History of the Jews in Lithuania

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

Documentary on Jakov Gens

Documentary on Jakov Gens

The Vilnius Gewish Public Library will screen the documentary “The Commandant’s Daughter” featuring the recollections of Ada Gens, daughter of Vilnius ghetto Jewish Police chief Jakov  Gens (aka Yakov, Jacob, Jokūnas Gens) at 6:00 P.M. Wednesday, October 22. Jakov Gens’s great-grandson Alexander Phibbs is to speak at the event.

Gens as de facto ruler of the Vilnius ghetto made controversial and lasting decisions for the survival of a remnant of Vilna Jewry. His post-Holocaust legacy was as nemesis to the FPO underground partisan organization, although Gens died in Gestapo custody. Gens displayed a clear preference for Hebrew over Yiddish as the language of the Jews in the future state of Israel.

Great-grandson Alexander Phibbs says heard his grandmother’s stories as a child but didn’t attach greater historical significance to them then. Phibbs began doing his own Holocaust research in 2008 and came across his grandmother Ada’s testimony to the US Holocaust Museum, and realized how little he really knew about Jakov Gens and the role he played in the Vilnius ghetto.

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YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture

YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture

The Science and Encyclopedia Publishing Center of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library and the Judaica Research Center there are pleased to announce the publication of a Lithuanian translation of Cecile Esther Kuznitz’s acclaimed monograph “YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation.”.

The book presentation will take place at 6:00 P.M on October 21 in the Conference Hall (5th floor) of the National Library. The event will feature the author Cecile Esther Kuznitz, professor of history and director of Jewish Studies at Bard College; Laimonas Briedis, cultural geographer and Vilnius researcher; and Jolanta Mickutė, scholar of Eastern European Jewish history. The discussion will be moderated by Lara Lempertienė, director of the Judaica Research Center.

Originally published in English in 2014, “YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture” is the first comprehensive history of the YIVO founded in Vilnius in 1925. As the only in-depth study of the institute’s activities in Vilnius before World War II, the publication of a Lithuanian translation is a long-awaited and significant cultural event.

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Righteous Gentiles Mažylis Family Remembered in Kaunas

Righteous Gentiles Mažylis Family Remembered in Kaunas

Liudas Mažylis and the Kaunas Jewish Community will unveil a plaque commemorating Righteous Gentiles Antanina and Pranas Mažylis on the façade of the Pranas Mažylis Birth Center in Kaunas next week. The couple hid Jews during the Holocaust at the birth center including Lilijana Levintoffskytė, Isakas Judelevičius, Grigorijus Teperis and Bela Gurvičiūtė.

“Back then in our family even thought about whether to hekp these poor people. WE just had to, that’s all,” the couple’s daughter Liūda Mažylytė-Rasteikienė recalled later.

Time: 2:00 P.M., Friday, October 24
Place: Putvinskio street no. 3, Kaunas

Celebration of Dolskis and Gorbulskis

Celebration of Dolskis and Gorbulskis

The Kaunas Jewish invites you to a celebration of the 135th anniversary of the birth of the crooner Daniel Dolskis and the 100th anniversary of the composer Benjaminas Gorbulskos with a concert by the Lithuanian Symphonic Horn Orchestra and others. Besides old favorites and lesser known works by both men, there will also be a presentation of the biographies of both men. The concert is free.

Time: 6:00 P.M., Monday, October 27
Place: Kaunas State Philharmonic, Ožeškienės street no. 12, Kaunas

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Sukkot in Panevėžys

Sukkot in Panevėžys

In spite of poor weather, members of the Panevėžys Jewish Community celebrated Sukkot in the traditional way with a booth set up in the Community’s courtyard.

The holiday brought together members new and old who discussed current events and shared family stories.

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Jäger Report Documentary in Palanga

Jäger Report Documentary in Palanga

The Palanga Jewish Community and Lithuania’s Onternational Commission for Assessing the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Ocuppational Regimes will screen a documentary film called “Following the Jäger Repor” at 2:00 P.M. on Tuesday, October 28 at the Kurhaus Theater, Grafų Tiškevičių alley no. 1, Palanga. The documentary will be followed by a discussion with historian Stanislovas Stasiulis. TYhe film was directed by Boris Maftsir, and Rony Katzenelson ftom Israel.

The Jäger Report is a report Wehrmacht officer Karl Jäger made for his superiors in Berlin detailing the number, location and gender of Jewish mass murder victims in the early months of the Holocaust in Lithuania, the fall of 1941 when almost all Lithuanian Jews were murdered by Lithuanians and Germans. In some cases affitional information was provided, e.g., the entry for July 4, 1941, for Kaunas noted the murder of two American citizens.

Holocaust Victims Remembered in Švenčionys

Holocaust Victims Remembered in Švenčionys

The first Sunday in October is the traditional date for remembering Holocaust victims from the Švenčionys region at the Menorah monument in the city park in Švenčionys.

The Menorah monument marks the border of the ghetto where local Jews were held before being murdered at Platumai village.

Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro, Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yaatom, members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and local officials took part in the ceremony.

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Nechama Lifshitz Song Contest Concert

Nechama Lifshitz Song Contest Concert

Contestants will perform in the fifth International Nechama Lifshitz Song Contest at the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 6:00 P.M. on October 28. There will be snacks, coffee and an opportunity to meet the contestants following the concert.

Memorial to Righteous Gentiles Unveiled in Kaunas

Memorial to Righteous Gentiles Unveiled in Kaunas

A plaque commemorating Righteous Gentiles Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė, her daughter Danutė Čiurlionytė-Zubovienė and her daughter’s husband Vladimir Zubov was unveiled at Žemaičių street no. 10 in Kaunas last month. The Lithuanian state radio and television Jewish affairs program Menora documented the event.

Television program in Lithuanian here.