A very happy birthday to LJC member of long standing and active Seniors Club member Idelis Gurvičius who celebrated his 90th on August 23. Mazl tov. Bis 120!
Gesher Club Offers Tour
The Gesher Club at the Lithuanian Jewish Community is offering a two-day tour of the Panemunė castles and the Curonian Spit on August 28 and 29. The group will visit the Pažaislis monastery, the Raudondvaris manor estate, Vilkija, the Veliuona earth-mounds and the Raudonė and Panemunė castles. They will also visit the Holocaust memorial and Alley of Synagogues in Jurbarkas, with rest and an overnight stay in Klaipėda with an evening tour of the Klaipėda Old Town. Following breakfast on Sunday the group will move on to the Curonian Spit with visits to Juodkrantė, the Dead Dunes and Nida, followed by the return trip to Vilnius. The tour will be conducted by long-time LJC member and professional tour guide Markas Psonikas. For more information and to register, call+37067881514 or send an mail to zanas@sc.lzb.lt. For more about Markas’s tours, see here.
EJC Slams Polish President, Calls Anti-Restitution Law Undemocratic, Unjust, Immoral
Saturday, August 14, 2021–European Jewish Congress president Moshe Kantor slammed the ratification of a bill passed by the Polish parliament which will make it far harder for Jews to claim restitution on properties appropriated and stolen during the Holocaust era.
“This law is undemocratic, unjust and immoral,” Kantor said. “This is not bringing order to chaos as president Duda claims, it is making legal what should be illegal and is merely legalizing theft. The president had an opportunity to right the wrong created by the parliament. He could have shown moral clarity and leadership, but he chose not to.
“Moreover, this law will also further highlight Poland’s unique position as the only country in the region which makes Holocaust restitution impossible and runs counter to its international commitments. It is outrageous that someone who survived the Holocaust, who will be in their later years, will still be deprived justice by this cruel, illegitimate and discriminatory law.”
Condolences
The Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners is sad to announce the death today of former Minsk ghetto prisoner Markas Buslovich at the age of 84. Our deepest condolences to his sister Inesa, also a member of the Union.
Condolences
LJC member Mordche Rostovskis has passed away at the age of 86. He was born in 1936. We send our deepest condolences to his relatives and loved ones.
Polish Senate Approves Bill Limiting Holocaust Restitution
Photo: Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid lashes out at bill last June. Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images
The law would prevent Holocaust survivors from regaining property seized after World War II. It triggered sharp criticism from Israel and the United States.
Poland’s parliament late Wednesday passed legislation that would put an end to most legal claims for properties confiscated after World War II.
The bill states that administrative decisions can no longer be challenged in court after the expiration of a 30-year period, essentially preventing Jews from recovering property seized by Poland’s Communist-era authorities.
The legislation, which passed earlier in the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, still has to be signed by president Andrzej Duda before taking effect.
Full story here.
Lithuanian State Television Takes Offense at “Star of Covid” at Protest
Photo: Protestors at Lithuanian parliament and national library wear stars of David with poster saying “No ghetto for the unvaccinated.” Photographer J. Stacevičius, courtesy Lithuanian state radio and television broadcaster LRT.
Lithuanian state television LRT reported protestors against Lithuania’s so-called quarantine restrictions crossed the line and made light of the Holocaust, according to the people they talked to about Tuesday’s protest in front of the nation’s parliament where some donned yellow stars of David and called the government’s shutdown of economic and social life genocide.
The first secretary at the Israeli embassy to Lithuania also provided negative comments to LRT regarding the use of Holocaust symbols. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky cautioned the use of the star of David and other symbols isn’t in itself anti-Semitic, but added that it’s important to look at the context in which they are used.
“I’ve seen criminals sitting in court who put on a yellow star [of David], and saying you are a Jew is no justification for committing crimes or that you can’t be tried or convicted because you are a Jew. Everything depends on how the symbol is used. Still, people who do use this symbol should understand what it means in general and what it means to Jews. Often people fail to look more deeply into the meaning of this symbol,” LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky told LRT state television.
Condolences
Moishe Gegužinskis passed away in Frankfurt at the age of 97 on June 7. He was born in Kaunas in 1924. He was part of the resistance in the Kaunas ghetto and was deported to Dachau. He came back to Lithuania after liberation and lived and worked in Vilnius. He published his memoirs in Yiddish called “My Memories: The Tragic and Tumultuous Life Path of a Litvak.” He went to live in Germany in 1997. Our deepest condolences to his immediate family and many friends and relatives.
Holocaust Procession in Biržai
Last Sunday a Road of Memory procession commemorated the 80th anniversary of the onset of the Holocaust in the northern Lithuanian town of Biržai.
Participants marched from the town’s Memory Square to the Pakamponys Forest where approximately 2,400 Jews including about 900 children were murdered in 1941.
Full announcement in Lithuanian here.
Ukmergė Regional Jewish Community to Mark 80th Anniversary of Holocaust
The Ukmergė Regional Jewish Community invites you to commemorate Holocaust victims on Holocaust Victims Remembrance Day at noon on September 5 in the Pivonija Forest in the Ukmergė district.
News from the Kaunas Jewish Community
I am endlessly grateful for the friendship and fruitful cooperation from the very beginning with the Kaunas 2022 team (and especially the Memory Bureau team) and I am thankful for the honor bestowed me as a member of the consultation committee for the Litvak Forum to take place in 2022.
I am so very glad because it is always pleasant to communicate with open, tolerant people who are hungry for knowledge and who are striving to insure our society might also become more open, more tolerant and more accepting.
I am glad because we are joined in a common goal: to encourage recognition of the multicultural history of our city and to appreciate what we have, while not averting our gaze from painful episodes.
Panevėžys Jewish Community Receives Visitors
With virus restrictions eased, the Panevėžys Jewish Community received some foreign visitors interested to learn more about their relatives, their biographies and their fate.
Yeir and his wife, both from Israel, visited us on July 25. He’s the great-grandson of famous Panevėžys rabbi Rabinovitch, the ilui who lived and worked here for more than 20 years. Yeir was keen to learn more about religious life in Panevėžys in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He experienced the city and visited Jewish heritage sites here.
According to archive documents from 1857, eight synagogues in Panevėžys are mentioned, with a few more synagogues located in private residences. Religious life in Panevėžys is the subject of a forthcoming book called “Žvilgsnis į praeitį: Panevėžio žydų istorija ir palikimas” [A Glimpse into the Past: The History and Legacy of the Jews of Panevėžys], already printed and soon to be launched.
Shalom, Akmenė
On August 4, 1941, the Jews of the Akmenė region who were being detained in the town of Akmenė were taken to Mažeikiai and murdered. An event called “Shalom, Akmenė” was organized and held to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust there on August 4. A new monument marking the site of the former synagogue in Klykoliai village was unveiled and the victims were remembered at the town square in Akmenė with a reading of names, sung prayers and kaddish. The ceremony there ended with a procession along Stoties and Viekšnių streets to the Akmenė town cemetery. Old Jewish cemeteries on the Tirkšliai-Mažeikiai highway were also visited.
Participants included members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community, Lithuanian MP Kasparas Adomaitis and others. Our gratitude goes to the organizers, Diana and Marijus Lopaitis and the Akmenė History Museum.
Remembering the Jews of Šeduva
Kupiškis Remembers Onset of Holocaust 80 Years Ago
On July 30 organizers and guests of the “Road of Memory 1941-2021” project and local residents assembled at the Kupiškis Ethnographic Museum where museum historian Aušra Jonušytė moderated events.
United States embassy to Lithuania representative Wartenberg welcomed visitors in the name of US ambassador Robert Gilchrist and Lithuanian Foreign Ministry ambassador Marius Janukonis and veteran Conservative Party politician, former minister and MEP Rasa Juknevičienė as well as others participated and spoke at the event whose main organizer was Lithuania’s International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes, whose deputy director Ingrida Vilkienė also delivered an address to the audience. Kupiškis regional administration mayor Dainius Bardauskas also spoke.
A procession bearing banners and flags walked to the mass murder site at the Freethinkers’ Cemetery in Kupiškis with marchers bearing flowers, candles and stones inscribed with the names of the murdered. The commemoration included a reading of the names of the victims and descriptions of their lives and families.
Marking Roma Genocide Remembrance Day
August 2 is observed as the day of remembrance of the genocide committed against the Roma in Europe.
“Roma, as with Jews, the disabled, homosexuals and Communists, were considered unworthy to live by the German Nazi regime. They were persecuted, deported as forced labor and murdered. It is believed about one-half million Roma were murdered during the Holocaust. … Only in 2015 did the European Parliament adopt a resolution recognizing the genocide committed against the Roma during WWII and naming August 2 as the day of remembrance of the Roma genocide. In 2019 the Lithuanian parliament included August 2 on Lithuania’s list of observed commemorative days.”
Lithuania’s Roma Community Center can be found here.
Lithuanian Jewish Community Kids Enjoy Summer Camp
Two LJC children’s summer camps took place in July, full of activities and fun. Not only did the kids have a chance to shake off state restrictions for fighting the virus by getting a little wild, they also learned a lot. The LJC camps among other things taught Jewish history and tradition. The kids learned to make challa, visited the Ninth Fort Holocaust site in Kaunas and engaged in other learning activities.
Table of Truth Web Event
About the event
Learn about the extraordinary connection to one chess table with Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman, Lithuanian Jewish Community; Shulamit Rabinovich, San Francisco engineer; Dudu Fisher, Israeli-based world-renowned entertainer; Grant Gochin, South African wealth Manager and Silvia Foti, Chicago journalist.
We will reveal recently discovered facts about the Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust denial by the Lithuanian Government, and present new paths to education about the horrors of the past.
The table WILL talk.
We will conclude the program with Dudu Fisher chanting Kaddish.
When: 10:00 A.M. PST, 1:00 P.M. EST, 7:00 P.M. South Africa, 8:00 P.M. Israel, September 12, 2021
Representatives of the Lithuanian Government have also been invited to attend and speak.
For more information and to register, see http://israelusa.org/table-of-truth/
Black Honey: A Film about Abraham Sutzkever
The Vilnius Jewish Public Library will screen the film Black Honey about Vilnius partisan and Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever created by his granddaughter and actress Hadas Kalderon of Israel. She will retell stories she heard directly from him and talk about film and filming. The screening is open to the public and will take place at 7:00 P.M. on August 8. The Vilnius Jewish Public Library (not affiliated with the Lithuanian Jewish Community) is located at Gedimino prospect no. 24 in Vilnius with entry through the alley and to the right.
Register by calling (8-5) 219 77 48 or sending an email to info@vilnius-jewish-public-library.com
The film is in English, Hebrew and Yiddish with English subtitles.
Evening of Poetry and Music
The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you to an evening of poetry and music at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, August 11. Sergejus Kanovičius will read selections of his prose and poetry accompanied by Boris Kirzner on violin.