Litvaks – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community Marks Ghetto Anniversaries

July 15 was the 82nd anniversary of the liquidation of the Shavl ghetto. In July of 1941 two ghettos were set up in the northern Lithuanian city to imprison around 6,000 Jews from there and surrounding locations. Thousands were tortured and murdered there. By Himmler’s order the ghetto was renamed a concentration camp in 1943. From July 15 to 19, 1944, the 3,000 or so survivors were sent to Dachau and Stutthof concentration camps where the majority were murdered and the Shavl ghettos were closed.

Members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community gathered at the stone stele marking the entrance to the ghetto to remember both anniversaries on July 15 with a minute of silence, flowers, stones and candles to remember the victims.

This was followed by a film at the Povilas Višinskis Public Library. Professor Hektoras Vitkus from Klaipėda University spoke about the prevailing circumstance when the Nazis set up the two ghettos in the Lithuanian documentary. He said the city had a population of about 14,000 Jews on June 26, 1941.

The testimony of late Holocaust survivor and author Markas Petuchauskas was then presented. His testimony is well known in Lithuanian Holocaust historiography and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum in Lithuania both conserve recordings of his testimony.

2026-07-162026-07-17

Israeli Team Returns to Shulhoyf Site

Jonathan Seligman and other archaeologists from the Israeli Antiquities Authority have arrived back for summer and are working the Shulhoyf or Great Synagogue site in central Vilnius.

Seligman said they have uncovered already new finds this summer and plan to work down from the bimah to the ground floor in the main hall. The bimah stood about 1 meter high according to Seligman, and the upper surface is completely exposed now.

People interested in taking a guided group tour of the site are able to book a time on July 27, 29 or 30 by calling +370 650 91521 or writing info@gvf.lt. The minimum group size is five people and the cost is 20 euros per person, with an anticipated duration of 45 minutes. The tours are being organized by the Goodwill Foundation. More information available here.

2026-07-15

From the Other Side of the Photograph

Photo: celebrate. My grandfather, Jonas Noreika, is in the third row. My mother, then two years old, is among them. Source: Silvia Foti, The Nazi’s Granddaughter (Regnery History, 2021).

by Silvia Foti

An open letter to Liam, on his bar mitzvah

Dear Liam,

You do not know my background and what I carry, as I know your background and your family history. You barely know me, and there is no gentle way to tell you who I am. I read about you in an article your cousin Grant Gochin published in The Times of Israel, about your family and mine. I am writing to a boy I have met just once, for a singular moment, at your cousin Grant’s home, to bless you shortly after the day you were called to the Torah and became a man. I am the granddaughter of the man whose orders helped empty your family’s world of Jews.

My grandfather was Jonas Noreika. He governed the Lithuanian district of Šiauliai, where the town of Papilė lies. He signed orders that confined its Jews and gave away what was stolen from them. Your family was murdered inside the system he ran. Tsile Gochin, the sister of your great-grandmother Sarah, was one of them. My grandfather bears responsibility for her murder, and that of your cousins, relatives, friends and neighbors.

2026-07-092026-07-09

Rabbi Visits Ukmergė

Rabbi Harry Pell whose family roots lie in Ukmergė (Vilkomir) visited the Ukmergė Jewish Community recently. Pell teaches Judaism and Israeli studies in the United States and also works as a chaplain in the armed forces.

Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas provided Pell a tour of Jewish sites in the town and they spoke about Jewish history and heritage there. They also sampled imberlakh at a local restaurant.

2026-07-08

The Law Lithuania Froze in 2000

by Grant Arthur Gochin

In 2000 the Lithuanian parliament or Seimas voted to make the 1941 declaration a legal act of the state, then reversed itself within a week. In 2026 the demand to finish the job is back.

On June 19, 2026, the Lithuanian parliament hosted a conference which reconstructed June of 1941 without the Jews murdered during it. I documented that event in They Rewrote History before Our Eyes. The conference was the visible, scholarly face of a longer project. Its legislative face is older, quieter, and now on the move again.

On September 12, 2000, the Seimas adopted a law recognizing the Provisional Government’s June 23, 1941 declaration, Restoration of Independence, as a legal act of the Republic of Lithuania. The vote was 48 in favor, none against and three abstentions, and the official record lists it among laws adopted rather than draft legislation (Seimas record, September 12, 2000).

The declaration that law would canonize carries a list of signatory ministers. One of them is the minister of communal economy, the architect Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis–father of Vytautas Landsbergis, who chaired the Seimas in 2000.

2026-07-07

They Rewrote History before Our Eyes

by Grant Gochin, June 24, 2026

Lithuania condemns Russian falsification of history. On June 19, its own parliament provided the screen for another falsification.

Holocaust revisionism was not whispered in a corridor of the Lithuanian parliament. It was projected onto the wall of the Hall of the Act of 11 March.

On June 19, 2026, the Seimas hosted an international conference marking the eighty-fifth anniversary of the 1941 Lithuanian uprising. The official announcement promised a discussion based on “sources and historical analysis,” rather than later stereotypes. The program listed the speaker of the Seimas, senior politicians, members of parliament and historians. This was not a private gathering in a rented hotel room. It carried the location, publicity and institutional prestige of the Lithuanian legislature. (Seimas conference program)

One presentation was delivered by Roman Kuzmyn of Lviv Polytechnic National University. Its subject was the supposed similarities and differences between the 1941 uprisings in Lithuania and Western Ukraine.

2026-07-012026-07-02

Remembering the Garage Pogrom 85 Years On

On Monday the Kaunas Jewish Community held a public commemoration for the victims of the Lietūkis Garage massacre in Kaunas. Although the exact number of victims remains unknown to this day, it’s believed around 50 Jewish men were rounded up and then tortured to death at the automobile repair cooperative before the German army had taken control of Kaunas, Lithuania’s provisional capital.

The mass murder attracted spectators, mainly Lithuanians but also Wehrmacht soldiers and officers. It happened on June 27, 1941. Firehoses were forced down the throats of many of the victims, bursting their stomachs and intestines, leading to death. Those who survived the various tortures were murdered with crowbars. The corpses were piled up in the parking lot and one of the perpetrators climbed on top and played a Lithuanian song. Some witnesses said it was the Lithuanian national anthem.

The commemoration took place at the site in Kaunas with a commemoration in the evening at Vytauts Magnus University there. Both commemorations featured live music, including accordion music at the mass murder site.

Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas spoke at the commemoration at the site, as did Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Shelly Hugler Livne. The latter decried the world turning its collective back on the lessons learned from the Holocaust. Also attending were the American, German, Estonian and French ambassadors.

2026-07-012026-07-01

Keeping Memory Alive

A small group marked the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust in Lithuania at the Ponar Memorial Complex yesterday.

The Holocaust began in late June of 1941. Withing a few months about 95% of all Jews in Lithuania had been murdered.

Writer and director of the Vilna Gaon Museum Sergejus Kanovičius said: “Words can never express our respect for those who were murdered as well as prayer does. Their memory will always live in our hearts.”

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said: “Those gathered here today are the people who don’t need salutes from an honor guard or ceremonies planned in the finest detail in order to understand that the massacre of Jews begun 85 years ago was a tragedy for all of Lithuania, not just for our people.”

Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Shelly Hugler Livne said it was horrible people hadn’t learned from the painful lessons of history. She said the ever-growing anti-Semitism around the world happening today was the best proof of that. Hugler Livne said it was said to see the world going down the same road again.

2026-06-30

Holocaust Testimonies in Palanga

The Palanga Jewish Community and the Jonas Šliūpas Museum invite you to attend Lithuanian-American historian and journalist Ina Navazelskis;s presentation “Voices from the Blood-Lands” which includes eye-witness testimonies of the Holocaust and World War II. Ina worked at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., for 25 years, soliciting oral testimonies from over three hundred witnesses and Holocaust survivors. She focused on Eastern Europe and especially the Baltic republics in her work, even writing a book about the period between 1990 when Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union and the attempted coup in Moscow in the fall of 1991. The presentation includes testimonies from Poles, Jews, Lithuanians, Germans and others. The presentation is free and open to the public, but the organizers ask that you register beforehand by calling +370 612 86114 or by sending an email to j.sliupo.muziejus@lnm.lt. Palanga Jewish Community chairman Vilius Gutmanas will also speak at the event. A discussion is planned after the main presentation.

Time: 5:00 P.M., Wednesday, July 15
Place: Jonas Šliūpas Museum, Vytauto street. no 23a, Palanga

2026-06-29

The Wreath and the Knife

by Grant Gochin

On June 27, 2026, the eighty-fifth anniversary of the Lietūkis Garage massacre will be marked in Kaunas and by Lithuanian diplomats in Israel and the USA.

Expect the wreaths. Expect the candles, the bowed heads, the violin music, the brief and dignified statement. Expect a Lithuanian official, perhaps a diplomat, to speak of the Jews who “perished,” who were “lost,” whose world “vanished.” I have set out elsewhere, in What Lithuania Means When It Says “Vanished,” “Lost,” or “Perished,” what that vocabulary is built to hide. The short version is that none of those words contains a killer. They are the grammar of a state that has learned to mourn the Jews it cannot bring itself to say were murdered by Lithuanians.

Watch closely this June, because the commemoration is the knife.

2026-06-18

Lietūkis Garage Commemoration

The Kaunas Jewish Community is inviting the public to mark the 85th anniversary of the Lietūkis Garage massacre on Monday, June 29. The ceremony will take place at the commemoration to victims at Miško street no. 3 in Kaunas at 4:00 P.M., followed by a concert in the Great Hall at Vytautas Magnus University, Gimnazijos street no. 7, Kaunas, at 6:00 P.M.

2026-06-112026-06-12

Jewish Life in the Baltic Countries, 1917-1945

Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas in cooperation with the US Holocaust Museum, the Sugijara House Museum in Kaunas and the Ninth Fort Museum in Kaunas is holding a conference called “Jewish Life in the Baltic Countries, 1917-1945: from June 9 to June 11. The conference marks the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust in the Baltic states with presentations on Jewish life including art, music, literature, education, languages, religion, government, land and nature, emigration, resistance, the rescue of Jews and commemoration. The Kapela Kotra trio will perform Litvak music and documentary films by Saulius Beržinis will be screened.

The conference will be held in the Senate Hall at Vytautas Magnus at Donelaičio street no. 28 in Kaunas. The program begins at 9:00 A.M. on Tuesday, June 9. It begins at 11:00 A.M. on June 10 and at 9:30 A.M. on June 11.

2026-06-092026-06-09

More Visitors in Panevėžys

A delegation of three guests from Israel visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community last week. Mordechai (Moudi) Ben Shach’s father and grandparents had lived in Panevėžys and ran the former Kommerts Hotel there. His grandfather Yaacov Chachvich from the Tuch family came to Panevėžys in 1890 from the town of Gedera in what is now Israel.

The rabbi accompanying the other two visitors was looking at the Community’s photography exhibit and was surprised to see a photograph of his great-grandfather, also a rabbi. He said it was a great honor to visit Panevėžys, one of the most important Jewish religious and cultural centers in the world.

Moudi Ben Shach said the foundation for the life of the community is not just various activities and projects, and that meeting and talking to people, keeping in contact and working together for the good of the community are just as important if not more so.

2026-06-042026-06-05

Fayerlakh to Perform in Trakai

Fayerlakh is to perform at the Ninth Ethnic Communities Festival with other ethnic performers in Trakai south of Vilnius on Saturday.

Time: ~3:30 P.M.-6:30 P.M., Saturday, May 30
Place: Trakai castle, Karaimų street no. 1, Trakai, Lithuania

2026-05-28

Al Jolson Birthday Celebration in Hometown

The town of Seredžius (Srednike back in the Russian Empire) where Al Jolson was born into a Litvak family on May 26, 1886, is celebrating the 140th anniversary of his birth on May 29, 2026, with performances by musicians from the Kaunas Jewish Community and the unveiling of a commemorative bench honoring the Hollywood star. Born Asa Yoelson, he starred in Hollywood’s first “talkie,” meaning a motion picture with synchronized soundtrack, the Jazz Singer (1927, USA). The event starts at 4:00 P.M. on Friday, May 29, outside the former synagogue in Seredžius in the Kaunas district.

2026-05-28

Ethnic Minorities Department Awards Ruth Reches, Gercas Žakas

The Lithuanian Culture Ministry awarded its order of merit to psychologist and school principal Ruth Reches and Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas on Friday, Lithuania’s Cultural Minorities Day.

Gercas was recognized for his work in preserving Jewish identity, commemorating famous Litvaks, care for Holocaust victims and rescuers and Holocaust commemoration.

Lithuanian Ethnic Minorities Department director Dainius Babilas presented Reches the silver order of merit, third degree, for her consistent work in minority education, teaching Jewish culture and history and her work to have the Yiddish language included on Lithuania’s list of immaterial cultural treasures.

Reches is actually a Hebrew teacher as well as psychologist and principal. She earned a PhD in psychology several years ago and her publications and academic work include topics such as attachment disorders, trans-generational Holocaust trauma and developmental psychology. She has served as the principal of the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius, the capital city’s only Jewish primary and secondary school, for over a decade. She is the daughter of Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky.

2026-05-262026-05-26

LJC on New Decisions on the Sports Palace and the Šnipiškės Jewish Cemetery

The Lithuanian Jewish Community expresses its profound concern regarding the decision adopted by the parliament or Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania following its initial approval of draft resolution No. XVP-1423 which effectively revives plans first proposed more than a decade ago to convert the former Vilnius Sports Palace into a venue for congresses, conferences and cultural events (Government Resolution No. 597 of June 9, 2015).

These plans had previously provoked strong opposition from international Jewish organizations, including Jewish religious authorities. According to Jewish religious law, a cemetery is sacred and inviolable ground; not only are entertainment events and concerts prohibited there, but even disturbing the soil is forbidden. It was precisely for this reason that a special working group was established, bringing together representatives of state institutions, the Lithuanian Jewish Community and international organizations.

After lengthy and complex discussions, a compromise solution was reached, one that balanced respect for the dead, preservation of historical memory and the public interest. This agreement was confirmed by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania in July of 2024 (No. S-2174 of July 17, 2024).

2026-05-222026-05-25

Great Synagogue Exhibit at Litvak Identity Museum

The Litvak Identity Museum of the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum will open a new exhibit dedicated the Great Synagogue in Vilnius, damaged by the Nazis and destroyed by the Soviets, but never completely forgotten by Vilnius and the residential community.

The exhibit includes archaeological discoveries, depictions in art, historical photographs and reconstructions.

The opening ceremony is to include a performance by cantor Shmuel Ya’atom and a guided tour of the Gros-Shul exhibit by its curators. The exhibit runs till January 31, 2027.

Time: 6:00 P.M., Tuesday, May 19
Place: Litvak Culture and Identity Museum, Pylimo street no. 41, Vilnius

2026-05-19

Kaunas Jewish Community Thanks Righteous Gentiles

For more than 30 years now the Kaunas Jewish Community has thanked rescuers of Jews every spring with a special ceremonial dinner, expressing deep gratitude and appreciation for the bravery and humanity they demonstrated. This the ceremony was held last week.

“Discussing Lithuanian and other European Jewish communities after World War II is impossible without the stories of the rescuers of Jews. If not for them, who are mainly humble and quiet about it, not boasting of their heroism, many of us would not be here in this land, and the dark time of the Holocaust would be even darker,” Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas told the audience this year.

As time passes there are fewer and fewer rescuers remaining, although there are examples of living rescuers such as Righteous Gentile Vladas Palkauskas who is now 93 and still going strong.

2026-05-192026-05-19

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