Opinion

Meir Bulka Releases Letter to Lithuania’s Minister of Culture, Proposing Scientific Ground Radar to Document Extant Burials in Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 16 January 2026 by Defending History

OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | 2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO THE NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA  (UNITED STATES COMMISSION FOR THE PRESERVATION OF AMERICA’S HERITAGE ABROAD) | THE CPJCE (COMMITTEE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF JEWISH CEMETERIES IN EUROPE) | THE AJC (AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE) | THE CER (CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN RABBIS) | THE GWF (GOOD WILL FOUNDATION) | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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by Meir Bulka (Ramat Gan, Israel & Lublin, Poland)

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For many years, I have followed with deep concern the situation of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramont (Shnípishok, today’s Šnipiškės), located beneath all around the ruin of the Soviet-era Sports Palace. The site, historically known as the major cemetery in Lithuania, remains a place of great religious and cultural significance for the Jewish people and for the history of Vilnius itself. Last summer’s announcement confirming intentions to turn it into a national conference center is alarming to good-willed Jews and non-Jews alike. The feelings were reinforced by last week’s event promoting the desecration, for some reason held at Lithuania’s national Academy of Sciences.

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Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Meir Bulka, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Meir Bulka Releases Letter to Lithuania’s Minister of Culture, Proposing Scientific Ground Radar to Document Extant Burials in Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

International Opposition to ‘New’ Proposals for Conference-Memorial Complex, with Seating Capacity for Thousands — in the Middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 16 January 2026 by Defending History

[last update]

Videos Online:

Rabbi Elchonon Baron’s one-minute bombshell at the Jan. 2026 conference-center rally at the Academy of Sciences in central Vilnius

Rabbi Baron at the July 2024 Vilnius Jewish Community protest demonstration

Rabbi S. J. Feffer in English (May 2024). Supplement.

Ecstasy on Jewish graves: Pro conference-center demonstrations shout nationalist slogans right on top of vast area with intact Jewish cemetery graves

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Written statements:

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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on International Opposition to ‘New’ Proposals for Conference-Memorial Complex, with Seating Capacity for Thousands — in the Middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Lithuanian Academy of Sciences Offers Premises for 14 Jan. Rally Set on Permanent Desecration of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 11 January 2026 by Defending History

OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER |  2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO THE NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA  (UNITED STATES COMMISSION FOR THE PRESERVATION OF AMERICA’S HERITAGE ABROAD) | THE CPJCE (COMMITTEE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF JEWISH CEMETERIES IN EUROPE) | THE AJC (AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE) | THE CER (CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN RABBIS) | THE GWF (GOOD WILL FOUNDATION) | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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Top: The “convention center in the Jewish cemetery” project slated for approval by the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences on Jan. 14th includes an annex (right of image) built right on top of Jewish graves going back half a millennium. Bottom: Alternative narrative of this choice of venue for a new national convention center.

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Conference of European Rabbis (CER), CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, USCPAHA (US Commission for Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad) | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Lithuanian Academy of Sciences Offers Premises for 14 Jan. Rally Set on Permanent Desecration of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

A Smaller 2025 Vilnius Yivo Exhibit: Unmentionable by Conference Leaders, and NY’s ‘Forverts’?

Posted on 11 November 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | LITVAK AFFAIRS | YIVO | YIDDISH AFFAIRS

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Introduction (in Yiddish, Lithuanian, and English) to the exhibit honoring Yivo’s centennial at Vilnius’s Jewish Cultural and Information Center in the heart of the city’s Old Town

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by Dovid Katz

It is heartwarming to see the widespread celebration of Yivo’s centenary this year, which is ipso facto a celebration of sophisticated Yiddish language culture in all its many branches. May the year’s events lead to ever more inspiring projects, particularly those that in the spirit of the Vilna Yivo will be carried out in Yiddish, strengthening living Yiddish as a vibrant means of communication, including the higher registers of scholarship and literature, for the generations to come, in accordance with Yivo’s raison d’etre. Although a researcher and teacher with a lifelong affiliation with Yivo and all that it means, I fully, to be honest, expected — as a critic of the present Yivo leadership’s participation in Holocaust obfuscation projects by a certain powerful establishment in Lithuania — to be excluded (not informed, not invited to submit a paper topic) by the recent Yivo conference in Vilnius and its eminent local partners.

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Posted in In the Era of Yivo's 100th, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Smaller 2025 Vilnius Yivo Exhibit: Unmentionable by Conference Leaders, and NY’s ‘Forverts’?

The Prague Declaration and the Double Genocide Theory

Posted on 27 October 2025 by Defending History

PRAGUE DECLARATION | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | HISTORY | LITHUANIA

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OPINION

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by Roland Binet  (De Panne, Belgium)

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In his book Crisis, War and the Holocaust in Lithuania, which I recently reviewed on these pages, historian Saulius Sužiedėlis virulently attacked those who in the past had opposed the Prague Declaration of 2008. When I read the list of signatories to the Prague Declaration signed in 2008, it makes me think of prisoners or detainees becoming free after having spent 45 years between four closed walls.

Getting free in the outside world and knowing next to nothing that has happened in the world at large during their detention. Most of these signatories, people of esteem, some of them heroes in their fight against Communist yoke, have suffered greatly and they yearn for recognition as victims of totalitarian crimes. But the only tangible contemporary phenomenon with some kind of kindred inhuman similitude they want to equate it with is — the Holocaust. So, oblivious to the manifold scourges the twentieth century has known worldwide, they signed on to the conclusion that “both the Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes should be considered to be the main disasters, which blighted the 20th century” and “recognition of Communism as an integral and common part of Europe’s common history.” The declaration contains the word “same” five times, in support of the declaration’s underlying thesis that Nazi and Soviet crimes are absolutely — the same.

Is it possible to be so self-centered on one’s suffering as to become blind to history?

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Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, History, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform", Roland Binet | Tagged , , | Comments Off on The Prague Declaration and the Double Genocide Theory

Kęstutis Budrys, Lithuania’s Foreign Minister, Offers Groundbreaking, Cutting-Edge Analysis of Nation’s Lingering Holocaust (and Jewish) Issues

Posted on 25 October 2025 by Defending History

LITHUANIA | ANTISEMITISM & BIAS | ŽEMAITAITIS AFFAIR | OPINION

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—The following is a transcript (in English translation) of an excerpt from the October 15, 2025 interview with Lithuania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Kęstutis Budrys (Social Democratic Party) on one of the most popular Lithuanian news sites, 15min, that appeared under the title “Kęstutis Budrys’ Interview with 15min: on Libel against Tsikhanouskaya and the Stain of Antisemitism.”

The incident under discussion this time was yet another antisemitic Facebook post by Remigijus Žemaitaitis, leader of the populist Nemuno Aušra (‘Nemunas’ Dawn’) party, currently one of the three parties in the ruling coalition, together with the Social Democrats (LSDP) and the Union of Peasants and Greens (LVŽS). It is the first time since independence and the rise of Lithuanian democracy in 1990/1991 that an overtly antisemitic party has been accepted into the governing coalition. See Defending History’s monitoring of aspects of the affair. In the most recent outrage, the party leader attacks a major beloved Lithuanian intellectual (a former culture minister and current director of the Lithuanian Museum of Art) by fabricating for him a supposed Jewish heritage.

But Minister of Foreign Affairs Budrys goes far beyond dealing with the issue in isolation.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, ministries, News & Views, Opinion, Žemaitaitis Affair | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Kęstutis Budrys, Lithuania’s Foreign Minister, Offers Groundbreaking, Cutting-Edge Analysis of Nation’s Lingering Holocaust (and Jewish) Issues

Rabbi Elchonon Baron Warns Lithuanian Gov. that ‘Blessings’ Will Not Come to the Country from Construction of Conference Center in Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 23 July 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER |  2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO THE NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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Rabbi Elchonon Baron speaking to Lithuanian media at the Vilnius Jewish Community’s protest at the cemetery last year. DH Photo: William Adan Pahl.

VILNIUS—Rapidly following upon the announcement today by Lithuania’s prime minister that he is ordering revival of the project to remodel a hated Soviet ruin in the heart of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery into a new national conference center, the office of Rabbi Elchonon Baron, president of JHL (Jewish Heritage in Lita), released his letter to the prime minister in both Lithuanian and English. They appear just below in PDF format.

During a protest at the cemetery coordinated with the Vilnius Jewish Community last summer, Rabbi Baron gave a powerful interview to Lithuania media (video), which was however not included in the evening news coverage (see report). Defending History’s reaction to the prime minister’s statement appeared earlier today.

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Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rabbi Elchonon Baron, Vilnius | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Rabbi Elchonon Baron Warns Lithuanian Gov. that ‘Blessings’ Will Not Come to the Country from Construction of Conference Center in Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Lithuania’s Prime Minister Throws Out Gov’s Own ‘Working Group’ Proposals. Announces Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery will Become a National Convention Center

Posted on 23 July 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT: 2015-2025 | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER |  2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO THE NEW “MUSEUM PROJECT” | THE USCPAHA | THE CPJCE | THE AJC | THE CER | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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VILNIUS—The following is the text of Defending History’s emailed letter to readers today concerning news of the Lithuanian prime minister’s statement announcing that the derelict Soviet building in the middle of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, instead of being torn down to make way for the cemetery’s loving restoration would be restored and rebuilt to become Vilnius’s new national convention center. There was, for all intents and purposes, no mention of the recent “Working Group” and its non-starter recommendation for it to become a museum. The Defending History community will continue to pursue peaceful and appropriate public-discourse means to defend the dignity of the thousands of Vilna Jews buried there over half a millennium of Litvak history.
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Dear Readers

Lithuania’s Prime Minister has just announced full reversion to the convention center project in the heart of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery that would prove so damaging and tragic for Lithuania’s standing in the world. The many thousands of Vilna citizens buried there have no local descendants to defend their graves because of the Holocaust. Moreover, the unique hand of East European antisemitism is in play (and an antisemitic party lamentably forms part of the PM’s coalition). The simple tests: (a) all other hated Soviet monstrosities are (rightfully!) dismantled; and (b) this would never happen to a five hundred year old city center cemetery of the ethnic/religious majority in the country. Both EU and US congressional law clearly designate the sacrosanct rights of minority cemeteries internationally.

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Vilnius | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Lithuania’s Prime Minister Throws Out Gov’s Own ‘Working Group’ Proposals. Announces Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery will Become a National Convention Center

2025 Plans for new ‘Collegium’ (and Seimas Law) to Glorify Holocaust’s June 1941 LAF Killers of their Jewish Neighbors

Posted on 21 July 2025 by Defending History

[LAST UPDATE. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 19 MARCH 2025]

A Vilnius professor, a former foreign minister, and group of Conservative (Homeland Union) parliamentarians announce ‘collegium’ to glorify 1941 LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front / ‘White-Armbander’ ) Hitlerists who murdered their neighbors — effectively ‘initiating on the ground’ the Lithuanian Holocaust

25 June 2025 update: Member of the Seimas proposes law to legitimize the “declaration of independence” of the LAF and Hitler’s puppet “provisional government” by an act of parliament (reports in Lrytas.lt, 15mins.lt, and BNS). Also: publication of statement by former energy minister claiming that without the genocidal, local-Holocaust-initiating LAF there would be no 11 March 1990…. DH’s take? Classic instances of ultranationalist politicians working to turn perpetrators into heroes, smearing the actual history as “Soviet” though it is the proven Western narrative.

The professor. Official announcement on website of the Seimas. Article citing former foreign minister. Article explaining that a new Seimas law will mandate spending on far-right history revisionism to smear the historic narrative (the Western narrative, the Holocaust history narrative) as Kremlin-inspired (!) while glorifying the killers of thousands of innocent Jewish neighbors. Far from helping the name of today’s free and democratic Lithuania, this Seimas proposal brings self-inflicted damage of the worst sort — glorifying the perpetrators of the early days and weeks of the Lithuanian Holocaust.

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OUR TAKE

Leonidas Donskis answers Prof. Girnius from the grave:

‘When will the truth finally set us free?’

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NOW IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION:

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on 2025 Plans for new ‘Collegium’ (and Seimas Law) to Glorify Holocaust’s June 1941 LAF Killers of their Jewish Neighbors

Jewish Heritage in Lita (JHL) Issues Statement of Support for Vilnius Jewish Community’s Boycott of Sham Community Elections that Disenfranchise Living Jewish People of Lithuania

Posted on 6 June 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY ISSUES | LITVAK AFFAIRS | GOOD WILL FOUNDATION | STOLEN ELECTION SAGA | AJC MISADVENTURES IN LITHUANIA

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—The following is a condensed version of the statement issued today by Jewish Heritage Lita (JHL), signed by its president, Rabbi Elchonon Baron. The full statement appears on the JHL website. It is in support of the Vilnius Jewish Community’s statement (also on Facebook) issued on 5 June 2025. See also Defending History’s reaction.

We at Jewish Heritage in Lita concur with the just position of the Vilna Jewish Community, rejecting the fake elections at the LZB [official state-sponsored ‘Jewish (Litvak) Community of Lithuania’ — ed.]. As the largest, most democratic and authentic Jewish organization in Lithuania, the VJC accurately represents the true voice of the vast majority of Lithuanian Jewry.

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Posted in A Stolen Election and a Small Jewish Community's Protest, Lithuania, Lithuania: Textbook Case of East European Restitution (for Lost Jewish Assets) Abused to Dismantle a Vibrant Jewish Community, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Rabbi Elchonon Baron | Comments Off on Jewish Heritage in Lita (JHL) Issues Statement of Support for Vilnius Jewish Community’s Boycott of Sham Community Elections that Disenfranchise Living Jewish People of Lithuania

Chris Heath’s ‘No Road Leading Back’ on Ponar and on How we Remember the Holocaust

Posted on 31 May 2025 by Defending History

BOOKS | PONAR | LITHUANIA

 

BOOK REVIEW

by Roland Binet  (De Panne, Belgium)

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Chris Heath, No Road Leading Back: An Improbable Escape from the Nazis and the Tangled Way We Tell the Story of the Holocaust, Schocken Books, 2024.

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In 2016, Chris Heath read an item in the New York Times about a tunnel that had been discovered “at a Holocaust killing site”. It was referring to  Ponar near Vilna (Yiddish Ponár, Polish Ponary, today’s Paneriai outside Vilnius, capital city of Lithuania). It is around ten kilometers (six miles) southwest of Vilnius city center. This caught his attention and he decided to write a book about this heroic feat. The main title is borrowed from two lines that Shmerke Kaczerginski had written in his poem “Shtiler, Shtiler” (Quieter, quieter) that was put to music and sung in the Vilna Ghetto.

Ponar: 100,000 persons killed by bullets from summer 1941 to spring of 1944, about 70% of them Jews including women, children, and the elderly. 

Ponar: List of twelve escapees from Ponar who survived (April 1944): Josef Bielic, Abraham Blazer, Yitzhak Dogin, Yuli Farber, Shlomo Gol, David Kantorovich, Zalman Matzkin, Lejzer Owsiejczyk, Konstantin Potanin, Motke Zeidel, Adam Zinger, Peter Zinin

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Posted in Books, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Poland, Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai), Roland Binet | Comments Off on Chris Heath’s ‘No Road Leading Back’ on Ponar and on How we Remember the Holocaust

Rašella Galinienė, Head of the Jewish Community of Shavl (Šiauliai, Lithuania) Protests an Inappropriate Memorial Plonked on a Holocaust Mass Grave

Posted on 30 May 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | CEMETERIES | COMMUNITY COMMEMORATION | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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Rašella Galinienė, elected head of the Jewish Community of Shavl (Šiauliai) speaks out to protest insensitive desecration of a Holocaust mass grave site where Jews of Yánishok (Joniškis) were massacred. Photo: Shavl Jewish Community.

Rašella Galinienė, elected head of the Jewish Community of Shavl (Šiauliai, northern Lithuania) has led a public call for removal of a series of sculptures erected by a nearby local government authority directly atop the actual graves, in the forest, of hundreds of murdered Jews of the shtetl Yánishok (or Yáneshik, today’s Joniškis). The issue has been reported on prominently in Lithuanian media, including on LRT TV, and the LRT news portal (where mechanical translation to English captures nearly all the text accurately). The media reports dwell on issues of permits, permissions, consultations and the difference of opinion between the Shavl community and the local authorities in the district where the forest mass grave is situated. They report accurately, that the late and long standing beloved leader of the Shavl community, Sania Kerbl (Kerbelis, 1963–2024) expressed — in concord with Jewish tradition and law of thousands of years standing — his staunch opposition to anything being constructed or erected on cemeteries and burial sites.

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Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Rašella Galinienė, Head of the Jewish Community of Shavl (Šiauliai, Lithuania) Protests an Inappropriate Memorial Plonked on a Holocaust Mass Grave

Germany’s New Brigade in Lithuania (‘Panzerbrigade 45’): Right Near Remnants of the Last Anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Fort in Europe

Posted on 26 May 2025 by Defending History

[LAST UPDATE (SEE AT END): 20 JUNE 2025]
LAST JEWISH PARTISAN FORT IN EASTERN EUROPE | POLITICS OF MEMORY | GERMANY | FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—International media has reported in detail on last week’s military ceremonies in Vilnius celebrating the permanent installation of thousands of German soldiers as part of NATO forces in Lithuania, southernmost of the three Baltic republics. The new entity is “Germany’s 45th Armoured Brigade” (Panzerbrigade 45) that is also known as the “Lithuania Brigade”.

The Defending History community is a staunch supporter of the values and security needs of the European Union, NATO, the Western alliance of free and democratic nations, and has from day one condemned the medieval, barbaric February 2022 invasion and unleashing of mass death and destruction upon Ukraine by Putin’s Russian Federation forces. Our support includes reproducing a statement that has appeared for over a decade on p. 1 of DefendingHistory.com (right hand column). As stated there, adherence to the democratic values of the EU and the NATO alliance includes cherishing the free-speech right to criticize: efforts to rewrite Holocaust history by Eastern Europe’s ultranationalist far right; efforts to defame the victims, including Jewish partisans who fought valiantly against the Nazis; efforts to disseminate Double Genocide revisionism in the realm of Holocaust and World War II history; efforts to glorify Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators; efforts to curtail free speech by criminalizing or delegitimizing views that oppose these efforts.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Germany, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Remnants of Europe's Last Jewish Anti-Nazi Partisan Fort | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Germany’s New Brigade in Lithuania (‘Panzerbrigade 45’): Right Near Remnants of the Last Anti-Nazi Jewish Partisan Fort in Europe

Rabbi Elchonon Baron and Julius Norvila Issue Appeal to Mayor of Vilnius for ‘Full Restoration’ of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Posted on 21 May 2025 by Defending History

OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | EARLIER OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER |  2023-2024 “WORKING GROUP” ON VILNA CEMETERY | LIST OF MEMBERS | MOUNTING OPPOSITION TO THE NEW MUSEUM/MEMORIAL PROJECT | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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VILNIUS—The following public letter to the mayor of Vilnius from Rabbi Elchonon Baron appeared today on the website of Jewish Heritage in Lita (JHL):

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Honorable Valdas Benkunskas

Mayor of Vilnius

While the municipality’s initiative to mark the borders of the Šnipiškės cemetery, in the Jewish world also known as Piramont cemetery, is a positive step, it’s concerning that a significant portion of the cemetery will fall outside these newly defined boundaries.

Furthermore, the official statement by the Vilnius city municipality, dated May 9, 2025, stating that “…in the 19th century the cemetery was officially closed and most of the remains were reburied,” is inaccurate and confusing. To clarify the historical details:

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Posted in 2023-2024 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Rabbi Elchonon Baron, Vilnius | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Rabbi Elchonon Baron and Julius Norvila Issue Appeal to Mayor of Vilnius for ‘Full Restoration’ of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery

Vilnius’s Resident Rabbi for Last 30 Years is Called ‘Mr. Krinsky’ in Latest Hate Piece from State-Restitution-fueled ‘Official’ Jewish Community

Posted on 21 April 2025 by Defending History

[2 May 2025 update at end of post]

OPINION | DOCUMENTS | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY AFFAIRS | A STOLEN ELECTION | CHABAD IN VILNIUS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—Even people who “thought they had seen everything” were taken aback a week ago, when without prior warning Vilnius’s only functioning synagogue was closed down on the occasion of the first seyder night of Passover, one of the most sacred Jewish calendar days of the year. The “explanation” did come shortly thereafter in the form of an official 13 April 2025 statement on the official website of the restitution fueled “Jewish (Litvak) Community of Lithuania” (the “LJC” as is it is still known from the long time title “Lithuanian Jewish Community”, LZB in Lithuanian). That is the “community” that disenfranchised virtually all the remaining few thousand Jewish people in Lithuania, by changing the system of voting (in the middle of an election campaign season!) from choice by community members to that of “associations” mostly benefiting from restitution funds. This transpired during the allegedly rigged 2017 community elections. See also the contemporary JTA reports (here and here). The official community has received tens of millions of dollars from the government in restitution.

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Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), Chabad in Vilnius, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Vilnius’s Resident Rabbi for Last 30 Years is Called ‘Mr. Krinsky’ in Latest Hate Piece from State-Restitution-fueled ‘Official’ Jewish Community

Prof. Girnius Tries Again to Glorify the LAF that in 1941 Killed Thousands of Jewish Neighbors, Unleashing the Lithuanian Holocaust

Posted on 19 March 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | LEGACY OF 23 JUNE 1941 | 2011 ATTEMPTS TO SANITIZE THE LAF  |  LAF’S INTENTIONS IN WRITING | ŠKIRPA’S PLANS | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | LITHUANIAN JEWISH AFFAIRS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS

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OPINION

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The eminent Harvard and Univ. of Chicago educated American-Lithuanian professor and public affairs analyst, Kęstutis Girnius, tried a decade and a half ago to mobilize support for a far-right inspired dry-clean of the “Lithuanian Activist Front” (LAF, Lietuvių aktyvistų frontas, “white armbanders”) which was the 1941 organization that did not shoot a rabbit when the Soviets were in power (1940-1941) but began to murder thousands of innocent Jewish neighbors the moment the Soviet army started its panicked flight eastward, and there was no authority to stop them. Hitler’s local henchmen declared an “independence” that included the oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, the commitment to rid Lithuania of all its Jews, and the unleashing of barbaric murder before the Germans even arrived or set up their control. Any true friend of Lithuania will understand that this is the kind of pro-fascist revisionism that beautiful, modern, tolerant, democratic Lithuania needs like a hole in the head.

Girnius’s gushing public announcement of the new initiative to whitewash the LAF was announced in an article in Delfi.lt this week, heralding the formation of a group of Conservative (Homeland Union party) members of parliament who are forming a “collegium” for this  task. If that’s correct, it would, in one fell swoop, undermine the magnificent contributions of so many great truth-telling Lithuanian ethicists of the past three and a half decades, including Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Saulius Beržinis, Aleksandras Bosas, Valentinas Brandišauskas, Algirdas Brazauskas, Leonidas Donskis, Silvia Foti, Andrius Kulikauskas, Liudas Truska, Rūta Vanagaitė, Nida Vasiliauskaitė, Tomas Venclova, Linas Vildžiūnas, and numerous others.

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Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Dovid Katz, History, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Prof. Girnius Tries Again to Glorify the LAF that in 1941 Killed Thousands of Jewish Neighbors, Unleashing the Lithuanian Holocaust

Another Kind of Final Solution?

Posted on 14 March 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | MUSEUMS | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS | YIDDISH AFFAIRS

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by Dalia Epstein (Dalija Epšteinaitė)

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When speaking about the Holocaust in Lithuania, it is customary to cite 95%, that is, more than two hundred thousand people. This is not only the lives lost, but also schools, synagogues, kheyders, yeshivas, books, newspapers. This is the white tablecloth and fresh challah of Shabbos, these are the Sabbath conversations in the bes-medresh, which tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters, and tinsmiths in the shtetls wait for all week long, for whom conversations about the Torah are a long-awaited spiritual respite. Today, in such a former synagogue you can see a carpentry workshop, a fire department, a gym, a bathhouse, a funeral services business, and at best a library… After all, there are no more Jews. In the town of Butrimonys (Yiddish: Butrimánts), the name of the former owner, Pertzikovich, has been preserved above the entrance to one house. We stopped to take a photo. A young woman with a little girl came out.

“Yes, Pertzikovich used to live here. And now we live here,” she said calmly and walked on.

We are witnessing the consignment of memory to oblivion. The language spoken, read and written by Jews in the towns and cities of Lithuania has been destroyed. The Nazi occupation exterminated 95% of Yiddish speakers, the bearers of a culture that had suddenly blossomed so brightly in the 1920s and 30s.

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Posted in Dalia Epstein (Dalija Epšteinaitė), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Another Kind of Final Solution?

Claims Conference Should Think Again Before Inadvertently Legitimizing East European Far-Right Holocaust Revisionism

Posted on 12 March 2025 by Defending History

OPINION | THE RED-BROWN COMMISSION | FANIA YOCHELES BRANTSOVSKY | YITZHAK ARAD | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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OPINION

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VILNIUS—Everybody makes mistakes, even august, storied and splendid international organizations. As in personal affairs, so in conference rooms, the secret is in the ability to say so and make a change, remembering the adage attributed to Mark Twain, along the lines of it being much easier to fool a person than to get them to admit they have been fooled.

The Claims Conference (Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany) has just allowed its vaunted name and logo to appear on the publicity for events in Palanga and Plunge, Lithuania organized by one of the major engines of East European Holocaust revisionism. That entity is the state-sponsored “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes,” which local diplomats have long dubbed for short “the Red-Brown Commission” starting in 2008 when the Commission reacted with utter silence to prosecutors’ launching of absurd and cruel kangaroo pretrial war crimes investigations into two of Vilnius’s most beloved Holocaust survivors, Dr. Rachel Margolis (1921-2015) and Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922-2024). Please skim through the saga.

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Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja): 1922-2024, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Claims Conference Should Think Again Before Inadvertently Legitimizing East European Far-Right Holocaust Revisionism

The Face of Feminism in the Prism of the War in Ukraine

Posted on 24 February 2025 by Defending History

OPINION  |  WOMEN’S ISSUES | UKRAINE | LITHUANIA

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by Vilma Fiokla Kiurė

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The author’s recent mission to Ukraine ended with gifting to Ukraine’s defenders the car she drove from Vilnius.

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When discussing feminism in Lithuania, I like to talk about women “volunteers” in part because I am one of them. Volunteers are people who give of their time and wherewithal to actually deliver aid to Ukraine. Their activities are very dangerous, because they often go to hot spots. On December 31, 2024, one volunteer was seriously injured when a package left on the street of a front-line town exploded in his hand. In June 2024, another volunteer lost a leg after coming under fire in Pokrovsk. You might think that this activity would discourage women, but there are a lot of them among the volunteers. These are emancipated, courageous women who go to the most dangerous zones, helping to transport cars and necessary equipment to the front.

I also go on such missions, because I believe that it is the duty of a true anti-fascist to fight this evil with all my might. The Putin regime’s fascism must be defeated in Ukraine so that it does not come to our homes here in Lithuania.

When traveling to the front line, in the Donetsk region, you are greeted not only by checkpoints, but also by minefields that stretch along the road you are driving on. Signs everywhere warn of mines. You see the destroyed cities and everything that the ideology of the “Russian Federation world” brings. And you understand that you are doing what you must, that all the achievements of feminism are worth only to the extent that you can help in dealing with this modern-day incarnation of fascism.

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Posted in Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Ukraine, Vilma Fiokla Kiurė, Women's Rights | Tagged , , | Comments Off on The Face of Feminism in the Prism of the War in Ukraine

Welcoming Lithuanian Prime Minister’s New Working Group on Antisemitism

Posted on 9 February 2025 by Defending History

 OPINION | ANTISEMITISM | LITHUANIA

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OPINION

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Today’s announcement that Lithuanian prime minister Gintautas Paluckas has set up a Working Group to study the rise in antisemitism is welcomed by all people of good faith. He has assembled a group of highly accomplished public figures, led by the PM’s advisor Alexander Radchenko, who will report to the PM by 1 June 2025 on a “plan of action for combating antisemitism, xenophobia, and other forms of incitement to discord; and, on the encouragement of Jewish life”. Among the Working Group’s members are deputy minister of internal affairs Gintaras Aliksandravičius; director of the Department of National Minorities Dainius Babilas; Head of the Culture Department of the Utena District Municipality Jūratė Brasiūnienė; member of the Vilnius City Council Vygintas Gasparavičius; chairperson of the Lithuanian Jewish Community Faina Kukliansky; head of the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Martynas Lukoševičius; deputy minister of Education, Science and Sports Jonas Petkevičius. Congratulations and godspeed to them and their colleagues.

The proximate event — inclusion of an openly antisemitic led party in the national governing coalition — that led to the Working Group’s formation needs no repetitive recital here. For over a decade and a half, Defending History prides itself on covering the ground that others may overlook (rather than repeat what is being done out there). Nevertheless, one generic comment is perhaps apropos: To be a working group, not a PR diversion, the new entity will frankly need to comment on its own convenor’s, the prime minister’s, decision to lead a coalition government that includes an antisemitic party, the first time this has happened in any Baltic country’s post-soviet history. Or is the working group precluded from commenting on a rise in antisemitism precipitated by the prime minister’s indefensible decision that has legitimized bigtime what had been marginal claptrap? That would render it akin to the proverbial case of beating the dickens out of a person, causing huge bodily and mental harm, and then offering for the cyberworld of the  contemporary press release, a little band-aid in a pristine plastic packet.

In the usual constructive spirit of providing timely input in the public space, the Defending History community offers its proverbial two cents in the form of — three points.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Welcoming Lithuanian Prime Minister’s New Working Group on Antisemitism