Dutch pianist Marcel Worms performed melodies by interwar Jewish composers at the Lithuanian Jewish Community on April 29, in the same hall where he played 11 years ago. Most of the composers were murdered in the Holocaust, and Worms said if their music was forgotten, they would die a second death.

Works by Rosy Wertheim, Erwin Schulhoff, Gideon Klein, Alexander Tansman, Szymon Laks, Anatolijus Šenderovas, Leo Smit, Dick Kattenburg and George Gershwin were performed. Anatolijus Šenderovas’s “Sonatina” lent a local flavor to the concert.

Concert-goers were got more than just wonderful music: the children of Dutch diplomat Jan Zwartendijk attended. Robert Zwartendijk and Edith Jes spoke about their father who helped rescue at least 2,000 Jews in Lithuania by issuing visas for the Dutch possession of Curaçao, a somewhat fictitious “end-visa” the Soviets demanded of holders of Sugihara’s transit visas through Japan. He and his sister Edith were glad their father was being commemorated and also happy to have a chance to visit Kaunas again, where the Zwartendijk family lived and which Edith, then 13, remembers well.

Rūta Jurkaitienė, senior librarian, Alsėdžiai Town Library, Plungė region, 2016

Let’s get to know Alsėdžiai, one of the oldest towns in Lithuania with a deep historical legacy

PDF in Lithuanian:

Traces of the Jews of Alsėdžiai

by Grant Gochin

Lithuanian officials state that Jews were not oppressed in Lithuania:

In an astonishing display regarding the ignorance of rampant anti-Semitism in inter-war Lithuania, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius stated that there was “no violence, repressions or anything like that at the time”, against Jews in Lithuania during the period 1918 – 1939. Based on this assumption, Lithuania intends to deny citizenship applications for descendants of Lithuanian Jews. The belief that Jews did not suffer enough, in Interwar Lithuania, to warrant citizenship is simply preposterous.

http://www.baltictimes.com/litvaks_continually_rejected_restoration_of_lithuanian_citizenship/

At the beginning of the 20th Century, Jews represented about 14% of Lithuania’s population. In May 1915, the Czarist regime deported and exiled approximately 100,000 Lithuanian Jews to the Russian interior. After the war ended, Lithuanian Jews, who had lived in Lithuania for centuries and often constituted half of the population of many towns, were promised that the new independent Lithuanian state would be tolerant to minorities. Jews provided considerable political support for Lithuania in international forums and enlisted into the Lithuanian army to defend their country’s independence. A great many war medals were awarded to these soldiers for their extraordinary bravery and many lost their lives fighting for Lithuanian independence. In return for their contributions, the government granted full autonomy to the Jewish community and created a Cabinet-level Ministry for Jewish Affairs. Unfortunately, these promises were not kept; in 1923 funding for this Ministry was withdrawn, and in 1924 the Ministry was abolished. Sadly, the Ministry had served little purpose, because in 1923 the Lithuanian Government reportedly rounded up and expelled Jews whom they considered to be “alien”.

Two groups of young rabbis from Canada, England, France, Israel, Japan and the United States came to the Panevėžys Jewish Community April 7, interested in Jewish life before World War II and now. The first group was led by Rabbi Meir Wunder, who leads trips by high school students to Panevėžys annually. The young people were interested in the life of Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman.

Kahaneman was born in the village of Kuliai in 1886 and studied at the yehsivas in Plungė and Telšiai before going on to the yeshiva in Novogrudok, now in Belarus. He became yeshiva director. He lived with his family in Panevėžys from 1919 to 1940. In 1923 he became a Lithuanian MP. In Panevėžys he set up a poorhouse, an orphanage and the Yavne Jewish religious school for girls, and headed the yeshiva. Later he and his son moved to Israel where he continued to maintain Litvak religious traditions. On the wall of an orphanage he founded are the names of the yeshivas of Lithuania. The Panevėžys yeshiva was also restored in 1919 due to his efforts.

The second group was led by Rabbi Tuvia Konn and Rabbi Nesivos Tours. They spoke about how they had heard of the Bokhrim yeshiva and became interested in the city of Panevėžys, and when there was opportunity to visit, they gladly came in search of their roots. They visited Jewish sites in Panevėžys and viewed a film about the history of the Jews of Panevėžys which they said opened a window onto the past.