On 10 July, a seminar, “The 80th Anniversary of the Destruction of the Kaunas Ghetto: History and Remembrance,” was held in Kaunas.
The seminar brought together teachers from all over Lithuania, who, in 2022, took part in an international seminar and internship at Yad Vashem, the international school for Holocaust studies in Jerusalem. One of the seminar’s aims was to discuss the experience and knowledge gained during the internship two years ago and how it was passed on to students and the school community. Another aim of the seminar was to participate in an event commemorating the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Kaunas ghetto.
The seminar started at the Jonas and Petras Vileišiai school in Kaunas, which was built on a historical site during the Soviet era next to the former Demokratų Square. During the Nazi occupation, this was the territory of the ghetto. On 28-29 October 1941, it was associated with a horrible historical event – the “Great Action” when about 10,000 people were selected from the ghetto population who were unfit for work and taken to Kaunas IX Fort to be executed. At the beginning of the seminar, the school’s headmistress, Dalia Lapėnienė, invited the teachers to see the monument commemorating this event, and the history of the “Great Action” was recalled once again.
The activities and projects implemented by the Secretariat of the International Commission were discussed with the participants. A film with Lithuanian subtitles about the former head of the Yad Vashem Institution and former member of the International Commission – historian Yitzhak Arad was shown. The possibilities of using the film and other methodological materials in the classroom were discussed with teachers.
Later, the teachers visited the Kaunas Choral Synagogue to learn about the synagogue’s construction history and the Jewish community in Kaunas before World War II. After the visit, the group of teachers took part in an event commemorating the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Kaunas ghetto.
The seminar for teachers was organised by the Secretariat of the International Commission.
