Seventy Years since the Liquidation - Yad Vashem 2013 — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

On October 7, 2013, a memorial service was held at the Yad Vashem Synagogue to mark the 70th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto. The service was attended by the Lithuanian Deputy Minister of Culture Darius Mažintas, Lithuanian Ambassador to Israel Darius Degutis, Yad Vashem General Director Dorit Novak, Chairman of the Association of Vilna and Vicinity in Israel, Michael Schemyavitz, Uri Hanoch, Chairman of the Association to Memorialize the Victims of the Landsberg-Kaufering-Dachau Concentration Camp, Lithuanian Holocaust survivors and next generations, other heads of Holocaust survivors organizations, and navy officers.

Avraham Payne, born in Kovno, read on behalf of the Chairman of the Association of Jews from Lithuanian in Israel (Advocate Yosef Melamed was unable to attend). Prof. Dina Porat, chief historian of Yad Vashem, lectured on “the uniqueness of Lithuanian Jewry that was lost.” Tenor singer Rafailas Karpis arrived from Vilna specifically for the service and sang songs in Yiddish accompanied by the pianist and Lithuanian Deputy Minister of Culture Darius Mažintas.

On June 22, 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa and occupied Lithuania. Immediately after the occupation, the Germans began carrying out the "Final Solution" against Lithuanian Jews, using the "Einsatzgruppen" units and local Lithuanian gangs, who carried out mass murders. By the end of 1941, only about 40,000 Jews remained in Lithuania and were concentrated in four ghettos: Vilna, Kovno, Siauliai, Švenčionys, and a number of labor camps. The Vilna Ghetto was liquidated on September 23, 1943. Lithuania was liberated in the summer of 1944. Since the beginning of the Nazi German occupation, within Lithuania's 1940 borders, about 200,000 Jews were murdered.

Moderator:  Mickey Kantor

Good afternoon to you all,

Ms. Dorit Novak. Yad Vashem General Director

Lithuanian Deputy Minister of Culture, Mr. Darius Mažintas, and Lithuanian Ambassador to Israel Mr. Darius Degutis

Mr. Michael Schemyavitz, Chairman of the Association of Vilna and Vicinity, in Israel

Prof. Dina Porat, Chief Historian of Yad Vashem

Holocaust survivors and representatives of the next generation

Navy officers and Distinguished Audience

We are gathered here today at the Yad Vashem Synagogue on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem to commemorate the memory of the Lithuanian Jews murdered during the Holocaust, and to mark seventy years since the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto.

The synagogue where we are gathered is both a monument and a witness to the synagogues destroyed in the Holocaust, and an expression of the Jewish spirit.

Around us can be seen aronot kodesh (holy arks) from Bârlad, Rădăuți, Iasi and Harlow in Romania; ritual and mitzvah articles from synagogues in Poland and the Czech Republic that were damaged or destroyed during the Holocaust, and from synagogues whose communities were exterminated. Some of the religious objects were taken by the people when deported, as a testament to their faith and in hope of the continuity of this aspect of their lives. Among them is found: a tin tablet engraved with the Ten Commandments, a Torah scroll hidden in a barn near Lublin, Poland, and an etz chayim (tree of life) made from rough wood during their stay in Transnistria.

Each item is a relic that tells the story of a community.

Screening of a video by Motti Seidel

After his release, Mordechai Seidel realized that no one in his family would return. He was active in the local Zionist movement, made aliyah to Eretz-Israel in late 1945, and joined the struggle for the establishment of the State. In 1948, he married Reisel, and the couple had three children and 6 grandchildren. Mordechai Seidel died in 2007.

A life of orphanhood, loneliness and bereavement were replaced by the creation of a family unit and the construction of a new life.

The Vilna Jewish community was an important spiritual center of Eastern European Jewry - a center of education and political life, of Jewish creativity and Judaism. It was a community in which flourished religious and cultural life, movements and parties, educational institutions, libraries and theaters, a community of geniuses and rabbis, intellectuals, poets, writers, painters, artisans and educators. In the Jewish world, Vilna was known as "Jerusalem DeLita."

On September 19, 1939, the Red Army occupied Vilna and at the end of October the city was handed over to the Lithuanians. In June 1940, Lithuania was annexed to the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities then closed Jewish and Zionist cultural institutions and offices. The entire Yiddish press was replaced by Communist Party press bodies, and many Jews were deported into Soviet territory where many of them were held in detention camps.

On June 22, 1941, the Germans invaded Soviet Union territories, and two days later Vilna was occupied. Immediately upon the occupation, the Germans began to persecute the Jews, then began operations of kidnapping and mass murder by the "Einsatzgruppen" units and gangs of local Lithuanians thugs. During July 1941, about 5,000 Jews were murdered in Ponar and another 8,000 during August-September - all this shortly before the ghetto was established.

By the end of 1941, only about 40,000 Jews remained in Lithuanian territory, and were concentrated in four ghettos: Vilna, Kovno, Siauliai, Švenčionys, and a number of labor camps.

On September 23, 1943, the Vilna Ghetto was liquidated. Some 3,700 men and women were sent to concentration camps in Estonia and Latvia. More than 4,000 children, women and the elderly were sent to the Sobibor extermination camp, and hundreds of the elderly and the sick were killed and thrown into the killing pits in Ponar. Several hundred members of the underground managed to escape to the forests.

Lithuania was liberated in the summer of 1944. Upon liberation, it became clear that only about 2,500 Jews from the glorious Jewish community survived the Holocaust.

Since the beginning of the Nazi German occupation, about 200,000 Jews have been murdered within Lithuania's 1940 borders.

Moderator: " Tenor singer Rafailas Karpis is a graduate of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Dance. Since 2003, he has sung at the National Opera of Lithuania, has appeared in various plays, and won much praise and numerous awards. The pianist Darius Mažintas has won numerous international awards and performs at various concerts and festivals around the world. In addition to his successful musical career, Mažintas has participated in developing programs to promote classical music among young people. Today we are happy to congratulate him on his new position as Lithuanian Deputy Minister of Culture.

Rafailas Karpis and Darius Mažintas arrived from Vilna for this event, and will perform songs from a special disk of Yiddish songs dedicated to the Jewish world destroyed in the Holocaust, and dedicated to the commemoration of Jewish culture and heritage.

I am honored to invite Rafailas Karpis and Darius Mažintas to perform "Kaddish" by the composer Maurice Ravel. Welcome, please…"

Moderator:  "Cultural life in the Vilna Ghetto began on the day we entered the ghetto. It once seemed to me that it made no sense to create artistic values for people sentenced to death, or to be deported to an island. Life has proved to me that this is not the case. The creative person, whether he lives in a modern hotel or in the desert with sand and jackals, whether he stands in awe and longing in front of the setting sun on the seashore or on the sides of a grave he dug with his own hands, the spirit of creation does not flee from him."

This is what the poet and partisan Avraham Sutzkever wrote in his diary. Lithuanian-born Sutzkever began writing poetry at the age of 13 - first in Hebrew and then in Yiddish. He continued to write even under Nazi occupation and within the ghetto walls. Sutzkever escaped from the ghetto and joined the partisans. He survived the Holocaust, and after the war made aliyah to Eretz-Israel. His poems have been translated into many languages, and he even won the Israel Prize for Yiddish Literature in 1985.

We will end the evening with his song "Under the Shining Stars in the Sky."