Heritage – Page 70 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Work to Renovate Žiežmariai Wooden Synagogue Begins

A ceremony was held at the unique wooden synagogue in Žiežmariai, Lithuania on May 19, 2016, to mark a new stage in its life: its resurrection. The ceremony marked the beginning of work by the Kaišiadorys Regional Administration and Lithuania’s Cultural Heritage Department to restore the house of worship and featured a concert by the Rakija Klezmer Orkestar and works of Paganini by violinist Gediminas Dalinkevičius.

An allocation of 85,000 euros from the Ministry of Culture to the Kaišiadorys Regional Administration and an additional 24,840 euros from the regional administration are to be used initially to fix the roof and repair the façade, stabilize the building and perform archaeological work. A total of 693,000 euros is needed for reconstruction of the synagogue and additional sources of funding are being sought.

“The Lithuanian Jewish Community agrees to turn the synagogue over for public use because the Jewish community of Žiežmariai no longer exists and the synagogue won’t be used as a house of prayer. The synagogue can be utilized very well for the cultural needs of the region and at the same time remain a place of commemoration for the Jewish community of the area,” LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said.

2016-05-19

Jews: Lithuania’s Misfortune

by Marius Ivaškevičius

It appears we can finally say exactly what all those who today speak publicly about the mass murder of Jews in Lithuania are truly seeking. Either they are doing PR for themselves through this, advertising themselves, because this is trendy in Europe, or their activities are being financed by the Jews themselves.

All of those shocking details, talk about smashing the heads of Jewish infants on trees to save bullets, is nothing other than the scratching of still unhealed wounds with dirty, dilettante fingers.

In this manner the attempt is made to traumatize yet another generation of Lithuanians, our children born in a free Lithuania, because these sorts of actions, instead of inviting repentance or at least sorrow, actually create even greater hatred of Jews, because this is how the natural defensive reaction of the nation operates. Every nation is different, so Germany’s experience doesn’t fit our situation, that is, healing and finally recovering by demonstrating and revealing through education and openness the brutality of the Nazi concentration camps. All that took place in the period after the war, when events were still vivid, but today the murderers and the witnesses have all but died off, so Lithuania must blaze her own trail. It’s not for no reason at all that our intellectuals, chroniclers and commentators say: don’t do it, don’t pick at that wound with your fingers, let it first heal, let it be forgotten. Sometimes forgetfulness is more worthwhile than remembering.

I am from Molėtai. A small town of extraordinary beauty with three lakes inside the town and another three hundred in the surrounding area. There’s no need to say much, everyone knows Molėtai, Lithuanian vacationers’ paradise. During the war, or more precisely, during one day in the summer of 1941, two thousand Jews were shot there. In other words, eighty percent of the population of Molėtai. More than two-thirds of the town’s residents vanished over the course of a few hours and were buried in a mass grave. German Nazis were in command of the massacre. Local Lithuanians did the shooting. These are the cold, hard facts and numbers.

2016-05-19

YIVO Awarded $260,000 by NEH

YIVO Receives $260,000 Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
May 16, 2016

New York, NY – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO) is pleased to announce that is a recipient of a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the Vilna Collections Project, a seven-year initiative to preserve, digitize and virtually reunite YIVO’s prewar archives and library located in New York City and Vilnius, Lithuania, through a dedicated web portal.

The NEH’s Division of Preservation and Access has awarded $260,000 over two years for the processing, conservation and digitization of rare archival documents rescued from the destruction of the Holocaust. The materials, looted by the Nazis and recovered with the help of the U.S. Army, were brought to New York in the late 1940s. They are a diverse resource on Jewish life, community and culture in Europe. They span the range from handwritten autobiographies by Jewish youth and humble folktales and folk songs to the archives of scholars, such as that of Simon Dubnow, known as the father of Russian Jewish history. They include photographs, Yiddish theater and political posters and the administrative records of Yiddish and Hebrew schools and yeshivas.

As City University of New York historian Jack Jacobs noted in a letter of support for YIVO’s application to the NEH, “It is simply impossible to write a dissertation or do any serious research project related to Eastern European Jewry without consulting the YIVO materials.”

Full story here.

2016-05-18

Litvaks Visit Panevėžys

Gilla Back from Melbourne and Leanne Cohen and her daughter from Johannesburg visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community and toured the city recently to learn more about the land whence their ancestors came.

They examined displays of photographs at the community and talked about their ancestors who lived in the city. Cohen’s antecedents emigrated to South Africa in 1900. They signed the guest book and said it had been a real privilege to walk the streets and breath the air in the city, although the Ponevezh of their relatives no longer exists.

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2016-05-17

Lithuania to Grant 30,000 Euros to Vilnius YIVO Project in 2017

The Lithuanian Ministry of Culture plans to allocate 30,000 euros in 2017 for the Vilnius YIVO project.

The Vilnius YIVO project is a seven-year endeavor to preserve, digitize and join together virtually two pre-war YIVO collections in New York and Vilnius. The project will also attempt to recreate digitally the Strashun library, one of the largest collections of judaica in pre-war Europe. YIVO, the Lithuanian Central State Archives and the Lithuanian Martynas Mažvydas National Library are partners in the project.

The project covers approximately 10,000 rare and unique books and publications and around 1.5 million documents. Material includes literary works, correspondence, memoirs, theater posters, photography, rare books, brochures, newspapers, political pamphlets and documentation of religious and communal activities.

lrkm.lrv.lt

2016-05-17

LJC Chairwoman Speaks on Lithuanian National Radio about Citizenship for Litvaks

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky was one of three distinguished guests on the late morning Aktualiju studijas [News Studio] program on Lithuanian radio May 12.

“This question keeps bothering me: when did the institution of citizenship, when did that institution stop, when was it interrupted? Was it when the person was imprisoned in the ghetto? When he was transported to the concentration camp? Nobody saved those passports anywhere. You see this is such an inhumane, such an unintelligent step when you look to the future. But as the chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community I would like to say, that Litvaks are welcome in our community, with or without a passport, and we would be very proud if our Lithuanian Jewish Community grew thanks to those people who left Lithuania. So we gladly invite and welcome them without regard to their political status,” Faina Kukliansky said during the discussion.

The main topic for the show as “Why don’t we want to grant citizenship to Litvaks?” The introductory blurb for the show was: “Lithuanian Jews–Litvaks–are not just people who have achieved great things in the world, they contributed greatly to the strengthening of the Lithuanian state as well. They sought Lithuanian independence and they fought in the battles for independence [in 1918-1919]. Unfortunately, almost all of them were murdered during World War II. Only a small portion survived. Today some Lithuanian bureaucrats don’t want to grant citizenship to the small group of Jews who want it. Why not?”

The other two guests were former Lithuanian prime minister, current deputy parliamentary speaker MP Gediminas Kirkilas and the historian Alvydas Nikžentaitis.

The audience was invited to call in and pose questions.

2016-05-16

Children’s and Youth Club Activities in April

The Ilan Club and its young directors continued their work and planned for the end of the season and children’s camps. There was a drop-off in attendance as the weather improved and parents kept their children home Sunday afternoons.

April 10, 2016: Activities at the Children’s Club of the LJC. As usual, children came to have both a fun and informative time. This time the activities centered around Jewish love and weddings. We spoke about customs and traditions.

April 17: These activities at the Children’s Club were regarding the upcoming Eilat Beach Party. We had fun, played games and tried to give a sense of the pleasantness of Eilat.

2016-05-06

An Unforgettable Concert

Dutch pianist Marcel Worms performed melodies by interwar Jewish composers at the Lithuanian Jewish Community on April 29, in the same hall where he played 11 years ago. Most of the composers were murdered in the Holocaust, and Worms said if their music was forgotten, they would die a second death.

Works by Rosy Wertheim, Erwin Schulhoff, Gideon Klein, Alexander Tansman, Szymon Laks, Anatolijus Šenderovas, Leo Smit, Dick Kattenburg and George Gershwin were performed. Anatolijus Šenderovas’s “Sonatina” lent a local flavor to the concert.

Concert-goers were got more than just wonderful music: the children of Dutch diplomat Jan Zwartendijk attended. Robert Zwartendijk and Edith Jes spoke about their father who helped rescue at least 2,000 Jews in Lithuania by issuing visas for the Dutch possession of Curaçao, a somewhat fictitious “end-visa” the Soviets demanded of holders of Sugihara’s transit visas through Japan. He and his sister Edith were glad their father was being commemorated and also happy to have a chance to visit Kaunas again, where the Zwartendijk family lived and which Edith, then 13, remembers well.

2016-05-02

Rome to Open Jewish Catacombs to the Public

Rome plans to open the 2,000-year-old Villa Randanini Jewish catacombs to the public for the first time between May 1 and June 5 as part of a cultural initiative as one of the several initiatives taken by the Italian Cultural Ministry to promote the scope of the “Jubilee Year of Mercy” declared by the pope.

The Jewish catacombs were discovered beneath the vineyard of Villa Randanini in 1859. The maze of tunnels covers nearly 18,500 square meters (about 199,000 square feet) and has a depth of five to 16 meters (about 16 to 52 feet). The walls have inscriptions in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew providing information about people buried there. The catacombs have been vandalized over time, but still contain many colorful frescoes and tablets with Jewish candelabra depicted. The walls are covered with paintings of birds, dancing maidens, flourishes and grapevines. The catacombs also contain kokhim, a type of Jewish burial chamber.

2016-04-29

Wooden Synagogue in Pakruojas, Lithuania

EEA and Lithuanian state support as well as from the Pakruojas regional administration has been allocated for fixing the wooden synagogue in Pakruojas, Lithuania.

The plan is to house a children’s literature section of the Juozas Paukštelis Public Library in the synagogue and to use it for educational activities and cultural events. The synagogue has no heat and will have to be outfitted with a heating system for year-round use.

A team of architectural experts, cultural heritage protection specialists, restorers and engineers visited Lithuania’s oldest wooden synagogue April 27. This mission organized by Lithuania’s Ministry of Culture was intended to come up jointly with experts the best solution to the heating problem and other outstanding issues at the site. Participants said the meeting was highly productive and hoped similar heritage issues would see the same sort of good practices applied in the future.

From EEA Grants for Culture in Lithuania

Photos from the trip here.

2016-04-29

Jewish Cultural Legacy Presented in Ukmergė

The Big Stone Hotel in Ukmergė Friday evening was the venue for Jewish music and the audience had the opportunity to try some traditional Jewish cuisine items recently included on the hotel restaurant’s menu. The Ukmergė regional administration, the Ukmergė Tourism and Business Information Center and Big Stone Hotel owners Tajana and Filionis August held a symbolic Passover seder to mark the Jewish holiday on April 23, with the requisite four glasses of wine (kosher, by the way).

The celebrants including members of the Ukmergė Jewish Community discussed the next steps in the life of the recently created Jewish Cultural Heritage Association and its Jewish Cultural Heritage Tourist Route, Lithuania’s largest newspaper, Lietuvos rytas, reported.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2016-04-29

Traces of the Jews of Alsėdžiai

Rūta Jurkaitienė, senior librarian, Alsėdžiai Town Library, Plungė region, 2016

Let’s get to know Alsėdžiai, one of the oldest towns in Lithuania with a deep historical legacy

PDF in Lithuanian:

Traces of the Jews of Alsėdžiai

2016-04-19

Litvaks Didn’t Suffer Enough to Deserve Lithuanian Citizenship?

by Grant Gochin

Lithuanian officials state that Jews were not oppressed in Lithuania:

In an astonishing display regarding the ignorance of rampant anti-Semitism in inter-war Lithuania, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius stated that there was “no violence, repressions or anything like that at the time”, against Jews in Lithuania during the period 1918 – 1939. Based on this assumption, Lithuania intends to deny citizenship applications for descendants of Lithuanian Jews. The belief that Jews did not suffer enough, in Interwar Lithuania, to warrant citizenship is simply preposterous.

http://www.baltictimes.com/litvaks_continually_rejected_restoration_of_lithuanian_citizenship/

At the beginning of the 20th Century, Jews represented about 14% of Lithuania’s population. In May 1915, the Czarist regime deported and exiled approximately 100,000 Lithuanian Jews to the Russian interior. After the war ended, Lithuanian Jews, who had lived in Lithuania for centuries and often constituted half of the population of many towns, were promised that the new independent Lithuanian state would be tolerant to minorities. Jews provided considerable political support for Lithuania in international forums and enlisted into the Lithuanian army to defend their country’s independence. A great many war medals were awarded to these soldiers for their extraordinary bravery and many lost their lives fighting for Lithuanian independence. In return for their contributions, the government granted full autonomy to the Jewish community and created a Cabinet-level Ministry for Jewish Affairs. Unfortunately, these promises were not kept; in 1923 funding for this Ministry was withdrawn, and in 1924 the Ministry was abolished. Sadly, the Ministry had served little purpose, because in 1923 the Lithuanian Government reportedly rounded up and expelled Jews whom they considered to be “alien”.

2016-04-18

ISIS Destroy Ancient Gate to Biblical City of Nineveh

The Gate of God, also known as the Mashqi Gate, was one of a number of grand gates which guarded the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh. Referenced in the Bible (Genesis 10:10, 2 Kings 19:36, Isaiah 37:37-38, Nahum, Zephaniah 2:13-15, Book of Jonah, as well as in the Christian Book of Tobit and the Gospels of Matthew and Luke in the New Testament), the settlement of the site which eventually became Nineveh dates back to about 6000 BC and in the 6th century BC it was the largest city in the world. Nineveh was central to the first book of the prophets, namely, Jonah, who was sent by God to make the Ninevites repent. The Book of Jonah describes the city as an “exceedingly great city of three days journey in breadth” whose population at that time was “more than 120,000.” On July 24, 2014, ISIS destroyed the tomb of Jonah in Ninveeh as part of a campaign to destroy idolatry, although Jonah has an entire chapter named after him in the Koran.

A source at the British Institute for the Study of Iraq confirmed the gate had been attacked.

The Antiquities Department in Baghdad didn’t deny the attack had happened, according to a source who also said there were unconfirmed reports the group was dismantling part of the walls of Nineveh to sell the stone blocks to antiquities collectors. There were also unconfirmed reports the Gate of God was being dismantled for sale rather than being completely destroyed.

2016-04-15

Kaunas Jewish Community Working with City Maintenance Department

Gercas Žakas, chairman of the Kaunas Jewish Community and deputy chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Religious Community, has met with the directors of the Cemetery Maintenance agency of the Kaunas municipality and the heads of the city’s maintenance department, during which they discussed Jewish cemeteries in Kaunas and maintenance and burial issues. The Jewish cemetery on H. ir O. Minkovskių street is at capacity and they confirmed the location for a new cemetery site. Žakas said he was satisfied by the productive meeting and was glad there had been such timely solutions to Jewish heritage and Jewish cemetery issues recently.

2016-04-15

About Taverns, the Vilna Gaon and the Shared History of Lithuanians and Jews

by Nijolė Bulotaitė

American academic Glenn Dynner is teaching a module at the History Faculty of Vilnius University called “Socio-cultural History of Ethnic Minorities in the Central and Eastern European Context.” The professor specializes in the history of Eastern European Jews and has written several books, including “Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society” (Oxford University Press, 2008) and “Yankel’s Tavern: Jews, Liquor and Life in the Kingdom of Poland” (Oxford University Press, 2014). What prompted the professor to take an interest in taverns and Lithuanian and Polish Jews, and what has he discovered? We asked him those questions in Vilnius recently.

Q. Why Poland and Lithuania exactly? Was Jewish life here somehow special?

A. When I was a naïve American student, as soon as I started professor Antony Polonsky’s class at Brandeis University I learned the majority of the world’s Jews lived in Poland and Lithuania before the Holocaust. The professor was my doctoral dissertation supervisor later. I learned three quarters of the world’s Jews in the 19th century lived in Eastern and Central Europe. My problem was I didn’t know any languages. At first I had to learn Hebrew, then Polish, Yiddish and several more. Only then did all the rich sources become available to me. Not many Americans are able to do research in this area because the languages are rather difficult, and it’s difficult for us Americans to learn languages.

Full interview in Lithuanian here.

2016-04-15

Litvaks Told No on Lithuanian Citizenship

VILNIUS, Apr 11, BNS–Jews and their descendants living in Israel and South Africa who left Lithuania in the interwar period have been receiving negative answers about restoration of Lithuanian citizenship for some time now.

Since November of 2015 the Lithuanian Migration Department has rejected the majority of applications for restoration of citizenship for people who left Lithuania in the 1920-1939 period and their descendants.

Under Lithuanian citizenship law, people who left Lithuania before March 11 of 1990 and acquired citizenship in a different country can be citizens of Lithuania, as can their descendants. About 1,000 Jews living in South Africa have taken advantage of the legal provision, but the process of citizenship restoration was suspended for some people in mid-2015.

2016-04-11

Joint Visits Panevėžys

JOINT atstovai lankosi Panevėžyje

AN event was held at the Panevėžys Jewish Community April 6 to welcome honored guests during their brief visit. One of them, Lee Seidler, arrived with his family. American Joint Distribution Committee director Diana Fiedotin and JDC representative in the Baltic states Moni Beniosev also came and took an interest in the history of the Jews of Panevėžys, visited Jewish sites and viewed the stele on Zikaro street, which was named Joint Street in 1923 in honor of the Joint Distribution Committee.

2016-04-10

Remembering Jewish Vilna in Painting

The catalog of the exhibit of Lithuanian painting and photographs called “Zakhor. Remember. Topography of Images of Jewish Vilnius” will be launched at the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 7:00 P.M. on Thursday, April 14. The catalog and exhibit are the work of curators Linas Liandzbergis, Elke-Vera Kotowski and Gabrielė Žaidytė. The exhibit has been at show at the Old Town Hall in Vilnius and at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin.

From May to August the exhibit will grace the halls of the Cape Town Jewish Museum and the Johannesburg Holocaust Museum in South Africa, then travelling on to Israel, Argentina and other destinations where sizeable populations of Litvaks live. The presentation, to be attended by Dr. Julius Schoeps, director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center and the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg, is also to include a short film documenting earlier showings of the exhibit. Improvisational jazz is to be performed at the presentation by Lithuanian musician Kęstutis Vaiginis.

2016-04-10

New Book on Litvak Art in Private Hands

A new book/catalogue called “Litvakų dailė privačiose Lietuvos kolekcijose” [Litvak Art in Private Lithuanian Collections] was presented at the National Art Gallery on April 5. The book is bilingual in Lithuanian and English, and contains about 250 works by 44 Litvak artists, including paintings, water colors and sculpture, many of which have never been seen by the public before. The publication is the fruit of exhaustive research by Dr. Vilma Gradinskaitė, an historian at the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum’s History Department.

Lithuanian minister of culture Šarūnas Birutis spoke at the book launch and said: “This serious album spans more than 150 years from the mid-1800s to current artists working within the Litvak artistic tradition. I hope this publication will interest the broader public as well as professionals, hooking the reader and reminding us of the names and works of little-known and forgotten artists.” He said it was the only book in Lithuania which so broadly and comprehensively surveys Litvak ark, graphics and sculpture held in private collections.

2016-04-10