Lithuanian Jewish Community

Sabbath in the Jewish Quarter September 1

The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you to come celebrate the 20th annual European Day of Jewish Culture, “Sabbath in the Jewish Quarter,” in the Vilnius Old Town on September 1.

World-renowned writer Chaim Grade called the Vilnius Old Town the Jewish Quarter ca. 1930, and wrote: “Long Fridays of Summer. The housewives go to the bakery to shop for Saturday: they buy dry bagels, dark cookies and pastries with poppy seeds, small little cakes with powdered sugar…” (from his Der shtumer minyen, or Silent Minyan).

On Sunday, September 1, restaurants and cafés located in the Vilnius Jewish Quarter will present a menu of Jewish dishes, Jewish music will play and there will be lectures and tours. LJC chairman Faina Kukliansky will open ceremonies with a welcome speech at 12 noon. Saulius Pilinkus will MC and new Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Yossi Avni Levy, Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department head Vidmantas Bezaras and Lithuanian Ethnic Minorities Department director Vida Montvydaitė will also welcome participants.

2019-08-302019-09-02

Lithuanian Prosecutor Issues Finding on Noreika Take-Down, Tricolor Alley

A letter from the prosecutor of the Defense of the Public Interest Section of the Vilnius district Prosecutor Office has been posted on the webpage of the Lithuanian Prosecutor’s Office regarding complaints over the take-down of a plaque commemorating Jonas Noreika and the renaming of a street honoring Kazys Škirpa in Vilnius. Both men were complicit in Holocaust crimes during World War II.

Investigation Performed for the Defense of the Public Interest on the Removal of the Commemorative Plaque and the Renaming of the Alley in Vilnius

August 28, 2019

After considering statements by members of parliament Audronis Ažubalis and Laurynas Kasčiūnas, the Union of Volunteer Founders of the Lithuanian Military, the Lithuanian Defense of Human Rights Association and other parties on the possibly illegitimate removal of the plaque commemorating Jonas Noreika/General Storm from the outer wall of the Vrublevskiai Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and the renaming of K. Škirpa Alley, the Vilnius district Prosecutor’s Office adopted a decision to decline to apply measures for the defense of the public interest. In adopting this decision, the Prosecutor’s Office looked at information from the Vilnius municipality, the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department, the Lithuanian Government representative for the Vilnius and Alytus districts and other information pertinent to the investigation. This decision only presents a legal and not an historical assessment.

2019-08-292019-09-02

Condolences

Gileras Babickis passed away August 19. He was born in 1934. Our deepest condolences to his friends and relatives.

2019-08-28

Concert at the Kaunas State Philharmonic

A concert will be held at the Kaunas State Philharmonic at 7:00 P.M. on September 5 to celebrate the 125th birthday of doctor and rescuer of Jews Ona Jablonskytė-Landsbergienė.

Performers include Keiko Borjeson doing lyrics and playing piano, Arvydas Joffe on percussion, Tomas Botyrius on sax and Mykolas Bazaras on bass.

The concert is free and open to the public.

2019-08-282019-08-28

The Walls Remember, the People Tell

As part of the 20th annual European Day of Jewish Culture, the Lithuanian Jewish Community invites the public to visit the former Jewish Quarter of Vilnius. Recently several frescoes appeared on the walls there. The creators will lead a tour and talk about their surprising project The Walls Remember on September 1. Project author Lina Šlipavičiutė-Černiauskienė describes it this way:

“Vilnius had one of the largest and most active Jewish communities in our region. The horrors of World War II almost completely destroyed this community and this is without doubt one of the most painful losses for Lithuania and especially Vilnius. We don’t have the right to forget these people, and we do not forget them.

“But we forget too much the time when the people of Vilnius were simply happy. These bright memories should be visible: how these people worked, grew up, created families and grew old… How they shaped their lives in Vilnius whose streets we walk today, the same town we the current inhabitants of Vilnius love.

2019-08-27

Happy Birthday to Moisiejus Šeras

Our birthday greetings to Moisejus Šeras, long-time member of the LJC and the minyan at the Choral Synagogue. We wish you great health, love and happiness! May you live to 120! Mazl tov!

2019-08-23

Notes from the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community

On May 21, teacher Nijolė Teišerskienė taught students about the history of the Šiauliai ghetto. Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community member Ida Vileikienė survived that ghetto and told the children her story, including how she was rescued by the Staškas family, how she lived in hiding and what she did after the war. She invited the children to learn to respect one another as a general life lesson.

On May 23 Inga Kvedariene of the Šiauliai territorial medical system met with community members and talked about the payment system hospitals use and which services are free to those who have social insurance. She then fielded questions from the audience.

On June 14 members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community visited the site of the former Lithuanian shtetl Zhagar (Žagarė) beginning with tours of the Žagarė Regional Park and the Naryškinas manor estate. Land management specialist Giedrė Rakštienė spoke authoritatively on the Jewish population of Zhagar and many community members learned new things about Jewish life there. Žagarė gymnasium geography teacher Alma Kančelskienė led the tour which included still-standing Jewish buildings which used to be synagogues, the house of the rabbi and a school, and members also visited the site of the former mikvah there. Members also visited the home of E. Vaičiulis. He is the owner now of the site of the former Jewish textile factory on the banks of the Švėtė river and of a wooden Jewish house where he now lives. Under several layers of wallpaper there are parts of old Jewish newspapers on his walls which the former owners glued there once upon a time. He has preserved the original exterior and the interior is decorated with period pots and dishes. Surrounded by a stone wall, Vaičiulis’s collection is a veritable museum of the former time when Jewish life was front and center in what is now a Lithuanian town. Pride of place is occupied by a Torah scroll discovered in Zhagar. Members also visited the Jewish cemetery and mass murder sites in and around the town.

2019-08-22

Panorama Mall in Vilnius Offering Nazi Symbols for Sale

Boy London clothing is being linked with Nazi symbols (photo: SCANPIX and Alfa.lt)

The store Aprangos galerija at the Panorama shopping mall in Vilnius is selling clothes from Boy London from Great Britain with a symbol which appears identical to the stylized eagle of the Third Reich.

Boy London clothing, long known and criticized around the world for using Nazi symbols, began sales in Lithuania a year ago.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2019-08-22

Genocide Center: Independent Holocaust Research Is Criminal and Unconstitutional in Lithuania

Culminating a series of letters back and forth between LA-based Litvak Grant Gochin and the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania–Lithuania’s state-sponsored arbiter of all historical truth–the Genocide Center posted a notice on their website saying Gochin’s questions to them might be criminal and in violation of the Lithuanian constitution.

The Genocide Center neglected to post Gochin’s actual letters and independent historical research, content to post only answers to the questions they cherry-picked and deemed worthy of refutation.

Note that Gochin himself says he never brought up Telšiai archbishop Vincentas Borisevičius and that the Genocide Center inserted him into their notification out of the blue.

Here is a translation of their notification with a link at the end to the original text in Lithuanian:

2019-08-22

The Doors Open: An Installation to Remember Jewish Merkinė

The town of Merkinė, Lithuania, held a big celebration August 17 and 18, marking the 660th anniversary of the first mention of the town in the historical sources and the 450th anniversary of the town receiving autonomous Magdeburg charter rights. The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Fayerlakh group were invited to the celebration.

The project “Doors Are Opening” was dedicated to commemorating life in Merkinė during the period between the two world wars, when the majority of the population was Jewish. Before the Holocaust Jews accounted for about 80% of inhabitants. The old Jewish doors were donated for the celebration.

“It’s normal not to want to talk about the painful past, but it’s abnormal if we try to live our lives as if none of those experiences ever even existed,” Mindaugas Černiauskas, the director of the Merkinė Regional History Museum, said.

2019-08-202019-09-02

European Day of Jewish Culture Events in Vilnius

Sabbath in the Jewish Quarter, a lost tradition where every Friday evening the Jewish family sat down at the dinner table together, lit the candles, prayed and broke bread, followed by a day of rest on Saturday, and the beginning of the new week on Sunday.

Let’s rediscover the ferment, history, tastes, smells and melodies of the Jewish Quarter on the European Day of Jewish Culture.

Program here.

Registration here.

Download

2019-08-202019-08-22

Jews of Merkinė

Merkinė Jewish school, ca. 1928-1930

by Mindaugas Černiauskas

“Decades have passed since I left you, Merkinė. You are always on my mind. Every day I walk your small crowded streets in my thoughts. I know it’s not real, but I haven’t learned to come to terms with the fact the terror of the Holocaust was also in my town.” –Dorit Blatshtein, refugee from Merkinė.

Exactly 78 years ago the Jews of Merkinė were marched to the sand pits in Kukumbalis forest and left there for the ages powerless and desecrated. The introduction of the book “Mano senelių ir prosenelių kaimynai žydai” [My Grandparents’ and Great-Granparents’ Jewish Neighbors] published in 2003 contains the line that “the destruction of the Jews of Lithuania was so blood-curdling and unexpected, so cynical and public, accomplished right here in view of all other residents, that it essentially touched in one way or another every member of society.”

It’s difficult not to agree with this, as it is difficult not to agree with the idea that traumatic experience is often pushed into the subconscious. It’s clear experience doesn’t disappear and can become a festering wound and neurosis, especially when we view history based on idealized versions of national history where we only want to see examples of goodness, beauty and harmony which make us proud.

2019-08-192019-09-02

Zachor, Professor Landsbergis

by Grant Arthur Gochin

How did it come to this? Professor Vytautas Landsbergis, first head of dtate of Lithuania after liberation from the Soviet Union and founding father of the country’s Conservative Party (Homeland Union), putting himself squarely at the forefront of defending the hero status of Holocaust perpetrators and Nazi collaborators in Lithuania?

Landsbergis has gone on record calling Vilnius mayor Remigijus Simasius delusional for removing a plaque honoring the Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika from the library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, a step called for years ago by a broad coalition of public intellectuals which included member of the European Parliament Leonidas Donskis, rector of Vilnius University Arturas Zukauskas and others (were they also all “delusional?”). Serving the Nazis as head of Siauliai district during World War II, Noreika signed orders forcing Jews into a ghetto and plundering their property (clearly they weren’t expected to come back).

Noreika’s granddaughter Silvia Foti, after discovering the truth, has courageously spoken out against the honoring of her grandfather. In what can only be described as an unstatesmanlike tirade, Landsbergis went so far as to publicly accuse her of “murdering him all over again” (Noreika was executed by the Soviets in 1947).

Landsbergis publicly condemned Vilnius City Council for removing the name of Kazys Skirpa, pro-Nazi leader of the Lithuanian Activist Front, the armed anti-Soviet resistance group behind the June 1941 Uprising, and nominal head of Lithuania’s provisional government under the Nazis, from a street in the middle of the capital. After the Vilnius synagogue was temporarily closed due to escalating anti-Semitism and threats of violence in the wake of these decisions, instead of calling for calm, Landsbergis continued to escalate his rhetoric, accusing head of the Lithuanian Jewish Community Faina Kukliansky of being “useful to the Kremlin.”

Full text here.

2019-08-19

Lithuanian Ethics Inspector to Investigate International Commission Chief

ELTA
August 14, 2019

Lithuania’s Supreme Public Service Ethics Commission will investigate Wednesday the actions of Ronaldas Račinskas, the secretary general of Lithuania’s International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Soviet and Nazi Occupational Regimes in Lithuania.

According to the press release, the ethics commission has conducted an investigation on whether Račinskas adhered to the stipulations of Lithuania’s law on conflicts of interest in public service, and having discovered violations, seeks his resignation. The investigation began after receiving internal audit information provided by the Chancellery of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania.

The Supreme Public Service Ethics Commission is looking at cases where Račinskas might have signed orders giving himself additional income, approving his own vacation and approving working trips for himself in Lithuania and abroad.

Full article in Lithuanian here.

2019-08-142019-08-14

Holocaust Haunts Lithuania as Names Are Erased from Capital’s Map

Vilnius’s main synagogue shut its doors after the mayor denied city honors to two Holocaust enablers, prompting threats. It has since reopened, but the controversy over how to deal with the past has hardly died down.

This was never going to be an easy decision. The mayor of Vilnius, Remigijus Simasius, knew a storm was coming when he signed a decree on July 24 changing the name of Kazys Skirpa Street and days later another, to remove a memorial plaque dedicated to Jonas Noreika from the library of the country’s Academy of Sciences.

A small group of radical nationalists held a rally in central Vilnius to protest the mayor’s decrees, railing against “traitors who spit at the memory of the nation’s great sons.” Vilnius’s synagogue was temporarily closed. The president’s office tabled a meeting to address, among other issues, renaming streets and memorial plaques, the BNS news agency reported.

The most sensitive issue of Lithuania’s past–the Holocaust–had ignited passions once again.

Full story in English here.

2019-08-142019-08-14

Lithuanian Olympic Committee Congratulates Lithuanian Makabi on Wins at European Maccabi Games

Lithuania’s National Olympic Committee have sent their congratulations to the Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club on the latter’s outstanding showing at the 15th European Maccabi Games held in Budapest in early August. Makabi Club president and head of delegation Semionas Finkelšteinas said their win was unprecedented both in the last hundred years of Lithuanian Jewish sporting history and in Lithuanian athletics overall.

The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club teams contain many young people, which might explain their outstanding recent victories and should insure many more victories to come.

This year Lithuanian Makabi athletes took home around 62 medals, 25 of them gold. Although the athletes from Lithuania originally won 81 awards, but in the final count only medals won individually or in pairs or teams with athletes from a single country were registered, leaving Lithuanian Makabi an appreciable haul. During awards ceremonies the Lithuanian national anthem played a whopping 25 times and the Lithuanian flag was raised the same number of times.

2019-08-142019-09-02

Condolences

With sadness we report the death of Inga Kundžmaitytė, long-time employee of the Jewish Culture and Information Center. Our sincere condolences to her family and friends.

2019-08-14

Lithuanian Writer Kristina Sabaliauskaitė on Commemoration Controversies

Photo: Kristina Sabaliauskaitė, photographed by Paulius Gasiūnas

by Audrius Ožalas, deputy chief editor, 15min.lt

“…If we’re discussing Jewish-Lithuanian relations, which is at the core of the memory wars going on now, great progress had been made towards reconciliation, and now there is again an attempt to destroy that. I believe this isn’t coincidental, the March of the Living is scheduled for September, and I perceive there is a very specific, strategic attempt to discredit, harm, to do something to get rid of this beautiful initiative, [to stop] our admission of guilt, our healing as a society, our reconciliation with our Jewish brothers and sisters.”

Full interview in Lithuanian here.

2019-08-132019-08-30

Vytenis Andriukaitis Comments on Noreika Plaque Take-Down, Hitler-Stalin Equivalency

In an interview conducted by the Lithuanian Telegraph Agency ELTA and published on the Delfi news site, outgoing Lithuanian European Commission commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis commented on the public controversy over the removal of a sign commemorating Jonas Noreika in Vilnius.

Question: Agitation has arisen in society because of the removal of the commemorative plaque for Jonas Noreika and the renaming of Kazys Škirpa Alley. In other words, conflict has arisen because of collective historical memory and this has provoked clear conflict between the Jewish community and [ethnic] Lithuanians. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky announced the closure of the synagogue and the community building due to threats received. The prime minister and the president immediately condemned expressions of hate, but the information had already been sent out to the international community that Jews are not safe in Lithuania. You are a highly educated person as well as an historian. As an historian, how do you view interference by politicians into historical memory? Do they have the right to do this?

Answer: The biggest complaint I have to make to the conservative ideologues is very clear: they politicize and rewrite history. Putin rewrites history, but this is being done in Lithuania by Landsbergis as well. Those who attempt to place an equal sign between the crimes of Stalinism and Nazi crimes–deportations, murders, exile–are also rewriting history. The Holocaust, however, is a unique Nazi crime, because the Nazi racial ideology is unique, one of a kind in the world. Communism was a universal system of beliefs … No distinction is made in Lithuania between Stalinist and Nazi crimes … The Holocaust of Naziism was a unique crime based on the Nazi ideology, based on an ultra-racist point of view, breeding people to create a superhuman breed and placing people in genetic categories: people, genetically deformed people and subhumans. Jews and Roma were subhumans, they were scheduled for extermination … This is horrific. Show me at least one Stalinist crime committed of this nature. The Stalinist concentration camps were crimes against humanity.

Full interview in Lithuanian here.

2019-08-122019-08-30

Israeli President Isaac Herzog Visits Lithuania

On the War in Israel and the Situation in Lithuania