For the first time, there has appeared to be a ‘coordinated antisemitic campaign’ among Lithuanian mass circulation daily newspapers of very different orientations. As reported on DefendingHistory.com yesterday, a massive three page tabloid spread on the 3 December weekend edition of the mainstream paper considered the country’s best, Lietuvos rytas, was replete with the kind of inflammatory language, references and images sure to cause a noticeable upturn in antisemitism in the country.

Obviously by agreement with Lietuvos rytas (otherwise there would be an infringement of rights claim), one of the pair of Tomkus owned ‘openly antisemitic’ papers, Vakaro žinios, today published a condensed version (two tabloid pages instead of three) of the same article, but without any author’s name (i.e. as ‘absolutely straight news’) with new photographs and headlines and a new blurb, this time high up on page 1 right under the masthead. A PDF of the entire Vakaro žinios article that appeared today is available here.

These are among the ‘innovations’ in today’s Vakaro žinios article as compared with its Lietuvos rytas prototype (aside from shortening of the text making the blatantly antisemitic and inflammatory passages somewhat more prominent):

(1) Addition of a photograph with the caption: ‘Disagreement: The Jews themselves are pushing and shoving one another because of Jewish property. On September 22, 1995 [sic], two feuding Jewish groupings even called in private security to the synagogue on Pylimo Street in Vilnius.’

(2) The name of the article has been changed to: ‘Why will Lithuania Remain in
Debt Even After Settling Accounts with the Jews?”

(3) The front page blurb near the very top reads: ‘Dividing up Jewish Property. Lithuanian Jews are being pushed out of a share of 128 million litas assessed worth of Jewish property by people from the US and Israel.’