Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg-Silverstein visited the western Lithuanian town of Jurbarkas, or Yurburg in Yiddish, on July 3, according to the Jurbarkas Regional Administration webpage jurbarkas.lt.

The ambassador began her visit at the V. Grybas Museum where Jurbarkas regional mayor Skirmantas Mockevičius and museum director Rasa Grybaitė received her.

At the Jurbarkas Regional Library the ambassador met with regional administration director Rūta Vančienė, culture and sports department director Aušra Baliukynaitė, senior department specialist Akvilė Sadauskienė and library director Rasida Kalinauskienė. They discussed opportunities for cooperative work.

At 3:00 P.M. the Israeli ambassador attended a ceremony at the mass grave of Jews and others from Jurbarkas who were murdered 82 years ago.

Jurbarkas regional mayor Skirmantas Mockevičius spoke, emphasizing the need to remember:

“Every year on July 3, but not only on this day, I, in the name of the entire Jurbarkas community, pay my respects to those who built Jurbarkas, who provided medical care to the people living here, who cared about and defended the local community, and whose lives were cut unbelievably short. During the Soviet period they tried to erase the memory from our thinking, from our minds and environment, but they didn’t erase it. So I say thank you to everyone who has come here, to those who have maintained this site, to those who write about this, to those who photograph this, because this is history. History which is important, not just to those who have been lost, but to those who will come in the future as well.”

Later the ambassador, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Žakas Gercas, Hektoras Vitkus from the Baltic Regional History and Archaeology Institute of Klaipėda University, Lithuanian History Institute doctoral candidate Rūta Matimaitytė and others gathered at the memorial on Synagogues Square in Jurbarkas and spoke about the history of the once-large Jewish population of Jurbarkas and about Holocaust memory and memorialization today.