Lithuania: In Search of the Hidden Holocaust Monument of Vilnius

 Vilnius, Lithuania. Flame of Hope. Photo from Foundation for the Arts

Cross posted from Defending History.com

The Hidden Monument of Vilnius
11 February 2012

 

In response to several requests from the United States, DefendingHistory.com this week asked three separate Westerners who found themselves in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, to try to see the “Flame of Hope” monument, by sculptor Leonardo Nierman, in memory of the victims of the Lithuanian Holocaust, located in the heart of the Old Town, in a yard that was in the Vilna Ghetto between September 1941 and the ghetto’s liquidation three years later.

The story of the monument got underway nearly thirty years ago when the idea first came to the person who made it happen, Shelly Rybak Pearson of Florida, USA, who contributed a DH.com comment piece on the subject last December.

The seemingly interminable saga has been the subject of a number of American media outlets, including a feature article in the Palm Beach Post and a television interview for the Miami Herald. For many years, the Lithuanian Embassy in Washington DC and the American Embassy in Vilnius have participated in the conversation concerning the monument. Discussions in different periods have dealt with agreeing a text for the inscription (see box at the end of this article), the venue for the monument, and above all — accessibility of the monument to the general public, Lithuanians and foreign visitors alike.

What is agreed by all sides is that the monument is located in the courtyard of the building that housed one of interwar Vilna’s prime Jewish educational institutions, the Yídishe reál-gimnàzye. During the Holocaust, the building tragically became the headquarters of the Nazi-established Judenrat, or “Jewish authority” within the ghetto. Like the other ghettos in major Lithuanian cities, the Vilna Ghetto continued to incarcerate the shrinking remnant of Lithuanian Jewry for several years after the majority were shot in the summer and fall of 1941, mostly by local perpetrators volunteering to kill the civilian Jewish population for the Nazis, at hundreds of mass grave sites across Lithuania.

Read the entire post here

Remembering Texas's Don Teter

Remembering Texas's Don Teter

Texas Jewish history expert Donald Lee Teter died in Houston on January 26, 2012, at 86.

Don was a founder of the Texas Jewish Historical Society and the Baytown Historical Museum. Over many years he organized efforts to locate, describe and preserve Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and other historical sites throughout Texas. I first met Don in the late 1980s when I was researching the history of the B'nai Abraham Synagogue in Brenham, Texas, of which my great-grandfather was a founder. Don also was an expert on the Jewish history of Baytown, where he had worked as chemical engineer after graduating from Rice University.   His 2008 paper "OIL GEVALT: The History of the Baytown, Texas, Jewish Community, 1928-2008" can be read here.

Brenham, Texas. Jewish cemetery - one of nearly 100 cemeteries documented by Don Teter. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (1988)

I followed Don's work in Texas throughout the 1990s. When I was collecting information on abandoned Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe, Don was doing the same for Texas. Together with his wife Gertrude, to whom he was married for 63 years and who survives him, Don compiled the massive Texas Jewish Burials, published by the Texas Jewish Historical Society in 1997. The 448-page book includes information on all Jewish burial grounds in Texas, including consecrated Jewish cemeteries separate from any other cemeteries, sections of non-sectarian cemeteries consecrated and dedicated as Jewish cemeteries and Jewish burials in non-Jewish cemeteries. The Teters collected the name and birth and death dates for each burial they and their colleagues located.  From this survey work developed many subsequent programs for cemetery clean-ups, sponsored by synagogues and other religious and civic groups.

Don Teter  will be missed by his large family and circle of friends.  For his warm spirit and abundant energy, and because of his work in Jewish history, heritage and community; he will be long remembered.

Donations in Don's memory can be made to Congregation K'Nesseth Israel, P.O. Box 702, Baytown, TX 77522 or other charity of your choice.

Poland: Belzec Death Camp Memorial Up for Architecture Award

Cross-posted from Jewish Heritage Europe

Poland — Belzec Monument as Architectural Masterpiece

Virtual Shtetl reports that the extraordinary monument memorial at the former Belzec Nazi death camp in southeast Poland is among 15 structures in the running for an award  for the most striking masterpiece of Polish architecture  built in the past two decades. The competition is sponsored by the Polityka weekly and readers can vote for their choice online.

Read more here.

Kosovo: Pristina Partisans' Monuments

 Kosovo: Pristina Partisans' Monuments

To read about the Partisans' monument in Pristina, Kosovo, see my blog Public Art and Memory.

Pristina, Kosovo. Partisans' Monument, detail of vandalism. Photo: Ivan Ceresnjes