Learning

Maya Pennington at the Lithuanian Jewish Community Thursday

mayapenn

Maya Pennington and the Hive!

Come… Hear… Fall in Love!

At 6:00 P.M. this Thursday, August 4, at the Lithuanian Jewish Community (Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius)

About Maya

Singer, actress, composer.

Born in Jerusalem, Maya began learning music when she was 5. She graduated from the Ruben Academy for music and dance High School (majoring in Baroque flute), later studyied jazz voice and multi-disciplinary composition at the Academy of Music and Rimon. In order to supplement her acting training, she took part in courses held by Sadna’ot Habama with teachers from the Royal Academy of Music and Guildford and with teachers specializing in various acting methods. She toured internationally with the a cappella group Voca People (2009-2013), and performed as a soloist with a wide variety of performances, ranging from several performances with the Be’er Sheva sinfonietta to the international Red Sea Jazz Festival 2008, the Jerusalem Jazz Festival 2006, etc. and as a recording artist on several albums, including Ittai Rosenbaum’s “Between Waters and Waters” (2009).

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New Torah Study Library at Choral Synagogue

We invite all our friends to the inauguration of our new Torah library at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius.

Every synagogue is more than just a house of prayer–it’s also a house of learning. Even more so in Lithuania, where Torah study has always been of the highest priority. Now our synagogue will provide the opportunity to teach Torah in the classic way.

Thanks to the Šeduva Jewish Memorial Fund and their understanding of the importance of this library in Vilnius, the synagogue will now contain a classic Jewish library of more than a hundred books needed by everyone who wants to engage in serious learning.

The Torah (Pentateuch) and the Books of Prophets with all the classical commentaries, Mishnah, Talmud, Rambam, Tur and Shulchan Aruch–if the latter are missing it is impossible to study Torah, to prepare for lessons and to teach those who are resolved to make progress in their knowledge and Torah study.

The Šeduva Jewish Memorial Fund and the Lithuanian Jewish Religious Community invite you to share in our joy and to make a small l’chaim at 7:00 P.M. on August 24 at the Choral Synagogue.

Important Delegation of Rabbis

smaller synagogue group

Rabbi Kalev Krelin reports on an important delegation who visited Lithuania last week.

“I had the honor to host a group of rabbis and philanthropists from the US. At the head of the group were R. Yeruham Olshin, head of biggest yeshivah in the world in Lakewood, New Jersey, and R. Reuven Desler, businessman and philanthropist, grandson of famous Rabbi Eliyahu Desler.

“The group visited the tomb of the Gaon and R. Chaim Ozer in Vilnius, and also the gravestone of Rabbi Boruch Beer Leibovitz at the Užupis cemetery. They visited the grave of Elchonon Spektor in Kaunas, prayed at the 7th Fort on the date when R. Elchonon Wasserman from Baranovichi Yeshiva was killed there, and also visited another cemetery.

“After that the group returned to Vilnius and prayed an evening prayer at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius.

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Sulamita Lermanaitė-Gelpernienė Would Be 90 Tomorrow

Antanas Sutkus
photo: Antanas Sutkus

Sulamita Lermanaitė-Gelpernienė would have celebrated her 90th birthday tomorrow, July 28. People who knew her remember her.

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…After being graduated from the Vilnius Conservatory, she became a pianist, a concert performer and a concert master at the Lithuanian Conservatory.

Lithuanian Music Academy professor and cathedral head Leonidas Melnikas told [the magazine] Muzikos Barai about Sulamita Lermanaitė-Gelpernienė whom he met when he went to work at the Music Academy as a young man. The professor spoke with the reporter Asta Linkevičiūtė. An excerpt is provided below.

What sort of person, colleague, fellow worker was she?

This was a person to whom you could always go to ask for help of a professional nature, whom you could ask about something, who always sincerely offered advice. She gave advice on how to come up with a repertoire, what material to teach during the school year, how to educate students. Professional communication with her was important human communication and also very pleasant. She was an active member of the cathedral, a real patriot of the collective, she was a fan of the cathedral and the students. The people around Gelpernienė always felt her attentiveness, interest and support.

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LJC Statement about the Seventh Fort in Kaunas

Statement by the Lithuanian Jewish Community concerning Cnaan Liphshiz’s article “This Lithuanian Concentration Camp Is Now a Wedding Venue” published at http://www.jta.org/2016/07/24/news-opinion/world/lithuanian-concentration-camp-is-now-a-wedding-venue

The Lithuanian Jewish Community thanks the author of the article and the news agency who have again brought attention to the problematic situation at the Seventh Fort in Kaunas. We also feel it is our duty to explain and add to some of the facts and circumstances brought up in the article.

In June and July of 1941 a concentration camp was set up at the Seventh Fort where up to 5,000 people were murdered, mainly Jews resident in Kaunas. During the Soviet era the fort was used for military purposes and the exact location of the mass grave was unknown and inaccessible to the wider public. In 2009 the Lithuanian State Property Fund, which had ownership of the complex, allowed it to be privatized. The Lithuanian Jewish Community never approved of this decision and numerous times wee expressed our position that this was a huge mistake which couldn’t be allowed to happen at similar sites. In any event, after the fort buildings were privatized, the new owner, Karo paveldo centras [Military Heritage Center], received the right to lease the land around the buildings, which belongs to the state. The mass grave site, whose exact location was not known then, thus fell within territory controlled by a private corporate entity.

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Israeli Media Report on Parties at Seventh Fort in Kaunas

7thfort

Vilnius, July 25, BNS—Parties held at the Seventh Fort in Kaunas have received attention by the media in Israel following efforts last year to resolve conflicts between the fort’s owners and Jews concerned about the Jewish mass grave discovered there several years ago.

Cultural heritage protection specialists say there haven’t been any complaints recently about unethical activities at the Seventh Fort, and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said the Israeli press was just bringing up “old stories.”

Discussion of entertainment events at the Seventh Fort came up last year when the Cultural Heritage Department sent the fort’s owners a letter calling upon them not to hold celebrations, games or similar events there.

An article in the Jerusalem Post Monday told the story of the fort’s privatization, the fee charged visitors to the museum territory there and parties held there despite the discovery there in 2011 of a Jewish mass grave.

The article said the Seventh Fort is a popular venue for graduation parties and wedding receptions and the space is available to be used for parties, for cooking on campfires and to host summer camps for children.

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This Lithuanian Concentration Camp is Now a Wedding Venue

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A film crew preparing to record at the former concentration camp known as the Seventh Fort in Kaunas, Lithuania, on July 12, 2016. (JTA/Cnaan Liphshiz)

KAUNAS, Lithuania (JTA) — In this drab city 55 miles west of Vilnius, there are few heritage sites as mysterious and lovely looking as the Seventh Fort.

This 18-acre red-brick bunker complex, which dates to 1882, features massive underground passages that connect its halls and chambers. Above ground, the hilltop fortress is carpeted with lush grass and flowers whose yellow blooms attract bees and songbirds along with families who come here to frolic in the brief Baltic summer.

It’s also a popular venue for graduation parties and wedding receptions, complete with buffets and barbecues, as well as summer camps for children who enjoy the elaborate treasure hunts around the premises.

Most of the visitors are unaware that they are playing, dining and celebrating at a former concentration camp.

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Preparations Under Way for Švenčionėliai Mass Murder Site Renovation

Ruošiamasi Švenčionėlių masinių žydų žudynių vietos tvarkymui

Work to renovate the Švenčionėliai mass murder site under the current plan is scheduled to begin in August and September, Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moisiejus Šapiro says. The period from June to November of 1941 was the most horrible and tragic period in the genocide, when about 80% of Jews in Lithuania were murdered. A ghetto was established in Švenčionys and mass murder operations were begun there. According to different sources, 7,000 to 8,000 Jews were shot across the Žeimena River in Švenčionėliai. A memorial marks the site.

Determining the exact identity of those murdered and buried near Švenčionėliai has been fraught with difficulty. After approaching numerous archives, only the names of seven Holocaust victims buried there were found. Chairman Moisiejus Šapiro is asking Holocaust survivors from the Švenčionys region and the small shtetls there and their children, grandchildren and relatives, wherever they might live now, to tell their stories and send him the names and surnames of those murdered at Švenčionėliai

He can be reached by email at moisa50@mail.ru

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Israeli Antiquities Authority Reports Major Finds in Lithuania

2.Historical with team
Photo: Ezra Wolfinger/NOVA

Historical Discovery in Lithuania: The Escape Tunnel of the “Burning Brigade” in Ponar (Paneriai) Has Been Rediscovered

For the first time since the Holocaust the famous tunnel used by the prisoners of Ponar to escape from the Nazis has been located using new technologies for underground predictive scanning.

In an exciting new discovery using electric resistivity tomography at the Ponar massacre site near Vilnius in Lithuania, the escape tunnel used by the so called “burning brigade” to elude captivity and certain death at the hands of the Nazis has been pinpointed.

Some 100,00 people, of whom 70,000 were Jews originating in Vilna and the surrounding area, were massacred and thrown into pits in the Ponar forest near the Lithuanian capital during World War II. With the retreat of the German forces on the eastern front and the advance of the Red Army, a special unit was formed in 1943 with the task of covering up the tracks of the genocide. In Ponar this task was assigned to a group of 80 prisoners from the Stutthof concentration camp.

At night the prisoners were held in a deep pit, previously used for the execution of Vilna’s Jews, while during the day they worked to open the mass graves, pile up the corpses on logs cut from the forest, cover them with fuel and incinerate them. All the while their legs were shackled and the worked in the full knowledge that on the completion of their horrendous task, they, too, would be murdered by their captors. Some of the workers decided to escape by digging a tunnel from the pit that was their prison. For three months they dug a tunnel some 35 meters in length, using only spoons and their hands. On the night of April 15, 1944, the escape was made. The prisoners cut their leg shackles with a nail file, and 40 of them crawled through the narrow tunnel. Unfortunately they were quickly discovered by the guards and many were shot. Only 15 managed to cut the fence of the camp and escape into the forest. Twelve reached partisan forces and survived the war.

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Ponar Escape Tunnel Found

Mokslininkai Lietuvoje rado tunelį, kuriuo žydai bėgo nuo nacių

An international group of scholars has completed nearly two weeks of archaeological digging at two sites of importance to Lithuanian Jewish history. They looked for a tunnel known from Holocaust testimonies and attempted to confirm information about the Great Synagogue and surrounding buildings in Vilnius. They used new non-invasive techniques: ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistivity tomography. The international group of scholars included scientists from Israel, Canada, the US and Lithuania. Project leader Dr. John Seligman is the head of the archaeological digging department of the Israeli Antiquities Service. US student volunteers helped at the sites. Some were in Eastern Europe and Lithuania for the first time.

Full story in Lithuanian on Vilnius University’s web site.

Boris’s Litvak Roots

Jungtinės Karalystės užsienio reikalų sekretoriaus Boriso Johnsono šaknys Lietuvoje

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Lithuanian Roots of UK Formin Boris Johnson

British foreign secretary Boris Johnson has said he’ll travel to Lithuania because he has roots here. What roots? The newspaper Lietuvos Rytas tried to find out. Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevičius discussed Lithuanian immigrants in Britain with the UK’s new foreign policy strategist Boris Johnson the day before yesterday and invited Johnson to visit the land of his ancestors. Johnson reportedly accepted the invitation enthusiastically. The family tree of Johson, 52, shows an Elias Avery Loew born October 15, 1879, in Kalvarija in what was then the Russian Empire. He later changed his surname to Low and is the father of Johnson’s grandmother. Both of Eli Low’s parents were born in Lithuania: Charles Loew, a silk merchant was born in Kalvarija in 1855, and Sarah Ragoller in Kaunas the same year. Later the family emigrated to the United States. Lithuanian archives don’t preserve the vital statistics on Johnson’s ancestors. Galina Baranova, advisor to the director of Information and Dissemination Department of the Lithuanian History Archive who has worked successfully for many years with the Lithuanian Jewish archives, said there is no way to find out more about the British foreign secretary’s forefathers, although it is clear he had ancestors in Kalvarija. Those records don’t survive and vital statistics only go back to 1922 now. There was a Ragoler family in Kaunas from 1898 to 1925, according to Kaunas Jewish Community birth records, but there is no way to connect this family with Boris Johnson’s.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Simnas Synagogue to Get New Life

Simno sinagogą bus bandoma prikelti naujam gyvenimui

Dzukija logo

The Alytus regional administration will look for ways to use the synagogue located in Simnas for cultural activities. The head of the regional administration discussed the issue with representatives of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, the Ministry of Culture and the Cultural Heritage Department.

The synagogue was built in 1905 to replace the old wooden synagogue at the same site and was reconstructed in the mid-20th century. In 1952 it became a palace of culture, and later a school athletics gymnasium. Currently it belongs to the Alytus regional administration.

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Evening with Markas Petuchauskas by Fundacja Borussia in Olsztyn, Poland

Evening with Markas Petuchauskas by Fundacja Borussia in Olsztyn, Poland

Petuchauskas portretas

The Fundacja Borussia (Borussia Foundation) organized a meeting, book presentation and discussion with professor habil. Markas Petuchauskas called “Cena Zgody,” the Polish translation of the title of his book “Price of Concord,” in Olsztyn, Poland, June 16.

The foundation responsible for the book-launch is a cultural NGO well known in Poland and outside its borders and is now in its second decade of operation. The foundation encourages exchanges of information about ethnic cultures: science, learning, literature, art, theater and music. Four times per year the foundation holds meetings with remarkable cultural and scholastic figures from around the world. Vilnius receives special attention. Before Petuchauskas, Alyvdas Šlepikas, author of “Mano vardas – Marytė” [“My Name Is Marytė”] was the guest of honor at a similar event. Petuchauskas said he was surprised by the invitation and he got quite emotional about it since the meeting is so formal and intellectual. Those attending came from outside of Olsztyn as well, some from as far away as Warsaw. Dainius Junevičius, Lithuania’s first post-independence ambassador to Poland and now ambassador for special assignments, also attended.

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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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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.

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.

Newsweek Magazine on the Last Nazi Hunter

by Stav Ziv

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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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