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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Archaeologists Dig at Vilnius Great Synagogue

Vilniaus Didžioji sinagoga žydams buvo svarbi, kaip katalikams Vatikanas

VILNIUS, June 21, BNS–A team of experts from the United Kingdom, Canada, Israel and Lithuania is starting to investigate the remains of the Great Synagogue of Vilnius and other buried buildings.

An international team of archaeologists using non-invasive geophysical techniques plans to investigate the remnants of a mikvah buried 2 meters below the surface under a school built by the Soviet regime after 1960.

“Our geophysical studies can map below the street without destroying any infrastructure and then to identify exactly where to dig, map and retrieve artifacts to understand the historical context,” one researcher said.

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Summer Camp

The Dubi Club invites kids to the summer day camp!

A day camp for children aged 3-and-a-half to 7 will be held at the naturally scenic recreation complex Viva Green Resort.

Camp program:

Educational activities with experienced teachers, excursions, nap-time for the younger kids, and three meals a day.

The day camp will be held from July 18 to 29, 2016.

Cost is 130 euros per child, or 110 per child for two children.

Registration is open until July 8.

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Visit to USA

Vizitas į JAV

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky has paid a working visit to the United States. During her visit in Washington, D.C., Kukliansky attended the annual meeting of the American Jewish Committee and spoke at the meeting of the board of directors of the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry. She also met with US State Department special envoy Nicholas Dean, gave an interview to the news service of Voice of America and met with the Lithuanian-American community.

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Romanian Klezmer Concert

The Romanian embassy in Vilnius and the Lithuanian Jewish Community invite you to a concert by the klezmer group Mazel Tov from Cluj, Romania, called

Rumania, Rumania,

lekhaim briderlakh!

 

at 7:00 P.M. on Wednesday, June 29, at the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius

350-Year-Old Torah Scroll Returns to Vilnius

350 m. skaičiuojatis toros ritinys grįžta į Vilniaus choralinę sinagogą

The Vilnius Jewish Religious Community cordially invites you to celebrate this extraordinary event, the return of the Torah scroll, at the Vilnius Choral Synagogue.

This 350-year-old Torah scroll, which survived the destruction of the Vilnius ghetto during World War II and was taken out of the country to protect it, is finally coming home.

The ceremony of bringing in the Torah is to take place at 1:00 P.M. on Monday, June 27, at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius.

The Vilnius Jewish Community is tremendously grateful to Judah Passow for his initiative in returning the Torah scroll. The family of London-based photojournalist Judah Passow safeguarded the Torah scroll for 56 years after it left Vilnius. The ceremony will feature a short presentation of the history of the Torah and what this most important book means.

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Famous Film Director Boris Maftsir Visits Panevėžys Jewish Community

Panevėžio žydų bendruomenėje lankėsi garsus režisierius Borisas Maftsiras

Maftsir was born in Riga in 1947 and made aliyah to Israel in 1971, where he works at Yad Vashem as an independent film director. He has produced over 400 documentaries for film and television and is the director of at least 30 documentary films.

He’s currently working on a new film about Lithuanian Righteous Gentiles. When he was in Lithuania in 2008 he visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community to talk about best to commemorate those who heroically rescued Jews during the Holocaust. This time Maftsir met sister Leonora Kasiulytė of the Congregation of the Love of God at the Community concerning her book and collection of material about Marija Rusteikaitė, a woman who saved 15 Jews without regard for her own life during World War II. He also met Genutė Žilytė, a history teacher from the Rožynas Pre-Gymnasium who has been doing tolerance and Holocaust educational projects for 12 years now to give greater understanding to Lithuanian society on the scope and nature of the tragedy. She’s been directing the school’s Tolerance Education Center since 2004, participating with students in projects by the International Commission and civic initiatives, collecting Holocaust survivors’ testimonies and of those who were deported to Siberia and maintaining the mass murder sites at Kurganava and Žalioji forest. Every year creative work by students at the pre-gymnasium on the topics of the Holocaust and Soviet repression of Lithuanians is presented to the people of the city and region of Panevėžys.

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Remember Lietukis Garage

The Kaunas Jewish Community invite you to come and remember the 75th anniversary of the Lietūkis garage massacre in Kaunas in the early days of the Holocaust. We will gather at the monument to the memory of the victims at Miško street no. 3 in Kaunas at 3:00 P.M. on June 24, 2016.

A concert to honor the victims will be held at the Kaunas State Philharmonic at 6:00 P.M., June 26, 2016 with the male quartet Quorum. The event is free and open to the public.

Exhibit of Works by Raimundas Savickas’s Art Class at LJC

LŽB R.Savicko dailės mokyklos studentų paroda

An exhibition of works by students in Raimundas Savickas’s art classes held at the Lithuanian Jewish Community opened June 16 on the third floor. Friends and family congratulated the students with flower arrangements. Lithuanian Jewish Community deputy chairwoman Maša Grodnikienė opened the exhibit, saying: “Thanks to the accomplished teacher Raimundas Savickas, many new talents have blossomed. Thanks to him, the talent and desire to paint was discovered by elderly people, opening up a new outlook on life, and creativity is the key to longevity. All the new artists have become friends, connected by a newly discovered world, and life has become significantly more interesting, while your spiritual lives have been enriched.”

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Vilnius Gay Pride March For Equality 2016

faina
photo: J. Stacevičius/lrytas.lt

Despite strange weather carrying over from the day before when there were sudden gusts of wind, squalls and atomspheric microbursts mixed with heavy thunder and lightning, a record number of people turned out this year for the annual Gay Pride march in Vilnius. Many but certainly not most wore costumes just as flamboyant as the mercurial weather.

Amid gusting winds, at least 1,500-2,000 marchers and possibly more, according to the Lithuanian daily newspaper Lietuvos rytas, assembled at Lukiškės square and marched down the main boulevard, Gedimino prospect, past Cathedral Square to the city park area called Bernardinų sodas [Garden of the Bernardines] on the banks of the Vilnelė creek Saturday.

Some carried signs protesting the recent mass-shooting at a gay night club in Orlando, Florida. One marcher said she made up her mind to march this year because of that incident, and the assassination of a British MP the following day.

Leading the vanguard for equal rights was Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky along with Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon.

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Meeting the Past at a Chess Match

kazys_grinius_cropped
by Geoff Vasil

Sometimes you open a door and walk into a room expecting nothing, and the strangest things happen. I went to the Rositsan Elite Chess and Checkers Club chess tournament dedicated to the memory of chess enthusiast and interwar Lithuanian president Kazys Grinius at the Lithuanian Jewish Community on Sunday morning, June 19, and thought I saw the president himself, although he died many years ago in exile in America.

At the chess tournament held in his name, there were tables with timers and boards set up both inside the Jascha Heifetz hall and in the foyer and people of all age groups from pre-teen to people in their 80s waiting for the games to begin. I expected some sort of formal nod of the head to the former president, a cursory commemoration after which the players would get down to business. The organizers had a much different idea of what it means to honor someone. Multiple speakers took the podium, gifts were lavished, chess medallions were passed out and there was a sincere recollection of the man himself.

Borisas Gelpernas, former chess champion, spoke about how Kazys Grinius rescued his mother and father from the Kaunas ghetto. At first his father refused the offer of help, not wanting to put Grinius in danger, but the former Lithuanian president kept insisting, and after the actions–mass shootings of Jews–began, he and his wife did hide in Grinius’s own apartment for several months, along with Kristina, Kazys’s second wife.

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Lithuanian Parliament Rushes to Aid of Litvaks

Lithuanian Parliament Rushes to Aid of Litvaks

By Raimonda Ramelienė

The Lithuanian parliament has heard complaints from Jews who left Lithuania between the wars and their descendants over their inability to restore Lithuanian citizenship and has begun amending Lithuania‘s law on citizenship.

Several parliamentary committees have been trying to determine since spring why the Migration Department has been rejecting requests by Litvaks and their descendants living in Israel and South Africa for restoration of Lithuanian citizenship.

Although members of parliament determined bureaucratic obstacles were hindering the process, they decided to put an end to conflicting legal opinions by amending the law. The initiator was oppoisition conservative leader Andrius Kubilius, aided by European Affairs

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Presentation of Archaeological Finds from Ponar and Great Synagogue in Vilnius

Participating: professor Richard Freund (Hartford University) and Dr. Jon Seligman (Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalem)

This team of renowned investigators began work on the Ponar mass murder site near Vilnius in early June. Using non-invasive archaeological methods, they examined a large portion of the site of the largest mass murder in Lithuania.

The archaeologists focused on the tunnel excavated by burners’ brigade and other items of high interest according the museum specialists. A film crew travelled with professor Freund to Lithuania and plan to release a documentary called Lost Vilnius.

The Israeli-American duo also looked at the site of the former Great Synagogue in Vilnius.

The Tolerance Center of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum will host their presentation of their findings June 22. The public is invited to attend. The event will be held in Lithuanian and English. The Tolerance Center is located at Naugarduko street no. 10, Vilnius.

Prizes Established for Academic Works on Ethnic Minorities

Vilnius, June 15, BNS–Lithuania’s Ethnic Minorities Department has established prizes to be awarded university students for best academic work on the topic of the ethnic minorities of Lithuania. The department said the prizes were intended to encourage interest by students in Lithuania’s minorities and to select topics involving the country’s minority communities for academic work in all disciplines.

All Lithuanian and foreign students of higher education whose final academic work (bachelor’s work, master’s thesis, doctoral dissertation) centered on Lithuanian minorities and which examine aspects of Lithuanian ethnic minorities in a broad manner.

Three prizes are planned: one for bachelor’s work, one for a master’s, and one for a doctoral dissertation.

BNS_logotipas

Latvian Consul Speaks Frankly about Holocaust

At a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Soviet mass deportations of citizens of the Baltic states held in Los Angeles June 12, Latvian consul in California Dr. Juris Bunkis spoke out strongly for remembering the Jews in the Baltics who were murdered during the Holocaust.

“We are here to commemorate evil–evil like the mass shootings that took place earlier today in Orlando,” Dr. Bunkis said. “We gather today to commemorate a brutal event in our histories, the mass deportations of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians from their illegally and forcefully occupied countries to Siberia by the Soviet Union that began on June 14, 1941. Unfortunately, this was just the first in a series of mass Soviet deportations of tens of thousands of victims from the Baltics, occupied Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova,” he continued.

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NCSEJ Mourns former Sen. Geoge Voinovich, 79

WASHINGTON, D.C. June 14, 2016 -The National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (formerly NCSJ) mourns the passing of former U.S. Senator from Ohio George Voinovich, a tireless activist for the freedom for Soviet Jewry and for combating the global threat of anti-Semitism. He died Sunday at the age of 79.

Voinovich served as a two-term U.S. senator from 1999 to 2011, retiring in 2012. He was governor of Ohio from 1991 through 1998 and mayor of Cleveland from 1980 to 1989.

Voinovich began his activism for the Jewish community as a member of the Lawyers’ Committee for Soviet Jewry while a local office holder in Cleveland. As a Cuyahoga County Commissioner he raised money for English tutors to help Soviet Jewish immigrants assimilate into the community. When he became mayor, he opposed Cleveland’s sister city relationship with Volgograd, due to Russia’s neglect of imprisoned Soviet Jews during the Cold War.

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Lithuanian Newspaper on The Floodgates Within: Video Art from Israel

Vidinės užtvankos – Izraelio sociopolitinis menas

The Lithuanian newspaper and internet news site Lietuvos Žinios [Lithuanian News] has covered the exhibition of video art by the Israeli Chen Tamir at the National Art Gallery in Vilnius. They report she spoke about economic liberalization in the 1980s and 90s and about the portrayal of conflict and militarization in Israeli video media.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

LJC Seeks Driver

The Lithuanian Jewish Community is looking to hire an automobile driver. Candidates should hold a B category license, have at least 2 years experience as a chaffeur, have a basic command of English and Russian and have a sense of duty, professionalism and responsibility. Light maintenance will also be required as well as some heavy lifting. Priority given members of organizations under the LJC umbrella. For more information, contact rokas@lzb.lt or call 865209915.

Star of David Shows the Way to Jewish Heritage Sites

Dovydo žvaigždė nukreips į žydų paveldą

Thirty road signs have gone up in the area around Šeduva, Lithuania with star of David designs to show the way to the different sites which are part of the Lost Shtetl project by the Šeduva Jewish Memorial Foundation, including a renovated Jewish cemetery and monuments at three mass grave sites. This has never been done before in Lithuania.

“We’re glad we were able to set a precedent without any complications at all, so that now people who don’t understand Lithuania will understand how to reach the sites connected with Lithuanian Jewish history by following the signs,” Sergejus Kanovičius, founder of the Šeduva Jewish Memorial Foundation and head of the Lost Shtetl project, said.

Kanovičius said he hopes this simple decision will soon spread throughout Lithuania. At the end of 2018 the foundation plans to open its Lost Shtetl museum next to old Jewish cemetery in Šeduva.

For more information, see www.lostshtetl.com

Full article in Lithuanian here.

Rakija Klezmer Orkestar Reviving Pre-War Music

Orkestras „RAKIJA KLEZMER ORKESTAR“: „Gaiviname po Antrojo pasaulinio karo išnykusią muziką“
by Gintarė Vasiliauskaitė

The Rakija Klezmer Orkestar is a band of five young men playing Gypsy music, music from the Balkans and Litvak klezmer. Klezmer is a genre of secular Jewish music which almost disappeared from Lithuania after World War II. Currently the young men are travelling around Lithuania looking for people who lived through the war who might be able to help in some way resurrect authentic Litvak klezmer. Here is an interview with the accordion player and creative leader of the band, Darius Bagdonavičius. He talks about touring and the difficulties encountered by the group trying to play music on the edge of vanishing, as well as plans for the future.

Full interview in Lithuanian here.