YIVO Celebrates 90th Anniversary in Vilnius, Lithuania

When YIVO was established in Vilna 90 years ago, in 1925, Vilna was part of Poland, and was officially known as Wilno. Today, Vilna is known as Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and YIVO is gradually returning to its roots there, through its joint Vilna Collections project with the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania and the Lithuanian Central State Archives, and by forging increasingly strong relationships with Lithuanian Jewish cultural activists and institutions and with the organized Jewish community there.

These renewed ties were the impetus behind a weekend-long series of events in honor of YIVO in Vilnius on September 18 - 20, organized by the Lithuanian Jewish Community and YIVO with the participation of the World Jewish Congress, the Good Will Foundation, the Embassy of the United States to Lithuania, the Lithuanian Central State Archives, the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, and the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania.

The delegation from YIVO that flew in from New York to attend the programs included Executive Director Jonathan Brent, Director of Development Suzanne Leon, Head of Library and Archives Dr. Lyudmila Sholokhova, Vilna Collections Project Manager Sarah Ponichtera, Director of Digital Initiatives Roberta Newman, Sound Archivist Lorin Sklamberg, and documentary filmmaker Peter Forgacs.

The weekend kicked off with a joint press conference by YIVO and the Lithuanian Jewish Community that made the connection between Holocaust issues and YIVO’s renewed presence in Lithuania. Suzanne Leon noted that the Holocaust represented a total break, a disconnect with the past, and that the Vilna Collections project would make more information available about those who were murdered by the Nazis.

The program, in fact, was timed to coincide with the annual commemoration of the liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto and the deportation and murder of its remaining inhabitants in September 1943. The first public event of the weekend, on September 18, was a dramatic reading in Lithuanian and Yiddish of the diary of Yitzkhok Rudashevski, a teenager who chronicled events in the Vilna Ghetto and who was murdered with most of his family in Ponary in 1943. His diary was rediscovered by his cousin and eventually made its way to YIVO in New York via the efforts of Abraham Sutzkever. In introductory remarks, Lithuanian Jewish Community chair Faina Kukliansky announced that the reading had been organized to commemorate both YIVO and “one, individual victim” of the Holocaust.  Jonathan Brent noted that this was the first time in  over 60 years that YIVO was holding an event in its city of origin.  

Members of the delegation attended Mincha/maariv services at the Choral Synagogue that evening and participated in a walking tour of Vilna’s Jewish quarter the next day, September 19. That afternoon, Brent presented the Schocken/YIVO translation of Fania Lewando’s Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook to the Jewish community. The book will soon be published in a Lithuanian translation. In the evening, the Klezmatics performed in the Vilnius Town Hall to a sold-out audience. The concert included a screening of Peter Forgacs’ Letters to Afar, a documentary video presentation based on home movies in the YIVO Archives.

Sunday, September 20 began with the laying of a wreath at the apartment of Max Weinreich, one of YIVO’s key founders and the leading force behind YIVO’s reestablishment in the U.S. in 1940. Then came the main event of the weekend: a day-long conference, “YIVO: From Yiddish Academy in Vilna to Global Institution,” at the Seimas, the parliament of the Republic of Lithuania. A highlight of the conference were the greetings by members of the Parliament, including Deputy Speaker of Parliament and Chair of the Committee on European Affairs Gediminas Kirkilas, who noted the important role that YIVO plays in “reminding the world of the rich heritage of in the hall, Litvaks” that developed in Vilnius. The program officially opened with tributes to two heroines of Jewish Vilna, former anti-Nazi partisan Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky and Fira Bramson, longtime director of the Jewish section of the National Library.

Read the full text of Deputy Speaker’s Gediminas Kirkilas’ greetings.

See photos of the gala reception at the Jewish Community Center in Vilnius.