In 2005 the UN General Assembly proclaimed January 27 the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. On that day in 1945 the Red Army liberated the prisoners at the Auschqitz-Birkenau death camp.

All survivors were invited to invited to come to the commemoration at the Lithuanian Jewish Community.

An exhibit of paintings by Levas Saksonovas called Holocaust was unveiled on the third floor of the LJC, at the initiative of active LJC member, doctor and photo artists Robertas Skalskis and social programs director Žana Skudovičienė. The artist’s son Danilias and art historian and researched Vera Kalmykova presented the exhibit.

by Grant Gochin

Many South African Jews are descended from an immigration wave from Lithuania in the 1920s. Our grandparents seldom explained the context; here it is.

During World War 1 when the current territory of Lithuania was part of Russia, the Tsarist army conducted a mass ethnic cleansing of Jews. During that period, especially in the spring of 1915, a number of Lithuanians took an active part in murdering old Jewish men, women, and even children, and plundering Jewish assets. Lithuania claims the Russians were entirely responsible for the actions of ethnic Lithuanians. Lithuanians retained the stolen Jewish property.

Betrayal after betrayal followed and Jews began to leave for greener pastures. It was the lesser-educated and unemployed Jews who left Lithuania, while the intelligentsia stayed on, hoping life would improve. Instead, they were slaughtered.

The world knows of the genocide perpetrated in Lithuania in 1941 in which Jonas Noreika was responsible for the murder of about 14,500 out of the 200,000 murder victims (including my own family). The sharing of Jewish property was widespread and once again Lithuanians were enriched by Jewish property.

The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and the Lithuanian Jewish Community held a commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 28. Markas Petuchauskas, the noted theater expert, art historian and professor as well as Holocaust survivor, spoke. Here is a translation of the speech he delivered to the overflow audience of Foreign Ministry staff, diplomats and members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community at the hall at the Foreign Ministry.

Perhaps the smallest of all is small group of former Vilnius ghetto inmates who survived. As a member of that group, I thought it would be best here today to share with those gather how I feel today and how I sense things. I feel good now. Because here prevails the solid principles of foreign minister Linas Linkevičius and his great spirit of courage. Linkevičius has never bent with the changing “line”…

Five years ago the Foreign Ministry, not the Culture Ministry, hosted the presentation my book in English, “Price of Concord.” From here it spread to the largest public and prestigious university libraries across Europe and all the continents. Beginning in North and South America and ending in the Republic of South Africa and Japan… Last spring the German translation was launched at the Leipzig International Book Fair and then it was presented in Berlin, again, at our embassy there. I’m not saying this to brag. The book preserves for the future the heroic spiritual resistance of many famous Litvak artists who ended up in the Vilnius ghetto. They opposed Hitler in their artistic work and his desire to tread upon the human dignity of the ghetto inmates.

Lithuanian MP and chairman of the parliament’s Commission on the Fight for Freedom and Historical Memory Arūnas Gumuliauskas announced earlier he is drafting a parliamentary resolution saying the Lithuanian state and the Lithuanian people are guiltless in the mass murder of Jews during WWII. The announcement made in mid-December provoked public discussion and it seems the author, who said earlier Lithuania’s position on the Holocaust cannot be the same as the West’s, has changed his mind and is now citing resolutions adopted by the European Parliament in 2009 and 2019 as the foundation for his resolution.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky refrained from any categorical comment on the planned resolution because of the lack of information surrounding it.

“We only know about this draft from the press, so it’s very difficult to judge it, because we just don’t what it really says,” Kukliansky told alfa.lt

Photo: Adam Jones/Wikimedia

Lithuanian Government “shares concerns” of Jewish community over proposed Holocaust law

Lithuania’s Jewish community and members of the expatriate Lithuanian Jewish community in Israel have expressed serious concern about possible legislation in the parliament in Vilnius which would declare the Lithuanian state and people didn’t collaborate in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust.

Member of Lithuanian parliament Arūnas Gumuliauskas and chairman of its State Historical Memory Committee said last month he would propose legislation declaring the Lithuanian state didn’t participate in the murder of Jews because it was an occupied nation, first by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany.

The parliamentary draft resolution has not yet been submitted to the parliament. The parliament goes into recess this Wednesday.

Gumuliauskas’s resolution, which he said was being prepared by the committee, would also claim the Lithuanian people could not have participated in the murder of Jews since Lithuanians were “an enslaved people” during World War II.

Full article here.