Tag Archives: DefendingHistory.com

Defending History’s 5000th Issue



VILNIUS—Today marks Defending History’s five thousandth day of publication. Please check out the top menu, esp. Sections and Authors; and, those interested in Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) studies and Yiddish, please see left menu. And — please support defending history by supporting DefendingHistory.com.

Continue reading

Posted in News & Views | Tagged , | Comments Off on Defending History’s 5000th Issue

Five Years of Defending History Dot Com



F

ive years have elapsed since this journal was founded as Holocaust in the Baltics on 6 Sept. 2009, in memory of Professor Meir Shub (1924-2009). Outside coverage includes David Hirsch in Engage and Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian (2009); Avi Friedman in Mishpacha, Ricky Ben-David in the Jerusalem Post, Mark Ames in The Nation, and Wendy Robbins on BBC World Service (2010); Cindy Mindell in the Jewish Ledger and Peter Jukes in Motley Moose (2011); Danny Ben-Moshe in his film Rewriting History (2012); Bernard Dichek in Jerusalem Report (2013); Richard Bloom in his film Defending Holocaust History (2014).

Continue reading

Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Dovid Katz, EU, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Five Years of Defending History Dot Com

Reply to the Economist on Lithuania’s Recent Reburial of the 1941 Nazi Puppet “Prime Minister”



O P I N I O N

by Dovid Katz

This is a slightly edited reprint of the comment posted today in reply to the article “Lithuania under the Nazis: Hero or Villain?” on the Economist’s online “Eastern Approaches” section, at: http://www.economist.com/comment/1472788#comment-1472788.

Many thanks to the Economist and its online Eastern Approaches section for highlighting this important issue that so many others have just swept under the rug. But frankly speaking, it does our Lithuanian friends no good to slant each report in the direction of sophisticated apologetics for the Lithuanian (and other regional) governments’ tragic veering to the far right on issues of historic integrity, human rights, freedom of speech, antisemitism, racism, gay rights, and perhaps above all, state-sponsored adulation of local Nazi war criminals and collaborators, and actual local mass murderers of the region’s Jewish population. It was, alas, a level of participation that resulted in the Baltics having the highest percentage of murder of its Jewish population in Holocaust-era Europe.

Continue reading

Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Dovid Katz, EU, Human Rights, Lithuania, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Russian Speakers' Personal Status, United Kingdom | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Reply to the Economist on Lithuania’s Recent Reburial of the 1941 Nazi Puppet “Prime Minister”

Meir Shub (1924 — 2009)



 

Professor Meir Shub

Holocaust in the Baltics, established on 6 September 2009, is dedicated to the memory of Professor Meir  Shub (1924—2009), pictured at right teaching a class at Vilnius University in the early 2000s.

A historian and philosopher, he dedicated the last decades  of his life to rebuilding Jewish studies in Vilnius, despite severe health issues deriving from his World War II wounds sustained as a Red Army soldier during the struggle against Nazism.

He was determined to inspire and train students of all backgrounds who would freely research Judaic topics, including the Holocaust. He was convinced that the success of these studies depended on the retention of a robust and intellectually free-feeling Jewish community component in such projects in Eastern Europe.

Meir Shub’s booming voice (which grew louder as his deafness worsened), straight talk, and high Litvak expectations of his students were trademarks. He is sorely missed. He played a pivotal role in achieving the first Oxford-Vilnius agreement in Judaic studies, and, in 1991-1992, was a visiting fellow at the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Oxford University. His works include a study of the Gaon of Vilna.

Posted in Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Obituaries | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Meir Shub (1924 — 2009)