On March 27 tand 28, 1944, around 1,700 children, elderly and the infirm were rounded up in the Kaunas ghetto by Waffen-SS troops and murdered nearby. The almost-complete extermination of the children in the Kaunas ghetto on those days is called by its German name in the Holocaust literature, the Kinderaktion.
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
The Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center in Vilnius is hosting an exhibit of works by the late Modestas Saukaitis. Saukaitis was an artist, art and book restorer and interior designer. He curated the first Fluxus exhibition in Lithuania with Gintaras Sodeika. Fluxus was an art movement started by Lithuanian-American artist, writer and filmmaker Jonas Mekas and was loosely associated with Guy de Bord’s Situationist International movement. Saukaitis passed away in 2024. He was deeply interested in Litvak history and his works on exhibit include a tribute to Righteous Gentile Ona Šimaitė and various takes on Jewish Vilna, with inscriptions in Hebrew and Greek characters, displayed in mirror-reverse for whatever reason. This exhibit is based on a previous exhibit of works by Saukaitis at the Shofar Gallery under the Jewish Culture and Information Center in Vilnius was based on texts by Abraham Sutzkever, the Yiddish poet and Litvak partisan (see below).
According to the host gallery, the exhibition features “verre églomisé works, assemblages, archival Fluxus material and video documentation as well as an overview of the artist’s work in interior design and restoration.” The exhibit opened March 6 and runs till May 23. The gallery is located at Malūnų street no. 8 in the Užupis neighborhood of Vilnius.
The Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community in concert with the Gegužės and Saulėtekis schools in Šiauliai are engaged in a project called “Road of Holocaust Memory: Lives Which Speak” to teach students about the Holocaust and human rights using first-person testimonies.
As part of that project, local students discovered and memorialized the biographies of 36 children who died in the Holocaust in Šiauliai. The older students from the Saulėtekis high school taught the younger students from the Gegužės junior high school about the lives of the Jewish children who were murdered.
The Pasvalys Regional History Museum held a conference called “They Saved a World…” to mark Lithuania’s Day of Rescuers of Jews. Speakers included Arūnas Bubnys, Aušra Jonušytė, Gražvydas Balčiūnaitis and others. Pasvalys mayor Gintautas Gegužinskas and museum director Vitutė Povilionienė welcomed the audience, which included high school students, Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman and local residents.
The Kupiškis Museum in Kupiškis, Lithuania, celebrated Lithuania’s Day of Rescuers of Jews on March 16. Eighth-graders from Kupiškis area schools presented texts and drawings on Jews in hiding, rescuing Jews, the Holocaust experience and the inner hope and strength which were needed to survive. The texts and drawings are to become part of a virtual exhibit at the museum later to mark Lithuania’s Day of Remembrance of Jewish Victims of Genocide on September 23.
by Grant Gochin, March 19, 2026
In 2018, while already a member of NATO and the European Union, Lithuania’s Parliament (Seimas) formally recognized Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas as the head of the Lithuanian state for the period 1954 to 1957. Lithuania’s defense ministry then placed him in the Heads of State Pantheon and described him as a role model for the country’s officers and soldiers. That is not routine commemoration. It is state canonization inside alliances that define themselves by democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.
Once a state does that, the first question is not ceremonial. It is governmental. What public record did Lithuania produce before this elevation showing how Ramanauskas-Vanagas responded to the destruction of Jews in his environment in 1941? Where is the record that he protected Jews, objected to anti-Jewish violence, forbade participation, or punished those who took part? Lithuania’s own official biographies place him in Druskininkai in June 1941 as leader of a self-defense unit and then in Alytus as a teacher from 1941 to 1944. Lithuania has produced no public record of protective action by him toward Jews in that period.
That silence matters because Ramanauskas-Vanagas cannot be sealed off from a documented persecution zone. The Simon Wiesenthal Center warned the Seimas against honoring him. Evaldas Balčiūnas, drawing on archival material cited from the Lithuanian Special Archives and on the work of Arūnas Bubnys, pointed to a July 18, 1941 police report stating that 28 people had already been shot and to evidence that a 38-man partisan unit assisted in establishing the Druskininkai ghetto beginning on July 16. Even on the narrowest reading, this is not an evidentiary void. It is a documented zone of confinement, shooting, and anti-Jewish coercion. Lithuania elevated him anyway.
The Films & Coffee café at the corner of Šv. Mikalojaus and Pranciškonų streets in the Vilnius Old Town will host an exhibit by Gediminas Dubonikas and Vytautas Tinteris on the Litvak population of the Old Town before the Holocaust and when Jews were imprisoned in two ghettos there. The exhibit opens at 7:00 P.M. on March 25. Triteris said the exhibit is appropriate for children.
The Ninth Fort in Kaunas opened an exhibit called Rescuers on March 15. The opening coincided with Lithuania’s Day of Rescuers of Jews. The museum invited members of the Kaunas Jewish Community, families of rescuers of Jews and Righteous Gentiles and others.
Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas, Palanga Jewish Community chairman Vilius Gutmanas, daughter and granddaughter of Righteous Gentiles Iga Makutėnienė, speaker of Lithuanian parliament Juozas Olekas and Darius Jakavičius, chairman of the Commission on Battles for Freedom and Historical Memory, participated, along with other family members of Righteous Gentiles.
A moment of silence was followed by a reading of the names of rescuers of Jews in the city and district of Kaunas. Students from the Naujalis music gymnasium performed. the Ninth Museum’s Vytautas Petrikėnas and Vytautas Švėgžda, the director of Multimediamark who organized the exhibit, presented it in more detail to the audience.
The Panevėžys Regional History Museum hosted an event to mark Lithuania’s Day of Rescuers of Jews Sunday. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman, son of Righteous Gentiles Vidmantas Markevičius and museum director Donatas Juzėnas spoke at the event.
The official Lithuanian commemorative day was first marked on March 15 in 2023. March 15 is the date Yad Vashem recognized Lithuanian librarian Ona Šimaitė for her work rescuing Jews from the Holocaust. Vidmantas Markevičius’s family rescued nine Jews in the Kupiškis region.
Viltis school students read the names of Jews rescued and their rescuers in the Panevėžys district.
The event featured a screening of the documentary film “Irena” about the late Irena Veisaitė. Veisaitė as a girl was rescued from the Holocaust by Stefanija Ladigienė.
Lithuania’s Day of Rescuers of Jews on Sunday was marked by the Šiauliai District Jewish Community and the Lost Shtetl Museum at an event at Righteous Gentiles Square in Šiauliai which then moved on the museum in Šeduva. Community members, members of the Lithuanian parliament and students from the Juventa school remembered the Righteous Gentiles who rescued Jews from the Holocaust. Conservative MPs Ingrida Šimonytė and Paulė Kuzmickienė provided moving speeches and Pinchas Nol spoke about how the Paluckas family rescued him. Nol spoke by video link from Israel. Juventa students provided a live musical performance.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman presented her book about her life and family “Dainos iš mėlynos užrašinės” [Songs from a Blue Notebook] at the Vilnius Book Fair early Friday afternoon and signed copies for readers. She also held a book-signing event there late Saturday evening.
Covering three generations of Litvaks, the recorded memories move from her grandparents who miraculously survived the Holocaust, her parents in the concentration camps to the youngest generation, Faina and her sister Sulamita, the generation of Jews who came out of survivors of the Holocaust.
The Sugihara Foundation awarded Holocaust and Righteous Gentile historian Danutė Selčinskaja the Person of Tolerance for the foregoing year 2025 and awarded writer Sergey Kanovich the recipient of the Leonidas Donskis prize in Kaunas Sunday.
The Palanga Jewish Community invites you to visit an exhibit of photographs called “Jews of Palanga: An History in Photographs” at the Palanga Youth and Volunteer Center, Vytauto street no. 110, Palanga, opening March 3 and running till March 31.
With more than 20 authentic period portraits of interbellum Palanga, the exhibit tells the story of the Palanga Jewish community’s daily life, urban spaces and communal and cultural sites integrated in the landscape of the Lithuanian seaside resort town.
The exhibit is a joint project of the Palanga Jewish Community and the Palanga Youth and Volunteer Center. Mindaugas Surblys is the curator.
Dear Community members,
A happy and colorful Purim!
Our ancestors taught us a very important thing: to make use of every opportunity to enjoy life. Even as history has been full of challenges, we chose light, unity and joy. Therefore laughter, music and song ring out in our homes and community today.
May your tables be laden with fruit, your friendships be sincere and your hearts open. May there be no lack of homentashn, symbolizing the ear of the vizier Haman who sought to harm the Jews as a reminder to us that evil and falseness never win, but courage, hope and unity do.
I hope the joy of Purim inspires in us strength, a sense of belonging and togetherness and faith in the future.
Hag Purim sameakh!
Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community
Publisher Alma Littera will present “Dainos iš mėlynos užrašinės” [Songs from a Blue Notebook] at the Vilnius Book Fair Friday.
The book tells the story of the family of the author, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky.
Covering three generations of Litvaks, the recorded memories move from her grandparents who miraculously survived the Holocaust, her parents in the concentration camps to the youngest generation, Faina and her sister Sulamita, the generation of Jews who came out of survivors of the Holocaust.
Readers say the book reads like a film with one frame following another painting a moving picture of the Jewish spirit: culture, heritage, traditions, holidays, cooking, children’s games and communal life. It’s also about a people who were condemned to death who, despite the great love of their families, carry grief from generation to generation, but also boundless courage, resolution, energy and an unstoppable ability to take joy in those things which make up daily life.
“Sometimes people ask me why I spend so much energy on the status of Jews in the world and history, especially since the majority of my people are gone. My only answer is, to safeguard their memory. We no longer have our parents’ candelabra which held the Sabbath candles in every Jewish home. All we have left is memory and respect,” Faina Kukliansky said.
The public is invited to the presentation with Faina Kukliansky who will sign books from 1:30 to 3:30 P.M. on Friday and from 6:30 to 8:30 P.M. on Saturday in Hall 5 at the Alma Littera Stand at the Litexpo pavilion in Vilnius. The Vilnius Book Fair starts Thursday.
Author Małgorzata Quinkenstein will speak at a presentation of her book “Stronger than Fear” at the Lithuanian Jewish Community. The book features 36 portraits of Righteous Gentiles from France, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and other countries and testimonies from rescued Jews. The interview with Quinkenstein is to take place in Polish with simultaneous translation to Lithuanian. Registration is required, click here.
Time: 1:00 P.M., Friday, March 6
Place: Lithuanian Jewish Community, Vilnius
Josifas Useris has died. He was born in 1937. He was a client of the Saul Kagan Welfare Center. Our deepest condolences to his family and friends.
The Panevėžys Jewish Community, deputy mayor Deividas Labanavičius, continuing-education students and visitors from Kupiškis as well as local residents marked the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust on January 27.
“The Holocaust reminds us to the depths to which hate, apathy and ignoring human dignity can lead. As we remember the victims, we take responsibility for preserving human respect, for strengthening tolerance and for passing on historical memory to the future generations. This is a duty, leading to a mature and responsible society,” deputy mayor Deividas Labanavičius said.
Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman spoke about the incredible mass murder of almost all Lithuanian Jews and noted more than 600,000 Jews had fought against Nazi Germany, many of them falling on the battle field or returning home disabled. “We also remember those who at risk to themselves and the lives of their families rescued Jews from certain death,” he said.
International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust was marked in Šiauliai January 27. People gathered at the location of the ghetto gates at the intersection of Ežero and Trakų streets. Members of the Šiauliai Jewish Community, local officials and local residents attended. Candles were lit at the monument marking the former ghetto gates. The attendees then moved on to Righteous Gentile Square.