Heritage – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Visitor from DC Looking for Roots in Panevėžys

Harold Closter who lives in Washington, D.C., and his son Yulik Gurvich visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community looking or information on Closter’s great-grandfather Zvi Hirsh Avraham and Closter’s mother Milke Ginzberg, both of whom lived in Panevėžys before the First World War. The Panevėžys Jewish Community’s archive had matches for both surnames but further information such as street addresses couldn’t be determined, because Kloster didn’t have their dates of birth, marriages or death.

Kloster is a folklorist and historian. He said it was important to him and his son to see where their ancestors lived.

Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman recommended they apply to the Lithuanian State Archive which conserves material documenting Jews living in Lithuania since the 17th century. Kofman and Kloster made plans to stay in contact.

2026-02-10

Vilkomir Chemistry Olympics Awards Renamed after Aaron Klug

The Ukmergė (Vilkomir) regional administration hosted the awards ceremony for winners of the chemistry contest which takes place at local high schools annually. This year the awards ceremony at the Antanas Smetona Gymnasium was renamed the Aaron Klug awards.

Aaron Klug was born in Želva, Lithuania, in 1926. Klug was taken by his parents from Lithuania to South Africa when he was three years old. He entered the University of the Witwatersrand at Johannesburg intending to study medicine, but he was graduated with a science degree. He then began a doctoral program in crystallography at the University of Cape Town but left with a master’s degree upon receiving a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he completed his doctorate in 1953. He won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1982 for his investigation of the three-dimensional structure of viruses and other particles which are combinations of nucleic acids and proteins, and for the development of crystallographic electron microscopy.. This year marks 100 since he was born. He died in 2018.

2026-02-042026-02-04

Remembering Holocaust Victims in Šiauliai

International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust was marked in Šiauliai January 27. People gathered at the location of the ghetto gates at the intersection of Ežero and Trakų streets. Members of the Šiauliai Jewish Community, local officials and local residents attended. Candles were lit at the monument marking the former ghetto gates. The attendees then moved on to Righteous Gentile Square.

2026-02-03

Palanga Jewish Cemeteries: Inscriptions, Records, Territories

Information from Mindaugas Surblys, Palanga Jewish Community

When fire ran rampant in Palanga in 1830, old burial pinkhas were destroyed, dating back to 1487. Beginning in 1831 burial records were kept for the new Jewish cemetery at the edge of town. For a time two Jewish cemeteries operated in tandem in Palanga, the old one since 1487 till 1892, located inside Birutė Park. The new cemetery was instituted near Naglys Hill.

There are ten remaining headstones (matsevot) of different sizes made from granite and cement with inscriptions in Hebrew letters. Three headstones are broken in their upper sections. One is splintered with fragments lying on the ground. Many of the surviving monuments are difficult to read.

Several inscriptions are legible and correspond to the burial records of the Palanga Jewish community. The inscriptions match the information in the pinkhas, for example, “Here lies our dear and honored father who was famous for his charity work and high moral character, Natan Frank, son of Hirsh (Tzvi), deceased on Rosh Hashanah, 1935” (partial translation).

2026-02-022026-02-02

UN Holocaust Day at the Šiauliai District Jewish Community

The Šiauliai District Jewish Community marked the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, with an evening of tea celebrating Vulf Visotiski, a tea expert whose family began dealing in tea in Žagarė back in 1849.

The Šiauliai District Jewish Community invited experts and cultural anthropologists from Žagarė and around Lithuania as well as the general public and served Visotski tea imported from Israel. The fifth generation of the family is still blending tea in Israel now. High school student singers from the area and from Klaipėda provided the highlight of the evening. Speakers also provided historical insights into the Volpert family and the history and current state of Žagarė.

2026-02-02

Šiauliai District Jewish Community to Mark UN Holocaust Day

The Šiauliai District Jewish Community invites you to mark International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust together with the community on January 27. At 12 noon there will be a candle-lighting ceremony at the Shavl ghetto gate located at the corner of Ežero and Trakų streets. At 6:00 P.M. the Community will hold an evening to celebrate Vulf Visotski and tea called “Memory, Faith, Hope” at the Community at Višinskio street no. 24 in Šiauliai. Participants are to include the student theater from the Ąžuolynas Gymnasium in Klaipėda, vocalists from the Juventa Pre-gymnasium in Šiauliai District and guests from Pakruojis and Žagarė.

2026-01-272026-01-27

Birthday Exhibition by Aleksandra Jacovskytė

Aleksandra Jacovskytė’s exhibit “Theater: Costume Sketches” will open January 20 at the Samuel Bak Museum of the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum with the artist in attendance. She’ll speak about the sources of her inspiration, theater life, how costumes are created from idea to stage and talk backstage. Aleksandra Jacovskytė is a set designer, graphic artist and photographer.

Time: 6:00 P.M., Tuesday, January 20
Place: Samuel Bak Museum, Naugarduko street no. 10, Vilnius

2026-01-192026-01-22

Lithuanian Economics Ministry Likes Idea of Holocaust Museum at Shnipishok Cemetery

The Lithuanian Ministry of Economics and Innovation has issued a press release on the Baltic News Service webpage expressing approval for the idea of setting up a Holocaust museum at the former Palace of Sports built on top of the Vilna Jewish cemetery by the Soviets in the Shnipishok neighborhood on the northern side of the Neris (viliya( River.. The building has been in serious disrepair for over a decade.

“Taking into account the position held regarding the possibility of adapting the former Palace of Sports, since this site is not suitable for modern and competitive conference tourism… it would be more appropriate to renovate the Palace of Sports and equip it for use as a new memorial and museum,” the Economics and Innovation Ministry posted on the BNS press release webpage.

Vilnius mayor Valdas Benkunskas after meeting with economics minister Edvinas Grikšas last week told BNS the Vilnius municipality and the Economics Ministry have a common position regarding the aging concert and sports complex.

Mayor Benkunskas said: “We perceive in the same way that the Palace of Sports has to be renovated and adapted as a memorial and museum space, and that it wouldn’t be competitive for conference tourism, and would pose a risk to our public image as such.”

The Economics and Innovation Ministry earlier posted the building was not fit to use as a conference venue following a study ordered by the Government.

“According to the current studies, this site could only host some of the requirements as a venue, there would be a lack of parking places, and the costs of reconstruction are difficult to predict,” the Ministry said.

2025-12-30

American Embassy Hosts Presentation of New Community Center

Goodwill Foundation co-presidents Rabbi Andrew Baker and Faina Kukliansky presented plans for a new Lithuanian Jewish Community Center at the US embassy in Vilnius last week.

World-renowned Litvak architect Massimiliano Fuksas’s team are drafting plans for the new building to be built at the site of the Great Synagogue complex in Vilnius Old Town.

Baker and Kukliansky provided details at the presentation on a planned YIVO exhibit at the new center telling the history of Litvaks, Litvak life, traditions, the people and their mass murder during the Holocaust.

2025-12-25

Natalja Cheifec on Shtetl Life

The shtetl was bit just a tiwn, but a self-contained world where Jewish traditions were maintained, students attended the yeshiva, people were married and buried under the precepts of Judaism and almost everyone spoke Yiddish.

To receive zoom credentials, click here.

Time: 6:00 P.M., Tuesday, December 4
Place: internet

2025-12-04

News from the Šiauliai District Jewish Community

Jewish history is an important part of the identity of Jews from Shavl and Žagarė. Last Sunday members of the Šiauliai District Jewish Community took a tour called “Jewish Houses, Trades and History.” sampled bagels and were treated to a lecture by ethno-musicologist Eirimas Velička about Jewish music.

The Šiauliai District Jewish Community also opened an exhibit Sunday on the kinder aktion in the Shavl ghetto in 1943. The exhibit is on display at the Culture Center in Šiauliai. Community members finished the day attending the play “The Thinking Heart of the Barracks” which recalled the injunction to remember.

2025-11-25

Sabbath Celebration with Vegetarian Dishes Inspired by Lewando

The team of the fotmer Bagel Shop Café, now called Pylimo 4 (the street address) is pleased to announce a Sabbath celebration featuring vegetarian dishes inspired by Fania Lewando from Vilnius, the author of a vegetarian cookbook published in Yiddish in 1938.

It happens this Friday, November 14. The menu pays tribute to Lewando’s cuisine which reflects Litvak traditions. Participants are asked to donate €22 per diner, but smaller donations are also very acceptable. The point is to celebrate the Sabbath together. To suggest dishes, for more information amd to register, send an email to gut.shabbos.vilnius@gmail.com.

2025-11-11

Memory Written in Stone

On October 18 Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro, MP Emanuelis Zingeris and a number of local officials and residents as well as educators from Lithuania and abroad attended an event in Pabradė called Memory Written in Stone. The event was held by the Paribio Pažinimo Centras as part of a borader project to memorialize locations where synagogues once stood.

During this event two stone markers were erected at the site of two former synagogues. The Pabradė Fanfare Orchestra provided musical accompaniment.

2025-11-05

Child’s Bracelet Marks Site of Righteous Gentiles’ Maternity Clinic

by Skirmantė Javaitytė

On Friday the Kaunas Jewish Community and Liudas Mažylis unveiled a plaque commemorating the site of the birthing clinic formerly run by the Righteous Gentiles Pranas Mažylis, Liudas’s grandfather, Pranas’s wife Antanina and their daughter Liūda.

The plaque features a child’s bracelet inlaid with the inscription: “In Pranas Mažylis’s ,maternity clinic in this building from 1936 to 2025 thousands of babies entered the world. During World War II the Pranas and Antanina Mažylis family saved Jews here.” The family rescued a number of Jews.

Grandson Liudas Mažylis said at the ceremony he hadn’t been a part of it because he was born in 1954. He said his grandparents saved Liliana Levintoff, Isaac Yudelavitch, Grigory Teper and Bela Gurvitch.

2025-10-272025-10-27

Fayerlakh Performs in Simnas

The Jewish song and dance ensemble Fayerlakh performed Sunday in Simnas as the final act in the celebration of the 120th birthday of the synagogue there and of the former Jewish community in the small town.

Members of the audience had the chance to sample traditional Jewish foods and learn more about the shtetl.

2025-10-27

Panevėžys Jewish Community and City Officials Visit Lost Shtetl Museum

Members of the Panevėžys Jewish Community and Panevėžys municipal officials visited the Lost Shtetl Museum in Šeduva October 17.

Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofmanas.presented a new Jewish calendar to museum staff.

2025-10-232025-10-24

Moyshe Kulbak Lecture

The Judaica Research Center at the Lithuanian National Library presents a lecture by Center director Lara Lempertienė at 6:00 P.M. Tuesday, October 28, on Yiddish poet and novelist Moyshe Kulbak called “I Am This City: Moyshe Kulnak’s Vilnius” in :Lithuanian.

Lempertienė for many years has worked with Jewish texts from Lithuania and Europe and has research manuscripts in the National Library’s Judaica collection. She was graduated from Vilnius University as a philologist, studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was a visiting scholar at Oxford University’s Hebrew and Judaica Studies Center. She earned a doctorate for her thesis “Rabbinical Exegesis in the Context of Traditional Jewish Education in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.”

The lecture will take place at the Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum in Vilnius where an accompanying exhibit of art by Tania Mourad is on display touching on the Holocaust experience and Litvak poetry, with street graffiti transcribed into the Yiddish alphabet. For more information, call +370 5 261 6764 or send an emial to the museum at kasiulio.muziejus@lndm.lt.

Time: 6:00 P.M., Tuesday, October 28
Place: Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum, Goštauto street no. 1, Vilnius

2025-10-222025-10-22

Documentary on Jakov Gens

The Vilnius Gewish Public Library will screen the documentary “The Commandant’s Daughter” featuring the recollections of Ada Gens, daughter of Vilnius ghetto Jewish Police chief Jakov Gens (aka Yakov, Jacob, Jokūnas Gens) at 6:00 P.M. Wednesday, October 22. Jakov Gens’s great-grandson Alexander Phibbs is to speak at the event.

Gens as de facto ruler of the Vilnius ghetto made controversial and lasting decisions for the survival of a remnant of Vilna Jewry. His post-Holocaust legacy was as nemesis to the FPO underground partisan organization, although Gens died in Gestapo custody. Gens displayed a clear preference for Hebrew over Yiddish as the language of the Jews in the future state of Israel.

Great-grandson Alexander Phibbs says heard his grandmother’s stories as a child but didn’t attach greater historical significance to them then. Phibbs began doing his own Holocaust research in 2008 and came across his grandmother Ada’s testimony to the US Holocaust Museum, and realized how little he really knew about Jakov Gens and the role he played in the Vilnius ghetto.

2025-10-212025-10-21

Righteous Gentiles Mažylis Family Remembered in Kaunas

Liudas Mažylis and the Kaunas Jewish Community will unveil a plaque commemorating Righteous Gentiles Antanina and Pranas Mažylis on the façade of the Pranas Mažylis Birth Center in Kaunas next week. The couple hid Jews during the Holocaust at the birth center including Lilijana Levintoffskytė, Isakas Judelevičius, Grigorijus Teperis and Bela Gurvičiūtė.

“Back then in our family even thought about whether to hekp these poor people. WE just had to, that’s all,” the couple’s daughter Liūda Mažylytė-Rasteikienė recalled later.

Time: 2:00 P.M., Friday, October 24
Place: Putvinskio street no. 3, Kaunas

2025-10-20

Holocaust Victims Remembered in Švenčionys

The first Sunday in October is the traditional date for remembering Holocaust victims from the Švenčionys region at the Menorah monument in the city park in Švenčionys.

The Menorah monument marks the border of the ghetto where local Jews were held before being murdered at Platumai village.

Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro, Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yaatom, members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and local officials took part in the ceremony.

2025-10-152025-10-18

« Previous