Holocaust

The Jewish Disease

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Miami, May 3, 2016–Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is May 4–5. Targum Shlishi’s support of projects related to Holocaust awareness and education is one of its core areas of giving. For many years, this category was primarily focused on pursuing justice for Nazi war crimes—Targum Shlishi worked with Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, on many initiatives, including partnering on Operation Last Chance. As time has passed, the focus has shifted to the critical importance of issues around awareness, education, and combatting denial.

“The Jewish Disease is not that in every generation there arises an enemy that seeks to destroy us, as we read just two weeks ago in the Passover Haggadah; that has been our destiny. Instead, the Jewish Disease is that in every generation, Jews, wherever their locale, believe that this time is different,” says Aryeh Rubin, director of Targum Shlishi. “Whether it is thirteenth-century England; fifteenth-century Spain; nineteenth-century Ukraine; twentieth-century Germany; or twenty-first century France, England, or elsewhere, anywhere that Jews have achieved an exalted status in society, a confidence sets in that blocks their sense of historical reality. The details vary—perhaps there are Jews who are advisors to their country’s rulers, or on the highest corporate levels of large multinational companies, or one serves as the finance minister in a democratic state—regardless of circumstance, the refrain is always the same. Over and over, the Jews have stated: ‘It can’t happen here.’ Holocaust Remembrance Day serves to remind us that anti-Semitism has a long history and that it can happen anywhere. And this extreme anti-Semitism of yesterday extends to Israel today.”

Expanding on this, Rubin continues: “Israel is increasingly pilloried in ways that are the current face of anti-Semitism. It is critical that on Holocaust Remembrance Day we do much more than see the Holocaust as an historic event. The terrible truth is that we are in no position to call the Holocaust history. With anti-Semitism steadily rising throughout Europe, we are all obligated to do our job in increasing awareness and knowledge of the Holocaust as well as disseminating truth and countering lies about Israel and the Jewish people. Every year we help support a series of initiatives that are dedicated to expanding awareness of the Holocaust. We are very proud of the important work being accomplished by these programs.”

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Campaign for Justice for Holocaust Survivors

Today, the World Jewish Restitution Organization is launching a grass-roots campaign to unite Jewish Holocaust survivors and younger generations in the ongoing effort for restitution of property stolen from Holocaust victims.

Please support this Call to Action and this international call for justice by signing this petition:
http://wjro.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c6386fad48760c74d93ecc4fb&id=7f2893a939&e=700ea8e007

In the Call to Action, Jehuda Evron, an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor and a longtime advocate for survivors and their families, asks younger generations to join the struggle for justice for survivors and their families and to ensure that their efforts continue after the last survivor has perished.

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Spirit of Jewish Girl Leads New Tour of Kaunas

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The story of one Lithuanian who lived in Kaunas in the early 20th century deserves to be made into a film. Instead, a group of Kaunas residents are using it in their intriguing new tour of the Kaunas Old Town. This is the first project of its kind in Lithuania.

Beginning this week locals and visitors will be able to follow this exceptional itinerary through Kaunas called “Spirit Guide through Old Kaunas” with a narration about the story of Kaunas and people living in Kaunas.

An audiovisual tourist guide file at www.atmintiesvietos.lt is available for free download before embarking on this 70 minute tour starting May 5.

Daiva Citvarienė, a teacher from the Arts Faculty at Vytautas Magnus University and the director of the university’s 101 Art Gallery, and a team of professionals created the project.

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Attend the March of the Living

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The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you to attend the annual March of the Living procession from the Ponar railroad station to the Ponar Holocaust Memorial and the commemorative ceremony following this on Holocaust Day (Yom ha Shoah) on Thursday, May 5.

The march will begin at 12:30 P.M. from the parking lot next to the railroad tracks in Ponar. A bus will take those wishing to attend but this year you will have to register beforehand (see more below). The bus will wait at the base of Kalinausko street in Vilnius near the Lithuanian Jewish Community, next to the Frank Zappa statue and the Central Clinic. Be ready to board by 11:15 A.M. because the bus will depart at 11:30 A.M. sharp.

The Embassy of Israel in Lithuania, the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum and the Lithuanian Jewish Community also invite you to attend events following the March of the Living at the Government House of the Republic of Lithuania including a ceremony to honor Lithuanian Righteous Gentiles at 3:30 P.M. the same day. Government House is located at Gedimino prospect No. 11, Vilnius. Please come early for this event, arriving by 2:30 P.M., with personal identification.

To register for the bus, the Government event or both, please send your intention to attend with your full name to info@lzb.lt or call (8 5) 2613 003 by April 29.

An Unforgettable Concert

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Dutch pianist Marcel Worms performed melodies by interwar Jewish composers at the Lithuanian Jewish Community on April 29, in the same hall where he played 11 years ago. Most of the composers were murdered in the Holocaust, and Worms said if their music was forgotten, they would die a second death.

Works by Rosy Wertheim, Erwin Schulhoff, Gideon Klein, Alexander Tansman, Szymon Laks, Anatolijus Šenderovas, Leo Smit, Dick Kattenburg and George Gershwin were performed. Anatolijus Šenderovas’s “Sonatina” lent a local flavor to the concert.

Concert-goers were got more than just wonderful music: the children of Dutch diplomat Jan Zwartendijk attended. Robert Zwartendijk and Edith Jes spoke about their father who helped rescue at least 2,000 Jews in Lithuania by issuing visas for the Dutch possession of Curaçao, a somewhat fictitious “end-visa” the Soviets demanded of holders of Sugihara’s transit visas through Japan. He and his sister Edith were glad their father was being commemorated and also happy to have a chance to visit Kaunas again, where the Zwartendijk family lived and which Edith, then 13, remembers well.

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Letter from Director of the Regional Administration of Molėtai

Director of the Regional Administration of Molėtai

March 3, 2016 No. B22-399
re: February 29, 2016 No. 190

To Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community

On Measures to Commemorate Father Jonas Žvinys and Bronius Žvinys

We thank you for the position expressed regarding activities to commemorate Father Jonas Žvinys and Bronius Žvinys. We understand your people’s pain and desire to expose the truth.

We inform you that there has been no discussion in the board of administrators of the Regional Administration of Molėtai on any sort of merits of Bronius Žvinys which might be deserving of commemoration. Regarding the commemoration of the activities of the priest Jonas Žvinys meritorious to Lithuania, his relatives represented by Antanas Žvinys have petitioned multiple times the Molėtai regional administration director and board of administrators and finally the President’s Office regarding the inadequate actions by the director and board of administrators in solving this issue.

The board of administrators of the Molėtai regional administration in considering the commemoration of Jonas Žvinys’s contributions to Lithuania do so based on the fact the President’s Office of the Republic of Lithuania, having investigated the circumstances, awarded him the Order of the Cross of Vytis, 4th degree, in 1999. We don’t have the right to question the decision of the President’s Office, and so long as it hasn’t been proved that he did participate in committing crimes against the Jewish people, the contributions of this person to Lithuania cannot be struck from the record. In view of the doubts concerning this person’s actions, causing great public discussion, however, we will propose to the board of administrators of the Molėtai regional administration not to consider the question of commemorating this person until an investigation is completed.

Respectfully,

Stasys Žvinys, director
Regional Administration of Molėtai

LJC Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky with Passover Greetings and a Message about Anti-Semitism

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Recently US State Department special envoy for Holocaust affairs Nicholas Dean visited the Lithuanian Jewish Community. This was not just a coincidence. The rise of Holocaust denial in Lithuania was the reason for his visit. Jews from Lithuania and their offspring living in Israel and South Africa have been receiving negative answers regarding their applications for Lithuanian citizenship for some time.

As the questions mount over why one set of people have received Lithuanian passports while others haven’t, despite similar circumstances, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, the Interior Affairs Ministry, Migration Department officials and members of parliament have begun to investigate. While the law on citizenship says one thing, officials are saying other things, and one wonders why it is left to each individual bureaucrat to interpret history. Yet another revision of history is being carried out in Lithuania, which is an essential element in denials of the Holocaust. The vitality of anti-Semitism in Lithuania is shown by the way citizenship is restored, attempting to foist upon Jews who fled persecution that they left Lithuania for other reasons, not for political reasons, not for opposing the occupational regime, not because of persecution by that regime. Another example of the upturn in anti-Semitism is provided by Laisvas Laikraštis, a newspaper which prints openly anti-Semitic articles without commentary. The Community has lodged a complaint against the newspaper with the prosecutor, but no action has been taken.

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Lithuanian Request to Germany: Return or Help Us Find Property Nazis Stole from Jews

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Almost 75 years have passed since Hitler began Operation Barbarossa. These were long and exhausting years for Lithuania and the world. But now, when the consciousness of the peoples has cleared, there are ever greater efforts to repair the losses and persecutions experienced under the Nazis.

…Emanuelis Zingeris says he’s resolved to achieve the discovery and return of Jewish property looted by the Nazis to heirs and communities. The politician says he has already grabbed the end of the thread which should lead to a location for discovering that property.

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Katerina and Benediktas Bagdanavičius: Last Hope of the Jews of Darbėnai

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by Romualdas Beniušis

I recently discovered the case-file of the deportation of the Bagdanavičius family in the archives. It is a unique document from the Soviet period testifying to the will and sacrifice of the family during the Nazi occupation of 1941 to 1944 in rescuing completely innocent people of the small town of Darbėnai from genocide, and to the bitter lot of the deportees later.

Who were they, Katerina and Benediktas Bagdanavičius, the quiet heroes of the village of Būtingė who without regard to danger to them and their family reached out a helping hand to people condemned to death simply for having been born Jews?

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Condolences

The Lithuanian Jewish Community notes with deepest sadness the death of Judelis Ronderis, an active member of the Kaunas Jewish Community, a World War II veteran, an enthusiastic supporter of Jewish culture and the man who began the search for Lithuanian citizens who rescued Jews from the Holocaust, who concerned himself with their welfare and with their commemoration. Our deepest condolences to his daughter Lėja, his family, his grandchildren, his long-time caregiver Stefanija Ancevičienė and to the many who knew and loved him.

Litvaks Didn’t Suffer Enough to Deserve Lithuanian Citizenship?

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by Grant Gochin

Lithuanian officials state that Jews were not oppressed in Lithuania:

In an astonishing display regarding the ignorance of rampant anti-Semitism in inter-war Lithuania, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius stated that there was “no violence, repressions or anything like that at the time”, against Jews in Lithuania during the period 1918 – 1939. Based on this assumption, Lithuania intends to deny citizenship applications for descendants of Lithuanian Jews. The belief that Jews did not suffer enough, in Interwar Lithuania, to warrant citizenship is simply preposterous.

http://www.baltictimes.com/litvaks_continually_rejected_restoration_of_lithuanian_citizenship/

At the beginning of the 20th Century, Jews represented about 14% of Lithuania’s population. In May 1915, the Czarist regime deported and exiled approximately 100,000 Lithuanian Jews to the Russian interior. After the war ended, Lithuanian Jews, who had lived in Lithuania for centuries and often constituted half of the population of many towns, were promised that the new independent Lithuanian state would be tolerant to minorities. Jews provided considerable political support for Lithuania in international forums and enlisted into the Lithuanian army to defend their country’s independence. A great many war medals were awarded to these soldiers for their extraordinary bravery and many lost their lives fighting for Lithuanian independence. In return for their contributions, the government granted full autonomy to the Jewish community and created a Cabinet-level Ministry for Jewish Affairs. Unfortunately, these promises were not kept; in 1923 funding for this Ministry was withdrawn, and in 1924 the Ministry was abolished. Sadly, the Ministry had served little purpose, because in 1923 the Lithuanian Government reportedly rounded up and expelled Jews whom they considered to be “alien”.

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About Taverns, the Vilna Gaon and the Shared History of Lithuanians and Jews

by Nijolė Bulotaitė

American academic Glenn Dynner is teaching a module at the History Faculty of Vilnius University called “Socio-cultural History of Ethnic Minorities in the Central and Eastern European Context.” The professor specializes in the history of Eastern European Jews and has written several books, including “Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society” (Oxford University Press, 2008) and “Yankel’s Tavern: Jews, Liquor and Life in the Kingdom of Poland” (Oxford University Press, 2014). What prompted the professor to take an interest in taverns and Lithuanian and Polish Jews, and what has he discovered? We asked him those questions in Vilnius recently.

Q. Why Poland and Lithuania exactly? Was Jewish life here somehow special?

A. When I was a naïve American student, as soon as I started professor Antony Polonsky’s class at Brandeis University I learned the majority of the world’s Jews lived in Poland and Lithuania before the Holocaust. The professor was my doctoral dissertation supervisor later. I learned three quarters of the world’s Jews in the 19th century lived in Eastern and Central Europe. My problem was I didn’t know any languages. At first I had to learn Hebrew, then Polish, Yiddish and several more. Only then did all the rich sources become available to me. Not many Americans are able to do research in this area because the languages are rather difficult, and it’s difficult for us Americans to learn languages.

Full interview in Lithuanian here.

Litvaks Told No on Lithuanian Citizenship

VILNIUS, Apr 11, BNS–Jews and their descendants living in Israel and South Africa who left Lithuania in the interwar period have been receiving negative answers about restoration of Lithuanian citizenship for some time now.

Since November of 2015 the Lithuanian Migration Department has rejected the majority of applications for restoration of citizenship for people who left Lithuania in the 1920-1939 period and their descendants.

Under Lithuanian citizenship law, people who left Lithuania before March 11 of 1990 and acquired citizenship in a different country can be citizens of Lithuania, as can their descendants. About 1,000 Jews living in South Africa have taken advantage of the legal provision, but the process of citizenship restoration was suspended for some people in mid-2015.

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Joint Visits Panevėžys

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JOINT atstovai lankosi Panevėžyje

AN event was held at the Panevėžys Jewish Community April 6 to welcome honored guests during their brief visit. One of them, Lee Seidler, arrived with his family. American Joint Distribution Committee director Diana Fiedotin and JDC representative in the Baltic states Moni Beniosev also came and took an interest in the history of the Jews of Panevėžys, visited Jewish sites and viewed the stele on Zikaro street, which was named Joint Street in 1923 in honor of the Joint Distribution Committee.

Remembering Jewish Vilna in Painting

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The catalog of the exhibit of Lithuanian painting and photographs called “Zakhor. Remember. Topography of Images of Jewish Vilnius” will be launched at the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 7:00 P.M. on Thursday, April 14. The catalog and exhibit are the work of curators Linas Liandzbergis, Elke-Vera Kotowski and Gabrielė Žaidytė. The exhibit has been at show at the Old Town Hall in Vilnius and at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin.

From May to August the exhibit will grace the halls of the Cape Town Jewish Museum and the Johannesburg Holocaust Museum in South Africa, then travelling on to Israel, Argentina and other destinations where sizeable populations of Litvaks live. The presentation, to be attended by Dr. Julius Schoeps, director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center and the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg, is also to include a short film documenting earlier showings of the exhibit. Improvisational jazz is to be performed at the presentation by Lithuanian musician Kęstutis Vaiginis.

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New Book on Litvak Art in Private Hands

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A new book/catalogue called “Litvakų dailė privačiose Lietuvos kolekcijose” [Litvak Art in Private Lithuanian Collections] was presented at the National Art Gallery on April 5. The book is bilingual in Lithuanian and English, and contains about 250 works by 44 Litvak artists, including paintings, water colors and sculpture, many of which have never been seen by the public before. The publication is the fruit of exhaustive research by Dr. Vilma Gradinskaitė, an historian at the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum’s History Department.

Lithuanian minister of culture Šarūnas Birutis spoke at the book launch and said: “This serious album spans more than 150 years from the mid-1800s to current artists working within the Litvak artistic tradition. I hope this publication will interest the broader public as well as professionals, hooking the reader and reminding us of the names and works of little-known and forgotten artists.” He said it was the only book in Lithuania which so broadly and comprehensively surveys Litvak ark, graphics and sculpture held in private collections.

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Rakija Klezmer Orkestar

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Rakija Klezmer Orkestar is a klezmer group which formed three years ago in Kaunas, Lithuania. They have performed Hanukkah concerts at the Lithuanian Jewish Community.

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The group say they want to revive Litvak klezmer traditions. The four-set will soon become five with addition of Mantas Ostreika on saxophone. The other members are Darius Bagdonavičius, Mikas Kurtinaitis, Skirmantas Rumševičius and Povilas Jurkša.

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International Meeting of Young Rabbis at Panevėžys Jewish Community

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Two groups of young rabbis from Canada, England, France, Israel, Japan and the United States came to the Panevėžys Jewish Community April 7, interested in Jewish life before World War II and now. The first group was led by Rabbi Meir Wunder, who leads trips by high school students to Panevėžys annually. The young people were interested in the life of Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman.

Kahaneman was born in the village of Kuliai in 1886 and studied at the yehsivas in Plungė and Telšiai before going on to the yeshiva in Novogrudok, now in Belarus. He became yeshiva director. He lived with his family in Panevėžys from 1919 to 1940. In 1923 he became a Lithuanian MP. In Panevėžys he set up a poorhouse, an orphanage and the Yavne Jewish religious school for girls, and headed the yeshiva. Later he and his son moved to Israel where he continued to maintain Litvak religious traditions. On the wall of an orphanage he founded are the names of the yeshivas of Lithuania. The Panevėžys yeshiva was also restored in 1919 due to his efforts.

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The second group was led by Rabbi Tuvia Konn and Rabbi Nesivos Tours. They spoke about how they had heard of the Bokhrim yeshiva and became interested in the city of Panevėžys, and when there was opportunity to visit, they gladly came in search of their roots. They visited Jewish sites in Panevėžys and viewed a film about the history of the Jews of Panevėžys which they said opened a window onto the past.

Documentary Filmmaker Visits Panevėžys Jewish Communtiy

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A documentary film crew shot footage at the Panevėžys Jewish Community April 8 for a new film about Panevėžys Jewish architecture before World War II. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman spoke about the history of Panevėžys Jews to an audience of the director and guests from the Margarita Rimkevičaitė Technical School.