Members and staff of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, representatives from the Lithuanian parliament and government and foreign diplomats observed the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish of Victims of Genocide at Ponar on Thursday, September 25. German Bundeswehr rabbi Elisch Mendel Portnoy joined Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yaatom in saying prayers for the dead.

LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky read the contents of an open letter she co-autyhored with Jewish Lithuanian MP Emanuelis Zingeris addressed to president Gitanas Nausėda cautioning against the latter’s decision to allow a member of an anti-Semitic party to occupy the post of Lithuanian minister of culture.

KJC chairwoman Kukliansky quoted a facebook post she received that day calling for the murder of Jews.

“If we don’t stop it, this will happen. So I ask all of you gathered here not just to honor those who were murdered and lie buried here–we are standing on blood-soaked soil–but also to think about the future of our country, and what we must do to insure this never happens again,” Kukliansky said.

A group of protestors gather at the Office of the President in Vilnius Thursday to protest the formation of a new government with a candidate from the Nemuno Aušra party proposed for minister of culture.

Ignotas Adomavičius has been put forward by Remigijus Žemaitaitis’s Nemuno Aušra party as a new government coalesces following real estate scandal which enveloped Gintautas Paluckas’s ruling coalition earlier this year. Žemaitaitis rose to prominence in early 2023 by making a series of facebook and other posts questioning the Holocaust in Lithuania and criticizing Jews and Israel. Lithuania’s Constitutional Court found his statements were a violation of his oath to uphold the Lithuanian constitution as a member of parliament. The comments have been widely recognized as anti-Semitic.

Adomavičius has been described as a pasta maker, whether that’s a hobby or a profession, and a graduate of an art school in Vilnius. In Lithuanian pasta is called macaroni, a synonym for nonsense He told Lithuanian state radio and television one of his priorities as culture minister will be to rebuild the “Old Synagogue,” presumably meaning the Great Synagogue in Vilnius, whose reconstruction no Jewish or Lithuanian heritage group is seeking currently. There was talk of this in the early 2000s by Lithuanian government officials, but the idea was rejected by the various Lithuanian Jewish communities at the time as a boondoggle without a congregation to serve. Jewish reporter and newspaper editor Milan Cheronskis called the proposal one for a Jewish Disneyland in Vilnius. Lithuanian state radio and television interview in Lithuanian here.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community, the umbrella organization for 31 Jewish organizations in Lithuania and abroad, calls upon Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda not to approve Ignotas Adomavičius, the candidate submitted by the anti-Semitic Nemuno Aušra party and its leader, Remigijus Žemaitaitis, whom the Constitutional Court found had violated grossly his oath of office and the constitution of Lithuania.

The Lithuanian Culture Ministry is in charge of maintaining the material cultural heritage, restoration of synagogues, Jewish cultural centers and historical commemoration, and to entrust this ministry to the member of an openly anti-Semitic party would be a desecration and public derision of the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, and an insult to Lithuanian citizens of Jewish descent.

Moreover, this person’s participation in the actions of the next Government would discredit Lithuania in front of our foreign partners, whose support to our country and to us, the citizens of that country, is so vitally important at this complicated time in geopolitics.

We would like to remind the president and the public that organizations such as IHRA, FRA (the EU agency on fundamental rights) and the OSCE have all recognized anti-Semitism as a crime. Lithuania has signed cooperation agreements with these international organizations and is obligated to adhere to these agreements.

Therefore we call upon the president to maintain his oath he took during his inauguration and to defend the interests of all citizens of Lithuania, including Jews, as spelled out in the Lithuanian constitution.

Executive board, Lithuanian Jewish Community

Leaders of the Lithuanian Jewish Community Emanuelos Zingeris, the only Jewish member of the Lithuanian parliament and signatory to the Act of the Restoration of Lithuanian Independence, and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky uniting 31 organizations across Lithuania and abroad have addressed an open letter to His Excellency Gitanas Nausėda, president of Lithuania, urging him not to appoint a representative of the anti-Semitic party Nemuno Aušra as minister of culture, citing several reasons outlined in the letter below.

OPEN LETTER

In recent days, following the decision to place the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania under the influence of Mr. Remigijus Žemaitaitis, we have developed profound concerns regarding the preservation of democratic values in the Republic of Lithuania.

In our considered view, Mr. Žemaitaitis incited hatred during the electoral campaign and fomented ethnic discord. The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania has found his actions to be in violation of the constitutional order of the Republic. He therefore obtained parliamentary mandates by means of incitement to hatred.

The legacy of Lithuanian Jewry–mass murder sites, our cemeteries, museum heritage, the organization of commemorations–is being entrusted to a person who would employ it as a cover for his previously pursued anti-Semitic policies. Lithuania must not become the only state in Europe where the memory of the 94% of Lithuanian Jews who perished is subjected to such desecration.