Heritage – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Dutch Museum Cancels Synagogue’s Tricentennial Celebration over Israel Tensions

Photo: The 300-year-old synagogue in Amersfoort in the Netherlands whose anniversary celebration has become contentious due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Courtesy of the Amersfoort synagogue via JTA.

by Michele Chabin, November 11, 2026

Museum Amersfoort director cites “pressure” over social impact of situation in the Middle East; Jewish leaders denounce move as capitulation to anti-Semitism

JTA–An exhibition honoring the nearly 300-year-old Amersfoort Synagogue was supposed to be a celebration of Jewish life in Amersfoort, a small city in the central Netherlands.

Instead, Dutch Jews say, it could become the latest casualty of anti-Israel cancel culture that has targeted Jews in the Diaspora.

The city’s mayor in the last week has scrambled to save a planned exhibit on the synagogue after it was canceled, but so far has not been able to guarantee that it will open as planned early next year.

On November 4, Paul Baltus, the director of Amersfoort in C, an organization which oversees the Museum Amersfoort and several of the city’s other cultural institutions, said he was canceling the upcoming synagogue exhibition due to “pressure,” an apparent reference to possible confrontations by pro-Palestinian activists.

2026-11-112026-11-11

Panevėžys Newspaper Reports on Dilapidated Holocaust Memorial Monuments

The Panevėžys newspaper Sekundė reported November 7 a direction marker and memorial to a Holocaust mass murder site has fallen into disrepair.

The marker and monument are made of large pieces of oak trees in a Lithuanian folk style and are in various states of decay. The wooden monuments are located along the Old Vilnius Highway and leads to the mass murder site in the Staniūnai Forest where 103 Jews were murdered.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2026-11-102026-11-10

Natalja Cheifec on Shtetl Life

Natalja Cheifec continues her internet lecture and discussion series with a presentation on shtetls called “On the Shtetl: Seriously and with a Smile” this Thursday. She will talk about the lost world of Eastern European Jewish towns–shtetls–where spiritual tradition, daily worries and Jewish humor were intertwined in daily life. She will speak about the place of the synagogue, mikve and cheder in the community, the traditions which escorted Jews from birth to the grave, how Sabbath was observed and the wisdom hiding in Jewish humor. The presentation and discussion will take place in Lithuanian. To register and participate, click here.

Time: 6:00 P.M., Thursday, November 12
Place: internet

2026-11-10

Lithuanian Jewish Community Informational Overview Memorandum

Historical Context

Before the Second World War, Lithuania was for centuries an important center of Jewish life and the cradle of the distinctive Litvak tradition, marked by its own culture of Jewish learning, religious thought and communal life. From June of 1941 the Nazi occupiers and their collaborators murdered some 90% to 95% of Lithuania’s Jews, one of the highest mortality rates among all Jewish communities in Europe. After Lithuania restored its independence in 1990, the surviving Jewish community (today numbering a few thousand members) renewed its public religious and cultural life. Its activities are organized through the Lithuanian Jewish Community (LJC), an umbrella organization that brings together the country’s various Jewish organizations. At present the LJC unites 30 member organizations.

The LJC is a member of the European Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress.

Jewish Life

Today the Jewish community is active and through its institutions, programs and services offers activities for people of all generations.

The Choral Synagogue in Vilnius is one of only two synagogues currently functioning in Lithuania and one of the main centers of the country’s Jewish religious life. Morning and evening services are held there every day, throughout the year and on holidays. They are attended by community members as well as guests from Israel and other countries. A permanent cantor leads the daily and festive services. The community is working to strengthen the involvement of rabbis in its activities: rabbis visit regularly, and it is currently looking for a rabbi who would work more closely with younger community members.

2026-11-092026-11-10

Ninth Museum Honors Victims of Grosse Aktion

The Ninth Fort in Kaunas held a commemoration of victims of the Grosse Aktion on the 85th anniversary of the massacre at the fort on October 28. The commemoration organized by the Kaunas Jewish Community and the museum featured speeches, music and a dramatized documentary film. Candles were lit and stones placed at the mass murder site.

From October 28 to 29 in 1941 around 10,000 Jews were murdered in one mass murder operation. Most were taken from the Kaunas ghetto.

Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas, Lithuanian Jewish Community executive director Michail Segal, representatives of the Lost Shtetl Museum in Šeduva, Israeli embassy chargé d’affaires Shimon Pesach, French embassy chargé d’affaires Emmanuel Carnesecca, German cultural attaché Valerie Hog, deputy Lithuanian foreign minister Rūta Statulevičiūtė-Kaučikienė, Lithuanian MP Vytautas Juozapaitis, Jurbarkas mayor Skirmantas Mockevičius, Ninth Fort Museum director Marius Pečiulis and others attended the commemoration.

2026-11-042026-11-10

Jacques Lipchitz Discussion at Vilna Gaon Museum

The Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum will host a discussion on Jacques Lipchitz, the artistic influence Vilnius had on his development, Vilnius cultural life in the early 20th century, Vilnius art guilds, the Vilnius Drawing School and other topics. The discussion will be in Lithuanian and the entrance fee is the cost of a museum ticket, €12,00. Samuel Bak Museum director Ieva Šadzevičienė will moderate the panel which includes art historians Laima Laučkaite-Surgailiene .and Jolanta Širkaite

Time: 6:00 P.M., Wednesday, November 4
Place: Samuel Bak Museum aka the Tolerance Center, Naugarduko street no. 10, Vilnius

2026-11-032026-11-03

Kaunas Jewish Community and Ninth Fort to Mark 85th Anniversary of Grosse Aktion

Eighty-five years ago the persecution and extermination of Lithuanian Jews began. The Nazis and Lithuanian Nazis called their mass murder operations aktionen. The Grosse Aktion, or Great Operation, was the largest single mass murder of Jews in Lithuania, where around 10,000 inmates from the Kaunas ghetto were murdered at the Ninth Fort in just over 24 hours.

The Kaunas Jewish Community and the Ninth Fort Museum invite you to mark the tragedy this year with a commemoration at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas followed by a concert at the fort called Muzik fun zikoyrn, or Music from Memory, featuring the trio Trise, saxophonist Petras Vyšniauskas, pianist Aleksandra Žvirblytė and percussionist Arkadijus Gotesmanas, performing works by Jospeh Achron, Max Helfman, Anatoly Shenderov and others as well as Jewish melodies.

The Ninth Fort Museum will screen a short documentary (by Karolina Vilkelienė, 2026) about the Grosse Aktion during the commemoration there. The commemoration at the Ninth Fort will conclude with a candle-lighting and stone-laying ceremony on the actual killing field.

The event is free and open to the public.

Time: 6:30 P.M., Wednesday, October 28
Place: Ninth Fort Museum, Žemaičių highway no. 73, Kaunas

2026-10-21

Šiauliai Jewish Community Visits Kupiškis

Members of the Šiauliai Jewish Community and guests from Germany took a trip to Kupiškis, a town with a deep and rich Jewish legacy. There they visited the Kupiškis museum and learned about the town’s cultural and historical heritage. Then they took a guided tour of Kupiškis’s central square where once three synagogues operated. Two of the synagogue buildings remain standing. They learned about Kupiškis before the Holocaust, Jewish life, traditions and history there, and that Lithuanians and Jews lived next to one another in peace before the Holocaust.

2026-10-212026-10-21

First Sunday in October in Žagarė

On Sunday descendants of Jews from Žagarė who live now in Šiauliai, Vilnius and other Lithuanian towns and cities gathered in front of the statue to Rabbi Israel Salanter aka Yisrael ben Ze’ev Wolf Lipkin along with Shimon Pesach from the Israeli embassy and Rabbi Kalev Krelin.

This is an annual event. On the first Sunday in October they come together to remember the Jewish history of Žagarė, to honor the Jews who lived here and to preserve their memory. Participants also visited the mass murder sites in Naryškinas Park and at the old Jewish cemetery.

The meeting then moved on to a local café where the discussion continued.

2026-10-142026-10-14

East German Town Bans Stumbling Stones

Photo: Stolperstein commemorating Nazi victim Paul Gröger embedded in the sidewalk in front of Heidenau City Hall. Robert Michael/picture alliance via Getty Images.

by Toby Axelrod, September 27

Transparent maneuver by AfD to suppress German commemorative culture, Jewish leader and Holocaust survivor says

A decision to bar the “stumbling stone” memorials to victims of the Nazis has touched a nerve in one small German town, and beyond.

At issue is a motion passed September 25 by the city council of Heidenau in the former East Germany [in Saxony] to stop installation of such memorials in local sidewalks, calling them disrespectful, and to use the town’s North Cemetery instead.

Set into the ground, the small, engraved brass Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, are meant to make pedestrians stop and think about the fate of former residents. There are currently some 116,000 stones laid in 1,860 municipalities across Europe, mostly in Germany, according to the project’s website.

2026-09-282026-09-28

Šiauliai Marks Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide

The Šiauliai Jewish Community marked the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide September 23. Students from the Saulius Sondeckas Art Gymnasium in Šiauliai began the event with a musical performance.

Deputy mayor Justinas Švėgžda attended. After the ceremony a silent procession moved from the site of the gate of the first ghetto (Caucasus) to the monument marking the gate of the second ghetto (Trakai).

2026-09-282026-09-28

Holocaust Commemoration in Švenčionys

The Švenčionys Jewish Community invites the public to remember the victims of the Holocaust and to mark the anniversary of the liquidation of the Švenčionys ghetto on October 4. Community and friends will gather at 11:00 A.M. on Sunday, October 4 at the Menorah statue in the Švenčionys city park. At noon there will be a commemoration at the mass grave in Platumai village in the Švenčionėliai aldermanship.

2026-09-28

Voice of Departed Exhibit Closes November 30 in Klaipėda

The Klaipėda Jewish Community invites the general public to tour the exhibit Voices of the Departed before the exhibit ends November 30. The exhibit highlights the old Jewish cemetery in the Lithuanian port city, and the cemetery hosts the exhibit. It’s located at Žiedų alley no. 3, Klaipėda. Tours are available in Lithuanian, German and English. For more information, call 0 650 21335.

2026-09-28

Kaunas Jewish Community Accompanies Fayerlakh at Kaunas Concert

The Jewish song and dance group Fayerlakh performed at the Garden of Cultures 2026 event in Kaunas this month which showcases Lithuanian ethnic cultures. Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas and other Community members spoke to the audience as well on Jewish culture and its place in the history of Kaunas.

2026-09-28

Floor of Great Synagogue Inspires Art Exhibition

We know the Great Synagogue in Vilnius was mainly subterranean, because of Christian restrictions limiting the height of houses of prayer of other confessions. Until now, we only had period illustrations of the interior, lost when the shul damaged by Nazi bombardment was demolished by the Soviets in the 1950s. For about a decade now archaeologists from the Israeli Antiquities Authority in cooperation with Lithuanian archaeologists from the Department of Cultural Heritage have been excavating the Shulhoyf, and last year, directed by Jon Seligman of the Israel Antiquities Authority (there from 205) and Justinas Račas and Zenonas Baubonis of the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Salvage Group (at the dig since 2018), they reached the floor of the main hall and uncovered most of the meter-high bimah, the central point in the main hall.

Their discoveries have inspired an exhibit of artworks by Lithuanian Eglė Ridikaitė called Depositions at the St. George the Martyr Church, K. Sirvydo street no. 4, in Vilnius, which opened May 14 and runs till October 3. Admission is from 5 to 10 euros and is payable by card only.

“Eglė Ridikaitė’s exhibition, through an unexpected artistic gesture, weaves together sites of faith, painful historical experiences, and a sense of present vulnerability. With striking clarity, serenity, and simplicity, Depositions unfolds as a silent yet conceptually dense narrative about the city. It invites us to experience, simultaneously, the layered histories of prewar Jewish and Christian Vilnius, while tracing processes of survival and extinction, life and its erasure in memory.

2026-09-232026-09-28

Sabbath Table to Remember Jewish History Exhibit in Pabradė

The first Sabbath Table to Remember Jewish History exhibit as part of the Children of the Holocaust: Lighting Up the Shadows of Lithuanian History project took place at the Pabradė Culture Center last week. The exhibit will be a changeable one depending on the decisions and sensibilities of the designers and exhibit item creators. This time the Sabbath table was laden with pomegranates, figs, apples and challa.

Residents of Pabradė in eastern Lithuania, visitors and local students and teachers attended the event. Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro welcomes the attendees, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Sholem Alechem ORT Gymnasium students, moderated by Algis Davidavičius, who discussed local history, memory and modern forms of commemoration. Then visitors learned about Sabbath traditions, sampled traditional dishes and attended a Jewish cloth-dying workshop.

The Sabbath Table to Remember Jewish History exhibition is the fruit of a two-year meaningful journey during which brave and knowledge-thirsty students from Vilnius and Palanga and their teachers dove into live research on local Jewish history. The young people conducted tours, creative workshops, celebrated Purim and Sabbath together, marked commemorative dates, visited synagogue and spoke with representatives from the Palanga, Vilnius, Darbėn and Israeli Jewish communities.

2026-09-22

Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide at Ponar

The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you to mark the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide with us, remembering the more than 200,000 victims of the Holocaust in Lithuania, at the mass murder site in Ponar just outside Vilnius.

The LJC is providing transportation for those wishing to make the short trip. Please register by 12 noon on September 22 by sending an email to info@lzb.lt containing your full name and the purpose of the email. The bus will leave from the LJC at Pylimo street no. 4 in Vilnius at 11:45 A.M. sharp on September 23. If you arrive late you’ll miss the bus.

Time: 12:30 P.M., Wednesday, September 23
Place: Ponar Memorial Complex, Memorialo street no. 15 aka Agrastų street no. 15, Vilnius

2026-09-172026-09-17

Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide in Šiauliai

The Šiauliai District Jewish Community invites you to a ceremony to mark the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide at the site of the former first ghetto gates at 11:00 A.M. on Wednesday, September 23. There will then be a procession to the second ghetto gates.

Time: 11:00 A.M., Wednesday, September 23
Place: Memorial marking gates of first ghetto at the intersection of Traku and Ezero streets, Righteous Gentile Square, Šiauliai

2026-09-172026-09-17

Droga Dō Concert Series Remembers Jewish Escape Route to Japan

The Droga Dō chamber concert series is dedicated to the memory of the escape route Polish and Lithuanian Jews took to Japan during the Holocaust, and to Japanese ambassador and Righteous Gentile Chiune Sugihara who made it possible, saving thousands of Jews. Dō (Dou, Doo) means “way” in Japanese, as does droga in Polish.

Droga Dō will be performed at the Kaunas State Philharmonic on September 19 with works by Toru Takemitsu, Dai Fujikura, Kishio Kirao, Mieczysław Weinberg, Władysław Szpilman, Aleksander Tansman, Aleksandr Veprik, Joseph Achron and others. For more information, click here. For information in Lithuanian and to purchase tickets, click here.

Time: 5:00 P.M., Saturday, September 19
Place: Kaunas State Philharmonic, E. Ožeškienės no. 12, Kaunas

2026-09-16

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