On July 3, the town of Jurbarkas held an event to honor and remember the destroyed Jewish community, which was wiped out 85 years ago.
As it does every year, the event “Remembering and Sharing: Stories of Jurbarkas’s Jews” took place in Jurbarkas to commemorate the local Jewish community, which was brutally destroyed in 1941. The commemoration ceremony began at the Holocaust victims’ memorial site, located near the old Jewish cemetery. Skirmantas Mockevičius, the mayor of the Jurbarkas District Municipality, and Shelly Hugler Livne, the ambassador of the State of Israel, spoke about remembrance and the importance of conveying this message to the entire community of Jurbarkas.
The commemoration then continued downtown on Kauno Street, near the synagogue memorial. The event attempted to bring the interrupted history of the Jewish community in Jurbarkas back to the Old Town, where life “bustled” before World War II and where two synagogues once stood. There, Lithuanians and Jews traded, joked, argued, and lived ordinary small-town lives. The highlight of the event in Synagogue Square was the Kaddish, a prayer for the dead and murdered, tenderly performed by soloist Rafailas Karpis. Attendees included Michail Segal, Executive Director of the Lithuanian Jewish Community; Gercas Žakas, Chairman of the Kaunas Jewish Community; community members; and active teachers and education professionals from Tolerance Education Centers operating in Lithuania.
The Jurbarkas District Municipality and the Jurbarkas District Municipal Public Library organized the commemorative event in cooperation with the following partners: the Secretariat of the International Commission, the Embassy of Israel in Lithuania, and the Goodwill Foundation.
