[last update]

A selection from tributes received. More on Facebook

See also: Defending History’s Rachel Kostanian section

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Sepp Brudermann (Austrian film maker, former  volunteer at the Green House):

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Ambassador Simon Butt (Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Lithuania,  2008-2011):

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Ambassador Dónal Denham (Ambassador of Ireland to Lithuania, 2006-2010):

“My very best and most respectful wishes to Rachel on her 91st birthday this Sunday, a wonderful and, I hope, wonder-filled occasion!  As I sit here in Dublin, Ireland, I am reminded of the many visits I paid to the Green House as Ambassador of Ireland to Lithuania over the years 2006-2010, always welcomed warmly even when I arrived in without any notice and with foreign visitors in tow.  Rachel’s encyclopedic knowledge was conveyed without any hesitation or inflation, always with great modesty and courtesy yet, above all, certain in her aim of promoting Holocaust awareness.It is, therefore, a delight for me to send this tribute to rachel, to acknowledge her life-long contribution to the cause of Holocaust education and the fight against antisemitism.  She might be pleased, I hope, to hear that this Wednesday, 27th January, International Holocaust Memorial Day, I will play a small part in the launch of a new local organization,  Holocaust Awareness Ireland, which I hope will both promote a better understanding of the relentless fight against Holocaust Revisionism and of contemporary manifestations of antisemitism and as it will be a reflection of the learning I absorbed from my conversations with Rachel (and with Dovid).”

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Ambassador Steinar Gil (Ambassador of Norway to Lithuania, 2006–2011):

“Dear Rachel, please receive my best wishes on your 91st birthday. We are many who are grateful for your courageous and tireless work to collect and secure documents and facts about the Holocaust in Lithuania.  You have contributed greatly to our knowledge of this heinous crime against humanity and strengthened our resolve to combat antisemitism, racism, discrimination and intolerance. My meetings with you and my visits to your Green House in Vilnius are among my lasting memories.”

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Professor Amelia M.  Glaser (University of California at San Diego), author of Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine (2020).

“I first visited Vilnius as a recent college graduate in the fall of 1997. I was on a short trip from St. Petersburg, where I was living that year. Taken with the ‘Green House’ I worked with Rachel to set up an internship the following summer. Rachel struck me immediately as smart, genuine, and tireless. And her committed to reviving Jewish memory in Vilnius is inspiring. It was Rachel who encouraged me to begin studying Yiddish as part of the Vilna Summer Program. Rachel taught me to give tours of the Green House, and shared her own stories with me, as she did with so many people who came to visit the museum. We spent hours that summer working together on English language biographies of for her Spiritual Resistance project, sometimes at the museum, and sometimes at Rachel’s dacha outside the city. I will always be grateful to Rachel for sharing her world with me, for trusting me with her aspirations and memories, and for encouraging me, a California-born student, to study East European Jewish culture. Her efforts have mattered far beyond Lithuania. I wish her a very happy birthday, and honor the important work she has done.”

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Dr. Alex J. Kay (University of Potsdam):

“Dear Rachel, Congratulations on your 91st birthday and on the extraordinary and unforgettable contribution you have made to documenting the history of Lithuanian Jewry and to keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust in Lithuania! I remember fondly my visit to the Green House in Vilnius in 2012. On that occasion, I was also fortunate enough to be able to conduct an interview with your colleague Fania Brantsovsky and to visit the memorial at Ponar. With all good wishes from Berlin, Alex Kay”

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Jeremy Leigh (Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion):

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Professor Sid Leiman (Touro Graduate School and Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies):

“Starting in 1996, I regularly led Jewish Heritage tours to Vilnius. Back then, there were few public memorials to almost anything Jewish in Vilnius. But there was one beacon of light, a modest Green House, where Rachel Kostanian presided, and where Vilna’s Jewish past was celebrated in all its glory and in all its shades, whether  Rabbinic, Maskilic, Yiddishist, Zionist, or diaspora nationalist. Rachel also made sure that the tragic history of the Holocaust, in its East European context, would be properly commemorated, with no holds barred. She educated the thousands who passed through the Green House, and advised them about the treasures they could take home from its book shop. We salute you, Rachel, on your 91st birthday! Look at what you have accomplished! And we wish you only the best in the years ahead: good health, happiness, and continued nákhes from all your dear ones, and from the many who were educated by the museum you created.” 

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Myra Sklarew (author of The Witness Trees and Survivor Named Trauma: Holocaust Memory in Lithuania):

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Dr. Shivaun Woolfson (author of Holocaust Legacy in Post-Soviet Lithuania [with Rachel Kostanian chapter]; also, documentary films on Lithuania):

Markas Zingeris (major Lithuanian author; former director of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum of Lithuania):

“Former deputy director of our museum  and Head of the Holocaust Exhibition, she now resides abroad, but whenever I visit the museum, I can still hear Rachel’s voice in the corridors: ‘Markas, we must establish an exhibition of the ghetto theater posters’ or ‘And how about the heroes of the Vilna Ghetto Markas, its cultural workers? They were the spiritual resistance, after all!’; and when I visit, as Rachel named it, the little’ Green House’ — the Museum’s Holocaust Exhibition — I still expect to find her in her corner office, leaning over rare books, of which she had a full closet; or guiding Lithuanian schoolchildren around the exhibition.  Rachel, Your contribution will never be forgotten. Together with our museum, you managed to kindle many sparks in the collective memory of Lithuania. Happy Birthday, Rachel Kostanian!”

(excerpted from Markas Zingeris’s tribute to Rachel Kostanian on her 91st birthday)

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