Fira Bramson, a Vilna librarian who was crucial to the post-Communist rescue of Lithuanian Jewry’s literary legacy, passed away at the age of 91 on June 12. Over the past 30 years, anyone researching the past or present of Jewish life and culture in Lithuania, eventually came to Bramson, one of the only archivists and…
This past March, three weeks before she passed away, my bubbe, Charlotte Friend, celebrated her ninety-ninth birthday. On that day, as on every other birthday she’d had over the last twenty or so years, she received several phone calls from her Russian friends — women (and a few men) to whom she had taught English…
(JTA) — When documentary photographer Richard Schofield stumbled upon a trove of unidentified prewar photographs in September 2013 in the storage room of the Sugihara House museum in Kaunas, Lithuania, he knew he had found something special. The photos, dating from about 1910 through 1940, were from a Lithuanian Jewish family’s album that had been…
— Unidentified persons vandalized a Holocaust monument in Lithuania on the anniversary of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s birthday. The monument in Vilkaviskis, a city located 90 miles west of the capital Vilnius, was stripped of its marble tiles and smashed in several parts on April 20, according to a report posted seven days later on the Facebook…
For the first time in recent history, Lithuanian Jews will be represented at a Vilnius street market that is one the country’s oldest traditions. The Jewish presence at the March 4-6 Kaziukas Fair — a large annual Lithuanian folk arts and crafts event dating back to 1604 — will comprise a stand where shoppers can…
(JTA) — As the author of a best-seller that deals with female sexuality after 50, the Lithuanian novelist Ruta Vanagaite is used to embarrassing questions from journalists about her private life. But even she was astonished when a reporter for a popular television station demanded to see her birth certificate to ascertain the veracity of…
Approximately 250 Lithuanians attended a march commemorating nationalists who are accused of complicity in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust. The march Tuesday in Kaunas, a city 65 miles east of Vilnius, was organized on Lithuania’s independence day by the Union of Nationalist Youth of Lithuania under the banner “We Know Our Nation’s Heroes.”…
The leader of Lithuania’s Jewish community supported a proposal to delay publishing the names of suspected Holocaust perpetrators out of concern for their families’ reputation and privacy. Faina Kukliansky, a former prosecutor and president of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, made this assertion following discussions in Lithuania on publishing a list of 1,000 names that…
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