Learning

Condolences

Accomplished Lithuanian sculptor Romualdas Kvintas has died following a long battle with illness. He passed away October 20, 2018. He was born June 16, 1953, in Žagarė, Lithuania. Many of his works started dealing with Jewish figures and the Holocaust in the late 1990s. He created portraits in sculpture of Romain Gary, Daniel Dolski, Tsemakh Shabad, Jascha Heifetz, Hermanas Perelšteinas, Nehru, Mohandis Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach together, and many others. He also created several memorials to the Jews of Šeduva.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community feels we have lost a friend and great artist. Our deepest condolences to his family, friends and many admirers.

Juvenishki Memorial, an Exhibit of Works by Simon Karczmar

The Dieveniškės School of Business and Technologies is inviting the public to attend a special event for the region and the nation, the opening of an exhibit of works by Simon Karczmar called “Juvenishki Memorial” at the school located at Geranionų street no. 42 in Dieveniškės, Lithuania, from 2:00 to 4:00 P.M. on October 23, 2018.

Simon Karczmar visited his grandfather in Dieveniškės, aka Juvenishki and aka Divenishok ca. 1908 where he discovered the life of the shtetl for the first time. He went on to pursue a career in art which he paid for by trading furs and lived in Warsaw and Paris. He joined the French resistance during World War II, found his surviving wife who had been sent to Auschwitz and they moved to Israel together, moving eventually to Montreal and then back to Israel. While in Canada and then later in Safed, Israel, Karczmar produced a series of works connected with his grandfather’s shtetl.

The exhibit will travel on from Dieveniškės to the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum in Vilnius later.

For more information, see the school’s facebook page here.

Righteous Gentile Vladas Varčikas Commemorated in Kaunas

The Juozas Naujalis Music Gymnasium in Kaunas has unveiled a plaque commemorating Righteous Gentile, teacher and famous violinist Vladas Varčikas, and has also created his portrait based on the memories of colleagues and those he rescued.

The Juozas Naujalis Music Gymnasium and the Kaunas Jewish Community commemorated Varčikas at the gymnasium where he worked as a teacher of violin from 1946 to 2008.

Varčikas isn’t just well known to the musical community, he’s also venerated in the Jewish community, as stated in the inscription on the plaque by the sculptor Gediminas Pašvenskas placed on the wall of the Chamber Hall of the gymnasium. The white marble plaque says he is a violinist, pedagogue and Righteous Gentile.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

LJC Invites Public to Express Solidarity with Holocaust Victims

The Lithuanian Jewish Community has learned of a protest organized by the Vilnius Forum to stop the alleged tarnishing of Jonas Noreika’s name. They invited protesters to assemble at the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry just before noon on October 16.

The LJC reminds readers there is a plaque commemorating Jonas Noreika, aka General Vėtra, the organizer of the Šiauliai ghetto and the person in charge of isolating Jews there, right in central Vilnius erected apparently illegally in 1997, while only this year was a site announced for a future statue to Righteous Gentiles. We believe this lack of moral priorities is not in keeping with the spirit of a free, democratic and lawful state.

It is a great shame that 28 years after the restoration of Lithuanian independence, some still refuse to accept and admit the historical facts and to seek reconciliation.

The LJC appreciates the Lithuanian foreign minister’s position regarding the removal of the plaque commemorating Noreika and we encourage international Jewish organizations to express their opinion as well.

We also invite all sensible Lithuanian citizens to go to the Foreign Ministry and take part in an alternative meeting by the LJC, to become a voice for the 200,000 murdered Lithuanian Jews, and to again read out the names of the Lithuanian Jewish citizens imprisoned and murdered in the Šiauliai ghetto. Let’s not allow the lionization of people who contributed to the destruction of the Jews and the various excuses to overshadow the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and of those who saved Lithuania’s honor, the rescuers of Jews.

Those unable to come are invited to sign a petition for the immediate removal of the illegal plaque commemorating Jonas Noreika from the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences.

Exhibit of Michailis Duškesas’s Document Collection

The third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community is now hosting an exhibit of documents to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the final destruction of the Vilnius ghetto. All of the documents relate to Vilnius and the people of the city, including Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, Dr. Tsemakh Shabad, banker Israel Bunimovich, the businessman Isak Shuman and others. The documents are from around the world with the majority from Germany, the USA and Israel.

One interesting document appears in the first display case at the new exhibit. It carries the inscription in Russia “Proyekt ustava dukhovnogo obschestva Vilniuskoy sinagogi” and the date 1888. It was acquired in Israel and comes from the collection of Leizer Ran, a well-known collector of Judaica.

There are many photographs from various angles of the Great Synagogue and the Choral Synagogue.

Document collector Michailis Duškesas says he began collecting pre-Holocaust Lithuanian Jewish documents about 15 years ago, and began collecting stamps since about 1980. He has an extensive stamp collection from around the world featuring the game of ping pong. He says he’s constantly enlarging his Judaica collection and now has a great number of documents concerning Lithuanian cities and towns where Jews lived. His documents have been exhibited before at the Lithuanian parliament, the National M. K. Čiurlionis Art Museum and the Lithuanian Historical Presidential Palace in Kaunas. He says they have also been used in documentary films about Jewish life in Lithuania before the Holocaust.

Read more

Lithuanian Public Television Features Program about Litvaks

The Lithuanian Radio and Television television program Misija: Vilnija [Mission: Vilnius Region] about ethnic communities and minority cultures in Lithuania featured Litvaks as the program entered its fourth season at the beginning of October.

In the interview with Miša Jakobas, the principal of the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius, he remarked how much freer children have become in Lithuania, which he said has its plusses as well as minuses. He said he never sees students carrying books during breaks between classes anymore and that the current student body was born into a technological society they know better than his generation does. Hostess and interviewer Katažina Zvonkuvienė and Jakobas discussed the sense of loss and sadness in which the post-war generation of Lithuanian Jews lives and which is sometimes unperceived as such. They also talked about the role of the state in guaranteeing the rights of all ethnic communities in Lithuania and the multiethnic and interfaith composition of the Sholem Aleichem school’s student body.

Interviewed at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius, Vilnius Jewish Religious Community chairman Simas Levinas spoke about the glorious reputation for scholarship Jewish Vilna once had, and the slow path to drawing back more Jewish families to tradition and to restoring what existed before.

Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium Hebrew teacher Ruth Reches spoke about the durability of Jewish tradition in the face of assimilation. She said rather than grandparents passing on tradition to children, the reverse process seems to be at work now: children are learning Jewish traditions at school and teaching their parents.

Riva Portnaja, the chief chef and baker at the Bagel Shop Café, recalled her childhood in Žemaitija when keeping a kosher kitchen was the customary thing, and spoke about the great demand in Vilnius for Jewish cuisine among Lithuanians.

Read more

Cardiology Lesson for Elderly at Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community

A class and consultation by cardiologist Virginija Ežerskienė was held for senior citizens of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community October 4. Our elderly learned about modern heart treatments and the doctor gave individual consultations and answered questions following the lecture.

Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community senior citizens said they find these sorts of lessons very useful. In line with the wishes of our seniors we will try to hold lectures with consultations by medical specialists once a month. The Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community is deeply grateful to Dr. Virginija Ežerskienė for her gift of expertise and advice to our senior citizens.

Condolences

Maestro Eugejijus Paulauskas whose 90th birthday we celebrated one year ago in the Jashca Heifetz Hall at the Lithuanian Jewish Community has passed away. He shared his memories with us then and we want to share some of ours about him as well. Paulauskas was a violin virtuoso and a wonderful teacher. The Lithuanian Jewish Community sends sincere condolences to his family for their loss.

Born September 6, 1927, Paulauskas began his musical career more than 70 years ago. The talented musician went on to become one of Lithuania’s most notable violinists. He began studying music in Šiauliai and completed violin class under professor J. Targonskis at the Vilnius Conservatory in 1949. Last year at the birthday celebration Eugenijus Paulauskas said: “My teachers were very good, all of them were Jewish. After all, the best violinists in the world are Jews because this is a talented people. Chamber music is one of the subtlest, most profound and most intellectual forms of music and performance. I am convinced no other genre of music has so many pearls, so many masterpieces, as the quartet does. All the musical geniuses compose quartets. These compositions are made in such a way that as you perform them you forget the musical fabric, the architectonics of form, because you enter into the very depths of emotion from which emerge as if cleansed, enlightened. This sort of rebirth isn’t something just we musicians need. Everyone who comes to a concert needs it,” the master violinist said.

Paulauskas’s solo concert activity was greatly limited by his deep engagement with the Lithuanian Quartet and his pedagogical work, which have become an important part of his activities. He had innate talent, the characteristics of a solo virtuoso which was developed very early, passion to perform and passion for communicating with people of all ages and experience in his audience. Paulauskas’s rich solo repertoire was dominated by music from the Baroque, classical and romantic ages. His performance on the violin was exquisite and full of style, and his duets were subtle. His violin duets with piano met with great approval from audiences and critical acclaim.

Rest in peace, Eugenijus Paulauskas, beloved and respected by all.

A Special Evening in Panevėžys

Professor Rita Aleknaitė-Bieliauskienė, formerly a resident of Panevėžys, invited the Panevėžys Jewish Community to attend an event to present her book “Iškilūs XX a. Lietuvos atlikėjai ir pedagogai Aleksandras Livontas ir Olga Šteinberg” [“Notable 20th Century Performers and Teachers Aleksandras Livontas iand Olga Šteinberg”], a screening of the documentary films “Žmogus su laiko žyme” [“Person Marked by Time”] and “Dainos galia” [“The Power of Song”] and a discussion of other remarkable 20th century performers and teachers. The professor’s book has real historical value, presenting the cultural inheritance and the past through contemporary eyes to readers. Not everyone is able to do this, but Rita Aleknaitė-Bieliauskienė has succeeded, as she always does. Panevėžys poet Elvyra Pažemeckaitė helped organize this cultural event.

It’s impossible to picture Lithuanian cultural life and the Lithuanian past without the Jewish contribution to cultural evolution. In her book the professor describes longevity in the words of the writer Grigory Kanovitch: the development of the individual begins with the number of books he’s read.

Read more

Sidney Shachnow Has Died

Kaunas ghetto inmate, legendary Litvak and US military officer major general Sidney Shachnow has passed away. He was born in 1934.

He survived the Holocaust in Lithuania and went on to become a legendary member of US military special forces. After spending three years in the ghetto, he escaped and later resettled in the United States.

His military career there was impressive. He did two tours in Viet Nam and served as a highest-ranking US military officer in West Berlin as the Cold War was grinding to a halt. US Special Forces, the Green Berets, are said to venerate Shachnow to the point of hero worship. He retired in 1994. He passed away at the age of 83 on Friday, September 28. His autobiography is called Hope and Honor.

More information in Lithuanian available here.

The Pharrajimos and the Shoah: The Uncomfortable Photography of Richard Schofield and Andrew Mikšys

by Agnė Narušytė

Two photography exhibits which don’t exist provoked me to write this article. One was supposed to open next week, but will not, and the other ran for just one day in a synagogue full of construction platforms. Neither artist was born in Lithuania but they live here now. Both exhibits concerned ethnic groups who were victims of the Holocaust: Jews and Roma.

British photo-journalist Richard Schoefeld came to Vilnius in 2001 and lived there until 2013 when he moved to Kaunas to work on a project connected with Litvaks. Since then Litvak culture has been his main theme. In 2015 he established the International Centre for Litvak Photography, an NGO which seeks to make Jewish history and culture topical and especially for young people to learn about Litvak culture using photography, art installations, workshops and other means. For several years now he has been trying to convince the intellectuals and government of Kaunas of the need to restore the Šančiai synagogue which is falling into ruin. He hasn’t succeeded.

So then Schofield drew up a list of about one hundred Lithuanian synagogues and set for himself the task of visiting each one. He hitchhiked for 12 days, kept a diary and used his mobile phone to record some of the people he met and the surviving and ruined synagogues. Only a very few had any signs of restoration work: bags of cement, bricks, tools. Many are simply falling down, although they are protected by the Lithuanian state as “monuments of great cultural, historical and architectural value.” As an example, the entry in his diary about the synagogue in Žemaičių Naumiestis reads: “Trees and bushes are growing in the middle of the building. Rays of sunlight shine through holes in the roof. Someone needed some flooring so they just stole it.”

Read more

An Evening to Remember Saulius Sondeckis and Simonas Alperavičius Z”L

The Destinies series of events invites you to come mark the 90th birthdays of the late Simonas Alperavičius and the maestro Saulius Sondeckis.

Program:

Discussions and recollections
Piano trip Musica Camerata Baltica
Screening of film “Aš kažkaip laimingas” (“I’m Happy Somehow,” 2014) by Berznitski and Gintarė Zakarauskaitė

Special television program “Svyatoslaw Belza Interviews Saulius Sondeckis”

6:00 P.M., October 18, Jascha Heifetz Hall, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius

Initiated and moderated by Maša Grodnikienė

We will visit the graves of Saulius Sondeckis and Simonas Alperavičius, Z”L, in the morning on October 11.

Sukkot Celebration in Panevėžys

This year the Panevėžys Jewish Community and the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community celebrated Sukkot together. According to tradition, during Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles (or more simply “tents”), everyone sets up a sukka, a booth or tent, together in which the ancient holiday associated with the annual harvest is celebrated. It recalls the sojourn of the Jews in Sinai when the people lived in tents. The usual practice is to make a sukka according to one’s means. This year in Panevėžys a buffet table stood next to the sukka featuring fruit and vegetables grown by community members. The main feature of the Sukkot table is the four species, the lulav, hadas, aravah and etrog, bound in palm fronds.

Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman said Sukkot is a continuation of the Jewish high holidays Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Many of the older participants spoke about how their families used to celebrate Sukkot when they were children. They used to make the sukka out of green wicker and put the table next to the sukka, where the whole family sat. The children received gifts rare at the time: bananas, oranges and tangerines. They also recalled the times of difficulty for the Jewish people when they wandered in the deserts of Sinai.

Read more

Maria Krupoves Performs Holocaust Commemoration Concert at LJC

Maria Krupoves performed Vilnius ghetto songs in Yiddish accompanied on piano by Artūras Anusauskas at the Jascha Heifetz Hall at the Lithuanian Jewish Community September 27. Krupoves holds a PhD and is a scholar and folklorist as well as an outstanding musician. A polyglot, her repertoire include songs from across Central and Eastern Europe sung in Yiddish, Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Romani, Karaïte, Tartar and a number of other languages. Her performance this time included the songs Es is geven a sumer-tog; Vilne, Vilne, undzer heymshtot; Unter dayne vayse shtern; Zog nit keynmol and others.

Read more

Come Learn Hebrew and English

Everyone is invited to come learn some Hebrew or improve the Hebrew skills they already have. On Sundays the long-awaited lessons for children will be held as well. To register contact teacher Ruth Reches by email at ruthreches@gmail.com

Sunday

9:30-11:00 A.M. Hebrew for adults, level 2 (continued, conference hall at the LJC)
1:00-2:30 P.M. Hebrew for adult beginners (conference hall)
2:45-4:15 P.M. Hebrew for adults, level 1 (continued, conference hall)

Sunday school for kids

10:00-11:00 A.M. English lessons by English teacher Viačeslav Mlynkovskij (Ilan Club)
11:15-12:00 noon Hebrew (conference hall)
12:00-12:45 P.M. Traditions (conference hall)

Remembering and Teaching the Holocaust in Panevėžys

The Panevėžys Jewish Community held an event to commemorate Holocaust victims with long-term community partners the Saulėtekis gymnasium, the J. Balčikonis school, the V. Žemkalnis school, the J. Miltinis gymnasium and the M. Rimkevičaitė school of business and services.

In the first part of the event teachers and students from the schools participated in a quiz about history, Jewish culture and the Holocaust. Many displayed a deep knowledge while others heard for the first time about the ghettos in Vilnius, Kaunas, Šiauliai, Panevėžys and other towns.

Next, participants presented posters they had made on the theme of “never again.” Teachers who head tolerance centers at their schools judged the pictures full of pain and suffering.

Every school was awarded prizes, trophies, thank-you letters and souvenirs for the knowledge, initiative, creativity, tolerance, bravery and artistry they displayed. Students from the Balčikonis school won the quiz.

Read more

Who Are Lithuania’s Heroes Today? Škirpa, Noreika or the Righteous Gentiles?

Former ghetto prisoners, members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, members of international Jewish organizations, ambassadors from Israel and other countries, Government ministers, parliamentary speaker Viktoras Pranckietis and Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius were among those attending a commemorative ceremony at Ponar September 23, 2018, the 75th anniversary of the final destruction of the Vilnius ghetto.

“Nine hundred Righteous Gentiles testify that 75 years ago people had the choice not to commit murder. The only ones without a choice were those selected for death. Even after 25 years of independence, Lithuania continues to bear the burden of that choice. I would like to ask one question: who is a Lithuanian hero today? Is it Škirpa, Noreika or the citizens who rescued Jews in Lithuania, who fought for their independence, worked for the benefit of their country, who risked their lives and saved their fellow citizens from death?” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky asked the audience.

Arie Ben-Ari Grodzensky, chairman of the Association of Jews from Lithuania in Israel, said: “It’s impossible to forget the tragedy of the Holocaust, and we must exert all efforts to make sure the Shoah never happens again. I want to add that our organization, made up of more than 1,500 Litvaks around the world, has officially joined the Lithuanian Jewish Community this year. We are very happy and very supportive of LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky.”

Mickey Kantor, president of the Beit Vilna Association of Vilnius and Vilnius Region Jews in Israel, remembered her relatives murdered at Ponar with great emotion, and told the story of her mother who was rescued.

Read more

Condolences

With sadness we report the death of professor Adolfas Bolotinas, an honored member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community who served two terms as chairman of the Vilnius Jewish Community. He was a doctor of physics and mathematics, a professor, recipient of the Republic Prize and an accomplished Lithuanian teacher and a member of the Israeli and New York Academies of Sciences. He was 93. Most of his life was centered around Vilnius University. He wrote his dissertation on theoretical and quantum physics. He was the author of more 250 academic articles and “raised” more than 20 other PhDs as professor. He is survived by his two children and wife.

Our sincere condolences go to his family and friends in this painful time. Your loss is all our loss as well.

The Murdered Don’t Vote

Nužudytieji nebalsuoja

by Sergejus Kanovičius

They no longer have a voice. Although, as my father says, they speak to us without stop. From the pits on the forest’s edge. Marked and unmarked. From both those somewhat maintained and those littered with trash. They speak to us and our conscience. The handful who possess a conscience respond, some with respectful silence, some, as in the forests of Šeduva and a few other places, quietly carrying and lighting a candle at that dismal site, some uttering something not very popular about the state of our memory which has become oblivion.

Those who are offended by this constant remembrance of two hundred thousand lives laid down in the pits also respond: after all, how much can you continue to appeal to our conscience, how much can you blame us for being apathetic about what happened, how much can you remind us that you still lie and will lie eternally there where the garbage of our memory swirls? Then there will appear those who express their annoyance with intellectual cynicism, who will remind us of the Jewish ghetto police, of Jacob Gens, who will argue that so many of you died because you didn’t know how to run away (yes, there are those, too). These people, calling themselves journalists or some sort of PhDs or even attorneys will speak cynically about the victims’ responsibility in their becoming victims. They’re the guilty ones. Do you hear that, you who lie under layers of garbage and moss? You’re the guilty ones.

Read more