Litvaks – Page 5 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Lithuanian Jewish Community Appeals to Prosecutor General over Hate Crimes

Unpunished vandals continue to target spaces belonging to the Lithuanian Jewish Community. Last week, for the second time, perpetrators smashed the window of the Community’s Bagel Shop. Security camera footage clearly shows this was not an accident but a deliberate act aimed at one of the most frequently visited spaces of the :LJC. Sadly Lithuanian police seem incapable of recognizing crimes which exhibit the signs of anti-Semitism; instead they prioritize incidents solely based on material damage. While a few dozen or even a few hundred euros might not seem like a large sum, violence motivated by ethnic hatred is a hate crime punishable by imprisonment.

We emphasize this is not the first clearly anti-Semitic incident. Our Israeli flag was stolen and desecrated; glass near the children’s club in the Community building was smashed; the Vilnius Choral Synagogue was vandalized; the Šiauliai Jewish Community has been attacked multiple times and our Bagel Shop has repeatedly become a target for anti-Semites. Regrettably, in none of these cases did the Lithuanian police or prosecutors take meaningful action to identify and punish the perpetrators. This sends a dangerous message to malicious actors: they may spread hatred and endanger members of the community without consequence.

2025-07-172025-07-18

Kaunas Jewish Community Celebrates Volf Kagan’s 125th Birthday with Concert

The Kaunas Jewish Community has the pleasure of inviting you to a celebration of the 125th anniversary of the birthday of Volf Kagan with a concert performed by the Kiryat Ono youth orchestra from Israel.

Kagan came from Balbirishok and served in the volunteer army in the first Lithuanian republic. He fought in the early battles for independence and was awarded the medal Knight of the Order of the Cross of Vytis twice.

The Kiryat Ono youth orchestra’s program includes works by Lithuanian composer Čiurlionis, traditional European and Near Eastern melodies contemporary Israeli music and some excursions into jazz and pop arrangements.

The concert is free and open to the public.

Time: 5:00 P.M., Monday, July 21
Place: Great Hall, Vytautas Magnus University, Gimnazijos street no. 71, Kaunas

2025-07-15

LJC Forges Agreement on Judaica Research with Vilnius University

The Lithuanian Jewish Community has signed a cooperation agreement with Vilnius University for closer collabaoration in Jewish studies and Judaica research, including joint efforts initiating new educational and cultural projects.

LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said: “This is a great honor and very useful for us … especially with Vilnius University with its centuries of learning and research. Jewish history and culture doesn’t start and end with the Holocaust. There is a millennium of the Yiddish language, a rich history and an abundance of deep and significant traditions which we want to pass on to future generations.”

Vilnius University rector and professor Rimvydas Petrauskas commented: “The Lithuanian Jewish Community is an important partner for us. This agreement is an opportunity to stimulate knowledge of the history and even the present-day of the Jewish community.”

Pro-rector for partnerships professor Artūras Vasiliauskas and organization contact coordinator Daniel Šematovič were also present at the signing of the historic agreement.

2025-07-072025-07-07

Lithuanian Jewish Community Condemns Desecration of Ponar Memorial Complex

The anti-Semitic attack on the Paneriai (Ponar) Memorial Complex commemorating the victims of the Holocaust there victims there is an act of vandalism equivalent to the desecration of graves.

During World War II 96% of Lithuania’s Jewish population, more than 200,000 people, were murdered. Nearly half were killed in Paneriai. There is no Litvak family untouched by the Holocaust, which is why Paneriai is not merely a place where we lay flowers and light candles several times a year. It is a sacred site where every patch of soil covers the bones of the murdered. Here we mourn our loved ones, reliving their terror and suffering each time we visit. It is cowardly and despicable to fight the dead, yet such is the tactic of terrorists, to rape women, to kidnap and torture the elderly, to murder children in front of their mothers. And to smash windows, attack synagogues which also house schools and shoot diplomats. This attack at the Paneriai Memorial Complex is part of a global wave of rising anti-Semitism.

Regrettably the number of anti-Semitic acts of vandalism in Lithuania continues to increase. But no matter what the terrorists do, the Lithuanian Jewish Community will continue to stand firm with Israel in its struggle for survival and its right to self-defense.

We thank everyone who has condemned this attack and we call upon Lithuanian law enforcement and state institutions to take action and identify those responsible for this anti-Semitic offense.

2025-07-032025-07-07

Aleksandra Jacovskytė’s Exhibit Punktyras Now Showing

Aleksandra Jacovskytė’s exhibit Punktyras opened July 2 at the Artifex Gallery of the Vilnius Art Academy. It will run till July 25.

Jacovskytė’s works on display include drawings in pen and pencil made on found scraps of paper, freehand drawings made without plan nor narrative.

Jacovskytė is a lauded artist in Lithuania whose media include drawing, photography, graphic design and even scenography and costumes for the stage. Her work on the play “Always Yours, Anne Frank” earned her recognition in the form of the Golden Cross of the Stage award. Her works are on display in museums and demonstration spaces throughout Lithuania.

Time: July 2-25, 2025
Place Artifex Gallery, Gaono street no. 1, Vilnius

2025-07-032025-07-04

Israeli ForMin Visits Vilnius

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar visited Vilnius Tuesday, met with his Lithuanian counterpart and attended a ceremony in Ponar to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust there.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky told foreign minister Sa’ar the LJC and the organizations it represents fully support the state of Israel which is defending itself from terrorists who seek to destroy it.

According to LNK television evening news Tuesday, Sa’ar met with Lithuanian foreign minister Kęstutis Budrys and they discussed EU efforts to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza, and the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Budrys, Kukkliansky, Israeli embassy staff and other Lithuanian Foreign Ministry officials accompanied Sa’ar to Ponar, the largest Jewish mass murder site in Lithuania.

LNK reported the Israeli foreign minister at a press conference at the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said “Lithuania is our friend.” He also said both of his wife’s parents are Litvaks from Vilnius. He said this was his first but not his last trip to Vilnius.

Gideon Sa’ar replaced Israel Katz as foreign minister in November of 2024.

2025-07-032025-07-03

Garage

Members of the Kaunas Jewish Community and the public commemorated the Garage massacre last Friday at the location where it happened in Kaunas.

On June 27, 1941, Lithuanians murdered about 50 Jews at the Lietūkis automobile service garage in Kaynas as onlookers watched. They tortured the men by beating them with crowbars and forcing high-pressure water from fire hose down their throats. The victims were pulled off the streets at random for being Jewish. When they had killed all the Jews, they placed the corpses in a pile and one man climbed on top and performed a Lithuanian song on accordion. Some eye-witnesses claimed it was the Lithuanian anthem, other sources indicate it was a different song. Photographs were taken of the massacre as it was carried out. The infamous Garage massacre was one of many pogroms carried out in Kaunas during the last two weeks of June and into July and August..

After the commemoration in situ, kaddish was said for victims of the pogroms and Holocaust at the Jewish cemeteries in the Slobodka and Žaliakalnis neighborhoods in Kaunas.

Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas thanked everyone for participating and the Kaunas municipality for their support.

2025-07-03

Vilna Gaon Museum Presents Samuel Bak Catalog

The Samuel Bak Museum at the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum’s Tolerance Center will host a presentation of a catalog of works of art by Samuel Bak. There will be a number of speakers including Bak himself.

Time: 6:00 P.M., July 2
Place: Samuel Bak Museum, Naugarduko street no. 10, Vilnius

2025-07-012025-07-01

Victims of First Mass Murder Remembered in Palanga

Palanga Jewish Community chairman Vilius Gutmanas, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, members of the Palanga Jewish Community, Lithuanian MPs Mindaugas Lingė, Dalia Asanavičiūtė-Gružauskienė and Paule Kuzmickienė, Palanga mayor Šarūnas Vaitkus, deputy mayor Akvilė Kiljonienė, Palanga municpal Vulture Department director Robertas Trautmanas, staff from the Jonas Šliūpas Museum and high school students gathered to remember the first mass murder of Jews in Lithuania on June 27.

On June 22, 1941, a Young Pioneers summer camp of mainly Jewish children saw the brunt of the Nazi invasion with a building burnt down from aerial bombardment and children fleeing in panic. On June 26 all Jews in Palanga were arrested and crowded into two synagogues, one designated for females and young children and the other for males. The males were taken out and shot in the city’s main park on June 27. Around 111 people were murdered there that day, including 106 Jews and 5 Lithuanians. Remaining Jews were subjected to mass murder again on October 12, 1941. It is believed more than 400 Jews from Palanga were killed during both mass murders.

2025-07-01

Hundredth Anniversary of Birth of Leiba Lipshitz in Šiauliai

The Šiauliai District Jewish Community invites you to come celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Leiba Lipshitz. The Community and the Aušra Museum in Šiauliai will mark the date with an event commemorating this chronicler of the Šiauliai Jewish community in the 20th century and well-known personality with a presentation by historian Jonas Kiriliauskas.

Time: 4:00 P.M., Wednesday, July 16
Place: The Chaim Frenkl Villa and Museum, Vilnius street no. 74, Šiauliai

2025-07-01

Hundredth Anniversary of the YIVO in Vilnius

An international seminar for Lithuanian teachers dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the YIVO Institute (Jewish Research Institute) in Vilnius was held at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library, and a virtual museum was presented with a prepared methodological manual entitled “Beba’s Story,” based on the story of Beba Epstein, a girl who lived in Vilnius.

The opening of the seminar was attended by library director Aušrinė Žilinskienė, Israeli ambassador Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, MP Emanuelis Zingeris, diplomats from the USA and Germany and deputy Vilnius mayor Vytautas Mitalas.

The seminar was attended by 40 teachers from different locations in Lithuania who are interested in the history of Lithuanian Jews and the possibilities of using various historical sources in their curricula.

Speakers included Egidijus Aleksandravičius of Vytautas Magnus University, YIVO sirector Jonathan Brent, director of the National Library’s Judaica Center Lara Lempertienė and historian Saulius Sužedelis.

The seminar was organized by the YIVO Institute (USA) in cooperation with the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, the Martynas Mažvydas National Library, the city of Vilnius, the Goodwill Foundation and the Lithuanian Jewish Community.

2025-06-262025-06-26

Brothers and Sisters in Arms in the Service of Remembrance

by Sergėjus Kanovičius, www.lrt.lt

When a half year ago German ambassador to Lithuania Cornelius Zimmermann asked me whether I’d object to an initiative by which soldiers from a Germany armored brigade would help document Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania, I was at a loss for words. The first thought which occurred to me was, why now Lithuanian soldiers?

But as I sat in the waiting room of the German embassy… Over 14 years in the life of Maceva (Matseva, Hebrew for monument), there’s been a bit of everything–Austrian and German volunteers, Christian, Lithuanian high school students, US embassy staff, visitors from Israel. But Bundeswehr soldiers maintaing Jewish cemeteries and documenting grave monuments? Why?

2025-06-23

Intensive Yiddish Courses Coming This Summer

The Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius will host two weeks of Yiddish course at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels under the tutelage of Dov-Ber Kerler and Anna Vershik–both teachers at the former Vilnius Yiddish Institute’s summer courses–and Yuri Vedenyapin from Poland August 3-15. The cost is €350 per student and registration is open now by clicking the following link:
https://forms.gle/DR4nzbXrDS84TVQ37

Beginners need no knowledge of the language at all but the instructors say knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet would be a big help. For more information, write to: yiddishcourse@ort.lt

2025-06-182025-08-25

Scouting Camp by Boat

ewish scouting leader Michail Adomui Kofman is planning a scouting camp at the Vaitlunkis camp and recreation area in the Panevėžys district to be reached and exited by boat from July 2 to July 8.

The program includes abundant activities, four meals per day, amenities and camp badges and emblems.

The cost is 90 years for the full program, 15 euros per day for part-time participants and a donation of 30 euros from adult volunteers and older scouts. Part-time volunteers are asked to pay 5 euros per day. Parents and guests attending visitor’s day are asked to pay 10 euroes per day. Scout leaders supervising groups of young people are not asked to pay anything. There are discounts for two children from the same family at 75 euros per person, and 3 members of the same family pay just 6- euros each. Discouns don’t apply to adult family members.

2025-06-182025-06-18

Journey to Agartha Scouting Jamboree in Panevėžys

A jamboree of scouts from across the Panevėžys district including a contingent of Jewish scouts met in the Žalioji Forest and camped there from May 31 to June 1.

Almost 150 scouts already on scene greeted a minbus full of Jewish scouts just before the opening ceremony for the campsite.

The scouts were divided into age groups and activities for the youngest included handicrafts and botanical identification. Scouts aged 10-14 played games to increase vigilance, leadership and strategic thinking. Scouts 14-18 honed their skills in constructing shelters (knots, wooden construction, tool safety), built a dug-out bunker and cooked for themselves.

This was the first time Jewish scouts appeared with their new official troop title, the Yitzhak Meir Jewish Scouting Club.

The jamboree was called A Journey to Agartha, the mythical subterranean kingdom popularized in Europe by Ferdynand Ossendowski and René Guénon.

2025-06-18

Bundeswehr, Maceva Clean Up Old Jewish Cemetery in Merkinė

Soldiers from the German Bubdeswehr’s 45th armored brrigade and members of the Maceva Jewish cemetery preservation group spent four days last week cleaning up the old Jewish cemetery and Holocaust monument in Merkinė in southeast Lithuania.

Merkinė is the site of early if not the earliest Jewish settlement in Lithuania.

Brigade commander Christoph Huber, German ambassador to Lithuania Cornelius Zimmermann and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky visited the cemetery to see the soldiers’ work at a special ceremony for concluding the upkeep mission.

About 130 soldienrs working with people from Lithuania’s Maceva Jewish cemeteries initiative removed moss, polished headstones and cleared brush from the site. Members of Maceva photographed the markers and cemetery as well.

One German soldier stationed in Lithuania since April said: “It’s not an obvious thing to me that I as a German soldier can contribute to the meaningful work by Maceva at Jewish cemeteries. This was an especially moving experience for me, to look at our complicated page of history in Lithuania.”

2025-06-172025-06-17

On the War in Israel and the Situation in Lithuania

Israel along with every country in the world has the right to self-defense. As has become known from open sources, Iran has come dangerously close to producing a nuclear bomb, and that is a direct threat to Israel, named by Iran as their second-greatest enemy. We therefore view Israel’s actions as the necessary defense.

This situation is especially painful to members of the Lithuania Jewish Communit as, despite our love and respect for Lithuania, Israel is the homeland of the Jews and the only Jewish state in the world, where many of our elderly parents and other friends and loved ones live, and our children sserve in the ranks of the Israeli Dfense Forces. Our hearts and our prayers are with them and have been with them and wuth the hostages taken and held by terorists since October 7, 2023,

We support Israel unconditionally in the country’s struggle for existence and call on all nations of the world to come together against terrorism of the highest level.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community, which includes 32 member-organizations in Lithuania and abroad, also invites the Government of Lithuania and the governments of other countries to exert all efforts to insure the safety of the Jewish communities and their members who fund themselves the targets of anti-Semites.

We are also extremely grateful to the people of Lithuania who support Israel and also ask that the public assess critically the information they are receiving, and ask that information provided by Israel be trusted over that of other parties in the conflict, and that only verified information be shared.

Am Yisrael chai.

Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community

2025-06-162025-06-18

From Lithuania to Israel via Siberia

The Vilnius Jewish Public Library is pleased to announce a presentation of a translation of Shmaryahu Pustopetsky’s book From Lithuania to Israel via Siberia on Monday, June 16.

Translators Regina Kopilevich, an accomplished genealogist and tourist guide for Jewish Vilna, and historian and author Dalia Epšteinaitė will discuss the book with sociologist and historian Violeta Davoliūtė who specializes in family studies as moderator.

Pustopetsjy was a military officer in pre-World War II independent Lithuania, and was deported to Siberia, He was an active member of the Beitar movement before the Holocaust. In the book, he discusses both world wars, Litvak culture in the 1930s, the story of the so-called prisoners of Zion and the brutal prison camps under Stalin.

Time: 6:00 P.M., Monday, June 16
Place: Vilnius Jewish Public Library, Gedimino prospect no. 24, Vilnius

2025-06-112025-06-12

Rafael Gimelstein Takes Respectable 2nd Place in Lithuanian Championship

Lithuanian Makabi athlete and LJC member Rafael Gimelstein, 47, recently took second place in the Lithuanian Table Tennis Veterans Championship, both in individual play and in duals with partner Jurga Grucytė,

Last year Gimelstein won first in dual matches and shared third and fourth places for one-on-one play. He is currently preparing to compete at the World Maccabiah Games in Israel later this year as part of the Lithuanian delegation. Even so, he finds time to teach ping-pong to students at Sholem Aleichem in Vilnius. He also holds table tennis sessions at the park across the street from the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius open to the general public, with matches on the weekends.

2025-06-11