anti-Semitism

New Holocaust Education Initiative in Poland and Lithuania

New Holocaust Education Initiative in Poland and Lithuania

A new project called “Education against Anti-Semitism. Learn from the Past to Understand Today’s Challenges. A Selection of Multimedia Teaching Aids” began in April. Over 2 years project participants will create and publicize a varied selection of multimedia aids based on individual historical sources for use by Lithuanian and Polish teachers, history teachers, human rights educators and young people from 14 to 19.

The aim is to foster understanding of the current state of anti-Semitism and the danger of stigmatization and isolation through teaching about the Holocaust.

The coordinator is the Polish organization Ośrodka Karta. Partners include Fundacja Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej, Ośrodek Brama Grodzka — Teatr NN, Fundacja Pogranicze, Fundacja Otwarta Edukacja and the Lithuanian Jewish Community. The project is dunded by the EU but is editorially independent.

Integration and Inclusion Forum

Integration and Inclusion Forum

The Ethnic Minorities Department and the British Council are holding a two-day conference and discussion on integration and inclusion on May 22 and 23 at Novotel Hotel in Vilnius. Those wishing to attend should register by May 15 at www.inforum.lt.

The conference will host experts on minority integration and human rights, media representatives, politicians, members of Lithuania’s ethnic minority communities, foreign speakers and more.

The Integration and Inclusion Forum is part of events to celebrate Lithuania’s Ethnic Minorities Day May 21, which kicks off with an awards event at St. Catherine’s Church in Vilnius at 3:00 P.M. The awards will be given to those who have distinguished themselves through their work with Lithuania’s ethnic minorities.

Remembering the Victims at Ponar

Remembering the Victims at Ponar

Members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Lithuanian foreign diplomats, politicians and members of the community at large marked Yom haShoah at Ponar Thursday with a solemn ceremony, an air-raid siren, a moment of silence and speeches. Yom haShoah is one of several days on the calendar dedicated to remembering the six million victims of the Holocaust in Europe. In Israel air-raid sirens sound and all activities cease in memory of the dead on this day.

“I call myself a Lithuanian woman of Jewish ethnicity and I would like to live in my own country not in fear, and it’s not Jews who must combat anti-Semitism, it’s the state which must provide for the safety of all its citizens,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said at the event. She also noted there is still no monument to the Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews from the Holocaust in Lithuania, despite seven years of discussion.

“History isn;t just lines in a textbook and facts. History includes feelings which we must pass on to our children, that they might understand what children who witnessed the murder of their parents felt. What anguish mothers experienced seeing their children murdered. These are what should be the lessons of history,” she continued. She is one of the few left in Lithuania who heard stories of the Holocaust directly from her parents and grandparents who were victims of it.

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How Yiddish Writer Chaim Grade’s Last Novel Was Rescued and Wrestled into Print

How Yiddish Writer Chaim Grade’s Last Novel Was Rescued and Wrestled into Print

Photo: Chaim Grade’s Sons and Daughters was originally serialized in the 1960s and ’70s in New York-based Yiddish newspapers (from YIVO and Alfred. A. Knopf via JTA).

The editors discuss how a previously-lost decades-old manuscript was found and pieced together. It’s being called “probably the last great Yiddish novel”

by Andrew Silow-Carroll, April 7, 2025

JTA–Sixty years after he first began serializing it in the Yiddish press and 42 years after publisher Alfred A. Knopf acquired the book, Sons and Daughters–the last novel by the late, great Yiddish novelist Chaim Grade–lands in bookstores this week. To call it long-awaited is an understatement.

How the novel came to be published in English translation is a story of family intrigue, literary detective work and dogged creativity on the part of its translator and editors.

The result, a sprawling 600-plus-page book about a rabbi in 1930s Lithuania and the different paths taken by his children, is “quite probably the last great Yiddish novel,” the critic Adam Kirsch writes in the introduction. Dwight Garner in a New York Times review calls it “a melancholy book that also happens to be hopelessly, miraculously, unremittingly funny.”

Full story here.

Second Civil Society Forum on Combating Anti-Semitism

Second Civil Society Forum on Combating Anti-Semitism

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky represented Lithuania at the second Civil Society Forum on Combating Anti-Semitism and Fostering Jewish Life held in Brussels on April 1 and 2.

The forum was set up by the European Commission.

More than 250 EU and international organizations, specialist and activists attended this year’s forum. Participants discussed strengthening social dialogue and new initiatives to increase mutual understanding. Katharina von Schnurbein was an organizer of the forum and is the EC’s coordinator for combating anti-Semitism, and is a friend of the LJC.

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Lithuanian Administrative Court Blocks Removal of Nazi Monument in Ukmergė

Lithuanian Administrative Court Blocks Removal of Nazi Monument in Ukmergė

Photo: Marker commemorating Juozas Krikštaponis. Though the city was ordered to remove the bas-relief and inscription, they didn’t do so. Photo by Gediminas Nemunaitis

Ukmergės žinios, April 5, 2025

The Lithuanian administrative court for regions handed down a decision in the case of commemorative markers honoring Juozas Krikštaponis in Ukmergė (Vilkomir).

The cort found partially in favor of the plaintiffs and annulled a decision issued by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania (Genocide Center) on August 23, 2023, calling for the removal from the marker stone of the image of the Lithuanian partisan and accompanying inscriptions.

Relatives of Krikštaponis, the Lithuanian Union of Freedom Fighters and the Lithuanian Association of Political Prisoners and Deportees opposed the decision by the director of the Genocide Center and took their complaint to the administrative courts.

The administrative court for regions found the Genocide Center’s decision to remove the bas-relief of Krikštaponis was made without adhering to the law, and that the Center failed to provide clear, specific and reliable evidence that Krikštaponis was complicit in crimes of genocide against Jews.

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Hungary Welcomes Netanyahu, Leaves ICC

Hungary Welcomes Netanyahu, Leaves ICC

Hungarian president Viktor Orban welcomed Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on a visit to the capital Budapest Wednesday. Orban extended the invitation back in November. Shortly after the visit Wednesday Orban announced Hungary was withdrawing from ICC membership, joining non-members Israel, United States, China, Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Burundi and others.

Full story here.

The Rabbi on Shortwave

The Rabbi on Shortwave

by Borukh Gorin, lechaim.ru

It was the early 1980s. On the coffee table stood a VEF-202–heavy, solid, with the smell of plastic and Soviet electronics. Its long antenna, like a taut nerve, caught the voices of a distant world. On the dial–London, Paris, Monte Carlo, and between them the frequencies that carried what was absent from Soviet news: the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Liberty.

There was a whole world on shortwave. On Kol Israel, I listened to Jewish music–old songs that seemed somehow familiar and distant at the same time. On the BBC, Seva Novgorodtsev talked about Western music, which we only knew about from rare records copied onto reels. And Svoboda talked about things that our newspapers were silent about. About Jews in the USSR, who “don’t exist.” About refuseniks, who are not allowed to leave. About synagogues that are still standing, but people are afraid to come to them.

And there was also a religious program.

I listened to Rabbi Haskelevich. I always listened alone.

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Panevėžys Commemorates Righteous Gentile Day

Panevėžys Commemorates Righteous Gentile Day

The Panevėžys Regional History Museum hosted an event to mark Righteous Gentile Day last week.

The Lithuanian parliament declared the day back in 2023 to coincide with Yad Vashem’s award of the title of Righteous Gentile to Ona Šimaitė back on March 15, 1966. She was the first Lithuanian given the distinction for her rescue of and aid to Vilnius ghetto inmates.

The commemoration in Panevėžys included speakers and a screening of the documentary film “Ponivez, Lithuania, 1932” about the Jewish community in Panevėžys or Ponevezh before the Holocaust.

Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman spoke at the event and delivered a message from Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky who was unable to attend in person.

Immigration Arrests Pro-Hamas Protest Leader at Columbia University

Immigration Arrests Pro-Hamas Protest Leader at Columbia University

March 9, 2025

A prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s student encampment movement was arrested Saturday night by federal immigration authorities, who claimed they were acting on a State Department order to revoke his green card, according to his attorney.

Mahmoud Khalil was at his university-owned apartment blocks from Columbia’s Manhattan campus when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered the building and took him into custody, his attorney Amy Greer told the Associated Press.

Khalil has been one of the negotiators with school administrators on behalf of the anti-Israel pro-Palestinian student protesters, who set up a tent encampment on a Columbia lawn last year. He became one of the most visible faces of the pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia.

One of the agents told Greer by phone that they were executing a State Department order to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the attorney that Khalil, who graduated in December, was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that, too, according to the lawyer.

Full story here.

Natalja Cheifec’s Special Purim Edition

Natalja Cheifec’s Special Purim Edition

Natalja Cheifec’s lecture series features a special Purim edition Wednesday. She will talk about the meaning of and traditions associated with the holiday, why it is considered a holiday of Jewish liberation and unity and about the Book of Esther and why it does not mention the name of God.

To register and receive zoom credentials, click here.

Time: 5:30 P.M., Wednesday, March 12
Place: internet

Trump Cuts $400 Million in Grants to Columbia University over Anti-Semitism

Trump Cuts $400 Million in Grants to Columbia University over Anti-Semitism

The slashed funding comes amid a review of more than $5 billion in federal grant commitments going to Columbia

March 7, 2025, Fox News

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it will rescind more than $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University, citing concerns over rising anti-Semitism on campus and the school’s failure to address it.

Earlier this week the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Education (DoED) and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced the initiation of a “comprehensive review” of more than $5 billion in federal grant money that goes to Columbia, “in light of ongoing investigations for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act” related to anti-Semitism on campus.

It has only been four days since the Trump administration’s announcement of this review, but the agencies have already begun slashing funds. Sources familiar with the matter, who asked to remain anonymous, say that more than $400 million in federal grant funds from HHS and DoED will be rescinded from Columbia as a result of the antisemitism that is allegedly continuing on campus.

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Mi Amor

Eulogy by Yarden Bibas, husband of Shiri and father of Ariel and Kfir.

I remember the first time I said “mi amor” to you. It was at the very beginning of our relationship. You told me to only call you that if I was certain I loved you, not to say it carelessly. I didn’t say it then because I didn’t want you to think I was rushing to say “I love you.” Shiri, I’ll confess to you now that I already loved you back then when I said “mi amor.”

Shiri, I love you and will always love you!

Shiri, you are everything to me!

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Samuel Bak Presents Catalog

Samuel Bak Presents Catalog

Samuel Bak himself and a panel of experts will launch a Bak catalog in Lithuanian on the first day of the Vilnius Book Fair. The catalog of his artwork is called “Gydantys simboliai.”

Joining via video link from the USA, Litvak painter from Vilnius Samuel Bak will speak with Bak Museum senior curator Ieva Šadzevičienė, illustrator Jokūbas Jacovskis and others with synchronous translations in Lithuanian and English.

Time: 2:00 P.M., February 27
Place: conference hall 5.5, Litexpo building, Laisvės prospect no. 5, Vilnius

Criminal, Trash and Enemy of the State

Criminal, Trash and Enemy of the State

by Grant Gochin

All I sought was information about the murder of my Lithuanian family during the Holocaust. This was my entanglement with the government of Lithuania.

Most barbarians shout about their hideous torture and murder of innocents as a matter of pride. Palestinian terrorists murder Jews and boast about it. They have parades with slain bodies. They hand out candy, and dance with joy, thinking they have done something wonderful. They haven’t.

During the Holocaust, Lithuanians murdered Jews with an even greater level of ferocity and depravity than Hamas currently displays. Their conduct was reprehensible and not even close to human. The Lithuanian slaughter was almost complete. They murdered 96.4% of all Jews they could reach. The current dream of Gaza is the replication of the Lithuanian Holocaust.

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Condolences

Marian Turski died February 14. He was born in Druskininkai in 1926. A survivor of the Łódź ghetto, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald and was liberated by the Soviet Red Army in 1945. He resettled in Poland where he advocated for the Communist regime and served as editor of the newspaper Sztandar Młodych and then as chief of the history department of the weekly Polytika, and authored at least seven books about the Holocaust and Communist politics in Poland. Our deepest condolences to his surviving daughter Joanna.

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Islamist Nurses in Australia Say They Have and Will Continue to Kill Jewish Patients

Islamist Nurses in Australia Say They Have and Will Continue to Kill Jewish Patients

Australia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Wednesday two nurses at the Bankstown Hospital in Sydney promised to kill Israeli patients and claimed they already had in a half-Arabic video rant filled with anti-Semitism and expletive language.

The two nurses, a male and a female, have since been fired and their nursing licenses have been revoked. New South Wales Police have started an investigation to determine whether the pair had killed Jewish patients.

Ahmad “Rashad” Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh were on shift at Bankstown Hospital when they recorded video conversation with Jewish influencer Max Veifer via the social website Chatruletka.

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Children of the Holocaust Project Takes Flight in Palanga

Children of the Holocaust Project Takes Flight in Palanga

A project to study the history of pre-Holocaust Lithuanian Jewish and Roma urban and rural communities has begun in Palanga. The aim is to recreate city, town, village and community history to understand how the former way of life connects with the present and future. Called “Children of the Holocaust: Illuminating the Shadows of Lithuanian History,” the Palanga Jewish Community said in a press release public understanding of the Holocaust is changing, with the history of the Jews now being told by creating a personal connection with the past.

This Lithuanian Jewish Community for implementation between 2024 and 2026 is supported by the EVZ Fund in Germany. The Palanga Jewish Community, the Jonas Šliūpas Museum in Palanga, the Old Gymnasium in Palanga, the Palanga Youth and Volunteer Center, the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius and the Roma Community Day Center are all partners in the project.

The goal is to encourage specific, novel, lively retellings of history to engage young people from Vilnius and Palanga. The focus is on children who were victims of the Holocaust from the Litvak and Roma ethnic communities and their experience, stories and recollections among survivors.

Full story in Lithuanian here.