Holocaust – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Kaunas Jewish Community and Ninth Fort to Mark 85th Anniversary of Grosse Aktion

Eighty-five years ago the persecution and extermination of Lithuanian Jews began. The Nazis and Lithuanian Nazis called their mass murder operations aktionen. The Grosse Aktion, or Great Operation, was the largest single mass murder of Jews in Lithuania, where around 10,000 inmates from the Kaunas ghetto were murdered at the Ninth Fort in just over 24 hours.

The Kaunas Jewish Community and the Ninth Fort Museum invite you to mark the tragedy this year with a commemoration at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas followed by a concert at the fort called Muzik fun zikoyrn, or Music from Memory, featuring the trio Trise, saxophonist Petras Vyšniauskas, pianist Aleksandra Žvirblytė and percussionist Arkadijus Gotesmanas, performing works by Jospeh Achron, Max Helfman, Anatoly Shenderov and others as well as Jewish melodies.

The Ninth Fort Museum will screen a short documentary (by Karolina Vilkelienė, 2026) about the Grosse Aktion during the commemoration there. The commemoration at the Ninth Fort will conclude with a candle-lighting and stone-laying ceremony on the actual killing field.

The event is free and open to the public.

Time: 6:30 P.M., Wednesday, October 28
Place: Ninth Fort Museum, Žemaičių highway no. 73, Kaunas

2026-10-21

Šiauliai Jewish Community Visits Kupiškis

Members of the Šiauliai Jewish Community and guests from Germany took a trip to Kupiškis, a town with a deep and rich Jewish legacy. There they visited the Kupiškis museum and learned about the town’s cultural and historical heritage. Then they took a guided tour of Kupiškis’s central square where once three synagogues operated. Two of the synagogue buildings remain standing. They learned about Kupiškis before the Holocaust, Jewish life, traditions and history there, and that Lithuanians and Jews lived next to one another in peace before the Holocaust.

2026-10-212026-10-21

Anti-Semitism in England’s Schools

by Ben Bloch, October 20, 2026

Report set to reveal vast scale of anti-Semitism in English schools

A landmark report is set to detail the vast scale of anti-Semitism in English schools and colleges, Sky News can reveal.

The review, conducted by former schools inspector Sir David Bell, will on Wednesday set out 27 recommendations to create change, which the government is poised to accept in full.

It will call for teacher training and resources to tackle anti-Semitism in schools, strengthened guidance on political impartiality, and giving students the tools to recognize and confront online anti-Jewish hatred and conspiracy theories.

Speaking exclusively to Sky News, Sir David said he was “very struck” by the evidence of rising anti-Semitism in schools, but also the extent to which it actually goes underreported.

2026-10-21

State Media on Litvak’s Visit to Žagarė

Photo: Joanne Fedler by Vilmantas Raupelis/LRT

Lithuanian state radio and television on their website LRT.lt featured Sydney-based writer Joanne Fedler’s visit to Žagarė, Lithuania, in spite of her family’s injunction never to set foot in Lithuania.

Fedler is the author of 17 books and teaches creative writing. She operates a small publishing house called Joanne Fedler Media. She was born and raised in South Africa to a family of Litvak immigrants before coming to Australia in 2001.

In fall of 2025 she was at a month-long writing workshop in Finland and decided the family hearth, Žagarė, was too close not to visit. She told LRT a dream of her grandfather as a young man was the sign for her which sealed the deal. She decided she would honor her family by travelling to Lithuania rather than avoiding it.

2026-10-202026-10-20

First Sunday in October in Žagarė

On Sunday descendants of Jews from Žagarė who live now in Šiauliai, Vilnius and other Lithuanian towns and cities gathered in front of the statue to Rabbi Israel Salanter aka Yisrael ben Ze’ev Wolf Lipkin along with Shimon Pesach from the Israeli embassy and Rabbi Kalev Krelin.

This is an annual event. On the first Sunday in October they come together to remember the Jewish history of Žagarė, to honor the Jews who lived here and to preserve their memory. Participants also visited the mass murder sites in Naryškinas Park and at the old Jewish cemetery.

The meeting then moved on to a local café where the discussion continued.

2026-10-142026-10-14

YIVO Studied a Living Yiddish Culture. What Happened When That World Was Nearly Destroyed?

Photo: YIVO reading room at 1048 Fifth Avenue, ca. 1958. (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)

by Andrew Silow-Carroll October 11, 2026

Kalman Weiser’s new history follows the institute from Vilna to New York where it had to preserve a vanished world and cultivate a future.

When YIVO was founded in Vilna in 1925 its mission was to study a living people.

The Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut was meant to be a national university for Jews scattered across Eastern Europe and increasingly the world. Its scholars studied Yiddish language and literature, but also Jewish sociology, psychology, history and contemporary life. YIVO was interested in how Jews actually lived and in helping them navigate modernity.

When the Nazis destroyed much of that world, YIVO’s surviving caretakers were forced to ponder how and why to keep their efforts going in a new world haunted by unimaginable loss.

Their efforts are explored in Kalman Weiser’s new history “Yiddish Scholarship Comes to America: The YIVO Institute at 100.” After World War II a relocated and heartsick YIVO had to become a guardian of a nearly vanished culture, a rescuer of its texts and artifacts and an institution which could somehow make that culture meaningful to Jews who were rapidly shedding Yiddish and embracing a distinctly American, English-speaking identity–all simultaneously.

2026-10-132026-10-13

From Sukkot to Artificial Intelligence: A Meeting with Students

Last week Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky visited the Martynas Mažvydas Pre-Gymnasium in Vilnius and held an open-format discussion with students there in a tent erected outside the school. The students and the chairwoman spent several hours in the sukka discussing Jewish life after the Holocaust and today, the importance Judaism places on learning, artificial intelligence and its influence on our opportunities, as well as a number of other topics.

We’d like to thank sincerely the teachers for their invitation to come and speak and for their attention to Jewish history and identity. Likewise we are grateful to the wonderful students for their interest, keen questions and the delicious latkes they served. True friendship begins when we have the courage to question, listen to and recognize one another.

2026-10-122026-10-12

Apology

The Lithuanian Jewish Community inadvertently named a suspect erroneously in a report several weeks ago about vandalism against a Jewish partisan memorial in Kaunas. The information was not properly verified. Our deepest and sincerest apologies to the person named in this report, which has since been removed.

2026-10-092026-10-09

Commemoration of 85th Anniversary of Onset of the Holocaust in Švenčionys and Lithuania

A sizeable group gathered at the Menorah in the central park in Švenčionys on October 4 to commemorate the anniversary of the start of the Holocaust in Lithuania. Organizer of the event Kristina Sizonova began the commemoration followed by historian Nadežda Spiridonovienė who went over the historical facts with the audience. From June to November of 1941 over 80% of Jews resident in Lithuania had been murdered. By 1944 more than 200,000 Jews had been murdered in Lithuania.

Students from the Zigmas Žemaitis Gymnasium in Švenčionys gave further presentations of Jewish life there before the Holocaust.

Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro thanks attendees for coming and invited people to lay stones, wreaths and candles on the Menorah. The commemoration then moved to the mass grave in the Platumai Forest where about 8,000 Jews were murdered, including entire Jewish communities from surrounding town and villages.

MP Emanuelis Zingeris spoke at the mass grave memorial, as did Artur Soroko from the Polish embassy in Vilnius. Chairman Shapiro ended the commemoration retelling his own family’s tragedy.

2026-10-08

UK Conservative Party Condemns Green Party over Anti-Semitic Resolution

Leader of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom Kemi Badenoch in a closing speech for the party’s conference in Birmingham Wednesday condemned the decision Sunday by the UK’s Green Party to equate support for Israel with racism. Green leader Zack Polanski, a Jew, failed to show up for that vote on the party’s new policy. Israeli declared Polanski persona non grata following the adoption of the anti-Israel platform plank.

“You know what else is taking us backwards? The disgraceful anti-Semitism we saw at the Green Party conference in Brighton last weekend. They are seeking to erase Jewish identity. Shame on the Green Party and shame on Zack Polanski.

“Exactly three years ago today, we saw the horrific 7th of October attacks, the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

“The Conservative Party stands with the Jewish people. We will never stop fighting anti-Semitism,” Badenoch said.

2026-10-072026-10-07

East German Town Bans Stumbling Stones

Photo: Stolperstein commemorating Nazi victim Paul Gröger embedded in the sidewalk in front of Heidenau City Hall. Robert Michael/picture alliance via Getty Images.

by Toby Axelrod, September 27

Transparent maneuver by AfD to suppress German commemorative culture, Jewish leader and Holocaust survivor says

A decision to bar the “stumbling stone” memorials to victims of the Nazis has touched a nerve in one small German town, and beyond.

At issue is a motion passed September 25 by the city council of Heidenau in the former East Germany [in Saxony] to stop installation of such memorials in local sidewalks, calling them disrespectful, and to use the town’s North Cemetery instead.

Set into the ground, the small, engraved brass Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, are meant to make pedestrians stop and think about the fate of former residents. There are currently some 116,000 stones laid in 1,860 municipalities across Europe, mostly in Germany, according to the project’s website.

2026-09-282026-09-28

Condolences

Alfonsas Bukontas died September 23. He was born Mordchelis Michnickis on September 11, 1941. Both his parents were murdered during the Holocaust in Lithuania and Bukontas was raised by Lithuanians. He was an accomplished poet, translator of German, Yiddish, Polish and even Sanskrit, and writer. He was a member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Union of Former Ghetto Inmates. Our deepest condolences to his friends, family members and members of the Union of Former Ghetto Inmates. May his memory be a blessing.

2026-09-282026-09-28

Palanga Marks Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide

More than 150 students joined a Road of Memory procession as part of the Palanga Jewish Community’s commemoration of Holocaust victims on the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide on September 23. Road of Memory is the initiative of the International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania. A ceremony was held at the site of the reburial of Holocaust victims at the Palanga city cemetery.

Palanga Jewish Community chairman Vilius Gutmanas was one of the speakers, and said: “This isn’t just a date on the calendar for us. Behind the numbers and historical facts stand specific people: residents of Palanga, families, children, our loved ones and neighbors, whose lives were atrociously cut short. They were part of this city, so it’s very important their names, stories and remembrance remain alive. It is especially moving and significant to see so many young people here. My sincere gratitude to the students and their teachers who went on the Road of Memory. This gives hope that this history will not be forgotten and its memory will be passed on from generation to generation. As long as we remember these people, so long will we preserve this part of Palanga’s history, which can never be erased.”

2026-09-28

Šiauliai Marks Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide

The Šiauliai Jewish Community marked the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide September 23. Students from the Saulius Sondeckas Art Gymnasium in Šiauliai began the event with a musical performance.

Deputy mayor Justinas Švėgžda attended. After the ceremony a silent procession moved from the site of the gate of the first ghetto (Caucasus) to the monument marking the gate of the second ghetto (Trakai).

2026-09-282026-09-28

Road of Memory Procession in Pabradė

Last Tuesday, September 22, a Road of Memory event and procession took place in Pabradė in the Švenčionys region to mark the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide (actually on September 23). A group of students from the 7th and 8th grades, their teachers from Rytas school in Pabradė and members of the community walked to the Holocaust commemoration site in Pabradė.

The event was organized by the Pabradė Culture Center in concert with the Pabradė aldermanship and chairman Moshe Shapiro of the Švenčionys Jewish Community.

2026-09-282026-09-28

Holocaust Commemoration in Švenčionys

The Švenčionys Jewish Community invites the public to remember the victims of the Holocaust and to mark the anniversary of the liquidation of the Švenčionys ghetto on October 4. Community and friends will gather at 11:00 A.M. on Sunday, October 4 at the Menorah statue in the Švenčionys city park. At noon there will be a commemoration at the mass grave in Platumai village in the Švenčionėliai aldermanship.

2026-09-28

Panevėžys Jewish Community Marks Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide

Members of the Panevėžys Jewish Community including chairman Gennady Kofman marked the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide by attending a screening at the Menas Theater of the Lithuanian film Getas about the Vilnius ghetto. This special screening of the 2013 film was preceded by a performance called Shameful River in the theater’s courtyard.

2026-09-28

Voice of Departed Exhibit Closes November 30 in Klaipėda

The Klaipėda Jewish Community invites the general public to tour the exhibit Voices of the Departed before the exhibit ends November 30. The exhibit highlights the old Jewish cemetery in the Lithuanian port city, and the cemetery hosts the exhibit. It’s located at Žiedų alley no. 3, Klaipėda. Tours are available in Lithuanian, German and English. For more information, call 0 650 21335.

2026-09-28

Floor of Great Synagogue Inspires Art Exhibition

We know the Great Synagogue in Vilnius was mainly subterranean, because of Christian restrictions limiting the height of houses of prayer of other confessions. Until now, we only had period illustrations of the interior, lost when the shul damaged by Nazi bombardment was demolished by the Soviets in the 1950s. For about a decade now archaeologists from the Israeli Antiquities Authority in cooperation with Lithuanian archaeologists from the Department of Cultural Heritage have been excavating the Shulhoyf, and last year, directed by Jon Seligman of the Israel Antiquities Authority (there from 205) and Justinas Račas and Zenonas Baubonis of the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Salvage Group (at the dig since 2018), they reached the floor of the main hall and uncovered most of the meter-high bimah, the central point in the main hall.

Their discoveries have inspired an exhibit of artworks by Lithuanian Eglė Ridikaitė called Depositions at the St. George the Martyr Church, K. Sirvydo street no. 4, in Vilnius, which opened May 14 and runs till October 3. Admission is from 5 to 10 euros and is payable by card only.

“Eglė Ridikaitė’s exhibition, through an unexpected artistic gesture, weaves together sites of faith, painful historical experiences, and a sense of present vulnerability. With striking clarity, serenity, and simplicity, Depositions unfolds as a silent yet conceptually dense narrative about the city. It invites us to experience, simultaneously, the layered histories of prewar Jewish and Christian Vilnius, while tracing processes of survival and extinction, life and its erasure in memory.

2026-09-232026-09-28

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