Alfonsas Bukontas died September 23. He was born Mordchelis Michnickis on September 11, 1941. Both his parents were murdered during the Holocaust in Lithuania and Bukontas was raised by Lithuanians. He was an accomplished poet, translator of German, Yiddish, Polish and even Sanskrit, and writer. He was a member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Union of Former Ghetto Inmates. Our deepest condolences to his friends, family members and members of the Union of Former Ghetto Inmates. May his memory be a blessing.
New Yiddish Language Classes Offered
Historian and translator Saulė Valiūnaitė is offering a Yiddish language course for adult beginners. The language of instruction is Lithuanian. The course consists of 15 classes and costs €150 per person. The class begins at 6:00 P.M. Thursday, October 1, and will run weekly on Thursdays. They’ll be held at the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium, Kraševskio street no. 5, Vilnius. For more information or to register, write saule.valiunaite@gmail.com.
According to the Lithuanian History Institute, Valiūnaitė defended her dissertation called “Yiddishist Women and Their Contribution to the Formation and Preservation of Secular Jewishness in Interwar Vilnius” at Vilnius University in 2025. Since 2025 she is a researcher at the Department of 19th Century History of the Lithuanian History Institute. Her main areas of research interests are history of Vilner Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries, Jewish gender studies and the political and cultural history of Yiddishism, according to the Lithuanian History Institute.
Fayerlakh Coming to Vilnius
Last weekend the Jewish song and dance ensemble Fayerlakh delighted the audience at the Kaunas Gardens 2026 festival in Kaunas with the collective’s unique program of Jewish music and movement. They’re scheduled to perform again next Sunday, September 20, in Vilnius at Kudirka Square outside Government House in central Vilnius as part of the Ethnic Fair held annually along Gediminas prospect. The concert starts at 2:00 P.M. Sunday and is free and open to the public.
Commemoration of 85th Anniversary of Liquidation of Panevėžys Ghetto
A ceremony to mark the 85th anniversary of the liquidation of the Ponevezh ghetto was held in the northern Lithuanian city September 8 with a number of speakers and music.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said they had gathered both to honor the dead and keep memory of the Holocaust alive for future generations.
Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania Shelly Hugler Livne said 85 years is long time in human life but only an instant in terms of historical memory.
Lithuanian MP Ramūnas Vyžintas reiterated the need to safeguard historical memory.
Sister Leonora Kasiūlytė from the Congregation of the Sisters of God’s Providence told the story Marija Rusteikaitė, the nun from the Panevėžys area who rescued 15 Jews including children.
Vilnius Jewish Public Library Showcases Encyclopedic Vilnius Book
Last week the Vilnius Jewish Public Library recognized Irina Guzenberg and Henrik Agranovski’s impressive and encyclopedic book Vilnius, the result of more than 30 years of research, published in English and Russian.
The book is both a short encyclopedia and a chronicle of Yerushalayim d’Lite, the Jerusalem of Lithuania, Vilnius. Israeli ambassador Shelly Hugler Livne, Lithuanian deputy foreign minister Kristupas Vaitiekūnas, a large contingent from Beit Vilna, Lithuanian Jewish Community members and academics from Lithuania, Israel and the USA attended to book presentation.
The book was previously published as a much shorter version of Jewish sites in Vilnius for tourists and others. The larger volume goes into much greater depth about the sites and histories.
Book Presentation in Palanga
“I never wanted to write a book about myself. My goal was to tell the story of post-war Jewish life, and the example I know well is our family,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said Friday at a reading room in Palanga where she presented her book Dainos iš mėlynos užrašinės [Songs from the Blue Notebook].
She spoke about her family’s story, including stories about the post-war reality, and the childish fears and joys which sometimes last a lifetime.
“Don’t be surprised if I cry. My whole family got teary-eyed reading this book,” she cautioned.
Her book about her parents, grandparents and cousins, their experiences and fates, was more than an autobiography. It’s a portrait of three generations of Litvaks, the story of how they carried on after the Holocaust and learned to take joy in life again, while always carrying inside the unfathomable tragedy.
European Day of Jewish Culture
The European Day of Jewish Culture enters its 22nd year this Sunday, September 6, with this year’s theme love. In Judaism love is more than romantic emotions, it’s the connection between cultures and communities, linking the past with the present and people with generations.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you to celebrate the European Day of Culture with us with a special program of events.
Program:
11:00 A.M. Ruth Reches will deliver an introductory Hebrew lesson at the LJC. Registration required before 5:00 P.M. Friday by clicking here.
Biržai Marks 85th Anniversary of Start of Holocaust
Sėla Museum director Edita Landsbergienė and museum staff held a Holocaust commemoration at the site of the former synagogue in Biržai/Birzh last week. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman, Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Shelly Hugler Livne, a representative from the city’s mayor’s office and others spoke at the event.
A procession walked from the city about 3 kilometers to the mass grave marked in Pakamponys Forest.
The commemorative ceremony and procession were followed by the premiere of an opera called Kitas Miestas [A Different City] at a local high school gymnasium about the pre-Holocaust Jewish community in Birzh and how they were murdered in the Holocaust. An internet stream of the opera will be made available here.
Photographer Shimon Bajer Celebrated in Kaunas
A plaque commemorating Jewish photographer Shimon Bajer (aka Bayer) will be unveiled in Kaunas at 4:00 P.M. on Thursday, August 13, at his former residence at Laisvės alley no. 97 (formerly no. 58). The Kaunas Jewish Community invites the public to come remember this important Kaunas photographer from the interwar period. Bajer and his wife Raja were murdered in the Kaunas ghetto in 1942.
Rendezvous with Living Family History in Panevėžys
The Panevėžys Jewish Community received visitors from France: Mr. Matt Nguyen and his mother. The warm meeting with Community members was more than just a search for roots, it was a return to the place where their family called home more than a century ago.
Nguyen’s father was Maurice Hendel, aka Moshe Lozer Gendel, who immigrated from Panevėžys to the United States in 1922, although the family hearth isn’t Panevėžys but Pastovys now in Belarus (Postavi). Following the path of Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaheman, the Hendel family moves to Panevėžys during the First World War. Moshe’s future wife Rochel Lea Tuvman moved later from Vidžiai, Lithuania, to Panevėžys. They built a family together in Panevėžys, traces of which remain to this day.
Moshe died at the Panevėžys Jewish Hospital in 1938 and was buried in the city’s Jewish cemetery. The cemetery was destroyed during Soviet times to build a city park. Moshe’s mother, sister and daughter-in-law remained in Panevėžys during the Holocaust and were murdered there.
Jewish Life in the Baltic Countries, 1917-1945
Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas in cooperation with the US Holocaust Museum, the Sugijara House Museum in Kaunas and the Ninth Fort Museum in Kaunas is holding a conference called “Jewish Life in the Baltic Countries, 1917-1945: from June 9 to June 11. The conference marks the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust in the Baltic states with presentations on Jewish life including art, music, literature, education, languages, religion, government, land and nature, emigration, resistance, the rescue of Jews and commemoration. The Kapela Kotra trio will perform Litvak music and documentary films by Saulius Beržinis will be screened.
The conference will be held in the Senate Hall at Vytautas Magnus at Donelaičio street no. 28 in Kaunas. The program begins at 9:00 A.M. on Tuesday, June 9. It begins at 11:00 A.M. on June 10 and at 9:30 A.M. on June 11.
Ethnic Minorities Department Awards Ruth Reches, Gercas Žakas
The Lithuanian Culture Ministry awarded its order of merit to psychologist and school principal Ruth Reches and Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas on Friday, Lithuania’s Cultural Minorities Day.
Gercas was recognized for his work in preserving Jewish identity, commemorating famous Litvaks, care for Holocaust victims and rescuers and Holocaust commemoration.
Lithuanian Ethnic Minorities Department director Dainius Babilas presented Reches the silver order of merit, third degree, for her consistent work in minority education, teaching Jewish culture and history and her work to have the Yiddish language included on Lithuania’s list of immaterial cultural treasures.
Reches is actually a Hebrew teacher as well as psychologist and principal. She earned a PhD in psychology several years ago and her publications and academic work include topics such as attachment disorders, trans-generational Holocaust trauma and developmental psychology. She has served as the principal of the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius, the capital city’s only Jewish primary and secondary school, for over a decade. She is the daughter of Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky.
Lost Shtetl Fifth Most Beautiful Museum in the World
The Lost Shtetl Museum in Šeduva, Lithuania, placed fifth in the Prix Versailles selection of the world’s most beautiful museums announced May 4 at UNESCO in Paris. Prix Versailles judges singled out the museum’s architecture designed by Finland’s Rainer Mahlamäki. The outer form of the museum is intended to replicate the silhouette of the skylines of typical Lithuanian shtetlakh.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
Jewish Music: From Liturgical Tradition to Klezmer and Minimalism
The Magic of Music Club [Muzikos magijos klubas] as part of a series of musical evenings to educate and delight is pleased to announce a lecture by ethno-musicologist Eirimas Velička in Lithuanian called “Žydų muzika: nuo liturginės tradicijos iki klezmerio ir minimalizmo” [Jewish Music: From Liturgical Tradition to Klezmer and Minimalism]. The presentation will include recordings of Yemeni Jewish liturgical music, followed by a klezmer performance by Giora Feidmanas on clarinet. Minimalist composer Steve Reich’s Tehlim, or Psalms, is the capstone of this evening of music. The audience will also be invited to learn two Hassidic songs.
Tickets start at 20 euros and are available here.
Time: 4:00 P.M., Sunday, April 19
Place: Magic of Music Club, Šv. Stepono street no. 10, Vilnius
Holocaust Seminar for Teachers in Palanga
The Lithuanian Jewish Community, Palanga Jewish Community and Claims Conference held a seminar for teachers teaching the Holocaust in Palanga on April 9. Twenty-seven educators and cultural workers attended. The two-year project financed by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany is titled “Education Program for Holocaust Remembrance and Historical Justice in Lithuania, 2025-2027.” It is intended to stimulate formal and informal Holocaust education in Lithuania.
Attendees received a tour of the Lithuanian seaside town including Jewish sites testifying to the once-large local Jewish community there before the Holocaust.
Happy Birthday
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is pleased to wish Shmuel (Simas) Levinas a very happy birthday. He was the first principal of the Sholem Aleichem School in Vilnius (post Holocaust), actively contributed to the founding of the LJC Social Center and served as its first director, was the first chairman of the Goodwill Foundation and served as the chairman of the Vilnius Jewish Religious Community as well as the Lithuanian Jewish Religious Community.
Dear Simas,
The Lithuanian Jewish Community with great honor and warm gratitude congratulates you today on your birthday. You are a person without whom the history of the rebirth of the Lithuanian Jewish Community would have been written much differently.
Passover Greetings
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky greets everyone on the occasion of Passover and on this family holiday celebrating the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery wishes you much love and joy.
Gut yontev! Gut Pesach! Hag sameach!
Fayerlakh Performs at Public Library
The Jewish song and dance ensemble Fayerlakh performed at the Adomas Mickevičius Public Library in Vilnius on March 30. They were invited to perform there by the library’s Song Club who wanted to learn more about Jewish song and whose members had bilingual lyric sheets in Lithuanian and Yiddish. Borisas Kizneris began on violin, demonstrating popular Yiddish songs, and invited the audience to join in, which they did. After the music, Fayerlakh director Larisa Vyšiauskienė spoke about Passover. Matzo was distributed to all attendees.
Photos by Mindaugas Masaitis
Dear Jewish Scientific Institute! Book Launch
The Judaica Research Center of the Lithuanian National Library is launching the book “Dear Jewish Scientific Institute!” April 7. The book is a collection of YIVO correspondence presented in Lithuanian (and presumably English judging from the cover) providing readers a look at the textual legacy of the YIVO and their fruitful work in pre-Holocaust Vilnius.
Judaica Research Center director and editor of the book Lara Lempertienė, historian Juozapas Paškauskas, Yiddish translator Aistė Puidokaitė, English translator Dalia Cidzikaitė and book designer Deimantė Rybakovienė will speak on a panel moderated by Jolanta Budriūnienė.
Time: 6:00 P.M., April 7
Place: Lithuanian National Library, Vilnius
Fayerlakh Concert
The Song Club at the Adomas Mickevičius Public Library in Vilnius is hosting a concert by the Jewish song and dance ensemble Fayerlakh at the end of March. Club members will receive instruction in singing Yiddish folk songs in Yiddish, with synchronous texts in Lithuanian and Yiddish, under the tutelage of Fayerlakh veterans. The event is free and open to the general public.
Time: 6:00 P.M., Monday, March 30
Place: Adomas Mickevičius Public Library, Trakų street no. 10, Vilnius