Lithuanians and Jews: What’s changed and what hasn’t over the last 40 years?
Victims of Armenian Genocide Commemorated in Vilnius
On April 24 Armenia and the world mark the tragic anniversary, this year the 100th, of the genocide of the Armenians perpetrated by forces of the Ottoman Empire. The victims are honored on this day. The 100th anniversary was commemorated with the slogan “I remember and demand” and with forget-me-not flowers as its symbol. The meaning of forget-me-nots is clear from the name: not to forget, to remember and to recall. A solemn commemoration took place along with celebrations around the world at the Cathedral in Vilnius, with a Mass conducted by archbishop Gintaras Grušas and Apostolic nuncio to Lithuania Pedro Lopez Quintana. Foreign diplomats and high-ranking officials were in attendance including Israel’s new ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon, as were members of the Lithuanian parliament, Lithuanian Jewish Community chair Faina Kukliansky and director of Vilnius’s Jewish school the Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium Misha Jakobas. Many countries recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire, but the modern state of Turkey denies it was a genocide. From 1915 till 1923 1.5 million Armenians died.
The President congratulated Israel on national day
On Independence Day, Former Defense Minister Says Israel Becoming More Independent Each Year
Moshe Arens, Israel’s former Defense Minister, said that with every year that passes, the State of Israel becomes more independent than the previous years. His comments were made in an interview with Israel’s Walla news on Wednesday.
Though he admitted that Israel – just like all other countries in the world – is not entirely independent, because of the increased interconnectedness of the world’s nations as a result of globalization, he said that, “When I look at Israel in 2015 and compare it to the State of Israel when I served in senior positions in public service, I have no doubt that we have become more independent.” Arens added that Israel is “stronger militarily” than it was in the past, and therefore “less dependent on external security assistance.
Criticism leveled at Lithuanian government and society at Vilnius Holocaust conference
A conference on Holocaust education was held at Vilnius city hall on 17 April. The conference was the final event in the “Being a Jew” project’s series of events this year marking Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The conference included participants from the United States, Poland, Romania and Israel, including recognized and esteemed Holocaust historians and Holocaust education specialists, among them Tomas Venclova, Saulius Sužiedėlis, Dovid Katz, Šarūnas Liekis and a prerecorded address given by Efraim Zuroff. Representative of the European Commission’s European Remembrance program Pavel Tychtl, Lithuanian Jewish Community chair Faina Kukliansky, Vilnius mayor Artūras Zuokas and Holocaust education experts from Poland and Lithuania spoke as well. No official representatives of the Lithuanian Parliament or Government attended.
Jewish Vilna’s Best Kept Secret: 100th Exhibit Features Gaon, and Still Counting
The Lithuanian Jewish community has always been different from the Jewish communities in other countries. Back in the Lithuanian Grand Duchy (roughly from AD 1200 to just before 1800) the Jewish communities enjoyed the special favor of the grand dukes and the Vilna Jewish community especially but Litvaks in general as well gained world renown for scholarship and religious knowledge, and many celebrated rabbis, cantors and Talmudic scholars issued forth from Lithuania. Litvaks have long had a reputation for being more conservative and for being more immune to innovation than other communities. The special worldview of the Litvaks, distinct for its synthesis of rational thought, logic, reason and religious imperatives, evolved under the influence of great local religious authorities and social conditions within the cultural zone of the Grand Duchy. The Litvak attitude, point of view and worldview is a distinct form of Jewish mentality for which the Litvaks became known as a distinct group within Judaism and Jewish culture over the centuries. The greatest religious authority, largely responsible for the religio-cultural identity of the Lithuanian Jewish community, was the wise Vilna Gaon of the 18th century.
Poisonous Antisemitism
Eli E. Hertz
Antisemitism means discrimination and hatred against Jews and Israel. Requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other free and democratic state – is antisemitism.
Imagining an Alternate History in Lithuania: A Jew in the Motherland
I, your faithful correspondent from the Colonial Motherland, just spent six days in the other motherland – Lithuania, the place from which most of my ancestors came. Other than a return in the 1990’s by my Holocaust-survivor maternal grandmother, and a similarly timed visit by my paternal grandparents, none of my “nearby” extended family had been to Lithuania in about seventy years.
What drew me back? In part there is a certain enjoyment I have – despite my complaints about Ashkenormativity – in being a Litvak. Lita brings to my mind a certain sort of rootedness, as well as the rye bread, pickled herring, and peppery gefilte fish (certainly not sweet) my grandparents fed me as a child. There was also a sense of “this is where things started”: before one brave great-grandparent set out 120 years ago to South Africa, my ancestors had been in Lithuania for centuries. Part of me wanted to honor the relatives – including my mother’s half-sister – who had been decimated by the Shoah. Finally, I’ve been entangled in an increasingly drawn-out attempt to gain Lithuanian citizenship by descent, given a new law granting the descendants of Holocaust survivors citizenship of the country. (Obviously, I would keep my other passports.)
Memories of America: Three Students Tell of Their Experiences
The Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, more commonly known simply as the Joint, is a participant in Lithuanian Jewish Community activities and youth programs, and selected three students for a trip to the United States.
Edvinas Puslys is a member of the LJC’s Ilan Club and native of Vilnius whose mother is Jewish. He is 16 and is in the 10th grade at the Sholem Aleichem Jewish Gymnasium. He was grateful for the opportunity the Joint provided him to travel in Poland last summer and visit Jewish locations in Warsaw and Cracow, and Auschwitz. In January he travelled to America to take part in the second part of the program, and saw firsthand there how Jewish families and others live in America. He said Jewish life and making friends were much easier there, and that American Jews are much more open, communicative and friendly.
Invitation to the lecture “The history of Jewish resistance against the Nazi genocide in the occupied USSR
Dear friends,
You are kindly invited to a lecture on a very involving and still awaiting for further research topic – The history of Jewish resistance against the Nazi genocide in the occupied USSR.
The lecturer Anika Walke, Ph.D., is assistant professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis and her book is to be published at Oxford University Press.
Place and time: Vilnius Jewish Public Library, Gedimino 24, Vilnius, April 30, 2015, 5 pm
RSVP: info@vilnius-jewish-public-library.com or (8-5) 219 77 48
Press release
Criticism Leveled at Lithuanian Government and Society at Vilnius Holocaust Conference VILNIUS, April 20, 2015 A conference on Holocaust education was held at the Vilnius city hall on April 17, 2015. This conference was the final event in the “Being a Jew” project’s series of events this year marking Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The day before the “Star of Remembrance” event to commemorate Holocaust victims with 700 students participating from 15 Vilnius schools took place outside the Town Hall in Vilnius and at Ponar mass massacre site outside Vilnius. The conference included participants from the United States, Poland, Romania and Israel, including recognized and esteemed Holocaust historians and Holocaust education specialists, among them Tomas Venclova, Saulius Sužiedėlis, Dovid Katz, Šarūnas Liekis and a prerecorded address given by Efraim Zuroff. Director of the European Commission’s European Remembrance program Pavel Tychtl, Lithuanian Jewish Community chair Faina Kukliansky, Vilnius mayor Artūras Zuokas and Holocaust education experts from Poland and Lithuania spoke as well.
Jerusalem of the North is Already Lithuania’s “Brand,” Tomas Venclova Says
A day-long conference April 17 capped efforts in Lithuania’s capital city this year to mark Yom haShoah, Holocaust Day, appropriately, and featured speakers as diverse as Vilnius’s mayor, esteemed writer and thinker Tomas Venclova and Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem and now director for Eastern Europe as well, who is often referred to as “the last Nazi hunter.”
The Lithuanian Jewish Community was also amply represented there, with a keynote speech by LJC chair Faina Kukliansky and outgoing LJC executive director Simonas Gurevičius acting as moderator.
Other speakers included Pavel Tychtl from the European Commission, Dovid Katz of DefendingHistory.com, Piotr Kowalik of the Polish Jewish Museum in Warsaw, the historian and writer Saulius Sužiedelis and others.
Hundreds of Youth Form Human Star of David outside Vilnius’s Old Town Hall
Hundreds of students marked Holocaust Day last Thursday by forming a giant Star of David on the square outside the Lithuanian capital’s historic Old Town Hall building Thursday before boarding trains for Ponar, where over 70,000 Jews were murdered during World War II. The same day the Lithuanian
Government and Prime Minister’s Office honored Lithuanian families who rescued Jews during the war.
LJC Chair Faina Kukliansky addresses March of the Living at Ponar
The annual March of the Living procession assembled in Ponar (Paneriai) outside Vilnius last Thursday to walk the final mile many Jews walked from the railroad station to the killing pits from 1941 to 1944. Lithuanian Jewish Community chair Faina Kukliansky spoke to those who gathered at the main memorial there. Her speech is available here, in Lithuanian with synchronous translation to English:
Calling all community members!
VOLUNTEERS WANTED!
You are invited to a volunteer clean-up campaign at 1:00 P.M. on April 26, 2015. We need people at the Jewish cemetery in the Šeškinė neighborhood of Vilnius (Sudervės kelias).
You’ll need to wear appropriate clothing and bring work gloves. Those who possess such things are asked to bring rakes.
If you can help, place call 8-652 09205 by April 22, or send an email to info@lzb.lt telling us, so we can pass it on to the organizers. If the weather is unexpectedly bad the clean-up at the cemetery will be rescheduled for another day and those who have registered will be informed.
Tomas Venclova’s talk on the Holocaust in Lithuania (in lithuanian)
Informal video of Tomas Venclova’s talk at Ruta Vanagaite’s conference and related issues, 17 April 2015, held at the Vilnius Municipality.
March of the Living honours Holocaust victims in Paneriai, Lithuania
Hundreds of people attended the traditional March of the Living on the Holocaust Memorial Day from a railway station to the memorial where 70,000 Jews were massacred during World War Two.
Under flying Lithuanian and Israeli flags, the rally included Jews living in Lithuania, people from Israel and a few hundred young people who formed a human David’s Star in front of the Vilnius Town Hall before the march.
“If we’re talking about Paneriai, it is a factory of death. The only word I can think of is horrible. I am here at this rally because I owe my family – I need to preserve their memory,” Fania Brancovskaja, 93-year-old survivor of the Holocaust in Vilnius, told BNS.
The March of the Living
April 16, 2015, is Yom haShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the traditional March of the Living will take place in Lithuania, marking the route to Ponar where 70,000 Lithuanian Jews were murdered. This year 600 young people from Vilnius will take part along with the Jewish community. The march will have a unique start this year, with the 600 young people forming a human Star of David at 11:00 A.M. on the square outside the Old Town Hall in Vilnius on April 16.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chair Faina Kukliansky said Holocaust Remembrance Day marked by the March of the Living is an extraordinary event summoning many people to the Ponar memorial where they may travel the same path those condemned to death followed when they were brought in by train and forced to march their final march to the pits.
Delegation from a European Jewish cemeteries committee in Vilnius
Baltic News Service reported April 14, 2015, that members of the delegation from a European Jewish cemeteries committee said they have no complaints over Lithuanian Government plans to refurbish the former Palace of Sports building complex located upon an old Jewish cemetery.
After the meeting Rabbi Hershel Gluck said: “This is an important day for the Lithuanian Jewish Community and for relations with Lithuanian state representatives and the Lithuanian people.”
He told reporters further that “this shows we can work together in a way beneficial to all sides. This is a new chapter in cooperation between the Jewish community and the Lithuanian Government. I want to express gratitude for these very positive steps.”