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Vilnius

man at podium

Ukraine wins G7 security pledges but its path to NATO membership remains unclear 

Ukraine

​​​​​​​A two-day NATO summit wraps up on Wednesday in Vilnius, Lithuania. The 31-nation military alliance now has plans to grow, with Sweden expected to become a full-fledged member. Ukraine is eager to join as well, and its membership bid was at the top of the NATO summit agenda.

Protesters hold signs

‘We cannot close the door or turn the page’: Belarusian dissidents in Lithuania fear Lukashenko’s crackdown

Refugees
Leonid Volkov wears a white shirt and raises his hand in the air while speaking in front of a blue and white background.

‘Fighting corruption in Russia is now being called extremism,’ says Alexei Navalny’s top strategist

Global Politics
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, a candidate for the presidential elections in Belarus, greets people during a meeting in her support in Brest, Belarus, Aug. 2, 2020.

Belarus opposition leader: ‘We are fighting for the future of our children’

Global Politics
The author's 3-year-old daughter Leila has been occupying herself during the "stay at home" order in Boston amid the coronavirus outbreak by making cards and beaded necklaces for her preschool friends. 

How families around the world talk coronavirus with kids

COVID-19
A sunset with the silhouette of a mosque and man approaching

How 16 Americans found family, faith and their immigrant roots — generations after their parents left their homelands

Immigration Rewind

Through war and Islamophobia, a generation thought they might have lost their histories and faith in Eastern Europe. But, unexpectedly, they found it again.

Jews digging a trench in Ponar forest, in which they were later buried, after being shot

Science confirms the incredible story of Lithuania’s Holocaust escape tunnel

Culture

More than 70 years ago, a group of Jewish prisoners dug a tunnel using mostly their hands and spoons to escape their Nazi captors. A team of archaeologists has recently discovered the tunnel in Ponar forest outside of Vilnius, Lithuania. The discovery is the subject of a new documentary.

European Humanities University, a Belarussian liberal arts school that's located across the border in Lithuania

When Belarus closed its last liberal arts school, the university went into exile

Education

The European Humanities University is a Belarussian liberal arts school. But it’s now operating in Lithuania.

Elena Narbutaitė, Menachem Kaiser and Jake Levine, October 15, 2010, preparing bagels for the first public bagel party and presentation of the Vilnius Bagel Project. Yalta Restaurant kitchen, Vilnius, Lithuania.

Bagels disappeared from Lithuania after WWII … but now they’re back

Food

When Menachem Kaiser discovered that the bagel had disappeared from Lithuania, along with most of the Jewish culture, he and some friends decided to bring it back.

Aga Ilwicka-Sheppard is a PhD candidate in Jewish Studies at the University of Wroclaw in Poland. She was instrumental in getting the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts to send 3,000 Yiddish language books to Poland, including novels, dictionar

This Polish grad student wants to help bring Yiddish back to life in Poland

Arts, Culture & Media

When the Nazis wiped out Jewish life and culture during World War II, it was hard to imagine it would ever come back in Poland. But it is starting to return. Though it’s not Jewish people who are leading the way.When the Nazis wiped out Jewish life and culture during World War II, it was hard to imagine it would ever come back in Poland. But it is starting to return. Though it’s not Jewish people who are leading the way.