Youth Education and Heritage

In April 2018, a meeting was held with Mr. Darius Skusevičius, Lithuanian Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs (responsible for relations with Jewish communities worldwide, Holocaust-related issues, and Jewish cultural heritage), at the Lithuanian Embassy in Israel. The discussion focused on ways to strengthen ties and create direct contact between Israeli and Lithuanian youth.

This initiative soon took shape. A few weeks later, Mr. Amir Maimon, Israel’s Ambassador to Lithuania, organized a fascinating study tour in Israel for forty high school students from various Lithuanian cities, accompanied by their teachers. The Association of Jews from Vilna and the Vicinity in Tel Aviv hosted a warm welcoming event for the group, where the students learned about their shared roots from second-generation Lithuanian Jews. On the one hand, the young visitors experienced Israel and its people; on the other, they met with second-generation Holocaust survivors connected to the very towns and cities they themselves came from. At school, these students had already studied the Jewish communities of their hometowns, but now they encountered living memories and stories face-to-face. This direct exchange proved to be a powerful way to build bridges, deepen social connections, and foster positive, lasting relations.

In February 2019, another group of about forty students from six Lithuanian high schools arrived in Israel, again accompanied by their teachers and a representative of the Israeli Embassy in Vilnius. Their visit was part of a mission of discovery, designed to bring them closer to Israel’s geography, culture, and people while strengthening bonds between the two nations’ younger generations.