Holocaust – Page 3 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Dainius Žalimas on Kazys Škirpa and Other Lithuanian Nazis

Dainius Žalimas served as the chief justice of the Constitutional Court of Lithuania from 2014 to 2021. He currently teaches. When protestors gathered to stop the city of Vilnius from taking down an illicit monument to wartime-era Lithuanian Nazi leader Kazys Škirpa, Lithuanian media went to Žalimas for commentary, because he had ruled in a case concerning Škirpa several years ago. The arrest of three protestors Sunday was followed by an unsanctioned but apparently announced protest in front of Vilnius City Hall Monday, where premade glossy posters were handed out to about 20 Škirpa fanatics, including one set of posters attacking Faina Kukliansky, the chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, for allegedly dictating political decisions to Vilnius mayor Valdas Benkunskas, who had called the Škirpa shrine, illegally installed on the Vilnius court building and former KGB palace, an act of “hooliganism,” which was later redacted by other members of the municipality to “vandalism.”

Dainius Žalimas posted to facebook regarding the legacy of Lithuanian Nazi leader Kazys Škirpa by quoting himself from an interview conducted by 15min.lt a year ago. This is an unofficial translation of his self-quote:

Some of us mark June 23 as a day of national pride and post photographs from that time of Lithuanian soldiers and residents joyfully greeting the Lithuanian insurgents and Germans, as well as photos of Soviet POWs being led through the streets. Yes, the Russian Bolshevik occupation had gone much too far for everyone. So there was no reason to feel pity for the occupiers. Under other circumstances we truly could’ve had something of which to be proud.

2024-06-272024-06-27

Vilnius Municipal Workers Take Down Škirpa Monument as Police Arrest Three Protestors

Photo by Orestas Gurevičius/ELTA

On Sunday afternoon city workers with police escort went to the Lithuanian Appellate and Lithuanian District Court courthouse in Vilnius where a shrine to Lithuanian Nazi Kazys Škirpa was installed without permission Friday in order to remove the illegal construction.

Over a dozen protestors attempted to stop the workers. They attempted to push the workers, who called for police backup, then several protestors locked arms to prevent access to the wall.

The police backup used force to push the protestors away. Protestors on the sidelines chanted “for shame,” “rascists” [sic] and “vatniks.”

Vilnius mayor Valdas Benkunskas told the ELTA news agency he would appeal to law enforcement regarding the illegal construction. He called the installation of the shrine by members of the National Unification party an act of hooliganism.

Three men were arrested at the scene and later charged with administrative law offenses, namely, refusing to obey justified orders from police to disperse.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2024-06-252024-06-25

Silvia Foti in Šiauliai

Journalist and writer Silvia Foti has visited Šiauliai for the second time to speak about her grandfather Jonas Noreika at the Šiauliai Jewish Community and his Holocaust crimes in Plungė, Telšiai and the Šiauliai district during World War II. She delivered a talk followed by a discussion and questions from the audience. We sincerely thank Silvia for making the visit and for her honesty and openness on this sensitive and very personal topic.

2024-06-252024-06-25

Lithuanian Jews Oppose Any Commemoration of Kazys Škirpa

Lithuanian Jewish Community press release

Wantonly, without any sort of permission, representative of the National Unification Party (Lithuanian: partija Nacionalinis susivienijimas) Vytautas Sinica has initiated the installation of a plaque commemorating Kazys Škirpa on the façade of the Vilnius District Court building. This is both an administrative and moral crime.

The International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania has recognized the activities of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) and the Provisional Government of Lithuania–both founded and led by Kazys Škirpa–as anti-Semitic.

“This is a monument to a man who led the organization which encouraged violence against Lithuanian citizens of a different ethnicity and fomented anti-Semitism. None of this is a subjective judgment or interpretation; these statements are confirmed by historical facts, sources and documents. The commemoration of this kind of person is a mistake and socially divisive,” the chairman of the Commission’s Nazi Crimes subcommittee and Millersville University professor emeritus Saulius Sužiedėlis said.

Other historians engaged in Holocaust research and international organizations are unanimous regarding the veracity of the aforementioned historical facts.

The Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania has issued as well an official finding of history which admits the actions of the LAF probably did encourage Lithuanians to become engaged in Holocaust crimes. The mass distribution of the LAF ideology led to the murder of 220,000 Jews living in Lithuania, or around 95% of the total Jewish population.

2024-06-232024-06-25

Memory Stones at Bergen-Belsen

Lithuanian journalist Rimas Bružas has travelled to Germany to make a film about Lithuanian Jewish concentration camp inmates.

Currently he’s visiting Bergen-Belsen located about 65 kilometers from Hannover in Lower Saxony. Originally this concentration camp was intended for privileged victims including inmates from neutral countries and prisoners the Nazis were hoping to trade in prisoner swaps with the Allied countries.

In the fall of 1944 Bergen-Belsen began receiving transports from concentration and death camps such as Auschwitz and the inmate population grew from 7,300 in July of 1944 to about 15,000 by December, 1944. When British troops liberated the camp on April 15, 1945, there were about 60,000 prisoners there, almost all of them Jews. Anne Frank was among the 50,000 people murdered there.

The Bergen-Belsen memorial site continues to maintain memory stones inscribed by students from the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.

#WeRemember

2024-06-212024-06-21

Learning about Jewish Life and Culture at the TOLI Seminar

All last week the LJC hosted the TOLI seminar where experts on Jewish life and culture from different Lithuanian institutions of learning come together to teach teachers about Litvak life before the Holocaust and about the Holocaust.

The TOLI institute founded by Olga Lengvel in New York and Lithuania’s International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regime in Lithuania jointly held the seminar which this year was called “Learning from the Past, Action for the Future: Teaching the Holocaust and Human Rights.”

The seminar was attended by over 30 teachers and educators from throughout Lithuania. They included ethics, Lithuanian language and literature, English, geography, information theory and history teachers, as well as librarians and social workers who sacrificed their summer vacations to learn and improve their knowledge.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2024-06-212024-06-21

Panevėžys Jewish Community Receives Visitors from Haifa

Psychologist Dirot Huber, her husband Jacob who directs a water-supply company and their daughter Romi from Haifa visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community last week. They were searching for family roots in Panevėžys and Ukmergė, namely, relatives of great-grandfather and pharmacist Haim Leibovitch born in 1867 and a grandfather named Teodor Todres, born in 1903 and deceased in 1951.

The pharmacy had been located on the first floor of the building at Smetonos street no. 3 with the owners living above it. Leibovitch’s brother Tovia was the principal of the Hebrew gymnasium in Ukmergė.

The visitor brought with them period photographs which they kindly allowed the Panevėžys Jewish Community to scan digitally for conservation in the Community’s archives. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman showed them many photographs from that archive.

2024-06-202024-06-20

Holocaust Memorial Desecrated in Southern Lithuania

BNS reports yet another anti-Semitic attack in Lithuania, this time upon a Holocaust memorial in the cemetery in Senoji Varėna (Old Varėna) in southeast Lithuania.

Police from Alytus, Lithuania, told BNS they received a report of the vandalism just after noon on Monday from a local resident who saw it on Sunday evening as he was walking in the forest.

Alytus Police Department communications department director Kristina Janulevičienė told the news agency the vandalism was recorded as evidence and including destruction of an information stand, the partial destruction of a memorial obelisk and the placement of some sort of sticker forbidding people from placing stones at the memorial, a common Jewish tradition at grave sites.

“It doesn’t appear this was just done by children somehow. It’s a premeditated crime and act of vandalism. According to our information an obelisk marking the site was also damaged,” Varėna regional administration mayor Algis Kašėta told the 15min.lt website.

Alytus police head of communications Kristina Janulevičienė said police are currently on scene investigating.

2024-06-192024-06-19

Silvia Foti Speaking in Šiauliai

The Šiauliai Jewish Community invites you to a meeting and discussion with Silvia Foti.

Foti is a Lithuanian-American writer who lives in Chicago. She is also the granddaughter of Lithuanian Nazi commander Jonas Noreika. When she began writing her family’s story, she approached it from the viewpoint of modern Lithuanian Holocaust denial, but quickly discovered her grandfather was responsible for the mass murder of Jews, and she began writing about that, alienating the Lithuanian public in North America and Lithuania who were raised to deny Lithuanian complicity in the Holocaust.

Foti’s books have been published in English and Lithuanian and she has appeared on major media telling her story of the journey from Holocaust denial to the truth, including on the BBC’s Hard Talk interview program.

Everyone is welcome to attend and participate.

Time: 6:00 P.M., Friday, June 21
Place: Šiauliai Jewish Community, P. Višinskio street no. 24, Šiauliai

2024-06-192024-06-19

More Attacks on Lithuanian Jewish Community

Last week two more attacks were made against the Lithuanian Jewish Community. A man in a mask with the help of an accomplice brazenly stole the Israeli flag flying above the entrance of the building in Vilnius, then took the flag to a nearby park and cut it up with a knife. He also apparently threatened a person there with the same knife, but didn’t wound that person. The next day someone broke a window at the Bagel Shop Café operated by the LJC in the same building as LJC headquarters.

Both incidents were recorded on security video which has been turned over to police.

The LJC expects law enforcement will take swift action to punish the criminals in light of the rising danger posed to Jews in the Lithuanian capital.

“What’s most discouraging isn’t the crimes themselves, but people’s apathy. In the video recording you can clearly see pedestrians passing by who stopped to look back at the crazed masked man but didn’t bother to call the police. There is more than one living eye-witness in our community who has personally experienced what tragic consequences can ensue from remaining passive while crimes are committed,” LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky commented.

2024-06-11

Germany Bestows Award on Faina Kukliansky on D-Day

Yesterday, on historic D-Day, “decision day” marking the entry of the western Allies into Nazi-occupied France and the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany, German ambassador to Lithuania Cornelius Zimmermann presented Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany for her tireless work commemorating Lithuanian Holocaust victims and long-term efforts to unite the LJC including enhancing the organization’s role on the national and international level.

Ambassador Zimmermann presented the honor, saying Germany’s responsibility for the Holocaust will remain forever. He said the Holocaust was a barbaric crime against humanity which led to the death of 95% of the Lithuanian Jewish community. He also said the small Litvak community which survives plays an important role in Lithuanian political life and in the international community, thanks to the efforts of the exceptional person occupying the post of leadership at the LJC.

“I received this award truly not only because my parents were imprisoned in a ghetto and experienced other horrors of the Holocaust, along with other Lithuanian Jews. Their children are not presented medals because of that. I hope this award is an evaluation of preserving memory. I’m not the only person doing this, each of our communities in every region where they have been established are doing everything possible to maintain the old cemeteries and restore synagogues. Sometimes I’m asked why we are doing this if there are no Jews left in the towns anyway. In order to preserve their memory. We no longer possess our parents’ candelabra which every family had for lighting the Sabbath candles. The only thing we have left is memory and respect, and not just self-respect, but also that of the state of Germany which, despite the tragic lessons of history, today is a shining example in many regards. I truly cherish this award because it wasn’t presented to me personally but as an assessment of the work by the entire Jewish community,” chairwoman Kukliansky said, thanking the German president, ambassador Zimmermann and previous German ambassador to Lithuania Matthias Sohn.

2024-06-072024-06-07

Rafailas Karpis and Vilnius State Choir Take Audience on Musical Journey through Jewish History

On June 4 the St. Kotryna (aka Catherine) Church in Vilnius was the gathering place for LJC members, foreign embassy staff, members of the Christian community and friends from Israel who came to take in another Shalom Culture and Music Festival in which opera soloist Rafailas Karpis, the Vilnius State Choir conducted by Artūras Dambrauskas, violinist Borisas Kirzneris and pianist Vincenzo de Martino performed an exceptional program of Jewish music with vocal works in Yiddish, Hebrew, Latin, English and Lithuanian, a musical journey through millennia of Jewish and Litvak history.

2024-06-072024-06-07

Art Exhibit at Kurkliai Wooden Synagogue

The recently-restored wooden synagogue in Kurkliai in the Anykščiai region recently opened its doors to the public again with an exhibit of paintings and graphic designs by Vytautas Kasiulis. The images were of different snapshots of Jewish life. The characters featured gracefully against a backdrop of town streets, natural scenes and indoors. The artist and his wife Bronė had donated the paintings to Lithuania in 2010. At the opening ceremony for the synagogue exhibition soloist Judita Leitaitė performed a concert. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman and Panevėžys Jewish Community member Albertas Savinčius with his wife Virginija attended.

Kofman delivered a welcome speech and read written greetings from Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky.

There was a relatively large Jewish population in the village of Kurkliai in the early 20th century, exterminated during the Holocaust. The small village had had a population of about 90 Jews before that, and the Jewish community centered around the synagogue.

2024-06-062024-06-06

Israeli Ambassador Visits Panevėžys

Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community recently where she met with chairman Gennady Kofman and the board of directors. Kofman gave a brief sketch of the life and activities of the Panevėžys Jewish Community and showed the ambassador their archives including thousands of testimonies from Litvak who once lived in the city.

Kofman escorted the ambassador to the former yeshiva building there, the former market square, the Hera Torah synagogue, the Jewish cemetery and Memory Square with the monument Sad Jewish Mother. He told her as well about the JDC’s work in Lithuania between the two world wars and they laid a wreath at the marker showing the location of the former ghetto gate.

He also took her to the city hall where he introduced her to Panevėžys mayor Rytis Račkauskas. They discussed various forms of cooperation.

2024-06-052024-06-05

Mexican President-Elect Has Litvak Roots

Mexico’s presidential election Sunday saw two females face off with Claudia Sheinbaum winning by a significant majority. She becomes Mexico’s first female, first Jewish and first Litvak president. Her paternal grandparents immigrated to Mexico from Lithuania with her maternal grandparents coming from Bulgaria. Her father was a chemical engineer and her mother a biologist.

2024-06-04

Safe Haven: Nazi Collaborators and the Failure of Justice

Dear friends,

Your final reminder about today’s Zoom event: Sunday, June 2, at 8:30 P.M. Israeli time (1:30 P.M. EDT).

Britain’s controversial 1991 War Crimes Act gave new powers to courts to try non-British citizens resident in the UK for war crimes committed during WWII. Despite the extensive investigative and legal work that followed and the expense of £11 million, it led to just one conviction.

Drawing on previously unavailable archival documents, Safe Haven considers for the first time why and how convictions failed to follow on the investigations, and why so many Nazi collaborators escaped justice and never even appeared in a criminal court. It provokes a timely reconsideration of the relationship between law, history and truth.

We will be joined by the book’s co-author Jon Silverman and a returning guest speaker for us, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the director of its Israel Office and Eastern European affairs.

Jon Silverman is professor emeritus for media and criminal justice at the University of Bedfordshire. He’s a former BBC home affairs correspondent in which role he won the Sony Radio Journalist of the Year award for his coverage of the UK’s investigations into Nazi collaborators. He reported from both the Rwanda and Yugoslavia tribunals and has written extensively for journals on international war crimes justice, including the relationship between the International Criminal Court and Africa. He is the author of four books.

In his role at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Efraim Zuroff has discovered the escape destinations all over the world of more than 3,000 suspected Nazi war criminals and has facilitated the exposure and prosecution of dozens of them. The author of four books (translated into 15 languages) and more than 500 articles on Nazi-hunting, Holocaust history and contemporary Jewish life and identity, Zuroff is one of the leading spokesmen in the world on Holocaust-related issues.

Join us live on zoom:

Topic: Nazi Collaborators and the Failure of Justice
Time: June 2, 2024, 8:30 P.M. Israeli time/1:30 P.M. EDT

Join the zoom meeting here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9411014000?omn=81972506471
Meeting ID: 941 101 4000

2024-06-02

Call for Volunteers to Clean Up Jewish Cemetery

You are invited to volunteer for what has become a beautiful tradition sponsored by the US embassy in Vilnius and various volunteers: to help maintain the old Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania. This time we’ll work on the old Jewish cemetery in the village of Turgeliai in the Šalčininkai region of Lithuania south of Vilnius.

Time: 10:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M., Sunday, June 2
Place: Old Jewish cemetery in Turgeliai in the Šalčininkai region
Link: https://shorturl.at/QILlI

Everyone is invited to take part. Come show your respect and concern for the history of the Jews of Lithuania and for Lithuania. It’s a small sacrifice, only a few hours, and no heavy lifting is involved!

2024-05-29

LJC Chairwoman Sends Thank-You Letter to Israeli Leaders for New Legislation Recognizing Diaspora Victims of Anti-Semitism

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky has sent thank-you letters to Israeli president Isaac Herzog, minister for Diaspora affairs and combating anti-Semitism Amichai Chikli and Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein for the Israeli Government’s recent resolution recognizing victims of anti-Semitism living in the Diaspora.

§§§

May 29, 202

On behalf of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, I extend our gratitude to the State of Israel for historic government resolution 492 which officially recognizes Jewish victims of anti-Semitic acts in the Diaspora.

This resolution carries huge importance, especially in these times when the Jewish people face increased anti-Semitism globally, exacerbated by the ongoing war between Israel and the brutal Hamas organization. Your leadership in spearheading this initiative assures us that the memories of those who suffered from anti-Semitism and hate crimes, targeted solely because of their Jewish identity, are honored, and thus solidarity among Jews worldwide is reinforced.

We sincerely appreciate the support of the State of Israel for its dedication to the welfare of Jews around the world. We strongly believe that these commitments strengthen the bonds within our global Jewish community and our resilience.

With sincere regards,

Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community

2024-05-292024-05-30

Commemorating Dubingiai Shtetl

An information stand commemorating the more than 100 pre-Holocaust Jewish residents of Dubingiai was unveiled in the town last weekend. The information stand is located where the synagogue once stood, and an outline of the synagogue on a transparent backdrop is the main feature of the stand. Next to the synagogue stood a mikvah, or ritual purification bath, and Jewish homes, some of which are still standing. One couple who lives in a former Jewish home there, Jolanta and Kastytis Žilinskis, financed the erection of the sign which was designed by historian Vaida Navickaitė. Other members of the local community also contributed financially and in other ways to making this small memorial possible.

“By taking this step, we contribute to keeping the memory of the Jews of Lithuania alive,” Navickaitė said at the unveiling ceremony.

Opera soloist Rafailas Karpis and pianist Darius Mažintas provided a musical component to the ceremony, invoking the atmosphere of shtetl life.

2024-05-29