Lithuania’s International Commission for Assessing the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania and the Centropa organization based in Austria held three days of workshops for teachers to teach the Holocaust in Kaunas from February 19 to 21. Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein and Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas contributed to the teachers’ workshop.

Wittenberg Silverstein spoke about her grandparents and their experience of the Holocaust. She showed the teachers copies of her grandparents’ testimony for Yad Vashem detailing the murder of family members.

Gercas Žakas spoke to them about his father’s Holocaust story in the Šiauliai ghetto and at the Stutthof concentration camp. He recalled his father completely avoided talking about it later, but in old age and infirmity he revealed his memories of the murder of almost the entire family.

Workshop participants also visited Sugihara House in Kaunas. The next day they visited the Ninth Fort Museum in Kaunas as well. Twenty-six teachers and educators from all over Lithuania attended. The Claims Conference and the European Commission also provided financial support.