VilNews section 12: LITVAK FORUM
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Author Ellen Cassedy in her ancestral homeland
Tue, 9th April, 2013 - Posted by - (0) Comment
The U.S. author of the book “We are here” (Mes esame čia), Ellen Cassedy (right), was in Lithuania last month. Here in eager discussion about Jewish life in Lithuania before the Holocaust and now today.
Ellen Cassedy in Vilnius last month, with her husband Jeff.
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Tue, 12th February, 2013 - Posted by - (1) Comment
‘Lincoln’s’ grandfather
was a Lithuanian Jew
Daniel Day-Lewis has received widespread critical acclaim for his
performance in the movie Lincoln.
VilNews has previously written that Hollywood largely was created by Litvaks, the Lithuanian Jews who have had so endlessly huge influence on world culture, science, business and politics.
Go to our VilNews Section 12 for case examples.
Now it turns out that the star of this year’s major film, Lincoln, also has Lithuanian ancestry. And not only that; his Lithuanian grandfather, Michael Balcon, had enormous influence on the British film industry in its startup phase in the early 20th century.
His mother, Jill Balcon, was a leading English film and radio actress.
 Sir Michael Balcon (1896 – 1977) grandfather. |
 Jill Balcon (1925 – 2009) mother. |
About Sir Michael Balcon
Michael Balcon is considered one of the most important figures in British Cinema. It was his vision that brought international prestige to Gainsborough in the 20s and 30s. and he was a vigorous spokesman for the industry for most of his career.
Michael Balcon’s career began in Birmingham in 1920, where, with Victor Saville he was a film distributor. Within two years they had begun producing feature films in London - Woman to Woman 1923 was the first. He formed Gainsborough Studios the following year. He visited the Ufa studios in Berlin in 1924 and began a co-production association with The Blackguard that was to last 10 years. German technical staff populated Gainsborough films through the 20s and early 30s giving them a slick, sophisticated veneer to match any film produced in Hollywood, Balcon was aiming for a product of international interest unlike many other British studios in the silent and early talkie era.
Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Balcon
About the movie “Lincoln”
Lincoln is a 2012 American historical drama film directed and produced by Steven Spielberg, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as United States President Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln. The film is based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of Lincoln, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and covers the final four months of Lincoln’s life, focusing on the President’s efforts in January 1865 to have the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed by the United States House of Representatives. Lincoln premiered on October 8, 2012, at the New York Film Festival, and has since received widespread critical acclaim, with major praise directed to Day-Lewis’ performance. In December 2012, the film was nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards including Best Picture (Drama), Best Director for Spielberg and winning Best Actor (Drama) for Day-Lewis. The film has been nominated for twelve Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Spielberg and Best Actor for Day-Lewis.
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Fri, 28th December, 2012 - Posted by - (1) Comment
 |
IN MEMORY OF JEWISH KAUNAS |
Kaunas Ghetto (1941-1944):
An entire urban district turned into a merciless death camp
Two children in the Kaunas (Kovno) Ghetto, Lithuania.
Yad Vashem Photo Archive, 4789
What happened to the Jews in Lithuania during World War II is a matter of grim record. Of the 250.000 Jews in 1939, only between 12.500 and 17.500 survived; of those, only about 200 remain today.
It has been estimated that of the 265.000 Jews living in Lithuania in June 1941, 254.000 or 95% were murdered during the German occupation. No other Jewish community in Nazi-occupied Europe was so comprehensively destroyed.
The Red Army occupied Lithuania in June 1940, and the country remained under Soviet control until June 1941, when it fell to the invading German Army (Wehrmacht). On 8 July 1941 an order was issued stating that all Jews had to wear a special patch on their back; subsequently they were ordered to wear the patch on their chest. In addition Jews were forbidden to walk along the main streets of the city, and shops were ordered to sell them food in limited amounts. Jewish people were fired from their jobs, deprived of the means of personal transportation and radios, forbidden to use public transport, and prohibited from public places. Jews were arrested on the streets, at their work places, and in their houses.
The Kaunas (Kovno) Ghetto
Between 1920 and 1940, Kaunas (Kovno) was Lithuania’s capital and largest city. It had a Jewish population of 35.000-40.000, about one-fourth of the city’s total population. Jews were concentrated in the city’s commercial, artisan, and professional sectors.
Kaunas was also a centre of Jewish learning. The yeshiva in Slobodka, an impoverished district of the city, was one of Europe’s most prestigious institutions of higher Jewish learning, with a rich and varied Jewish culture. The city had almost 100 Jewish organizations, 40 synagogues, many Yiddish schools, 4 Hebrew high schools, a Jewish hospital, and scores of Jewish-owned businesses. It was also an important Zionist center.
Kaunas‘ Jewish life was disrupted when the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in June 1940. The occupation was accompanied by arrests, confiscations, and the elimination of all free institutions. Jewish communal organizations disappeared almost overnight. Soviet authorities confiscated the property of many Jews. Meanwhile, the Lithuanian Activist Front, founded by Lithuanian nationalist emigres in Berlin, clandestinely disseminated antisemitic literature in Lithuania. Among other themes, the literature blamed Jews for the Soviet occupation. Hundreds of Jews were exiled to Siberia.
Following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Soviet forces fled Kaunas. Immediately before and following the German occupation of the city on June 24, anti-Communist, pro-German Lithuanian mobs began to attack Jews (whom they unfairly blamed for Soviet repression), especially along Jurbarko and Krisciukaicio streets. These right-wing vigilantes murdered hundreds of Jews and took dozens more Jews to the Lietukis Garage, in the city center, and killed them there.
Moving into the Kovno Ghetto.
George Kadish, photographer, George Kadish, Florida.
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Fri, 28th December, 2012 - Posted by - (2) Comment
Kaunas massacre of 29 October 1941
The largest mass murder
of Lithuanian Jews
Thousands of Jews were killed to fall in pits like these.
Kaunas massacre of 29 October 1941, also known as the Great Action, was the largest mass murder of Lithuanian Jews.
By the order of SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger and SS-Rottenführer Helmut Rauca, the Sonderkommando under the leadership of SS-Obersturmführer Joachim Hamann, and 8 to 10 men from Einsatzkommando 3, in collaboration with Lithuanian henchmen, murdered 2,007 Jewish men, 2,920 women, and 4,273 children in a single day at the Ninth Fort, Kaunas, Lithuania.
With the arrival of the SS Einsatzgruppen, the ‘Great Action’ began on October 28th. The Jewish inhabitants of the Ghetto were assembled on Democrats Square and all those fit for work were allowed back into the Ghetto. The others, over 9,000 men, women and children were marched to the SS execution centre in the Ninth Fort and there, stripped of their clothes and in the freezing cold, they awaited their fate. In groups of 200, they were stood on the edge of large pits, dug previously by Russian P.O.W.s, and were systematically machine-gunned to death.
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Fri, 28th December, 2012 - Posted by - (7) Comment
How I escaped from
the Kaunas Ghetto
My coffee chat with Irena Veisaite (84) started here in the kitchen of her
cosy apartment in the outskirts of Vilnius Old Town. What a life story
hasn’t this gentle lady got to tell…
Text/photos: Aage Myhre
A room full of books. A desk covered with pamphlets, documents, newspaper clippings. Walls and bookshelves overcrowded with framed photographs of friends and relatives. Her today’s home in Vilnius is filled with warmth and wisdom.
Was this the way they lived? The Lithuanian Jews, often named as the Litvaks. Before the World War II horrific events so brutally took them and their culture here in Lithuania away forever? Or perhaps not forever?
Because here she lives, Irena Veisaite, born in this country in 1928. She is one of the few Litvaks who survived the Holocaust in Lithuania. A living evidence of cruelty and injustice. Yet with less bitterness and anger than you might think.
“Love,” she says, “love is so much more important than hatred. Hatred is the most destructive feature that humanity possesses and even in the most difficult times I experienced a lot of kindness”.
Irena was born in 1928 in Kaunas, the inter-war Lithuanian capital when Vilnius and the south-western part of the country was occupied by Poland. Her parents had a liberal European education and she grew up, as she describes, surrounded by very different people. She was playing with the neighbourhood children and never thought much of what nationality the other kids were. It was only when rumours of a potential war grew in strength that she began to feel a certain degree of insecurity.
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Wed, 26th December, 2012 - Posted by - (10) Comment
|
IN MEMORY OF JEWISH KAUNAS |
Chiune Sugihara:
The Japanese diplomat/
spy who became a hero of the Holocaust
Chiune Sugihara (1900 – 1986)
By Boris Bakunas, PhD
In the Year of Shame 1940, while the bulk of the German military machine was consolidating its grip on Poland, 110 French and British divisions sat idly on the Western Front, facing a token German force a fraction its size.
In the Year of Shame 1940, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the dreaded NKVD, massacred 22,000 captured members of the Polish Officer Corps, turning the Katyn Forest into a vast mass grave.
In that same Year of Shame 1940, Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat and spy stationed in Kaunas, Lithuania – along with his wife Yukiko – made a joint decision in defiance of direct orders from their government, and together they lit a beacon of hope for thousands of Polish and Lithuanian Jews. From 19 July to 28 August, 1940, the two-storey, white stucco building on 30 Vaizgantas Street that housed the Japanese Consulate, became the moral capital of the world.
Chiune and Yukiko Sugihara with their two children had arrived in Kaunas from Helsinki in 1939 not long after Nazi and Soviet troops sliced Poland into two zones of terror. Chiune’s ostensible mission was to serve as the Japanese Vice-Consul in Kaunas. His real assignment was to gather intelligence on the strength of the Soviet military in the West.
But a chance encounter at a delicatessen with an eleven-year-old Lithuanian-Jewish boy named Solly Ganor intervened, transforming the suave foreign-service officer renowned in diplomatic circles for throwing lavish parties into a hero of the Holocaust.
Jewish refugees at the gate of the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas,
July 1940. Thousands of Jews lined up here, hoping to receive transit visas allowing them to escape to the Far East and to America or Palestine.
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Kaunas was an important centre of Jewish life
Wed, 26th December, 2012 - Posted by - (1) Comment
Kaunas Synagogue is one of two operating choral synagogues in Lithuania.
Jews are first known to have lived in Kaunas (Kovno) as early as 1410 when they were brought forcibly as prisoners of war by the Grand Duke Vytautas. Many of those Jews were later active as traders between Kovno and Danzig (today’s Gdansk, Poland). Living conditions for many Jews were squalid. In 1858, archaic living restrictions were relaxed and all but 6,000 of the city’s 35,000 Jews flocked to the Old Town in search of something better. In July 1941, however, the Nazis expelled all the Jews from the town and sent them back to Slobodka. The Kovno Ghetto was thus established.
Kaunas became an important center of Jewish cultural life in the latter half of the 19th century. Distinguished Jewish leaders moved here from Vilnius, the capital, to establish yeshivas. Influential thinkers also moved to Kaunas.
Kovno video:
Jewish bank in Kaunas
See also: http://vilnews.com/?p=12028
In pre-war Lithuania, many members of the Jewish middle class, especially the educated strata, who had already experienced to some extent the establishing of Jewish autonomy, mobilized their resources for the strengthening of the social economic basis of the Jewish masses and their livelihood. With the blessing and initiation of the Economics Committee at the Ministry for Jewish Affairs and with the assistance of the “Foundation”, a national financial system was established of co-operative credit societies. By the end of 1920, these were already active in 44 cities and towns and were named “Peoples Bank” (in Yiddish Folksbank). In addition to the positive local economic activity (extending loans etc) they were also of importance in the social and cultural sphere. In a number of places, the community organs and other organizations also used the bank building. There were also cases of the bank granting study scholarships and prizes for cultural activities.
The Central Jewish Bank. Kaunas, 1923.
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OPINIONS
Here you will find letters from people who have comments to the history and present lives of Litvaks in Lithuania and around the world...
We would also be happy to receive letter from people who have suggestions for us about new articles, events, ideas and more...
Chiune Sugihara:
The Japanese diplomat/spy who became a hero of the Holocaust
An article by Dr. Boris Bakunas, exclusively for VilNews.
Read it HERE
Comments:
__________________________
This man and his wife belong in the annals of history, not to be set aside, but to be lauded, loud and clear from every person with a heart and soul
Bernard Terway
__________________________
Sugihara deserves to be placed among the giants in Lithuanian history.
Jon Platakis
__________________________
In Japan, where he was first considered to be a traitor, he is celebrated as a hero
Daiva Repeckaite
__________________________
It is very important for Lithuanians, Israelis, the people of Japan, and people of goodwill around the world to spread their story as an example of what individuals can do to stem the hatred
Boris Bakunas...
Kovno Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spector (1817-1896), served as chief rabbi of Kovno, the most prominent rabbinical position at the height of 19th century Lithuanian Jewry.
Jewish postcards from the past
http://vilnews.com/?p=790
We were very impressed with the scope of the articles, photos and vast scope of coverage of all things Lithuanian
Stephanie Comfort's Jewish Postcard Collection has been featured in the online Lithuania News called the "VilNews e-magazine". The VilNews e-magazine was launched on February 15, 2011 and hopes to be one of the most comprehensive online resources for Lithuania.
We were very impressed with the scope of the articles, photos and vast scope of coverage of all things Lithuania and wish them much success.Harley Felstein, chair and founder of the Sunflower Project in USA, hits back:
Sat, 25th August, 2012 - Comments
Zygimantas Pavilionis, Lithuanian ambassador to the U.S. (left), and Harley Felstein of the Lithuanian Heritage Project
“I have been under tremendous personal attack in certain press circles during the past month. The attack issues are mean-spirited and unwarranted”
See also:
http://vilnews.com/?p=9949
http://vilnews.com/?p=13081
My fellow colleagues of Lithuanian descent, I would like to thank you for your staunch and unwaivering support over the past 18 months. My family’s documented roots in Lithuania trace back to the 1700’s, in and around the small town of Rokishkis in northeast Lithuania. As the chair and founder of the Sunflower Project, whose mission is to bridge and reconnect the Lithuanian people with the Jewish community of Lithuanian descent, I knew from the outset that to make progress and re-connect our deep roots was going to be a tremendous challenge.
As you may be aware, I have been under tremendous personal attack in certain press circles during the past month. The attack issues are mean-spirited and unwarranted. The allegations have included that I have no connection to Lithuania (false), that I don’t know anything about Jewish cemeteries and their maintenance (despite my having worked in the funeral industry and in Jewish cemetery management for over 40 years professionally) or that somehow I am a “agent” of the Lithuanian government (absurdly false) as I am an independent volunteer who has been made aware of a need, and with others of like mind, am seeking to create an atmosphere of positive change.
Read more…- By reading Israeli newspapers one can hear more sobering voices. I say, It is time to heal the wounds and start living in peace again, as we have done for hundreds of years
Vytautas Sliupas
By Vytautas Sliupas, California
“The Times of Israel”, March 11, 2012, carries a news article “Nazi hunter leads criticism of Lieberman for cordially hosting Lithuanian FM”. But not everyone was happy about this warm reception Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman gave his Lithuanian Counterpart. About a dozen demonstrators were carrying signs disapproving Foreign Minister’s Audronius Azubalis visit. Protest was co-organized by Efraim Zuroff, a well known Lithuania baiter.
Efraim Zuroff
The article further quotes: ”The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, however, seems unfazed by these accusations”.
My Kudos to both Foreign Ministers for trying to normalize the strained relations and to remove the mutual distrust.
There are Jewish voices that are more conciliatory and thoughtful. In the Comments column:
Arik Elman
Mr. Arik Elman writes “both the Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes should be considered to be the main disasters of the 20th century. My family lost relatives to both and I really fail to see a problem to that statement... Why is that Mr. Zuroff is so fixated on a tiny Lithuania instead of looking to the West?”
Meir Rhodes
Mr. Meir Rhodes writes: ...”both stalin and hitler were anti-Semitic monsters... stalin was preparing to deport and destroy the Jews in 1953...”
Zalman Lachman
Mr. Zalman Lachman writes: ... “The argument who was worse, Hitler or Stalin, is just silly... While everyone is busy arguing about last generations haters, there is a fellow in Persia preparing to kill us all right now... Let’s face the present... Efraim, how about we make an effort... and let the Lithuanians deal with their own history”.
Daniel Teeboom
Mr. Daniel Teeboom writes: ... “Efraim Zuroff... I think it is a mistake to allow events from 70 years ago determine who should be our friends and who should not... So really, why care about Baltic deflections and demand so much from prospective friends?”
By reading Israeli newspapers one can hear more sobering voices. I say, It is time to heal the wounds and start living in peace again, as we have done for hundreds of years.
Vytautas Sliupas
California- Lithuanian Jewish Community
Lietuvos Žydų Bendruomenė
LJC Chairman Dr. Simonas Alperavičius
The Lithuanian Jewish Community (LJC) is an organisation offering a wide range of cultural, communal and social services from kindergarten through to senior level. Dr. Simonas Alperavičius has been the leader of the organisation since 1992. Along with the two functioning houses of worship, this is where you can meet the genuine Jewish locals and read the country’s only Jewish newspaper, Jerusalem of Lithuania, available in English, Yiddish, Lithuanian and Russian. The building also houses a youth club, Jewish Student Union, Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Inmates and the Union of WWII Jewish Veterans.
The LJC Chariman, Simonas Alperavičius, was born 11 October 1928 in Vilnius. In 1933, his family moved to Kaunas, where he completed six grades at the Kaunas Sholom Aleichem Jewish gymnasium. At the outbreak of World War II, he and his parents escaped to Russia.
In 1944, Alperavičius returned to Vilnius, where he graduated from the city‘s 4th Gymnasium in 1947. In 1947-1952, Alperavičius studied law at Vilnius University and graduated magna cum laude.
Alperavičius spent a period working in the Klaipėdas regional Ministry of Justice, and in 1961-1988 he taught at the Ministry of the Interior.
In 1989, he became executive director of the Jewish Community of Lithuania and in 1992 he was elected chairman. In 2006, he was elected chairman of the Jewish Community of Vilnius. He currently leads the Religious Jewish Communities of Vilnius and Lithuania. Alperavičius helped organize the first and second World Litvak Congresses.
Writer Grigory Kanovich – first Chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community
Grigory Kanovich is one of the most re-known contemporary Jewish writers novelist, play and script writers. Grigory Kanovich was born in traditional Jewish family on 18th of June 1929 in Jonava (Yonava), Lithuania. His family escaped the WWII and spent evacuation in Kazahstan and Ural. In 1945 his family returned to Vilnius where he took Slavistic studies at Vilnius State University which he graduated in 1953.- Jewish culture returns to Vilnius
Wyman Brent, book collector, Professor Dovid Katz, director of the Litvak Studies Institute, Dr. Simonas Alperavičius, head of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, Emmanuel Zingeris, Member of Seimas (Parliament), Žibartas Jackūnas, Vilnius City Councillor.
Many of us had a certain feeling of participating in writing a new chapter of history when we met this early June day two weeks ago. Vilnius, which for hundreds of years had been one of the world's most important centres of Jewish culture and learning, was, as we know virtually wiped out from the Jewish world map during the Holocaust, but as we meet here - individuals from many countries, nationalities and cultures - this early summer day to celebrate that an American Baptist has collected more than 5000 books for what eventually will become a Jewish library of 200,000 titles, the feeling of a new dawn is clearly present.
- World famous Litvaks
Getting this undertaking off the ground is awe-inspiring
Many famous Jewish people lived and created in Lithuania. It was not for nothing that Vilnius was called "Jerusalem of the North" - as the wealth of its sages and of its religious scholarship competed with that of Jerusalem. The Jews made a large cultural and economic contribution, to both the Jewish people and to Lithuanians.
Congratulations on the VilNews debut in this new, expanded format. It looks very good indeed, is highly informative, and I wish you much success with it. The sheer amount of effort and dedication that must have gone into getting this undertaking off the ground is quite awe-inspiring. You are doing an important, noble thing for the beautiful country you love. It is indeed an exceptionally interesting, genuinely fascinating country, with a turbulent past and difficult present -- a place that, despite (and in part, due to) the many still-unresolved issues of history, never is not-interesting, where "the past is not dead. It isn't even past," to quote Faulkner -- and as someone who also has been held under its thrall for many years, I share your desire to see as many people as possible the world over to discover it, come visit -- and fall in love with it, too, and keep coming back. My very best wishes to VilNews.
Mikhail Iossel, Professor, Montreal, Canada
"Legendary Litvak heroes of Africa"
Eugene Rangayah:
I am not sure about the source of the information entitled Jews in South Africa. Especially with regards to point 3, which clearly, in my opinion, is aimed at marginalising the involvement of Muslims in the anti-apartheid struggle... Read more...
Grant:
Further to my comment above, one also has to acknowledge that Jews were regarded as White in Apartheid South Africa and enjoyed the benefits afforded to them as White South Africans. Some chose to oppose it, who have been duly honoured, and some chose to ride the wave of these benefits. Read more...
I appreciate that White South Africans, who chose to join the struggle had everything to lose. That is not what I dispute about the article. The article, in my opinion, does a direct comparison between Muslim and Jewish participation in the anti-apartheid movement, resulting in the Muslim involvement being marginalised. Why does it not measure Hindu, Buddhist or Christian involvement? I do not think that this forum, should be used as an instrument to spruce up anyone's involvement in the anti-apartheid movement at the expense of others. If the intention was to highlight the contribution of the Jewish community, then that's fine, as it is the Litvak forum, but definitely not at the expense of the Muslims or any other religious sect. Read more...
Correct – Jews were regarded as white in South Africa and did enjoy all the privileges. What made their sacrifices even more remarkable was that they put themselves at risk and all the privileges at risk to fight a fight where they were not victims themselves. Read more...
We were very impressed with the scope of the articles, photos and vast scope of coverage of all things Lithuania
Stephanie Comfort's Jewish Postcard Collection has been featured in the premier launch of the online Lithuania News called the "VilNews e-magazine". The VilNews e-magazine was just launched on February 15, 2011 and hopes to be one of the most comprehensive online resources for Lithuania. We were very impressed with the scope of the articles, photos and vast scope of coverage of all things Lithuania and wish them much success.
JEWISH POSTCARD COLLECTION
http://jewishpostcardcollection.com/
VilNews e-magazine is published in Vilnius, Lithuania. Editor-in-Chief: Mr. Aage Myhre. Inquires to the editors: editor@VilNews.com.
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