anti-Semitism – Lithuanian Jewish Community

LJC on New Decisions on the Sports Palace and the Šnipiškės Jewish Cemetery

The Lithuanian Jewish Community expresses its profound concern regarding the decision adopted by the parliament or Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania following its initial approval of draft resolution No. XVP-1423 which effectively revives plans first proposed more than a decade ago to convert the former Vilnius Sports Palace into a venue for congresses, conferences and cultural events (Government Resolution No. 597 of June 9, 2015).

These plans had previously provoked strong opposition from international Jewish organizations, including Jewish religious authorities. According to Jewish religious law, a cemetery is sacred and inviolable ground; not only are entertainment events and concerts prohibited there, but even disturbing the soil is forbidden. It was precisely for this reason that a special working group was established, bringing together representatives of state institutions, the Lithuanian Jewish Community and international organizations.

After lengthy and complex discussions, a compromise solution was reached, one that balanced respect for the dead, preservation of historical memory and the public interest. This agreement was confirmed by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania in July of 2024 (No. S-2174 of July 17, 2024).

2026-05-222026-05-25

Israel Eurovision Head: Don’t Know What Would Have Happened If We’d Won

by Florit Shoihet, May 17, 2026

Yoav Tsafir reflects on fears as booing became more intense as Israel came closer to winning in Vienna

The head of Israel’s Eurovision delegation said he felt a sense of relief when Noam Bettan’s entry was pipped to the post last night amid an increasingly hostile atmosphere in the hall.

“At that moment when we led and it wasn’t clear if Bulgaria would overtake us, the booing from the crowd was immense, and … it turned into violent booing toward the Israeli delegation,” Yoav Tsafir told Channel 12, adding: “I don’t know what would have happened if we had won”.

The director noted that until the announcement of the results, the atmosphere towards the Israeli delegation was better compared to the two previous contests. “There was a positive change, with no huge expressions of hate,” he said, and behind the scenes “there was huge appreciation” towards Noam Bettan and his song Michelle, pointing out even the jury panels awarded him 123 points, thus placing 8th before public votes came in.

2026-05-212026-05-21

News from Panevėžys

Last weekend volunteers from the Panevėžys Jewish Community cleaned the interior and grounds of the Chevra Torah synagogue there. The brick synagogue was built in 1910. It was closed in 1940, the interior was destroyed and the decorative façade heavily damaged.

On May 6 Panevėžys Jewish Community representatives attended a lecture at the Lost Shtetl Museum in Šeduva by Holocaust historian Christoph Dieckmann called “How Did It Happen?” During questions afterwards, Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman thanked Dieckmann and asked about sources on Jewish vital statistics from the period between 1938 and 1941, engendering a discussion about the drop-off in marriages and births at a time when the Jewish community sensed the onset of tragedy.

2026-05-192026-05-19

EU Agree Sanctions against West Bank Settlers

Photo: Israeli settler places flag on day of re-establishment of Sa-Nur settlement, evacuated in Israel’s 2005 disengagement, in Sa-Nur in the West Bank, April 19, 2026. REUTERS/Shir Torem

BRUSSELS, May 11 (Reuters)–European Union foreign ministers reached an agreement on Monday on new sanctions targeting violent Israeli settlers in ‌the occupied West Bank, as well as leading Hamas figures, EU ‌foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.

The sanctions package, which targets three settlers and four settler organizations whose identities have yet to be publicly disclosed, had been blocked for months by the previous Hungarian government, which lost an election last month.

European governments have raised concern about a rise in reports of settler violence against Palestinians ‌in the West Bank.

“It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery,” Kallas said on X. “Extremisms [sic] and violence carry consequences,” she added.

2026-05-14

Lost Shtetl Fifth Most Beautiful Museum in the World

The Lost Shtetl Museum in Šeduva, Lithuania, placed fifth in the Prix Versailles selection of the world’s most beautiful museums announced May 4 at UNESCO in Paris. Prix Versailles judges singled out the museum’s architecture designed by Finland’s Rainer Mahlamäki. The outer form of the museum is intended to replicate the silhouette of the skylines of typical Lithuanian shtetlakh.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2026-05-052026-05-05

London Jews Heckle PM

British prime minister Keir Starmber travelled to Golders Green in north London Thursday afternoon to talk with local Jewish volunteer security guards and others, and was greeted by a crowd of 100 to 200 Jews who heckled him, shouting “shame on you,” “traitor,” “coward” and “Keir Starmer, Jew harmer.”

The outrage in the Jewish neighborhood over lack of security and policing follows at least two arson attacks and the stabbing of two Jewish men Tuesday by a naturalized Somalian within a very narrow section of Golders Green, just three mostly residential streets. Other arson attacks against Jewish synagogues and institutions have also been committed over the past two months in north London.

The prime minister reportedly cut his visit short, it only lasted a few minutes, and he was heckled as his motorcade left the location.

Photo: londonlovesbusiness.com

2026-04-302026-04-30

Anti-Jewish Arson Rings in UK Investigated for Links to Iran

A recent spate of arson attacks in London against Jewish synagogues and institutions is now being investigated by London’s Metropolitan Police for links to advertisements placed social media by Iran seeking criminals to commit anti-Semitic acts for pay.

Last year Australia’s ASIO intelligence service and the Australian Federal Police uncovered a similar scheme by Iran to attack synagogues and Jewish sites in Sydney. Australia threatened to cut off diplomatic relations and evacuated Australian embassy personnel from Tehran. Last week Australia sent a diplomatic protest to the Iranian embassy there for ads on Telegram and other social media sites again recruiting Australians for terrorist acts.

Scotland Yard and the Met in London have arrested over 15 people in possibly related arson rings in the greater London area in the last month.

According to Skynews UK reporting and interviews on the on-going investigation, Iran is using artificial intelligence, chatbots, to select potential viable candidates for its terror missions. After passing that gateway, would-be jihadists are put in touch with a human operator to assess their willingness to carry out terrorist acts, and are asked if they’d be willing to travel to Israel. Some of the posts intended to lure in sympathizers are bi-lingual, in English and Hebrew.

Photo: Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images

2026-04-292026-04-29

Iran Turns to Stand-Up Comedy to Ward Off Trump

by Geoff Vasil

When president Trump announced an American counter-blockade at the mouth of Hormuz, a wild-eyed Islamic Revolutionary Guard spokesman took to what’s left of Iranian state television to denounce the move as an “illegal act” and “piracy.”

Pretty rich coming from the country that attacked all its neighbors and at least three nominally European countries, then claimed it wasn’t attacking, then claimed it was only attacking US bases. It wasn’t. It was attacking energy and civilian sites in Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the Emirates, Oman, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Israel and Turkey. Then Iran attacked a Thai-flagged ship at Hormuz, then about 19 more in and around the area, saying it was allowing international shipping, but not for US allies.

The Iranian protection shakedown at Hormuz was a major issue at the pro forma alleged negotiations in Pakistan. Iran demanded the world cede the international waterway to Iran, and even demanded the UN Security Council approve that aggression by the Islamic Republican mafia. “Nice tanker ship. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,” Iran tells the world in its last gasp as some sort of regional power, regional bully. Iran isn’t like its neighbors, it’s more like the psychopathic neighbor whose ire all avoid.

2026-04-142026-04-14

March of the Living for Yom HaShoah

A March of the Living event will take place in Vilnius on Sunday to mark Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls on Tuesday, April 14, this year.

Those wishing to join the procession should gather at Rūdninkų Square at 4:00 P.M. to begin walking by 4:30 P.M., ending at Kudirka Square outside Government House at 5:00 P.M. Sunday. The march will have a police escort. Feel free to bring Israeli flags and other flags and banners appropriate for commemorating six million Holocaust victims.

2026-04-092026-04-09

Passover Greetings

Passover begins tomorrow at sundown, April 1. As our forefathers escaped slavery and freedom from their enemies in the land of Egypt, so may the spirit of liberation warm our hearts and spirits during these dark days of upheaval and uncertainty, even as we pray for the liberation of our Persian brothers and sisters under the yoke of an evil and anti-human regime, and for the Lebanese peoples oppressed by that same evil. Am Israel chai.

2026-03-312026-03-31

Children’s Aktion Remembered

On March 27 tand 28, 1944, around 1,700 children, elderly and the infirm were rounded up in the Kaunas ghetto by Waffen-SS troops and murdered nearby. The almost-complete extermination of the children in the Kaunas ghetto on those days is called by its German name in the Holocaust literature, the Kinderaktion.

2026-03-312026-03-31

Boots on the Water

by Geoff Vasil

The US is sending two contingents of US Marines numbering about 5,000 soldiers and from 1,000 to 3,000 troops from the US Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division to the Persian Gulf, to arrive sometime in the next week or so. The marines and the paratroopers are specially trained for taking and holding beachheads and islands, and higher ground positions in the case of the paratroopers.

There’s little or no doubt what their mission will be: open the Strait of Hormuz.

So far no one has challenged Iran at the Strait. Raising on a busted flush yet again, the Islamic Republic is trying to spin their image as global boogey-man into strategic control of the chokehold and over the world economy. Iran is seeking to put the blame on Donald Trump for their attacks on commercial shipping. While it’s true that the world’s leading exporter of terrorism could have been expected to act badly and attack neutral shipping, blaming Trump is a media PR ploy aimed at putting public pressure on Trump to end hostilities. Trump didn’t set fire to the 20 or so ships attacked so far.

2026-03-262026-03-26

Modestas Saukaitis: Between Gold Dust and Fluxus

The Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center in Vilnius is hosting an exhibit of works by the late Modestas Saukaitis. Saukaitis was an artist, art and book restorer and interior designer. He curated the first Fluxus exhibition in Lithuania with Gintaras Sodeika. Fluxus was an art movement started by Lithuanian-American artist, writer and filmmaker Jonas Mekas and was loosely associated with Guy de Bord’s Situationist International movement. Saukaitis passed away in 2024. He was deeply interested in Litvak history and his works on exhibit include a tribute to Righteous Gentile Ona Šimaitė and various takes on Jewish Vilna, with inscriptions in Hebrew and Greek characters, displayed in mirror-reverse for whatever reason. This exhibit is based on a previous exhibit of works by Saukaitis at the Shofar Gallery under the Jewish Culture and Information Center in Vilnius was based on texts by Abraham Sutzkever, the Yiddish poet and Litvak partisan (see below).

According to the host gallery, the exhibition features “verre églomisé works, assemblages, archival Fluxus material and video documentation as well as an overview of the artist’s work in interior design and restoration.” The exhibit opened March 6 and runs till May 23. The gallery is located at Malūnų street no. 8 in the Užupis neighborhood of Vilnius.

2026-03-242026-03-27

Šiauliai Jewish Community Marks Rescuers Day with Butterfly Project

The Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community in concert with the Gegužės and Saulėtekis schools in Šiauliai are engaged in a project called “Road of Holocaust Memory: Lives Which Speak” to teach students about the Holocaust and human rights using first-person testimonies.

As part of that project, local students discovered and memorialized the biographies of 36 children who died in the Holocaust in Šiauliai. The older students from the Saulėtekis high school taught the younger students from the Gegužės junior high school about the lives of the Jewish children who were murdered.

2026-03-24

Rescuers Day in Pasvalys

The Pasvalys Regional History Museum held a conference called “They Saved a World…” to mark Lithuania’s Day of Rescuers of Jews. Speakers included Arūnas Bubnys, Aušra Jonušytė, Gražvydas Balčiūnaitis and others. Pasvalys mayor Gintautas Gegužinskas and museum director Vitutė Povilionienė welcomed the audience, which included high school students, Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman and local residents.

2026-03-24

Kupiškis Museum Celebrates Rescuers Day

The Kupiškis Museum in Kupiškis, Lithuania, celebrated Lithuania’s Day of Rescuers of Jews on March 16. Eighth-graders from Kupiškis area schools presented texts and drawings on Jews in hiding, rescuing Jews, the Holocaust experience and the inner hope and strength which were needed to survive. The texts and drawings are to become part of a virtual exhibit at the museum later to mark Lithuania’s Day of Remembrance of Jewish Victims of Genocide on September 23.

2026-03-24

The Impossibility of Ignorance

by Grant Gochin, March 19, 2026

In 2018, while already a member of NATO and the European Union, Lithuania’s Parliament (Seimas) formally recognized Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas as the head of the Lithuanian state for the period 1954 to 1957. Lithuania’s defense ministry then placed him in the Heads of State Pantheon and described him as a role model for the country’s officers and soldiers. That is not routine commemoration. It is state canonization inside alliances that define themselves by democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

Once a state does that, the first question is not ceremonial. It is governmental. What public record did Lithuania produce before this elevation showing how Ramanauskas-Vanagas responded to the destruction of Jews in his environment in 1941? Where is the record that he protected Jews, objected to anti-Jewish violence, forbade participation, or punished those who took part? Lithuania’s own official biographies place him in Druskininkai in June 1941 as leader of a self-defense unit and then in Alytus as a teacher from 1941 to 1944. Lithuania has produced no public record of protective action by him toward Jews in that period.

That silence matters because Ramanauskas-Vanagas cannot be sealed off from a documented persecution zone. The Simon Wiesenthal Center warned the Seimas against honoring him. Evaldas Balčiūnas, drawing on archival material cited from the Lithuanian Special Archives and on the work of Arūnas Bubnys, pointed to a July 18, 1941 police report stating that 28 people had already been shot and to evidence that a 38-man partisan unit assisted in establishing the Druskininkai ghetto beginning on July 16. Even on the narrowest reading, this is not an evidentiary void. It is a documented zone of confinement, shooting, and anti-Jewish coercion. Lithuania elevated him anyway.

2026-03-192026-03-20

Exhibit on Jewish Vilna

The Films & Coffee café at the corner of Šv. Mikalojaus and Pranciškonų streets in the Vilnius Old Town will host an exhibit by Gediminas Dubonikas and Vytautas Tinteris on the Litvak population of the Old Town before the Holocaust and when Jews were imprisoned in two ghettos there. The exhibit opens at 7:00 P.M. on March 25. Triteris said the exhibit is appropriate for children.

2026-03-17

Australian Football Pays Tribute to “Bondi Victims,” Omits All Mention of Jews

Photo: 7News Australia

The Australian Football League paid a pre-game tribute to the victims of the Bondi Beach massacre but removed all mention of Jews at the last minute.

AFL CEO Andrew Dillon claimed the change to the script was intended to be “more inclusive,” by excluding the fact almost all of those murdered by terrorists were Jews celebrating Hanukkah at the annual event on Australia’s iconic Bondi Beach last December. Apparently the AFL didn’t want to offend Islamic terrorists and extremists resident in Australia.

Dillon said he didn’t know who decided to remove “Jew” as an offensive word.

Now one of the teams in the match has ‘fessed up:

Swans Admit “Error of Judgment” in Bondi Tribute

Sydney has apologized for omitting a specific reference to the Jewish community in its pre-game tribute to victims of the Bondi terror attack

2026-03-162026-03-16

Mounting Islamic Attacks throughout the West Targeting Jews, Americans

Following three attacks on synagogues in Toronto last month, the US has seen at least four terrorist attacks in the last three weeks: a Senegalese supporter of Iran shot nightclubbers in Austin, Texas; ISIS terrorists threw three bombs which failed to detonate in New York City at a crowd of anti-Islam protestors; a Hezbollah family member attacked Michigan’s oldest Jewish community with firearms and explosives which he failed to detonate and a man shouting “Allahu akbar” attempted to murder an ROTC class at Virginia’s Old Dominion university, killing one.

Two synagogues/Jewish schools in Rotterdam and Amsterdam and one in Liege, Belgium, were the subject of unsuccessful bombings.

In the UK around 10 suspected Iranian spies were arrested for spying on Jews in London.

Two of the American attacks came after the Trump administration leaked to journalists counter-intelligence indicating Iran had sent a “go signal” to “sleeper cells” in North America. Security was increased in Los Angeles for the Academy Awards over the weekend.

2026-03-16

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