TWO GUYS IN VILNIUS: BUT ARE THEY REALLY JEWISH?
Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky with Professor Pinchos Fridberg at the annual Grand Menorah in central Vilnius on 28 December 2016
די צוויי מענטשן, אויסער דעם וואָס זיי האָבן דאָקומענטן אַז זיי זײַנען יידן, האָבן נאָך דערצו יידישע נשמות…
Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky led his 23rd annual Grand Menorah Lighting in the center of Vilnius on Wednesday evening 28 December, for (in Lithuanian Yiddish) di fínfte líkhtale, the fifth candle of Chanukah. The event attracted hundreds from different faiths who filled the square to celebrate harmony in the Lithuanian capital. It was addressed by Mayor Remigijus Šimašius and attended by diplomats from the embassies of Israel, Norway, Turkey, and the United States, among others, and dignitaries from the nation’s parliament, among them MP Emanuelis Zingeris, cofounder of the city’s Jewish museum.
MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE VILNIUS CITY-CENTER MENORAH:
City of Vilnius TV3.lt Lrytas.lt 15min.lt Delfi.lt Wilnoteka.lt
The event seemed to succeed even more this year following various alleged attempts at sabotage. Many of the Vilnius Jewish residents present were visibly thrilled that Mayor Šimašius had boldly ignored some public calls, one from a Lithuanian academic, one from an unsigned piece on the official Jewish community website, and one from an antisemitic author, all of which imlpied that it was suddenly (after 22 years of previous universally beloved events) “controversial,” perhaps for featuring Rabbi Krinsky, who has recently been the target of a bizarre campaign of harassment.
A big part of the crowd comprised young people who particularly enjoyed the candle lighting, the smaller menorah of ice, and the large tent where traditional foods were served to hundreds of Vilnius residents. Chanukah menorahs were handed out to all who wanted one.Continue reading
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VILNIUS—Ruta Bloshtein, a native and resident of the Lithuanian capital, and stalwart of its small Orthodox community, has launched an international petition via Change.org asking the leaders of Lithuania to move the project for a national convention center away from the old Jewish cemetery at Piramónt where many thousands of the city’s Jewish citizens were buried from the 15th to the 19th centuries. It is one of East European Jewry’s most sacred sites. Many of its gravestones were lovingly preserved or renewed right up to the Holocaust, in which around 99% of Vilna’s Jewish community perished.
Whenever I drive from Skaudvilė to Batakiai I almost always turn off the road at Šilas, stopping at the location of the mass grave of the people who were shot there in 1941. Here, the sky is always dark. The sunlight over the graves is blocked out by a forest of unruly spruce, birches, aspen. Everything seems completely calm here. Occasionally, I catch the light scent of the forest, carried out on a breeze as the wind roars through the trees. I pause. I remove my hat. Slowly, I pull a photograph out of a notebook I carry with me always. A twelve year old girl smiles out at me from that photograph. The photograph is quite worn out. In places there are creases. That’s because I have been carrying this photograph around with me for many years now. The person who this photograph belongs to is already long gone and buried. I listen and I can almost hear her voice: “My Algis, farewell. I am leaving forever.”Continue reading
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SIMON MALKES
I was born in 1927 in the city whose official name was then Wilno, Poland (historically Vilna, today’s Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania). When I was fourteen, the Nazis took over the city, began murdering its Jewish population and set up the Vilna Ghetto. My own survival is due to my having been taken as a teenage repairman of German military vehicles at the plant known as HKP (Heereskraftfahrpark or Army Motor Vehicle Repair Park) on Subotsh Street (today’s Subačiaus). That one enterprise was under the directorship of Major Karl Plagge (1897–1957), a righteous gentile who did everything he could to protect as many Jewish workers as possible from the huge murder machine. Famously, shortly before the Nazi flight from the Soviet army in the summer of 1944, he gave a coded warning to his workers about a need for imminent escape.
UPDATE OF 5 DEC 2016: VILNIUS SYNAGOGUE REOPENED WITHOUT INCIDENT
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City’s Last Functioning Pre-Holocaust Prayerhouse Was Shut from 28 Oct. to 4 Dec. 2016
PROF. DOV LEVIN
Kaunas (Kovno) 1925 — Jerusalem 2016