Antony Polonsky is Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University and Chief Historian of the Global Education Outreach Project of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw. His most recent work is The Jews in Poland and Russia volume 1, 1350 to 1881; volume 2 1881 to 1914; volume 3, 1914 to 2008 (Oxford, 2010, 2012), published in 2013 in an abridged version The Jews in Poland and Russia. A Short History (2014), which has been translated into French, Polish and Lithuanian. In 1999, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland and the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Independent Lithuania. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Warsaw (2010) and the Jagiellonian University (2014).

Prof. Antony Polonsky: My talk will be an investigation of the origin and character of the Litvak identity. 

Visual artist and photographer, Bruce Clarke was born in London in 1959 to South African parents. His maternal grandparents were from, Lithuania. He now lives in France.

Clarke’s work engages with contemporary history, the writing and transmission of this history, and hopes to stimulate thought on the contemporary world and its representations. His work is deeply anchored in a school of critical figuration. He was politically and artistically engaged in the struggle for change in South Africa during the period of apartheid and has been involved in the creation of memorial sites and artworks for the conservation of the memory of the victims of the genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda.

Bruce Clarke: Taking art out of the ghetto, assuming that different geographical situations are linked by the threads of history, I will talk about how each of my diverse personnel and political experiences nourishes my practice of art related to memory.

Daiva Čepauskaitė - poet, playwright, publisher. Member of the Lithuanian Writers' Union since 1998. She writes poetry, plays, stagings, and librettos for children and adults. In 2017, she founded the publishing house "Žalias kalnas" in Kaunas, which publishes books for children. In 2011, Daiva Čepauskaitė was named Person of Tolerance of the Year by the Sugihara Foundation "Diplomats for Life" for her play "Pit (I've Forgotten You)". She works as a dramaturge at the National Kaunas Drama Theatre.

Chlebinskaitė and Čepauskaitė will tell us about the story behind the translation of Leah Goldberg's children's book "Rented Apartment" and the creation of the exclusive design. 

James E. Young is a Distinguished University Professor of English and Judaic Studies Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Founding Director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at UMass Amherst. Professor Young is the author of Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust (Indiana University Press, 1988), The Texture of Memory (Yale University Press, 1993), which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1994, At Memory's Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (Yale University Press, 2000), and The Stages of Memory: Reflections on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces Between (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), which won the National Council for Public History Book Award for 2017. He was also the Guest Curator of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York City, entitled "The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History" (March - August 1994, with venues in Berlin and Munich, September 1994 - June 1995) and was the editor of The Art of Memory (Prestel Verlag, 1994), the exhibition catalogue for this show.

In 1997, Professor Young was appointed by the Berlin Senate to the five-member Findungskommission for Germany's national "Memorial to Europe's Murdered Jews," which selected Peter Eisenman’s design, finished and dedicated in May 2005. More recently, he was appointed to the jury for the “National 9/11 Memorial” design competition, won by Michael Arad and Peter Walker in 2004 and opened on September 11th, 2011.

Prof. James E. Young: In “History, Memory, and Monuments,” I will reflect on what we ask our monuments to do, how they succeed, and how they fail.

Jyll Bradley is a UK-based artist working with sculpture, drawings, film, and text. She studied at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and has exhibited internationally for over 30 years. Jyll is interested in the idea of sculpture as a ‘gathering place' for people, stories, and ideas. She recently presented her sculpture project ‘Threshold’ - based on the Jewish ritual object the mezuzah – as part of Kaunas 2022 City Telling Festival.

Jyll Bradley: I will talk of sculpture as a gathering place. Gathering round the mezuzah – one of the smallest sculptures in the world. 

Katharina von Schnurbein was appointed the first European Commission Coordinator on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life in December 2015. Her mandate includes liaising closely with Jewish communities, Member States, EU institutions, and international organizations as well as proposing and implementing policy to address antisemitism, foster Jewish life, and ensure Holocaust remembrance.

Prior, she worked for five years as part of the advisory team to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, responsible for the dialogue with churches, religions, and non-confessional organizations as well as civil society organizations and think tanks in Germany. Katharina started working for the Commission in 2002, serving as the press officer for the EU Delegation in Prague. With enlargement in 2004, she moved to Brussels as spokesperson on employment, social affairs, and equal opportunities for the Czech EU Commissioner Vladimir Špidla.

Katharina received the B’nai B’rith Europe’s Human Rights Prize in 2018 and the Marietta and Friedrich Torberg medal of the Jewish Community in Vienna in 2021.

Pianist, organist, musicologist, head of the department of the LMTA

Lina Šlipavičiūtė is an artist monumentalist whose work ranges from frescoes created in sacred spaces to street artworks exploring themes of memory and social exclusion.

The street art project "Walls Remember” not only decorates the walls of the Old Town of Vilnius but has also expanded to other Lithuanian cities.

Lina is interested in the possibilities of transformation of space: how a space/place with its history influences the work that appears there and vice versa – how the work can change the space and affect the person in it.

Marilia Destot is a French photographer, living and working in New York. Her photography explores the passage of time and the subjective and poetic process of memory. Her work is mainly rooted in her personal and familial history, is often developed in chapters, over time, places, or characters, and is linked to an intimate and contemplative experience of Life and Nature. Her practice uses the photo medium through a mix of visual or narrative experimentations, open forms where the subject reveals itself in fragments, echoes, and illusions, free to float and resonate with the viewer’s imagination and intimate world.

In 2018, begins her Journey, a poetic exploration of her family's Litvak roots, developed during a residency with the Kaunas Photography Gallery in 2019, and shown at the Emmanuel Levinas Center as part of the CityTelling Festival, Kaunas 2022.

Heritage Expert of the Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) Community

Michael Shubitz was born in Israel. His parents survived the Holocaust in Lithuania. Both of them were from Lithuania. Both were Kaunasians.

Shubitz is a cameraman and photographer. In Kaunas, he is presenting his photography project "Back to Kaunas". He has captured the lives of 12 survivors from Kaunas. In his project he tries to draw a line between Jewish life in Kaunas before the war and now.

Michael Shubitz: In my presentation, I will talk about the ways of imagining the past, having no photos to tell the story. A phenomenon that is common for a whole generation.

M. Lukošaitis (born in 1980 in Šiauliai) is a sculptor, and draughtsman, and has been participating in exhibitions since 1997. He is perhaps most famous for his drawing cycles "Resistance" (or Resistance) and "Jews. My Story", which masterfully weave history and imagination. In both cycles, the artist's imagination creates reconstructions of possible situations, recreating traumatic moments of historical reality. The artist's works have been acquired by Lithuanian and international museums.

Mindaugas Lukošaitis: in the forum, I will talk about the reasons why memory is important to me as a creator.

Paulina Pukytė is an artist, writer, playwright, exhibition curator, and cultural critic. In 2017, she curated the 11th Kaunas Biennial There and Not There: (Im)possibility of a Monument in the public spaces of the city, dedicated to rethinking past, present, and future monuments in the paradigm of presence and absence. In the Forum she will present the aims, objectives, and results of this memorable project and talk about the relationship between the artist, the monument, and the viewer.

Paulina Pukytė: At the Forum I will present the 11th Kaunas Biennial There and Not There: (Im)possibility of a Monument. I will talk about the relationship between the artist, the monument, and the viewer.

Jagiellonian University Professor at the Department of Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, Jagiellonian University in Kraków. His research interests include life writing genres (particularly memoirs), transnationalism, dissonant heritage, as well as a comparative approach to literary studies. He is the author of two monographs and several dozen articles published in books, academic journals, and magazines, as well as co-editor of fourteen volumes of articles. He was a researcher in several Polish and international projects – currently he is a principal investigator in the National Science Centre funded project entitled “(Un)accidental Tourists: Polish Literature and Visual Culture in South Africa in the 20th and 21st Centuries.”

Dr. Kusek and Dr.Wojciech Szymański: This presentation aims to discuss various acts and strategies of addressing Lithuanian and, largely, Central European heritage in selected works of South African writers and artists: William Kentridge, as well as the likes of Nadine Gordimer, Dan Jacobson, and Rose Zwi. We will try to identify what kind of influence Central Europe – and specifically Lithuania – have exerted on South African cultural production and how the above-mentioned artists have responded to its often burdensome memory.

Director of the Vilnius Sholom Aleichem ORT Gymnasium

Peter Salovey is the twenty-third president of Yale University and the Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology. Since becoming president in July 2013, he has led the development of new programs and facilities, strengthened partnerships worldwide, increased access to a Yale College education, and enhanced interdisciplinary collaboration and entrepreneurial opportunity for faculty and students. His prior leadership roles at Yale include serving as chair of the Department of Psychology, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, dean of Yale College, and provost.

After completing his undergraduate education at Stanford University, he earned a Ph.D. (psychology) at Yale in 1986 and then was appointed to the faculty. He has authored or edited over a dozen books translated into eleven languages and published hundreds of journal articles and essays in social psychology. He has studied the connections among health beliefs, health communication, and health behavior, especially those relevant to the prevention of cancer and HIV/AIDS. He also conducted research on the psychological significance and function of human moods and emotions. With John D. Mayer, he developed a broad framework called “emotional intelligence.” In addition to teaching and mentoring scores of graduate students, President Salovey has won both the William Clyde DeVane Medal for Distinguished Scholarship and Teaching in Yale College and the Lex Hixon ’63 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the social sciences. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.

Prof. Peter Salovey: Through my ancestry and understanding of the historical approach to the Jewish practice of those with roots in Lithuania, I reflect on the multidimensional nature of Litvak identity.

Chairman of Vilnius Jewish Religious Community

Sigutė Chlebinskaitė writes books, and curates exhibitions dedicated to book culture and the accompanying education. In 2002, she founded the volunteer community "Book Country". She has won awards in book art competitions in Lithuania and the Baltic States, the USA, France, Great Britain, and Japan, and was awarded the Culture and Art Prize of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania (2017). She has written books by Icchok Rudaševski, Matilda Olkinaitė, Avram Suckever, Moishe Vorobeitchik-Moï Ver, Beba Epstein, Moishe Kulbak, Moishe Kulbak, and Liya Goldberg, and has tried to speak anew about the destroyed world of the Litvaks and their talents and their manuscript legacy.

Chlebinskaitė and Čepauskaitė will tell us about the story behind the translation of Leah Goldberg's children's book "Rented Apartment" and the creation of the exclusive design. 

Prof. Tsvia Walden from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, is a psycholinguist and a software and T.V. program designer, consultant, and presenter of TV series about the Hebrew Language, author of numerous publications on its renewal as a mother tongue.

Prof. Tsvia Walden: I will discuss the enormous contribution of Litvaks to modern Hebrew. I will raise questions: How many homelands may a person have? How many mother tongues may he speak? And in case this person is a Litvak – is it still the same answer?

Architect, member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, member of the creative group JUDVI&AŠ

Art historian and art critic, independent curator. Assistant professor at the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw, author of several dozen articles, editor and author of monographs and exhibition catalogs, principal investigator and researcher in several Polish and international scientific projects; since 2019 he has been editor-in-chief of “Ikonotheka” journal. Currently, he is a co-curator of Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s exhibition Re-enchanting the World in the Polish Pavilion at the 59th Biennale Arte in Venice. He is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). He lives in Krakow.

Dr. Kusek and Dr.Wojciech Szymański: This presentation aims to discuss various acts and strategies of addressing Lithuanian and, largely, Central European heritage in selected works of South African writers and artists: William Kentridge, as well as the likes of Nadine Gordimer, Dan Jacobson, and Rose Zwi. We will try to identify what kind of influence Central Europe – _and specifically Lithuania – _have exerted on South African cultural production and how the above-mentioned artists have responded to its often burdensome memory.

Host of the LRT Klasika radio program "Small Europe Talks", Head of the Media and Democracy Programme at the Vilnius Institute for Policy Analysis, teacher of ethics at the Queen Martha School, and alumnus of the "I Choose to Teach" program. He is a passionate researcher of Lithuania's multicultural past and was named the 2014 Person of the Year for Tolerance for promoting dialogue between different cultures and religions. A man who will always be grateful to the brilliant Litvak writer Grigory Kanovich for showing us the cloud called Lithuania.

Donatas Puslys will moderate a discussion with authors of Lithuanian books - Sigute Chlebinskaite, Daiva Čepauskaite, and Aneta Anra.

Aneta Anra is a novelist and playwright. She is the author of three novels: Niki: dvigubas portretas (Niki: A Double Portrait), published by Tyto Alba in 2019; Paleistuvės, arba Meilė pagal Niurnbergo mergelę (Iron Maidens, or Love According to the Virgin of Nuremberg) published by Kitos knygos in 2016, with illustrations by Jolanta Kyzikaitė; and Katinas Temzėje (The Cat in the Thames), published by Versus Aureus in 2008; the plays Niurnbergo mergelė (The Virgin of Nuremberg; 2013, Naujoji Romuva, No. 3), Katinas Temzėje (The Cat in the Thames) and Bestija žydrom akim (The Beast with Blue Eyes); and the documentary novel Jehudit. Pasaulis galėtų būti toks gražus (Jehudit. How Beautiful the World Could Be, released in Lithuanian by Odilė publishers in 2021). Her plays Katinas Temzėje and Bestija žydrom akim were staged at the State Youth Theatre (Vilnius) in 2008 and 2010, respectively.

Her book "Jehudit: How Beautiful the World Could Be" was awarded the Grigory Kanovich Republican Prize and is currently being translated into English, Polish and French.

Prof. Violeta Davoliūtė, VU TSPMI researcher on the politics of memory in East Central Europe.

Prof. Violeta Davoliūtė will moderate a discussion on the role of art in understanding complex history.

Daiva (Citvarienė) Price - art curator, researcher, and cultural producer. She is also a lecturer at the Faculty of Arts of Vytautas Magnus University, with an interest in memory and museum studies. Dr. Price is the creator of several memory projects: the collective memory project "Sites of Memory" (www.atmintiesvietos.lt), the audio guide to historical Kaunas "Spirit Guide to the Old Kaunas" and many others.

Since 2014, Dr. Price has been one of the members of the creative team preparing the Kaunas European Capital of Culture 2022 bid and since 2017 she has been working for the Kaunas 2022 team. She was Curator of the Audience Development Programme for Cultural Operators 2017 - 2019. The main program she curates for Kaunas 2022 is Memory Office, which aims to break down the city's stereotypes, stimulate a conscious interest in the city's complex history, and awaken the city's multiethnic memory.

Dr. Daiva Price: The path of the Memory Office began in 2017. What has changed in these five years? What memories have been awakened by the Memory Office?