Closing Evening - Lost but Remembered: Traces of Jewish Legacy in Lithuania

This exhibition focuses on loss and remembrance in relation to Lithuania’s Jewish community. The Nazis and their local collaborators murdered about 90% of Lithuania’s Jews during the Holocaust. Lithuania’s Jewish population peaked at roughly 250,000, in 1941; today, the community is estimated to number 5,000 at most.

Daniel and Nathan Pesin reveal how the memory of Lithuania’s Jews endures today. They take us into witness-bearing forests and town archives, yeshivas-turned-museums and seemingly forgotten rural graveyards. Plaques in the street memorialise former Jewish businesses, and road signs denote mass killing sites. It is unusual for former synagogue buildings to remain in their intended use; while some still have a connection to their Jewish past, many have become concert halls or cafés, if they stand at all.

Complimenting the photographs is a screening of award-winning filmmaker Roberta Grossman’s Extinguished Lives (14 minutes), examining the story of a young woman during the “Holocaust…