Tag Archives: Lithuanian Holocaust

For Vilnius’s 700 Year Celebrations, Antisemitic ‘Artists’ Launch Vicious New Holocaust-‘Justifying’ Souvenir



ANTISEMITISM  |  700 YEARS OF VILNIUS CELEBRATIONS  |  POLITICS OF MEMORY  |  DOUBLE GENOCIDE

VILNIUS—This commemorative envelope was purchased this morning, on Easter Sunday, on Pilies gatve, Vilnius’s historic Castle Street that has become the city’s center for souvenir stalls and shops. It is an older antisemitic envelope design seen many times before, picturing the Jews of Kaunas allegedly welcoming the Soviet army into town during World War II (i.e. blaming the Jews for the 1940 Soviet occupation as excuse for the genocide — the Lithuanian Holocaust — that followed a year later, wiping out some 96.4% of Lithuanian Jewry, with thousands murdered in  late June 1941 before the Germans even took over).

 

The caption “explains”  (in Lithuanian) that “on June 15, 1940, numerous crowds of Kaunas Jews welcome the occupying Red Army (archive photo)”. No mention of the vastly larger numbers of Lithuanians, Poles and Russians who turned out. No mention that this canard continues to be used to “explain” the Lithuanian Holocaust. No mention of the failure of the nation’s army to defend the country or the president’s fleeing the country. But plenty of room to link (in English) the antisemitic canard to the current 700 year Vilnius anniversary festivities. Are Western tourists presumed to be idiots?

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Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Double Genocide, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Vilnius | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on For Vilnius’s 700 Year Celebrations, Antisemitic ‘Artists’ Launch Vicious New Holocaust-‘Justifying’ Souvenir

DH’s 2023 Person of the Year: Evaldas Balčiūnas



PERSON OF THE YEAR  |  LITHUANIA  |   EVALDAS BALČIŪNAS  |  LITVAK AFFAIRS  | HUMAN RIGHTS  |  HISTORY

In the decade since Evaldas Balčiūnas began informing the English-speaking world, in a series of articles in Defending History, of the details, scope, and pain of his own country pursuing a state policy of glorifying Holocaust collaborators and perpetrators, the phenomenon has moved from local shadows to the bright lights of open and free debate across the democratic world. His 2012 exposé of Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika ultimately led to the publication in America of a bold new book, The Nazi’s Granddaughter by Sylvia Foti. But back here in Lithuania, Evaldas was lugged into court for years and years on kangaroo charges and harassed extensively. The Defending History team was there at each hearing to provide moral support. The day will surely come when Evaldas Balčiūnas — journalist, educator, rebel, author, and historian — will be honored by Jewish and Holocaust history and remembrance groups internationally, by humanists everywhere, and last but not least, by his own country, as its fearless grand  ethicist of the earlier twenty-first century.

Editor’s memoir

Evaldas Balčiūnas

In 2011, when our small Defending History team headed out (as we did each year) to Kaunas to monitor and document the 2011 neo-nazi city center march, an event that glorified Holocaust collaborators, we went for a coffee after the event. There, our mentor who never missed a march before his final illness, Milan Chersonski (1937–2021), the longtime Vilnius Yiddish theatre director and editor for some dozen years of the Lithuanian Jewish community’s quadrilingual newspaper, Jerusalem of Lithuania, told us (in Yiddish, of course): “Look, there is one young Lithuanian who has more courage than the rest of the country combined. He has been writing articles on the tragedy of his country’s government organs glorifying Holocaust collaborators in the public space. And unlike others, he’ll be happy for Defending History to publish them in English translation. Trust me, his articles are more important that all of ours that come from Jewish pens.”

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Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Defending History's Person of the Year, Evaldas Balčiūnas, Free Speech & Democracy, History, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on DH’s 2023 Person of the Year: Evaldas Balčiūnas

No Sir. This is No Photoshop.



VILNIUS—Shortly after Defending History published the news yesterday that Dr. Arūnas Bubnys, longtime chief historian at Lithuania’s state sponsored far-right Genocide Center had been nominated by the speaker of parliament as the center’s new director, news published also by New York’s Algemeiner Journal,  a social media campaign began to try to spread a rumor that the DH photo of Dr. Bubnys proudly speaking less than a year ago under banner images of Holocaust collaborators Jonas Noreika and Kazys Škirpa was “photoshopped.” Two of DH’s Vilnius-based team, Julius Norwilla and Dovid Katz, monitored the event from start to finish. Their report appeared the same day, 23 June 2020, the 79th anniversary of the outbreak of the Lithuanian Holocaust. Instead of honoring the victims — defenseless Jewish citizens, often older rabbis and younger women brutalized and murdered by the “White Armbander” fascists  — the event, like many legitimized by Lithuanian government institutions, glorified the killers, who are invariably described as “heroic anti-Soviet rebels.” This is of course a patent historic nonsense. The USSR’s forces were fleeing Hitler’s invasion, Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in human history, not the local white-armbanded Jew-killers. While the Soviets were in power, the Hitler-backers and murderers of civilian neighbors now adulated as “anti-Soviet rebels” did not fire a single shot. Not even at a local rabbit.

See DH’s sections on Dr. Bubnys, the Genocide Center, and commemorations of 23 June 1941, as well as reviews  of his books on the Vilna Ghetto and on the Kovno (Kaunas) Ghetto.

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Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Dr. Arūnas Bubnys and State Holocaust Revisionism in Lithuania, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Human Rights, Kazys Škirpa, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika, Vilnius, Yitzhak Arad | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on No Sir. This is No Photoshop.

Timeline: Can a Foreign Gov. Plonk Monument to Alleged Nazi Collaborator in the Heart of New Britain, Connecticut?


[UPDATED]


 NEW BRITAIN’S PROPOSED MONUMENT FOR LEADER OF A 1941 HITLERIST MILITIA |  GLORIFYING COLLABORATORS  |  USA  |  LITHUANIA  |  CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS  | ANTISEMITISM & BIAS  |  HUMAN RIGHTS

SEE DEFENDING HISTORY’S NEW SECTION ON NEW BRITAIN, CONN. ISSUES

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Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Collaborators Glorified, Debates on Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, New Britain, Connecticut: Plans to Glorify Alleged Nazi Collaborator?, News & Views, Politics of Memory, United States | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Timeline: Can a Foreign Gov. Plonk Monument to Alleged Nazi Collaborator in the Heart of New Britain, Connecticut?

Premier Vilnius Showing of “Last Sunday in August” is Free and Open to Public



FILM AND THEATER  |  EVENTS  |  VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE  |  COMMEMORATIONS  |  MALÁT

Lat Sunday

All welcome at next Sunday’s Vilnius showing of the new film The Last Sunday in August about Malát (Molėtai). 24 September 2017 at 6 PM at the Ozas Multi Cinema, Ozo 18, Vilnius 08009. Admission free but pre-registration required (phone or SMS: +3706 718-6202 or +3706 153-9950). For background see DH’s Malát sectionTrailer for the film.

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Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Film, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Malát (Molėtai), News & Views | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Premier Vilnius Showing of “Last Sunday in August” is Free and Open to Public

A Heroic Narrative in Violation of Good Conscience


 


O P I N I O N

by Leonidas Donskis

 

The ceremonial reburial of the head of the Lithuanian Provisional Government (PG), Juozas Ambrazevičius-Brazaitis, which recently took place, and the tension and details associated with it, said more about Lithuania today than all the news and commentary over the past twenty years put together.

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Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Collaborators Glorified, Events, Genocide Center (Vilnius), History, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Leonidas Donskis, Lithuania, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on A Heroic Narrative in Violation of Good Conscience

Litvaks and their Descendants Issue Public Letter Calling for Change in Lithuanian Government’s Holocaust Policies


 


Text of the public letter follows. Queries may be sent to Professor Danny Ben-Moshe at: Danny.Ben-Moshe@vu.edu.au.  UPDATES: Covered by JTA and the Jewish Chronicle.


We the undersigned Litvaks — Jews of Lithuanian origin and their direct and immediate descendants — hereby express:

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Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, Dov Levin (1925 - 2016), Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (Fania Brancovskaja), Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Lord Janner of Braunstone, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, The Great SLS About-Face | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Yad Vashem, Causing Pain to Survivors with Participation in Lith. Parliament Conference Lauding Collaborators, Withdraws at Last Moment (after Defending History’s Plea)


UPDATE 1: On 27 June 2011 at 3:31 PM (Vilnius time), the Israeli Embassy in Riga (responsible for Lithuania as well as Latvia) emailed DefendingHistory.com to say that Yad Vashem’s participation in the event has been cancelled. This was confirmed in a further email from Yad Vashem at 3:56 PM. In Vilnius, however, the name of Yad Vashem and its designated representative continue to appear on programs and brochures, giving the impression that the event enjoys the formal participation of Yad Vashem. See our public query to Yad Vashem.

UPDATE 2: See Defending History’s eyewitness reports of Day 1 and Day 2 of the conference.

According to a conference program posted on the website of the Lithuanian Parliament, Yad Vashem is the only Jewish institution sending a representative to the latest conference mounted by the Lithuanian government in its campaign to downgrade the Holocaust and whitewash the Lithuanian Holocaust’s first murderers (the L.A.F. and other fascist groups), often by glorifying them as ‘freedom fighters’. The printed brochure for the conference, to be held on 29 and 30 June 2011, announces the event as a joint project of the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas) and the deeply antisemitic Genocide Research Center. One of the Center’s top ‘specialists’ participated in the recent neo-Nazi parade and went on to launch a public antisemitic campaign. He was neither removed from his post nor publicly reprimanded, as the season’s conferences plow ahead full steam.

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Posted in A 21st Century Campaign Against Lithuanian Holocaust Survivors?, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Israel, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Legacy of 23 June 1941, Lithuania, Museums, News & Views, Yad Vashem and Lithuania | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yad Vashem, Causing Pain to Survivors with Participation in Lith. Parliament Conference Lauding Collaborators, Withdraws at Last Moment (after Defending History’s Plea)

Lithuanian Parliament and Genocide Research Center planning 2011 Film to Sanitize (and Glorify?) the ‘Rebels’ of 1941


Some highly respected international scholars have been persuaded to participate in a film which some leaders of Holocaust Survivor organizations around the world fear will be a cover-up for the main ‘accomplishment’ of the LAF (Lithuanian Activist Front) and related fascist groups, and their local supporters. These groups, often identified by white armbands and known as white armbanders, had started to carry out murder, molestation and pillage of Jewish neighbors in dozens of locations even before the arrival of German Nazi forces in late June 1941. Many of the same killers went on to serve voluntarily as shooters in the annihilation of most of Lithuanian Jewry in the second half of 1941.

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Posted in Arts, Collaborators Glorified, Double Genocide, Film, Genocide Center (Vilnius), Legacy of 23 June 1941, News & Views, Politics of Memory | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Lithuanian Parliament and Genocide Research Center planning 2011 Film to Sanitize (and Glorify?) the ‘Rebels’ of 1941