Lost Shtetl - Lithuanian Jewish History and Memory
- Date
- Wednesday 10 June 2026, 14:00-16:00
- Location
- Clothworkers North building's Cinema Room (LT 2.31)
- Category
- Symposium
Join us for a panel discussion and film screening with the Lost Shtetl Museum (Lithuania).
This event is organised is by the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Leeds and is generously supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in the UK.
Speakers
Professor Saulius Sužiedelis, Millersville University
Dr Jolanta Mickute, Lost Shtetl Museum, Lithuania
Dr Darius Staliūnas, Lithuanian Institute of History
Moderators
Dr Eva Frojmovic, Centre for Jewish Studies and School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies
Dr Zinovijus Ciupijus, Centre for Jewish Studies and Leeds University Business School
Professor Jay Prosser, Centre for Jewish Studies and School of English
Programme
Crisis, War and the Holocaust in Lithuania
Crisis, War, and the Holocaust in Lithuania (2025) by Professor Saulius Sužiedelis is the first scholarly English-language study of Lithuania during World War II which utilizes previously inaccessible archives as well as academic works published in that country in the post-Soviet era.
In part 1, the book examines the multifaceted relations of Lithuania’s ethnic/national communities before World War II and the international and domestic crises which led to the destruction of the Lithuanian state in 1940.
The author describes in detail the process of the mass persecution and murder of the country’s Jews during the Holocaust, the role of Nazi and collaborationist forces, acts of resistance, as well as the society’s responses.
The book concludes with an examination of the postwar struggle within Lithuania to confront this legacy of unprecedented violence.
The Lost Shtetl Museum
The Lost Shtetl Museum opened in Šeduva, Lithuania in 2025. It was shortlisted for „World’s Most Baeautiful Museums“ category at the the architecture and design Prix Versailles 2026.
The Lost Shtetl invites visitors to discover a vanished world — an entire lost civilisation of shtetls. Drawing on the voices of the Šeduva Jewish community, the museum tells the story of thousands of shtetls and the hundreds of thousands of Jews who lived in them, whose daily lives, traditions, and aspirations helped shape the cultural identity of Lithuania and the wider Eastern European region.
The museum is not only a witness to the past — it seeks to honour, preserve, and, where possible, revive memory. Through photographs, town maps, written records, and video testimonies in which descendants of Šeduva’s Jews share stories of their families’ lives, the museum’s exhibitions recreate the world of the shtetl, a world that no longer exists.
The event will include a screening of the Introductory film used in the Lost Shtetl Museum, which explains how Jewish people came to Central and Eastern Europe to form a civilization of shtetls. It is a blend of documentary and feature film, introducing the imagined inhabitants of the Šeduva shtetl.
Book your place
This event is free to attend but booking is essential.
Image
Lost Shtetl Museum, general view. Photograph by Kuvatoimisto Kuvio.