in the Lithuanian capital was a dilapidated and abandoned section of the Žvėrynas neighborhood. Today this location has received new life. Although surrounding buildings appear just as dilapidated as before, the sidewalks are still uneven and tree branches still litter the ground, there is a shiny newly-renovated building standing right in the middle.
So this year the traditional start of the school year, September 1, will also feature the opening of the impressive new school building, the Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium. The Lithuanian and Israeli flags fly atop tall flagpoles in the yard. This is a secular school in whose cafeteria pork products are not to be found, and the cafeteria workers ask whether it’s alright to add sour cream to the beet and meat soup. The majority of children attending the school are Jewish.
School principal Miša Jakobas, 66, is bright, polite and calm, but also speaks emotionally. A true teacher by calling. He describes himself as a Lithuanian patriot and is happy that almost all of his graduates pursue successful careers in their own country, and almost none seek their fortunes abroad.
For full interview in Lithuanian, see Lrytas.lt
Photo Exhibit of Pope’s Visit to Israel Opens on Central Cathedral Square in Vilnius
An exhibition of photographs called “Pope Francis’s Visit to Israel in 2014” opened on Cathedral Square, the center of the city of Vilnius, on August 28. The photographs presented in the exhibit were selected to best show the historical nature of the visit and the most important meetings during the Pope’s trip. Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon and Vilnius archbishop metropolitan Gintaras Linas Grušas opened the open-air public exhibition.
In May, 2014, Pope Francis made his first visit to the Holy Land. It was the fourth pilgrimage by a Pope to Israel, and came on the 50th anniversary of the visit Pope Paul VI made to Israel.
Shimon Peres, president of Israel then, met Pope Francis at Ben-Gurion Airport. The Pope then travelled to Jerusalem where he met the patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew outside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. They prayed together inside the church. The Pope participated at a synod of bishops later that day.
Hesed Club News from Kaunas
On the sunny afternoon of August 26 a contingent of the ever-cheerful and bright Hesed Club activists gathered at the Kaunas Jewish Community to celebrate the 95th birthday of fellow Hesed Club and Kaunas Jewish Community member Ana Orlova. Ana Orlova was born in Byelorussia. When the war began she was evacuated to Kazan. After the war she contineud her medical studies in Minsk and came to Lithuania in 1948 along with her husband, a military doctor. Initially the young family with two small daughters lived in Marijampolė, then moved to Kaunas in 1956, where the young female doctor was appointed director of the internal diseases section at a Kaunas hospital, where she worked for many years. She retired after Lithuanian independence. Ana Orlova has raised three beautiful daughters and has five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Ana Orlova has always been the life of the party and is happy, inventive and creative. She recently has been reading some of her written work at Kaunas Jewish Community events. Community chairman Gercas Žakas greeted her on the occasion of her birthday and called upon everyone to try to follow her example of sharp wit, inexhaustible energy and great sense of humor. He said she would live to be at least 120!
Photo: Ana Orlova with daughters: Olia visiting from Israel and Nataša who lives in Kaunas.
Jewish Song and Dance Ensemble Fayerlakh
Jewish song and dance ensemble Fayerlakh
- E-mail: larisa.vysniauskiene@gmail.com
Larisa Vyšniauskienė, manager.
Top Story of the Week: Much Ado about Nothing
This last of August, 2015, saw continued agitation over Lithuanian Government plans to restore an aging architectural monument built over a Jewish cemetery bulldozed by the Soviets in 1950. A delegation of Litvak ulta-Orthodox rabbis from Israel and America arrived in Vilnius to petition the government to halt any plans for the site and Israeli media continued to demonstrate a complete naïveté and immunity to the facts in the case in their reporting on the issue. The facts are:
There hasn’t been a cemetery operating at the site since the late 1800s, and the gravestones and monuments were bulldozed and removed in 1950. The Soviets, apparently out of a misplaced sense of cultural sensitivity, removed the human remains of the Vilna Gaon and reinterred them at the one working Jewish cemetery in Vilnius, in the Šeškinė neighborhood on the hill to the northwest of the historical neighborhood of Šnipiškės. Graves were certainly disturbed by Soviet construction in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the massive Palace of Sports was built. The site was grand Soviet architecture and almost all open ground was covered with flagstones at that point, as it still is. The remaining graves which were never disturbed by the building of the sports arena remain under the flagstones.
Family of missing soldier slams ‘Hamas lies’ broadcast on Al Jazeera
In a statement on Friday, the family said that the body part recovered during the August 1, 2014 attack was indeed that of their son.
“Hamas’s lies are being heard again and being given a stage on Al Jazeera,” they said. “We see the security establishment as the only one to trust for reliable information. We call for increased pressure on Hamas to return Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin.”
In addition to 2nd Lt. Goldin, Hamas still holds the remains of Staff Sergeant Oron Shaul, who was killed in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood, a Hamas stronghold, last summer.
In the Thursday interview, a masked Kassam Brigades commander said that the IDF accidentally recovered the body of Walid Tufik Massoud, the terrorist who killed Goldin, saying that Massoud was wearing an IDF uniform at the time.
International Rabbinic Delegation Pleads with Government Leaders to Cancel Redevelopment Plan of Sports Palace, Desecrating 500-year Old Snipiskes Cemetery – BNS
VILNIUS, Lithuania, Aug. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — A Rabbinic Delegation visited yesterday Vilnius and met the authorities to plea with them to cancel plans to construct a Congress Hall on Snipiskes Jewish cemetery.
The Snipiskes cemetery – interring Vilnius’ most famous Jewish leaders – was desecrated by a series of regimes, including the Nazis and Soviets. The latter built a now-abandoned Sports Palace on top of cemetery land. Desecration continued under Lithuania’s democratic government, with two apartment buildings constructed on cemetery grounds during the last decade, disturbing and shattering human remains.
Recently, the government announced plans to redevelop the abandoned Sports Palace into a Congress Hall. Leading Rabbis who maintain the Lithuanian tradition of Talmud study publicly decried the plan, protesting “any use of this sacred site other than for prayer and solemn reflection.”
International Rabbinic Delegation Travels to Vilnius to Plea for the Cancellation of Development Plans on the Snipiskes Cemetery
Group Meets Deputy Chancellor and the Vilnius Mayor to Relay Calls of World Jewry to Spare 500-year Old Snipiskes Cemetery from Further Desecration
Vilnius – A Rabbinic Delegation visited yesterday Vilnius and met the authorities to plea with them to cancel plans to construct a Congress Hall on Snipiskes Jewish cemetery.
The Snipiskes cemetery was established over five centuries ago, and it interred the most famous Jewish leaders of Vilnius. Sadly, the cemetery’s Gravestones were razed and the cemetery was desecrated by a series of regimes, including the Nazis and the Soviets. The latter built a now-abandoned Sports Palace on the cemetery land. Desecration continued in recent years, under Lithuania’s democratic government. During the last ten years, two apartment buildings were constructed on cemetery grounds and human remains were disturbed, shattered and excavated, despite protests from Jewish communities worldwide.
Competition In Protecting Old Jewish Cemeteries
Machberes: Inside The Chassidish And Yeshivish World
By Rabbi Gershon Tannenbaum
Two groups lead in the fight to save Jewish cemeteries. Both organizations strive for the same goal but each has a different approach. The Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe (CPJCE), which is headed by Rabbi Elyakim Schlesinger, universally respected London roshyeshiva, was founded in 1992; its headquarters is in London with affiliate offices in Warsaw. The CPJCE, also known as Admas Kodesh, meets with local municipal authorities and with heads of state, seeking to achieve working relationships. In all of CPJCE’s work, they proceed with the assumption of responsibility for all Jewish cemeteries in a particular country and all of the Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe.
International Rabbinic Delegation Travels to Vilnius to Plea for the Cancellation of Development Plans on the Snipiskes Cemetery
A Rabbinic Delegation visited today Vilnius and met the authorities to plead with them to cancel plans to construct a Congress Hall on Snipiskes Jewish cemetery.
Israel “More Ready Than Ever” to Strike Iran IAEA: No Funds For Nuke Plant Inspections
As the Iran nuclear deal continues to dominate international headlines, shock waves of sorts have been reverberating in Israel after it was revealed that recordings had been released by former prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak in which alleged plans to strike Iran in the past had been graphically discussed.
On Monday, an unnamed Israeli senior security official told Walla news that his country’s military is more prepared now than in previous years to conduct a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities should the orders be handed down to do so.
The official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter said, “Every year that passes, the IDF improves. We never stand still. The professional level increases. In the coming year we will receive another submarine, F-35 fighter jets and other platforms. Intelligence is improving as well.”
The picture of the meeting last week in Washington DC
from Left to Right:
1) Mr. Gershon Schlesinger- UJ Care Admas Kodesh2) Rabbi Gershon Tennenbaum-representing Admas Kodesh –Spiritual Leader Rabbinical Alliance of America3)Rabbi A Ginsberg- Executive Director CPJCE4) Mr. Abba Cohen-Agudas Israel of America member of the Commission for the Preservation of Americas heritage Abroad5) Mrs. Lesley Weiss- Chair of the Commission for the Preservation of Americas Heritage Abroad6) Andrew baker-member of Commission head of the American Jewish Committee7) James L Furrow-Director of the Commission and member of the State Department for Jewish Issues8) Susan Sandler- Head of the State Department Jewish Affairs desk9) Carol Beilman Weiner- Desk officer For Lithuania Baltic energy Affairs at the State Department. Also two other participants who were linked via video link are not pictured here