The Sabbath begins at 9:52 P.M. on Friday, July 10, and concludes at 11:32 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:34 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:52 P.M. Tuesday, July 14, is Bastille Day. July 15 is St. Vladimir Day in the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
Photo: celebrate. My grandfather, Jonas Noreika, is in the third row. My mother, then two years old, is among them. Source: Silvia Foti, The Nazi’s Granddaughter (Regnery History, 2021).
by Silvia Foti
An open letter to Liam, on his bar mitzvah
Dear Liam,
You do not know my background and what I carry, as I know your background and your family history. You barely know me, and there is no gentle way to tell you who I am. I read about you in an article your cousin Grant Gochin published in The Times of Israel, about your family and mine. I am writing to a boy I have met just once, for a singular moment, at your cousin Grant’s home, to bless you shortly after the day you were called to the Torah and became a man. I am the granddaughter of the man whose orders helped empty your family’s world of Jews.
My grandfather was Jonas Noreika. He governed the Lithuanian district of Šiauliai, where the town of Papilė lies. He signed orders that confined its Jews and gave away what was stolen from them. Your family was murdered inside the system he ran. Tsile Gochin, the sister of your great-grandmother Sarah, was one of them. My grandfather bears responsibility for her murder, and that of your cousins, relatives, friends and neighbors.
Rabbi Harry Pell whose family roots lie in Ukmergė (Vilkomir) visited the Ukmergė Jewish Community recently. Pell teaches Judaism and Israeli studies in the United States and also works as a chaplain in the armed forces.
Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas provided Pell a tour of Jewish sites in the town and they spoke about Jewish history and heritage there. They also sampled imberlakh at a local restaurant.
Internet news site and cable channel Delfi.lt reports a man attacked Israeli tourists in Vilnius and posted a video of the attack on Sunday. Delfi contacted Lithuanian police and learned they received a complaint Monday afternoon about the video positing on facebook on Sunday. According to Delfi, a male suspect born in 1972 posted a video taken on Dūkštų street in Vilnius where he verbally attacked a group of three Jews and spit on them, then called upon others to do the same. He told Jews to “go home.”
Delfi.lt said internet news portal and daily newspaper lrytas.lt reported the suspect was Gintaras Liutkevičius, who goes by Grafas Liutkevičius [Count Liutkevičius] on social media. According to the latter, he posted the video of his attack on what appeared to be Jewish tourists on facebook with the title New Challenge: Spit On and Out a Zionist. Liutkevičius apparently approached the group he thought were Jews and spoke to them in Lithuanian, but group members asked him to speak English. The suspect then said in English he had heard Jews spit on Christians, although the three men said that wasn’t true. Liutkevičius reportedly then told them to go home and then spit on them.
Liutkevičius has been arrested over the incident which police view as a violation of Lithuanian law against racial, ethnic and religious incitement. The Lithuanian law forbids mockery and belittlement and the encouragement of hatred against a group or individual belonging to a group based on age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, race, skin color, ethnicity, language, origin including ethnic origin, social status, beliefs including religious beliefs and convictions and points of view. The law provides for punishment for transgressions including arrest, imprisonment up to two years, limitation of freedoms, and other measures.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
For the last two weeks a Lithuanian crew of diggers have been uncovering new archaeological strata at the site of the Great Synagogue or Gros-Shul in Vilnius. No Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologists have been seen this summer, although they were always in charge during past summers. Several teams of mostly young men were seen digging at the bimah and northern wall of the synagogue, but not at the mikvot which remain under a make-shift shed. The young men were wearing t-shirts identifying them as working for Lithuania’s Cultural Heritage Protection Department. They used shovels to pile mounds of debris on the western side of the synagogue and appeared to collect bricks at the northeast corner inside a gate next to the Vilna Gaon statue. No archaeological sieves were visible during several visits to the site. The dig at the eastern side of the complex appeared to reveal a descending staircase made of stone and an eastern wall of the synagogue just to the west of the staircase.
Jewish educator Natalja Cheifec will lead a tour of the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius this Thursday, July 9, at 6:00 P.M. She’ll tell the story of the only traditional synagogue still operating in Vilnius and explain its architectural secrets, symbolism and storied traditions. Cantor Shmuel Ya’atov will also be on hand to offer his extensive knowledge of the edifice and to talk about his work there as cantor. The tour will be followed by an informal discussion with questions and answers. Natalja asks participants to make a 5 euro donation to the synagogue. To register, click here.
Time: 6:00 P.M., Thursday, July 9
Place: Pylimo street no. 39, Vilnius, around the corner from the Conti Hotel and the egg statue, across the street from the Leonard Cohen statue
Last weekend Goodwill Foundation co-chairpeople Rabbi Andrew Baker and attorney and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky visited the Šiauliai District Jewish Community, where they discussed the local LJC affiliate’s activities and on-going projects, and shared ideas for future cooperation.
by Grant Arthur Gochin
In 2000 the Lithuanian parliament or Seimas voted to make the 1941 declaration a legal act of the state, then reversed itself within a week. In 2026 the demand to finish the job is back.
On June 19, 2026, the Lithuanian parliament hosted a conference which reconstructed June of 1941 without the Jews murdered during it. I documented that event in They Rewrote History before Our Eyes. The conference was the visible, scholarly face of a longer project. Its legislative face is older, quieter, and now on the move again.
On September 12, 2000, the Seimas adopted a law recognizing the Provisional Government’s June 23, 1941 declaration, Restoration of Independence, as a legal act of the Republic of Lithuania. The vote was 48 in favor, none against and three abstentions, and the official record lists it among laws adopted rather than draft legislation (Seimas record, September 12, 2000).
The declaration that law would canonize carries a list of signatory ministers. One of them is the minister of communal economy, the architect Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis–father of Vytautas Landsbergis, who chaired the Seimas in 2000.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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
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.
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.
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.
Lithuanian Jewish Community member Aleksandras Asovskis just turned 105. His life spanning entire eras is an inspiration to all of us. We wish him good health, the love of family and friends, much joy and many happy moments to come. Mazl tov. Bis 120.
Julija Zibuc has died. She passed away June 18. Born in 1936, she was a member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and a client of the Saul Kagan Welfare Center. We extend our deepest condolences to her family and friends.
Yevgeniy Pilyugin passed away June 14. He was born in 1953. He was a member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and a client of the Saul Kagan Welfare Center. Our deepest condolences to the daughter and many friends he leaves behind.
