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New Synagogue Opens in Lithuania

September 17, 1997
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A new synagogue has been dedicated in the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda.

The synagogue includes a small soup kitchen to offer meals to needy Jews twice a week, and a Torah scroll the community received from a British synagogue.

The Lithuanian seaport, formerly known as Memel, had a Jewish community before the war of 10,000 that was totally destroyed during the Holocaust.

The town is now home to about 300 Jews who have long awaited the opening of a synagogue, according to the community leader Boris Smoliaras.

Most of Klaipeda’s current Jewish residents came to the town after the war from other parts of the Soviet Union.

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