Come learn about the Jewish cultural and historical legacy. European Days of Jewish Culture, September 4. This time the theme is Jewish languages. Event begins at 2:00 P.M. on the third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius.
The Kaunas Jewish Community will mark the 75th anniversary of the murder of the Jews of Petrašiūnai and the Intellectuals Aktion on August 26, 2016. The ceremony will begin at 3:30 P.M. at the stele in memory of the Jews of Petrašiūnai. Then we will move to the Fourth Fort in Kaunas where the Intellectuals Aktion, the first mass murder of Jews imprisoned in the Kaunas ghetto, was perpetrated.
We sincerely congratulate long-standing and very active Vilnius Jewish Community member Michlia Lorman on her 70th birthday.
We wish you eternal beauty and happiness, health and continued energy! And may all your birthday wishes come true.
Mazl tov!
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Rositsan and Maccabi Elite Chess and Checkers Club invite you to a chess tournament dedicated to the memory of Kaunas Chess Club director Abraomas Šulmanas at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius at 11:00 A.M. on August 21.
Tournament director Boris Rositsan, FIDE master
For further information and to register, contact:
info@metbor.lt
tel.: +3706 5543556
Vladimir Kavleiskij, a member of the Vilnius Jewish Community and the Social Club, passed away August 12. He was born July 19, 1946. We extend our deepest condolences to his family members for their loss.
On August 11 as the Vilnius Yiddish Institute’s summer Yiddish courses came to an end, students gathered at the Lithuanian Jewish Community and sang some Yiddish songs they learned. Listen to the old classic “Vilne” and sing along if you like.
Footage here.
Another outdoor painting workshop, or “plein air,” took place from August 8 to 14 at the Įlanka farmstead in Šaukšteliškiai village in the Molėtai region of Lithuania, organized by the Lithuanian Jewish Community. Participants stayed in and painted a scenic natural location where the surrounding lake, skies and fresh air inspired creativity. The program included ceramics as well as painting and featured professional teachers and lecturers and a significant recreational component. Participants included two recognized Lithuanian folk artists.
Events to commemorate Chiune Sugihara, Japanese WWII-era consul in Kaunas and a Lithuanian festival were held in Sugihara’s hometown of Yaotsu, Japan, from July 31 to August 7.
Sugihara rescued thousands of Lithuanian Jews from the Holocaust and has been recognized as a Righteous Gentile and awarded the status of Righteous among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial authority in Israel.
The week of commemorations was opened by the signing of a memorandum of cooperation by Yaotsu mayor Masanori Kaneko and Kaunas municipality representative Inga Pukelytė.
Acting Lithuanian ambassador to Japan Violeta Gaižauskaitė noted the events came on the 25th anniversary of the restoration of diplomatic ties between Japan and Lithuania and characterized ties between the people of Japan and Lithuania as sincere, and relations btween the two nations friendly. She also said both countries were dedicated to preserving the memory of the noble Japanese diplomat for future generations.
Jagomastas was an activist for the rights of the Lithuanian minority in East Prussia and a publisher. He and his wife, two sons and daughter were shot at Ponar outside Vilnius in August of 1941. On the 75th anniversary of his death the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania is calling on the public to remember him and the murder of his family. An event is scheduled for 12 noon on August 23 at the marked grave of Jagomastas in Ponar.
More information in Lithuanian here.
Valdimir and Regina Lazerson
by Jūratė Vaižgauskaitė
manoteises.lt
“We used to drink tea using the ‘look’ method: a lump of sugar was tied to a string and we’d look at it while we sipped tea. The tea wasn’t any sweeter for that, but we all had a good time,” Vladimir Lazerson’s daughter Tamara wrote in her memoirs. Lazerson was a professor and early practitioner of clinical psychology. They drank that imagined sweet tea in the Kaunas ghetto where they were imprisoned in June of 1941.
First professor Lazerson was thrown out of university. Then his house was taken away, his books burned and he was sent to Dachau. There he died. He had dozens of articles published and was the founder in Lithuania of several branches of psychology, and practiced clinical psychology as a military medic.
Army Medic, Peace Psychologist
Born in Moscow, Lazerson began his scholastic career at German and Swiss universities. He defended a dissertation thesis in psychology in 1911 and then went on to study medicine in Germany and Russia. His path to Lithuania was a winding one. Working as a military medic and associate professor in Kiev, he left when pogroms began and chose newly independent Lithuania as a destination.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
A new Lithuanian translation of Woman in Jerusalem by Abraham B. Yehoshua has been published in Lithuanian by the Sofoklis press in Vilnius. It was translated by Kristina Gudelytė.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
Nina Kačerginskaja, a member of the Social Club and of the Klaipėda Jewish Community, passed away August 11. She was born on November 20, 1925.
Our deepest condolences to her friends and family.
UPDATE: Event organizers are providing transport from Vilnius and several free seats are left! Please register for a place before August 23 by sending an email to info@lostshtetl.com
You are invited to an event to commemorate the Šeduva Jewish community murdered in the Holocaust. The event is on on August 30 and will be a kaddish at the 3 mass murder sites and the old Šeduva Jewish cemetery.
Commemorative program
9:00–9:30 Kaddish at the Jewish mass murder site in Pakuteniai forest
https://goo.gl/maps/tdN5Y3mrWJw
9:45–10:15 Kaddish at Liaudiškiai Jewish mass murder site I
https://goo.gl/maps/fhjnq5ubSfk
10:30–11:00 Kaddish at Liaudiškiai Jewish mass murder site II
https://goo.gl/maps/mYLnGLUmVuK2
11:15–11:45 Kaddish at the Šeduva Jewish cemetery
https://goo.gl/maps/ZuHGdK9EHvF2
12:00–12:30 Coffee break at the Šeduva Culture and Crafts Center
12:45-1:30 Mass at the Holy Apparition of the Cross Church in Šeduva
1:30–2:15 Yiddish song concert by Rafailas Karpis and Darius Mažintas at the church in Šeduva
Download PDF format event program
More here.
by D. Baranauskaitė
manoteises.lt
“All riders have reached the finish line and the injured have been brought by automobile, but we haven’t seen Mr. Anolik and he isn’t found among the injured. Everyone has left. The stadium is empty, but he’s still not here. Asked by telephone, all the checkpoints reported they didn’t know and that there was not a single cyclist left on the route. He only came back at 11 at night, cold and hungry.”
This is how the newspaper Sportas reported the debut of the Lithuanian state at the Olympic Games in 1924. The subject of the report, Isaac Anolik, was a Lithuanian athlete of Jewish origins and the country’s cycling champion many times over. His accomplishments didn’t matter during the Holocaust. The leading Lithuanian cyclist was shot at the Ninth Fort.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
15min.lt
The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is inviting visitors to a provocative interactive exhibit called My Selfie and I. Visitors can photograph themselves as much as they like with special equipment and their images are immediately projected on a large screen. Initially it appeared as if the museum were trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator among visitors, but actually the exhibit subtly reveals the absurdity of the selfie phenomenon.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
Work has begun to produce a memorial plaque to commemorate the pre-WWII Union of Jewish Soldiers Who Fought for Lithuanian Independence. The project was initiated by the Kaunas Jewish Community with support from Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, LJC cultural heritage expert Martynas Užpelkis and sculptor Gediminas Pašvenskas, who designed the plaque. The plaque is to be placed on the building formerly housing the Union at A. Mapu street no. 10 in Lithuania’s interwar capital.
Established in 1933, the Union of Jewish Soldiers Who Fought for Lithuanian Independence was originally based in Joniškis and moved to Kaunas in 1934. Besides fostering patriotism and loyalty to the state, the union also encouraged cultural cooperation between Lithuanians and Jews and operated throughout the country, with about 3,000 members in total. Twenty Jewish soldiers were decorated with the Order of the Cross of Vytis for bravery in battle and other orders and decorations were also bestowed on the veterans of the early Lithuanian struggle for independence following World War I. The union participated with its regalia at official events and ceremonies and publicly displayed their devotion and loyalty to Lithuania.
A memorial to Samuelis Petuchauskas, deputy mayor of Šiauliai from 1921 to 1940, is to be unveiled at the city of Šiauliai municipality at Vasario 16 street no. 62 at midday on August 29, 2016. Šiauliai mayor A. Visockas is to open the ceremony.
Šiauliai Jewish Community chairman J. Buršteinas and other members are scheduled to attend along with other notable local figures, representatives of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, members of the family of Jackus Sondeckis family and others.
More information to follow.
In an article published on the website of the literary and arts magazine Literatura ir Menas, Mindaugas Kvietkauskas shares his memories of the late Fira Bramson.
Esther’s Scissors
by Mindaugas Kvietkauskas
I will call her by a biblical name, Esther. Now I may. That was how the rabbi called her to eternity so recently his prayer uttered before the first three handfuls of earth were sprinkled on her shrunken body, cut off from the world of the living.
In life it was different: she was Fira, sometimes Firochka. I smile when I think how unrecognizably the name of the queen of Persia, meaning morning star, has changed in our lands, in the daily language of the Yiddish dialect washed by the great Slavic languages. But now that she has entered a time of more perfect reckoning, Fira has again become Esther, the daughter of Israel, the morning star, Ester bat Israel.
Fira Bramson in 1949
Full piece in Lithuanian here.
Raoul Wallenberg’s passport photo, June, 1944, Sweden.
The story of the disappearance in 1945 of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews from the gas chamber, is one of the greatest mysteries of World War II, the New York Times writes.
Suspicion in the disappearance of Wallenberg initially fell on the Soviet Union. After the Soviet occupation of the city Wallenberg’s contacts with high-ranking Nazis and Americans hinted at espionage, with the story of rescuing Jews from the Holocaust possibly a not-very-good cover story. The story of his disappearance has remained a mystery right through Gorbachev’s era of perestroika and throughout the years following the chaos which ensued from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
This summer, however, newly published diaries from a former head of the KGB found hidden in the walls of a dacha are shedding new light and for the first time it can be said with confidence Wallenberg was murdered in a Moscow prison. “I have no doubts that R. Wallenberg was murdered in 1947,” Ivan Serov, a Soviet military officer and director of the KGB from 1954 to 1958, wrote.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
