Wooden Synagogue in Alanta Renovated
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LJC, International Comminission and Olga Lengyel Institute Holding Holocaust Seminars for Teachers
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LJC Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky Speaks at Commemoration of Grosse
Aktion in Kaunas
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Šiauliai Opens Righteous Gentile Square at the Intersection of Vilniaus and Ežero Streets at Former Ghetto Gates
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"Symphony from Jerusalem of the North” Mark Day of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide in Presidential Courtyard
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The renovated synagogue in Žiežmariai will become a new cultural center. The first synagogue in appeared sometime between 1690 and 1696. In the 19th century there three synagogues. Not surprising, since the majority of the population were Jewish. This synagogue which has survived and has now been renovated stands in the southern part of town between Vilniaus and Žalgirio streets, with the Strėva river flowing from southeastward from there.
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The Lithuanian Post Office has issued a stamp commemorating 300 years since the birth of the Vilna Gaon
The Lithuanian Post Office has issued a stamp commemorating 300 years since the birth of the Vilna Gaon
with a face value of 0.81 euros, enough to mail letters abroad.
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Lithuania Marks 300th Anniversary of Birth of Vilna Gaon, 2020 Named Year of the Gaon and Litvak History.
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Most important events at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in 2018
Most important events at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in 2018
Revival of Jewish Scouting in Lithuania: The first new Litvak scouting camping trip with children from Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Panevėžys and Molėtai took place August 24 to 26.
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Jewish newspapers and advertisements from Vilnius in the period between the two world wars. Jews and other minorities were given equal rights in the reconstituted Lithuanian state. Yiddish thrived with many newspapers and books published in the language.
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Fifteen Ways Being Jewish Is Meaningful

by David Harris

Surveys reveal a disturbingly large number of American Jews who feel disconnected from their Jewish identity. How painfully sad! In response, and with the High Holy Days just around the corner, let me share, as I have on occasion in the past, what being Jewish means to me.

1. It means championing what is arguably the single most revolutionary concept in the annals of human civilization—monotheism—introduced to the world by the Jews, and its corollary, the inherent belief that we are all created in the image of God (in Hebrew, B’tzelem Elohim).

2. It means embracing the deep symbolic meaning the rabbis gave to the story of Adam and Eve. Since all of humanity descend from the “original” couple, each of us, whatever our race, religion, or ethnicity, shares the same family tree. No one can claim superiority over anyone else.

3. It means entering into a partnership with the Divine for the repair of our broken world (in Hebrew, Tikkun Olam), and recognizing that this work is not to be outsourced to a higher authority, or to “fate,” or to other people, but that it’s my responsibility during my lifetime.

4. It means affirming life – “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse, therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live” (Hebrew Bible) – and the moral choice that lies in the hands of each of us to bring a little closer the Jewish prophetic vision of a world at peace and in harmony.

5. It means celebrating the fact that Jews were early dissidents, among the very first to challenge the status quo and insist on the right to worship differently than the majority. Today, we call this pluralism, and it is a bedrock principle of democratic societies. It also ought to be an essential component of Jewish communities everywhere.

6. It means welcoming the pioneering Jewish effort to establish a universal moral code of conduct and seeking to act as if that code of conduct were my daily GPS—to pursue justice, to treat my neighbor as I would wish to be treated, to welcome the stranger in our midst (and, I might add, the newcomer to the Jewish people), to be sensitive to the environment, and to seek peace. It’s not by accident that America’s Founding Fathers chose words from the Hebrew Bible for our nation’s Liberty Bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Or that the Ten Commandments continue to be an ethical guidepost for so many around the world.

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WJC President: We Must Never Forget Babi Yar Massacre

Babi Yar: Kodėl Holokausto aukų atminimo išlieka svarbus?
by Menachem Rephun

World Jewish Congress leaders recently visited Ukraine in connection with the 75th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre, in which over 33,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis in 1941.

“Babi Yar is one of the most infamous pieces of ground in the entire world,” World Jewish Congress leader Ronald Lauder said. “Tens of thousands of our people were killed there for only one reason: because they were Jewish.”

Lauder noted Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis to murder Kiev’s Jews.

“While Babi Yar was organized by the Nazis, there were willing helpers in the Ukrainian militia,” Lauder said. “This happened all across Europe. In almost every occupied country, local people helped the Germans round up their Jews.”

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LJC Youth Programs in September

Ilan Club and their youngest group leaders opened the club for fall. Children returning from the summer camps were full of emotion, and the counselors were filled just as much with enthusiasm and new ideas.

On September 18 the Ilan club officially opened for the fall and about 30 of our youngest friends turned out for the event. The first activity was getting to know the new club members and the counselors. During the activities session the children participated in skits where children’s favorite things were showcased–cartoons, music, games, etc. During play the children had the chance to introduce themselves to the group and to play as teams. After the skit there was our weekend ceremony and a symbolic dinner with many delicious items.

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NCSEJ in Ukraine: Remembering Babi Yar

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KIEV, UKRAINE September 29, 2016–Today the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCSEJ) joined with government leaders from the U.S. and Europe and members of the Jewish community from around the world at an official ceremony to remember the 1941 massacre of Jews by Nazi forces at the Babi Yar ravine in Kiev, Ukraine.

A delegation of over twenty NCSEJ officers and board members traveled to Ukraine this week to participate in the ceremony and attend commemorations relating to the Babi Yar anniversary.

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Lithuanian Jewish Community Chairwoman Pays Last Respects to Shimon Peres in Jerusalem

VILNIUS, September 30, BNS – Lithuania on Friday is paying last respects to late Israeli president Shimon Peres.

Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė and foreign minister Linas Linkevičius attended his funeral in Jerusalem, and Vilnius residents and guests can express their condolences at the Israeli embassy.

“We bid farewell to a great man of the world, a man of peace, an example of tolerance, a man important to all, including Lithuania, because he considered Lithuania, this region, his birthplace and called himself a Litvak,” Grybauskaitė said.

“His visit several years ago marked a significant improvement in the relationship between our states, which is very important for us not only as we look to the future, but also as we reflect on our painful past,” she said.

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky also attended his funeral in Jerusalem.

Peres was born only 100 kilometers from Vilnius in a small town in what then was Poland in 1923.

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Happy Birthday to Ella Gurina

Sveikiname Ellą Guriną su jubiliejumi!

The Lithuanian Jewish Community wishes Ella Gurina a happy 70th birthday. She has been a constantly active member of the Community, a doctor, a member of the board of executives who participates in everything and is extremely demanding of herself.

Dear Ella, please accept our birthday wishes for continued health and great happiness and may all your days be beautiful ones brightened by your joy and hope. Happy birthday on this important milestone. May every day bring you greater success and happiness!

Mazl tov!

Babi Yar Anniversary Marked in Ukraine

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The Ukraine Thursday marked the 75th anniversary of the murder of about 34,000 Jews during the Holocaust in a Kiev suburb.

The Babi Yar mass murder site is a ravine in the capital Kiev and has been subject to intense controversy within the Ukraine about the role Ukrainians played in the Holocaust.

Story in Lithuanian here.

Lithuanian Jewish Community Position on the Reconstruction of the Great Synagogue in Vilnius

The following is an official letter sent by the Lithuanian Jewish Community to concerned government agencies.

September 27, 2016

To:
Remigijus Šimašius
mayor, city of Vilnius

Alminas Mačiulis
Government chancellor

Šarūnas Birutis
minister of culture

Linas Linkevičius
minister of foreign affairs

Diana Varnaitė
director, Cultural Heritage Department under the Ministry of Culture

On the Reconstruction of the Great Synagogue

As public interest has grown recently in the history and cultural legacy of Lithuanian Jews (Litvaks) and specifically regarding artifacts uncovered at the site of the Great Synagogue in Vilnius, we feel it our duty to again present our view, that of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, regarding the issue of the conservation of surviving parts and the possible reconstruction of the Great Synagogue, a building with extraordinary significance to the Lithuanian and the global Jewish community.

As we have said before many times, we support all meaningful initiatives to preserve, protect and commemorate the legacy and heritage of the Jews of Lithuania, but we do not support unreasonable projects to rebuild non-existing buildings which are carried out in the name of Jews. It seems that is what we are facing again in the idea developing over many years by certain government institutions and possibly including hidden business structures to rebuild the Great Synagogue complex in Vilnius.

In 2015 the municipal government enterprise Vilniaus Planas was commissioned by the municipality’s Urban Development Department to prepare draft construction proposals for a memorial to the Great Synagogue under pre-project proposals submitted by the architect Tzila Zak. The terms of reference of the planning task itself revealed the client’s attitude towards the rebuilding of the Great Synagogue as an attractve real estate development project: the primary task presented to planners was to submit a list of the buildings proposed for rebuilding, to name the rooms and premises slated for reconstruction and to calculate floor space.

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Israeli Dance Lessons

Israeli dance lessons with Karina and Valerija, beginners’ group from 11:00 A.M. to 12 on Sundays, advanced group Sunday from 12:15 P.M. to 1:15 and Wednesdays 6:00 P.M. to 7:30 P.M. at the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius.

For more information write karina.semionova@gmail.com

News from the Interwar Period in Jewish Lithuanian Newspapers

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Editorial board of Di Yiddishe Stime, 1924. Sitting, right to left: Nathan Goren, Roza Khazan-Feigin, Moshe Cohen, David Cohen, Reuven Rubinstein, Moritz Helman, Rafael Khasman. Standing, right to left: Ya’akov Feigin, Israel Zhufer, Moshe Rabinowitz, Eliezer Shibolet. Photo courtesy jewishgen.com

Jews were the largest ethnic and religious minority in Lithuania in the period between the two world wars. The Jewish culture of Lithuania, just like that of Eastern Europe as a whole, was multifaceted and diverse, and the Yiddish language was an important vehicle of communication. When Isaac Bashevis Singer received the Nobel Prize for Literature in December of 1978, he wasn’t just speaking in vain when he said: “There are some who call Yiddish a dead language, but so was Hebrew called for two thousand years. It has been revived in our time in a most remarkable, almost miraculous way. … It is a fact that the classics of Yiddish literature are also the classics of the modern Hebrew literature. Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and Cabbalists—rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget.

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Lithuanian President Awards Rescuers of Jews

VILNIUS, September 28, BNS–Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė Wednesday awarded nearly 50 persons with Life Saving Crosses for rescuing Jews from the Holocaust during World War II.

The majority, 44, were awarded posthumously.

Speaking at the ceremony at the President’s Office, Grybauskaite invited all participants to stand in a minute of silence to honor the memory of Israel’s former president Shimon Peres who passed away earlier that day.

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Let’s Do Something Good

logo-telsiu-zinios

by Aurelija Servienė

Last week was special for Jews. On September 23 the Day of Genocide of Lithuanian Jews was marked. To mark the day, a club of mentally disabled people in Žemaitija called Telšių Atjauta [Empathy of Telšiai] under their chairman Kazimieras Mitkus did a good deed: they cleaned up the Jewish cemetery in Telšiai.

Mitkus said the club engages in activities which are unusual for similar organizations. He said they strive to make the activities meaningful for the community as well as organization members.

“One of the sectors we care for and maintain is the Telšiai Jewish cemetery. Last week was special, in that we took the initiative without waiting for anyone else and cleaned up the cemetery. In the belief that there might be guests coming this special week,” the club chairman commented.

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Shimon Peres: An Exceptional Intellect and a True Litvak

Sh.Peresas buvo išskirtinio intelekto žmogus ir tikras litvakas – F.Kukliansky

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky says late Israeli president Shimon Peres was a person of exceptional intellect and always stressed his ties with Lithuania.

“It’s important for us, for Lithuanian Jews, that he was one of our own, we always considered him a Litvak and he considered himself a Litvak. After all, he came from Vishnev, a village 70 kilometers from Vilnius in what is now Belarus but which was Lithuanian territory then. It was so nice for us that our countryman was so intelligent, so educated, such an erudite, and could speak on any and every topic even at a venerable age. Our entire community is in mourning. We know human life has an end, but when you encounter death, great sadness overtakes you,” Kukliansky said.

Peres visited Lithuania three years ago and Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė met him when she visited Israel last year. This last spring he was decorated with the Lithuanian order of the Great Cross “For Contributions to Lithuania.”

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The Shekel Route around Klaipėda

Po Klaipėdą Šekelio keliu

In celebration of World Tourism Day, a new tourist route called the Shekel Route around Klaipėda was unveiled. The Klaipėda District Tourism Guild presented the route to the public. The route was created in cooperation with the Klaipėda Jewish Community. The author was Laurencija Budrytė-Ausiejienė. Partial funding for the route came from the Klaipėda Jewish Community using funding from the Goodwill Foundation.

As soon as news appeared on the internet about the route, all available spaces were snatched up.

The Tourism Information Center of the Palanga municipality has prepared a brochure called “Jewish Sites to Remember in Palanga.”

Names of Holocaust Victims Read in Ukmergė

II Antakalnyje ir Ukmergėje skambėjo nužudytų žydų vardai
Ukmergė residents read 2,336 names of Holocaust victims at the old Jewish cemetery

gzeme.lt

The sixth annual reading of the names of Holocaust victims took place in Lithuania September 22 and 23 and this year Ukmergė (Vilkomir) joined the commemoration. Names were read at the edge of the Pivonija neighborhood there, at the old Jewish cemetery and at Antakalnis village in the Lyduokiai aldermanship. The latter site has no commemorative markers at all and has been abandoned and left to the elements. One-hundred and fourteen Jews from Ukmergė were murdered there in the summer of 1941.

Neringa Latvytė-Gustaitienė, director of the History Department of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, said she was happy the public had responded and assembled at this site where Jews were brought from the Ukmergė jail and murdered during the first days of World War II in Lithuania. “This location is not marked with informational signs or arrows, and has not been entered on the registry of cultural heritage. Neither local residents nor representatives of the aldermanship had even heard of the site until now,” she said.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Jewish Holocaust Victims Were Neighbors and Fellow Citizens

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The project is based on the fact that there are 227 Holocaust mass murder sites in Lithuania scattered all across the country.

I had never heard of Vėliučionys, a small village on the outskirts of Vilna (Vilnius) before Lithuanian author Rūta Vanagaitė and I set out in the summer of 2015 to visit sites of Holocaust mass murders for a book we wrote on Lithuanian complicity in Shoa crimes.

Our original list of destinations was compiled based on our biographies.

I chose the birthplaces of my maternal grandparents Samuel and Bertha Sar, and the towns in which they had grown up and studied, as well as the presumed site of the murder of my great-uncle Rabbi Efraim Zar, for whom I am named, his wife and two sons. Rūta chose the places where her grandfather Jonas Vanagas and her aunt’s husband Antanas Stapiulionis had played a role in the murder of Jews.

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Yiddish for Pirates

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No, it’s not the latest whacky facebook language option to spice up your social media experience, but a novel by Litvak Canadian author Gary Barwin which is up for the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize for best new novel or short story in English authored by a Canadian.

Yiddish for Pirates is one of six candidates for the annual prize, vying for the prestigious award with Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien, Wonder by Emma Donoghue, Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittal, Party Wall by Catherine Leroux translated from French and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad.

Every year the Giller Prize looks back at the previous year’s fiction and presents a winner from their shortlist. This year’s awards ceremony will take place in Canada on November 7.

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Lithuanian Jewish Partisan Joseph Harmatz, “The Avenger,” Has Died

Mirė Lietuvoje gimęs ir Holokaustą išgyvenęs žydų „keršytojas“ J. Harmatzas

BNS and others

Jospeh Harmatz who led a Jewish attempt to take revenge on the Nazis has died at the age of 91. Harmatz’s son Ronel confirmed he had died Monday.

Harmatz was one of a handful of Jewish “avengers” who plotted to poison many SS officers held at an American POW camp in 1946. More than 2,200 Germans were poisoned during the operation, but none of them died from it as far as anyone knows.

Nonetheless the act took on symbolic meaning for the newly forming State of Israel: the day when attacks against Jews went unanswered had ended.

Harmatz was born in Lithuania and lost most of his family to the Holocaust. He gave an interview to AP shortly before his death in which he said he did not regret his actions or those of others in the Revenge brigade.

“We couldn’t understand why there shouldn’t be payback for that,” he said.

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Leonidas Donskis Dead at Age 54

Netekome Leonido Donskio

Leonidas Donskis, a Lithuanian philosopher, scholar and former member of the European Parliament, deputy chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, political activist, author and notable figure in Lithuanian society and academic and political life, died Wednesday morning.

He reportedly died at Vilnius International Airport from a heart attack.

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Prize Recipients Chosen for Best Final Academic Work on Ethnic Minorities in 2016

Išrinkti 2016 m. Premijos už geriausią baigiamąjį mokslo darbą tautinių mažumų tematika laimėtojai

On September 14 the Academic Council of the Lithuanian Department of Ethnic Minorities selected the winners of a new prize created this year for best final academic work on ethnic minorities.

Department of Ethnic Minorities director Dr. Vida Montvydaitė made the final decision on recommendations from her Academic Council and selected Julijana Leganovič in the first nomination category for her bachelor’s work “Comparative View of the Development of the Vilnius and the Kaunas Jewish Communities in the Interwar Period.”

The second category was for master’s work and the winners were Rūta Anulytė with her “Heritage Protection and Maintenance of Historical Jewish Cemeteries in Lithuania: Practice and Recommendations” and Mantas Šikšnianas with his “Jews of Švenčionys from the mid-18th Century to the mid-20th Century: Shtetl, Sabbath, Shoah.”

Full story in Lithuanian here.