Honouring Jews kicked out of Vilnius University

STAFF REPORTER

This would be to honour them for the degree they would have got or the position they would have held at the university, had they not been forced out because they were Jewish.

President of the international Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, South African Marlene Bethlehem, alerted the SA Jewish Report to this, saying that Vilnius University had approached the foundation about this project.

She felt sure there may be South Africans who would be eligible for Recovering Memory Diplomas because of the many Lithuanian Jews here.

“Although these diplomas won’t give those who were not able to complete their degrees what they were striving for, it does give some comfort that the university is acknowledging what happened and honouring these people,” Bethlehem says.

The university has invited people to apply for this on their own behalf or on behalf of their deceased relatives. There will be a special award ceremony in Vilnius in 2018 to pay tribute to and honour these people.

The impetus for acknowledging the many people whose academic careers and degrees were halted at the time, was an e-mail to the university from Israeli Professor of Medicine Moshe Lapidoth, last year.

He asked that the university “symbolically honour the memory of his uncle, Chlaunė Meištovskis, who was “a student in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Vilnius University”.

Meištovskis had completed eight semesters of physics and chemistry when his scholarship was terminated and he was expelled on July 1, 1941, specifically because he was Jewish.

During the National-Socialist occupation of Lithuania, on June 27, 1941, the order of the then head of Higher Education Department for Vilnius, was implemented. Following that order, the then rector of the university began dismissing staff members of Jewish origin, as well as those who took an active part in the university’s Sovietisation, according to the university.

Lapidoth’s letter led to the university taking this project on in order to “remember and evaluate the past, especially the tragic events that took place in the pre-war and post-war Lithuania, particularly at Vilnius University”.

Their idea is to “commemorate and pay respect to members of Vilnius University community, both staff and students, who were expelled from the university, losing (the) ability to continue their academic careers or studies, because of the actions of the totalitarian regimes and their local collaborators”, the university says.

According to the university’s initial research, there are believed to be about 1 000 candidates for the Memory Diplomas. At the beginning of the Nazi occupation, there were about 650 Jews, 80 Poles and one German professor – whose wife was Jewish – expelled from Vilnius University.

The university sees this as a long-term project and a great incentive to learn more about its history, to fill in some of its blank pages or rewrite others.

“It is also an opportunity for the academic community to look back at very painful periods that affected so many lives. Understanding and recognising unretouched history in a responsible way, creates a foundation for a strong, open academic community.”

In September 2016, a commission was established to do research, to formulate evaluation criteria for nominations, to identify the names of those expelled from the university, assess their biographical facts, and to return them symbolically to the field of historical memory of Vilnius University.

Bethlehem showed the SA Jewish Report a letter from Vilnius University Rector Professor Arturas Zukauskas, to the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. In it he spoke about promoting Jewish studies at his university and hoping the foundation would help him do this.

“It is also so exciting that after all these years, people will be able to take Jewish studies at that university,” Bethlehem says.

If people believe they or a family member are eligible for a Recovering Memory Diploma, they can find all the details on https://www.vu.lt/en/about-vu/history/recovering-memory/procedure-of-granting-memory-diploma