History of the Jews in Lithuania

Courage and Hope: Remembering the Rescuers

Courage and Hope: Remembering the Rescuers

The Palanga Jewish Community and the Jonas Šliūpas Museum in Palanga are holding an event to remember the courage displayed by the Righteous Gentiles, those who rescued Jews from the Holocaust. MEP professor Liudas Mažylis will share his insights and Palanga Jewish Community chairman Vilius Gutmanas will talk about his family’s experience. The Mažylis family rescued Jews and were recognized posthumously as Righteous Gentiles by Yad Vashem in 2006. The presentation and discussion will be in Lithuanian. The event is free and open to the public.

Time: 5:00 P.M., December 11
Place: Jonas Šliūpas Museum, Vytauto street no. 23A, Palanga

Natalja Cheifec on Shtetl Life

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

New Album: Litvak Violin Art

New Album: Litvak Violin Art

Violinist Dalia Dėdinskaitė and pianist Walter Delahunt will perform selections from their new album at the album lauch at 6:30 P.M. on Wednesday, December 3 at the Samuel Bak Museum of the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum, Naugarduko street no. 10, Vilnius. The album is called Estrellita and features works by Litvak composers from Lithuania to Hollywood.

Exhibit of Works by Raimondas Savickas

Exhibit of Works by Raimondas Savickas

Life with Pastels is an exhibit of works by renowned Lithuanian visual artist Raimondas Savickas which opens at 6:00 P.M. on December 6 and runs till December 27 at the Savickas Picture Gallery, Tumo-Vaižganto street no. 5, Vilnius. A new exhibit of paintings by Savic;as also opens on December 30 at the Lithuanian Artists Union gallery at Vokiečių street no. 2.

Fifty Voice across the Shtetl Multiverse

Fifty Voice across the Shtetl Multiverse

The Litvak Culture and Identity Museum of the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum will show a short film by Shoshana Simons called “Fifty Voice across the Shtetl Multiverse on Saturday at 12:30 P,M. This will be followed by a discussion with the audience and a violin performance by Morgan Rosario Maruthiah, followed by bagel snacks. Registration required by clicking here,

Time: 12:30 P.M., Saturday, November 29
Place: Litvak Culture and Identity Museum, Pylimo street no. 4A, Vilnius

News from the Šiauliai District Jewish Community

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.

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Youth Day at the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community

Youth Day at the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community

October 18 students from the Juventos pre-gymnasium arrived early at the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community for a special day of lessons on Jewish culture, history, tradition and customs. Teachers Aurelija Dirginčienė, Loreta Stankuvienė and Gaiva Šimonienė delivered the lessons. Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community chairwoman Rašella Galinienė and Oser Gleizer answered the cikdren’s questions. There are plans to include more of the school’s student body in future lesson days.

Dolskis and Gorbulskis Comcert Great Success

Dolskis and Gorbulskis Comcert Great Success

The concert “When Dolskis Met Gorbulskis” concert at the Kaunas State Pjilharmonic ib late October was a rousing success according to all involved.

THe concert celebrated the 150th birthday of Lithuanian estrada music founder Daniel Dolksis and the 100th birthday of Benjaminas Gorbulskis, a composer who contributed much to this genre of popular stage music.

Performers included tenor Rafailas Karpis, the Lithuanian Symphonic Horn Orchestra formerly known as Trimitas and a number of other talented musicians and actors.

The Kaunas Jewish Community would like to apologize to everyone who was unable to attend because of limited seating or had to stand during the free concert.

Some snapshots from the remarkable evening follow.

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Condolences

Roza Bloch has passed away. She was born in 1930 in Kaunas, survived the Kaunas ghetto, the Kaunas concentration camp and the Stutthof concentration camp. Almost her entire family was murdered, excepting her maternal grandparents who also survived the Holocaust. She repatriated from the Soviet Union with her family to Israel in 1973. She was a long-standing member of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel and served on its board of directors. We extend our deepest condolences on her loss to her friends and family, members of the Association and to all who knew and loved her.

Sabbath Celebration with Vegetarian Dishes Inspired by Lewando

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.

Continuing Education Students Visit Panevėžys Jewish Community

Continuing Education Students Visit Panevėžys Jewish Community

Continuing education university students visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community on November 9 where they were received by chairman Gennady Kofman. Jifman presented members of the group his book on the Holocaust and two of the visitors spoke about the Holocaust experience of their families. They spoke for an hour and a half.

The Panevėžys Jewish Community and the older students planmed three lecture series starting in December on Krystallnacht, hate and the roots of the Holocaust, and to commemorate victims of the Holocaust together on January 27.

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Concert of Jewish and Other Composers

Concert of Jewish and Other Composers

Lithuanian saxophone prodigy Petras Vyšniauskas and pianist Aleksandra Žvirblytė will perform a program of works by Jewish, Litvak and other composers called Dialogue on Thursday, November 13, at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius.

Prior registration is required by filling out the internet form here.

Time: 6:00 P.M., November 13
Place: LJC, Vilnius

Memory Written in Stone

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.

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Kaunas Jewish Community Attends YIVO Birthday in Brussels

Kaunas Jewish Community Attends YIVO Birthday in Brussels

A contingent of members of the Kaunas Jewish Community travelled to Brussels to attend a celebration of 100 years since the founding of the YIVO held at a Lithuanian government representative office there in late September. Member of the European Parliament Liudas Mažylis extended the invitation for the Kaunas legation o attend the event.

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Lazar Kagan Exhibit in Palanga

Lazar Kagan Exhibit in Palanga

he Palanga Jewish Community invites you to attend an exhibit of works by Lazar Kagan at the Jonas Šliūpas Museum opening this Thursday. Kagan was a Jewish cartoonist and illustrator from Palanga in interwar Lithuania.

Time: 5:30 P/M/. Thursday, Octobver 30
Place: Jonas Šliūpas Museum, Vytauto street no. 23A, Palanga

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

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.

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Fayerlakh Performs in Simnas

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.

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Moyshe Kulbak Lecture

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

Litvaks in the Cape Town Archives

Litvaks in the Cape Town Archives

Lithuanian diplomat Dainius Junevičius will present his research on Litvaks in the Cape Town, South Africa, archives he and others conducted in 2024 at the Vilnius Jewish Public Library at 5:30 P.M. Tuesday, October 30.

The research project by the Lithuanian Literature and Art Institute sent the team to the Kaplan Jewish Research Centre at University of Cape Town and the Western Cape Archive where they discovered thousands of documents regarding Litvak immigration to South Africa and Litvak life and achievements in South Africa.

Junevičius was Lithuanian ambassador to the Republic of South Africa from 2021 to 2023. The presentation will be in Lithuanian.

Time: 5:30 P.M. Tuesday, October 30
Place: Vilnius Jewish Public Library, courtyard, Gedimino prospect no. 24, Vilnius