Already this deeply meaningful historic site, of high significance to Holocaust history in Lithuania, has been noticeably damaged and major “state-employed history specialists” have publicly opposed its being preserved. Powerful Lithuanian agencies and figures want the Jewish fort to disappear in the framework of Holocaust and World War II history revisionism espoused by the ultranationalist far right that wields disproportionate power in some Eastern EU member states. They want the Jewish partisans to be regarded as wanton bandits who must not be commemorated.

By contrast, the white-armbander LAF butchers of thousands of Lithuanian Jews before German forces even arrived are feted as “national heroes who led an uprising against the Soviets” (utter fake history, the Soviets were fleeing Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in human history, not the local Jew-killer white-armbanders). Shamefully, the Kaunas war museum is trumpeting events to “celebrate” the 85th anniversary of the “uprising” that was, in real life, the outbreak of the slaughter of Lithuania’s Jewish citizens. To add insult to injury, the museum is named for Vytautas the Great, the grand duke of Lithuania whose charters for Jewish rights (1388 and 1389) were revoked in writing by the LAF masterminds sitting in 1941 Berlin during preparation for the Nazi invasion of Lithuania. He would be turning over in his grave at this travesty, the travesty of glorifying, at a museum named for him, those who overnight turned his shining-light example of human rights and equality of peoples in medieval Europe, that in many respects lasted six centuries, into the most odious chapter of Lithuanian history.

The political pressure from Lithuania is so intense that a German elder statesman renowned for his lifetime of work combating antisemitism and telling the truth about the Holocaust, who had penned an appeal to the Lithuanian government on the fate of the fort, withdrew it just before publication, he explained, on the basis of guidance from a former Lithuanian member of the European Parliament who is of the same political affiliation and told him it would be sorted out with the “Jewish authorities” in Vilnius. In other words, the same the ersatz state-sponsored “official” restitution-fueled group that organized the PR bonanza a year ago intended to push the disappearing Jewish fort issue off the table: scrubbing down an old Jewish cemetery that has nothing to do with the issue at hand (going so far as to import a rabbi from Berlin for the grand ceremony to avoid the rabbi from Vilnius who knows all too well what is going on). More recently, the 45th Brigade was honored for that again by being the “first guests” of the new director of the state Jewish museum. You can’t make this stuff up. For details please see p. 1 of Defending History and its section on the fort.

Ms. Tkalec’s Berliner Zeitung report, beyond breaking the taboo, has managed to put all of it in its much deeper and wider historic context. She splendidly captures, with words and images, the sheer moral outrage at this army “returning here” given the unspeakable history and failure to publicly commit to the next-door Jewish partisan site’s preservation. That fort is now the scene of emptied beer cans and other remnants of partying by the nearby workers building the barracks for the thousands of German soldiers to soon be housed there.

Just one historical error must be pointed out regarding the historic information the author received from her named Holocaust professor source. Sadly, thousands of Lithuanian Jews were murdered in the days before the actual arrival (or actual takeover of power) by the invading Nazi army (or to use the terminology of Ms. Tkalec: pogroms did indeed break out before German rule).

To this day, the history of what survivors called The First Week (from 23 June 1941, the day after the launch of Barbarossa) is celebrated as some grand “local uprising against the Soviets” by the nationalist far right, and it continues, in deference to to them, to be utterly obfuscated even by some major historians who are long-time members of the Lithuanian government financed “International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania” (one of the leading engines of “Double Genocide” revisionism in Europe; the name itself is right out of Orwell).

The (truly major) historian she relied on, who has done absolutely splendid work on the rest of the history of the Lithuanian Holocaust, has for decades been a member of this “government history commission” (the very concept is a classic example of “Soviet in form, nationalist in content”). See Defending History’s section on the legacy of June 23rd 1941. A small selection of our own interviews with survivors of The First Week.

Accurate history of The First Week has been meticulously researched by many valiant historians over the years, including Yitzhak Arad, Valentinas Brandišauskas, Sir Martin Gilbert, Masha Greenbaum, Konrad Kwiet, Dov Levin, Dina Porat, Karen Sutton, and Liudas Truska, among others. In recent years, knowledge has been spread by publication of English translations of the Koniuchowsky collections of survivors’ testimonies, the first volume of which is online. 

But let us return to the main positive moral takeaway from Ms. Tkalec’s work.

Germany has a grand opportunity to insist on the fort’s rapid rescue from imminent loss, preserving Lithuania’s only major remnant of anti-Nazi resistance (a true favor to the country in the longer term!). To grab with both hands this magnificent opportunity for Holocaust education of the thousands of German soldiers it is sending “back” to Lithuania who will be living in barracks just down the road from the Jewish resistance fort. To just do the right thing.