The seminar included Simonas Gurevicius' lecture about the Yiddish language and heritage and an excursion around Jewish sites of Vilnius. We received great feedback from the young participants, who are full of energy and willingness to include Yiddish-related classes into their activities` thus we will continue our cooperation not only in the Lithuanian capital.

Here is a letter from the program director of "Hillel Russia" Valentina Nemirovskaya:

"On behalf of all our group of Hillel coordinators throughout Russia we would like to thank World Jewish Congress Yiddish center Vilnius for organizing a seminar "Pearls of Yiddish culture" in Vilnius. This seminar opened the wonderful world of Yiddish culture.

Amazing Simonchik told us about his exciting childhood experience: funny stories and cases. We liked that it wasn't a lecture about the history of Yiddish, it was a wonderful story about real life of real person, for whom Yiddish is a native language. We heard different familiar Yiddish words like our grandparents spoke. During all the lecture there was an atmosphere of some miracle, that we see now in Vilnius, 2016, and we are speaking about Yiddish, we are the generation who can really transfer Jewish values to the next generation.

On a rainy day we were walking through the center of Vilnius with an interesting guide. Vilnius is a real historical place with tragic events for Jewish population. We learned many stories and facts about Jews in Vilna during the World War II. When we went through the Getto, when we stood near Judenrat, we felt as if we were the part of the history. Our responsibility is to keep the memory of our history. All of our staff is working on the engaging uninvolved Jewish students into community's Jewish life, we are the connection between the history and our students."