Holocaust – Page 122 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Kiev Renames Street after Nazi Collaborator

Authorities in Kiev decided July 7 to rename the city’s Moscow Prospect in honor of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

Allegedly pro-Western Ukrainian leaders and protestors have idolized Bandera, and the move to rename a street after the man could further trouble relations with neighboring Russia, Lithuania’s Baltic News Service reported on July 9.

As with Lithuania’s Nazi puppet government in the summer of 1941, Bandera declared Ukrainian independence as soon as the Nazis invaded the Ukrainian SSR.

2016-07-092016-07-19

Newsweek Magazine on the Last Nazi Hunter

by Stav Ziv

0715nazi04
Lithuanian-born Holocaust survivor Yitzhak Kagan visits the Chamber of the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. Photo: GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty

Efraim Zuroff has accomplished much in his long career, but there’s one thing he’s particularly proud of: He’s the most hated Jew in Lithuania.

His Lithuanian friend Ruta Vanagaite agrees: She called him a “mammoth,” a “boogeyman” and the “ruiner of reputations”—and that’s just in the introduction to a book they co-authored.

Last summer, in a journey that helped cement his notoriety, Zuroff set off across the Lithuanian countryside in a gray SUV with Vanagaite, an author best known for a book about women finding happiness after age 50. Their goal: to visit some of the nation’s more than 200 sites of mass murder during World War II. On the road, between destinations, they talked and talked, recording their conversations. The trip formed the basis of their 2016 book, Our People: Journey With an Enemy, an instant best-seller in Lithuania. It also ignited a rancorous debate among Lithuanians, who have long downplayed their country’s considerable role in the Holocaust.

2016-07-072016-07-24

Farwell My Friend: Three Things I Learned from Elie Wiesel

Dear Friends,

Please find below Moshe Kantor’s opinion article published in the Newsweek following the sad loss of Prof. Elie Wiesel.

Kind regards,
The EJC team

European Jewish Congress (EJC)
Tel : +3225408159
Fax : +3225408169
Web : www.eurojewcong.org

FAREWELL MY FRIEND: THREE THINGS I LEARNED FROM ELIE WIESEL

The world has lost one of its premier moral voices, writes the president of the European Jewish Congress.

BY MOSHE KANTOR

The great French writer Victor Hugo once said that “adversity makes men.” There is no one in the history of humanity for whom this is more true than the late great Elie Wiesel. The world has lost one of its premier moral voices. His early life was fashioned in darkness, but he brought light to our world with his words of hope and peace. His courage to see good when he saw so much unspeakable evil should remain a legacy, not just for the Jewish people, but for mankind. Our view of life can be determined by interactions with extraordinary people. If you are lucky, each of us will meet one person who will change our world. For me, that was Elie Wiesel.

2016-07-05

Documentary Film: “An Open Door: Jewish Rescue in the Philippines”

You are invited to attend a screening of An Open Door (2015) at the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 5:00 P.M. on July 13, 2016.

While Europe was under the thrall of the Nazis, Filipino president Manuel Quezon and US high commissioner to the Philippines Paul McNutt opened the door to 1,300 persecuted European Jews in the Philippines.

Jack Simke, assistant to the director and award-winning filmmaker Noel Izon, will introduce the film and lead a discussion afterwards. The event will take place in English.

For more information about the film, see here and here.

For more about the Jewish community in the Philippines, see here.

2016-07-052016-07-14

Judah Passow Thanks LJC Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky for Celebration for Return of Torah

Juda Passow dėkoja LŽB ir pirmininkei F.Kukliansky už Toros sugrįžimo šventę

“I just want to thank you once again for making possible such a moving and memorable day with the Lithuanian Jewish community,” Judah Passow said in the note.

“It was an honour and a privilege to be with all of you. I’m especially grateful to you for the time and effort you put into making what began as an idea a year ago into a reality,” he wrote.

Judah Passow’s father, professor David Passow at Philadelphia University, received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to commemorate Jewish life behind the iron curtain in 1960. When he went to Vilnius that same year, local Jewish leaders asked him to take away with him one of two Torah scrolls which were used in the Vilnius ghetto and survived the Holocaust intact, saying they were unsure what the future held for Jews in the Soviet Union. The Passows protected the Torah ever since then, for 56 years, and used it for three bar mitzvahs in the family. When he came to Vilnius last year for a showing of his photography work, Judah Passow met Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and the idea was fleshed out of returning the scroll to Vilnius. Just last week Passow returned the Torah dating from the time of Vilna Gaon, with a silver decoration his mother Aviva Passow made for the scroll.

2016-07-05

The White Rose: German Student Opposition to Hitler in 1942 and 1943

Exhibit opens 6:00 P.M., July 5, 2016 at the Kaunas Multicultural Center, Šv. Gertrūdos street no. 58, Kaunas. Speakers to include Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas, German ambassador to Lithuania Jutta Schmitz and others. Wine will be served after the formal launch of the exhibit.

2016-07-052016-07-18

Global Media Carry Discovery of Escape Tunnel at Ponar

News of the discovery of the tunnel used by the burners’ brigade to escape from the mass murder site of Ponar near the Lithuanian capital has been picked up by media around the world. The Lithuanian Jewish Community received a report from the Lithuanian ambassador to India that Indian media are reprinting an article about it from the Washington Post.

A team of experts from Israel, Lithuania, the United States and Canada found the escape tunnel, new killing pits, overgrown paths taken by the victims to the execution site and the distribution of human ashes and crushed bone at the site.

The burners’ brigade was formed by the Nazis to exhume the corpses of Jews shot at Ponar, burn them in large piles and crush to dust whatever bones or teeth survived the fire. They knew they were condemned to death and over a period of time excavated a tunnel from their place of confinement.

2016-07-052016-07-05

White Rose Exhibit to Open in Kaunas

The White Rose was the only organized youth resistance group at universities in Nazi Germany (the Edelweiss Pirates and the Swingjugend weren’t specifically university groups and weren’t as organized), established by students and a professor in Munich in June of 1942. Gradually the White Rose movement has come to symbolize all German resistance to Naziism, although it is still not widely known outside Germany.

In their final leaflet distributed in February of 1943, the White Rose society wrote:

“Der deutsche Name bleibt für immer geschändet, wenn nicht die deutsche Jugend endlich aufsteht, rächt und sühnt zugleich, ihre Peiniger zerschmettert und ein neues geistiges Europa aufrichtet. Studentinnen! Studenten! Auf uns sieht das deutsche Volk!”

2016-07-052016-07-18

Remembering Lietūkis Garage

Lietūkio garažo žudynes prisimenant

Events to commemorate the victims of the Lietūkis garage massacre took place in Kaunas on the last, very hot weekend in June. Seventy-five years have passed since this atrocity. On June 24 we remembered and honored the victims of the mass murder before a monument set up at the site of pogrom by the Kaunas Jewish Community 10 years ago. A commemorative concert was held at the Kaunas State Philharmonic on June 26 with a special program by the male vocal artists Quorum. Members of the Kaunas Jewish Community were joined at the events by Kaunas residents and representatives of social organizations, the municipality and the Catholic Church. Raimundas Kaminskas and Julija Iskevičienė, representatives of the Kaunas section of Sąjūdis [Lithuanian independence movement] expressed sorrow, solidarity and the hope the brutality and the mass murders would never happen again. The priest Robertas Pukenis and deputy mayor of Kaunas Vasiliy Popov expressed the same sentiments. Scouts from the Kaunas area honored the victims with a Lithuanian folk song.

2016-07-052016-07-05

Remembering Elie Wiesel: A Tribute from a Friend and Disciple

Dear Friends,

Together with the entire Jewish people and, indeed, the world, we are in mourning today for one of the greatest writers, teachers, and human rights activists of our age. Elie Wiesel not only survived the Shoah–he transcended its horrors and became the voice first of its survivors and then of the conscience of humankind.

Below are my recollections of, and tribute and farewell to, my friend and mentor for more than 55 years, published in Tablet Magazine. The link is:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/206702/remembering-elie-wiesel-a-tribute-from-a-friend-and-disciple

May his memory be a blessing and a source of strength to his beloved wife Marion, his son Elisha, daughter in law Lynn, his grandchildren, his stepdaughter Jennifer, the entire Jewish people and to us all.

Menachem Rosensaft

2016-07-04

Picking Up the Pieces

top
by Geoff Vasil

“Don’t get too close!” an attractive and sunburned young Lithuanian warned at the edge of a large pit just behind what was the Great Synagogue of Vilnius. He’s friendly and it quickly becomes clear he’s the lead archaeologist on the dig, but he’s just as quick to point out he’s formally the lead archaeologist, but Dr. Richard Freund of the University of Hartford in Connecticut is the real force behind the whole initiative.

Mantas Daubaras is doing his doctoral thesis at the Lithuanian Institute of History on a Neolithic site far to the west in Lithuania. He has no personal connection to Jewish Vilna and approaches it as he would any site, dispassionately.

“Yesterday we found what we think is the ritual bath,” he explains, pointing to a small hole in the top of what looks like a vaulted brick ceiling. They sent a camera in to take a look and found a large space terminated by rubble and fill. Does it connect to the Great Synagogue? He doesn’t know yet, but it looks as if it extends right up to the line where they think the back wall of the synagogue once stood.

2016-07-012016-07-24

New Issue of Bagel Shop Newsletter

Download

2016-07-012016-07-05

Celebration to Welcome Torah Scroll at Choral Synagogue

Toros įnešimo šventė Vilniaus choralinėje sinagogoje vyko birželio 27d.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community is tremendously grateful to Judah Passow for his initiative in bringing the 350-year-old Torah scroll back to Vilnius.

Those assembled at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius June 27 waited in anticipation of something extraordinary: for the carrying in of a 350-year-old Torah scroll, from the period when the Vilna Gaon walked among us, a witness to the Vilnius of the 17th century, experiencing all the passages and changes together with the Jews, used for innumerable bar mitzvah ceremonies until it ended up in the Vilnius ghetto during World War II, and miraculously survived the Holocaust.

In 1960 professor Passow of the University of Philadelphia in the United States came to Vilnius after receiving support from the Rockefeller Foundation to commemorate Jewish communal life behind the iron curtain. Jews in Vilnius asked him to take with him one of two Vilnius ghetto Torah scrolls to survive the Holocaust, uncertain about the future of Jewish life in the Soviet Union. That’s how the Torah entered into the Passow family and was used in three bar mitzvahs. The family protected the scroll for 56 years. Last year the professor’s son, London-based photojournalist Judah Passow, came to Vilnius for an exhibition of his photographic works and spoke with LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky. This year he’s come back with the Torah scroll with a silver ornament his mother made.

2016-07-012016-07-24

Romanian Mazel Tov Klezmer Band Concert Big Hit

The concert by klezmer band Mazel Tov from Cluj, Romania, June 29 at the Lithuanian Jewish Community was a great success with a large turnout and heavy applause. Romanian ambassador to Lithuania Dan Adrian Balanescu welcomed the audience and noted Romania’s current presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. In May IHRA member-state representatives met in Bucharest and adopted a definition of anti-Semitism. The ambassador said Romania’s presidency will continue to focus on fighting Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.

The concert in Vilnius was held on the 75th anniversary of the massacre of Jews in Iaşi, Romania, the largest mass murder of Jews in Romania. About 14,000 Jews were murdered. Before World War II some 800,000 Jews lived in Romania. After the war there were 400,000. Today there are 4,000.

2016-06-30

Happy Birthday to Levas Jagniatinskis on His 90th!

May he live in health to 120!

Levas Jagniatinskis and his family were active participants in the reestablishment of the Lithuanian and Vilnius Jewish Communities around the time of Lithuanian independence from the Soviet Union. In 1992 he was elected to the Community’s Council of World War II Veterans and worked with recompense, putting finances in order and organizing events with the veteran’s council and the executive board of the Lithuanian Jewish Community. Those first years were financially hard for the Community, and so he donated his car three times per week winter and summer, parking it in the courtyard of the LJC for use by the Community. He was very active in preparing documents for the Claims Conference and tried to find greater funding for the Community. His son was one of the organizers of the Community’s union of scholars, Vilnor, and later became its director. When he left, the union stopped operating. The family’s third generation, his granddaughters, began attending children’s events put on by the Community, and now, in adulthood, continue their activities, trying to mitigate the losses from the Holocaust.

2016-06-302016-07-05

June Uprising Insurgents: Heroes and Murderers at the Same Time?

som

“If we want to comprehend why some Lithuanians actively aided the Nazis in murdering Jews, we must first understand instead of condemning, moralizing or getting carried away by emotion.” This statement by Alfredas Rukšėnas, an historian studying the Holocaust in Lithuania and a researcher at the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania, might shock you. But in the scientifici discipline of history, as in criminology, the most important problem is to understand the criminal’s motivations and external factors which give rise to the event. And the motivations which caused good-hearted young men to murder unarmed people, Jewish children, women and the elderly, could be horribly simple.

Full piece in Lithuanian here.

2016-06-30

Gaon-Era Torah Scroll Returns to Vilnius

350 m. skaičiuojatis toros ritinys grįžta į Vilniaus choralinę sinagogą

Vilnius, June 27, BNS–A 350-year-old Torah scroll used in Jewish religious services in the Vilnius ghetto has returned to Vilnius. British photojournalist Judah Passow decided to turn the scroll over to the Lithuanian Jewish Community for use in the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius.

“What’s important is not the [scroll itself], but that he decided to give the Torah to our synagogue. The Torah belonged to his family, it was safeguarded during the war and the entire time. Boys became men during bar mitzvah in front of this Torah and began to read from this Torah, so it is a great honor for us,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky told BNS. According to Jewish religious tradition, Torah scrolls must be written by hand. Kukliansky said this Torah will replace the one currently being used, which is worn out.

Passow, whose roots are in Ukraine and Poland, told how Lithuanian Jewish community representatives gave the scroll to his father, a professor at an American university in Philadelphia, almost six decades ago when he visited Vilnius in 1960.

2016-06-272016-07-05

Let’s Remember Together: Steps for Life in Riga

The Shamir Association and the Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum are holding an event called Steps for Life on Holocaust Memorial Day in Riga. The event starts at 11:00 A.M. on July 3 at the corner of of Lomonosov and Ebreju streets in Riga. Participants will walk through the Riga ghetto area to the Great Choral Synagogue on Gogola Street. Shamir is inviting those able to come participate and remember, together.

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/545798345593250/
facebook.com/samir.latvija
facebook.com/rigaghettomuseum

The Significance of Holocaust Memorial Day in Latvia

2016-06-272016-06-27

Samuel Kukliansky Remembered at 25th Anniversary of Lithuanian University

Minint Mykolo Romerio Universiteto 25-metį, pagerbtas Samuelio Kuklianskio atminimas

Samuel Kukliansky, father of Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, has had a tree planted in his memory at a ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius (known as the Law University before 2004). Samuel Kukliansky, Lithuanian attorney, scholar of law, criminology expert, was also a professor at the university and a post-doctoral fellow in social sciences. He was born and raised in Veisiejai, Lithuania. After surviving the Holocaust, he was graduated from the Law Faculty of Vilnius University in 1953 with the qualifications of attorney. He was a life-long scholar and published more than 150 academic papers on different aspects of criminology.

On June 23 Mykolas Romeris University celebrated honored alumni and friends. The event to mark the 25th anniversary of the post-Soviet incarnation of the university included the release of a book including those who have contributed to the university along with the names of rectors, professors, teachers and students. An arboretum of Japanese cherry trees and ash trees was planted to honor past professors, alumni and friends of the university. Rector Dr. Algirdas Monkevičius said at the ceremony to open the garden it was intended as a gift from the university community to the founders and boosters of the university, to the neighborhood and to the city of Vilnius.

2016-06-272016-07-05