Teacher blog

Today we had an emotional and exciting meeting with Tal Gur and his parents Rachel and Mel Gur. The meeting was in Prienai Public library. Tal presented his performance "Mind Crossing" based on the real life story of his maternal grandparents. Rachel's mother and father are from Lithuania, during the Holocaust they were sent to Kaunas ghetto and then to different concentrationcamps. Despite very tragic losses they managed to reunate and start their family life anew in the state of Israel.

Hello, my dear CSA friends,

Today is September 23 - Holocaust Memorial day in Lithuania. I've had an opportunity to present Centropa's workshop in Poland to the school community and to share my newly gained knowledge about the old, rich and sad history of Lithuanian Jewry.

According to old Catholic traditions, Advent, four weeks before Christmas, is time for tranquility and meditation, not for hunting in the boundless fields of malls:) Fortunately, there still are possibilities to run accidentaly into some small church, sideway from the main shopping routes, and find yourself "far from the madding crowd".

In order to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust in Lithuania, students of Jieznas gymnasium went to the Fort VII  of Kaunas fortress. Kaunas is my native town that had more than 30 000 Jews before the WWII and only 634 of them managed to survive in 1944.

Eight days with Centropa were so full of activities, meetings, new information that I am still trying to summarize all the things in my head. What was summer academy about? WWI? Austro-Hungarian Empire? Austrian cultural heritage? Balkans history? War in Sarajevo? Sephardic Jews? I wake up at night and can't realise at first where I am: at home or in a hotel in Sarajevo. And I feel nostalgia for people I met and for  things we did.

It's nice to be here in Vienna and Sarajevo and to meet lots of educators from Europe and the USA all of whom are intersted in the Jewish life, culture and history. There are three of us from Lithuania: Gintare, Raimonda and me. To be continued...,