History of the Jews in Lithuania

Israel Day Event in Jurbarkas

Izraelio dienos renginys Jurbarke

An Israel Day celebration took place in Jurbarkas, Lithuania on October 26, attended by Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon with embassy staff, representatives from the Jurbarkas regional administration, representatives from the Lithuanian Jewish Community and others.

Before the event the Israeli ambassador and Skirmantas Mockevičius, the head of the Jurbarkas regional administration, met and talked with students from the Antanas Giedraitis-Giedrius Gymnasium in Jurbarkas, and later with Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and Community members visited the Jewish cemetery in Jurbarkas. The official event took place at the Jurbarkas Regional Administration Public Library in the afternoon, where the photo exhibit “Pope Francis’s Visit to Israel” was opened and a sculpture by sculptor Dovydas Zundelovičius dedicated to the memory of the Jewish community of Jurbarkas was unveiled. The winners of a student drawing contest called “Let’s Draw Jerusalem” were also awarded, photos of trips to Israel were displayed and Jewish cuisine was showcased.

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Cultural Historian Violeta Davoliūtė: Deportations to Siberia Were Lithuanianized, Catholicized

diskusija-apie-radikaliojo-nacionalizmo-nuotaikas-lietuvoje-51388c8860434-694x480

by Jūratė Juškaitė
manoteises.lt

Historians reckon about 17,000 people were deported from Lithuania during the first Soviet occupation. Cattle cars were sent deep into Russia from June 14 to June 18, 1941, and many of the deportees didn’t survive the first winter. Most people in Lithuania know these facts well, but June of 1941, often called the tragedy of the Lithuanian people, isn’t all that Lithuanian.

Research recently performed by cultural historian Violeta Davoliūtė soon to appear in the book “Population Displacement in Lithuania in the Twentieth Century” (Brill, 2016) attempts to bring the experiences of deported Lithuanian Jews back into collective memory regarding those days in June. The researcher says the narrative of deportations formed during the push for Lithuanian independence in the late 80s and early 90s contained ethnocentric elements and was often too “Catholicized.” Although the official politics of memory seem complicated if only for the widespread “Jewish Communist” stereotype, Davoliūtė says these and similar stereotypes have failed to divide this group of deportees, which is a tight-knit community based on shared experience.

In a recent discussion historian Dr. Arvydas Anušauskas was the first to call the 1941 deportations multiethnic. Why are they called this?

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Ethical Will of Leonidas Donskis: Kaddish for Butrimonys

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photo courtesy Milda Jakulytė-Vasil

In line with the expressed wish of the recently deceased Lithuanian philosopher and author Leonidas Donskis, a group will assemble in the Lithuanian town of Butrimonys Sunday, October 23, to say kaddish for the Jewish community murdered there in 1941.

“I would be happy, if while I am still alive, something similar would happen in Butrimonys… I feel a moral obligation to say kaddish there with Jews,” Donskis said in an interview on Delfi TV on July 31, 2016. The interview in Lithuanian is available here.

Kaddish will be performed by Lithuanian Jewish opera soloist Rafailas Karpis.

Time: 3:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M., Sunday, October 23, 2016
Location: Jewish mass grave site in Butrimonys, Lithuania

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Mini-Limmud 2016

The LJC and the EJF Mini-Limmud educational conference on Judaism will take place November 25 to 27, 2016, at the Trasalis resort and spa in Trakai near Vilnius, Lithuania. Participants must register between October 19 and 28. For more information contact Žana Skudovičienė, telephone +370 678 81514, email mini.limmud@gmail.com

Israeli Embassy to Present Awards to 3 Lithuanian Righteous Gentiles in Kaunas

The Israeli embassy in Vilnius is holding a ceremony to honor and award three Righteous Gentiles October 21 in Kaunas. The ceremony will confer the Yad Vashem title of Righteous among the Nations upon Antanas Blažaitis (1897-1949), his wife Adelė Blažaitienė (1903-1988) and their daughter Valentina Eugenija Blažaitytė Liutikienė (1927-1993). The Yad Vashem medals and certificates are being awarded posthumously and will be accepted by their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The ceremony is scheduled for 1:00 P.M. on Friday, October 21, at the Kazys Grinius Pre-Gymnasium, Šiaurės prospect No. 97, Kaunas. Those who wish to attend should contact the Israeli embassy before October 20, telephone +370-5-2502510, fax +370-5-2502555, email press@vilnius.mfa.gov.il

Sara Lapickaja Has Died

Netekome Saros Lapickajos

Following prolonged illness Sara Lapickaja, 79, died in Ashdod, Israel, on October 11, 2016. An active former member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, she was also a Yiddish language and literature expert and a held a doctorate in philology. The Lithuanian Jewish Community express our deepest condolences to her surviving family and relatives.

Sara Lapickaja was born in Kaunas on June 14, 1938. She and her 10-year-old brother managed to escape the Holocaust and flee to Russia without their parents, where they were sheltered at an orphanage in the Kirov oblast. Lapickaja was in the first class of the Vilnius Jewish School in 1945, but the school was shut down within several years and she transferred to a Russian school, then graduated from the Vilnius Music School where she received a degree in choir conduction. She taught high school in Vilnius and Kaunas until 1988 while devoting much of her energy to the Jewish community, setting up an amateur volunteer choir which she conducted and helping establish the Jewish kindergarten in Vilnius, among other things.

In 1988 with help from the Lithuanian Jewish community she travelled to Israel on a Soviet passport to study at Bar-Ilon University. In Israel she devoted herself to Yiddish language and literature and earned a master’s degree, then furthered her education in St. Petersburg, Russia, where she successfully defended her doctoral thesis, “Ber Gelpern: Editorial and Educational Work” in 1997. She taught Yiddish language and literature in Israel for many years at Bar-Ilon and other institutes of higher learning.

She had a deep and significant relationship with Vilnius’s famous writer Abraham Karpinovich who wrote in Yiddish. They often attended conferences together, including in Vilnius. Karpinovich devoted much of his creative fervor to Jewish life in interwar Vilnius and after his death in 2004 the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum set up a special room in his name containing much of his archives and other items.

Everyone who knew Sara loved her and we will remember her goodness, sincere and open nature and her goal of being useful to her people.

Let her rest in peace in the Land of Israel.

Panevėžys Jewish Community Visits Auschwitz, Birkenau

Panevėžio miesto žydų bendruomenė lankosi Aušvico ir Birkenau koncentracijos stovykloje

There were many events to commemorate the Holocaust in September at the Panevėžys Jewish Community. In August members of the Panevėžys Community took part in ceremonies marking the anniversary of the destruction of the Jewish communities of Biržai, Kupiškis and Rokiškis.

The series of commemorations of victims ended on September 30 with a trip to Poland where Panevėžys Jewish Community members visited the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps.

During the trip Panevėžys Jewish Community members heard many tragic stories about the events of the World War II era. The tours of the death camps Auschwitz and Birkenau deeply affected children and parents. Over 1.5 million Jews, Russians, Roma and people of other ethnicities were murdered there. The Nazis murdered prisoners in the gas chambers and burnt the bodies of their innocent victims in the furnace.

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Returned from Israel to Live in Lithuania

Iš Izraelio sugrįžo gyventi į Lietuvą

“So you’re a Jew-girl? Oh my, how fine!” Bella Shirin gets this reaction from a Lithuanian woman as they chat while waiting at the doctor’s. Born and raised in Kaunas, she went to Israel with her parents during the Soviet era, and two months ago she returned to live in Lithuania.

True Litvak Family

Bella isn’t upset by the stranger’s words. “All of us Jews are fine,” she replies to the surprised Lithuanian woman. “Lithuania and Israel are for me like two children of the same mother. I love both equally. Our families have been in Lithuania from the time of Gediminas. We are true Litvaks,” Bella exclaims with evident pride.

The energetic and svelte 70-year-old greets us in one of the old apartment houses on E. Ožeškienės street. Bella rents a room here. Her courtyard is well known; it’s the site of the “Courtyard Gallery,” with the walls of the surrounding buildings painted with portraits of the Jews who lived here until the Holocaust. “I wouldn’t like my picture taken in front of them. One should know history, recall the past, but look to the future. We need to talk more about bright examples, about living together peacefully,” she explains.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Vytautas Magnus University Students Join City’s Effort to Revive Old Jewish Cemetery in Žaliakalnis Section of Kaunas

In the last several days work was completed in a month-long project to photographically document almost 6,000 headstones. “We are grateful to the Vytautas Magnus University community for this good-will contribution to restoring historical heritage in Kaunas. Eight students responded to our call and truly performed a great and significant deed. Each headstone was photographed from several angles so now we have several thousand photographs total. They will be included in a common data base which will serve in continuation of the project to restore the old Jewish cemetery. Additionally, a web page is being set up right now especially for this project where all the students’ work will be on display as well,: Kaunas city council member and project initiator professor Jonas Audėjaitis said.

The decision to inventory and identify the graves at the old Jewish cemetery in the Žaliakalnis neighborhood of Kaunas was made last fall. To do so comprehensively according to methods required, efforts to renovate the graveyard were undertaken first. The municipal enterprise Kapinių priežiūra [Cemetery Maintenance] removed brush and unwanted bushes, cut the grass, fixed up the fence and did other work urgently needing to be done, and the enterprise plans to continue fixing up the cemetery. Now video surveillance cameras have been placed around the perimeter of the location.

At the end of July there was a volunteer clean-up campaign. In order to revive the abandoned space and commemorate it, Kaunas city leaders and several dozen volunteers cleaned headstones and counted more than 5,800 graves. The decision was made not to move monuments knocked over by vandals at the present time.

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Lithuanian Prime Minister Sends Birthday Greetings to Markas Petuchauskas

Premjeras sveikina Marką Petuchauską jubiliejaus proga

Lithuanian prime minister Algirdas Butkevičius has sent birthday greetings to art history and theater scholar Markas Petuchauskas on the occasion of his 85th birthday.

“You are an important creator of the cultural history of Lithuania and have dedicated many years of your life to the study of art and art history, and especially the development of our theater. Led by mature wisdom and relying upon your wide erudition, you have revealed to us the unique nature of works by famous artists and have painted detailed and colorful pictures of celebrated personalities. You have always been a person of wide horizons and constructive dialogue, and therefore have contributed much to the understanding and to the good cooperation between the Jewish and Lithuanian peoples.

“I sincerely thank you for your great contribution to the spiritual fortification of our state and enrichment of cultural life,” the Lithuanian prime minister said in his birthday greeting.

Book about Lithuanian Public Figure Irena Veisaitė Launched in Paris

Paryžiuje pristatyta knyga apie Lietuvos visuomenės veikėją I. Veisaitę

The Lithuanian embassy in Paris hosted the launch of Yves Plasseraud’s new biography in English, “Irena Veisaitė: Tolerance and Involvement,” October 3. Lithuanian ambassador to France Dalius Čekuolis spoke and said he was happy to have the opportunity to present a French author’s book in English about a noble Lithuanian person who has inspired and set an example of tolerance, and who is an active champion of European values.

The presentation was followed by a discussion with the author, academic and attorney Yves Plasseraud, and the guest of the evening, Irena Veisaitė herself, professor of literature, drama critic and human rights activist. The discussion was moderated by professor Šarūnas Liekis, dean of the Political Science and Diplomacy Faculty at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. Veisaitė’s daughter Alina also attended with her son and friends.

Veisaitė, born in Kaunas in 1928, is a well-known public figure in Lithuania, a celebrated scholar of the theater, a professor of literature, one of the founders of the Lithuanian Open Society Fund and a member of the Lithuanian national UNESCO commission from 1999 to 2007. She is a member of numerous international and national NGOs and has received many awards and distinctions in Lithuania and other countries. Veisaitė has consistently emphasized the need for dialogue and tolerance even in the most difficult situations life has to offer in all her work.

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Happy 85th Birthday to Markas Petuchauskas

The Lithuanian Jewish Community wishes professor habil. Markas Petuchauskas a happy 85th birthday! The doctor of art history has written many books on theater and drama over many years.

We wish him continuing health, continuing creativity and hope for another of his wonderful books. Let’s all wish him inspiration, success and love.

Today Markas Petuchauskas is the only person who can speak with real authority about the Vilnius ghetto theater which operated in 1942 and 1943. He was a ghetto prisoner and miraculously survived, as did his mother, after being rescued by good people. For many years he has sought to renew the interrupted dialogue between Lithuanians and Jews, which, he says, is best understood through art.

Happy Birthday! Mazl tov! May you live to 120!

Holocaust Commemoration in Švenčionys

Spalio 2 d. Švenčionyse vyko renginiai, skirti atminti 75 m. sukakčiai nuo Holokausto pradžios

The tradition of gathering and remembering the Jewish victims of the mass murder in Švenčionys on the first Sunday in October has been followed for many years. Jews from around the world and local residents gather to mark the tragic occasion and bow before the mass grave. Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon was there this year on October 2, as were Švenčionys regional administrator Rimantas Klipčius, Ethnic Minorities Department to the Lithuanian Government senior specialist Aušra Šokaitienė, Vilnius Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium principal Miša Jakobas, Švenčionys regional administration commissioners, members of the Jewish community and students.

Wreaths were laid and candles lit at the Menorah monument to the victims of the Švenčionys ghetto at 11:00 A.M. in the Švenčionys city park. The victims were then remembered at the military base where they were massacred in the village of Platumai in the Švenčionėliai aldermanship.

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The Holocaust Wound That Never Heals in the History of the World

by Algis Jakštas, Švenčionių kraštas

We will probably never find an answer to why expressions of mass genocide [sic] keep repeating in human history, why people are murdered for their ethnicity, race and religion. A few years ago as I watched the film Salt of the Earth (2014) about the photographer Sebastião Salgado who has spent many years photographing genocide committed around the world at the end of the 20th and in the early 21st century, I recalled the Holocaust carried out by fascists against the Jewish people as well. I have spoken many times with Moise Preis who lives in Švenčionys and who passed through all the brutality of the ghettos and concentration camps and through a miracle survived. Sometimes as I listened to his stories I found it hard to even imagine how a person could bear such atrocities and survive, and preserve his humanity.

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Aerial Daredevil Senior Rescued Jews in Youth

Sparnuotas senjoras, jaunystėje gelbėjęs žydų gyvybes

Vladas Drupas, a Kaunas resident who saved ten lives during the Holocaust, doesn’t consider himself a hero at all. It was like pulling teeth to get him to remember the events of 1943 and 1944 in Šiauliai and the surrounding area where a battle took place in secret from the Germans for the survival of individual Jews and their families.

Rescuer and Pilot

This year as the 75th anniversary of the Holocaust in Lithuania was marked there were many events, monuments were unveiled, mass murder sites were marked, rescued Jews and their rescuers were interviewed and 50 people were honored at the President’s Office (most of them posthumously). There are lists in the archive of the Department of the Righteous at the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum of hundreds of well-known teachers, doctors, attorneys, writers, musicians, professors, servants, priests, monks, farmers and people from other professions. These include Šiauliai gymnasium student Vladas Drupas who rescued ten Jews from destruction.

This 94-year-old Kaunas resident even now is surprising for his courage. As Lithuania’s oldest aerobatic pilot, several weeks ago he spent a half hour at the Pociūnai airport diving in the sky with his one-seat airplaine.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

LJC Camp Counselor Seminar in Dubingiai

LŽB Vadovų (madrichų) seminaras Dubingiuose

The recreation and conference center ORO Dubingiai hosted a seminar of LJC camp counselors in September. The seminar was intended to raise the qualifications of counselors and better coordinate the Ilan, Knafaim and Regional Clubs. Attendants were the team of counselors and experienced coordinators who shared their knowledge with the young group directors.

The counselors were able to demonstrate their leadership characteristics and other talents and abilities, revealing themselves as good people capable of working in a team. They demonstrated that teamwork playing group games and preparing a program for period until the next season, the winter children’s camps. The coordinators were able to come up with interesting programs for children and adolescents to make this season a memorable one and attract more participants next year.

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Kaunas Jewish Community Celebrates Rosh Hashana

Kauno žydų bendruomenė švenčia Roš ha Šana

A large contingent of Kaunas Jewish Community members came out to ring out the old and usher in the new year, 5777, wishing one another harmony, health, positive changes and good ideas. The evening of celebration was unusually warm, cozy and family-like. The Levita group of young musicians from France contributed with some great music performed extraordinarily well. The vocalist Vita Levina is the daughter of long-time Kaunas Jewish Community member Leonidas Levinas and began her musical career in Kaunas.

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Peres Memorial in Žemaitija

The Litvak Memorial Garden created by the Jakov Bunka Charity and Support Fund dedicated to Litvaks from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania has become the first location to host a memorial to late Israeli president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres. The memorial to Peres was placed in the metal apple tree sculpture “planted” at the garden which is located in the Žemaitija National Park. Žemaitija is an ethnographic region in western Lithuania.

Lithuanian Jewish Community Chairwoman Pays Last Respects to Shimon Peres in Jerusalem

VILNIUS, September 30, BNS – Lithuania on Friday is paying last respects to late Israeli president Shimon Peres.

Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė and foreign minister Linas Linkevičius attended his funeral in Jerusalem, and Vilnius residents and guests can express their condolences at the Israeli embassy.

“We bid farewell to a great man of the world, a man of peace, an example of tolerance, a man important to all, including Lithuania, because he considered Lithuania, this region, his birthplace and called himself a Litvak,” Grybauskaitė said.

“His visit several years ago marked a significant improvement in the relationship between our states, which is very important for us not only as we look to the future, but also as we reflect on our painful past,” she said.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky also attended his funeral in Jerusalem.

Peres was born only 100 kilometers from Vilnius in a small town in what then was Poland in 1923.

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