Next year Lithuanian Citizens, the Victims of the Holocaust, will be commemorated
in Lithuania

The year 2011 were declared the Year of Remembrance of the Lithuanian Citizens, the Victims of the Holocaust. Victims of the Holocaust, rescuers of Jews and Lithuanian citizen who fought against the Nazi will be commemorated by organizing remembrance events, implementing commemoration and awareness-raising projects. Moreover, efforts will be made to reconstruct as well as commemorate historical and cultural heritage of Lithuanian Jews next year.

‘The history of Lithuanian Jews forms the part of the history of Lithuania that needs to be given proper significance. The aim of the Year of Remembrance will be to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust as well as Lithuanian Citizens who protested against inhumane requirements of the Nazi regime and put their lives at risk when rescuing others. By expressing tribute to such people we face the events of the 20th century and lessons of history anew’ said the Chancellor of the Prime Minister Deividas Matulionis.

In the year 2011 the following various commemoration events will take place in Lithuania: a solemn ceremony to commemorate the Holocaust victims in Aukštieji Panieriai Memorial, a commemoration performance at the Vilnius Ghetto Victims Square, unveiling of the monument for the Righteous among the Nations of the world. As the Chancellor of the Prime Minister has put it, efforts will be made to give attention to the remembrance of the Holocaust victims as well as to encourage the citizens to create a modern, tolerant Lithuanian society. ‘The aim of the projects is to remember the events of the past as well as to find the solutions to the problems of today. The international conference on xenophobia and anti-Semitism is one of such projects’ said the Chancellor.

Much attention will be given to educational projects, including holding of the Holocaust Memorial Day in schools, organizing of educational seminars for young people, arrangement of awareness-raising expositions on the history of Jews in Lithuanian museums. The municipalities are recommended to pay special attention in 2011 to cleaning Holocaust memorial sites and Jewish cemeteries, as well as make their inventory and registration in the Real Estate Register.

It is proposed that Lithuania’s major public institutions and bodies, research centres, higher education institutions and communities should contribute to the commemoration of the Year of Remembrance: the Office of the President of the Republic of Lithuania, Office of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, Genocide Resistance and Research Centre of Lithuania, Secretariat of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, the Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius University, the Centre for Studies of the Culture and History of East European Jews, the Jewish Culture and Information Centre, the Lithuanian Radio and Television, the Jewish Community of Lithuania and other bodies.

The measures for commemoration of the Year of Remembrance of the Lithuanian citizens, who fell victims to the Holocaust, will be presented during the Prime Minister’s official visit to Israel.