Heritage – Page 22 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Project “Young Leaders of the Jewish and Roma Communities for the Preservation of Historical Memory and Justice”

The year 2021 reminded us all of the suffering and misfortune the people of Lithuania had to live through in the 20th century, finding themselves at the intersection of the interests of the world’s great powers. There were commemorations, conferences and exhibitions throughout Lithuania. Even so, we haven’t done all our homework to insure the preservation of historical memory and teaching the younger generation a deeper sense of history don’t merely become annual events, but an inalienable part of national politics where all institutions work towards a common goal in a coordinated way, so that the combined resources of the state and society work together according to a clear strategy.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Roma Social Center are beginning the implementation of a project called Young Leaders of the Jewish and Roma Communities for the Preservation of Historical Memory and Justice organized by Germany’s EVZ Foundation aimed at teaching the public the importance of the history of the Roma and Jewish communities with the goal of including and engaging the younger generation of both communities.

Do members of these communities feel safe living in their own country?

2022-02-022022-02-02

Parliamentary Amendments to Law on Citizenship to Allow for Restoring Lost Ties

The Lithuanian Jewish Community welcomes the decision by the Lithuanian parliament to approve amendments to the Law on Citizenship correcting long standing gaps (since 2017) in legal regulations and creating opportunities for closer ties between the Litvak communities in Lithuania and the world.

“The Lithuanian state often underlines its connection with notable Litvaks and their descendants, takes pride in their achievements and invites them to visit Lithuania. At the same time, it has to be stated that for many years these same people had to have iron constitutions when attempting to restore Lithuanian citizenship. I have called consistently on all Lithuanian institutions to solve this problem and I am pleased to say that today we can see the result of that joint effort,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman, attorney Faina Kukliansky said.

These amendments broaden the circle of people with the right to restore Lithuanian citizenship. The procedure until now demanded those seeking to restore their Lithuanian citizenship prove that their ancestor who had Lithuanian citizenship (or if they themselves had it) was a citizen on April 15, 1940. This requirement demanded exhaustive research of historical facts which demonstrated and proved which citizenship documents the person or his or her ancestor had in their possession until April 15, 1940 (exclusively), and at what moment and on what basis these people acquired the citizenship of another country. Moreover, there are no institutions which issue certificates showing that a person was a Lithuanian citizen on April 15, 1940. With the adoption of these amendments, now one only has to prove they were a Lithuanian citizen at any time, and that they didn’t lose that citizenship at that time in a manner prescribed by law. Implementation of these amended regulations means the bureaucracy will be reduced for those seeking to restore their Lithuanian citizenship and opportunities will be insured for members of the Litvak community around the world to restore their connection with Lithuania.

2022-02-01

Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe on Šnipiškės Cemetery

PRESS RELEASE by the Committee for the Protection of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe
(CPJCE)
January 18, 2022

The Lithuanian Government reaffirms its commitment to follow CPJCE guidelines on future plans of the Sports Palace Building situated in the Snipiskes Jewish cemetery in Vilnius.

The future function of the existing Sports Palace Building was discussed at a meeting held in Vilnius on November 25, 2021, between first deputy chancellor Mr. Rolandas Krisciunas, accompanied by his working team, and Mrs. Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, together with Rabbi H. Gluck OBE and Rabbi Y. Schlesinger representing the CPJCE.

Rabbi Gluck pointed out that regardless what the future plans hold, the Government must respect the agreements signed between the Government and the CPJCE in 2009 and 2015 and therefore no movement of soil is allowed in the entire cemetery area, and the Government should continue to work hand-in-hand with CPJCE to ensure the safeguarding of the cemetery and other cemeteries in the framework of the halachic guidelines.

2022-01-312022-02-02

Lithuanian Prime Minister Talks about Jewish Legacy in Radio Interview

LRT.lt: This interview is taking place on January 27, which is International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. This topic is important to you, you took part in the Road of Memory procession several times if I recall correctly. The topic of the Holocaust is sparking a great many discussions in Lithuania and it’s clear we haven’t answered many questions. Have we, Lithuania, as a state, bearing in mind the entire history, have we commemorated sufficiently the victims and rescuers?

Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė: I think we haven’t fully realized over all what Jews mean in Lithuanian history. … The very scope, the understanding that 200,000 people, that the residents of the towns were in the majority the large Jewish communities which simply disappeared, someone took and wiped 200,000 people out of the picture. I came to that realization rather late.
…
Regarding the Palace of Sports, it has its own specific features because it is a building which is [protected] cultural heritage, nothing new may be built there, it can only be commemorated and put to public use. I won’t hide that there are people who say we should let this building fall into ruin because there are so many off-limit areas, so let the building fall down of its own accord. This is a difficult decision, to wait for the building to fall down in the middle of the city. I don’t think we should do this, but I also don’t think some other kind of application would meet with great support.

2022-01-28

Resurrection of the Palace of Sports: Could It Become a Jewish Memorial?

On International Holocaust Day Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė told LRT.lt the Palace of Sports complex in Vilnius could become a memorial to Jews. For more than a decade now there has been consideration on how to renovate this historical building of brutalist architecture. The main idea was to create a modern conference center, but the Government might not go along with this now.

The building has a unique roof and is an example of brutalism [Soviet architecture]. If there are even a few sites in the Lithuanian capital where it’s possible to travel back through time in an instant, the Palace of Sports is one of them. Abandoned and apparently forgotten, although it once throbbed with life.

Many Lithuanian music stars performed on its stage and festivals and plays were held there.

In 1989 while the USSR still existed the group Sonic Youth performed there.

The Lithuanian independence movement Sąjūdis held its founding conference there.

2022-01-282022-03-11

Vytautas Mikalauskas Art Gymnasium Students Commemorate Holocaust Day in Panevėžys

Panevėžys students marked International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman was invited to speak at the event.

“Today like never before young people must know, understand and remember. This is the only hope that this indescribable horror not repeat itself, it is the only way to bring us out of darkness,” Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Elisa Springer said.

At the event, Elena Adelina Kofman served as moderator, and said the systematic mass murder and genocide of the Jews, also known as the Shoah, saw the greatest percentage of victims over a very short period in Lithuania. Around 96 percent of Jews were exterminated in Lithuania, around 200,000 people. She said that made this commemoration especially important.

2022-01-282022-03-11

First-Ever Exhibit of Michael Brenner’s Works in Lithuania

The Šeduva Jewish Memorial Fund and the Aušra Museum in Šiauliai are pleased to invite the public the first-ever exhibition in Lithuania of works by famous Litvak designer and sculptor Michael Brenner. Brenner almost never exhibited his works during his lifetime and rarely invited anyone into his studios.

The exhibit called “Michael Brenner: Free Fall” will open at the Chaim Frenkel villa located at Vilniaus street no. 74 in Šiauliai at 5:30 P.M. on January 22. For more information, click on the links below.

2022-01-242022-01-24

Legacy of Jewish Community Being Revived in Kupiškis

The surviving material culture of the former Kupiškis Jewish community, namely a mill which changed communal life once upon a time, is being restored in the small town in northeast Lithuania. For more, see here.

2022-01-20

Chaim Grade: Facts of a Life

Photo: Jung-Vilne literary group: Chaim Grade is standing in the top row to the left, the poets Shmerke Kaczerginski and Abraham Sutzkever are seated in the middle. YIVO archives

by Susanne Klingenstein and Yehudah DovBer Zirkind, In Geveb, December 15, 2021

INTRODUCTION

When on May 2, 2010, Inna Hecker Grade passed away at the age of eighty-five, a sigh of relief, unkind and hard-edged, coursed through some corners of the Yiddish literary world and a small circle of scholars and archivists tensed with expectation. For twenty-eight years, since the passing of her husband Chaim Grade on June 26, 1982, the literary legacy of one the most important Yiddish prose-stylists and documentary storytellers to emerge from the ashes of Vilna, had lain concealed in the couple’s Bronx apartment, guarded by his angry widow who deemed the world unworthy of her husband’s genius. After a brief foray into the publishing world, she had withdrawn into a tomb filled with her husband’s treasures.

The sepulchral metaphor was first used by Ralph Speken, the psychiatrist who had taken care of Inna Grade during the last months of her life. On the eve of breaking the seal, Speken pleaded: “They should take over that apartment as if they were taking over King Tut’s tomb.” Scholars and readers expected the discovery of manuscripts in drawers and closets that would speedily be published, perhaps in critical editions, and bring Grade back to literary life. No new work, no critical edition or biography has yet appeared.

2022-01-132022-01-13

Remembering Documentary Photographer, Author, Screenwriter Alter-Sholem Kacyzne

Photo: Alter Kacyzne. “Green Fields” theater still. ca. 1921. Museum of the City of New York.

text by Yitskhok Niborski, translated from Yiddish by Yankl Salant

Kacyzne, Alter-Sholem (May 31, 1885-July 7, 1941)

(1885–1941), Yiddish writer and critic; photographer. Born in Vilna to a working-class family, Alter-Sholem Kacyzne (Yid., Katsizne) attended heder and also a Russian-language Jewish elementary school. At 14, after his father’s death, he stopped his formal studies. Kacyzne was an autodidact and remained an avid reader not only of literature in Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew, but also of Polish, German and French works. For about 11 years he lived in Ekaterinoslav where he learned to be a photographer and was married.

In 1909, Kacyzne first published two Russian stories in the periodical Evreiski mir (Jewish World), edited by S. An-ski. In 1910, attracted by the work and reputation of Y. L. Peretz, Kacyzne settled in Warsaw, where he opened a photography studio. He grew very close to Peretz, who became a literary mentor, but did not begin publishing in Yiddish until after Peretz’s death in 1915. Kacyzne’s first Yiddish texts appeared in collections in Vilna and Kiev. In 1919 and 1920 his first two books were published in Warsaw, the dramatic poems Der gayst der meylekh (The Spirit, the King) and Prometeus (Prometheus). He was also a consistent contributor to (and sometimes co-founder and co-editor of) a series of literary periodicals, most of them short-lived, in Warsaw and Vilna, in which he published novellas and stories that in 1922 appeared in book form as Arabeskn (Arabesques).

2022-01-132022-05-12

News and Views from the Kaunas Jewish Community on the Levinas Center

Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas shared his impressions on facebook after visiting the Emmanuel Levinas Center opening ceremony:

“It was endlessly pleasant to receive an invitation from professor Rimantas Benetis, rector of the Lithuanian Health Medicine University, to meet at the recently-opened Emmanuel Levinas Center. We had a nice and warm conversation in which we discussed the Center’s mission, planned activities and opportunities for cooperation. I thank Center directors Ingrida Krasauskienė and Julija Vasilenko who conducted a tour of the impressive space of the Center with its extraordinary aura and possessing materializing visions of the future. I hope that the Center will be more than just an institution researching and promoting the philosophical, intellectual and cultural inheritance of the famous philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) born in Kaunas, as its articles of incorporation state, but also that it will become a new venue in Kaunas for memorable and meaningful meetings and events. And I also hope ties of partnership and cooperation will join the Levinas Center and the Kaunas Jewish Community, inspiring us to carry out numerous projects.”

2022-01-122022-01-26

Discussion on Jewish Contributions to Lithuanian Statehood

Arkadijus Vinokuras will moderate a discussion on Jewish contributions to Lithuanian statehood from 1918 to 1940 and from 1988 to 2022 as part of the #ŽydiškiPašnekesiai series of talks at the Bagel Shop Café in the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius at 5:00 P.M. on January 12. This is the eve of January 13, an important date in modern Lithuania’s history, the morning on which Soviet tanks attacked and killed citizens defending the Vilnius television tower in 1991. Participants are to include father of Lithuanian independence Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and Lithuanian MP and signatory to the 1990 Independence Act Emanuelis Zingeris, among others.

Musical accompaniment is to be provided by Vytas Mikeliūnas on violin and Darius Mažintas on piano performing Lithuanian and Jewish songs. The discussion will be held in Lithuanian. Those wishing to attend may come in person or watch the live-feed on the LJC facebook page.

2022-01-10

Joint Lithuanian-YIVO Digitization Project Complete

New York-based YIVO has announced the completion of a joint project to digitize the Edward Blank collection in what is known as the Edward Blank Vilna On-Line Collections Project. The historic initiative took seven years and $7 million to complete. The goal was to sort, conserve and digitize pre-war collections from the YIVO library and archives, and to make them available to everyone online.

The project was carried in concert with the Lithuanian Central State Archive, the Martynas Mažvydas Lithuanian National Library and the Vrublevskiai Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences.

Ruth Levine, the director of the board of YIVO, called the completion of the project a new phase in the modern history of the YIVO institute and part of their main mission. She said heroes and martyrs gave their lives to preserve the books and documents in the collection, and expressed gratitude to the Lithuanian partners in the project.

2022-01-102022-01-11

Name Changes but Fate Remains the Same

by Lina Dranseikaitė

The century-old red-brick synagogue standing on M. Valančiaus street in almost the exact center of the city of Panevėžys from now on will be known by its true name, the Torah Association.

Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman said historical justice has been restored. But even with the restoration of historical justice, this decaying heritage site in the historical part of the city might completely vanish over the coming decades.

Although Lithuania’s state Property Bank attempted to sell the synagogue two years ago, no takers have appeared. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman says he isn’t even considering that Jews might buy the red-brick synagogue since this building is supposed to belong to Jews already.

Full text in Lithuanian here.

2022-01-07

Lara Lempertienė Awarded Prize by Lithuanian Foreign Ministry

Jewish scholar and head of the Lithuanian National Library’s Judaica Center Lara Lempertienė, PhD, was awarded the Star of Lithuanian Diplomacy prize Friday, according to a press release from the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry. Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis personally presented her the prize at the ministry in recognition of her work fostering research into Litvak history and cultural heritage, and for her significant contribution to commemorations of the 300th birthday of the Vilna Gaon and 700 years of Litvak history.

“You have made a remarkable contribution in strengthening foreign policy and carrying out our shared mission to spread knowledge of Lithuanian Jewish history and culture,” minister Landsbergis said. The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry has been awarding the Star of Lithuanian Diplomacy since 2010 in recognition of contributions to spreading knowledge of Lithuania internationally and to improving and celebrating international relations.

2021-12-21

LJC Rejects Communist China’s Statements on Lithuanian Ethnic Minorities

The Lithuanian Jewish Community looks on in surprise and with concern at statements issuing from the press secretary of the Communist Chinese Foriegn Ministry claiming Jews and other ethnic minority communities in Lithuania are suffering “serious discrimination” and pressure, the LJC said in a press release.

Although there is public and free dialogue between the LJC and Lithuanian government institutions concerning commemoration of the past and other painful chapters of history regarding the Holocaust, we vigorously reject any and all accusations Jews are experiencing discrimination in Lithuania today.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said: “Lithuania is a democratic country which respects its Jewish citizens and safeguards the rights of all its citizens. While we sometimes have differing opinions regarding heritage and property destroyed during World War II by the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators, or regarding unreturned property, we are nonetheless and active and free part of Lithuanian society. In our country we freely express our views, and we support open and public dialogue with institutions and other groups of society. It is absolutely unacceptable attempting to draw our small community into a solution of bilateral and international disagreements through mendacity and manipulation.”

2021-12-052022-08-09

LJC Donates 1,000 Rudashevski Diaries to Lithuanian Schools

The Lithuanian Jewish Community has delivered 1,000 copies of Yitzhak Rudashevski’s “Vilnius Ghetto Diary” in Lithuanian translation to the Lithuanian National Education Agency for distribution to almost all primary school libraries across the country.

At the hand-over ceremony several days ago, LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said the gift will contribute to Holocaust education in Lithuania and that Rudashevski’s diary provides a personal perspective which children are able to grasp more easily. Rudashevski wrote the diary as a teenager from Vilnius. She presented one copy of the book personally as a symbolic gift to Lithuania’s education and athletics minister Jurgita Šiugždinienė on the occasion.

“While we provide the book to the schools, it’s important to remember there were thousands of Rudashevskis,” chairwoman Kukliansky said.

2021-11-16

Alanta Synagogue Renovated

The synagogue in the town of Alanta in the Molėtai region stands on slight hill side a little bit away from Ukmergės street on the right-hand side of the Alanta-Molėtai road. It is unique in Lithuania and Europe. It is one of only seventeen surviving wooden synagogues spread across Lithuania. Judging from its shape, it is thought it was built in the late 19th century. The Alanta synagogue is the only surviving synagogue from the Romantic period with an intact interior and interior stairs left in Lithuania.

The renovated synagogue will be handed over to the Molėtai regional administration for managing public use of the state-protected heritage site for cultural, educational and tourism activities including exhibits and tours teaching local Jewish history.

2021-11-152022-01-11

European Jewish Congress Holds First Sit-Down since Pandemic in Vienna

The European Jewish Congress held their firs in-person meeting since the outbreak of the corona virus in Vienna on November 10. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky attended.

The meeting touched on current problems of concern to European Jewish communities.

On November 9 members of the executive board attended a commemoration of the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht at the Holocaust memorial Judenplatz in Vienna. The same day EJC president Moshe Kantor presented a comprehensive plan to defeat anti-Semitism.

2021-11-122021-11-12

The Unknown Connection between Zambia and Ukmergė

by Rytas Sakavičius

One average day doing my usual thing, scrolling through facebook, an entry caught my eye about a European who is a national hero of Zambia. The most interesting part was his surname, Zukas.

It sounded familiar, but I didn’t really believe it: is it possible we wouldn’t know about this person? We so love stories about people whose ancestors came from Lithuania and it hardly matters whether they identified themselves with Lithuania. Not expecting much, I put “Simon Zukas” into a search engine. The results were suprising. Born July 31, 1925, in Ukmergė [Vilkomir], Lithuania. That’s when I got interested, thinking it strange such an important and exceptional African political figure might be completely unknown in his native land.

2021-11-032021-11-19