Lithuanian Jewish Community

East German Town Bans Stumbling Stones

Photo: Stolperstein commemorating Nazi victim Paul Gröger embedded in the sidewalk in front of Heidenau City Hall. Robert Michael/picture alliance via Getty Images.

by Toby Axelrod, September 27

Transparent maneuver by AfD to suppress German commemorative culture, Jewish leader and Holocaust survivor says

A decision to bar the “stumbling stone” memorials to victims of the Nazis has touched a nerve in one small German town, and beyond.

At issue is a motion passed September 25 by the city council of Heidenau in the former East Germany [in Saxony] to stop installation of such memorials in local sidewalks, calling them disrespectful, and to use the town’s North Cemetery instead.

Set into the ground, the small, engraved brass Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, are meant to make pedestrians stop and think about the fate of former residents. There are currently some 116,000 stones laid in 1,860 municipalities across Europe, mostly in Germany, according to the project’s website.

2026-09-282026-09-28

Condolences

Alfonsas Bukontas died September 23. He was born Mordchelis Michnickis on September 11, 1941. Both his parents were murdered during the Holocaust in Lithuania and Bukontas was raised by Lithuanians. He was an accomplished poet, translator of German, Yiddish, Polish and even Sanskrit, and writer. He was a member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Union of Former Ghetto Inmates. Our deepest condolences to his friends, family members and members of the Union of Former Ghetto Inmates. May his memory be a blessing.

2026-09-282026-09-28

Fairford Bombers Appeared “Middle Eastern”

Update: Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Policing released all five suspects on police bail and intimated the three white vans in question were not carrying bombs or explosives of any kind. Other investigators, members of the cabinet and MPs said the investigation has become extremely complex.

Five terrorism suspects arrested about a half mile away from the main runways of the Fairford Royal Air Force Base in Gloucestshire, England, appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, according to a farmer who alerted police of suspicious activities in front of her house on early Sunday morning.

The farmer told the British tabloids she and another person were returning home from a party just after midnight and were unable to get into her driveway because it was blocked by vans. She turned around and left, when she saw “a large group” of men wearing masks and balaclavas flee in front of her headlights into woods and fields near her home. She told the newspapers they appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin. BBC reported national counter-terrorism police told them all five men are British subjects who lived in London. The female farmer told SkyNews there had been more than the five arrested, she saw between 8 and 10 men.

2026-09-282026-09-28

Palanga Marks Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide

More than 150 students joined a Road of Memory procession as part of the Palanga Jewish Community’s commemoration of Holocaust victims on the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide on September 23. Road of Memory is the initiative of the International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania. A ceremony was held at the site of the reburial of Holocaust victims at the Palanga city cemetery.

Palanga Jewish Community chairman Vilius Gutmanas was one of the speakers, and said: “This isn’t just a date on the calendar for us. Behind the numbers and historical facts stand specific people: residents of Palanga, families, children, our loved ones and neighbors, whose lives were atrociously cut short. They were part of this city, so it’s very important their names, stories and remembrance remain alive. It is especially moving and significant to see so many young people here. My sincere gratitude to the students and their teachers who went on the Road of Memory. This gives hope that this history will not be forgotten and its memory will be passed on from generation to generation. As long as we remember these people, so long will we preserve this part of Palanga’s history, which can never be erased.”

2026-09-28

Šiauliai Marks Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide

The Šiauliai Jewish Community marked the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide September 23. Students from the Saulius Sondeckas Art Gymnasium in Šiauliai began the event with a musical performance.

Deputy mayor Justinas Švėgžda attended. After the ceremony a silent procession moved from the site of the gate of the first ghetto (Caucasus) to the monument marking the gate of the second ghetto (Trakai).

2026-09-282026-09-28

Road of Memory Procession in Pabradė

Last Tuesday, September 22, a Road of Memory event and procession took place in Pabradė in the Švenčionys region to mark the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide (actually on September 23). A group of students from the 7th and 8th grades, their teachers from Rytas school in Pabradė and members of the community walked to the Holocaust commemoration site in Pabradė.

The event was organized by the Pabradė Culture Center in concert with the Pabradė aldermanship and chairman Moshe Shapiro of the Švenčionys Jewish Community.

2026-09-282026-09-28

Holocaust Commemoration in Švenčionys

The Švenčionys Jewish Community invites the public to remember the victims of the Holocaust and to mark the anniversary of the liquidation of the Švenčionys ghetto on October 4. Community and friends will gather at 11:00 A.M. on Sunday, October 4 at the Menorah statue in the Švenčionys city park. At noon there will be a commemoration at the mass grave in Platumai village in the Švenčionėliai aldermanship.

2026-09-28

Panevėžys Jewish Community Marks Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide

Members of the Panevėžys Jewish Community including chairman Gennady Kofman marked the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide by attending a screening at the Menas Theater of the Lithuanian film Getas about the Vilnius ghetto. This special screening of the 2013 film was preceded by a performance called Shameful River in the theater’s courtyard.

2026-09-28

Voice of Departed Exhibit Closes November 30 in Klaipėda

The Klaipėda Jewish Community invites the general public to tour the exhibit Voices of the Departed before the exhibit ends November 30. The exhibit highlights the old Jewish cemetery in the Lithuanian port city, and the cemetery hosts the exhibit. It’s located at Žiedų alley no. 3, Klaipėda. Tours are available in Lithuanian, German and English. For more information, call 0 650 21335.

2026-09-28

Kaunas Jewish Community Accompanies Fayerlakh at Kaunas Concert

The Jewish song and dance group Fayerlakh performed at the Garden of Cultures 2026 event in Kaunas this month which showcases Lithuanian ethnic cultures. Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas and other Community members spoke to the audience as well on Jewish culture and its place in the history of Kaunas.

2026-09-28

New Yiddish Language Classes Offered

Historian and translator Saulė Valiūnaitė is offering a Yiddish language course for adult beginners. The language of instruction is Lithuanian. The course consists of 15 classes and costs €150 per person. The class begins at 6:00 P.M. Thursday, October 1, and will run weekly on Thursdays. They’ll be held at the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium, Kraševskio street no. 5, Vilnius. For more information or to register, write saule.valiunaite@gmail.com.

According to the Lithuanian History Institute, Valiūnaitė defended her dissertation called “Yiddishist Women and Their Contribution to the Formation and Preservation of Secular Jewishness in Interwar Vilnius” at Vilnius University in 2025. Since 2025 she is a researcher at the Department of 19th Century History of the Lithuanian History Institute. Her main areas of research interests are history of Vilner Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries, Jewish gender studies and the political and cultural history of Yiddishism, according to the Lithuanian History Institute.

2026-09-282026-09-28

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 7:20 P.M. on Friday, September 25, and concludes at 8:01 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit and prayers recited by or before 6:52 P.M. and completed before sunset at 7:20 P.M. Sukkot also begins at sunset on Friday. Simchat Torah begins Friday, October 2, at sunset and concludes at sundown on Sunday, October 4.

2026-09-24

Sukkot on Friday

Sukkot begins Friday, September 25 at 6:52 P.M. 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 leads on to Simchat Torah celebrated for two days outside Israel, this year starting at sundown on October 2. Sukkot is one of the three festivals during which Jewish men were required to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the times of the Holy Temple. The Choral Synagogue in Vilnius has set up a sukka for members of the Community.

2026-09-242026-09-24

Floor of Great Synagogue Inspires Art Exhibition

We know the Great Synagogue in Vilnius was mainly subterranean, because of Christian restrictions limiting the height of houses of prayer of other confessions. Until now, we only had period illustrations of the interior, lost when the shul damaged by Nazi bombardment was demolished by the Soviets in the 1950s. For about a decade now archaeologists from the Israeli Antiquities Authority in cooperation with Lithuanian archaeologists from the Department of Cultural Heritage have been excavating the Shulhoyf, and last year, directed by Jon Seligman of the Israel Antiquities Authority (there from 205) and Justinas Račas and Zenonas Baubonis of the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Salvage Group (at the dig since 2018), they reached the floor of the main hall and uncovered most of the meter-high bimah, the central point in the main hall.

Their discoveries have inspired an exhibit of artworks by Lithuanian Eglė Ridikaitė called Depositions at the St. George the Martyr Church, K. Sirvydo street no. 4, in Vilnius, which opened May 14 and runs till October 3. Admission is from 5 to 10 euros and is payable by card only.

“Eglė Ridikaitė’s exhibition, through an unexpected artistic gesture, weaves together sites of faith, painful historical experiences, and a sense of present vulnerability. With striking clarity, serenity, and simplicity, Depositions unfolds as a silent yet conceptually dense narrative about the city. It invites us to experience, simultaneously, the layered histories of prewar Jewish and Christian Vilnius, while tracing processes of survival and extinction, life and its erasure in memory.

2026-09-232026-09-28

Ontario Synagogue Shooter Dead

Photo: Ian MacAlpine/The Canadain Press

A man drove up in a pick-up truck to the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ontario, Sunday evening during Yom Kippur services and opened fire on an off-duty Belleville Police Service constable working as a security guard there as he sat in his vehicle.

Police say the man, 29-year-old Sean Ward who lived in nearby Quinte West and served in the Canadian armed forces in Alberta, joining in 2017 and leaving in 2022 at the rank of corporal, was hit by return fire from the security guard, and from another off-duty constable working as a security guard who rushed to the scene. The first constable and the shooter were wounded, and the shooter Sean Ward died from his wounds in hospital in Kingston, Ontario, Monday night.

Ward is said to have been discharged from the Canadian military’s Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry division because he refused Covid vaccinations. One military source told the GlobalNEWS.ca news website Ward believed Jews were responsible for the virus, restrictions and vaccinations.

2026-09-232026-09-23

Sabbath Table to Remember Jewish History Exhibit in Pabradė

The first Sabbath Table to Remember Jewish History exhibit as part of the Children of the Holocaust: Lighting Up the Shadows of Lithuanian History project took place at the Pabradė Culture Center last week. The exhibit will be a changeable one depending on the decisions and sensibilities of the designers and exhibit item creators. This time the Sabbath table was laden with pomegranates, figs, apples and challa.

Residents of Pabradė in eastern Lithuania, visitors and local students and teachers attended the event. Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro welcomes the attendees, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Sholem Alechem ORT Gymnasium students, moderated by Algis Davidavičius, who discussed local history, memory and modern forms of commemoration. Then visitors learned about Sabbath traditions, sampled traditional dishes and attended a Jewish cloth-dying workshop.

The Sabbath Table to Remember Jewish History exhibition is the fruit of a two-year meaningful journey during which brave and knowledge-thirsty students from Vilnius and Palanga and their teachers dove into live research on local Jewish history. The young people conducted tours, creative workshops, celebrated Purim and Sabbath together, marked commemorative dates, visited synagogue and spoke with representatives from the Palanga, Vilnius, Darbėn and Israeli Jewish communities.

2026-09-22

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 7:28 P.M. on Friday, September 18, and concludes at 8:19 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit and prayers recited by or before 7:10 P.M. and completed before sunset at 7:28 P.M. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, begins at sundown on Sunday. This Wednesday, September 23, is the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide, a commemorative day on the Lithuanian calendar.

2026-09-172026-09-17

Yom Kippur at the Choral Synagogue

Yom Kippur starts Sunday evening. It is considered the most important holiday on the Jewish calendar. The Choral Synagogue at Pylimo street no. 39 in Vilnius will host Yom Kippur services. G’mar khatima tova, May your name be inscribed in the Book of Life.

Schedule:

September 20

5:45 P.M. Mincha
6:00-6:45 P.M. Feast before fast
6:45-7:05 P.M. Candle lighting and beginning of fast
7:00 P.M. Kol nidre

September 21

10:00 A.M. Shacharit
12:15 P.M. Yizkor
6:00 P.M. Mincha
7:00 P.M. Ne’ila prayers, shofar and closing prayers
8:14 P.M. End of fast, break-fast meal

2026-09-172026-09-18

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