Lithuanian Jewish Community

Saulius Sužiedėlis Interview on Lithuanian Holocaust Collaboration

by Mindaugas Jackevičius, www.delfi.lt

U.S.-based professor emeritus of history Saulius Sužiedėlis says it’s inappropriate for the state to honor those who contributed in any way to the Holocaust, and calls upon Lithuania to review for whom statues have been erected

Sužiedėlis says Lithuania could have and should have done more to detect and prosecute Holocaust perpetrators. He says Lithuania doesn’t have to admit complicity in the murder of Jews, but finally needs to admit collaboration by Lithuanians without excuses and to stop downplaying the significance of that collaboration.

The historian says this is harming Lithuania’s reputation which is important for defending national sovereignty. Sužiedėlis says no one will want to defend a country with such a poor reputation.

Well-known German historian Dr. Christoph Dieckmann, who in 2011 wrote the fundamental work “Germany’s Occupation Policy in Lithuania 1941-1944” [co-authored by Saulius Sužiedėlis], in an interview with Delfi last spring raised the moral question of why Lithuanian society, seeing and hearing the Jews being killed around them, didn’t protest. Do you think this is a well-founded question?

I think the question is not completely justified, because there were few opportunities to resist. And let’s remember that in the first two months the Lithuanian consciousness was still focused on the deportations, and Red Army soldiers shot at least 1,000 innocent Lithuanians as they withdrew. The psychology was completely different. What Lithuanian would die for Stalin? So resisting would have been difficult psychologically.

2017-11-292017-12-12

Thank You

November 28, 2017

Dear members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community,

I would like to thank the entire Lithuanian Jewish Community for the outpouring of love and support that has been extended to my family following the passing of my mother, Chasia Shpanerflig. I consider myself truly blessed to have the love and support of this amazing community.

Those who knew my mother knew her as a strong-willed and resilient woman. In ninety-six years, my mother was presented with some of life’s most difficult challenges–war, genocide, the loss of family, oppression; the list goes on and on. It is in the face of adversity where my mother, guided by her deep-rooted morals and values, distinguished herself as a human being. Circumstances that may have given others reason to abandon hope were the times that my mother was strongest and most resilient. Her selflessness and commitment to the well-being of her family and friends: exemplary; her will and her beliefs: unwavering; and her love for her community and family: unparalleled. It is these basic ideals that distinguished my mother and that she will be remembered for.

During the latter portion of her life, my mother was recognized her as an active member of the Jewish community in Vilnius. During times where she still had her youth and was physically capable, she actively participated in, and contributed to, all causes that promoted the well-being of her fellow community members. She took great pride in her level of involvement with the community, most notably in her tenure as an officer in the Veterans Division (secretary)–it gave her an unbelievable sense of purpose and brought her tremendous joy.

In the very late stages of my mother’s life, as her health deteriorated, the community which she gave so much of herself to was right there to return the good favor. The Social Services and the Ghetto divisions in particular, worked tirelessly to make sure she received all of the proper care and support when she wasn’t able to provide for herself. Being thousands of miles away, these times were incredibly difficult for me. Throughout this entire time, both divisions were right there by my family’s side, ensuring that my mother received the best possible care and that the lines of communication were constantly open for my own comfort and peace of mind. It is to them, and their leadership, that I am eternally grateful and would like to extend my deepest appreciation.

There is a popular saying that “time heals all wounds.” While her death has been difficult for my family and me, my mother lived a long and dignified life. The Lithuanian Jewish Community was a significant piece of her identity and she considered its members her family. I would like to thank everyone in the community for the lifetime of support they provided her and for being there for my family and me in these tough times.

Sofia Kats

2017-11-292017-12-12

Christmas Fair at Old Town Hall Square

The Israeli embassy and the Bagel Shop Café presented Jewish foods for the Christmas Fair at the Old Town Hall in Vilnius Tuesday. The fair will take place on Saturday, December 2. The fair is held annually by foreign embassies in Vilnius with all sorts of handicrafts, Christmas decorations and food on offer. Revenues generated go to welfare programs in Lithuania. More than 30 embassies and 5 international schools will man booths at the fair. A lottery will be held with valuable prizes awarded and traditional song and dance will be performed. The fair will be open from 12 noon to 6:00 P.M.

2017-11-292017-12-04

Grigory Kanovich: A Good Book is a Life Teacher

G. Kanovičius: gera knyga visada yra gyvenimo mokytoja
by Donatas Puslys, www.bernardinai.lt

Rūta Oginskaitė’s book “Gib a Kuk: Žvilgtelėk” recently hit the book shops, in which the author, Grigory Kanovich and his wife Olia paint a portrait of the Lithuanian writer and an entire era. On November 29 London’s Central Synagogue will host the launch of the English translation of Kanovich’s book “Shtetl Love Song.” We spoke with Grigory Kanovich about his relationship with his readership, love of homeland and the painful moments in our history.

There’s a proverb that a prophet is not recognized in his homeland. Your work is an important monument to the history of the Jews of Lithuania and their memory. The book requires, however, a reader who is able to enter into a dialogue with the text. Do you sense the presence of such readers in Lithuania, do you think there is a dialogue and discussion going on with your texts? Should we conclude from your recent works published abroad that your work is more interested to foreign than Lithuanian readers?

I hold to the view that prophets are rare in their homeland, and one more frequently encounters only clairvoyants and the righteous. I think “prophet” is hyperbole. I won’t deny that my novels are an attempt to create a monument to pre-war Jewish history and to commemorate my compatriots.

I wouldn’t dare claim some wide-ranging discussion is taking place between me and my readers in Lithuania, but I do receive a lot of good-willed responses from different locations from readers reading my work in Lithuanian and Russian. I can’t complain about that. I am happy foreign publishers are interested in my work. For instance, the recent publication of my Shtetl Love Song by a leading London publisher.

Full interview in Lithuanian here.

2017-11-292017-12-12

The Litvaks: 900 Years of History

You are invited to a multimedia presentation called “Litvaks: 900 Years of History” by the students of the Saulėtekis school in Vilnius. The Saulėtekis school has presented a number of plays on Litvak culture and the Holocaust. The school has a strong Holocaust education component. In addition, student choirs often perform songs in Yiddish and Hebrew, most recently at the Holocaust commemoration at Ponar at the end of September where they performed the Vilnius ghetto anthem, Zog Nit Keynmol.

The presentation will take place at the Russian Drama Theater at Basanavičiaus street no. 13 in Vilnius at 6:00 P.M. on Wednesday, November 29.

Admission is free.

2017-11-292017-12-04

Japanese Volunteer Teacher Visits Panevėžys Jewish Community

Svečio iš Japonijos Susumu Nakagawa vizitas Panevėžio miesto žydų bendruomenėje

Last week Susumu Nakagawa from Japan visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community. Mr. Nakagawa is visiting Panevėžys for the second time as a volunteer teacher, teaching beginning Japanese at the Panevėžys Technology and Business Faculty of Kaunas Technology University. Mr. Nakagawa is building a bridge of friendship between the two countries, he says. He’s interested in Litvak history and culture, and when he learned there is a living Jewish community in the Lithuanian city, he decided to visit. He was accompanied by art teacher Loreta Januškienė.

Mr. Nakagawa and his family are Christians and interesting in the Old Testament and Jewish history and traditions. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman told Mr. Nakagawa about the history of the Panevėžys Jewish community over tea, and showed him documents and photographs. Mr. Nakagawa posed a number of questions to the chairman, and they touched upon the legacy of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who rescued Jews in Kaunas during the first stages of the Holocaust.

2017-11-282017-12-12

Kanovich Shtetl Love Song Presentation in London

2017-11-282017-12-04

Exhibit of Miniatures by Valius Staknys

An exhibit of miniature drawings by Valius Staknys called Letters will open at the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 5:30 P.M. on November 30. The opening ceremony will include a retrospective of the artist’s life and work. He is best known as a theater director. The exhibit will run until December 18 on the third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community.

2017-11-282017-12-04

Professor Says Lithuanian Holocaust Perps Not Just Lowlifes, Included Intellectuals

Professor Saulius Sužiedėlis claims Lithuania could have and should have done more to find and convict Holocaust perpetrators. He said Lithuania doesn’t need to take responsibility for murdered Jews, but needs to recognize Lithuanian collaboration in the Holocaust instead of trying to belittle the significance of Lithuanian participation. The historian said this is harming Lithuania’s reputation which is important for defending national sovereignty. Sužiedėlis said no one would come to the defense of a country with such a poor reputation.

Full article in Lithuanian here.

2017-11-272017-11-28

Faina Kukliansky Says Jews and Lithuanians Need to Resolve Disagreements

Photos: BNS
by Birutė Vyšniauskaitė, www.lrt.lt

Although the scandal caused by writer Rūta Vanagaitė’s statements on the partisan Adolfas Ramanauskas has subsided, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky believes the tranquility is only temporary. Vanagaitė’s book Mūsiškiai about the mass murder of Jews in Lithuania is soon to appear in English translation. She also enjoys the support of the European Jewish Congress and has many proponents in Israel. In an interview with LRT [Lithuanian Public Radio and Television], Kukliansky said we shouldn’t fear coming scandals.

“I really liked historian Saulius Sužiedėlis’s idea that it’s possible to read a given document or set of documents a number of times and come to different conclusions. It takes special training and understanding to study documents. An elderly grandmother could read the same documents, and while they might be interesting to her, she won’t be able to make sense of them. So, what if a book is written for public relations, seeking profit and to sensationalize readers and listeners?” Kukliansky told LRT regarding the aftermath of the Vanagaitė scandal.

2017-11-272017-12-15

Happy 50th Birthday to Rabbi Krinsky

Happy 50th birthday to Rabbi Krinsky! Mazl tov!

The Lithuanian Jewish Community congratulates Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky on his birthday and thanks him for his efforts and sincere work over many years for the good of our community. A young Jewish generation has grown up in Lithuania accompanied by your teaching and good works. Rabbi, the Jewish community wishes you and your family strength and health and that the Light of the Torah would illuminate all your future work.

Mazl tov. May you live to 120!

2017-11-262017-12-07

Screening of “Aš turiu papasakoti”

The film “Aš turiu papasakoti” (“Ya Dolzhna Rasskazat”) will be screened at the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius at 6:00 P.M. on November 23. The movie is based on the book by Marija Rolnikaitė about surviving the Holocaust.

The film is open to the public and admission is free. Director Feliks Dektor and producer Eugenijus Bunka will be there.

2017-11-232017-11-27

Tens of Thousands of Jewish Documents Lost during Holocaust Discovered in Vilnius

YIVO announces the discovery of 170,000 Jewish documents thought to have been destroyed by the Nazis. Photo: Thos Robinson/Getty Images for YIVO

NEW YORK (JTA)–A trove of 170,000 Jewish documents thought to have been destroyed by the Nazis during World War II has been found.

On Tuesday the New York-based YIVO Institute for Jewish Research announced the find which contains unpublished manuscripts by famous Yiddish writers as well as religious and community documents. Among the finds are letters written by Sholem Aleichem, a postcard by Marc Chagall and poems and manuscripts by Chaim Grade.

YIVO, founded in Vilnius in what is now Lithuania, hid the documents, but the organization moved its headquarters to New York during World War II. The documents were later preserved by Lithuanian librarian Antanas Ulpis who kept them in the basement of the church where he worked.

Most of the documents are currently in Lithuania but 10 items are being displayed through January at YIVO, which is working with Lithuania to archive and digitize the collection.

“These newly discovered documents will allow that memory of Eastern European Jews to live on, while enabling us to have a true accounting of the past that breaks through stereotypes and clichéd ways of thinking,” YIVO executive director Jonathan Brent said Tuesday in a statement.

United States Senate minority leader Charles Schumer, democrat from New York state, praised the discovery.

“Displaying this collection will teach our children what happened to the Jews of the Holocaust so that we are never witnesses to such darkness in the world again,” Schumer, who is Jewish, said in a statement.

Israeli consul general in New York Dani Dayan compared the documents to “priceless family heirlooms.”

“The most valuable treasures of the Jewish people are the traditions, experiences and culture that have shaped our history. So to us, the documents uncovered in this discovery are nothing less than priceless family heirlooms, concealed like precious gems from Nazi storm troopers and Soviet grave robbers,” he said.

Full story here.

2017-11-222017-12-07

Chess Tournament in Memory of Algimantas Butnoris

A chess tournament in memory of Algimantas Butnoris will be held at 3:00 P.M. Sunday, November 19, at the Lithuanian Jewish Community. For more information please write info@metbor.lt or call 370 6 55 43 556.

2017-11-162017-11-22

Samuel Bak Museum Opens

Painter and Vilnius native Samuel Bak attended a press conference in Vilnius Wednesday to announce the opening of a Samuel Bak museum in Vilnius.

Bak, now based in the US, donated over 50 of his artworks for the museum. Born in 1933, the Jewish painter is a Holocaust survivor. He began drawing and painting in the Vilnius ghetto. After the war he lived in Israel and Western Europe. He and members of his family plan to spend just over a week in Vilnius on their current visit.

Bak is scheduled to be awarded honorary citizen of Vilnius at a ceremony to be held at the Vilnius Old Town Hall. The museum is to open November 17. 2017.

2017-11-162017-12-12

LRT TV Program Author Vitalijus Karakorskis Wins Prize for Intercultural Communication

November 16 is UNESCO’s International Day of Tolerance. Under the UNESCO definition in its Declaration of the Principles of Tolerance, tolerance doesn’t mean a tolerant attitude towards social injustice, nor the renunciation of one’s principles and their replacement with someone else’s. It means everyone is free to hold their own convictions and recognizes the right of others to do the same. It means recognizing people are born with different appearances into different social conditions, learn different languages, behavior and values, and have the right to live in peace and preserve their individuality.

The Ethnic Minorities Department under the Government of Lithuania named winners of its prize for intercultural communication November 13. There were 37 separate works in the running this year, including television programs, articles and interviews.

The judges’ panel awarded the prize to journalist, editor and filmmaker Vitalijus Karakorskis for originality and for discovering incredible connections between the ethnic communities resident in Lithuania in his making of an episode of the Lithuanian public television (LRT) program Menora on the topic of Dr. Jonas Basanavičius and Lithuanian Jews, on the 90th anniversary of the death of the patriarch of the Lithuanian state. They also awarded the prize to Siarhey Haurylenka for exceptional treatment of the cultures of Lithuanian ethnic minorities and the Belarusian language in the LRT television series about culture and history called “Cultural Crossroads: The Vilnius Notebook.”

2017-11-162017-12-04

New Fall Issue of the Bagel Shop Newsletter

After skipping a beat this summer, the newest Bagel Shop newsletter has hit the stands. The fall issue includes a complete news round-up from spring to the present, the usual sections and articles about the history of the Bund, efforts to restore Jewish headstones removed from Soviet-era public works projects around Vilnius to their rightful locations and the history of the Jews of Skuodas. The Jewish Book Corner this issue features a book about the tractate Nazir from the Babylonian Talmud and the Telšiai Yeshiva.

Look for the newest issue at the Bagel Shop Café, available for free, or download the electronic version below:

Bagel Shop Newsletter No. 2, 2017

2017-11-162017-12-04

Polish Nationalist March of 60,000 Worries Jews and Poles

by Cnaan Liphshiz

JTA–The sight of far-right activists waving racist banners and shouting anti-Semitic slogans during a nationalist march in the capital of Poland over the weekend shocked many around the world.

It was an understandable reaction to witnessing tens of thousands in Warsaw marching near what used to be the largest Jewish ghetto during the Holocaust amid shouts of “Jews out” and “remove Jewry from power.”

The march, an annual event which began in 2009 with 500 participants on Poland’s national day, November 11, was not necessarily the largest so far. Similar numbers of marchers showed up last year. But it did showcase the rising strength of Polish nationalists who are feeling emboldened by the conservative government in Warsaw and to some extent by the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president.

2017-11-15

AJC Decries Hateful Demonstrators on Poland’s Independence Day

November 13, 2017, Warsaw — AJC is urging the Polish government to speak out clearly against rising hatred inspired by the country’s far right. The call to action comes after a large demonstration filled with neo-Nazi and white supremacist rhetoric that took place in Warsaw on Saturday, the country’s independence day.

“While the joyous 99th anniversary of Polish independence was appropriately celebrated in ceremonies led by president Duda, the day was seriously marred by hateful, far-right throngs that threaten the core values of Poland and its standing abroad,” said Agnieszka Markiewicz, director of AJC’s Warsaw-based Central Europe office. “The growth of xenophobic nationalism in Poland is becoming more dangerous, and we urge the government to condemn unequivocally the phenomenon and take appropriate action to counter it.”

An estimated 60,000 people participated in the “March of Independence,” an annual event organized by far-right groups in Poland that attracted many more people than last year, including some from other countries. Men and women wearing face-masks chanted “pure Poland, white Poland” and “clean blood, lucid mind” as well as “sieg heil” and “Ku Klux Klan.”

“The apparent tolerance shown for these purveyors of hate — and, let’s be clear, that’s exactly what they are — by some Polish government officials is particularly troubling,” said Markiewicz.

Interior minister Mariusz Blaszczak called the large demonstration “a beautiful sight,” adding that “we are proud that so many Poles have decided to take part in a celebration connected to the Independence Day holiday.”

AJC, an organization long involved in Poland and steadfastly devoted to fostering strong links among the U.S., Israel, Poland, and world Jewry, calls on the Polish government to counter all forms of xenophobia and racially-motivated hatred through concerted action. “History has painfully taught us that silence or inaction in such matters can come with a high price,” said Markiewicz.

“As the late President Lech Kaczynski laudably said during the 2008 independence day celebration, ‘Patriotism does not mean nationalism,'” Markiewicz said. “It is an important message worth remembering and reinforcing. Radical nationalism and the spewing of hatred should not be confused with patriotism.”

Shapiro Silverberg
AJC Central Europe Office

2017-11-142017-11-15

Makabi Tennis Tourney

The now-traditional Makabi doubles tennis tournament took place November 12.

Three pairs tied and the final winners, Anatolijus Faktorovičius and son Norbertas Faktorovičius, were decided by number of games won. The family team took first place for the second time. Kęstutis, Faktorovičius’s other son, also took part in tournament successfully and demonstrated a great swing. Danielius Merkinas and Aleksandra Miller took second and Lorensas Baliukonis and Laima Urbšienė took third in fierce competition.

2017-11-132017-11-15

Israeli President Isaac Herzog Visits Lithuania

On the War in Israel and the Situation in Lithuania