Daily Archives: 23 February 2020

Two Invitations for March 11th


 


Come Join DH’s Monitoring Team

(March 11th, 3:15 PM)

The entire Defending History community joyously celebrates Lithuania’s independence day this Wed. March 11th. We sincerely hope that the “nationalist” march for which the beautiful center of Vilnius is gifted each year will this year not glorify local Holocaust and Nazi collaborators, will not heap scorn on  the nation’s minorities and will not flaunt fascist symbols. We have been monitoring these events since 2008, and invite colleagues to join our small team of observers this Wednesday, March 11th, 3:15 PM at Cathedral Square, Vilnius, who will then monitor the march on Gedimino Blvd. to the Seimas.

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Posted in News & Views | Comments Off on Two Invitations for March 11th

As Usual, Leaders of Far-Right March Glorifying Holocaust Perpetrators Target DH Monitors…



  VILNIUS MARCHES  |  KAUNAS MARCHES  |  MARCHES SECTION  | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS

VILNIUS—Yet again, the far right organizations that choose to glorify their country’s Nazi and Holocaust collaborators, also choose to target the human rights monitors who come to document their events. Alas, the Vilnius-based human-rights organizations, like European and international Jewish organizations, again failed to monitor last week’s central-Vilnius event. The small Defending History team was the only one on hand last Sunday, February 16th, to monitor, and DH, as usual, reported on the march, after having reported on its planners’ vow to highlight three specific collaborators. Vilnius’s prestigious Old Town, from the Gates of Dawn to the foot of Castle Mount, was allocated by authorities to the marchers for their dusk-to-evening slot of the Independence Day public festivities.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Comments Off on As Usual, Leaders of Far-Right March Glorifying Holocaust Perpetrators Target DH Monitors…

London CPJCE and US Affiliate “Admas Kodesh” Misrepresent Rabbi Kanievsky’s Ruling to their (Naive?) Supporters



OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY  |  OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT  |  INTERNATIONAL PETITION

VILNIUS—The controversial London-based “grave selling rabbis” of the CPJCE, alongside its American “Admas Kodesh” branch, has posted on Twitter the recent sensational letter by the doyen of Litvak rabbis, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, writing for the vaunted rabbinical court of Bnai Brak, Israel. The edict, in a rabbinic Hebrew that is perhaps not easily read by most Twitter readers, rails against the  a convention center in the cemetery under “rabbinic supervision” (referring to the CPJCE’s project), and forbids the convention center project at the old Vilna Jewish cemetery of Piramónt at Shnípishok (Šnipiškės in today’s Vilnius), and demands the old Soviet ruin be left untouched, stressing that the site cannot, in its view, be used for anything but a cemetery.

The tweet, however, seeks to misinform these groups’ Twitter  readers as “supporting the almost 20 year struggle” (!) of these groups. Orwell indeed. The tweet also referenced the deeply controversial role of the US taxpayer supported USCPAHA. [UPDATE of 29 Sept. 2020: The Conference of European Rabbis has explicitly disqualified the CPJCE from further involvement in Vilnius.]

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Posted in "Admas Kodesh", Cemeteries and Mass Graves, CPJCE (London), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), USCPAHA (US Commission for Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad) | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on London CPJCE and US Affiliate “Admas Kodesh” Misrepresent Rabbi Kanievsky’s Ruling to their (Naive?) Supporters