Dear Friends,
We are happy to share with you a positive update regarding the European Parliament Working Group on Anti-Semitism (WGAS), of which EJC is both the secretariat and advisor.
The WGAS has been approached by the European Parliament Anti-Racism and Diversity Intergroup (ARDI) in order to become their sole interlocutor on anti-Semitism.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the elite chess and checkers club Rositsan and Maccabi
invite you
to a chess tournament to celebrate
February 16,
Lithuanian Independence Day.
The tournament is to take place at 11:00 A.M. on February 14 at the Lithuanian Jewish Community at Pylimo street no. 4 in Vilnius.
Tournament director: FIDE master Boris Rositsan
For more information and to register, contact: info@metbor.lt, telephone +3706 5543556
Dear Rabbi K. Krenlin,
I send the lines of this letter in the desire to bless you upon your having begun work as rabbi in Lithuania.
Lithuania is a historic location famous for Torah studies and the influence of that activity is significant in the Jewish world even now.
The Holocaust destroyed the major portion of the community, but thanks to G_d the community exists, and so the story of the Jews in Lithuania has not ended.
I understand the challenges which await you. You must solve them honorably.
May G_d help you.
I would gladly, as much as I am able, help with spreading the Light of the Torah.
Sincerely,
Rabbi David Lau,
Chief Rabbi, Israel
Saulius Sondeckis, conductor, orchestra leader and professor, died February 3 at the age of 88.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community expresses condolences to his surviving family, his wife Silvija and three sons Saulius, Paulius and Vytautas, as well as all the other members of his family.
Sondeckis was a great friend of the Lithuanian Jewish Community. During his last visit in May of 2015 the hall was full to overflowing during a screening of a film about him by his son Saulius. At that time the maestro thanked his parents for inspiring him to embark upon his musical career, saying stories about their good works circulated by word of mouth: the charity work of his mother, a teacher, helping poor students, and the rescue of Jews by his father, Jackus, the burgermeister of Šiauliai. Jackus Sondeckis was recognized as a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem. Lithuanian music experts recognize Saulius Sondeckis as a Lithuanian artist of the highest order. Just a year ago he was performing fully on stage despite his age. Over 50 years of work professor Sondeckis conducted more than 3,000 concerts in almost every European country, in the USA, Japan, Cuba, South Korea, Canada and Taiwan.
Vilnius, February 2, BNS–Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky thinks a list of Holocaust perpetrators held by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania should be handed over to prosecutors for possible action.
Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania director Teresė Birutė Burauskaitė said she doubts such an investigation could take place and believes it is up to the Lithuanian Government and not the Center to address prosecutors.
“I would be satisfied” with the release of the list, Kukliansky said, “but would that affect the families of these people, would it violate their rights if guilt hasn’t been established? I would give the list to the prosecution, [these] crimes don’t have a statute of limitations, let them investigate. That needed to happen a long time ago. I think people need to know the names of the murderers as well as the rescuers. But the list may only be published when the guilt of these people has been proven. It should as provided for in law,” she added.
by Sergejus Kanovičius
“Šeduva? Oi, oi, oi. What’s your name? Sergejus? Oi, great, come, I’m waiting. When will you arrive? Tomorrow. Really? Šeduva? Come. Oi…”
That’s how I rang into her life last spring. Neither I nor she knew what to expect from our unexpected meeting. I have knocked at the chambers of people’s memories knowing for some the trip back into the past will be pleasant, while for others it will perhaps not be such a joyful return to memories stashed away in the most remote drawers,
I found Frida’s house easily enough, after all it wasn’t very long ago, just two decades ago, that I lived almost right there. She opened the door for me, so fragile, so small, always smiling. After listening to my short introduction about how some strange people were concerned with recording her life and those of her neighbors, their deaths and the disappearance of their home town, she sighed and looking somewhere far off in the distance, as if at the Milky Way of memory, said:
“How long have I waited for you. How very long. All my life.”
Oksana Navickienė, a member of the Panevėžys Jewish Community, has received a diploma from the Yad Vashem Memorial Authority and Museum in Jerusalem for completing a course at the International School for Holocaust Studies there. We hope she is able to apply her new knowledge to teaching the Holocaust to primary and secondary students throughout Aukštaitija. Congratulations, Oksana!
The Bagel Shop, a new kosher food café, opens its doors February 4. The café will prepare kosher food and different traditional sweets according to the rules of Judaism. The Bagel Shop’s main draw will be freshly-baked bagels and bagel sandwiches. Adhering to the strictest rules, the bagels will be made under the supervision of a rabbi versed in kosher food rules.
Bagels are a traditional European Jewish food product often referred to as a “baronka” in Lithuania in the past, and when cooked may be cut in half and made into a sandwich. The book Joy of Yiddish furnishes one version of the origin of the bagel, according to which the recipe for bagels was created in Cracow at the beginning of the 17th century, and that bagels were given then as gifts to women giving birth. The bagel was supposed to symbolize the “wheel of life” because of its roundness. The bagel’s popularity quickly grew and spread to other countries where Jews speaking Yiddish lived, and was quickly adopted in America, where today about five million bagels are baked daily!
For just over a half year now the Vilnius Jewish community hasn’t had an official rabbi.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Lithuanian Jewish Religious Community announced a public tender to find a new rabbi and received responses from over thirty honored rabbis from the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Belarus, Latvia, Russia and elsewhere.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Lithuanian Jewish Religious Community are grateful for the response by all the rabbis, and for the concern and respect shown Lithuanian Jewish believers and their venerable past.
Foreign donors to the Palestinian Authority should not be misled by a “procedural ruse” enabling the continuation of massive funding to terrorists and their families, Israel’s deputy foreign minister said on Sunday.
In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Tzipi Hotovely wrote that due to embarrassment caused by a budgetary report compiled by Israel’s Foreign Ministry in June, 2014, revealing that the PA’s annual payments to terrorists amounted to $75 million, which was 16% of the yearly sum received by foreign donors, the PA altered the way it was doling out the cash to the killers of Israelis.
That same year, according to Hotovely, “The Palestinian Authority passed the task of paying stipends to terrorists and their families to a fund managed by the Palestine Liberation Organization.”
Full story here.
The World Jewish Congress are searching for two new interns to work with them at their Geneva office from February, 2016. Both internships last a minimum of 3 months.
– Internship in “Assisting the JDCorps Coordinator Europe, FSU Region, Israel and Africa”:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B42kDlSEIu6FZXZKVUJNcE5uczJiZnVyUlMyVW1xUDBaXzRj/view?usp=sharing
– Internship in “Assisting the UN Representative and JDCorps Policy Analyst”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B42kDlSEIu6Fdkp5UUEtbDF3YWpXbkN6ME9kd1RqQ1F3VWZj/view?usp=sharing
Several days after commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day, discussions on the topic of the Holocaust have again come up in Lithuania. In my childhood I heard everything in my family–during conversation memories of the ghetto often came to the fore, being locked in the ghetto, taken to concentration camps, about the hole where people hid. But the experience of the Holocaust was as it were one of many things which separated Jews from non-Jews. They murdered us, while others at the same time went on with their lives, went to movie theaters, went to school and studied. Over just a few months almost the entire Lithuanian Jewish community, more than 200,000 people, were exterminated. For all of my life, for the entire Soviet period, many people treated us differently. We always knew our opportunities were limited and that we were different.
January 9, 2016
PARIS–On the first anniversary of the January 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris in which 17 people were murdered by jihadist terrorists including four Jews at a kosher supermarket, World Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder declared: “Despite the commitment and efforts undertaken by the French and other European governments, the terrorist threat has not diminished.” Lauder said that although French Jewish sites were now better protected than ever by police and the army, the threat of radical Islamist fighters had yet to be defeated.
In a message which was to have been read Saturday night at a memorial for the four Jewish victims of the Hyper Cacher attack to Roger Cukierman, the president of the French Jewish community umbrella organization CRIF, Lauder wrote:
“On behalf of the World Jewish Congress, I salute the French Jewish community for the remarkable strength you have all demonstrated over the past year.
by Sergejus Kanovičius
The noise generated as soon as an excerpt from Rūta Vanagaitė’s book “Mūsiškiai” was published was phenomenal in the true sense of the word. The passage released is almost certainly a transcription of an interview Saulius Beržinis conducted almost two and a half decades ago, one of many he did with Holocaust perpetrators. It says nothing about the book or its worth.
A bit later several interviews with the author and several responses to the facts recited in those interviews appeared. Writers, historians, publishers and known and unknown public figures began immediately discussing and judging the unread book, some even compared to a great work of literature and mused upon questions of metaphysical guilt and the effect of the Holocaust on society. For some of the non-readers it was enough that famous Holocaust historian and Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff attended the presentation of the book and participated in its creation: right-wing non-readers immediately christened the unread book a provocation by the Kremlin intended to sow ethnic discord. One long-time Conservative Party member even fretted the book would ruin Lithuania and Israel’s wonderful relations, although she was unable to explain exactly the connection between Lithuania’s inability to come to terms with its past and foreign policy.
In an addendum to a piece on International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations around the world, the Jerusalem Post reported the publication of a new book by Efraim Zuroff, “co-authored” by Lithuanian Rūta Vanagaitė:
“Also on Tuesday, Zuroff launched his new book ‘Our People: Journey with an Enemy’ in Lithuania. Co-authored with Ruta Vanagaite, the writers accuse the current Lithuanian government of trying to ‘hide or minimize the role of Lithuanian collaborators during the Holocaust.'”
Full text here.
BNS–A wooden synagogue built between the two world wars was discovered as the brick walls of a building were torn down in Kulautuva, Lithuania.
The Kaunas section of the Cultural Heritage Department halted work at the site as consideration is given to what to do with the discovery, the newspaper Kauno Diena reported. Department employees said they learned of the demolition of the building over the weekend after photos were posted to facebook. Cultural heritage protection experts are mulling over the idea of making the synagogue a candidate for entry on the list of protected cultural treasures and even of moving the entire structure to the Lithuanian Folk-Life Museum in Rumšiškės outside Kaunas.
The synagogue was built in 1935 and its windows were boarded up and it was turned into storage space for the town after World War II. Major reconstruction work was performed on the building in 1967 and 1968.
Ingrida Vilkienė, education program coördinator of the International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania reports on the commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day at a conference held at the high school in Ariogala, Lithuania. Teachers and students from schools with tolerance education centers throughout Lithuania as well as many others came to the Lithuanian town January 27 to remember the dead and present student works about the Holocaust. Others at the conference included Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon, Lithuanian ambassador for special assignments Dainius Junevičius, Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Žakas Gercas with community members, Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman, Raseiniai district administrative head Algirdas Gricius and a large number of people from the education department and other institutions in the Raseiniai district administration.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day was marked at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius with a minute of silence and a reading of the names of Holocaust victims. Cantor Shmuel Yaatov offered song and prayer for those who perished. Students from the Vilnius ORT Sholem Aleichem Gymnasium, Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon, deputy Lithuanian foreign minister M. Bekešius and may others took turns reading the names. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky addressed the audience, calling on them to pray for the Jews of Lithuania brutally murdered, and said there was a noticeable lack of an official reaction or even a minute of silence to remember the circumstances of the brutal mass murder of Jewish Lithuanian citizens by the leaders of the country.
Eye-witness Edmundas Zeligmanas, whose father was murdered as he watched by white armbanders, recalled the horrific mass murders in Šilalė during the first days of war in 1941. After his father’s murder, they murdered many members of the Jewish community the next day. The mass murders were so bloody and so swift there wasn’t time for the earth to absorb all the blood, and it flowed into a small stream which turned red.
by Kenneth X. Robbins and John Mcleod
In 1992 the editor of the Times of India telephoned one of Mumbai’s most prominent businessmen, Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied. The editor asked Hamied “as a Muslim leader” his opinion on the communal riots then taking place in the city. Hamied replied: “Why aren’t you asking me as an Indian Jew? Because my name is Hamied? My mother was Jewish!” His maternal grandparents perished in the Holocaust.
The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, has posted a set of testimonies by Holocaust survivors:
They Survived the Holocaust. Survivors’ Accounts
It is truly difficult to find words to describe the ultimate atrocities of the Holocaust. Therefore, the words of those who managed to survive the Genocide are all the more important. For the International Holocaust Remembrance Day we present the survivors’ accounts from the oral history collection of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
Webpage here.
