Irena Veisaitė (9 January 1928 – 11 December 2020) was a Lithuanian theatre scholar, intellectual and

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

activist. She was awarded the Goethe Medal in 2012 for her contribution to cultural exchange between Germany and Lithuania.

Life and career

Veisaitė was a

Lithuanian Jew Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks () are Jews with roots in the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (covering present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, the northeastern Suwałki and Białystok regions of Poland, as well as adjacent areas o ...

. She was born in

Kaunas Kaunas (; ; also see other names) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the largest city and the centre of a county in the Duchy of Trakai ...

and survived the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

. She earned a doctorate in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

in 1963 with a dissertation on the poetry of

Heinrich Heine Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of '' Lied ...

, and was a lecturer at the teacher's college in

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...

from 1953 to 1997. She was also head of the

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...

Cultural Centre in

Nida, Lithuania Nida (german: Nidden, Kursenieki: ''Nīde'') is a resort town in Lithuania, the administrative centre of Neringa municipality. Located on the Curonian Spit between the Curonian Lagoon and the Baltic Sea, it is the westernmost point of Lithuania a ...

. . She was the long-term President of the Open Society in Lithuania Foundation. She was also known for addressing

communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

in her work, and said in an interview with ''

Deutsche Welle Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave" in English), abbreviated to DW, is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite television service con ...

'' that "the Soviets were very, very bad. Different from the Nazis, but not better." In 1952, Veisaite married in Moscow to a young Jewish economist named Jakov (Jasha) Boom. Later, she married the Estonian film director

Grigori Kromanov Grigori Kromanov (8 March 1926 in Tallinn – 18 July 1984 in Lahe, Lääne-Virumaa) was an Estonian theatre and film director. He directed some of the best known Estonian movies, including ''Viimne reliikvia'' (''The Last Relic'') and '' Dead ...

, with whom she remained until his death in 1984. She died from

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

on 11 December 2020, during the

COVID-19 pandemic in Lithuania The COVID-19 pandemic in Lithuania is part of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The virus was confirmed to have reached Lithuania ...

, twenty nine days short from her 93rd birthday.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Veisaite, Irena 1928 births 2020 deaths Academic staff of the Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences Lithuanian Jews Lithuanian human rights activists Holocaust survivors Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Writers from Kaunas Lithuanian women activists Jewish women activists Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in Lithuania 20th-century Lithuanian Jews Jewish human rights activists Jewish women writers