Jews

Lithuania has a long history of being home to ethnic minority communities, from as early as 1323 when Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas invited foreign artisans and merchants to come to Lithuania and settle there without interference in their customs and culture.

"There is always someone in a family who pushes against silence," says Rita Gabis, in whose new book Lithuania’s Holocaust skeletons come to light, exploring the 220,000 Lithuanian Jews killed during WWII — and the people who let it happen.

Lithuania's citizenship laws recognize the right of people who lived in Lithuania in the period 1918-1940 and their offspring to claim Lithuanian citizenship but recently a growing number of applications by Litvaks, Lithuanian Jews, have been rejected by the Lithuanian Ministry of Interior, leading ...

Some Jews in Israel and the Republic of South Africa who left Lithuania between the two world wars and their descendants have been applying to have their Lithuanian citizenship restored, but receiving a negative answer.

Over €125,000 euros have been raised in a charity concert organized by the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Order of Malta for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust in Lithuania.

People like anniversaries, and 75 years since the establishment of Kaunas Ghetto is a good opportunity to remember the history of Lithuania's Litvaks, says a British expat offering an original way of doing it.

Members of Lithuania's Roma community who perished during World War Two should have a day of commemoration, say public organizations. They add that the group has been unduly erased from Lithuania's historic memory.

Lithuania's Prosecutor General's Office said Thursday it would investigate a list of about 2,000 Lithuanians who may have taken part in the killing of Jews in Lithuania during World War Two. The list was compiled by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre in Lithuania.

An old Jewish cemetery site in Vilnius should be listed as a cultural heritage object under state protection, suggests Diana Varnaitė, the director of the Cultural Heritage Department.

Latvia's parliament has approved a new law that will see properties confiscated from Jews during World War II to be returned to the country's Jewish community.

A posthumous award of military rank to a man suspected of involvement in the Holocaust has caught attention of the Lithuanian parliament speaker who has asked for explanation from the president and the defence minister.

The living keep silencing the dead, says Jewish-Lithuanian poet and author Sergey Kanovich.

Businessman Valdas Balčiūnas has been named the 2015 Person of Tolerance in Lithuania, the public organization “Sugihara Foundation - Diplomats for Life” told BNS on Saturday.

The Lithuanian Jewish community would like to see a monument built in Vilnius to people who were saving Jews during World War Two.

The leader of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, Faina Kukliansky, says that the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre should submit the list of Holocaust perpetrators to prosecutors for scrutiny.

Hundreds of ordinary Lithuanians who saved Jews are honoured in Israel

Author Rūta Vanagaitė recently presented a book, "Our Own", about the Holocaust in Lithuania. Although historians have been researching the topic for years, the Lithuanian society has yet to realize and acknowledge the part their compatriots, ordinary Lithuanians, played in the mass killings of Jews...

Talking about the massacre of Jews in Lithuania in 1941 is still taboo 75 years later, according to the Lithuanian author of a new book about the events.

A large crowd gathered on Kudirkos Square to witness Rabbi Sholom B. Krinsky light the Menorah candelabra this past Thursday. With the mayor of Vilnius and the first Israeli ambassador to Lithuania, Amir Maimo, attending, this 22nd Hanukkah event in Vilnius showed that it has grown with the city.

Residents of Kaunas and exchange students curiously glanced at a crowd, standing outside despite the cold around an imposing metal menorah next to the colourfully lit Musical Theater. Holding Bengal lights, members of the small Jewish community in Kaunas, their ethnic Lithuanian friends, and Israeli...