Tag Archives: Dovid Katz

Correspondence of Yiddish Linguists Hartog Beem (1892-1987), Solomon A. Birnbaum (1891-1989), Jechiel Bin-Nun (1911-1983), Florence Guggenheim-Grünberg (1898-1989)


with Dovid Katz (1970s and 1980s)

PAGE INITIATED JANUARY 2024

Contents:

Hartog Beem

Jechiel Bin-Nun (Fischer)

Solomon A. Birnbaum

Florence Guggenheim

Hartog Beem

1892—1987
———

HB (Hilversum) to DK (Brooklyn) (30 Dec 1977)

HB (Hilversum) to DK (Brooklyn) (9 Feb. 1978)

HB (Haifa) to DK (London) (15 June 1978)

HB (Hilversum) to DK (Brooklyn) (24 Aug. 1978)

HB (Hilversum) to DK (Brooklyn) (2 Sept. 1978)

HB (The Hague) to DK (London) (28 March 1979)

DK (London) to HB (The Hague) (3 May 1979)

HB (The Hague) to DK (London) (30 Aug. 1979)

HB (Haifa) to DK (London) (14 Sept. 1979)

HB (Haifa) to Menke Katz (Brooklyn) (27 Sept 1979)

DK (London) to HB (Haifa) (4 Oct. 1979)

HB (Haifa) to DK (London) (7 Nov. 1979)

DK (London) to HB (The Hague) (17 Dec 1979)

HB (The Hague) to DK (London) (6 May 1980)

DK (London) to HB (The Hague) (9 June 1980)

HB (The Hague) to DK (London) (7 Sept. 1980)

DK (London) to HB (The Hague) (1 Jan. 1981)

HB (The Hague) to DK (London) (12 Jan. 1981)

DK (London) to HB (The Hague) (22 Feb. 1981)

HB (The Hague) to DK (London) (25 Feb. 1981)

DK (London) to HB (The Hague) (1 March 1981)

HB (The Hague) to DK (London) (26 March 1981)

HB (The Hague) to DK (London) (31 March 1981)

DK (London) to HB (The Hague) (22 April 1981)

HB (The Hague) to DK (London) (10 May 1981)

HB (The Hague) to DK (London) (25 May 1981)

DK (Oxford) to HB (The Hague) (26 June 1981)

DK (Oxford) to HB (The Hague) 7 March 1982)

From our working papers over the years: HB’s replies to DK’s lists of queries

Joel Cahen (Amsterdam) to DP and DK (Oxford) (1 Dec. 1987) [telegram on Beem’s death]

Dov Noy’s appreciation of Hartog Beem’s contributions (1984)

Obituary by Marion Aptroot in Oksforder Yidish I (1990)

Dovid Katz’s paper on Netherlandic Yiddish vocalism (based largely on Beem’s work; 1978)

DK’s personal notes and memoir (2024)

Jechiel Bin-Nun

(Jechiel Fischer; Yekhiel Fisher)

1911—1983
———

Three of the papers he sent after the war to Yivo in New York for publication:

The e Sounds in Yiddish

The Sounds in Yiddish

Phonetic Transcriptional Systems

———

JBN to DK (5 Feb. 1978)

JBN to DK (8 May 1978)

JBN to DK (31 August 1978)

DK to JBN (11 Feb. 1979)

JBN to DK (12 March 1979)

DK to JBN (11 May 1979)

JBN to DK (10 July 1979)

DK to JBN (1 Jan. 1981)

JBN to DK (20 Jan. 1981)

DK’s personal notes and memoir

Solomon A. Birnbaum

(Salomo Birnbaum; Shloyme Birnboym)

1891—1989
———

SAB to DK (twelve letters, 1979-1986) [from: Oxford Yiddish III (1995), pp. 937-962]

DK to SAB [unsent] (1976)

SAB’s MS on Soviet Yiddish submitted to Soviet Jewish Affairs

DK replies to SJA editor L. Hirszowicz on queries on MS (15 February 1977)

JRUL to DK (4 April 1979)

DK to SAB (14 Aug. 1979)

SAB to DK (18 Sept. 1979)

DK to SAB (10 Oct. 1979)

SAB to DK (5. Nov. 1979)

DK to SAB (12 Dec. 1979)

DK to SAB (28 Dec. 1979)

SAB to DK (31 Jan. 1980)

DK to SAB (20 April 1980)

DK to SAB (24 April 1980)

SAB to DK (25 July 1980)

DK to SAB (17 Aug. 1980)

DK to SAB (1 Jan. 1981)

SAB to DK (12 July 1981)

DK to SAB (8 Aug. 1981)

Notice of SAB’s 90th birthday (Toronto, 13 Dec. 1981)

DK to SAB (Dec. 1981 [telegram])

DK to SAB (24 Dec. 1981)

SAB to DK (23 May 1982)

SAB to Hugh Denman (20 July 1982)

SAB’s list of writings sent to DK (1983)

DK to SAB (3 March 1984)

DK to SAB (18 Jan. 1985)

SAB to DK (28 April 1985)

DK to SAB (9 May 1985)

DK to SAB (7 Oct. 1985)

SAB to DK (15 Oct. 1985)

DK to SAB (27 Oct. 1985)

DK to SAB (1 Nov. 1985)

SAB’s paper ‘Old Yiddish Manuscripts’ for the Winter Symposium (Autumn 1985)

SAB to DK (20 Nov. 1985)

DK to SAB (29 Nov. 1985)

SAB to DK (10 Dec. 1985)

SAB’s text for telegram to first Oxford Winter Symposium on Yiddish (Dec. 1985)

DK/CH/DBK to SAB (23 Dec. 1985)

SAB to DK (26 Jan. 1986)

SAB to DK (26 Feb. 1986)

DK to SAB (3 April 1986)

SAB to DK (8 June 1986)

SAB to DK (12 Feb. 1987)

DK to SAB (10 April 1987)

DK/DBK to SAB (11 Dec. 1987 [telegram])

YL Arbeitman to SAB (6 June 1988)

Oxford Program in Yiddish papers (in the Birnbaum papers)

Obituary by Dovid Katz in Oksforder Yidish II (1991)

New York Times obituary for SAB (4 Jan. 1990)

DK’s notes and short memoir on the letters

Note: Letters from SAB are from DK’s archive. DK’s letters in SAB’s archive were kindly photocopied and sent in 1999 by his son Dr. David Birnbaum of Toronto, with thanks to Vivian Felsen for enabling the introductions that resulted in assembling the above archive.

Florence Guggenheim

(Florence Guggenheim-Grünberg)

1898—1989
———

FG to DK (4 Oct. 1979)

DK to FG (16 Dec. 1979)

FG to DK (30 Dec. 1979)

DK to FG (25 Feb. 1980)

DK to FG (20 April 1980)

DK to FG (30 April 1980)

DK to FG (16 June 1980)

RW to DK (17 Aug. 1980)

DK to RW (4 Sept. 1980)

RW to DK (17 Sept. 1980)

DK to FG (1 Jan. 1981)

FG to DK (21 Jan. 1981)

DK to FG (1 March 1981)

DK to FG (17 Jan. 1985)

Obituary by Johannes Brosi in Oksforder Yidish I (1990)

DK’s notes

 

 

 

 

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Will Working Group Have Courage to Just Say No to New Wave of Building & Profit from the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery? And — a Tale of Two Green Buildings



OPINION | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH ISSUES | CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER

Is this what “Jewish cemetery restoration in Holocaust-stricken Europe” looks like? For details of the results here of new builds and refurbishments on Jewish cemeteries, click on the image. As the buildings on the cemetery were going up, there was a long parade of government (and builders’) assurances that the dignity of the cemetery would never be violated there. Photo by William Pahl for DefendingHistory.com

by Dovid Katz

On the 4th of May this year, Defending History published the official document issued by the Office of the Prime Minister of Lithuania announcing the members appointed to the latest commission (“Working Group”) on the fate of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in the historic Shnípishok district, today’s Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius). In the accompanying Opinion piece, the DH community expressed the view that “Never before has a state commission been empaneled on such a ‘Water is wet’ question. Of course the capital’s last Soviet eyesore (and symbol of brutal foreign domination) should be demolished and the 500 year old Vilna Jewish Cemetery restored. […] The argument that it can’t be touched because its preservation status is sacred and immutable to the end of time is an insult to modern democratic Lithuania and all who hold her dear.”

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Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Christian-Jewish Issues, Conference of European Rabbis (CER), Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, The 2023 'Working Group' on the Future of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Will Working Group Have Courage to Just Say No to New Wave of Building & Profit from the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery? And — a Tale of Two Green Buildings

Defending the History of: Yiddish at Oxford



OPINION  |  YIDDISH AFFAIRS

Under the leadership of the visionary founder of modern Jewish studies at Oxford University, Dr. David Patterson (1922–2005), the academic research and teaching institution which he created became for around two decades a major world center of Yiddish studies. That institution was the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies (since renamed the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies). Indeed, it was Yiddish in the last quarter of the twentieth century that catapulted the Centre from just another sleepy Hebrew studies unit to a world-class center in advanced studies, including successful doctoral programs that provided a generation of (today’s) professors, and seminal publications in English and Yiddish that will be there for centuries to come. The kind of thing that the current twenty-first century incarnation of the same institution might well look back on with pride and even some nostalgia.

Among today’s scholars, educators, authors and personalities in the wider arts who were attracted to come and study Yiddish by our team, enabled at each stage by Dr. Patterson (in an array of settings ranging from weekly classes through summer courses to doctoral programs) at the Centre between the 1970s and 1990s are Prof. Marion Aptroot, Dr. Helen Beer, Prof. James Dingley, Prof. Jennifer Dowling, Prof. Gennady Estraikh, Mr. Elliot Gertel, Prof. Christopher Hutton, Dr. Devra Kay, Prof. Dov-Ber Kerler, Ms. Miri Koral, Dr. Holger Nath, Prof. Ritchie Robertson, Ms. Elinor Robinson, Mr. David Schneider, Prof. Robert Moses Shapiro, Prof. Astrid Starck, Dr. Heather Valencia, Prof. Nina Warnke, Mr. Tim Whewell, among many others. The first BA option in Yiddish was introduced at Oxford University (Faculty of Modern Languages) in 1982, and the doctoral program was inaugurated in 1984. After some years it was awarded a citation of excellence by the Modern Languages Faculty, signed by its then head. These were all achievements of historic order for the small, fragile and frankly still struggling academic field of Yiddish.

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Posted in United Kingdom, Yiddish Affairs, Yiddish at Oxford | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Defending the History of: Yiddish at Oxford

The American Hebrew Day School Boycott of Yiddish: ‘Aleichem Sholem’ and Other Documents from the 1972-1974 Yeshivah of Flatbush Dispute



by Aleichem Sholem staff member (and art director) Eli S. Rosenzweig (from issue no. 4, p. 2, 1974)

Preface

In the 1970s, one could still hear an older set of reasonings for the boycott of the study of Yiddish in any American Jewish (/Hebrew) day school: “It’s a primitive ghetto-mentality (and not very nice sounding) galut language (or corrupt jargon) good for the Communists and the Hasidim and those who hate Hebrew and Israel. It would be ridiculous to include it, especially now that it’s a completely dead language.” Nowadays one hears delicatized, politer reformulations of the foregoing, plus less polemic explanations: “It would just be too much on top of English, Hebrew, and one of the major foreign languages. Sorry, it’s a curriculum issue, there’s no time.”

Looking back at Aleichem Sholem, from my high school years (ages 15-18), I am delighted to report that in Nov. 2004, I had a wonderful evening of peace, reconciliation, humor and “speaking only Yiddish as a matter of principle, at the insistence of the hosts” at the Manhattan high rise apartment of Rabbi David Eliach and Dr. Yaffa Eliach at their gracious invitation when I was in New York that month for the publication of Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of YiddishOn a much sadder note, and with lifelong feelings of some indirect guilt: our beloved Talmud teacher Rabbi Oscar (Yechezkal) Lichtman, the school’s major embodiment of East European style Talmudic study (he had studied with the legendary Rabbi Aaron Kotler) was fired once our class graduated, some time had gone by and the issues were out of the public eye, and told it was because of his support for “the Yiddish.” He relocated to Chicago to start a yeshiva there, and passed away in 2007.

The materials below are being collected not only in the interests of those who will fairly study these often misunderstood events of the early 1970s in New York. This little project is dedicated to a long overdue twenty-first century fulsome, serious, proud and successful introduction of Yiddish studies into the curriculum of the American (and international) Hebrew and Jewish day school movement, which can only be enriched and enhanced by enabling hundreds of thousands of pupils to know the language of their own recent ancestors, of a great world literature and of the unique and vast heritage of East European Ashkenazic Jewry.

  — Dovid Katz (Sept. 2022)

  1. Yiddish Forward (Forverts): Dovid Katz, “51 talmidim in Fletbush yeshive hayskul farlangen ayntsufirn limed fun yidish” [51 Students at Flatbush Yeshiva High School Demand Inclusion of Study of Yiddish” in Forverts, 17 April 1972, p. 5 [plus front page news of Apollo 16 moon landing and bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong].

  2. Yiddish Forward (Forverts): Dovid Katz, “Nokhamol vegn yidish in der fletbush yeshiva hayskul” [Again About Yiddish at Flatbush Yeshiva High School] (letter to the editor) in Forverts, 12 June 1972, p. 5 [plus article on project for Jewish/Yiddish day school(s) in N.Y. plus front page news on UN Security Council session to adopt means of countering airplane hijacking].

  3. New York Post: Bernard Bard, “Yiddish Rebels Upset Yeshiva” in The New York Post, 17 August 1972, pp. 2, 38 [apology was received for misspelling of “Dovid”…], [plus front page news of former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark returning to Washington from his visit to North Vietnam].

  4. Aleichem Sholem, no. 1 (Aug.-Sept. 1972).

  5. Aleichem Sholem, no. 2 (Winter 1972).

  6. Aleichem Sholem, no. 3 (Spring 1973).

  7. Aleichem Sholem, no. 4 (Oct. 1973).

  8. Aleichem Sholem, no. 5 (Summer 1974).

  9. A 1975 letter writing campaign to principals of major Hebrew day schools resulted in one sympathetic letter, from Dr. Abraham Zuroff of BTA (Brooklyn Talmudical Academy = Yeshivah University High School for Boys). See 2014 obituary for Dr. A. Zuroff. Question: Does the successor school include Yiddish in the third decade of the 21st century?
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In Honor of Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja) on her 100th Birthday (2022)


[LAST UPDATE]

by Dovid Katz

Compilation of articles, documentaries, videos, and photos. Plus: from the saga of 2008

See Defending History’s Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky Section

Note: This page is a work in progress. A number of older documents, articles, photographs, and recordings remain to be digitized, catalogued, and posted.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja), Film, History, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on In Honor of Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Brancovskaja) on her 100th Birthday (2022)

Exotic Antisemitism? Declaring a Soviet Ruin to be a National Treasure — to Keep an Old City-Center Jewish Cemetery Verily Underground?



OPINION  |  ANTISEMITISM  |  OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY  |  CEMETERIES  | HUMAN RIGHTS  |  LITVAK AFFAIRS

by Dovid Katz

Antisemitism takes many forms in the twenty-first century. It includes the religion-based, the anti-Israel-based, the globalization-based, the envy-based, and the drunk-violence based — all the way to sophisticated and elegant forms that are so sublimated that it is hard to discern what’s what. In Eastern Europe, some rather exotic forms flourish: hatred of remnant local Jewish communities (who know the truth about the Holocaust-relevant roles played by local nationalists during the Holocaust years of 1941-1944/45) alongside love of rich, distant foreign Jews (who can be charmed right to the high heavens with medals, junkets and photo-ops to help underpin Double Genocide revisionism — and sometimes cover for glorification of local collaborators — as part, naturally, of “Holocaust remembrance” or “commemoration of the victims of equal genocidal regimes”).

Then there is the occasionally encountered East European love of substantial Jewish sacred sites that are suitably far from the center of town (“best place is the forest, you know!”) and provide a fine niche in-season tourism without upsetting the ethnic-purity concocted versions of town-center history that want it to be say pure Ukrainian (Lviv/Lvov/Lemberg), pure Latvian (Riga), or pure Lithuanian (Vilnius/Vilna/Wilno/Vílne).

The hard fought battle to keep the convention center out of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery was won last summer (report in the AJ). It will go down in history as a victory for Lithuania and all the country’s true friends. Now comes Part II.

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Dovid Katz, Human Rights, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Exotic Antisemitism? Declaring a Soviet Ruin to be a National Treasure — to Keep an Old City-Center Jewish Cemetery Verily Underground?

Bravo! Lithuania Abandons “Convention Center in the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery”



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

VILNIUS—Congratulations were pouring in this morning as soon as Lithuania’s media, led by Alfa.lt’s ace reporter, Arvydas Jockus, one of the few to have provided balanced reports throughout the saga, reported on the Lithuanian government’s decision, led by Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, to abandon the project to cite a national convention center in the heart of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery at Piramónt, in the Shnípishok section of Vilna (today’s Šnipiškės in modern Vilnius). The Alfa.lt report was followed by BNS (Baltic News Service) confirmation, carried by Lrytas.lt, the business news portal Verslo zinios (vz.lt), as well as 15min.lt, Diena.ltKauno diena, and visosnaujienos.e2.lt, among others.  JTA has reported the new development (and its report carried, inter alia, by Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post, Enlace Judío, and the Forward). Ben Cohen’s originally researched article followed in New York’s Algemeiner Journal.

Ben Cohen in The Algemeiner

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Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Human Rights, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Bravo! Lithuania Abandons “Convention Center in the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery”

Video Released of Marius Ivaškevičius’s Interview with Dovid Katz



VILNIUS—Famed Lithuanian playwright Marius Ivaškevičius interviewed Dovid Katz as his Vilnius apartment on 20 March 2017 as part of the filming for Tzvi Kritzer’s documtentary “The Last Sunday in August” about the slaughter of the Jews of Malát (today: Molėtai) Lithuania. The much more general interview offers sweeping discourse on the Lithuanian Holocaust and its legacies, and sundry difficult related issues. There was a cameo appearance  by  the film’s producer Tzvi Kritzer. The footage released  is unedited but not complete. Unfortunately, the beginning, with Marius’s detailed opening statement and set of questions, is missing from this footage. The documentary, released in 2018, is on youtube.

Posted in Arts, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on the Postwar "Forest Brothers", Double Genocide, Dovid Katz, Film, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Malát (Molėtai), News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Video Released of Marius Ivaškevičius’s Interview with Dovid Katz

Lithuania Hears Pleas and (For Now?) Cancels Funding for Convention Center Project in Old Jewish Cemetery



OPINION  | HUMAN RIGHTS | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH ISSUES  |  CEMETERIES & MASS GRAVES  |  OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY AT PIRAMÓNT | OPPOSITION TO ‘CONVENTION CENTER  IN THE CEMETERY’ PROJECT |INTERNATIONAL PETITION

by Andrius Kulikauskas

A Victory for Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year’s

On December 16, 2020, the sixth day of Hanukkah, defenders of the oldest Jewish cemetery in Vilnius (at Piramont-Šnipiškės) won a major, decisive, surprising, timeless victory. Lithuania’s government, acting on our campaign’s and Seimas member Kęstutis Masiulis’s proposals to the Seimas (parliament) Budget and Finance Committee, struck from the 2021 budget all funding for the reconstruction of the Vilnius Sports Palace into a Vilnius Congress Center. This building, which the Soviets had erected in the middle of the Cemetery, had fallen into disuse. The Lithuanian government acquired the building in 2015 with plans to remake it as a center for international conferences, further desecrating the Cemetery for untold years to come. Thankfully, the newly elected Government has eliminated funding.

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Posted in Andrius Kulikauskas, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Christian-Jewish Issues, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Lithuania Hears Pleas and (For Now?) Cancels Funding for Convention Center Project in Old Jewish Cemetery

Sanitizing Mass Murder: A Historical Novelette



OPINION  |  LITVAK AFFAIRS  |  (AB)USE OF JEWISH STUDIES FOR HISTORICAL REVISIONISM  |  YIDDISH AFFAIRS  | YIVO IN LITHUANIA  | HUMOR (OF SORTS)

by Saul Chapnick  

from today’s TIMES OF ISRAEL

PREFACE: This is a “must-tell” story. It has, for too long, been deliberately kept away from you, the public. It is a fictionalized account of actual events. This tale has all the components of modern day noire: a lone hero, a jaded country, not admitting to its murderous genocidal past, and a once revered institution, experiencing a moral dilemma that could affect her very existence. 

This is the story of Dr. Raphael L. Hatulay and what he has witnessed over the years between the goings on with what we shall call, ASHKI and the Republic of Fenwick. During this process Professor Hatulay has lost almost everything he worked for in life, but he is still fighting for what is right and just. This story deserves to be told.  You deserve to hear it.

“What is the stated mission of a non-profit institution?”  the Public Health professor asked his students nearly five decades ago.

Depending on the agency, the answers provided from the students differed about the stated mission: from feeding the hungry to educating the masses to caring for the elderly.

“Wrong. Wrong, Wrong! Lies, lies, lies!” retorted the professor, who was also the director of a major governmental agency. “The main purpose of charitable organizations and nonprofits is one thing, and one thing only, continuity and survival, no matter what and no matter who gets in the way. Nothing else matters!”

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Humor (Of Sorts), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Saul Chapnick, Yiddish Affairs, Yivo Manipulated? | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Sanitizing Mass Murder: A Historical Novelette

On the (Ab)use of Law to “Fix” Holocaust History



OPINION  |  DOUBLE GENOCIDE  |  FREE SPEECH  |  STATES’ MANIPULATION OF HISTORY

by Dovid Katz

This comment appeared in Mémoires en Jeu (Memory at Stake), no. 9, (2010).

In recent years, a number of eastern EU and NATO member states (plus Ukraine) have been constructing components of their official(and protected-by-law) national narratives on heroes who were collaborators, or even perpetrators in the Holocaust on the grounds that they were “anti-Soviet heroes.”1 These countries indeed had to face two Soviet occupations (1939/1940–41 and 1944/45–1991), and the occupation by Nazi Germany (1941-1944/5). The “liberating” state was also the author of major crimes such as repressions, deportations, forced labor and executions, and the statutes of post-Soviet Europe lacked a text on the crimes of communism. The ensuing moral problem is as follows: while these States would have legitimate heroes who struggled for freedom against dictatorial Soviet domination, they also honor those who participated in the Holocaust and even criminalize criticism against them.

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Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, Dovid Katz, Estonia, EU, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Free Speech & Democracy, History, Latvia, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Prague "Platform", State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on On the (Ab)use of Law to “Fix” Holocaust History

Curious History of a Yiddish Professorship at Vilnius University & its “Vilnius Yiddish Institute”


LAST UPDATE



YIDDISH AND JUDAIC STUDIES MANIPULATED FOR HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM  | VILNIUS YIDDISH INSTITUTE  |  BORNS JEWISH STUDIES PROGRAM AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY  |  RICHARD MAULLIN

Its Prehistory (1990-1999), History (1999-2010) and Posthistory (2010-2018) from the Year of Lithuania’s Declaration of Independence Onward

CAN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES STILL WRITE INDIVIDUALS OUT OF HISTORY IN POST-SOVIET SPACE? DO VILNIUS UNIVERSITY’S DEANS AND RECTOR APPROVE OF THE PRACTICE? CAN A PAST PROFESSOR WITH A PERFECT RECORD OVER 11 YEARS (NO COMPLAINTS, NO INCIDENTS) BE WRITTEN OUT OF THE UNIVERSITY’S HISTORY AND DEFAMED IN THE UNIVERSITY’S NAME ON ORDERS OF SOMEONE AT THE “INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION FOR THE EVALUATION OF THE CRIMES OF THE NAZI AND SOVIET REGIMES IN LITHUANIA” (THE “RED-BROWN COMMISSION“)?

A “for the record” page in progress, developed in response to repeated public statements by the current director of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, a member of the state-sponsored Commission on Nazi and Soviet crimes, claiming that Defending History’s editor (a) was never a professor at the university, (b) if he was an elementary Yiddish alphabet teacher paid by some surfers in California, he got fired for not turning up to work. Further documents are being processed for inclusion in the bizarre but curiously telling chapter of the history of Yiddish Studies in the 21st century. The political manipulation (ranging from West European far-left to East European far-right) of Yiddish-less “Yiddish” is a theme in the final chapter of Yiddish and Power (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) by the Yiddishist in question, Dovid Katz.

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Bloomington-Borns Program Manipulated?, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja), Free Speech & Democracy, Holocaust Policies of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Richard Maullin, Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Curious History of a Yiddish Professorship at Vilnius University & its “Vilnius Yiddish Institute”

Alexandra Kudukis Interviews Dovid Katz in The Lithuania Tribune



VILNIUS—The following  interview of DH editor Dovid Katz by Alexandra Kudukis appeared in the Lithuania Tribune today.

Alexandra Kudukis: Professor Katz, you shared that although you were not surprised by the decision, you believed the verdict only serves to divide and hold Lithuania as a culture and people back. Could you please expound on that thought?

My view, consolidated after twenty years of choosing to live in beautiful Vilnius, is that the Lithuanian people by and large have absolutely no interest in there being state-sponsored monuments to Holocaust perpetrators and collaborators or street names glorifying them. This is a kind of self-destructive obsession of a very small but very powerful elite that deals with “history” in government, government-sponsored research and public affairs, agencies and history departments.

Here, in this most delightfully democratic of countries, the one exception is freedom to disagree about history! My dear friend Evaldas Balčiūnas, for example, did the country a huge service by publishing a series of articles, starting in 2012, in both Lithuanian and English, on the topic of “Why does the state commemorate murderers?” He lost his job and career, and was lugged into court for useless kangaroo hearings for years (for the saga in English, please see his section in Defending History, here: (please scroll down to May 2014). In fact, virtually all who have spoken up on these issues have seen our jobs come to a rapid end (see a summary here).

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Holocaust History Trial Slated for 15 January in Vilnius


[LAST UPDATE]

OPINION  |  VILNIUS GENOCIDE CENTER  |  VILNIUS GENOCIDE MUSEUM  |  GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS  |  ACADEMIC BACKGROUND

As trials of alleged criminals come to an end, is the era of ‘history on trial’ getting underway?

OUR TAKE

Holocaust perpetrator: glorified in marble on the central boulevard of an EU capital?

On January 15th, 2019, at 10 AM, a momentous historic court case will unfold in Vilnius, Lithuania, scheduled to start at the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court at Žygimantų 2 in the heart of the capital. Challenged by a call for removal of Holocaust collaborator Jonas Noreika from the pantheon of national heroes (including street names, memorials and an inscribed stone block on the capital’s central boulevard), the state-sponsored “Genocide Center”, a bastion of far-right extremism that, in the opinion of many, does grave damage to the image of modern democratic Lithuania, will be defending Noreika using the hard-earned tax euros of the nation’s noble citizens. See the remarkable 2018 Salon magazine essay by Noreika’s granddaughter, American author and educator Silvia Foti; DH report by Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas on the action brought by Grant Gochin. Documents include the original query (15 June), Genocide Center’s response (19 July), Mr. Gochin’s legal complaint (10 August) and the Genocide Center’s response (1 Oct.).

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Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Genocide Center (Vilnius), History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Holocaust History Trial Slated for 15 January in Vilnius

The Yiddish Conundrum: A Cautionary Tale for Language Revivalism



YIDDISH PROJECTS   |  YIDDISH AFFAIRS

by Dovid Katz

This paper appeared this month as: Dovid Katz, “The Yiddish Conundrum: A Cautionary Tale for Language Revivalism” in: G. Hogan-Brun  and B. O’Rourke  (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and Communities (Palgrave Macmillan: London 2019), pp.  553-587.

For those who cherish the goal of preserving small, endangered languages, some developments (and lessons) from the case of Yiddish might be illuminating, though not in the sense of some straightforward measure of ‘success’ or ‘failure’. There is no consensus on the interpretation of the current curious — and contentious — situation. If the issues raised might serve as a point of departure for debate on its implications for other languages, particularly the potential damage from exaggeratedly purist ‘corpus planning movements’ as well as potentially associated ‘linguistic disrespect’ toward the majority of the living speakers of the ‘language to be saved’, then this paper’s modest goal will have been realized. Moreover, the perils of a sociolinguistic theory overapplied by a coterie with access to funding, infrastructure and public relations need to be studied.[1]

Ultimately, the backdrop for study of the current situation is the pre-Holocaust status quo ante of a population of Yiddish speakers for which estimates have been in the range of ten to thirteen million native speakers.[2]

Nowadays, on the one hand, millions of dollars a year are spent on ‘saving Yiddish’ among ‘modern Jews’ (secular and ‘modern religious’), interested non-Jews. People may be academically, culturally, literarily, musically, sentimentally, ideologically, and otherwise attracted. The number of Yiddish speaking families these efforts have generated is in dispute, but it is under a dozen. A high proportion of those hail from a postwar movement of normativist language revision, on the Ausbau model of Heinz Kloss. This conscious process has taken their variety ever further from native Yiddish speech of any naturally occurring variety while retaining a steadfast, profound commitment to actually using the language in daily life. Lavish subsidies provide for a newspaper, magazines, myriad programs and a few large architectural edifices dedicated, one way or another, to ‘saving Yiddish’. In academia, endowments have provided a number of positions that are ironically known in the field as ‘poetry fellowships’ in so far as their incumbents may try to be ‘Yiddish writers’ while under no pressure to produce successful doctoral programs that would be generating new generations of scholar specialists who can themselves write and teach in the language (say for advanced courses). In the case of some Yiddish chairs, the elderly East European born donor ‘had the chutzpah to go ahead and die’, leaving his or her children amenable to a program’s ‘rapid enhancement’ via conversion from the low-student-number (‘failing’) Yiddish to the ‘higher student takeup’ (‘winning’) menu of ‘Judaic Studies’ or ‘comparative Jewish literature’ courses.[3] Much of the current ‘language movement’ is focused on ‘Yiddish products’ in English (and other national languages) about Yiddish that have engendered fundraising campaigns for buildings and centers, without seriously attempting to produce new speakers, let alone writers. This has been made possible by what I have called massive American-style PR driven ‘delinguification’ of Yiddish (Katz, 2015: 279-290). The satire, ‘A conference of Yiddish savers’ by Miriam Hoffman, the last major actual Yiddish author born in Eastern Europe before the war, now based in Coral Springs, Florida, continues to delight readers from all sides of the argument (Hoffman 1994). Note that none of this is to suggest that any of these efforts are ‘wasted’.

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Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Ends Up with DH Editor in Hit Job by Neo-Nazi Blogger



How did Lithuania’s Foreign Minister End Up Together with Defending History’s Editor in Hit Job by Nation’s Top Neo-Nazi Blogger?

“By doing the right thing, and calling for the removal of a central Vilnius plaque that honors a brutal Nazi collaborator”

LATEST ADDITION TO THE SERIES “OUR EDITOR IN THE NEO-NAZI IMAGINATION”

See also selection of the racist, homophobic, and misogynist output of a Baltic nation’s far-right blogger who is said to be an official in the Economy Ministry

 

There are ome strange twists in the 21st century history of Holocaust collaborator Jonas Noreika (who continues to be honored by street names, plaques, engraved stones and more).

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Lithuania’s Intensive Spring Season for New Brand of Holocaust Denial



OPINION  |  LITHUANIA  |  FREE SPEECH  |  COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED  | USA  | NEW BRITAIN, CONNECTICUT

The team at Defending History has witnessed quite a lot in Eastern Europe over the last decade when it comes to Holocaust obfuscation and its related ills, including glorification of actual Holocaust collaborators, defamation of Holocaust survivors who joined the resistance, and a progressive chipping away at Western norms of free speech and tolerance. It is almost as if the Western powers don’t care whether folks in the “Eastern EU” have the same rights of expression as others.

During these last few weeks, an unusually intensive convergence of events has been noticed here in Vilnius. To bring our loyal readers up to speed we thought it might be useful to summarize what’s been happening on the Lithuanian Holocaust obfuscation and history rewriting front. Links to articles are included for those interested in reading more.

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Virtual Yiddish Mini-Museum of Jewish Life in Interwar Lithuania


 

APOLOGIES. THIS PAGE HAS MOVED HERE

https://defendinghistory.com/mini-museum-of-jewish-life-in-interwar-lithuania

 

Posted in Arts, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Mini-Museum of Jewish Life in Interwar Lithuania, Museums, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Virtual Yiddish Mini-Museum of Jewish Life in Interwar Lithuania

21st Century Lowpoint for Israeli Diplomacy? Ambassador Poses with Photos of Holocaust Collaborator



OPINION  |  ISRAEL PAGE  |  ISRAEL SECTION   |  HONORING COLLABORATORS  |  LEGACY OF JOE MELAMED  |  LEGACY OF DOV LEVIN  |  FOREIGN MINISTRIES AND THE HOLOCAUST

by Dovid Katz (Vilnius)

 

PHOTO: DELFI.LT

VILNIUS—Israel may have crossed a red line today when it was flaunted on the major News portal Delfi.lt here, both in Lithuanian and in English, that Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon had found the time this week to stage a demonstrative PR-photographed visit to the chief campaigner for the parliament’s decision less than one month ago to name 2018 in honor of Adolfas Ramanauskas — his daughter in Vilnius, Auksutė Ramanauskaitė-Skokauskienė, who is a prime icon of the ultranationalist camp that often glorifies various collaborators and participants in the Holocaust on the grounds that they were also anti-Soviet activists. The PR move came just after a major political commentator asked what Lithuania is getting in return for its staunch political support for the Netanyahu government.

UPDATES TO THIS ARTICLE: WEEKLY OF VILNIUS COMMENTARY; AMBASSADOR’S BETRAYAL OF HOLOCAUST HISTORY A FIASCO AS LITHUANIA VOTES ANYWAY AGAINST U.S. DECISION TO MOVE ITS EMBASSY (PARTING WITH NEIGHBORING LATVIA)

One of the PR photos released shows the ambassador posing underneath adulatory photos of the 1941 pro-Nazi militiaman (from various other periods in his life). Of course Lithuania has a vast number of inspirational historical heroes, including many anti-Soviet heroes, who were not Holocaust collaborators, and state decisions to honor collaborators cause untold pain to survivors, their families, and the remnant Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. They all send a message that becomes part of the history-revision campaign to downgrade the Holocaust in the context of “Double Genocide” revisionism.

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Posted in Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas), Dovid Katz, Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Human Rights, Israel, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 21st Century Lowpoint for Israeli Diplomacy? Ambassador Poses with Photos of Holocaust 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.

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