This week the P5+1 and Iran agreed to terms on the Iran Deal, which represents a direct threat to Israel’s national security, and we believe is also detrimental to Europe, bearing in mind EU was also one of the key negotiating partners.

The bottom line of this very bad deal is exactly what Iran’s President Rouhani said immediately following signing of the agreement: “The international community is removing the sanctions and Iran is keeping its nuclear program.”

Meantime, Iran will be rewarded with hundreds of billions of dollars, while its proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah, which continue to be active throughout Europe, will also present a direct threat to the EU and the national security of European citizens. A number of European nations and companies have already expressed willingness to increase trade with Iran.

Despite the best intentions of those negotiating this deal, unfortunately the world and our region today has become a much more dangerous place, with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, one step closer to nuclear weapons.

Accordingly, this underscores the need for Jewish communities around the world to unite and consolidate, including in support of the State of Israel, at this critical time of need. This is of course at the very core of The Israeli-Jewish Congress (IJC) mission.

LJC Congratulates Jakovas Braveris on His Final Exam! Well done!

Thursday the high school students with the best final exam results assembled at the Old Town Hall in Vilnius where Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius congratulated them.

Among the best were Jakovas Braveris of the Sholem Aleichem Jewish Gymnasium in Vilnius.

Jakovas’s father is Igor, a doctor in physics and mathematics who has taught at Sholem Aleichem for 20 years. He said both his sons had inherited their father’s gene for science and he had been aware of that since their early childhoods.

Read the press release:

Press Release regarding the Siauliai Mass Graves

In consideration of a request by the Jewish community, the government of the city of Šiauliai, Lithuania has shelved plans to move human remains discovered during road construction. The Šiauliai municipality has given assurances no earth moving work will be performed until due respect is guaranteed for the mortal remains of the people murdered and buried in the mass grave.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairperson Faina Kukliansky would like to underline the stop in construction is not somehow the fault of Jews, but rather happened because human remains were found at a location where they should have been expected before construction began.

“I can’t say what sort of historical research was performed before construction work was begun. If it had been performed and a new location was discovered accidentally, that would be possible to understand, to forgive and to correct. Until now eight such sites were known. The issue of the Pročiūnai mass murder site was raised earlier and all of the material associated with that issue is preserved in primary sources at the Lithuanian Central State Archive, meaning it has been collected and is known. Although the location hasn’t been determined definitively, today we have all sorts of technology which we can use to determine where human remains are located without even disturbing the surface of the ground. It doesn’t matter whether those remains are of Jews or non-Jews.

Vilnius, July 15, BNS–In response to a request made by the Jewish community the administration of the Lithuanian city of Šiauliai has shelved plans to move human remains discovered during road construction.

Deputy director of the municipal administration of the city of Šiauliai Martynas Šiurkus said the decision was made to show respect for “the customs and traditions of all ethnic groups.”

“The municipality of the city of Šiauliai affirms … no digging work will take place until the appropriate respect is guaranteed for the human remains of the people murdered and buried in the mass grave,” Šiurkus told a press conference Wednesday.

The city’s press representative Vitalis Lebedis told BNS the road construction project in Šiauliai will be amended.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chair Faina Kukliansky welcomed the decision.

“Jewish concerns are satisfied because there is a cultural difference and a different requirement for honoring the dead. On the other hand I would still prefer something concrete from the municipality because there is no guarantee that more human remains won’t be found as the work continues,” Kukliansky told BNS.

She said representatives of the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe and from Lithuania’s Cultural Heritage Department had traveled to Šiauliai Wednesday.

There are documents showing the site in question might have been a mass murder site during World War II where prisoners from the Šiauliai jail were taken and executed.

There are the mortal remains of approximately 40 people in the section of the grave site uncovered during road work. It is likely some of them are Jews. Jewish religious customs forbid moving human remains buried in the ground.

Lüneburg, July 15, AFP/BNS–A German court Wednesday sentenced the bookkeeper of Auschwitz, former SS officer Oskar Gröning, to four years of incarceration. Gröning is considered one of the last possible suspects in Holocaust crimes.

The 94-year-old sat as judge Franz Kompisch read the verdict finding the accused guilty of being an accomplice to the murder of 300,000 people, mainly Hungarian Jews sent to the gas chambers in 1944.

The judge characterized Gröning as cheerfully accepting “safe office work” contributing to the working of “a machine with a single goal,” a system which was “inhumane and almost incomprehensible to the mind of man.”

A meeting of the Kėdainiai regional council at the beginning of July resolved to establish a Jewish Cultural Heritage Association.

It is to include residents of Ukmergė and Joniškis as well as Kėdainiai.

The Kėdainiai regional leaders have already adopted the plan and are now waiting to see how the two partners resolve to act. the city councils of Ukmergė and Joniškis are supposed to meet in August and their decision is expected at that time.

Once the resolutions are known, work to establish the association is to begin.

Indiana University Press   2014
416 Pages   

Review by Jack Fischel

This unusual book was composed by members of the Jewish police force who served in the Kovno Ghetto from August 1941 until March 1944, when the Nazis murdered its leadership. The writers of this riveting document were determined to provide a truly balanced history of the Jewish police force as it interacted with ghetto inhabitants, the Nazi occupiers, and their Lithuanian auxiliaries—virulent anti-Semites whose violence against Jews shocked even their German masters. The chronicle is also a refutation of Raul Hilberg and Hannah Arendt, whose works were highly critical of the Jewish councils and the Jewish police leadership in the ghettos. One distinguished Holocaust historians, Samuel Kassow, notes in his introduction to the book that “the chronicle… serves as a caution not to rush to blanket judgments of the Jewish police—or of the Jewish ghetto leadership. Each ghetto had its own context and circumstances.”