Saulius Sondeckis, conductor, orchestra leader and professor, died February 3 at the age of 88.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community expresses condolences to his surviving family, his wife Silvija and three sons Saulius, Paulius and Vytautas, as well as all the other members of his family.

Sondeckis was a great friend of the Lithuanian Jewish Community. During his last visit in May of 2015 the hall was full to overflowing during a screening of a film about him by his son Saulius. At that time the maestro thanked his parents for inspiring him to embark upon his musical career, saying stories about their good works circulated by word of mouth: the charity work of his mother, a teacher, helping poor students, and the rescue of Jews by his father, Jackus, the burgermeister of Šiauliai. Jackus Sondeckis was recognized as a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem. Lithuanian music experts recognize Saulius Sondeckis as a Lithuanian artist of the highest order. Just a year ago he was performing fully on stage despite his age. Over 50 years of work professor Sondeckis conducted more than 3,000 concerts in almost every European country, in the USA, Japan, Cuba, South Korea, Canada and Taiwan.

With sadness we report the death of Lithuanian Jewish Community member Faina Duškina (July 28,1946–January 18, 2016) on January 18.

The LJC express our deepest regrets to her daughters for the loss of their mother.

Joel Elkes, whose father was Dr. Elkhanan Elkes, the reluctant chairman of the Kaunas ghetto Ältestenrat, or council of elders, died at the age of 101 on October 30 in Sarasota, Florida. Joel Elkes made major contributions to modern psychiatry. His wife Sally Lucke Elkes reported the cause of death was kidney failure.

Dr. Joel Elkes helped shape
treatment for schizophrenia.
Photo: New York Times

On December 1, 2015, Rima Vaisman, a member of our community and a member of the Social Center, passed away. She was born on February 9, 1925. Our deepest condolences to her friends and family.

We are saddened to learn of the death of Boris Mishkin on November 6 of this year. He was born on November 14, 1929. Our deepest sympathies go to his family and friends.

PARIS (JTA)—Some 200 people gathered under heavy guard at a Paris synagogue to remember the victims of the terrorist attacks in the French capital on Friday night.

Led by chief rabbi of France Haim Korsia, leaders of French Jewry and Israel’s ambassador to France were among those who assembled at the Synagogue de la Victoire Sunday evening.

“Our people, who have been tested more than others, know the healing power of solidarity and unity in the face of the pain of families torn apart, broken couples and orphaned children,” Michel Gugenheim, chief rabbi of Paris, said about the132 fatalities and more than 350 wounded in multiple coordinated attacks.

Embassy of Israel
Vilnius

The Embassy of the State of Israel is very saddened to hear about the passing of Abram Lešč. We would like to express our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Abram Lešč.

Yehuda Gidron
Deputy Chief of Mission

In profoundest sorrow and with our deepest condolences to his survivors, we regret to announce that Abramas Leščius passed away on November 12. The Lithuanian Jewish Community as a whole feels the painful loss of this sincere, honest and intelligent man who served as gabbai of the Vilnius Choral Synagogue minyan for many years.

He was born on April 18, 1932. He will be buried according to Jewish tradition. The burial ceremony is to take place at 11:00 A.M. on November 13 at the Vilnius Jewish Cemetery, located at Sudervės road No. 28. A bus will transport those who want to bid him farewell from the Lithuanian Jewish Community at Pylimo street No. 4 at 10:30 A.M.

Abramas Leščius agreed to share passages from his life on the lzb.lt webpage just six months ago.

It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of our dear friend and committed Council Representative, Uri Chanoch, z”l.

 

The funeral will be held today, Thursday, September 3^rd, at the cemetery in Kfar Shmaryahu at 6PM. 

Uri served as a Council Representative of WJRO, and as a Board member of the Good Will Foundation in Lithuania.

 

Uri, a survivor of the Kovno Ghetto, and of Dachau, worked tirelessly as an advocate for survivors.  He dedicated his time to a long list of organizations, and fought for the restitution of private-property for Lithuanian survivors through his work with WJRO and the Good Will Foundation.

 Below is a letter written by Julius Berman, President of the Claims Conference, illustrating Uir’s story and dedication. 

May his memory be a blessing. We extend our deepest condolences to his family.

 

Abraham Biderman, Co-Chair
Gideon Taylor, Chair of Operations
Nachliel Dison, Acting Director General

The last Jew living in Biržai (Birzh), Lithuania, Shevka (Sheftl) Leiba Melamed died Monday, August 31, 2015. He was 89. His death brings to an end over 400 years of Jewish life in the Biržai region. The community there was annihilated during the Holocaust, but by some miracle Leiba Melamed, then still an adolescent, managed to flee to the Soviet Union with his brother Shalom, conscripted into the army, and survived. A little over a month later his family–his father Peisakh, mother Paye and his little brother Hirsh, just turned 7–had been murdered at Pakamponys forest next to Astravas, part of the city of Biržai on its northern outskirts.

The Melamed brothers were sent deep into Russia. Leiba worked on a collective farm. He later attended a Lithuanian arts and crafts school in Kuybyshev, Russia, and later worked at an airplane factory. In 1945 he returned to Biržai but found neither his home nor his friends. He did meet his brother Shalom in Biržai and they both went to live with his brother’s best friend Leonas Jukonis. Later Leiba moved to Klaipėda where he was employed in rebuilding the city. After some time he returned to Biržai and worked in a bakery. Here he met the love of his life, Genovaitė, started a family and had two daughters, Leta and Nelė. He had four grandchildren: Daina, Asta, Petras, Kristina and Dalia.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community mourns the passing of Rachel Margolis, born in Vilnius, a partisan, biologist and author of the book Partisan from Vilna.

She was born on December 28, 1928. As a young Jewish girl she was sent to the Vilna ghetto, were she joined the FPO, the united partisan  underground, and carried out various military missions. She was blonde and blue-eyed, and able to pass “on the Aryan side” as she put it. She also worked at Herman Kruk’s ghetto library on Strashun Street (now Zemaitijos street) where the FPO sometimes held target practice in the cellar.

She was friends with Hirsh Glik, the young poet who penned the words which would become the Partisan Hymn, Sog Niet Keynmol, still sung when Holocaust survivors gather in Israel and throughout the world. Margolis was the first to hear the poem and put it to musical accompaniment.

Her entire family was murdered during the Holocaust, but she married a fellow partisan and started her own family. She is survived by several daughters in Israel. In the post-war period she worked for many years teaching biology at Vilnius University and was the main force in the decyphering and publishing of the Sakowicz diary, an eye-witness testimony of the mass
murder operations at Ponar outside Vilnius. After making aliyah to Israel she used to return to Vilnius during the summers and volunteered her time constructing exhibits at the Green House Holocaust exhibit of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum and leading tours through the Vilna ghetto.

With profound sadness the Lithuanian Jewish Community mourns the loss on Thursday of one its founding members, Josep Levinson (1917-2015). Levinson was a pioneer in Holocaust research after World War II and located Jewish mass murder sites. He also led efforts to mark and commemorate such sites. His memory lives on in the his books “The Shoah: The Holocaust in Lithuania” and “The Book of Sorrow” he compiled and edited, monuments to the lost Lithuanian Jewish Community. The book contains information about and photographs of almost every Jewish mass murder site in Lithuania.

 Josif Levinson grew up in the shtetl Vishéy (Lithuanian Veisiejai) in the Dzūkija ethnographic region of Lithuania. He was graduated from Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas with a degree in engineering. In 1941 his father and relatives were murdered in the village of Katkiškė near Lazdéy (Lithuanian Lazdijai). He fought the Nazis as a serviceman of the 16th Lithuanian Division during World War II and was seriously injured.  He was a founding figure of Vilnius’s Green House–the Holocaust exhibit of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum–and was one of the primary historians in the field of Lithuanian Holocaust studies.

We mourn our great loss and offer our condolences to the immediate family of the esteemed scholar and tireless advocate of memory and justice.

Our deepest condolences to Jewish (Litvak) Community of Lithuania chair,
attorney Faina Kukliansky, and to her extended family, upon the death of
her beloved mother, Mrs. Klara Toides-Kuklianskienė.
Mrs. Toides-Kuklianskienė was born in Šiauliai, Lithuania in 1930, and
lived and worked in Vilnius. She spent the last decades of her
life in Israel.

Jewish (Litvak) Community of Lithuania,
Vilnius Jewish Community,
Religious Jewish Community of Lithuania,
Religious Jewish Community of Vilnius,
The Good Will Foundation