After seven years of renovations, a unique complex made up of two 19th-century synagogues opened to the public in the Lithuanian town of Joniskis. The Joniskis Synagogue Complex made its official debut earlier this month, the Russian Jewish news agency AEN reported Wednesday. The complex in northern Lithuania comprises the Red Synagogue, which dates to…
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research has launched a $5.25 million project to digitize a swathe of its library and archive, creating the world’s largest online collection of Eastern European Jewish life prior to the Holocaust. If completed, the Vilna Project will reunite YIVO’s pre-World War II library and archive for the first time in…
Lucy Fox Robins Lang (second from right) at her book party, 1948 // Copyright Forward Association Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. When Lucy Fox Robins Lang’s memoir “Tomorrow is Beautiful” was published by Macmillan in 1948, the…
The parliament in Lithuania passed a law permitting ritual slaughter in the country, spurring a protest by animal rights activists. The measure passed Tuesday stipulates that animals can be killed by slitting their throat without first being stunned — a requirement in religious Jewish law and by observant Muslims — the Baltic News Service reported….
Bessie Hillman and Sydney Hillman on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1938 // Forward Association Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. Although better known as the tireless wife of labor leader Sidney Hillman, who founded…
Lithuania’s Parliament passed an amendment recognizing Holocaust-era rescuers of Jews as freedom fighters. The amendment, which entitles the families of rescuers to special state pensions, passed Tuesday by a majority of 72 lawmakers present, the news site 15min.lt reported. The Jewish Community of Lithuania praised the vote. “Finally, the Lithuanian government has expressed its positive…
Watching horrifying tapes of Nazi executions can tell us a lot about the authenticity of a video depicting the killings of two Palestinian teens in the West Bank While studying Yiddish in Lithuania during the summer of 2008 my fellow students and I visited Ponar, the site where 100,000 people, including nearly an entire branch…
The Simon Wiesenthal Center accused the Lithuanian government of facilitating the glorification of Holocaust-era war criminals. The accusation followed a march earlier this month by nationalists in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second largest city which is also known as Kovno. They carried portraits of the pro-Nazi former ruler Juozas Ambrazevicius-Brazaitis. His government helped German troops send 30,000…
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