Litvaks

Lithuanian Political Illusions: The “Policy” of the Lithuanian Provisional Government and the Beginning of the Holocaust in Lithuania in 1941

The Lithuanian Jewish Community is publishing a series of articles by the historian Algimantas Kasparavičius, a senior researcher at the Lithuanian History Institute.

kasparavicius

Part 4

By their June 25, 1941, meeting, the Provisional Government resolved to “move towards the organization of police in Kaunas, and expand partisan activities in the countryside where gangs of Bolsheviks, Communists and Jews still remain.” [1] On June 26 the PG sent a request to just-arrived Wehrmacht commandant von Pohl, asking: “1) to step-up even more the cleansing operation, 2) to allow our partisan units to operate more widely.” [2] At the same meeting that day acting prime minister professor Juozas Ambrazevičius stated “the partisans of Lithuanian work in contact with the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Provisional Government,” and where military action had already subsided “the operation of the partisans becomes police functions and as sharp-shooters.” [3] These weren’t empty words. The mechanism which had been wound up began to spin. For instance, the Alytus TDA platoon noted in their operations report for the beginning of July that “according to reports from citizens 36 Communists, 9 Red Army soldiers and a larger number of Jews had been apprehended and are in detention.” [4] It’s characteristic the Lithuanian official accurately listed the number of Communists and Red Army soldiers arrested without bothering to count the Jews arrested. If anyone knows at least a little bit about the propaganda content of the calls to action issued by the LAF and has an understanding of the internal logic and semantics of the Lithuanian language, I believe that person has a clear understanding of what that signifies and why the situation was described in this manner and not a different manner in the report by the Lithuanian official.

On July 17, 1941, Alytus district administrator Antanas Audronis reported to Provisional Government interior minister colonel Jonas Šlepetis: “The are carrying out arrests and conducting searches, and fulfilling quotas for Communists, robbers and rumor-mongers. The quotas are turned over to the local German military command. By German order 82 Communists have been shot in the district. There are 389 under arrest and approximately 345 more Communists need to be arrested.” [5] If this document isn’t a typical example of Nazi collaboration, then what does collaboration even mean?

On July 16, 1941, Alytus district police chief and aviation captain Stasys Stasys Krasnickas–Krosniūnas gave a speech to his subordinates: “Jewry, as an inbred people who under the red banner as a cover want to enslave all of humanity through the means of the highest kind of sadism and turn us into animals, has been very quickly dealt with through the radical measures of the führer of the German people. We must consider that this problem has already been solved, but there still appears one or another Lithuanian, even a police officer, who attempts to solve this problem in their own way. I tell you there can not be two different opinions on this problem. There is and should be only one opinion, it must be executed 100%, and it is clearly set out in Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf.” [6]

Read more

Sole Jewish Survivor of Holocaust in Šilalė Says Old Jewish Cemetery Cattle Pasture Now

Until World War II, the majority of the residents of the western Lithuanian town of Šilalė were Jews. The brick synagogue was built sometime around 1910 to 1914 at what is now the corner of V. Kudirkos street and Maironio street. There is a hardware store there now. The old Jewish cemetery is now pasture for livestock, with just the Holocaust mass murder site next to it fenced off.

Zeligmanas

Lithuanian Jewish Community member Ruvin Zeligman is the sole survivor of approximately 1,500 Šilalė Jews murdered in the Holocaust. He was 10 when World War II began in Lithuania in 1941.

Although he hasn’t lived in Šilalė for many years now, when he speaks he still falls into the western Lithuanian dialect. His wife also comes from the region and they speak in dialect at home.

Zeligman remembers the great fire which ravaged the town in 1939, burning down his family home and the entire street, taking a terrible toll on the town’s mainly wooden buildings.

How do you remember Šilalė when you lived there with your parents and family?

At that time about 60% of Šilalė’s population was Jewish. My father was a religious figure: the cantor, mohel [performer of circumcision], a religious teacher and a reznik [a man educated in the rules of kosher slaughter]. My father graduated from the famous Telz yeshiva. He was a respected man and he helped the local residents of Šilalė with his knowledge of medicine, healing the sick. There were four of us children in the family. Mother took care of the home and the children. We lived well, back then each of us, the four children, had a golden goblet at home and mother used to bring out a silver candleholder for holidays.

Zeligmanas Ruvinas2
Zeligman lights candles for the murdered Jews of Šilalė at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius

Read more

Holocaust Remembrance Day Commemoration in Šešuoliai

Holokausto aukų minėjimo diena Šešuoliuose

On January 27 Stanislovas Budraitis, the chairman of the community of villages of the Šešuoliai aldermanship, organized and held an observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Šešuoliai administration building hosted an exhibit of photographs called Jews Are Our Neighbors and an exhibit of the book Lietuvos žydai [Jews of Lithuania]. Šešuoliai alderwoman Jolanta Lukšienė gave a welcome speech to those who gathered for the event.

Uk01

Stanislovas Budraitis, an historian, gave a presentation called “The Contribution of Jewish Culture to the History of Lithuania,” Želva Gymnasium Museum director Zita Kriaučiūnienė gave a report called “Jewish Life in Želva,” Molėtai Regional History Museum director Viktorija Kazlienė read her “Memories of Jews of the Molėtai Region,” Sketches of the Almanac editor Vytautas Česnaitis read “Jews of Ukmergė in the Pages of the Almanac” and Anita Albužienė, a member of the Ukmergė Jewish Community, recalled tragic events and shared them with those present.

A menorah with candles was lit at the former Jewish house of prayer and participants vitisted four mass murder sites 2 kilometers from Šešuoliai on the way to Želva. Members of the Ukmergė Jewish Community and the Gutman family, now resident in Vilnius but originally from Šešuoliai, participated in the commemoration.

Read more

Meeting with Dr. Antony Polonsky

Polonskis bendr

LJC members and members of the public attended a meeting with professor Antony Polonsky, whose book on Jewish history in Lithuania, Poland and Russia has been translated to Lithuania. Professor Šarūnas Liekis moderated the discussion.

The Brandeis professor is one of the most authoritative scholars of Eastern European Jewish history. His new book Jews in Poland and Russia provides an exhaustive view of the historical, political and cultural evolution of Jewish communities in these countries. Litvaks haven’t been left out, of course, and form a major part of the book.

In the 18th century the Polish-Lithuanian Jewish community was the largest in the world. The author elected not to look at Jewish history through the prisms of conflict and suffering, but instead to seek out the different principles by which the communities organized Jewish life and life with other communities.

Sale

Panevėžys Marks International Holocaust Day

On November 1, 2005, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution and called upon the world to mark January 27 every year as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On that day in 1945 as World War II was still going on the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp were liberated. This was the largest Nazi death camp where about 1.5 million people including the elderly and children were murdered, of whom about 1 million were Jews.

Lithuanian is a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance which actively participates in international programs to combat anti-Semitism. In 1941 Nazi Germany occupied Lithuania and over a few months the majority of the Lithuanian Jewish community had been murdered. Some Lithuanian Jews were sent as labor to ghettos set up in the cities. The Panevėžys ghetto was liquidated on August 17, 1941. About 13,500 Jews were shot. Studies by the International Commission show 200,000 Jews were exterminated. There are more than 200 mass murder sites in Lithuania, and about the same number of old Jewish cemeteries.

Paa5 getas

The date was marked on January 26 at the Sad Mother statue in Memory Square in the Jewish cemetery in Panevėžys. Participating were Panevėžys mayor Rytis Mykolas Račkauskas, Panevėžys city council member Alfonsas Petrauskas, teachers and students from the Margarita Rimkevičaitė Services and Business School and the J. Miltinis Gymnasium, members of the Panevėžys Jewish Community and city residents. Mayor Račkauskas spoke and laid a wreath, and city council member Petrauskas also spoke. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman recalled the horrible facts of Jewish extermination, Lithuanian-Jewish cooperation and mutual aid, and thanked Lithuanians who rescued Jews. He laid a wreath before the memorial. Jewish calendars from the LJC and stars of David paid for by Panevėžys Jewish Community member Jurij Grafman were passed out to participants. Wreathes and flowers were also laid at the Ghetto Gates monument. A documentary film about the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was screened at the Panevėžys Jewish Community, a conference was held and there was discussion on the facts in the cases of heroic rescuers of Jews.

Read more

We Remember at the Kaunas Jewish Community

“We Remember -Mes atsimenam” Kauno žydų bendruomenėje

Rememeber2

The Kaunas Jewish Community honored the memory of victims and took part in the international We Remember campaign on the eve of International Holocaust Day.

Photos: Members of the Kaunas Jewish Community, local residents in solidarity, students from the A. Puškinas and S. Darius and S. Girėnas gymnasia, whose students marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, educational assistant Audronė Zamalienė (standing in final photograph with M. Duškesas).

Read more

Litvak Al Jaffee Gives Interview to Lithuanian National Radio

Lietuviškų šaknų turintis karikatūristas Alas Jaffee: „Nekuriu nieko nešvankaus“

Litvak cartoonist Al Jaffee of MAD magazine fame told Lithuanian state radio’s Week of Culture program so many crazy things happen in the world that one must choose from the world of politics and celebrity at what to laugh now.
Al Jaffe4

He explained he doesn’t like doing anything offensive, cheap, crude or sexual in his art. He simply likes to portray funny situations. When a politician says something outrageous, all he has to do is spin it a little in a certain direction to create one of his trademark caricatures, the 95-year-old cartoonist who holds the Guinness Book of World Records record for longest career in cartooning.
jaf

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Kaunas Jewish Community Celebrates 120th Birthday of Yudl Mark

Kaune paminėtos Judelio Marko 120-osios gimimo metinės
Yudel_mark_001

The Yiddish Club of the Kaunas Jewish Community is celebrating the 120th birthday of Litvak-American Yiddish philologist, educator and author Yudl Mark (1897-1975). Mark taught at the Vilkomir Jewish Gymnasium and was one of the founders of YIVO. He moved to the United States in 1936, and to Israel in 1970. Among his many great works stands the 12-volume Groyser verterbukh fun der yidisher shprakh (Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language), which caused dispute with YIVO over the use of non-YIVO orthography.

Judel3

Reminder: International Holocaust Remembrance Day Events Begin Today

You’re invited today at 4:30 P.M. to attend a ceremony at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius where candles will be lit in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and the El malei Rakhamim prayer will be sung. Afterwards all are invited to the Lithuanian Jewish Community at Pylimo street no. 4 in Vilnius to a discussion of Jewish history with professor Antony Polonsky, moderated by professor Šarūnas Liekis, at 6:00 P.M.

Scratch an Historical Lithuanian Town, You Might Get a Shtetl

The Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department announced they are already planning for this year’s European Day of Jewish Culture and have selected a theme, “The Diaspora and Heritage: The Shtetl.” They characterized the choice as an intentional, mature and topical one for a country where the formerly large Jewish ethnic and religious minority thrived until the 1940s in shtetls.

They explained the word “shtetl” means small town in Yiddish. “When the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., Jews spread throughout the world, starting a new stage in the existence of the people, life in the Diaspora. Jews who settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the latter half of the 14th century and their descendants are called Litvaks. They are a branch of the Ashkenazi, Jews fleeing persecution in the German lands in the Middle Ages,” the department noted in a press release.

They continue: “It’s possible the origins of the shtetls reach back to the 18th century, but one shouldn’t get the mistaken impression that every historical Lithuanian Grand Duchy or Lithuanian town may be called a shtetl. Not so! Only a town where Litvaks comprised up to half, and often more, of the population and where the spirit of Litvak enterprise and intellectual ferment was felt can be called a shtetl without reservations.”

Read more

Lithuanians Rediscover Their Own Anne Frank


Estera Kverelytė second from left

Romualdas Beniušis writing in the newspaper Lietuvos žinios tells the story of Estera Kverelytė, a Jewish girl from Darbėnai (Drobyan or Dorbyan in Yiddish), Lithuania, who kept a diary in the months leading up to her murder at the hands of postman and policeman Vladas Jašinskas presumably in early July of 1941. Kverelytė’s diary has been lost but is known to have existed and was used in a documentary called “Nebaigtas dienoraščio puslapis” [Unfinished Page of a Diary] released by the Lithuanian Film Studio in 1964 and still available for viewing on the internet archive of Lithuanian National Radio and Television, according to the author. Beniušis is trying to locate the diary and is asking the public for help.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

We Remember

weremember_website_banner3

Bendruomene We remember

Jewish Community members including a number of Holocaust survivors

16113910_1393314054034017_8722848022136507426_n (1)

As International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 draws near, the World Jewish Congress is inviting everyone to join the global campaign We Remember. Please try to make sure your Community and its leaders visit schools, churches, synagogues, youth organizations and other institutions to deliver the message. Ask your friends, students and teachers who consent to be photographed to hold homemade We Remember signs as their portraits are taken and sent directly to facebook, twitter and/or instagram, and send a link to weremember@wjc.org

Why now?

In 2017 we have to remember the Holocaust.

Because so many more of the survivors are leaving us…

Because Holocaust denial is not getting weaker,

Because genocide is still happening…

And because it is so important to educate the coming generations.

Together, we want to remind the world about all that happened.

R.Rivlin We rememberReuven Rivlin, president of Israel

Radio Documentary: Lost Traces of Vilkaviškis

„Radijo dokumentika”: dingusio Vilkaviškio pėdsakais
Vilkaviškis synagogue

lrtradijas

The Lithuanian National Radio program Radijo Dokumentika aired the episode on at 11:05 A.M. on January 22. It is to be rebroadcast at 9:00 A.M. on January 24 just after the morning news program Ryto Garsai.

Feiga Koganskienė, who lived in the town in the Suvalkija region right up till World War II, says: “Vilkaviškis is only the name Vilkaviškis, it has nothing in common with the former Vilkaviškis.” When she returned to her home town after the war, the woman did not recognize it, and found none of her Jewish family or friends.

Vilkavišio ž buvusi gimnazija

The modern Vilkaviškis Jewish Gymnasium between
the wars, now the city municipal building.

Before the war Vilkaviškis was one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse towns in the region, but now it’s perhaps the most Lithuanian town in the entire country. Today only a handful of people remember Vilkaviškis in the interwar period, and even fewer are prepared to look into the town’s Jewish history. In the Lost Traces of Vilkaviškis episode, Radijo Dokumentika reporters walk with residents for whom the Vilkaviškis of that time is not just a collection of faded facts from history.

Lithuanian Jews behind the Iron Curtain: An Exhibit in Tblisi

Gruzija5vell

The David Baazov Museum of the History of the Jews of Georgia opened an exhibition January 18 called “Lithuanian Jews behind the Iron Curtain” about the Lithuanian Jewish community during the initial Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940. Members of the local Jewish community, diplomatic personnel and lovers of history were invited to attend the opening of the moving and historically informative exhibition of photographs and historical documents. Lithuanian ambassador to Georgia Giedrius Puodžiūnas and Tblisi Jewish Community chairman Jamlet Khukhashvili opened the exhibit and the Georgian minister of culture, the minister of reconciliation and civil equality and the Israeli ambassador spoke. The main focus of the exhibit was on individual efforts to resist restrictions on freedom, identity and historical memory. The exhibit is based on primary sources and items from the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, documents from the Lithuanian Central Archives, the Lithuanian Special Archives and personal collections. The exhibit was prepared by the Vilna Gaon museum in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Read more

Holocaust Remembrance Day with Dr. Antony Polonsky

You’re invited to a public meeting and discussion with Dr. Antony Polonsky (the Albert Abramson professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis and the chief historian of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw) called The History of the Jews in Lithuania, Poland and Russia at 6:00 P.M. on Thursday, January 26, in the Jascha Heifetz Hall on the third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community (Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius).

Moderator: professor Šarūnas Liekis.

Polonsky-2017-Web-EN-001

A Mekhaye Winter Children’s Camp 2016

Camp6

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Joint Distribution Committee traditionally hold the A Mekhaye winter camp for Children and did so late last year in 2016 as well. The camp is held in Dubingiai, Lithuania. It usually includes about 90 children who spend the holiday period together. This year as in earlier years we assembled a great team, people who know their work and who have been part of camp staff for several years now.

This year the theme was “Hanukkah in the shtetl,” since the camp coincided with the holiday. Each day camp counselors introduced a new topic and taught the children about it. Besides just being fun, the camp is very educational, even if information comes through games, as it often does. The children and staff say they feel right at home in Dubingiai now, as if it were their second home.

Read more

Lithuanian National Radio and Television Hosts Exhibit on Righteous Gentiles

LRT atidaroma paroda, skirta Pasaulio Teisuoliams

An exhibit of photographs of upstanding and courageous Lithuanian Righteous Gentiles who rescued Jews from the Nazis, performing the highest service to their nation, will open at the Lithuanian National Radio and Television Gallery at Konarskio street no. 49 in Vilnius at 3:00 P.M. on Thursday, January 19. The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial authority and museum in Israel bestows the title Righteous among the Nations, or Righteous Gentile, on citizens of other countries who rescued Holocaust victims. This exhibition was shown earlier at the Lithuanian parliament. As readers will recall, the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s annual calendar features Lithuanian Righteous Gentiles this year as well, with a photograph of Lithuanian president Kazys Grinius and wife Kristina on the cover.

Writer Icchokas Meras, the winner of the Lithuanian National Prize for Art and Culture who was saved from the Holocaust by Lithuanians, wrote about the rescuers: “They were the blooms of the morality of the nation, the spiritual giants of the nation, no matter whether they were educated or simple people, whether they were illiterate, clergy who carried with them the true love of one’s neighbor or simple peasants broadcasting seed to the ground by hand. They, intentionally or unintentionally, opposed the destroying power of the Nazis and its tool: those who murdered. We should remember and honor their heroism based on conscience, goodness, love of one’s neighbor and simply human pity.”

Panevėžys Jewish Community to Mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Dovydo žvaigždė

January 27 marks the day in 1945 when the victims of the Auschwitz death camp were liberated. Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp set up by Nazi Germany where about 1.5 million people were murdered, including children, and approximately 1 million of the victims were Jews, according to the best estimates.

The Panevėžys Jewish Community will observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 26 at the “Sad Jewish Mother” statue on Memory Square at Vasario 16 street next to the Vyturis Pre-Gymnasium.

Program:

2:00 P.M. Assembly, wreath-laying ceremony, speeches;

2:45 P.M. Wreath-laying ceremony at the statue “Ghetto Gate” (at the intersection of Klaipėdos and Krekenavos streets);

3:00 P.M. Forum dedicated to International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Panevėžys Jewish Community (Ramygalos street no. 18). Documentary film about the Holocaust.

Let’s remember the heroic rescuers.

Event supporters:

LZB _LOGO2GVF_logo-01