On November 8, Jonas and Petras Vileišiai School in Kaunas organized a seminar, “The Tree of Life in Kaunas Ghetto.”
The seminar was an unconventional history lesson aimed at commemorating the Great Action – the selection of the inhabitants of the Kaunas ghetto for death or for the possibility of living for a while – which took place on October 28-29, 1941, and the liquidation of the Kaunas ghetto in the summer of 1944 and the fate of its inhabitants.
The unconventional history lesson for the school community began with an artistic composition of the students about a girl rescued from the Kaunas ghetto, which began with the students saying: “We are the children of the war and the ghetto…”. The event continued with a presentation by Simona Gustaitytė (Kaunas IX Fort Museum) about the Great Action – how it took place, and the feelings and emotions of the people who were waiting for their verdict. The historian empowered her presentation with the thoughts of the survivors of the Great Action, quotes from diaries and memoirs.
Ingrida Vilkienė, Coordinator of Educational Programs at the Secretariat of the International Commission, spoke about the children who survived the Great Action and were later rescued from the Kaunas ghetto and their rescuers. The presentation about the Jews imprisoned in the Kaunas ghetto recalled the stories of the Ipai family, Tobias Jafet, Fruma Vitkinaitė – Kučinskienė and Jochanan Fain, together with the stories of the rescuers of these people. The theme of rescuers was continued by the chairman of the Kaunas Jewish community, Gercas Žakas, who told about Vladas Varčikas, a musician of the Kaunas Musical Theatre, who used to sail across the Neris River to the Kaunas ghetto at night in a boat to pick up the children of the ghetto, who had managed to find their Lithuanian foster parents – rescuers.
The seminar for the school community also presented the activities carried out to promote tolerance, historical memory, and shared human values. Speaking about the projects implemented at the school, the students emphasized that “our school was built on the ruins of the Kaunas ghetto…”.
The final highlight of the event was the unveiling of a commemorative sculpture at the school, dedicated to the Great Action in Kaunas on Demokratų Square. The author of the sculpture, sculptor Gediminas Gedonis, speaking about the idea, emphasized that his greatest impression as a creator was the selection of people during the Great Action when a Nazi officer decided with one finger of his hand who would live and who would die. Dalia Lapėnienė, the headmistress of Jonas and Petras Vileišiai School, reiterated in her speech that the location of the school on Demokratų Street, where the Kaunas ghetto and Demokratų Square were located in 1941, obliges the school to tell this tragic story, to convey the message to the students, their parents and the entire community of Vilijampolė. Thus, the new sculpture unveiled at the school will be a reminder of the school site, which commemorates the great pain, the tears, and the loss of innocent lives more than 80 years ago.
The unconventional history lesson was organized by the Centre for Tolerance Education of Jonas and Petras Vileišiai School of Kaunas in cooperation with the Secretariat of the International Commission.
