Background
ZINGERIS, Emanuelis was born on July 16, 1957 in Kaunas, Lithuania. Parents: Mykolas Zingeris and Polina Zingeriene (née Tatarskyte).
Deputy of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania
ZINGERIS, Emanuelis was born on July 16, 1957 in Kaunas, Lithuania. Parents: Mykolas Zingeris and Polina Zingeriene (née Tatarskyte).
Vilnius University, Diploma, Lithuanian language and literature, 1985, post graduate study, 1988. Columbia University, Yiddish language and literature, 1989. Spoken languages: Lithuanian, Russian, Yiddish, German, Polish, English.
A Lithuanian Jew, he has been director of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, honorary chairman of Lithuania"s Jewish community, and is Chairman of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania. Himself being Jewish, he wrote his post-graduate dissertation on the Jewish cultural heritage of Lithuania, a difficult subject at the time. Zingeris failed to be reelected in 2000, and served as director of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, which he helped found, from 2000 to 2004.
In 2004, he returned to parliament.
He was honorary chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, but resigned from this position in 1997 after he was elected chairman of the Lithuanian Parliamentary Committee on Human and Civic Rights and National Minorities, stating that he was "thus bound to have concern for all national minorities". In 1998, he was appointed chairman of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania by President Valdas Adamkus.
He chaired the Lithuanian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) in 2009 and is one of the Vice Presidents of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He has also chaired both the Lithuanian and Israeli inter-parliamentary group, and the Lithuanian and American inter-parliamentary group. In 2010, he was also elected President of the Parliamentary Forum of the Community of Democracies.
Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland
Order of Merit of Ukraine
Emanuelis Zingeris speaks Lithuanian, Yiddish, Polish, German, English and Russian.
He is a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, that proposed the establishment of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. He is a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism.
He was a member of the pro-independence Sąjūdis movement and was elected to the Seimas (parliament) in 1990, where he served as chair of both the foreign affairs committee and the human rights committee, and as a member of several interparliamentary relations groups. Having formerly been a member of the Social Democratic Party, he is now representing the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats and the European People"s Party at the European level
Spouse Virginija Zingeriene (née Sestakauskaite), 1983. Children: Danas-Dovydas, Estera.