Lithuanian Jewish Community

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 9:57 P.M. on Friday, July 3, and concludes at 11:25 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:39 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:57 P.M. Thursday, July 2, is the fast day of Shivah Asar b’Tamuz, commemorating the breach of Jerusalem’s city walls in AD 68, AD 69 or AD 70 (3828, 3829 or 3830), according to different sources, just three weeks before the destruction of the Second Temple, and also commemorates four or five other tragedies associated with this date on the Jewish calendar. Saturday, July 4 is Independence Day in the United States, with Monday included as a day off work in many parts of the country. Monday, July 6, is Coronation of King Mindaugas Day in Lithuania, a state holiday.

2026-07-022026-07-02

They Rewrote History before Our Eyes

by Grant Gochin, June 24, 2026

Lithuania condemns Russian falsification of history. On June 19, its own parliament provided the screen for another falsification.

Holocaust revisionism was not whispered in a corridor of the Lithuanian parliament. It was projected onto the wall of the Hall of the Act of 11 March.

On June 19, 2026, the Seimas hosted an international conference marking the eighty-fifth anniversary of the 1941 Lithuanian uprising. The official announcement promised a discussion based on “sources and historical analysis,” rather than later stereotypes. The program listed the speaker of the Seimas, senior politicians, members of parliament and historians. This was not a private gathering in a rented hotel room. It carried the location, publicity and institutional prestige of the Lithuanian legislature. (Seimas conference program)

One presentation was delivered by Roman Kuzmyn of Lviv Polytechnic National University. Its subject was the supposed similarities and differences between the 1941 uprisings in Lithuania and Western Ukraine.

2026-07-012026-07-02

Remembering the Garage Pogrom 85 Years On

On Monday the Kaunas Jewish Community held a public commemoration for the victims of the Lietūkis Garage massacre in Kaunas. Although the exact number of victims remains unknown to this day, it’s believed around 50 Jewish men were rounded up and then tortured to death at the automobile repair cooperative before the German army had taken control of Kaunas, Lithuania’s provisional capital.

The mass murder attracted spectators, mainly Lithuanians but also Wehrmacht soldiers and officers. It happened on June 27, 1941. Firehoses were forced down the throats of many of the victims, bursting their stomachs and intestines, leading to death. Those who survived the various tortures were murdered with crowbars. The corpses were piled up in the parking lot and one of the perpetrators climbed on top and played a Lithuanian song. Some witnesses said it was the Lithuanian national anthem.

The commemoration took place at the site in Kaunas with a commemoration in the evening at Vytauts Magnus University there. Both commemorations featured live music, including accordion music at the mass murder site.

Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas spoke at the commemoration at the site, as did Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Shelly Hugler Livne. The latter decried the world turning its collective back on the lessons learned from the Holocaust. Also attending were the American, German, Estonian and French ambassadors.

2026-07-012026-07-01

Keeping Memory Alive

A small group marked the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust in Lithuania at the Ponar Memorial Complex yesterday.

The Holocaust began in late June of 1941. Withing a few months about 95% of all Jews in Lithuania had been murdered.

Writer and director of the Vilna Gaon Museum Sergejus Kanovičius said: “Words can never express our respect for those who were murdered as well as prayer does. Their memory will always live in our hearts.”

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said: “Those gathered here today are the people who don’t need salutes from an honor guard or ceremonies planned in the finest detail in order to understand that the massacre of Jews begun 85 years ago was a tragedy for all of Lithuania, not just for our people.”

Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Shelly Hugler Livne said it was horrible people hadn’t learned from the painful lessons of history. She said the ever-growing anti-Semitism around the world happening today was the best proof of that. Hugler Livne said it was said to see the world going down the same road again.

2026-06-30

The Tragedy in Palanga 85 Years Ago Must Not Be Forgotten

by Mindaugas Surblys

Today we commemorate the men and young men of the Palanga Jewish community who were murdered in Birutė Park in Palanga in 1941. Palanga Jewish Community chairman Vilnius Gutmanas, Palanga deputy mayor Rimantas Mikalkėnas, Palanga municipal culture department director Robertas Trautmanas and members of the community lit commemorative candles and placed commemorative stones.

The army of the Third Reich occupied Palanga on June 22, 1941, and by June 26 all of the town’s Jews had been locked up inside two synagogues, mothers, children and the elderly in one and men and young men in the other. The 106 males were taken on June 27 to Birutė Park and murdered, along with 5 Lithuanians accused of collaborating with the Soviet government. The remaining 300 or so women, children and elderly were murdered on October 11 and 12, 1941, in the Kunigiškiai forest.

The males were exhumed in July of 1958 and moved to the Palanga city cemetery, where a single marker marks the mass grave.

Memory lives so long as we remember.

Chairman Gutmanas said: “Eighty-five years have passed but time is powerless to erase our pain. People who had families, dreams and lives were silenced forever. They were murdered because of their origin. It is our duty today not just to commemorate them, but not to allow their stories to be forgotten.”

2026-06-30

Holocaust Testimonies in Palanga

The Palanga Jewish Community and the Jonas Šliūpas Museum invite you to attend Lithuanian-American historian and journalist Ina Navazelskis;s presentation “Voices from the Blood-Lands” which includes eye-witness testimonies of the Holocaust and World War II. Ina worked at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., for 25 years, soliciting oral testimonies from over three hundred witnesses and Holocaust survivors. She focused on Eastern Europe and especially the Baltic republics in her work, even writing a book about the period between 1990 when Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union and the attempted coup in Moscow in the fall of 1991. The presentation includes testimonies from Poles, Jews, Lithuanians, Germans and others. The presentation is free and open to the public, but the organizers ask that you register beforehand by calling +370 612 86114 or by sending an email to j.sliupo.muziejus@lnm.lt. Palanga Jewish Community chairman Vilius Gutmanas will also speak at the event. A discussion is planned after the main presentation.

Time: 5:00 P.M., Wednesday, July 15
Place: Jonas Šliūpas Museum, Vytauto street. no 23a, Palanga

2026-06-29

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 10:00 P.M. on Friday, June 26, and concludes at 11:31 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:42 P.M. and completed before sunset at 10:00 P.M. Monday, June 29, is the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul in the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican Churches this year. July 1 is Canada Day.

2026-06-25

Basketball Club Director and Vice-President Visit Panevėžys Jewish Community

Panevėžys basketball club Lietkabelis director Jonas Mačiulis and club vice-president Sigitas Gailiūnas visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community and spoke about cooperation between the club and the Community, including initiatives to get youth involved in sports and fostering understanding and tolerance between ethnic groups.

There was talk of Ramla, Panevėžys’s sister city in Israel, and of meeting the Israeli ambassador to Lithuania to talk about future avenues of cooperation.

The guests signed the guest book at the Community and said it was a great honor to meet Community chairman Gennady Kofman at Community headquarters, expressing hope for future cooperation.

2026-06-23

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 9:59 P.M. on Friday, June 19, and concludes at 11:32 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:41 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:59 P.M. Celebrations of the summer solstice or Midsummer’s Eve, the longest day of the year, take place around the world starting Friday, but the Lithuanian state holiday called Švento Jono diena, or St. John’s Day, is on Wednesday, June 24, with solstice celebrations taking place the evening before, called Joninės.

2026-06-182026-06-25

The Wreath and the Knife

by Grant Gochin

On June 27, 2026, the eighty-fifth anniversary of the Lietūkis Garage massacre will be marked in Kaunas and by Lithuanian diplomats in Israel and the USA.

Expect the wreaths. Expect the candles, the bowed heads, the violin music, the brief and dignified statement. Expect a Lithuanian official, perhaps a diplomat, to speak of the Jews who “perished,” who were “lost,” whose world “vanished.” I have set out elsewhere, in What Lithuania Means When It Says “Vanished,” “Lost,” or “Perished,” what that vocabulary is built to hide. The short version is that none of those words contains a killer. They are the grammar of a state that has learned to mourn the Jews it cannot bring itself to say were murdered by Lithuanians.

Watch closely this June, because the commemoration is the knife.

2026-06-18

United States Holocaust Envoy Visits Shnipishok

Ellen Germain, the special envoy for Holocaust issues at the United States Department of State, visited the old Jewish cemetery in the Shnipishok or Šnipiškės neighborhood of Vilnius last week, spoke with representatives of the Lithuanian Jewish Community about the site housing the ruins of the Soviet Palace of Sports complex and discussed plans for the site.

2026-06-15

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 9:55 P.M. on Friday, June 12, and concludes at 11:27 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:37 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:55 P.M. Sunday, June 14, is Flag Day in the United States and Freedom Day in Malawi.

2026-06-11

Lietūkis Garage Commemoration

The Kaunas Jewish Community is inviting the public to mark the 85th anniversary of the Lietūkis Garage massacre on Monday, June 29. The ceremony will take place at the commemoration to victims at Miško street no. 3 in Kaunas at 4:00 P.M., followed by a concert in the Great Hall at Vytautas Magnus University, Gimnazijos street no. 7, Kaunas, at 6:00 P.M.

2026-06-112026-06-12

How to Win in Iran: Thoughts from outside the Box

by Geoff Vasil

The first task in the American and Israeli war against Iran is to open the Strait of Hormuz. This isn’t an impossible military task. It simply entails a cold, hard slog up the coast, reducing by attrition Iranian radar, speedboat, drone and missile sites.

For Donald Trump to lose the military engagement in Iran would be an American tragedy. Never mind he forgot to sell the war to the American public and Congress. Maybe he thought a 4-day war’s results would speak for themselves. I might be misremembering, but George Herbert Walker Bush spent about 6 months selling his First Gulf War and about 4 months actually fighting it, to a semblance of victory. My flawed memory doesn’t recall any war at all America engaged in which didn’t include a prequel to war, a long build-up and more importantly an argument or explanation of why it was in America’s national interest. The secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos might be an exception, but “Ho Chi Minh Road” was kind of self-explanatory in the end. Did fourth American president Madison make the case against Canadian terrorism and British imperialism in the War of 1812? I don’t know, I wasn’t born yet, but I kind of think he did make that case to the American people in that weirdest of all American wars. America’s third president Thomas Jefferson definitely did make the case in the two Barbary Pirate Wars before that..

Donald Trump as the most significant American president since George Washington can’t afford to lose. Of course he never wanted to be a “wartime president” and he probably isn’t cut by nature or nurture to be a great military leader. Maybe there was some hubris involved in the technically good military kidnapping of the Venezuelan president a month before; if we can do that, we can do anything.

2026-06-102026-06-11

Solomon: King and Wise Man

Natalja Cheifec continues her lecture series and discussion club Thursday at 6:00 P.M. with a presentation on King Solomon, both on his monarchy considered a time of peace and plenty, and on his renowned wisdom. To receive zoom credentials and participate, click here.

2026-06-092026-06-09

Jewish Life in the Baltic Countries, 1917-1945

Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas in cooperation with the US Holocaust Museum, the Sugijara House Museum in Kaunas and the Ninth Fort Museum in Kaunas is holding a conference called “Jewish Life in the Baltic Countries, 1917-1945: from June 9 to June 11. The conference marks the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust in the Baltic states with presentations on Jewish life including art, music, literature, education, languages, religion, government, land and nature, emigration, resistance, the rescue of Jews and commemoration. The Kapela Kotra trio will perform Litvak music and documentary films by Saulius Beržinis will be screened.

The conference will be held in the Senate Hall at Vytautas Magnus at Donelaičio street no. 28 in Kaunas. The program begins at 9:00 A.M. on Tuesday, June 9. It begins at 11:00 A.M. on June 10 and at 9:30 A.M. on June 11.

2026-06-092026-06-09

How Israel Should Respond to Trump

by Geoff Vasil

Last night the Israeli-American relationship was cast into doubt when Trump told the press he was about to call Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “tell” him not to respond to Iranian missile attacks on Israel.

Trump has gone back and forth for weeks now claiming he’s close to “a deal” with some group of Iranians on a peace plan. It’s fairly obvious the gangsters in the Islamic Republic have been goading and cajoling him on into some sort of idea of a peace plan, but that’s what Iran is best at, endless negotiations on a set of untenable principles.

It should be obvious to everyone watching that the best way to end the impasse with Iran is through military victory. They’re claiming some sort of sovereignty over the choke-point on world commerce, the Strait of Hormuz. They want Israel to stop bombing Hezbollah. They want war reparations from America. There are no common points for negotiation, but Trump keeps pretending there are. Even regarding nuclear enrichment.

2026-06-08

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Israeli President Isaac Herzog Visits Lithuania

On the War in Israel and the Situation in Lithuania