Apie mus vėl rašo
Their teacher Vaida Kriščiūnienė writes
"Letters from beyond" and artistic installation - "They are still alive in our memory"
"Letters From Beyond" and Artistic Installation - "They Still Live in Our Memory"
The young generation of Vilkaviškis region, which grew after 1990, only knows from the hearts that Vilkaviškis, Virbalis, Kybartai, Vištytis grew through the disappearance of our nation - the Jewish community.
In Vilkaviškis Jews settled in the 16th century. In the 19th century, they accounted for the majority of Vilkaviškis population. According to the census of 1897, there were 348 Jews (60 percent of the population) living in Vilkaviškis. By the 20th century At the beginning of the 19th century, Jewish communities in these towns accounted for 50 to 80 percent of the total population.
For centuries Jewish hands have been trading, crafts, and the national minority of Vilkaviškis region has given many world-famous personalities. These are the artists I. Levitan
(Kybartai), M. Maimon (Vilkaviškis), A. Aprilis (Vilkaviškis), graphic artist from Paris C. Reims (Kybartai). Holland is proud of their ballet founder S. Gaskel (Vilkaviškis), Virbalis was born a famous poet Š. Blumgarten, Joe.
According to the Jews living in Israel, whose roots are in our country, the Jewish community was completely destroyed during World War II.
On November 15, 1941, the last massacre of Jews in the province of Lithuania took place in Vilkaviškis. The century-old Jewish history of not only Vilkaviškis, but also the entire province of Lithuania ended in the day. In four and a half months in 1941, the Nazis and their supporters destroyed 70,000 Jews from the Lithuanian province.
The Jews arrested at the end of July near a barracks near the barracks, dug a 25-meter-long and several-meter-wide ditch in three days. About 500 - 600 Jewish men were shot in the day. On September 24, Jewish women and children from Vilkaviškis were shot.
By honoring these people and remembering their memory, on September 24, the students of the Vilkaviškis Salomėja Neris School (studying 6b, 6d, 8c, 8e) initiated an art installation - "They are still alive in our memory" - planted under the hats in old boots. People were not left behind after mass murder, but their belongings remained, symbolizing that such a community was, and the plant - as if it had perpetuated the lives that the people of the Jewish people killed remained in our memory of Lithuanians.
This artistic installation was decorated on September 24th. Vilkaviškis Holocaust Victims Cemetery, where the day of Lithuanian Jewish genocide was mentioned.
And the literary - artistic composition "Letters from Beyond" of class 6b pupils took away all of Lithuania 's horrors and horrors of those times, allowing for a short time to feel the horrors of that time and the nightmare of the Jewish people, reminding everyone of this terrible tragedy.
Amir Maimon, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the State of Israel to Lithuania, also spoke in the commemoration, said the Mayor of Vilkaviškis District Algirdas Neiberka, Honorary Citizen of Vilkaviškis District Municipality, Ralf Selinder, Dean of the Vilkaviškis Jewish Community, Dean Prel. kan. Vytautas Gustaitis, Member of the Council Antanas Žilinskas. The pupils laid the memorial stones at the monument, and the guests lit the candles.
I am proud of my students that they are not indifferent to this historic date. Most importantly, students need to talk about tolerance to another nation, another race or religion, so that such a tragedy does not happen again.
Thanks to the teachers Rimai Šlivinskienė and Rokas Šlivinskas' team Perlas for the gifts for the pupils, I thank the teacher Dalyte Lapaitienė for her wonderful artistic photos, which further strengthened the mood of the event.
Lithuanian language teacher Vaida Kriščiūnienė
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