Shimon Alperovich

Posted on 6 February 2013 by Defending History

Vilnius native and life-long resident Professor Pinchos Fridberg sent the following question to the leadership of the Jewish Community of Lithuania (JCL), and received the following answer. These official English translations, accepted by JCL, are reprinted verbatim, with permission from the website of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, where the question appears here and the reply here.

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On the Recent Amateur Treatments of the Role of the Provisional Government of 1941 in the Mass Media

Posted on 29 June 2012 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Shimon Alperovich

Authorized translation from Lithuanian by Geoff Vasil of the 26 June 2012 statement issued by Dr. Shimon Alperovich (Simonas Alperavičius), chairperson of the Jewish Community of Lithuania. Posted on the community’s website at: http://www.lzb.lt/en/home/691-recent.html. According to sources in the community, Dr. Alperovich wrote this in response to an article on Delfi.lt by Vidmantas Valiušaitis called “Why are Historians Afraid of the Facts?” (Lithuanian text here), and when Delfi allegedly declined to publish Dr. Alperovich’s response,  the community placed it on its own webpage and elsewhere.

Recently there has been an increasing number of internet articles by amateur, non-professional authors without training in history expressing approval for the actions of the 1941 Provisional Government of Lithuania toward the Jews of Lithuania, without regard for the antisemitic actions of that government in the context of the mass murder of the Jews of Lithuania already underway at that time.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community earlier provided an assessment of the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Provisional Government.

It is saddening that the authors of these texts choose to ignore the conclusions of professional historians as well as the findings of the special commission established by decree of former president Valdas Adamkus and operating under the Lithuanian government, which clearly and categorically judges the actions of the LAF and PG thus:

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, History, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Shimon Alperovich | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Joint Statement by the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum on the Ceremonies for the Reburial of Juozas Brazaitis (Ambarazevčius)

Posted on 14 May 2012 by Defending History

The following statement, drafted by the head of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, appeared today on the community’s website, and is republished here with permission. Presumably it will appear also on the website of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum. [Update of 15 September 2012: it has not thus far appeared on the museum's website.]

 

On May 19 and 20 of this year rites to re-inter Juozas Brazaitis (Ambarazevčius), the head of the Provisional Government of Lithuania, and commemorations and events in connection with this will take place in Kaunas.

Every person has the right to leave this world maintaining their inherited traditions and religious convictions. The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum do not protest and are not expressing dissatisfaction over the return of the mortal remains of Juozas Brazaitis (Ambarazevčius) to Lithuania.

Nonetheless, we are deeply hurt because of the ceremonies and events surrounding the reburial ceremony of this controversial political figure. This figure is connected with the actions of the puppet Provisional Government of Lithuania and with the calls by the Lithuanian Activist Front for inciting the mass murder of Jews which led to the execution of barbaric “justice” by the mob.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Events, History, Litvak Affairs, News, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Shimon Alperovich | Comments Off

Nationalists’ Roundtable Discussion Invites Jewish Community Chairman to ‘Speak about Lithuania’

Posted on 10 October 2011 by Defending History
O P I N I O N

by Geoff Vasil

Medieval Lithuania was a colonial power in Europe stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. After the sixteenth-century union with Poland and the eighteenth-century partitions by other European powers that reduced Poland to nothing, Lithuania reemerged as a modern state in the aftermath of World War I based largely on the ethnic boundaries of the Lithuanian population. Then there was the contested region around the capital, Vilnius, the majority of whose population identified themselves as Poles (or Jews, or Belarusians, and others).

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Dr. Shimon Alperovich, chairman of Lithuania’s Jewish Community, Interviewed on Balsas.lt

Posted on 9 October 2011 by Defending History
O P I N I O N

Translation from Balsas.lt, Interview of the Week, 26 September — 2 October 2011. PDF of the original available here.

Antisemitism Still Felt in Lithuania

September 23rd is the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews.
The victims of the Vilna Ghetto liquidated in 1943 are honored on this day.

[Interview by] Julija Kiško

During the war the Nazis essentially exterminated the Jewish community of Lithuania and the unique culture they created. Chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community Simon Alperovich shares his thoughts on the past and present.

Assessing the Holocaust

What hasn’t the Lithuanian Government, in your opinion, yet done in assessing the Holocaust and its aftermath? Balsas.lt Week asked S. Alperovich.

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Dr Shimon Alperovich turns 82

Posted on 11 October 2010 by Defending History

Dr Shimon Alperovich (Simonas Alperavičius), chairman of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, turned 82. Notwithstanding his age and various health issues, he continues to provide proud, courageous, vigorous and independent leadership for the Jewish community at a time when various government agencies continue to pursue painfully disingenuous policies on a range of Jewish issues, including Holocaust history, antisemitism and restitution. His series of public statements (some produced in translation on the Bold Citizens page) have made the Lithuanian Jewish community a de facto champion of the battle for tolerance, multiculturalism and historic forthrightness throughout the region.  Happy Birthday!  Photo: Sebastian Pammer.

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Jewish Community’s Alperovich Writes to Parliament, as Government’s ‘History Apartheid’ Becomes Official Policy

Posted on 5 October 2010 by Defending History

Dr Shimon Alperovich (Simonas Alperavičius), chairman of the Jewish Community of Lithuania, has written to the chairperson of the Lithuanian parliament, MP Irena Degutienė, concerning the most recent travesty of the government’s ‘Jewish merry-go-round’, as one Western ambassador put it, off the record, during yesterday’s German National day event at Vilnius’s Old Town Hall.

At the September 21st commemorative ceremony at Ponar (Paneriai), the mass murder site of 100,000 civilians  (70,000 of them Jewish), mostly at the hands of the Nazis’ fascist collaborators here, the government’s MP Emanuelis Zingeris (now head of the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee), boasted of a parliamentary resolution to declare 2011 the year of Holocaust Remembrance in Lithuania. Continue reading →

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Front Page Image of the Head of the Jewish Community with a Soviet-era Abacus

Posted on 15 July 2009 by Defending History

Image from the front page of the daily Vakaro zinios: a photomontage of the elected 80 year old chairman of the Jewish Community of Lithuania and a Soviet-era abacus.

The headline and accompanying article on p. 4 suggest that ’the Jews’ are plotting to expropriate money from the country.

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Jewish Community and Union of Ghetto Survivors Speak Out Again on Harassment of Holocaust Survivors who Joined the Resistance

Posted on 1 September 2008 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Shimon Alperovich and Tuvia Jafet

VILNIUS, 1 SEPTEMBER 2008

AN OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY VALDAS ADAMKUS, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

ČESLOVAS JURŠĖNAS, SPEAKER OF THE SEIMAS OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

GEDIMINAS KIRKILAS, PRIME MINISTER OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

ALGIMANTAS VALANTINAS, PROSECUTOR GENERAL OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

 

The Lithuanian Jewish Community did not fail to notice the quite rapid reaction of the country’s President and Prime Minister, who urged law enforcement authorities and special services to find as quickly as possible the criminals )and their masterminds( who organized the attack on the LJC building in Vilnius on August 9-10.

But we respectfully wish to point out that this act of vandalism is not exceptional. It should be evaluated in the context of the neo-Nazi parade on March 11, biased media publications about the Šnipiškės cemetery, restitution of Jewish property (that delayed by the authorities), vandalism at Jewish cemeteries and mass murder sites, antisemitic articles in the press and on the internet. The Lithuanian Jewish Community has already mentioned the serious concern and anxiety caused by all these problems in its statement of 18 May 2008.

On 19 June 2008 we addressed the leaders of the Republic of Lithuania in an open letter concerning the aforementioned events and anti-Nazi Jewish partisans who are being persecuted by the Prosecutor’s Office. We were hoping that the leaders of our state would politically evaluate the persecutions (which have no precedent in the post-war world) of ghetto prisoners, who are being accused of choosing the only possible means of defense in the face of mortal danger, that is, armed resistance to the Nazis and their local collaborators.

The fact that the persecution of anti-Nazi Jewish partisans was not evaluated politically, forces us to ask the following questions: Does Lithuania accept the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition at the end of World War II? Does the Republic of Lithuania accept the decisions of the international Nuremberg Tribunal? Do the courts and prosecutors of the Republic of Lithuania follow these decisions? Can the judges and prosecutors of our state follow a different policy from that of the Republic of Lithuania? Is the persecution of partisans and ghetto prisoners a part of official policy of the Republic of Lithuania or is it an act solely by the will of prosecutors and judges?

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Jewish Community and Union of Ghetto Survivors Speak Out on Harassment of Holocaust Survivors who Joined the Resistance

Posted on 19 June 2008 by Defending History

O P I N I O N

by Shimon Alperovich and Tuvia Jafet

The following Open Letter was published today by the Jewish Community of Lithuania in partnership with the Union of Former Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners.

VILNIUS, 19 JUNE 2008

AN OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY VALDAS ADAMKUS, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

ČESLOVAS JURŠĖNAS, SPEAKER OF THE SEIMAS OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

GEDIMINAS KIRKILAS, PRIME MINISTER OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

ALGIMANTAS VALANTINAS,
PROSECUTOR GENERAL OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

 

The prosecutors of Lithuania do not cease to persecute anti-Nazi Jewish partisans. The Prosecution Service’s claims that “hundreds of witnesses are being questioned” are belied by the fact that only Jewish names are being heard in the media: Yitzhak Arad, Fania Brantsovsky, Rachel Margolis, and others.

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