Learning, History, Culture

Virtual Shtetl Newsletter, July 19, 2016

75th Anniversary of Pogrom in Jedwabne

On July 10, 1941, an anti-Jewish pogrom took place in Jedwabne. On the 75th anniversary of these tragic events, the POLIN Museum wishes to commemorate the victims of this crime. Taking into consideration the difficult and multifaceted nature of the murder in Jedwabne, we have prepared a description of the pogrom, detailed timeline of the events and fragments of several academic works regarding the crime. More here:
http://mail.enewsletter.pl/k3/422/on/1dtn/0b12f3f9e95cf/lgriUOG5

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Kaunas Jewish Community Celebrates Lithuanian Statehood Day

Kauno žydų bendruomenė kartu su kauniečiais švenčia Valstybės dieną

The Kaunas Jewish Community together with the city’s public organizations and municipal representatives celebrated Lithuanian Statehood/Coronation of King Mindaugas Day on July 6.

Those interested in the city’s history and that of its Jewish community were given a tour of the Slobodka neighborhood (Vilijampolė) where the Kaunas ghetto was established. The Veršva Vilijampolė Community Center organized the excursion led by Raimundas Kaminskas, an expert in the history of the neighborhood. Others took part holding and attending a Statehood Day celebration at the War Museum in Kaunas.

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Road to Eden Exhibit in Kaunas

road to eden

The exhibit space on the fourth floor of the Kaunas Castle section of the Kaunas City Museum (Pilies street no. 17) is hosting an exhibit of paintings by Anatolijus Michailovas-Klošaras called “Road to Eden.” The exhibition opened July 7.

The theme of the paintings revolves around World War II in Europe. The paintings fall into three time-periods: pre-war peace, horrors of war and complicated post-war years.

The painter said if we don’t learn from the past the horrors of war could be repeated.

Anatolijus Michailovas-Klošaras was born and raised in Kaunas. His first showing of works was in Kaunas in 1996. He began showing abroad in 2002.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Yusuf Hamied Receives First Chemistry Alumni Medal

Dr. Yusuf Hamied was awarded the first ever Department of Chemistry alumni medal in a ceremony on March 17, 2016. The vice-chancellor of the University of Cambdridge, professor Leszek Borysiewiecz, presented the medal “for services to the community that have brought honour to the Department of Chemistry.”

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American Jewish Committee Celebrates 110th Anniversary in Moldova

Moldova Joe Resnik

From left: Lithuanian ambassador to Moldova Rimantas Latakas, LJC chairwoman
Faina Kukliansky, AJC CEO David Harris

July 12, 2016, Chisinau (Kishinev), Moldova–AJC, the global Jewish advocacy organization founded in 1906 after vicious pogroms in Tsarist-ruled Kishinev, marked its 110th anniversary during a visit to the Moldovan capital.

The trip was highlighted by private meetings with president Nicolae Timofti, prime minister Pavel Filip, speaker of parliament Andrian Candu and deputy foreign minister Lilian Darii.

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Lithuanian Holocaust Atlas Author: “I Crawled through the Underbrush to Find Commemorative Stones”

The Lithuanian internet news site 15min.lt has published an extensive interview with Milda Jakulytė-Vasil, the author and prime mover behind the Lithuanian Holocaust Atlas, a hardcopy manual on every known Holocaust mass murder site in Lithuania complete with GPS location and directions for drivers in Lithuanian and English, with an extensive interactive version on the web.

Known in Lithuanian as “Holokausto Lietuvoje atlasas,” the Lithuanian version is available here:
http://holocaustatlas.lt/LT/

with a complete English version here:
http://holocaustatlas.lt/EN/

In the interview on 15min.lt, Milda Jakulytė-Vasil recalled crawling through the brush to find long-neglected mass murder site commemorative markers. She also spoke about compiling the atlas and the help she received from the IHRA, but also from local people, local officials and politicians at the national level, including conservative opposition leader Andrius Kubilius.

Full interview in Lithuanian here.

Opening Ceremony for Yiddish Summer Course

Vilniaus Jidiš institute, esančiame Vilniaus universitete, liepos 17 prasidėjo vasaros programa 2016

Students, teachers and staff and other interested parties gathered at an opening ceremony for the summer course of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute at Vilnius University Sunday. Director Dr. Šarūnas Liekis welcomed the new students and thanked supporters and teachers from around the world. The courses are arranged in four levels and will end August 12.

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Bagel Shop Café Draws Attention of ARD-1 German Public TV Crew

Vokietijos Visuomeninės televizijos ARD-1 kūrybinės grupės ypatingas dėmesys LŽB „Beigelių krautuvėlei“

German public television channel ARD-1 filmed footage at the Lithuanian Jewish Community on July 13 with a focus on the Bagel Shop Café for a program to be called “Berlin-St. Petersburg,” according to director Christian Klemke.

He said although the itinerary for the film crew had been decided carefully prior to their trip through Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia, they had encountered interesting sites along the way which they will include in the final production.

When they were considering what to film in Vilnius, they discovered Vilnius’s rich pre-war Jewish cultural and spiritual life. “I wanted to know what there is now, so many years after the Holocaust,” Klemke said. Local producer Karolis Pilipauskas told him about the Bagel Shop Café. The Lithuanian Jewish Community facilitated meetings with members of the older generation, including Holocaust survivors. “I was very interested to hear their stories. Young members of the Jewish community also came to the café,” Klemke said.

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Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium Graduation Celebration

Šolom Aleichemo ORT gimnazijoje šiandien, liepos 15d. švenčiamos išleistuvės

The Lithuanian Jewish Community congratulates the students, parents and teachers on this significant day.

This year the Sholem Aleichem school graduated 18 high school students. This is the school’s 13th graduating class. Students come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds–Jewish, Lithuanian, Russian, Polish and others–and the school is a place of mutual respect and tolerance. Principal Miša Jakobas says he’s very proud because everyone passed their final exams, a major achievement in comparison to the problems encountered in other Lithuanian high schools. He said there were students who scored in the 96 to 97 percentile range, and one student scored 100% on the English language test, while the average scores were in the 70% range.

Let’s Not Name Streets after Nazi Collaborators

Let’s Not Name Streets after Nazi Collaborators

In Vilnius we have a street named after a Nazi collaborator, Kazys Škirpa, and as an elected city councillor I asked the municipality to change the name.

The street is in the absolute centre of town, between the Cathedral, the National Museum, the Castle and the Hill of the Three Crosses. Škirpa wrote the Lithuanian equivalent of Mein Kampf, and started an organisation to clear all the Jews out of Lithuania, men, women and children. He blamed them for Soviet atrocities just because they were Jewish.

I don’t think that’s the kind of person we should be celebrating on our walls. I asked the Names Commission to consider changing the name, to honour the Lithuanians who saved Jews from the Holocaust, instead of honouring a Nazi collaborator who wanted to create a racially pure Lithuania with Hitler’s help.

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Yiddish Summer Course

The Vilnius Yiddish Institute at Vilnius University proudly announces

The 2016 Summer Program in Yiddish Language and Literature17 July — 12 August 2016

offering four levels of intensive language instruction:

YIDDISH I: for beginners    YIDDISH II: intermediate
YIDDISH III: higher intermediate    YIDDISH IV: advanced

more information from Indre Joffyte, info@judaicvilnius.com
(Coordinator of Programs at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute)

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Kiev Renames Street after Nazi Collaborator

Authorities in Kiev decided July 7 to rename the city’s Moscow Prospect in honor of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

Allegedly pro-Western Ukrainian leaders and protestors have idolized Bandera, and the move to rename a street after the man could further trouble relations with neighboring Russia, Lithuania’s Baltic News Service reported on July 9.

As with Lithuania’s Nazi puppet government in the summer of 1941, Bandera declared Ukrainian independence as soon as the Nazis invaded the Ukrainian SSR.

Newsweek Magazine on the Last Nazi Hunter

by Stav Ziv

0715nazi04
Lithuanian-born Holocaust survivor Yitzhak Kagan visits the Chamber of the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. Photo: GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty

Efraim Zuroff has accomplished much in his long career, but there’s one thing he’s particularly proud of: He’s the most hated Jew in Lithuania.

His Lithuanian friend Ruta Vanagaite agrees: She called him a “mammoth,” a “boogeyman” and the “ruiner of reputations”—and that’s just in the introduction to a book they co-authored.

Last summer, in a journey that helped cement his notoriety, Zuroff set off across the Lithuanian countryside in a gray SUV with Vanagaite, an author best known for a book about women finding happiness after age 50. Their goal: to visit some of the nation’s more than 200 sites of mass murder during World War II. On the road, between destinations, they talked and talked, recording their conversations. The trip formed the basis of their 2016 book, Our People: Journey With an Enemy, an instant best-seller in Lithuania. It also ignited a rancorous debate among Lithuanians, who have long downplayed their country’s considerable role in the Holocaust.

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Farwell My Friend: Three Things I Learned from Elie Wiesel

Dear Friends,

Please find below Moshe Kantor’s opinion article published in the Newsweek following the sad loss of Prof. Elie Wiesel.

Kind regards,
The EJC team

European Jewish Congress (EJC)
Tel : +3225408159
Fax : +3225408169
Web : www.eurojewcong.org

FAREWELL MY FRIEND: THREE THINGS I LEARNED FROM ELIE WIESEL

The world has lost one of its premier moral voices, writes the president of the European Jewish Congress.

BY MOSHE KANTOR

The great French writer Victor Hugo once said that “adversity makes men.” There is no one in the history of humanity for whom this is more true than the late great Elie Wiesel. The world has lost one of its premier moral voices. His early life was fashioned in darkness, but he brought light to our world with his words of hope and peace. His courage to see good when he saw so much unspeakable evil should remain a legacy, not just for the Jewish people, but for mankind. Our view of life can be determined by interactions with extraordinary people. If you are lucky, each of us will meet one person who will change our world. For me, that was Elie Wiesel.

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Documentary Film: “An Open Door: Jewish Rescue in the Philippines”

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You are invited to attend a screening of An Open Door (2015) at the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 5:00 P.M. on July 13, 2016.

While Europe was under the thrall of the Nazis, Filipino president Manuel Quezon and US high commissioner to the Philippines Paul McNutt opened the door to 1,300 persecuted European Jews in the Philippines.

Jack Simke, assistant to the director and award-winning filmmaker Noel Izon, will introduce the film and lead a discussion afterwards. The event will take place in English.

For more information about the film, see here and here.

For more about the Jewish community in the Philippines, see here.

Judah Passow Thanks LJC Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky for Celebration for Return of Torah

Juda Passow dėkoja LŽB ir pirmininkei F.Kukliansky už Toros sugrįžimo šventę

“I just want to thank you once again for making possible such a moving and memorable day with the Lithuanian Jewish community,” Judah Passow said in the note.

“It was an honour and a privilege to be with all of you. I’m especially grateful to you for the time and effort you put into making what began as an idea a year ago into a reality,” he wrote.

Judah Passow’s father, professor David Passow at Philadelphia University, received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to commemorate Jewish life behind the iron curtain in 1960. When he went to Vilnius that same year, local Jewish leaders asked him to take away with him one of two Torah scrolls which were used in the Vilnius ghetto and survived the Holocaust intact, saying they were unsure what the future held for Jews in the Soviet Union. The Passows protected the Torah ever since then, for 56 years, and used it for three bar mitzvahs in the family. When he came to Vilnius last year for a showing of his photography work, Judah Passow met Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and the idea was fleshed out of returning the scroll to Vilnius. Just last week Passow returned the Torah dating from the time of Vilna Gaon, with a silver decoration his mother Aviva Passow made for the scroll.

Jewish Heritage Trip to Lithuania Visits Lithuanian Jewish Community

LŽB lankėsi „Jewish Heritage trip to Lithuania“ delegacija

A delegation from the Jewish Heritage Trip to Lithuania led by Peggy Mosinger Freedman visited the Lithuanian Jewish Community July 1. The organization supports the “Food to Homes” program for the elderly conducted by the LJC Social Center. Members of the group are not infrequent visitors to Lithuania, where they always take a keen interest in Jewish life. This time the delegation included Canadian Alex Bronsteter, who said he can make the trip to the land of his roots now that he retired. He wants to bring his children to Kaunas next year as well. His mother survived the Kaunas ghetto, but most of her relatives were murdered.

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Global Media Carry Discovery of Escape Tunnel at Ponar

News of the discovery of the tunnel used by the burners’ brigade to escape from the mass murder site of Ponar near the Lithuanian capital has been picked up by media around the world. The Lithuanian Jewish Community received a report from the Lithuanian ambassador to India that Indian media are reprinting an article about it from the Washington Post.

A team of experts from Israel, Lithuania, the United States and Canada found the escape tunnel, new killing pits, overgrown paths taken by the victims to the execution site and the distribution of human ashes and crushed bone at the site.

The burners’ brigade was formed by the Nazis to exhume the corpses of Jews shot at Ponar, burn them in large piles and crush to dust whatever bones or teeth survived the fire. They knew they were condemned to death and over a period of time excavated a tunnel from their place of confinement.

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