The Kaunas Jewish Community invites the public to come and commemorate the victims of the Lietūkis Garage massacre at the monument to them located at Miško street no. 3 in Kaunas at 4:00 P.M. on June 28. Following that ceremony there will be ceremonies held at the Slobodka (Vilijampolė) Jewish cemetery located on Kalnų street in Kaunas, the Seventh Fort in Kaunas and the Žaliakalnis Jewish cemetery on the Radvilėnų highway in Kaunas to honor Holocaust victims.
A meeting convened by the European Commission to discuss challenges facing Jewish communities in Europe was held on June 20 in Brussels.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky spoke at the meeting, thanking Lithuanian law enforcement institutions for long and productive cooperation, but stressed Lithuania is one of only a few European countries without a systematic policy for safeguarding Jewish sites and institutions.
The LJC has adopted all security measures meeting European standards by itself and with help from the Security and Crisis Center under the European Jewish Congress.
Photo: Lukas Balandis/15min.lt
by Violeta Grigaliūnaitė
A decision to rename Škirpa Alley at the base of Gediminas Hill in Vilnius is brewing within the city council. Municipality administration director Povilas Poderskis has received a request to initiate a decision by the Vilnius city council to rename it Tricolor Alley. Freedom Party faction member Renaldas Vaisbrodas prepared the request. The small street next to the Vilnia creek was named after Kazys Škirpa in 1998.
At Issue: A Finding by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania
Vaisbrodas included compelling arguments for the decision in his request. Here is an extract from an historical finding by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania signed by director Birutė Burauskaitė:
“The historians of the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania have performed an exhaustive examination of the activities of Kazys Škirpa in World War II. The actions of the historical figure of Kazys Škirpa are subject to multiple interpretations. On the one hand, he was a Lithuanian patriot who exerted major efforts for the foundation of national independence and for resistance to the Soviet occupational regime. On the other hand, there were expressions of anti-Semitism in his activities in 1940 and 1941.
“One may fault Škirpa and the organization he led because anti-Semitism was raised to a political level in the actions of the Berlin Lithuanian Activists Front and that might have encouraged some Lithuanian residents to get involved in the Holocaust. On the other hand it must be noted the Berlin LAF organization proposed solving “the Jewish problem” not through genocide, but by expulsion from Lithuania. It also must be noted members of the Berlin LAF organization did not know on the eve of war the Nazis planned to carry out the total genocide of the Jews.”
This excerpt comes from a finding presented on April 17, 2019, to the Vilnius municipal commission on names, monuments and commemorative plaques.
Full article in Lithuanian here.
The True State of the Jewish Cemeteries in Vilnius. Part of a Proud Past Which Must Be Protected
In the international sphere there has been no respite regarding preservation of the old Jewish cemetery in Vilnius (in the historical neighborhood of Piromont, now known as Šnipiškės): petitions are being circulated, the issue has even been raised in the United States Senate and there is the attempt being made to put a halt to plans to renovate the Palace of Sports building there. But are these disputes over the now-destroyed cemetery sufficiently well-founded?
The Soviet Era Destroyed the Šnipiškės Jewish Cemetery and Buried Its Memory
It’s important to look at the history of the Šnipiškės cemetery. The old Jewish cemetery in Vilnius established in 1592 or 1593 (although other sources say 1487) was for all intents and purposes closed in 1830, after which part of the cemetery was destroyed, with another part surviving to the end of World War II.
The Executive Committee of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic adopted a resolution on October 15, 1948, to close the old Jewish cemetery. At that time it had an area of just over three hectares, a quarter of the size of the Užupis Jewish cemetery on Olandų street in Vilnius.
When World War II came to Lithuania, the children were on summer vacation, many at Communist Youth and pioneer summer camps in Palanga, Kačerginė and Druskininkai. Stasys Sviderskis (1920-2011) was assigned leader of the youn pioneer camp in Druskininkai, where of the 150 or so children, 70 were Jewish.
Stasys was recognized a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem in 1997 and Lithuanian president Algirdas Brazauskas awarded him the Life-saver’s Cross. His elder brother Alfonsas saved Jews from the Kaunas ghetto and was named a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem in 1980.
When the war arrived on June 22, 1941, Stasys Sviderskis didn’t wait for instructions and collected all the children in his care to send them east away from hostilities. On the first day of war he managed to put the children on a train to Vilnius which continued a long journey to cities in the east in the Soviet Union. Despite the many dangers which confronted him, Sviderskis evacuated all of his wards out of Nazi-controlled territory and so all the Jewish children were saved. He was named a Righteous Gentile on October 6, 1997, with Yad Vashem also publishing a list of the children he rescued.
Yale University president Peter Salovey visited the Lithuanian Jewish Community on the last day of his visit to Lithuania on June 21.
Salovey, a descendant of the famous Soloveitchik family of rabbis who were followers of the Vilna Gaon, maintains close connection with his Litvak roots in Kaunas and Volozhin. One of his relatives was Max Soloveitchik, a Zionist who was a member of the first interwar Lithuanian parliament, an attorney and who actively fought for recognition of Lithuania’s independence at the Paris Peace Conference. He later became Lithuanian minister of Jewish affairs.
Peter Solovey is known for his theory of emotional intelligence. With John D. Mayer, he significantly expanded the scope of the concept and authored several of the field’s seminal papers, arguing people have widely ranging abilities pertaining to emotional control, reasoning, and perceptivity. In contrast to earlier theories of intelligence which held emotions in rivalry to reason, Salovey and Mayer claimed emotion could motivate productive outcomes when properly directed. He worked to develop models and tests of emotional intelligence such as the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test. Salovey’s second area of research is in health psychology, where he applied social psychology principles to investigate the efficacy of information and education in promoting HIV risk reduction, early cancer detection and quitting smoking
Bernardinai.lt
In marking the anniversary of the June Uprising of 1941, let’s look at what the late Leonidas Donskis wrote in 2010.
I will admit that reading commentaries by political analyst Kęstutis Girnius on the Lithuanian Provisional Government and the Lithuanian Activist Front, and the allegedly small amount of academic research and documentation on these phenomena, I find myself hardly able to believe that a person whom I consider one of the soberest and keenest of our political commentators could write this. Without quoting from his earlier statements on radio and in print on this issue, I will present a link to a new comment by Kęstutis Girnius.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and the Lithuanian Jewish Community invited guests and the public to a ceremony to unveil a plaque near the site of the former Vilnius headquarters of YIVO on Vivulskio street in Vilnius June 20. Those attending included deputy to the LJC chairwoman professor Leonidas Melnikas, the heads of YIVO, Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevičius, Lithuanian culture minister Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, Jewish partisan Fania Brancovskaja and the mayor of Vilnius.
YIVO began in Vilnius in 1925 and was originally housed in the apartment of its founder and prime mover Max Weinreich on Basanavičiaus street (aka Pogulanskaya, Pogulnaka and Wielka Pohulanka street) in Vilnius. Dedicated to research on the language, literature, culture and history of Jews in Eastern Europe, the institute collected a large mass of documents and archive material from local Jewish communities before the Holocaust.
Architect and designer Victoria Sideraitė-Alon designed the new YIVO plaque.
Although much of YIVO’s material was lost during the war, some made its way to the provisional war-time headquarters in New York, which became world headquarters following the war.
A ceremony to unveil the unusual new Holocaust memorial in the Pakamponys forest outside Biržai in northern Lithuania took place June 16 with over 50 people from around the world attending. Also attending were Lithuanian MPs, ambassadors, visitors from other towns and local residents and young people.
Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman, a member of the executive board of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, represented the LJC at the ceremony and presented a thank-you letter to Biržai regional administrator Vytas Jareckas. Sofia and Michael Tabakina of Israel, who arrived in Panevėžys on June 14 and who are frequent visitors, also attended the ceremony. Sofia’s family came from Panevėžys, Šiauliai and Biržai. Her ancestors were murdered in Biržai. As many Litvaks living in Israel do, every year Sofia Tabakina visits sites where her relatives were murdered in Lithuania.
Achikam and Riva Shapira of Israel paid an unexpected visit to the Panevėžys Jewish Community on June 16 seeking information about their relatives, who previously lived in Kupiškis, then moved to Panevėžys with some relatives moving to South Africa. Achikam’s grandfather God Shapira and his wife Khana were born in Memel, which is now called Klaipėda and his grandfather’s brother David Shapira lived in Kupiškis and moved to Panevėžys.
Only migration saved the family from the Holocaust, except for the elder brother Mordechai Shapira who stayed in Lithuania and was murdered in Skuodas during the Holocaust. Family members still remember everything connected with their former life in Lithuania. Achikam donated some family photographs to the Panevėžys Jewish Community archives.
Sheryl Silber of the USA and Alin Silberg of Canada visited on June 17 after taking part in the unveiling of the new Holocaust memorial in Biržai, Lithuania. They told their family’s story. Their great-grandparents, Dora Dviera (née Zak, 1863-1932) and Harry Moishe Meirovitch were born in Panevėžys, as did their other great-grandparents Yakhvida and Liba Zak. Their great-great-grandparents moved to South Africa in 1906 while some of their relatives remained in Lithuania and died in the Holocaust. After viewing photographs at the Panevėžys Jewish Community, the two women expressed the desire to see Jewish heritage sites in city. The Panevėžys Jewish Community received new information about the Zak, Meirovitch and Silberg families.
Lithuanian culture minister Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas has met with YIVO director Jonathan Brent and YIVO head of archives Dr. Stefanie Halpern. In the meeting they discussed the implementation of YIVO’s Vilna project, a seven-year-long international effort to preserve, digitize and connect the pre-war YIVO archives in New York and Vilnius. The project aims at recreating the Strashun Library, one of the largest Jewish collections in Europe before the Holocaust.
The Lithuanian side expressed the hope that next year, when the Baltic country marks the Year of the Vilna Gaon and Litvak History, YIVO would loan the pinkas of the Vilna Gaon shul, a book of statistics kept by the Jewish community which is considered one of the most important documents testifying to the life and history of the Vilnius Jewish community.
Full story in Lithuanian on the Lithuanian Culture Ministry webpage here.
Stasė Jusaitė, a museum expert at the Ninth Fort Museum in Kaunas, is asking the public for help identifying the woman on the left in the photograph below. The woman on the right is Ona Fridmanienė, the wife of Vulf Fridman, who lived on Italijos (now Mickevičiaus) street in Kaunas before World War II. After her husband died she remarried, to a man named Gustas. Returning from some hiding place–it’s not clear where–she found a Jewish baby boy in a basket and brought him home. When the boy was about three years old, his mother and father came from Vilnius and took him home. When they boy was between 7 and 9, they came to visit Ona again. Ona’s great-granddaughter is searching for the woman and her son.
The Kaunas Regional State Archive invited the public to come celebrate International Archives Day on June 11, although technically June 9 is the date set as an annual day by the International Council of Archives.
On June 11 the regional state archive showed an exhibit called “The History of the Suburbs of Kaunas: Vilijampolë from Manor Estate to City.” Vilijampolë is the Lithuanian name of the former Jewish neighborhood of Slobodka which became the Kaunas ghetto during the Holocaust.
Archive director Gintaras Druèkus welcomed visitors and said the exhibit was the first in a new series of exhibits featuring the suburbs and neighborhoods of Kaunas. He began a discussion of Slobodka with Kaunas Regional State Archive senior specialist and exhibit curator Nijolë Ambraškienë, department director Vitalija Girèytë, Kaunas Regional Public Library local history expert Dr. Mindaugas Balkus, social activist Dr. Raimundas Kaminskas, Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas, Jewish representative Michailas Duškesas and others, who informed the audience of different aspects of the history of the suburb.
A new Holocaust memorial was unveiled in the Biržai region on June 16. The 30-meter-long monument commemorates 522 known victims. About 2,400 people, 900 of them children, were shot in the Pakamponys (aka Astravas) forest in 1941, but not all names are known. Jews were an integral part of the culture and history of the northern Lithuanian town of Biržai.
Trees were planted along Žemaitės street to honor those who risked their lives to save Jews, the Biržai Jewish Culture and History Association reported.
A procession walked the same route Jews were forced to march to their deaths in 1941, from the site of the ghetto on Žemaitės street to the mass murder site in Pakamponys forest, where the new monument was revealed. This is only the sixth site in Lithuania where Holocaust victims are commemorated with inscriptions of names.
Joseph Rabie from France designed the monument. His great-grandparents came from Biržai and some of his relatives were murdered at Pakamponys. Abel and Glenda Levitt from Israel initiated the commemoration project. Philanthropist Ben Rabinowitz from Cape Town who also has roots in Biržai was a strong contributor to the project.
Mass deportations to Stalin’s camps began on this day in 1941.
About 17,500 people were deported from Lithuania between June 14 and 18, 1941, (the fates of 16,246 have been determined so far), a number derived from the 4,663 arrested and 12, 832 people officially deported. The deportations were a huge loss and tragedy for Lithuania. Not all those deported were ethnic Lithuanians: about 3,000 Jews, according to various sources, were also deported and about 375 Jews died at the camps and in exile.
Jews deported to Siberia resisted the brutality and terror of the oppressive Soviet organs with a deep spirituality and faith. In 1941 about 1.3 percent of the total Lithuanian Jewish population were deported, and as a percentage constitute the largest group by ethnicity deported from Lithuania.
Santariškės Children’s Hospital doctor Rozalija Černakova tells the story of what happened to her grandfather and family. Her grandparents were deported with their families. Rozalija’s parents were still children when they were deported: her mother 11 and her mother’s brother 8. They were sent to the Altai region. That’s where Rozalija was born.
Grant Gochin, an LA-resident Litvak as well as a Lithuanian citizen and a member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, has reported the Lithuanian Supreme Court will hear his appeal of a lower court’s dismissal of his case against the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania regarding the latter’s finding WWII-era Lithuanian captain Jonas Noreika was not culpable in Holocaust crimes. As reported earlier, Gochin has been waging a battle for several years now to have the finding reversed and a commemorative plaque to Noreika removed from its location in central Vilnius. Following the earlier court’s finding Gochin didn’t have “standing,” the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania issued a non-attributed document which the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) said fell within its definition of anti-Semitism.
IHRA response here.
Gochin’s appeal here.
The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and the Lithuanian Jewish Community invite the public to attend an unveiling ceremony of a plaque to commemorate the site of the former headquarters of YIVO in Vilnius at 3:00 P.M. on June 20 at the building now located at Vivulskio street no. 18 in Vilnius. YIVO, the most significant center for the study of Jewish culture, history and languages in Eastern Europe, was located near this site from 1925 to 1941. Its founder moved its activities to New York which became world headquarters following the German invasion in 1941.
Participants at the ceremony are to include YIVO director Jonathan Brent and YIVO board of directors deputy chairwoman Irene Pletka.
For a number of years now the Lithuanian Jewish Community has been inviting artists and special guests to celebrate Sabbath with the community. Last Friday LJC executive director Renaldas Vaisbrodas presented Lithuanian designer Agnė Kuzmickatė to members. She holds a doctorate and is sometimes called butterfly queen because of her use of her butterflies in her designs.
Renaldas led the discussion and tendered questions to the famous young designer, starting with questions about her family. Her father is the philosopher Bronislovas Kuzmickas, PhD, who was a founding member of Sąjūdis, the Lithuanian independence movement, who went on to become a member of parliament, a signatory to the Lithuanian declaration of the restoration of independence and served as deputy to parliamentary speaker Vytautas Landsbergis.
Agnė Kuzmickatė’s grandmother Gita Jekentienė was at a children’s summer camp in Palanga, Lithuania, when World War II arrived. She and some of the other children were evacuated to safer locations in the Soviet Union. When she spoke of her family, Agnė Kuzmickatė repeatedly returned to her grandmother Gita’s experience and said she only know understood how her grandmother’s environment shaped her. She said she and her grandmother often spoke about Jewish identity, about the Yiddish language and the tragic loss of family, all of whom, except for her grandmother’s brother, were murdered at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas. Returning to Lithuania after the war, her grandmother experienced all sorts of bullying and name-calling because she was Jewish. Agnė Kuzmickatė said she had never experienced this and everyone at school respected her because of her father’s activities on behalf of independent Lithuania.
