Condolences

In Memoriam

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Sad news has reached the Panevėžys Jewish Community and the public that famous former Panevėžys doctor Mira Rozova has died in Israel after suffering from chronic illness. For half her life she was the senior doctor at the Panevėžys Infectious Hospital. In 1954 she was graduated from the Krasnodar Institute of Medicine. She performed a three-year residence in Kaliningrad and then moved to Panevėžys in 1957. She worked as a therapist at what was the Republic Hospital and Clinic. The infectious disease division was small at that time. The decision was made to open a separate infectious disease hospital and young and energetic Rozova was appointed the director of the new hospital. The Infectious Disease Hospital was established in the Panevėžys Jewish Hospital on Ramygalos street, which needed repair following the war. The hospital operated for 20 years in the unrenovated premises.

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Condolences

Rūta Gorinienė passed away May 12 (March 28, 1938-May 12, 2016). We are saddened by her loss and share in the sadness of her loved ones. Our deepest condolences.

Condolences

With deepest regret we announce Yakov Epshtayn, a member of the LJC Social Club, has passed away. Born June 1, 1925, he left us on May 12, 2016. Our deepest condolences to his loved ones.

Condolences

With sadness we announce the death of Valentina Tureckaja of Vilnius, born June 3, 1954. She passed away on the 11th of May. She was a member of the LJC Social Center. Our deepest condolences to her loved ones for our shared loss.

Condolences

Cilija Rubinštein of Vilnius, a member of the LJC Social Center, has died. The entire Community expresses our deepest sadness and regrets over her loss.

Condolences

Petras Zakroiskis, a member of the Kaunas Jewish Community and the Social Center, has passed away. Our deepest condolences to his family and friends. He was born December 1, 1925, and left this world on May 10, 2016.

Condolences

On April 19 Roza Znak, member of the LJC Social Club, passed away. She was born October 6, 1938. Our deepest condolences to her friends and family in this time of pain.

Condolences

Roza Levit, LJC Social Center member, passed away on April 22. She was born July 9, 1939. Our deepest condolences go to her friends and family.

Condolences

The Lithuanian Jewish Community notes with deepest sadness the death of Judelis Ronderis, an active member of the Kaunas Jewish Community, a World War II veteran, an enthusiastic supporter of Jewish culture and the man who began the search for Lithuanian citizens who rescued Jews from the Holocaust, who concerned himself with their welfare and with their commemoration. Our deepest condolences to his daughter Lėja, his family, his grandchildren, his long-time caregiver Stefanija Ancevičienė and to the many who knew and loved him.

Condolences

Rolnikaite

Marija Rolnikaitė, aged 89, has died.

Born July 21, 1927 in Klaipėda/Memel, some have called her Lithuania’s Anne Frank. When she was 14 she and her family were imprisoned in the Vilnius ghetto. After that she survived two concentration camps. What was a adolescent pastime, keeping a diary, became an important testimony of the fate of Lithuanian Jewry.

She wrote a poem in Yiddish about the Strazdamuiža concentration camp in Latvia which became an anthem for the anti-Nazi resistance. After the war she worked on the staff of the Lithuanian National Philharmonic for a time and was graduated from the Maxim Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow in 1955. She published memoirs about her time in the ghetto and concentration camps in 1963. She moved to Leningrad in 1964 where she wrote more books, articles and reviews and was an active member of the Leningrad Jewish Community.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community will not forget her or the bright trail she blazed and now leaves in her wake.

Our Deepest Condolences

Girsh Vainer, member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s Social Club, passed away March 29. Our deepest condolences to his family and friends.

December 6, 1946—March 29, 2016

Condolences

Aron Kac, member of the LJC Social Center, died March 22. He was born on January 29, 1935. The community mourns his passing and sends their deepest condolences to his family members.

Thursday Proclaimed Day of Mourning in Lithuania

The Lithuanian Government has declared Thursday a day of mourning for those killed in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, the Benelux Union, the EU and NATO. The day of mourning has been set as the period from 7:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M. on Thursday, March 24, 2016. Lithuania flags will be flown at half-mast or with a black ribbon. Speaking at an ad hoc meeting, acting prime minister and minister of finance Rimantas Šadžius expressed solidarity with the city of Brussels and Belgium, and the cabinet observed a moment of silence, according to BNS.

European Jewish Congress Shocked and Appalled by Attacks in Brussels

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European Jewish Congress Shocked and Appalled by Attacks in Brussels Calling
Them “Shots at the Heart of Europe”

The European Jewish Congress (EJC) has expressed shock and revulsion at the attacks which took place in Brussels this morning. Two explosions rocked the departure lounge at Brussels Airport and another blast went off in the Brussel Maelbeek metro station, very close to European Union institutions.

“This is yet another shocking, appalling and deadly attack on innocent Europeans by terrorists,” Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the EJC, said. “These attacks on an airport, train system and outside European Union institutions are shots at the heart of Europe. Our prayers and thoughts are with the Belgian people at these difficult times.”

“These are attacks against all that we stand for. All Europeans regardless of background must stand together and expel this terror and intolerance from our midst.”

The blasts come four days after Belgian police arrested a key suspect in the November, 2015 attacks in Paris.

“We can no longer ignore the fact that radical Islamists are at war with Europe and all Europeans and we call on our governments and law enforcement agencies to act accordingly,” Dr. Kantor said. “We have been exposed for too long and now we must strike back at the terrorist infrastructure including those who support it economically, and those who inspire and provide it legitimacy.”

Tuesday, March 22, 2016.

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Condolences

On March 15, 2016, Neli Bolotina, a member of the LJC Social Club, passed away. She was born on May 11, 1924. Our deepest condolences to professor Adolf Bolotin, chairman of the Vilnius Jewish Community from 2000 to 2005, over the loss of his beloved wife Neli. During this time of loss our hearts are with their son Viktor, daughter Ina, the grandchildren and the entire Bolotin family.

Vytautas Mikuličius, Journalist and Son of Righteous Gentiles, Has Died

With deep sadness we note the passing of journalist Vytautas Mikuličius who with his parents Petras and Ona rescued Julija Remigolskytė-Flier, now a Canadian violinist, during World War II.

Petras and Ona lived with their three children at Minkovskių street no. 110 in Kaunas. Jews from the Kaunas ghetto were used as forced labor near their home, including Klara Gelman. During the winter of 1942-1943 Klara asked Ona and Petras to save her two-year-old daughter Julija. Petras and Ona took her in and raised her as their won. The little girl quickly learned to speak Lithuanian, and her foster parents told the neighbors she was the daughter of Ona’s dead sister.

From Vytautas Mikuličius’s recollections:

Our family had many friends and acquaintances. Our mother was very involved with the women in the area especially. Russians, Jews, Poles… When the Nazis put their regime in place, mother didn’t drop her girl friends, but visits became brief and secret.

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Condolences

The Lithuanian Jewish Community express our deepest condolences to the people of Turkey following the March 13 attack on central Ankara. Terrorism is a threat the Lithuanian Jewish Community understands well and remains a great challenge to 21st century society. We condemn the perpetrators of this vicious kind of crime who hold hostage the lives and safety of many civilians.

Boris Borisov, Composer, Former Chairman of the Vilnius Jewish Community, Has Died

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The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Vilnius Jewish Community mourn the loss of former Vilnius Jewish Community chairman and composer Boris Borisov. Born in 1937, the maestro left us on February 14, 2016.

Although best known as a composer, Boris Borisov was also a pianist, conductor, teacher, author of many cultural publications and a public figure. As chairman of the Vilnius Jewish Community he set up the Jascha Heifetz Fund. He held over 300 concerts and held the Shalom Jewish Music Festival in Vilnius five times from 1994 to 1998.

Since 2000 he had been living in the United States.

Our deepest and heartfelt condolences to the family members, friends and colleagues of the maestro.

A Great Loss

Kaganas

The Lithuanian Jewish Community is sad to report the death of Isaak Kagan (b. March 13, 1929 in Kaunas), Lithuanian attorney and public figure.

From 1947 to 1952 Kagan studied at and graduated from the Law Faculty of Vilnius University. He worked as a teacher and as legal consultant for different organizations, serving as a consultant on the judicial commission as well. He was a consultant for the Justice Ministry from 1971 to 1973 and worked as a lawyer at the 2nd Office of Lawyers of the City of Vilnius from 1974 to January of 2009.

Kagan wrote and had published a number of monographs and about 50 articles on law, some appearing in the books called “Selected Speeches by Lawyers in Court” and “On the Status of the Defendant in Criminal Proceedings.” He also delivered a presentation called “Communist Regimes: Perpetrators of Ethnic Genocide” as a member of the Lithuanian independence movement Sąjūdis, which he joined in 1988. He was a member of the executive committee of the Lithuanian parliament from 1992 to 1994, a member of the Lithuanian Sąjūdis Commission for Drafting a Constitution for the Republic of Lithuania in 1992, a member of the Public Constitutional Protection Commission, the Lithuanian Council of Attorneys, the Lithuanian Citizens Charter, the Supreme Election Commission and the vice president of the Lithuanian UN Association, among other organizations.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community sends all of our deepest condolences to his wife and family.

Maestro Saulius Sondeckis Has Gone

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A man has gone who dreamt of Grand Lithuania. Grand not in size, but in thought, imagination and creativity. A man has gone who himself worked for such a Lithuania for decades. Professor Saulius Sondeckis is gone.

The period between the encouraging words of Herbert von Karajan to the young musicians Saulius Sondeckis conducted to the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra which put Lithuania on the world map included the entire epoch of Lithuania’s cultural renaissance. Many of the foreign maestros who came to Lithuania sought out professor Sondeckis because he was sort of a symbol of the talent of our country. A void has appeared in the national culture now without the professor, although it is being filled by hundreds of Saulius Sondeciskis’s students.

And a man has left us for whom everything mattered in Lithuania. Raised by his father and standing firmly upon Lithuanian Social Democratic roots, he invited us all not to look away from the individual, and he was deeply concerned with the continuation of social democratic thinking in Lithuania.

In saying goodbye to the Maestro, I express my sincere condolences to his family, his students and his friends, and to the entire cultural community of Lithuania. Our work for Lithuania and culture will be the implementation of his dreams.

Algirdas Butkevičius
Prime minister of Lithuania
Chairman of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party