Markas Zingeris, an award-winning author, poet, and longtime former director of the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum, has died at the age of 76.
Zingeris, who headed the Vilna Gaon Museum from 2005 to 2019, passed away on April 20 and was buried in the city’s Sudervė Jewish cemetery.
A statement on the Lithuania Jewish community web site said he had suffered from heart problems for several years.
Zingeris was the author of a several collections of poetry, as well as novels, essays and plays.
In the latter part of his tenure at the museum, he was instrumental in the opening in 2017 of a branch of the museum dedicated to the work of Samuel Bak, a painter who was born in Vilnius in 1993. Bak survived the Holocaust and eventually moved to the United States. His works reflect the experience of the Shoah. Bak donated dozens of paintings to the Vilna Museum, and donated others to museums/learning centres in Houston, Texas and Omaha Nebraska.
Lithuanian leaders, including President Gitanas Nausėda expressed condolences on Zingeris’s death.
“Lithuanian society and the wider cultural community have lost an intellectual writer who is demanding of himself and the text – both written and read. As a long-time head of the Vilnius Gaon Jewish History Museum, a publicist, and an active member of society, Markas Zingeris was a wise, capable and important person who united Lithuanian and Jewish cultures,” Nauseda said in a statement.