Mazel tov to the historian Dr. Simonas Strelcovas, named director of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish History Museum following a competition organized by the Ministry of Culture.
Announcing the appointment, the Ministry said Strelcovas and three others had applied for the post, which has a five-year term.
Born in 1972, Streltsovas is an associate professor at Šiauliai University, where he headed the Humanitarian Research and the Defense and Warfare Educational Center. He was also the chairman of the board of the university’s Science Institute. In 2019, he was a visiting researcher at Meijo University in Japan, where he led a project on the collective memory of traumatic experiences.
His research themes include refugees in the Baltic states during WWII and the Japanese diplomat, Chiune Sugihara, who while posted in Kaunas, Lithuania during WWII, rescued Jews by providing them with transit visas.
“Having an education as a historian, I have worked with the field of Jewish history for many years,” he said in the Ministry announcement. “One of the first main tasks after becoming the head of the Vilnius Gaon Jewish History Museum is to refine the museum’s priority activities together with the team, setting a strategic goal to make the museum one of the leaders in the region.”
Read the Culture Ministry’s announcement