Holocaust

Thank You to Out-Going Cultural Heritage Department Director Diana Varnaitė

The Lithuanian Jewish Community sincerely thanks Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department director Diana Varnaitė for all the work she’s done to preserve Jewish heritage in Lithuania. The Community is also wondering who could replace her professionalism, intellect and sense of heritage as a significant legacy we leave to future generations.

Since Faina Kukliansky became chairwoman of the LJC in 2013, the Community has paid special attention to the preservation of Lithuanian Jewish heritage sites. Mainly because of director Varnaitė’s personal attention to Jewish heritage, it became one of the Cultural Heritage Department’s priorities and thus a priority for protection nation-wide. The Jewish story in Lithuania began almost 700 years ago and much has been lost, but what remains needs urgent work to save it as a treasure of the state and the people which draws people here from around the world.

Lithuanian Jewish heritage sites are relics of a cultural landscape created over centuries by the community which once numbered a quarter million people living in almost every Lithuanian city and town. It is around 200 cemeteries, more than 200 mass murder sites and mass graves and over 40 synagogues listed as cultural treasures.

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Jews from Australia Visit Panevėžys

The families of Jews who lived in Panevėžys before the war are now scattered around the world. Even before the war, back in tsarist times, Panevėžys Jews migrated widely to countries such as Argentina, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Brasil and also South Africa and Australia. The Panevėžys Jewish Community often receives visitors from these countries, and especially from South Africa. This time Kelly Rozmarim from Australia visited with her husband, brother and two daughters. She brought documents showing her grandfather Hona Shepts was born in Panevėžys in 1908 and immigrated with his brother to South Africa in 1939. Her father Judelis Shepts was a rabbi. He and his three sisters were also born in Panevėžys and stayed in Lithuania. All of them died in the Holocaust.

In South Africa in 1939 there was a world-renowned Jewish community called Ponevezh. Kelly Rozmarim has a document, a list of people who sailed to South Africa which includes members of her family. She and her brother have also discovered relatives in Šeduva, Pasvalys and Biržai.

The family’s visit to the Panevėžys Jewish Community enriched our archives and provided valuable information about the Jewish residents of Panevėžys back then. The visitors thanked Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman for his active efforts to preserve the Litvak heritage and to commemorate it in Panevėžys. All of the family members left warm words and greetings in the Community’s guest book.

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Great Synagogue Excavation to Resume

Dr. Jon Seligman of the Israeli Antiquities Authority has announced excavation of the Great Synagogue and the former complex of surrounding buildings known as the Shulhoyf in Vilnius will resume this summer July 9 and will continue till July 27. Those interested in volunteering should contact Dr. Seligman, address below.

The Great Synagogue and Shulhoyf of Vilna (Vilnius): The 2018 Season
A Research, Excavation, Preservation and Memorial Project

A Quick Summary of the Work until Now

The successful outcome of the preliminary excavation of 2011, the 2015 ground-penetrating radar survey and the 2016 excavation showed us the potential of continued excavation at the site to uncover further sections of the Great Synagogue and the surrounding buildings. Given the resources available to the team, we decided to initially concentrate on issues relating to the water system of the shulhoyf that developed in and around the Great Synagogue in the 18thcentury. Written sources inform us that a pipeline was established in 1759 to bring water from the Vingrių springs, that belonged to the Dominican friars, to the synagogue complex. It supplied water to the communal “well,” and apparently to the bathhouse constructed between 1823 and 1828 that included a miqve and a public lavatory.

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First Hebrew Camp

For the first time in post-war Lithuania this summer a Hebrew language camp was held from June 22 to 24. Vilnius Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymansium Hebrew teacher Ruth Reches organized the event. She has been teaching Hebrew to adults for two years now at the Lithuanian Jewish Community.

Ruth says the idea for the camp occurred to her spontaneously. “I was speaking with students and we began to talk about how it wasn’t enough to learn Hebrew in the classroom. We were thinking about immersion in a Hebrew language environment and how good it would be to go to Israel for that reason. But first we decided to attempt to create a Hebrew environment at a camp,” she said.

The camp was held on a rural farm where for three days over 40 people from all over Lithuania gathered. The people ranged in age from students to pensioners.

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LJC Criticizes Vilnius Municipality Invitation to Celebrate 1941 Uprising

Vilnius, June 27, BNS–The Lithuanian Jewish Community Wednesday criticized an invitation to the public from the Vilnius municipality to mark the anniversary of the 1941 uprising.

According to the Community’s statement, in June of 1941 “Lithuania won a brief and very conditional freedom essentially in exchange for becoming a Nazi ally.”

The LJC said the Lithuanian Activist Front which staged the uprising against the Soviet government became a tool of anti-Semitic policy in Lithuania and the Provisional Government never passed any act condemning the mass murder of Jews.

“The LJC can’t remain indifferent when several days ago in the heart of the capital a celebration was held, while flags of mourning should have flown in the country to mark the first victims of the Holocaust in Lithuania,” the statement said.

The uprising in June, 1941, is supposed to have been a struggle the restore Lithuanian statehood destroyed by the Soviet occupation, but critics say the insurgents and the Provisional Government were not favorable towards Jews.

The invitation published on the internet page of the Vilnius municipality claims the 1941 uprising demonstrated the resolution of Lithuanians to fight the Bolshevik occupation.

“In June, 1941, to avenge for those murdered and family members deported to Siberia and other northern regions of the Soviet Union, the sons and daughters of our nation, relying only upon their own bravery and themselves, were able to drive out the hated occupier and albeit briefly (June 22 to 28, 1941) restore Lithuanian statehood and the independence lost due to the culpability of their politicians and military leaders,” the Vilnius municipality’s invitation said.

It’s Unfair to Say All Lithuanians Murdered Jews

The Lithuanian Jewish Community has never said or claimed and never will that all Lithuanians are murderers of Jews. Although approximately 95 percent of Jews in Lithuanian were murdered in the Holocaust with the help of local collaborators, it’s not fair to label the entire Lithuanian people with the offensive and shameful accusation of murderers.

This is especially not fair to those who remained steadfast and passed the most difficult trial of being human. Those brave Lithuanians who seemed to find themselves in a hopeless situation and nonetheless found within themselves the power to fight antihuman ideas and Nazi doctrine. We can speak the names today of more than 800 of these quiet heroes although certainly the names of more have been lost to time.

Marking on June 25 the massacre of Jews at Lietūkis garage in Kaunas, honoring the memory of our ancestors and their rescuers, the LJC cannot remain indifferent when several days ago in the heart of the capital a celebration was held, while flags of mourning should have flown in the country to remember the first victims of the Holocaust in Lithuania.

On June 21, 2018, the municipality of the city of Vilnius published on their internet page an invitation to mark the anniversary of the June 23 uprising in which, among other things, that in June of 1941 revenge was exacted for the deportation of family members to Siberia and other northern regions of the Soviet Union, and that the sons and daughters of our nation, relying only upon their own bravery and themselves, were able to drive out the hated occupier and at least briefly (from June 22 to 28, 1941) restore Lithuanian statehood and the independence lost due to the culpability of their politicians and military leaders.

Should we really be encouraging the celebration of revenge, should we really utilize hate in the alleged goal of uniting the nation? Even after 70 years have passed since the end of the war, these sorts of phrases, recalling those during the Holocaust, remain painfully familiar.

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Kaunas Remembers Lietūkis Garage Victims

On an overcast Monday afternoon members of the Kaunas Jewish Community, friends of the Community and those who care honored the victims of the Lietūkis garage massacre. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky recalled the historical event when in the first days of World War II in Lithuania when one group of citizens brutally tortured and murdered another group of citizens just because they were Jews as a crowd looked on in the middle of the day. She spoke about enduring myths about Jews, the Holocaust and the reasons the Holocaust happened.

Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas and ghetto inmate Fruma Kučinskienė recalled what their family members said about those horrible and not-so-distant times and the still living, blood-curdling images fixed in memory.

Chairman of the Kaunas chapter of Sąjūdis [Lithuanian independence movement] Raimundas Kaminskas and Ninth Fort Museum deputy director Marius Pečiulis both expressed condolences to Holocaust victims and their descendants and apologized for the crimes of their countrymen.

All speakers expressed a common idea: the need to educate children, not just to talk about the historical facts, crimes against humanity and genocide, but to try to figure out together with children how and why these sorts of crimes occur, what happens to the human mind, psyche and spirit so that a person loses all sense of humanity and commits inconceivable acts.

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Israelis Visit Panevėžys

For the fourth year now Edit Perry from Israel has led delegations of visitors to Panevėžys and the Panevėžys Jewish Community. This year, on June 25, the guide and teacher led a group of 23 people from Tel Aviv and other locations in Israel engaged in researching Jewish heritage and history. They are university students who study Jewish history during the academic year and spend their summers actually visiting locations connected with the life of their forefathers in Lithuania and Poland.

Community member Jurij Smirnov shared his experience of the Holocaust as a child in the concentration camps in Šiauliai and Panevėžys, the death of family members and how he came to Panevėžys with surviving family.

Following the discussion, the visitors viewed a photography exhibition and Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman presented a brief history of the Jews of the Panevėžys region before World War II. All visitors were given a Jewish calendar published by the Lithuanian Jewish Community featuring drawings and paintings of Lithuanian synagogues by Gerardas Bagdonavičius made before the war.

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Honor the Lietūkis Garage Victims

The Kaunas Jewish Community invites you to come and honor the victims of the Lietūkis garage massacre at the monument commemorating these horrific events (Miško street no. 3, Kaunas) at 5:30 P.M. on June 25. Excursions to other Holocaust sites, the Slobodka ghetto, the old Jewish cemetery in the Žaliakalnis neighborhood and the Seventh Fort will follow the commemoration.

First Lithuanian Dramatic Film about Mass Murder of Jews in Production

Lately it’s been fashionable to talk about Lithuania’s breakthrough and how we can achieve it. Stasys Baltakis, the producer of the film Izaokas–probably the first Lithuanian dramatic film to discuss the relationship between Lithuanian Holocaust perpetrators and Jews–says we will begin to move ahead as a country and nation only when we accept and solve internally the problems of our darkest history and identity.

Over the last several years there have been more open discussions of the Holocaust in Lithuania and collaboration by locals. About 90 percent of the Jews of our country were murdered. Stasys Baltakis, however, says there is a lack of constructive discussions and–most importantly–an open and sincere recognition of history.

Already in post-production, Jurgis Matulevičius’s first film with a running time of 90 minutes tells the story of main character Andrius Gluosnis who murders the Jew Izoakas [Isaac] in the Lietūkis garage massacre in Kaunas in 1941. The film is based on the short story of the same name by Antanas Škėma. It is scheduled to hit theaters on September 15.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Conference to Preserve Jewish Heritage in Pušalotas, Lithuania

A conference and inspection tour took place in Pušalotas, Lithuania, June 15, of the synagogue there known as “Yoshke’s house” which also included a Jewish primary school. The synagogue was built by Howard Margol’s great-grandfather, all of whose relatives lived in Lithuania during Tsarist times. One of Margol’s relatives is former Israeli prime minister and long-time leader of the Labor Party Ehud Barak.

The inspection tour in Pušalotas included members of the Panevėžys Jewish Community, Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon, members of the Pušalotas community, officials from the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department and staff from the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pasvalys regional administration chairman G. Gegužinskas, Lithuanian MP A. Matulas, Pušalotas township alderwoman P. Stravinskienė and Pušalotas community chairman A. Kumpauskas, among others. They inspected the synagogue which is in critical condition. For 75 years it hasn’t been used as a synagogue and was left derelict for some time. Margol and family had a commemorative plaque placed on the synagogue and put the old Pušalotas Jewish cemetery in order in 2005. The external structure of the synagogue is intact and authentic, and it could be restored and used by the local community.

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YIVO Director Jonathan Brent Visits Vilnius

YIVO executive director and CEO Jonathan Brent led a delegation visiting Vilnius earlier this week. The Lithuanian Jewish Community cherishes our long-term cooperation and meaningful work with YIVO in preserving the Jewish cultural heritage in Lithuania and the world. We thank the United States embassy for their invitation to attend a reception for Jonathan Brent.

City of Kaunas Honors Righteous Gentile, Dutch Consul Jan Zwartendijk

Jan Zwartendijk, the honorable consul of the Netherlands in Lithuania at the beginning of World War II and a rescuer of Jews, was honored Friday at Freedom Alley in Kaunas outside his former office where he also worked as a representative of the Philips company. The location was decorated with a lighting installation and a commemorative plaque was unveiled to honor Zwartendijk.

Dutch artist Giny Vos said she was trying to commemorate Zwartendijk the man, but also his humanitarian actions; Zwartendijk never considered himself a hero, although his so-called Curaçao end-visas he issued over 10 days in the summer of 1940 ended up saving around 2,400 lives directly in conjunction with transit visas issued by Japanese ambassador Chiune Sugihara, and countless more lives if succeeding generations are included. She said her light-show installation’s spiral symbolized life, movement, growth and hope, and that each individually sized and colored LED light in the installation represented a life saved, with the emphasis on hope, light and the future.

Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė, Kaunas mayor Visvaldas Matijošaitis and Jan Zwartendijk’s son Rob spoke about the man and his humanitarian actions at the event.

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Solomonas Atamukas’s Book on Lithuanian Jews Launched at Lithuanian Jewish Community

A new book by the late scholar and historian Dr. Solomonas Atamukas (1918-2014) was lauched June 11 in the Jascha Heifetz Hall at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius. The book, “Lietuvos žydų keliai: atmintis, tikėjimas, viltis” [Paths of the Jews of Lithuania: Memory, Faith, Hope] was written and intended by the author to be a continuation of his first book. Late in life Dr. Atamukas suffered health problems and in order to insure the continuation of his first book would be published, enlisted the help of his son, daughter, grandson and daughter-in-law, who performed careful research and collection of information. According to his daughter, long-serving deputy chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community Maša Grodnikienė, the family paid for the publication of both books.

This is a useful new source for the reader interested in Litvak history. It contains 458 biographical sketches, called biograms in the book, of Litvaks, arranged by country of residence. The book contains large amounts of information about world-famous Litvaks, their origins in Lithuania, education, work and achievements. The author sought to collect as much information and write as many biograms as possible about Holocaust survivors.

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Lithuania Marks Day of Mourning and Hope on June 14

At 3 o’clock in the morning on June 14, 1941, NKVD officers began mass arrests of Lithuanian citizens. Entire families of Lithuanians and Jews were deported to Siberia deep in the Soviet Union. More than 30,000 people from Lithuania were taken away in one week. They were sent to Siberia in sealed rail cars.

Lithuania marks this anniversary as the Day of Mourning and Hope in honor of those who died in exile.

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Kaunas Mayor Invites Public to Unveiling of Zwartendijk Monument

Kaunas mayor Visvaldas Matijošaitis has issued public invitations to attend a ceremony to unveil a monument to WWII-era Dutch diplomat Jan Zwartendijk across from the Knygų Ministerija bookshop at Laisvės Alley no. 29 in Kaunas at 3:30 P.M., Friday, June 15. Zwartendijk issued the so-called Curaçao final-destination visas to Jews fleeing the Holocaust in Lithuania.

Condolences

With great sadness we report the death of Anastazija Votrinienė who passed away June 4. She was born in 1936. Our deepest condolences go to her sister, Jelena Jakiševa.

Unexpected Guests Visit Panevėžys Jewish Community

A group of former classmates now living in Israel, Russia and the United States have visited Panevėžys together. They attended a school which began operating in Panevėžys after liberation from the Nazis in September, 1944. Many of the students were Jewish. One such is David Dworkin, who now lives in Miami, Florida. His father was an airman and the commander of a military unit. Another is Semion Zuselevič Šteiman who lived on Ramygalos street with his parents. His children Genadij, Leonard and Jevgenij also attended the school. Vladimir Maksimičiov lived in Panevėžys and is a member of the Panevėžys Jewish Community. His brothers Genadij and Baruch also attended the same school after the war.

Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman told the guests the history of Jewish schools in Panevėžys, include the Yavne girls’ religious gymnasium which some of the visitors attended before the war, built in 1922 by Rabbi Josef Shlomo Kahaneman. It was closed down in June of 1940 along with all other Jewish schools, gymnasia and high schools in Lithuania. The chairman also told the guests about community activities and treated them to kosher wine and matzo.

The visit was useful to the Panevėžys Jewish Community as well as the visitors and the chairman said he’s grateful so many people have come and shared new photographs and documents with the community over the last 20 years.

Those wishing to visit during summer should contact beforehand the chairman of the Panevėžys Jewish Community, who might be able to help locate old homes, former teachers and places where parents and grandparents once worked.

Old Kalvarija Synagogue Springs Back to Life

Leading Polish musical group Vocal Varshe performed a concert of Jewish song last week at the old synagogue complex in Kalvarija, Lithuania, where services were last held more than 77 years ago.

The Polish group sang and played accordion to a full house. The windows were opened and the music reverberated throughout the former shtetl where Jews were the majority population before the Holocaust. A local youth choir sang a Jewish song at the beginning of the concert to honor the victims.

Construction began on a synagogue in “Jewish Calvary” in 1713 when the ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Augustus II, granted the kahilla a charter to engage in different forms of trade and manufacturing, to set up cemeteries and to build synagogues not taller than the highest church.

The Kalvarija synagogue complex is listed on the Lithuanian registry of protected cultural treasures. It includes the Baroque synagogue built in the 18th century, the electric synagogue built in the latter half of the 19th century and the adjacent Talmud school and rabbi’s residence built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

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Polish Group Vocal Varshe Performs at Sacred Site in Vilnius

Vocal Varshe, a group of musicians from Poland, performed songs in Hebrew, Yiddish and Ladino at the site of the former Great Synagogue in Vilnius, destroyed after World War II, on the evening of June 6, 2018. The event was organized by the Polish Institute in Vilnius and the Lithuanian Jewish Community. The Polish musicians from Warsaw performed songs from the Warsaw and Vilnius ghettos.

LJC executive director Renaldas Vaisbrodas began the event with the poem Vilne by Moshe Kulbak.

Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius greeted the audience and said the concert venue reminded the public, Polish and Lithuanian residents of Vilnius, that more could have been done to save Jews from the Holocaust. He also called for an appropriate commemoration at the site, whether that be partial reconstruction of the synagogue or some other form, to remind future generations of what happened. He said this would serve to unite the different ethnic communities in Vilnius.

LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky thanked the musicians for coming and performing and the Vilnius mayor who granted permission for the concert at the site infused with the spirit of the teachings of the Vilna Gaon.

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