The Kaunas Jewish Community invites you to an evening to remember Righteous Gentile Ona Šimaitė at the Vincas Kudirka Public Library, A. Mapu street no.18, Kaunas at 6:00 P.M. on Thursday, September 19.
Author of a biography in Lithuanian and researcher Rimantas Stankevičius will speak at the event hosted by the historian Linas Venclauskas. Rokas Makštutis will provide musical accompaniment.
You’re invited to attend a commemoration of the Day of Genocide of Lithuanian Jews to be held in in Panevėžys, Lithuania, starting at 1:00 P.M. on Monday, September 23.
Program:
1:00 P.M. Opening ceremony and wreath-laying at “Sad Jewish Mother” statue on Memory Square on Vasario 16-osios street.
1:30 P.M. Trip to mass murder site in Kurganava Forest.
2:00 P.M. Trip to Holocaust memorial site in Žalioji Forest.
3:30 P.M. Screening of Yad Vashem film about the Holocaust at Panevėžys Jewish Community
Please indicate your intention to attend by calling the chairman of the Panevėžys Jewish Community at 8 611 20882 or the administrator at 8 610 17608.
The Regional History Museum of the Jonava Culture Center has put on a new exhibit of photographs by Iveta Bajorinaitė called Mirages of the Shtetl accompanied by texts by the late Grigoriy Kanovich showcasing the Lithuanian town and Jewish shtetl then and now. Renowned Litvak writer Kanovich grew up in Jonava.
During the opening ceremony last week, Iveta Bajorinaitė spoke about her quest to locate and photograph locations in the current urban landscape which correspond to with archival photographs.
Šeduva Jewish History Museum aka the Lost Shtetl senior curator Milda Jakulytė-Vasil, Kėdainiai Regional History Museum director Rimantas Žirgulis and Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas continued the opening ceremony with a panel discussion called “How Do We Tell the Story of the Shtetls?” Among the other ideas shared, they agreed the most important answer to that question was taking the initiative and working steadfastly towards that goal. They shared their personal experiences in organizing exhibitions and events and utilizing urban spaces.
The Regional History Museum of the Jonava Culture Center’s project “Stories of the Shtetls” is financed by Lithuania’s Cultural Heritage Department and the Jonava regional administration with the Šeduva Jewish History Museum aka the Lost Shtetl as a partner in the project.
Celesta and Harriet Sollod from San Francisco visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community recently. Their grandfather was Isaac Neviarsky who with his brother was Nathan and sister Yeta left Ponavezh in 1895 and travelled to Baltimore in the United States. Their father was Hirsh Aaron who was deported with other Jews from the Kovna guberniya during the First World War in 1915. He went to Petrograd where a maternal relative of the Semakovich family lived, becoming a renowned medical doctor to the Russian tsar.
Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman received the visitors and spoke to them about the history of the Jews of Panevėžys and the Community’s activities. The two women then went to view Jewish sites in the area including the Jewish cemetery and several Jewish mass murder sites.
The state of the old Jewish cemetery in the New Town section of Panevėžys requires emergency action, according to Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman.
The cemetery is thought to have been established for the burial of the first Jewish and Karaïte settlers in the northern Lithuanian city and surrounding areas.
The Panevėžys regional administration adopted a resolution for maintaining the old Jewish graveyard back in 2019 but hasn’t followed through on the ground. Time, disregard and the weather have since taken a greater toll, which prompted Kofman to seek additional redress from the Panevėžys regional administration.
“The main section of the old Jewish cemetery in the New Town neighborhood has been abandoned and allowed to fall into ruin, with fallen trees knocking over headstones, overgrown grass and shrubbery, felled trees and branches left unremoved. We would be grateful if administration staff could come, formulate a maintenance plan and finally care for this unique historic city location,” Kofman said.
People gathered at noon on the first Sunday in September for the annual commemoration of the approximately 12,000 Jews murdered in the Pivonija Forest outside Ukmergė (Vilkomir) this year as in years past. Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas began the ceremony with an address and Kaunas Jewish Community member Iseris Šreibergas said kaddish. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kuklianksy, members and heads of regional LJC affiliates, local politicians, local school children and ambassadors to Lithuania including Israel’s Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein attended the ceremony.
Brendan Cohen from Melbourne, Australia, visited the Panėvežys Jewish Community August 30. He had sent genealogical documents to the Community before his trip. Cohen sought to learn which of his relatives had been murdered in the Holocaust in Panėvežys and surrounding areas. Chairman Gennady Kofman received the guest and shared the results of searches of the Community’s archives.
Last Sunday two events were held in honor of Chaim Frenkel in Šiauliai: a stele marking the first soccer stadium in Šiauliai was unveiled in the central part of the city and the fourth Chaim Frenkel soccer tournament was attended by 10 soccer teams including Šiauliai Makabi. Frenkel helped build the soccer stadium in the period between the two world wars..
A music and dance play based on Jievaras Jasinskis’s “Symphony from the Jerusalem of the North” is returning to the stage for two performances.
Time: 6:00 P.M., September 19
Place: Alytus Town Theater, Alytus, Lithuania
Time: 6:00 P.M., September 24
Place: Saulė Concert Hall, Šiauliai, Lithuania
BERLIN–Police in Munich say they thwarted a potential attack on Jewish targets Thursday after they shot and killed a man who was firing a rifle near the Israeli Consulate and a museum documenting Nazi Germany.
Police have not offered details on the suspect. Some German media outlets reported he was a juvenile from Austria police had previously investigated for alleged ties to Islamic extremism.
Germany’s public broadcaster Deutsche Welle verified the authenticity of cell-phone videos shared online which show a younger male carrying a rifle fitted with a bayonet before and during the shootout.
Mother and son Eudenta and Samull Virine from Canada visited the Nalšia Museum in Švenčionys on August 21 where Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro gave them a guided tour including viewing implements and artifacts from Jewish homes, the history of the region and a new exhibit on the fate of the Jews of Švenčionys. Eudenta’s mother was born in Švenčionys.
They sought archival information about the families of Leiba and Abraham Alperovitch and Mengel Bushkanietz with the help of historian and museum specialist Nadežda Spiridonovienė. The museum has very little information regarding these surnames but they are recorded as living in Švenčionys in a Russian Empire census conducted before World War I.
The two visitors also viewed the Menorah statue in the town’s central park. They went on to visit a Jewish mass murder site in nearby Švenčionėliai.
This year’s topic is family.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is celebrating the European Day of Jewish Culture this Sunday, September 1, with a full day’s program of events, lessons, workshops, discussions and exhibits. All events are free and open to the public, but registration is required for most of the events below.
Here’s the program:
11:00 A.M.-12:30 P.M. First Hebrew lesson for the whole family with Ruth Reches at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius. Ruth will soon be forming new classes for studying Hebrew. Register here: https://bit.ly/4g5jZbW
The Lithuanian Jewish Community representing 32 Lithuanian and foreign Jewish organizations categorically rejects the latest report and conclusion by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania regarding Kazys Škirpa.
We note that a ban on propagating totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and their ideologies has been in force in Lithuania since May of 2023. Under this law symbols of totalitarianism and authoritarianism–statues, street names, names of squares and other of other public locations–cannot be instituted, and those which are currently in existence must be removed from public space. The LJC is convinced Kazys Škirpa, whose publicly-made anti-Semitic statements and incitement to get rid of Jews gave rise to a wave of violence with such tragic results, should not be honored. Statues and commemorative plaques in his honor are a gigantic insult to the memory and relatives of the hundreds of thousands of Lithuanian Jews murdered in the Holocaust. All the more so bearing in mind that until now Lithuania has not established a national memorial commemorating the more than 200,000 victims of the Holocaust, our fellow citizens. Neither is there any monument paying honor to the heroism of Lithuania’s rescuers of Jews who risked their own lived and those of their families.
The International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania set up by the president of Lithuania has recognized the activities of the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Lithuanian Provisional Government, both led by Škirpa, as anti-Semitic. Chairman of the Commission’s Nazi Crimes Subcommittee Millersville University professor Saulius Sužiedelis stated: ” This is a statue to a man who led an organization which promoted violence against Lithuanian citizens of other ethnicity and which incited anti-Semitism. This is not a subjective judgment or interpretation, all of these statements are founded on historical facts, sources and documents.”
interviewed by Katrina Zeiter
On the topic of Litvak history and personalities, one of the Community’s most active members, Geršonas Taicas, always provides interesting facts and facts unknown even to seasoned researchers. Celebrating his 75th birthday this year, his greatest passion is genealogy. Like a fish in its natural element, he dives into the archives, discovering incredible connections which force us to consider history from another perspective, and also helping Litvak descendants scattered around the world find their family roots. A Litvak himself, he can speak for hours on the notable chef and cooking author Fania Lewando, the crooner Daniel Dolskis and former British prime minister Boris Johnson, but in this interview we spoke about the genealogist’s own story which serves as a mirror of a period in Lithuanian Jewish life which fewer and fewer now remember.
What are your first childhood memories?
I was born in Ukmergė [Vilkomir] in 1949 to a family who had been incarcerated as “enemies of the people” at a gulag in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. My father Alter was an accountant and my mother Masha was a teacher.
Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel chairman Arie Ben-Ari Grodzensky visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community last week where he learned about Community activities, met members and viewed archival documents. He noted progress in conserving and commemorating the Litvak heritage in Panevėžys.
Grodzensky was born and raised in Lithuania and also serves on the executive boards of the Goodwill Foundation and the Lithuanian Jewish Community.
Members of the Šiauliai Jewish Community and friends from Germany Saturday toured Lithuania’s Kurtuvėnai Regional Park. They took in the visitors’ center, some of the beautiful landscapes, learned about the history of the town of Kurtuvėnai and visited a barn museum at the manor estate there.
A delegation of directors and students from the Leikund Yeshiva in New York City visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community recently. Most of them were members of the Frank family as well. They were interested in Litvak history and visited some of the mass murder sites. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman told them about the history of the Jews of Panevėžys and about the Panevėžys Jewish Community’s activities. After visiting the Panevėžys Jewish Community the group went on to tour Jewish sites in Panevėžys including the Jewish cemetery, different locations in the city and Holocaust mass murder sites in the area.
A camp for scouts called Draugystės Mazga [Knot of Friendship] is scheduled to take place from August 17 to 19 to include scouts from throughout Lithuania.
Place: Bražuolė campground, https://maps.app.goo.gl/EknH7EqAB1tE74r87
Registration: https://forms.gle/sryYSvAKHbwETKnG8
Cost: 15 euros per participant, 5 euros for scout leader and accompanying adults
If you want to participate but don’t have a scouting guide, contact karolisalekna125@gmail.com.
Architect Tauras Budzys visited the Šiauliai Jewish Community recently. He’s the person behind the project begun back in 2018 to mark the graves of Righteous Gentiles in Lithuania with a special symbol. He and Šiauliai Jewish Community leaders agreed to hold an exhibit of Lithuanian Righteous Gentiles in Šiauliai in early September. The exhibit was created by Budzys and Barbora Karnienė and features the names, biographical facts and numbers of Jews rescued by 45 Righteous Gentiles in Lithuania.
by Rabbi Moshe Martin Levin
Žilvinas Beliauskas WAS ALWAYS:
Tall and handsome;
Brilliant and articulate;
Talking in long sentences without taking a breath;
He always listened with both ears.
Always was an encyclopedia of so many subjects.
A true patriot who knew the shortcomings as well as the achievements of his homeland.
A husband in love with his wife Ieva.