To Grow Closer: Naomi Koc and Young Vilnius Jews of Today

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©Karolis Pilypas Liutkevičius

Eighty years after the liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto, NARA is launching a podcast series “We Too Are From Vilnius” where we talk to the Vilnius Jewish youth of today, exploring how they relate to their identity in a city marked by immense loss and a Lithuanian society navigating between multiculturalism and nationalism.

This is the first interview in the series “We Too Are From Vilnius”. The series is in Lithuanian. Listen by pressing the PLAY button on the NARA player or through the podcast apps listed below:

While producing this series, the conflicts in Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon reached new levels of destruction, affecting both Jewish and Arab communities in Lithuania. This inevitably became a topic of some conversations. We invite you to read and listen to NARA’s publications about the situation in the Middle East in Lithuanian and English.

When people meet Naomi Koc in Vilnius, they often assume she is a foreigner. But Naomi grew up in Vilnius, speaks Lithuanian, studies here, and works at an NGO focused on mental health education. For many who meet her, Naomi becomes the first Vilnius Jew they know.

This is not surprising, as today the Jewish community in Vilnius is small—less than 2,000 people. Before World War II, Vilnius was home to 57,000 Jews and 135 synagogues; now there is only one. The city was a hub of Yiddish culture. This history is slowly fading from memory.

“My great-grandmother survived the Holocaust. But many people I met after finishing school didn’t know what that even was,” says 23-year-old Naomi in the NARA podcast interview.

“Or if they did, they knew it was related to World War II, but they didn’t grasp the scale of the tragedy. When I said that half of my family was killed during that time, people were surprised. That’s an aspect of education. Because I also don’t know much about other cultures beyond Christian and Jewish.”

Growing up in Vilnius, Naomi gradually built a safe relationship with the world outside her Jewish Vilnius, which consisted of a Jewish school and Jewish youth camps. ©Karolis Pilypas Liutkevičius
Growing up in Vilnius, Naomi gradually built a safe relationship with the world outside her Jewish Vilnius, which consisted of a Jewish school and Jewish youth camps. ©Karolis Pilypas Liutkevičius

Naomi’s great-grandmother was saved during the war by a Lithuanian family. But her great-grandfather’s family was killed at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas and the Kaunas Ghetto. Her great-grandfather himself was taken to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, which was liberated by American forces.

Growing up in Vilnius, Naomi had to gradually create a safe relationship with the world beyond her Jewish Vilnius. This world was shaped by her Jewish school and Jewish youth camps, where she was first a participant and later a madrich (leader). Over time, she made the city her own.

“During the Lithuanian Song Festival, I cried when we sang the anthem. I feel a connection to Lithuania as my home.”

“There was an attitude that ‘we should stick to our own, and they [Lithuanians] can stick to theirs,’ that we should maintain some kind of distance,” Naomi recalls about her childhood relationship with the Lithuanian majority in Vilnius. “But I don’t believe in that distance. I hope that young people don’t believe in that distance. We need to bridge that gap because only through dialogue we can learn about each other.”

Her words embody the central idea of the “We Too Are From Vilnius” series—that we can create a space to hear one another, gradually understanding what it means to live in a city marked by immense loss. And how to live with this history—both as Jews and as Lithuanians.

Naomi Koc in Vilnius. Fall of 2024. ©Karolis Pilypas Liutkevičius
Naomi Koc in Vilnius. Fall of 2024. ©Karolis Pilypas Liutkevičius

Naomi Koc speaks with Vilnius high school students Anastasija Pacijenko, Aistis Klimavičius, and NARA podcast editor Karolis Vyšniauskas. Hear the full interview (in Lithuanian) in this week's NARA podcast.

This podcast series continues NARA’s earlier work on Lithuanian society’s relationship with the Holocaust memory, speaking with survivors, researchers ir artists who commemorate it, those whose relatives were complicit, and Jews living in Lithuania today. It also indirectly engages with earlier NARA audio documentaries about Vilnius and Vilnius’ identity.

The five-interview series “We Too Are From Vilnius” was created this summer in collaboration with Vilnius high school students interested in journalism from various ethnic communities in the city. New episodes of this series with different guests will be released every Tuesday in November and December on the NARA podcast.

“We were part of Lithuania’s history. And I am still part of Lithuania’s history,”—Naomi Koc. ©Karolis Pilypas Liutkevičius
“We were part of Lithuania’s history. And I am still part of Lithuania’s history,”—Naomi Koc. ©Karolis Pilypas Liutkevičius

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The recordings with the students and the studio voice in the episode were recorded in the studio of Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, sound director Justina Šimonytė.

The author of the series' music is Kata Bitowt.

The project "We Too Are from Vilnius" is partially funded by the Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund by the U.S. Embassy in Lithuania and the Resilience initiative by the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Lithuania. The NARA team maintains full control of the content and journalistic independence.

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