The Sabbath begins at 8:53 P.M. on Friday, August 14, and concludes at 9:54 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 8:35 P.M. and completed before sunset at 8:53 P.M. Wednesday, August 19, is Chinese Valentine’s Day or Qixi in China and Taiwan, on the 7th night of the 7th month on the Chinese lunar calendar.
Sėla Museum director Edita Landsbergienė and museum staff held a Holocaust commemoration at the site of the former synagogue in Biržai/Birzh last week. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman, Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Shelly Hugler Livne, a representative from the city’s mayor’s office and others spoke at the event.
A procession walked from the city about 3 kilometers to the mass grave marked in Pakamponys Forest.
The commemorative ceremony and procession were followed by the premiere of an opera called Kitas Miestas [A Different City] at a local high school gymnasium about the pre-Holocaust Jewish community in Birzh and how they were murdered in the Holocaust. An internet stream of the opera will be made available here.
A plaque commemorating Litvak photographer Shimon Bajer (1893-1942) was unveiled Thursday on Freedom Alley, Kaunas’s main pedestrian walking mall, at his former residence at Laisvės alley no. 97 (formerly no. 58). Bajer was one of the most famous figures in Lithuanian photography in the period between the two world wars and pioneered studio photography in the country. He photographed Lithuanian president and later dictator Antanas Smetona and Lithuania’s chief rabbi Rozensen, among others. Shimon and his Raja were murdered in the Kaunas ghetto in 1942.
Photographs by Gediminas Pašvenskas courtesy the Kauno Diena newspaper and website.
A plaque commemorating Jewish photographer Shimon Bajer (aka Bayer) will be unveiled in Kaunas at 4:00 P.M. on Thursday, August 13, at his former residence at Laisvės alley no. 97 (formerly no. 58). The Kaunas Jewish Community invites the public to come remember this important Kaunas photographer from the interwar period. Bajer and his wife Raja were murdered in the Kaunas ghetto in 1942.
The Ukmergė Regional History Museum invites the public to the town of Želva in the Ukmergė (Vilkomir) region at 11:00 A.M. on August 11 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Aaron Klug, who won the Nobel prize for chemistry. Želva is the Klug family hearth. At the age of two Aaron Klug and the rest of his family immigrated to the Union of South Africa. While he later said he remembered almost nothing about Lithuania, he often expressed pride in his Litvak roots and did related family stories from Želva. His grandfather on his father’s side was a cattle merchant. In 1982 Klug was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry for his work on biological macro-molecular structures. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 1988.
The names of 1,225 people buried at the desecrated Jewish cemetery in Klaipėda were read out at a ceremony held in the first week of August called “Voices of the Departed.” A symbolic headstone was also erected there in their honor.
Master of ceremonies Nerijus Gedminas said: “This was the Klaipėda Jewish cemetery and ritual funeral home right up until World War II. The Klaipėda Jewish community was annihilated during the Nazi occupation and its material legacy was largely destroyed as well. The post-war Soviet government set up a secret radio jamming station in the former [sic] cemetery called No. 61. Jewish headstones were used as construction material and for the bases of the antennae.”
Klaipėda Jewish Community chairman Feliksas Puzemskis said: “On the eve of Klaipėda’s birthday we want to give the city a list of the people who built this city and who are buried in this cemetery. Many visitors from around the world come here looking for their roots. Until now there hasn’t been a database for visitors to check whether their relatives are buried here. To accomplish this, organizers and money were required, but more importantly, the right person to undertake this work. We were very fortunate that Klaipėda University invited in professor Ruth Leiserowitz, thanks to whom this list has been reconstructed. She compiled a priceless treasure house of information.”
Šiauliai Jewish Community members toured Radviliškis and Šeduva August 1, where they learned about the former Jewish communities there and visited sites of former Jewish life, including the former People’s Bank site in Šeduva, Jewish neighborhoods and streets, mikvot and several synagogues.
The Sabbath begins at 9:08 P.M. on Friday, August 7, and concludes at 10:12 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 8:50 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:08 P.M.
The Panevėžys Jewish Community received visitors from France: Mr. Matt Nguyen and his mother. The warm meeting with Community members was more than just a search for roots, it was a return to the place where their family called home more than a century ago.
Nguyen’s father was Maurice Hendel, aka Moshe Lozer Gendel, who immigrated from Panevėžys to the United States in 1922, although the family hearth isn’t Panevėžys but Pastovys now in Belarus (Postavi). Following the path of Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaheman, the Hendel family moves to Panevėžys during the First World War. Moshe’s future wife Rochel Lea Tuvman moved later from Vidžiai, Lithuania, to Panevėžys. They built a family together in Panevėžys, traces of which remain to this day.
Moshe died at the Panevėžys Jewish Hospital in 1938 and was buried in the city’s Jewish cemetery. The cemetery was destroyed during Soviet times to build a city park. Moshe’s mother, sister and daughter-in-law remained in Panevėžys during the Holocaust and were murdered there.
by Grant Gochin, August 4, 2026
Since 2015 I have filed forty-nine formal submissions with Lithuanian state bodies. Eight lawsuits and international filings. Eleven to the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre. Five criminal complaints under Article 170-2. Eleven institutional submissions. Two to the Commission of Journalist Ethics. Twelve letters. Not one produced a finding on the merits.
Lithuania’s answer has been consistent. I am a foreigner with a grievance. The controversy is manufactured. In February 2025 Laurynas Kasčiūnas–member of the Seimas, former Minister of National Defence, newly elected chairman of the Homeland Union–called me a Russian agent and called me trash.
That answer rests on a premise: that the file begins with me.
It begins in Paris on December 30, 1921, in a letter signed by Leo Motzkin.
I know that because of a book almost nobody reads. In July I borrowed it through interlibrary loan from Duquesne University. Herbert von Truhart, Völkerbund und Minderheiten-Petitionen, Vienna and Leipzig, 1931. I could locate no openly accessible full-text scan. To consult the complete inventory you borrow the physical volume.
Svetlana Karaulova has died. She was born in 1942. She was a member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and a client of the Saul Kagan Welfare Center. Our deepest condolences to her daughter and other friends and family members.
The Palanga Jewish Community is pleased to announce a guided tour of the traces of Jewish life in Palanga. The tour starts at 4:00 P.M. on Friday, August 7, at the main entrance to Birutė Park, by the gates, Vytauto street no. 19. The walking tour will proceed from there through the city and end up at the city square and the plaque commemorating the former synagogues there. The tour is free and open to the public, but registration is necessary. Please indicate the number of people in your party while registering by sending an email to palangoszb@gmail.com or by calling+370 682 55164.
Members of the Lithuanian Roma community gathered August 3 at the Ponar Memorial Complex to remember their compatriots murdered during the Holocaust. According to EU reports, 1 in 3 Roma still experience discrimination in EU member-states. Approximately 500 to 1,000 Roma were murdered at Ponar along with the largest mass murder of Jews in Lithuania and a number of Poles, Soviet POWs and Lithuanian anti-Nazi dissidents.
Natalja Cheiifec’s internet discussion club continues Thursday. Participants are invited to submit questions beforehand while registering. To register, click here.
Time: 6:00 P.M., Thursday, August 6
Place: internet
The Sabbath begins at 9:22 P.M. on Friday, July 31, and concludes at 10:30 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:04 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:22.
With great sadness we report the death of Arie Ben-Ari Grozdensky on July 29. He was born in 1946. He was chairman of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, a member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, a long-time supporter of the Litvak community and a member of the board of the Goodwill Foundation. Born and raised in Lithuania, Grozendsky and family were able to repatriate to Israel in 1972. He was a tireless defender of Litvak heritage and proponent of Holocaust justice and remembrance. His grandparentsm uncles and cousins were murdered in the Alytus region in Lithuania.. The Lithuanian Jewish Community and chairwoman Faina Kukliansky extend our deepest condolences to his wife Bella, children, grandchildren, many friends and the entire Litvak community. May his memory be a blessing.
Eighteen visitors from Haifa and guide Idit Perri visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community July 20. They discussed the Holocaust, Jewish life, traditions, surviving material heritage and local cooking with Community members over tea.
The Klaipėda Jewish Community will hold a ceremony at the old Jewish cemetery there to name the names of 1,225 people buried there and to unveil a monument to the lost Jewish community and lost Jewish graves. Ruth Leiserowitz will speak about the history of Jewish cemeteries in Klaipėda, formerly known as Memel. The Jewish actors troupe Shatil will perform as well.
Time: 4:00 P.M., July 30
Place: Old Jewish cemetery, Sinagogų street no. 13, Klaipėda
Remigijus Žemaitaitis has lost his appeal at a Lithuanian appellate court on his conviction of sowing ethnic discord against Jews and Holocaust trivialization.
Member of parliament Remigijus Žemaitaitis made a series of anti-Semitic statements on facebook and elsewhere several years to launch his party Nemuno Aušra [Nieman River Dawn]. He accused Jews of carrying out a Holocaust against Lithuanians following Soviet occupation of the country, among other things. The appeals court in the latest ruling found Žemaitaitis had engaged in a form of Holocaust trivialization by comparing the Holocaust to Soviet crimes and by using dehumanizing language to describe Jews.
In a separate case earlier Lithuania’s Constitutional Court ruled Žemaitaitis’s statements on facebook and to media violated his oath of office as an MP and constituted a gross violation of the Lithuanian constitution.
The appeals court reiterated the earlier verdict against the Lithuanian MP and increased the fine levied against him from 5,000 to 10,000 euros.
The Sabbath begins at 9:34 P.M. on Friday, July 24, and concludes at 10:47 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:16 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:34 P.M. Tisha b’Av ends at sundown on Thursday, July 23.
