VILNIUS—A prominent Vilnius academic known for Holocaust “fixing”, “proud” antisemitism, and a desire to make a national holiday of the day the anti-Jewish violence broke out in Lithuania in 1941, Dr. A. Liekis, returned this week to the fray with a mainstream media attack on the presence of “foreign Jewish” scholars in the state’s history commission, known formally as “The International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania, and less formally, and for brevity, as the “Red-Brown Commission.”
“Red-Brown Commission”
Vilnius Academic Accuses State History Commission of Having Too Many Foreign Jews as Members
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Antisemitism & Bias, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis, Vilnius Yiddish Institute
Tagged Dr. Algimantas Liekis, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes, Prof. Sarunas Liekis, Red Brown Commission in Vilnius, Vilnius Yiddish Institute
Comments Off on Vilnius Academic Accuses State History Commission of Having Too Many Foreign Jews as Members
Dieckmann & Vanagaite Launch Crowdfunding Campaign for New Book
Member of Lithuanian Gov’s “Red-Brown Commission” Teams Up with Ruta Vanagaite, Best-Selling Author, in Crowdfunding Campaign for a New Book
Prof. Christoph Dieckmann, longtime member of the commission and author of a major scholarly work (in German) on the Lithuanian Holocaust, is seen by some, however, to “tow the government line” on the painful issue of widespread outbreak of violence and murder by the LAF and other “nationalists” against their defenseless Jewish neighbors before arrival (or setting up of authority) by the invading German forces in the last week of June 1941. For years now, commission-related “Holocaust spokespeople” have trivialized the numerous testimonies of survivors (sample), and the work of the late eminent historian Prof. Dov Levin, and others, in documenting the massive violence that broke out on 23 June 1941, before German forces arrived, and went on for varying periods of time. Does the new crowdfunding effort signal a shift in the commission’s position?
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views
Comments Off on Dieckmann & Vanagaite Launch Crowdfunding Campaign for New Book
“Red-Brown Commission” Boasts of Conference Honoring Alleged 1941 Collaborator
Lithuanian Government’s “Red-Brown Commission,” A Prime Engine of Prague Declaration “Double Genocide” Politics, Boasts of Conference Honoring Alleged 1941 Holocaust Collaborator
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yivo Manipulated?
Tagged Andrew Baker (AJC), Antony Polonsky, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes, Jonathan Brent, Red-Brown Commission, Yitzhak Arad
Comments Off on “Red-Brown Commission” Boasts of Conference Honoring Alleged 1941 Collaborator
The Extraordinary Recent History of Holocaust Studies in Lithuania
OPINION | HISTORY | LITHUANIA’S STATE COMMISSION ON NAZI AND SOVIET CRIMES | LITVAK AFFAIRS
◊
by Dovid Katz
◊
This paper was published today by Taylor and Francis on its website. It appears in Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, volume 31, no. 3, pp. 285-295 (Dec. 2017). Dapim is edited by the Strochlitz Institute for Holocaust Research at the University of Haifa.
◊
In Lithuania, the primary provider for Holocaust studies for close to two decades has been the state-sponsored International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania (ICECNSORL), which was established in 1998 by decree of the nation’s president and is housed in the office of its prime minister, embedding it in the highest strata of Lithuanian politics. Several of its activities have enabled significant contributions in research, education, and public commemoration.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide, Dovid Katz, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, Double Genocide, Dovid Katz, history of Holocaust studies, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Studies University of Haifa, Holocaust Survivors demonstrate againstAzubalis, International Commission on Evalluation of Crimes of Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes, Yitzhak Arad
Comments Off on The Extraordinary Recent History of Holocaust Studies in Lithuania
Is Prof. Krutikov the Latest Lithuanian Gov. “Yiddish Star” to be Manipulated?
OPINION | JEWISH STUDIES AS COVER | YIDDISH AFFAIRS
◊
VILNIUS—Beware of any academic conference hosted by a nation’s parliament. This isn’t about Lithuania, the Baltics, or Eastern Europe. It’s about the intellectual independence and academic integrity of bona fide academic conclaves anywhere. There are elementary questions. Was there a public call for papers? Was there an academic committee established to select those papers by the most competent specialists on the actual topic of the conference? An academic committee that would guard against the petty jealousies, politics of revenge and personal exclusions, as well as larger political correctnesses or state-sponsored-agency attempts to predetermine the proceedings or (ab)use them for governmental PR? Is the conference a free tribune for the exchange of ideas in an atmosphere of collegiality and mutual respect? One where scholars of opposing views can thrash it out, robustly and publicly — without the loss of interpersonal respect — to yield positive results for the area of human enquiry to which the conference was dedicated in the first place. One of the ironies is that Vilnius is nowadays host to some of the world’s best (and most academically free) conferences in an array of fields, both in the humanities and the sciences. That Soviet-style rigging should survive in the case of Judaic studies, of all things, will itself be studied one day.
Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Bloomington-Borns Program Manipulated?, News & Views, Opinion, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Affairs, Yivo Manipulated?
Tagged Dov-Ber Kerler, Good Will Foundation (Vilnius), International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes, Jean and Samuel Frankel Center, Jewish Studies Univ. of Michigan, Jews in Lithuania, Mikhail Krutikov, Red-Brown Commission Vilnius, Richard and Natasha Maullin, Richard Maullin, Sarunas Liekis, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Studies in Lithuania
Comments Off on Is Prof. Krutikov the Latest Lithuanian Gov. “Yiddish Star” to be Manipulated?
Major German Holocaust Scholar Slips (Again) into Baltic Nationalist Discourse
OPINION | HISTORY | LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFAIRS | RED-BROWN COMMISSION
◊
by Dovid Katz
◊
East European state-sponsored “Holocaust Fixing” continues apace. The distinguished German scholar and author of a major two-volume work on the Lithuanian Holocaust, Professor Christoph Dieckmann, has given a major interview intended for the general public on the popular Delfi.lt news portal. He was in town for an IHRA conference held in intimate collaboration with the Lithuanian government’s units on the Holocaust and Jewish affairs, including the Red-Brown Commission, of which Prof. Dieckmann is, surprisingly for many of his genuine admirers, a longtime member and apologist.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Germany, History, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis
Comments Off on Major German Holocaust Scholar Slips (Again) into Baltic Nationalist Discourse
Conflict of Interest as Red-Brown Commission Chief Legitimized by Meeting with “Litvak Leaders”?
OPINION | RED-BROWN COMMISSION | ISRAEL AFFAIRS
◊
VILNIUS—The 22 November edition of the Jerusalem Post carried the following news item about an international meeting at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation.
Lithuanian and Israeli diplomats, academics, and government officials, together with representatives of Litvak organizations in Israel, the American Jewish Committee, the World Jewish Congress and the Tel Aviv Municipality, will congregate on Thursday at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation to discuss Lithuania and Israel – Past, Present and Future. Among the Lithuanians will be Lithuanian Ambassador Edminas Bagdonas, Ronaldas Račinskas, executive director of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania; Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community; and several other Lithuanian dignitaries. Among the topics tabled for discussion is the reinstatement of Lithuanian citizenship to Lithuanian expatriates living in Israel.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Genocide, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Views of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas
Comments Off on Conflict of Interest as Red-Brown Commission Chief Legitimized by Meeting with “Litvak Leaders”?
Is Eastern European “Double Genocide” Revisionism Reaching Museums?
HISTORY | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | MUSEUMS | COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED
◊
by Dovid Katz
This paper appeared today in Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, published by Taylor and Francis.
ABSTRACT: In contrast to twentieth-century Holocaust Denial, the most recent assault on the narrative of the genocide of European Jewry has emanated from a sophisticated revisionist model known as Double Genocide, codified in the 2008 Prague Declaration. Positing “equality” of Nazi and Soviet crimes, the paradigm’s corollaries sometimes include attempts to rehabilitate perpetrators and discredit survivors. Emanating from pro-Western governments and elites in Eastern Europe in countries with records of high collaboration, the movement has reached out widely to the Holocaust Studies establishment as well as Jewish institutions. It occasionally enjoys the political support of major Western countries in the context of East-West politics, or in the case of Israel, attempts to garner (eastern) European Union support. The empirical effects to date have included demonstrable impact on museums, memorials and exhibits in Eastern Europe and beyond.
◊
The demise of twentieth-century-style Holocaust denial in mainstream Western society is aptly symbolized by David Irving’s loss to Deborah Lipstadt in the London High Court in 2000. But around the same time, a new and more irksome method of writing the Holocaust out of history was emerging under the radar, this time without necessarily denying any of the historical events or a single death. Particularly in Eastern Europe, it was being forged with state funding and more subtle powers of persuasion in academia, the media, the arts and international diplomacy.
READ MORE
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Double Genocide, Dovid Katz, EU, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Museums, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Double Genocide, Dovid Katz, Genocide Museum Vilnius, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust museums, Holocaust Revisionism, Prague Declaration, Seventy Years Declaration
Comments Off on Is Eastern European “Double Genocide” Revisionism Reaching Museums?
Baltic Red-Brown “Nazi-Soviet Hunter” Featured at Brazil’s Olympics in Rio
OPINION | RED-BROWN COMMISSION (PAGE) | RB COMMISSION (SECTION) | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | VILNIUS YIDDISH INSTITUTE
◊
VILNIUS—The news portal Delfi.lt reported yesterday on Lithuanian sharpshooting star Ronaldas Račinskas making a hit at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics not only for his talents with a rifle, but on his work back home for which the headline calls him the “Nazi-Soviet hunter,” in the latest of a long series of Holocaust terms appropriated and ably recast by the Red-Brown movement’s PR wizzards. Besides heading a commission that now includes the gentleman who launched the campaign, a decade ago, to “hunt” Holocaust survivors who joined the Jewish partisans, his “Nazi and Soviet hunting” refers to his role as Director of the Secretariat of that comission, popularly known as the Red-Brown Commission, a state-financed entity that is one of the main European engines for spreading the revisionist far right’s “Double Genocide” model of World War II history. In that history, as an example, those who liberated Auschwitz are declared to be equal in principle to those who committed the genocide there. Moreover the movement’s primary document, the 2008 Prague Declaration (PD), insists that all European “minds” accept the revised history and regard Nazi and Soviet crimes as equal, a stance widely considered to be a camouflage for obfuscating and diminishing the Holocaust. The response in the European arena came in the form of the 2012 Seventy Years Declaration (SYD).
Director of the Secretariat of the state-sponsored International Commission on the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania (known for short as the “Red-Brown Commission”) is a sharpshooting star at the Rio Olympics. He has rapidly brought red-brown politics into the apolitical environment of the Olympic Games. His views on the Holocaust feature in a new German documentary.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Genocide, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Views of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Double Genocide, International Commission for the Evaluation of Nazi and Soviet Crimes (Vilnius), Prague Declaration, Red-Brown Commission, Rio Olympics and Baltic politics, Ronaldas Racinskas, Sarunas Liekis, Vilnius Yiddish Institute
Comments Off on Baltic Red-Brown “Nazi-Soviet Hunter” Featured at Brazil’s Olympics in Rio
In Reponse to the Media: 9 July 2016
Western Mainstream Media Fails to Mention that East European Allies of the West are Investing in Glorification of Hitler’s Local Collaborators
Huffington Post Piece on Stepan Bandera Worship in Ukraine Omits his Organization’s Responsibility for Hundreds of Thousands of Murders of Poles and Jews; Landmark Historical Book on Bandera Still Goes Unmentioned by Most Mass Media
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", 70 Years Declaration, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, Efraim Zuroff, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Rūta Vanagaitė
Tagged Battle of the Declarations, Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes, Efraim Zuroff, Prague Declaration, Ruta Vanagaite, Seventy Years Declaration, Stav Gil in Newsweek, Stepan Bandera
Comments Off on In Reponse to the Media: 9 July 2016
Appeal to Conscience of the “Red-Brown Commission”
[updated]
Appeal to the conscience of the members of the renewed state-financed “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania”
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", 70 Years Declaration, A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Genocide, Germany, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Pinchos Fridberg, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform", Yad Vashem Manipulated?, Yiddish Affairs, Yivo Manipulated?
Tagged Historical Commission (Vilnius, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust studies manipulated?, International Commision for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, Lithuania, Pinchos Fridberg, Yitzhak Arad
Comments Off on Appeal to Conscience of the “Red-Brown Commission”
Forward Coverage of Yivo Strife Omits Mention of Instrumentalization by Lithuanian Holocaust Revisionism Industry
YIVO MANIPULATED? | MEDIA WATCH | POLITICS OF MEMORY | DOUBLE GAMES
◊
NEW YORK CITY—A 9 March 2016 Forward article, by Britta Lokting, focused on Martin Peretz’s recent resignation from Yivo’s board, cited a number of current Yivo issues. It did not, however, mention the major issue of instrumentalization by the Lithuanian government’s campaign of Holocaust obfuscation, relativization and revisionism. It did reference the now-famous Vilnius-based digitization project.
In 2011, Yivo honored an antisemitic foreign minister while failing to honor the Yiddish speaking Vilna Holocaust survivors maligned by Lithuanian prosecutors, resulting in a heartfelt plea from the long-time editor of the Jewish community’s quadrilingual newspaper. Then, in 2012, it sent its director to Vilnius to help cover for the reburial with full honors of a Holocaust perpetrator, and saw its director join (and thereby give legitimacy to) the notorious “Red-Brown Commission.” A year ago, the organization was called to task by a Vilna Holocaust survivor in the Yiddish Fórverts (English translation here; unmentioned in the English Forward?). See Defending History’s section on Yivo issues in recent years.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United States, Yiddish Affairs, Yivo Manipulated?
Tagged Britta Lotking, Bruce SLovin, Forverts (Yiddish newspaper), Forward (nespaper), Jonathan Brent, Martin Peretz, Y.L. Peretz, Yivo + Peretz, Yivo and Lithuania, Yivo and Vilna, Yivo Digitization Project, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Comments Off on Forward Coverage of Yivo Strife Omits Mention of Instrumentalization by Lithuanian Holocaust Revisionism Industry
Another Holocaust-Obfuscating PR Bash at “Vilnius Jewish Public Library”
VILNIUS JEWISH PUBLIC LIBRARY | DOUBLE GAMES | RED-BROWN COMMISSION
◊
VILNIUS—Yet again, the “Vilnius Jewish Public Library,” housed in exquisite city-center premises in a courtyard off the capital’s central Gedimino Boulevard, has been the base for a Holocaust-obfuscating event featuring stars of the state’s “Red-Brown Commission” who are dispatched far and wide to deny the existence of the state-sponsored “Double Genocide” campaign, to mitigate the campaign against Holocaust survivors, the efforts to glorify local collaborators, and to obscure entirely the Second Opinion expressed in the Seventy Years Declaration. Incredibly, the roster of invited speakers did not include Ms. Rūta Vanagaitė, author of Mūsiškiai, the new best-selling book on the Holocaust that has in effect revolutionized the country’s coming to terms with its Holocaust-era past. What is the “Jewish” Library afraid of?
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", "Vilnius Jewish Public Library", Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Double Genocide, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Obfuscation, Musiskai, Prof. Saulius Suziedelis, Ruta Vanagaite, Seventy Years Declaration, Vilnius Jewish Public Library
Comments Off on Another Holocaust-Obfuscating PR Bash at “Vilnius Jewish Public Library”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry Faces a Lithuanian Dilemma
DOCUMENTS | ISRAEL | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | RED-BROWN COMMISSION | GENOCIDE CENTER
◊
As the Lithuanian government-sponsored “Red-Brown Commission” (popular moniker for the “International Commission for Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes of Lithuania“), quiet on the international front for a time, announces a comeback global conclave for 17-19 March 2016, suspense is rising as to whether various Jewish organizations, including Yivo and the AJC, but above all the Israel Foreign Ministry, will again be coming on board to legitimize the body that is the midwife of the Double Genocide movement in the European Parliament.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Documents, Double Games, Double Genocide, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem Manipulated?
Tagged Arvydas Anusauskas, Commission on Nazi and Soviet Crimes, Historical Commission of Lihtuania, Israel-Lithuania relations, Israeli Foreign Ministry + Eastern Europe, Joseph Melamed, Rachel Margolis, Ronaldas Racinskas, Yitzhak Arad
Comments Off on Israel’s Foreign Ministry Faces a Lithuanian Dilemma
Sugihara Abused? Red-Brown Commission Ropes In Japanese Embassy for 11 Feb. Event
OPINION | EVENTS | JAPAN | RED-BROWN COMMISSION | POLITICS OF MEMORY
◊
VILNIUS—Over the past decade, few foreign embassies in Lithuania have done as much as Japan’s to help ensure that the accurate history of the Holocaust in Lithuania is never forgotten and indeed, that remembrance events and educational programs feed into both national and international efforts to raise awareness and sensitivities in the cause of averting future massacres of innocent civilians.
Japan’s Holocaust remembrance achievements in Lithuania are manifold. From 2008, when state prosecutors connected to the Genocide Center began defaming local Holocaust survivors, Japan’s embassy joined with others in giving honor to the wrongly accused, including the 2009 “Walk in the Rain” organized by then Norwegian ambassador Steinar Gil. More well known are the embassy’s activities in commemoration of Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara, the inspirational Japanese humanist who saved thousands of lives by issuing visas in Kaunas in 1940. One of the most important goes back to the turn of our century when the embassy participated actively, and generously, in setting up Sugihara House in Kaunas.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Games, Double Genocide, Events, Japan, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Chiune Sugihara, Embassy of Japan in Vilnius, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes, Japan and Holocaust issues, Red-Brown Commission, Vytautas Magnus University
Comments Off on Sugihara Abused? Red-Brown Commission Ropes In Japanese Embassy for 11 Feb. Event
Lithuanian Translation of Dovid Katz’s 17 April 2015 Vilnius Conference Lecture
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
Note: This text is the Lithuanian translation, provided by the Being a Jew project, of the written text of a lecture from the 17 April 2015 conference on the Holocaust in Lithuania organized by Rūta Vanagaitė. The original English is here.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", 70 Years Declaration, Dovid Katz, EU, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Dovid Katz, Dovidas Katzas, Dovydas Kacas, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holokaustas Lietuvoje
Comments Off on Lithuanian Translation of Dovid Katz’s 17 April 2015 Vilnius Conference Lecture
Double Genocide in Action? Victims and Perpetrators Interchangeable
O P I N I O N
◊
VILNIUS—Ronaldas Račinskas, executive director of the Lithuanian-government financed “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania,” widely known for brevity as the “Red-Brown Commission,” has revealed — on camera, to the producers of the documentary film Liza Ruft — his thoughts about the “war crimes investigation” into Fania Brantsovsky. The video clip of his statement was released today on Youtube.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Double Games, Double Genocide, EU, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai), Views of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas
Tagged Fania Brancovskaja, Fania Brancovskaya, Fania Brantsovsky, Holocaust in Lithuania, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, Mickey Cantor, Red-Brown Commission, Ronaldas Racinskas
Comments Off on Double Genocide in Action? Victims and Perpetrators Interchangeable
A New Book on the Kaunas (Kovno) Ghetto by Arūnas Bubnys
O P I N I O N / B O O K S
by Geoff Vasil
◊
This small book, brought out in three separate editions (English, Lithuanian, Russian) by the state-supported Genocide Center, looks more like a brochure than anything else. The cover features the author’s name, in small type, above all else, then a larger Kaunas Ghetto, then a line with the years 1941-1944, against a backdrop of a computerized dark blue sky above a “tasteful” black-and-white picture of Jews lined up in columns inside Kaunas ghetto. The computerized dark blue wraps around the spine to the back cover where some vague lines comprise a hand-drawn map of the streets making up Kaunas ghetto, an ISBN number in white above UPC Bookland barcode featuring the same number again, and then a web address, www.genocid.lt. I found myself staring at the internet address and wondering what language that was supposed to be. Lithuanian is always “genocidas” and “genocid” isn’t possible as any permutation or declension of the noun, and of course English is “genocide.” Perhaps it’s Russian in Latin-letter transcription? But that would contradict the nationalist and ethnic bias of the publisher, the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Lithuanian Residents where Arūnas Bubnys is a leading figure. Perhaps “genocid” is someone’s notion of a non-English and yet international form of the word, formed by reducing it from the Lithuanian nominative case ending -as? I checked my favorite search engine, and of course the Lithuanian organization’s webpage came up first, but was soon followed by a wikipedia and wiktionary entry for the Croatian word.
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", Bold Citizens Speak Out, Books, Double Games, Geoff Vasil, History, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Comments Off on A New Book on the Kaunas (Kovno) Ghetto by Arūnas Bubnys
Translation of a Yiddish Correspondence: The Vilna Holocaust Survivor and the Director of Yivo
D O C U M E N T S
Editor’s note: The following is a translation of the open letter by Professor Pinchos Fridberg, a Holocaust survivor in Vilnius, and the reply by Yivo’s director, Dr. Jonathan Brent. Both were published in the Yiddish Forward (Forverts) on 1 March 2015. Prof. Fridberg has also posted an audio file of his reading his letter aloud in his native Vilna Yiddish. In the case of any issue arising, the Yiddish text is authoritative. For readers’ reference, hyperlinks have been added (by Defending History) to various of the documents and topics cited. See also the Pinchos Fridberg page and section in Defending History, page and section on the state-sponsored commission discussed, and section on Yivo issues.
September 2014 at Ponár, the mass muder site of Vilna Jewry: Three representatives of the controversial state sponsored commission on Nazi and Soviet crimes pay respects in unison: (from left): Dr. Jonathan Brent, Emanuelis Zingeris, Ronaldas Račinskas. Photo: Defending History.
D
ear Dr. Jonathan Brent,
I appeal to you in Yiddish. Do you know why? Because I believe, that a person who is the leader of the Yivo institute will understand me. My name is Pinchos Fridberg. I was born in Vilna before the war and am a survivor of the Holocaust. My grandmother and grandfather, and all our relatives on my mother’s side — 28 people — lie [at the mass murder site] Ponár.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Pinchos Fridberg, Politics of Memory, United States, Views of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas, Yiddish Affairs, Yivo Manipulated?
Tagged Dr. Jonathan Brent (Yivo), Emanuelis Zingeris, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, Jewish community in Lithuania, Jews in Lithuania, Jonathan Brent, Juozas Ambrazevicius Brazaitis, Kovno Ghetto, Pinchos Fridberg, Ronaldas Racinskas, Yivo + Vilnius + Lithuania, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Yivo Lithuania, Yivo Vilna Project
Comments Off on Translation of a Yiddish Correspondence: The Vilna Holocaust Survivor and the Director of Yivo
