Švėkšna

Švėkšna, Lithuania

Monika Žąsytienė

Compiled by Esther (Herschman) Rechtschafner

Monika works as the curator of the Švėkšna museum.
She is a young woman of about 24 years old.
She has a degree in librianship (specialty: communication and information) from the Vilna University.
Her native village is near Švėkšna. As understood, she is not Jewish. She is Catholic.
She has made numerous photographs of Sveksna that may be viewed by clicking here.

Monika has been very helpful in sending information about the Jews of Sveksna. She is honestly and earnestly interested in Jewish history. She spends much time at her computer searching for such information. She even asked for a website for Jewish music. She enjoys watching a clip about Jews on her computer. She asks me for information and I try to help her. She is particularly interested in information about the Holocaust.

Recently her project "Švėkšna's Jewish Community is still alive in our memories" was approved. She received funding for the project from Eastern European Jewish Culture and History Research Center and Task Force of International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF) and Ministry of Culture of the local municipality. Therefore, she now has the opportunity to expand the museum's exhibition in Jewish topics and create an educational film about Švėkšna's Jewish for students. She would like to be in contact with Jews who lived in Švėkšna before the Holocaust. She wrote, "I know that somewhere there are records about life in concentration camps, told by people from Švėkšna." She asked for permission to use material from my articles about Švėkšna for her exhibition.

She sent me information about the Holocaust Day Ceremonies. She sent both an article and the pictures shown below.

She has also sent much information and photographs of the Jewish cemetery in Sveksna. She wrote to the director of the Eastern European Jewish Culture and History Research Center and got help with the translationson the tomb stones.

Click on the following links to see photos she made of the stones: In Novenmber 2011 In December 2011

Click here to send an e-mail message to Monika.

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