30 August 2018

3–20 September: exhibition “The Lighting Memory”

Lithuania will host European Jewish Culture Days during the first week of autumn.   For this occasion, the Judaica Research Centre of Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania invites you to visit the exhibition “Lighting Memory” dedicated to the poet Avrom Sutskever (Abraham Sutzkever).  The author of the first published memoir of Vilnius ghetto and participant of anti-Nazi Resistance contributed to the flourishing of Jewish Vilnius and provided testimony of its destruction by immortalizing it in our memory.

A. Suckever lived two short and tumultuous lives in Vilnius. The first one started in 1921 when he moved to live in Vilnius together with his mother at the age of eleven after the death of his father in Siberia. During that period the poet was attending a cheder and a gymnasium, was taking courses at Vilnius University and was starting out as a writer publishing poetry.  The most important part of this period of his life was his friendship with other Jewish poets and artists.  Nazi occupation and the founding of ghetto in 1941 marked the beginning of the second period of life in Vilnius for A. Suckever and his family – his mother and his wife.  Having encountered such devastating atrocities as the loss of his mother and his new-born sun and having witnessed eradication of Vilnius Jews, the poet continued to write poetry yet his poems reflected a radical thematic shift and embodied a fight against a sense of nothingness.

A. Suckever's manuscripts, books and other works by the poet and his friends from the ghetto period will be on display at the exhibition entitled “The Lighting Memory”. The opening of the exhibition will take place on 6 September at 6:00 p.m. in the Art Space, 5th floor. A. Suckever’s granddaughter actress and director Hadas Kalderon, poet and translator Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, and violinist Veronika Žukaitė will be among the attendees of the opening ceremony.

Brief information about the exhibition:

Date	3-20 September
Time	Opening of the exhibition: 6 September at 6:00 p.m.
Venue	Art Space, 5th floor
Duration	2 hours
Participation	Free entrance
Organiser	Judaica Research Centre of the National Library
Sponsors	Embassy of Israel in Lithuania, Lithuanian Department of Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture, Lithuanian Institute of History
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