We are deeply saddened to report the death of Ida Vileikienė, a long-time member of the Šiauliai Jewish Community. The Šiauliai Jewish Community sends our deepest condolences to her husband Petras, daughter Svajonė and grandson Donatas.
Šiauliai Jewish Community
On November 5, 1943, the Kinder Aktion, one of the most brutal Holocaust crimes perpetrated in Lithuania, was carried out in the Šiauliai ghetto. The mass murder operation aimed at Jewish children took 725 of them and they were sent to Auschwitz in cattle cars where they were murdered. The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Šiauliai City and Šiauliai Regional Jewish Communities invite you to remember and commemorate the victims of this crime.
The event begins at 12:00 noon on November 5 at the stone monument on the corner of Trakų and Ežero streets marking the location of one of the former gates to the ghetto. At 12:30 P.M. a procession leads from there to the Chaim Frankel villa. At 1:00 P.M. there will be a ceremony at the villa to remember the children murdered. The villa is located at Vilniaus street no. 74 in Šiauliai. This will include the opening of a joint exhibition by the Šiauliai City Jewish Community and Yad Vashem museum of photographs of the child victims of the Kinder Aktion.
Please note: Those wishing to attend the commemoration on November 5 are asked to register by sending an e-mail to info@lzb.lt.
Šiauliai Jewish Community chairman Sania Kerbelis said he was grateful so many people responded to the call to attend a gathering to show support for Israel on October 9, even though the meeting was only announced a few hours before it took place.
“We are all suffering, we all have relatives in Israel, many of us have relatives in the army who are engaged in combat. We are all worried about our loved ones and the cities are being shot up. The deaths are senseless. We are calling constantly and they keep trying to calm us down, but you know what is really going on. I was in Israel in May and we got caught in the fighting then, several hundred rockets were shot from Gaza. There were casualties but the [Iron] Dome protected many locations. But this time they also crossed the border, slaughtered people, slaughtered children. It associates in my mind that we’re preparing on November 5 to mark the Kinder Aktion. We keep saying ‘Never again.’ Usually other people, non-Jews, think subconsciously ‘never again’ [means ‘no more’] of something, but Jews subconsciously have it that after the Holocaust these kinds of things should be impossible in the civilized world now. Yet they are happening,” Sania Kerbelis said.
A delegation from the town of Kupiškis attended the Sukkot celebration by the Panevėžys Jewish Community and presented a new book and student art exhibit about the former Jewish community in the small town.
The local history book “Kupiškio žydų bendruomenės atspindžiai. Kupiškėnų atsiminimai apie žydų bendruomenė” [Reflections of the Kupiškis Jewish Community: Kupiškis Residents Recall the Jewish Community” was compiled by historian Aušra Jonušytė who also delivered an address at the Sukkot celebration about the former Kupiškis Jewish community and their fate. Book illustrators Augustė Žalkauskaitė, Nojus Pajarskas and Vytė Sabaliauskaitė spoke about their work on the book.
Kupiškis regional NGO coalition executive chairwoman Marytė Semaškienė and art school principal Daiva Šakickienė also spoke in Panevėžys. Šakickienė’s students from the Kupiškis Art School also presented an exhibit of their works of art revolving around the former Kupiškis Jewish community.
The Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities invite you to attend an international conference called “The Intellectual Heritage of the Jews of Vilnius” on October 10 and 11 at the Lithuanian Academy located at Gedimino prospect no. 3 in Vilnius.
According to the Lithuanian Academy’s press release:
“Thanks to the support of the Research Council of Lithuania, we were able to invite such world-renowned experts in Jewish history and culture as Israel Bartal, David Fishman, David Roskies, Benjamin Brown, Alex Lubotzky, Marcin Wodzinski, Jon Seligman, Avner Holtzman, Tsvia Walden, Mordechai Zalkin and others.
“The conference will also feature presentations by prominent Lithuanian scholars: Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, Lara Lempertienė, Jurgita Verbickienė and doctoral student Saulė Valiūnaitė.”
A program is available in English here.
For more information, visit the Lithuanian Academy’s website here.
Palanga Jewish Community chairman Vilius Gutmanas contacted the city mayor and police regarding the desecration of Holocaust monuments in the Lithuanian seaside resort town.
Lithuania marked both the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto and the Lithuanian Day of Remembrance of Jewish Victims of Genocide during the third week in September. On September 22 the Palanga Jewish Community, city representatives, teachers and students lit candles, placed stones inscribed with the names of victims and read passages from the history of the Jews of the city at a Holocaust monument there. The next day all the candles and stones had been removed.
“This came as an unpleasant surprise to me and visitors from Israel who had read about the event which took place the evening before,” chairman Gutmanas said.
He also surveyed markers and monuments in memory of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust in the area and discovered much damage, including a stele marking the mass murder and mass grave site of Jewish women and children from Palanga erected by British House of Lords member Greville Janner in the Kunigiškiai Forest, and the complete removal of a monument including its plinth on Vytauto street.
“This isn’t the work of some accidental passer-by. Someone really hates that Lithuania is commemorating Holocaust victims, that we are paying our respects to innocent citizens of our country who were brutally murdered, that we are telling young people the facts about this tragic period of history so they can learn from the mistakes of the past and not repeat them,” the chairman of the Palanga Jewish Community said.
The Choral Synagogue in Vilnius will provide the following prayer services for Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah:
October 6
6:30 P.M. Kabalat Shabat and Hag Shmini
October 7
10:00 A.M. Shacharit
11:00 A.M. Megilat Kohelet (reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes)
12:00 noon Yizkor
7:40 Simchat Torah eve with hakafot dance/procession
October 8
10:00 A.M. Shacharit with hakafot
11:00 A.M. Torah reading
The Israeli ballet troupe Jerusalem Ballet will perform the world premiere of their “Memento: Franceska Mann’s Last Dance at Auschwitz” on November 26 in Vilnius. The performance is based on historical facts and inspired by the tragic story of Jewish ballerina Franceska Mann, who is said to have killed a Nazi guard during the Holocaust.
Time: 6:00 P.M., November 26
Location: Avia Solutions Group Arena, Vilnius
Tickets available here.
Please note: Lithuanian Jewish Community members and friends will receive a 20% discount on the ticket price. To obtain the discount code, fill out the form here.
Photo: Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, April 24, 2018. Photo credit: REUTERS/Chris Wattie
by Zvika Klein, October 3, 2023, Jerusalem Post
Israel’s envoy urges Canada to revisit WWII Nazi immigration and Jewish policy.
Resignation of Canada’s speaker of the House of Commons lower chamber is a “first step to acknowledging responsibility for this wrong,” Israel’s new special envoy for combating ant-Semitism, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, told the Jerusalem Post this week. She added that Canada needs to acknowledge its historic sin of not allowing enough Jews into the country during the Holocaust and immediately afterward while allowing Nazis to immigrate.
The speaker of Canada’s House of Commons lower chamber said last week that he would quit, a few days after he publicly praised a former Nazi soldier in Parliament in an incident that Russia said helped justify its war on Ukraine.
A week ago Anthony Rota told legislators he had made a mistake by inviting ex-soldier Yaroslav Hunka, 98, to attend a session in the House honoring Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky last Friday. Rota publicly recognized Hunka, calling him a hero.
We commemorated the 80th anniversary of the mass murder of Jews in Švenčionys on Sunday. In October, 1943, the Švenčionys ghetto was liquidated and the last survivors of the 8,000 Jews who lived in the area before the war were killed.
Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moishe Shapiro organized the commemoration and invited LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Vilnius Jerusalem of Lithuania Jewish Community chairman Algirdas Malcas, Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas, Polish and German embassy representatives, district mayor Rimantas Klipčius, Vilnius Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium principal Ruth Reches and a large contingent of students, among others, to light candles and lay wreaths at the Menorah statue in Švenčionys’s central park, marking the border of the ghetto there. Attendees also viewed an exhibit on Jewish history at the Nalšia Museum, then went to the mass murder site in Platumai village to commemorate the victims.
The famous Telzh (Tels, Telšiai, Telz) Yeshiva, a cultural heritage site, has reopened with a new public use. Last week a branch of the Alka Museum opened its doors inside the yeshiva building. The new museum space housed in the Jewish school will feature and protect the Jewish material heritage there.
The Telzh Yeshiva exhibit there was set up based on the yizkor Sefer Ṭelz (Sefer Ṭelz (Liṭa): matsevet zikaron li-ḳehilah ḳedoshah) compiled by Yitzhak Alperowitz and published in Israel in 1984. In 2022 the books was translated into Lithuanian as “Telšiai. Atminties knyga” [Telzh: Book of Memory], opening the door for Lithuanian speakers to discover the traces of Jewish life in the small town and find out more about its history.
Photo: Chairman of Yad Vashem Dani Dayan at the memorial ceremony in the Ponary forest, remembering the over 200,000 Lithuanian Jews brutally murdered during the Holocaust, at this very site, courtesy X, formerly Twitter, used in accordance with clause 27a of US copyright law.
by Efraim Zuroff
The locals may never own what they did, but Yad Vashem’s chairman spoke truth to power, calling out their role in eliminating a vibrant Jewish world
During the past two decades, virtually every country in Europe, and many in the Western Hemisphere, have adopted a Holocaust memorial day, many inspired by the decision of the United Nations to do so in 2005. Quite a few have chosen to follow the example of the UN by commemorating the date of the liberation of Auschwitz death camp on January 27, 1945, but others chose dates that mark significant events in the history of the Shoah in their respective countries. In some cases, the choice is a reflection of the significance of specific Holocaust events for their societies, or the desire, or lack thereof, to emphasize the complicity of local Nazi collaborators.
Thus, for example, France chose July 16, the anniversary of the mass arrest in Paris in 1942 of 13,152 French Jews, who were deported to their deaths in Auschwitz by the local police. Similarly, Hungary chose April 16, the date of the initial orders for the ghettoization of Hungarian Jewry, the prelude to the deportation of 437,000 of them to Auschwitz in spring of 1944. Bulgaria, by contrast, chose March 10, the date on which the government revoked its original plan to deport the country’s entire Jewish population to Treblinka.
by Silvia Foti
Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan addressed the Lithuanian Seimas on September 21, 2023, three days before the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. He took the opportunity to proclaim loudly and clearly the widespread knowledge of Lithuanian participation in the Holocaust, urging Seimas members to stop glorifying Holocaust perpetrators.
…
For me, the speech was electrifying because it was a vindication of so much hard work by so many people who have been beating the drum of Lithuania’s Holocaust distortion–including Rūta Vanagaitė, Efraim Zuroff, Dovid Katz, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Andrius Kulikauskas, Arkadijus Vinokuras, and the three of us who are mostly focused on my grandfather Jonas Noreika, namely Grant Gochin, Michael Kretzmer, and myself.
Full text here.
Photo: Lithuanian auxiliary forces carried out many murders of the country’s 141,000 Holocaust victims.
by Lianne Kolirin, Thursday, September 28, 2023, The Times of London
Streets and schools are named after citizens who colluded in the Holocaust
The head of Yad Vashem called for an end to the “glorification of war criminals associated with the massacre of Jews” in an address to Lithuania’s parliament.
Dani Dayan, chairman of the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, was invited to address the Seimas in Vilnius to mark the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the city’s ghetto in 1943.
According to Yad Vashem, Lithuania welcomed the Nazis, “seeing them as liberators from Soviet occupation.” About 141,000 of Lithuania’s 168,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, with “a significant part carried out by Lithuanian auxiliary forces,” its website states.
Anthony Rota, speaker of Canada’s lower house of parliament or House of Commons, has resigned following an incident last week where he pointed to a former Nazi Waffen-SS soldier in the chamber and singled him out for praise as a Ukrainian freedom fighter who “fought the Russians then, and is fighting them now.”
The entire audience including prime minister Justin Trudeau and deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland gave Jaroslaw Hunka a prolonged standing ovation. Trudeau later called the incident embarrassing to Canada and fodder for Russian propaganda.
Rota, a member of Trudeau’s Liberal Party, fell on his sword to save the Trudeau government sagging in the polls in recent months, while commentators pointed out every single MP and member of the cabinet at the special sitting of the House of Commons should’ve been able to do the basic math and conclude Hunka, whose Canadian immigration documents use the alternate surname Gunka, had fought on the side of the Nazis, Canada’s declared enemy during World War II. In point of fact Hunka served in a Waffen-SS detachment in the province of Galicia (Galitsiya) in the Ukraine under the command of Stepan Bandera, the 14th Grenadiers aka Galicia Division, and committed atrocities and mass murder against Jews and Poles.
Israeli ambassador to Lithuania was among the speakers September 21 at the annual commemoration of Holocaust victims at Ponar outside Vilnius. The annual commemoration marks Lithuania’s Day of Remembrance of Jewish Victims of Genocide and officially falls on the nominal date of the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto, September 23, although the actual liquidation lasted several weeks.
She said:
Ladies and gentlemen, Madam Speaker, Madam PM, the Chairman of Yad Vashem, honorable Ministers, Members of Parliament, esteemed leaders of the Jewish community, dear Holocaust Survivors and families.
Today, we gather here in Ponar, the last stop of tens of thousands of men, women, and children, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto. We come together to remember the tragic events of the past and honor the enduring spirit of survival and resilience.
Photo: Remigijus Žemaitaitis, © 2023 ELTA/Dainius Labutis
On Tuesday Lithuanian media reported Lithuanian MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis, under fire for anti-Semitic comments he posted to facebook, had formed a new political party following his expulsion from his former party:
Žemaitaitis Claims Formed New Party
Parliamentarian Remigijus Žemaitaitis, now facing impeachment proceedings in parliament for anti-Semitic statements, says he and fellow travellers have formed a new party. The controversial member of parliament says the political entity being formed will participate in all upcoming elections.
“We plan to participate in all of them,” Žemaitaitis told ELTA.
The Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community located at Višinskio street no. 24 in Šiauliai will host a public presentation of the short book “Gyvenimo istorijos. Žydų gelbėtojai” [Life Stories: Jewish Rescuers] as the final events in the Laptai Gallery’s project “Cultural Sketches of Litvaks” at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, October 3.
This is the third short book in the “Gyvenimo istorijos” series and focuses on testimonies from eye-witnesses and relatives about the Righteous Gentiles who rescued Jews from the Holocaust in the Šiauliai region.
The presentation will include the reading of passages by Šiauliai State Drama Theater actress Jūratė Budriūnaitė, recollections by living witnesses and their relatives and musical accompaniment performed by Arijus Ivaškevičius. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (8) (41) 200-642 (which is equivalent to +370 41 200 642 on mobile phones).
Photo: Synagogue in Žiežmariai, by Andrejus Tomenko.
An international agreement is already bearing fruit: the United States Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad has collected $10,000, the first tranche to be used for restoration of the second floor, the women’s gallery, of the wooden synagogue in Žiežmariai, Lithuania.
Several months ago Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and United States Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad director Star Jones signed an agreement to join forces for the restoration of the second storey of the unique wooden synagogue in rural Lithuania. The Commission pledged to find financing for that project and the LJC pledged to insure its smooth implementation.
The synagogue was built in the 19th century but burned down in 1920 and was rebuilt. For the thousand or so Jews of the small town before the Holocaust, the synagogue served as both a house of prayer and school, and the central community meeting place.
Yad Vashem director Dani Dayan addressed a special sitting of the Lithuanian parliament convoked to mark the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilnius ghetto. He called on Lithuania to stop heroizing murderers of Jews and to commemorate better the tragedy of the Holocaust.
“Hundreds of thousands of Lithuanian Jews were murdered in this country by the Germans and by their Lithuanian collaborators. And to a significant extent by the local population, characteristically distinct to Lithuania,” he told 112 MPs gathered for the special sitting.
“(A)n anti-Semite, especially a murderer of Jews, cannot be considered otherwise a good person. … For sure he cannot be considered a hero. In addition to refraining from attributing public honor to such butchers, Lithuania must consistently acknowledge that many of the Lithuanian Jews massacred in the Holocaust, died at the hands of their Lithuanian co-nationals, and that Lithuanians also took part in the extermination of Jews in neighboring countries. The zero-tolerance policy must apply also towards glorification of war criminals associated with the massacre of Jews. Such names as Noreika, Škirpa, Krikštaponis do not add to the honor of your nation, nor to its adherence to international norms of appropriate national remembrance,” he continued.