The Kaunas Jewish Community accepted an invitation from Viktoras Klepikovas, monument specialist for the Jurbarkas (Yurburg, Georgenburg) regional administration’s infrastructure and property department, to attend the seminar Klepikovas organized called “Life and Diaspora in the Shtetl of the Jews of Jurbarkas” held at the regional public library. A large, overflow audience listened to deputy director of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute Rūta Puišytė who spoke about the Jewish history of Jurbarkas, daily life for Jews there and good neighborly relations between Jews and Lithuanians. She said Jews constituted 42 percent of the population before the Holocaust.

Viktoras Klepikovas presented the second speaker, Rita Vaiva Begenat, who finally grew weary of the apathy of local officials and all the bureaucratic obstacles, and so in 2003 began cleaning up the old Jewish cemetery in Jurbarkas herself. She cleaned up the grounds, cleaned headstones and renewed inscriptions. She said she needs help reading the inscriptions now.

KJC chairman Gercas Žakas spoke at the seminar and thanked the organizers for the meaningful event. Also attending were KJC members Judita Mackevičienė and Dobrė Rozenbergienė, both originally from Jurbarkas. KJC members toured the old Jewish cemetery and a mass murder site. The KJC delegation stopped at nearby Panemunė castle on the way home and were intrigued by the yellow star on the coat of arms of its former rulers, the Gelgaudas (Giełgud) family.

by Loreta Ežerskytė, Gimtoji žemė, the newspaper of the Ukmergė region

For more than 60 years now the mass murder of 12,000 Jews has been marked on the first Sunday in September in the Pivonija forest near Ukmergė [Vilkomir]. The commemoration happens at noon at the mass grave. Those who cannot attend, whose family members or other loved ones are buried here, mark the tragedy by lighting candles and praying at home. On Sunday many candles burned in Israel, the United States, South Africa and other countries whither fate sent Jews from Ukmergė.

The commemoration of the third-largest Holocaust mass murder site in Lithuania was attended by members of the Ukmergė Jewish Community and a large contingent of Jews from the Panevėžys, Šiauliai, Vilnius and Kaunas Jewish Communities as well as from other cities and countries. Regional administration head Rolandas Janickas and municipal administration director Stasys Jackūnas attended, and US embassy Vilnius deputy chief of mission Howard Solomon attended for the second year in a row.

A group from the Dukstyna primary school and local residents also attended the commemoration. Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas told those in attendance about how Jews were brought in groups there 76 years ago: “They were brought by the Nazis and local collaborators. No one had any mercy for the women or children, never mind the men. They all suffered the same fate. They were murdered because they were Jews. Only a few individuals survived, those who were deported. In the Taicas family only my grandfather survived, and that’s why I am standing here…”

Dr. Aurelijus Zykas, the director of the Asian Studies Center of Vytautas Magnus University which formerly occupied the second floor of the Sugihara House museum in Kaunas, characterized Japanese diplomat and Righteous Gentile Chiune Sugihara this way in an interview granted to the “What’s Happening in Kaunas” webpage. Dr. Zykas was one of the organizers of the Sugihara Week celebration in Kaunas from September 2 to 9.

Full interview in Lithuanian here.

Residents of Rokiškis, guests and representatives of the Panevėžys Jewish Community gathered in the hall of the Rokiškis Regional History Museum on the afternoon of September 8. They gathered for an event to celebrate the European Day of Jewish Culture. Event organizer Neringa Danienė presented the program, the first part of which honored Molėtai Regional History Museum director and Lithuanian linguist Viktorija Kazlienė. Visitor from the USA F. Shapiro presented her the Ruvin volunteer award and thanked her for promoting Jewish heritage and for her contribution to the march of memory in Molėtai.

by Ona Šimaitė
translated by Gloria Berkenstat Freund

At the time of the Second World War, Lithuanian-Jewish relations took on a sharply tragic form that could not have been imagined in earlier times. As a Lithuanian woman, it is bitter for me to assert that during the years of the worst torture of the Jews by the Germans, not all of the people in my country showed an elementary, humane sympathy to their Jewish neighbors of many generations and the worst of the Lithuanians–to my great pain!– even had their hand in the extermination.

The Lithuanian Special Squad (Ypatingasis Bûrys) together with the Nazis murdered Jews in a series of places. Such scoundrels as Babialis, Piragius and others will remain accursed not only by Jews, but also by Lithuanians.

Lithuanian police divisions not only carried out Hitler’s orders to kill Jews, but in many localities they themselves asked to do the mitzvah [commandment, usually translated as “good deed”) of murdering Jews or they randomly initiated various persecutions. I had more than one occasion to watch how Lithuanian policemen fined Jews for trifles and how hard-hearted and malicious they were during the deportations of Jews in the ghetto. Even leading the Jews to death, deeply degenerate Lithuanian policemen did not have the elementary tact not to show–during the last tragic hours of thousands of lives–their animal-like fury.