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OPINION

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VILNIUS—In the present context, we are limiting this survey to the official German governmental and Bundeswehr public-relations apparatus active in connection with Panzerbrigade 45 in Lithuania. We are therefore not including serious journalistic treatments carried by institutions such as the Goethe-Institut, which is legally independent and has mixed public and self-generated funding, even where such treatments importantly discuss the Jewish partisan fort. Our concern here is narrower: what Germany’s own military and governmental communications machinery chooses to publicize about Panzerbrigade 45 and Jewish history in Lithuania, while not uttering  a syllable about the Jewish partisan fort right near its own training ground. As detailed in earlier reports, the arrival of the Panzerbrigade’s massive military infrastructure has already badly damaged the fort’s accessibility and has been responsible for rapid deterioration.

Given the solemn respect that both the Bundestag and the current German government have shown in repeated statement, it seems that there is a disturbing dissonance with the Lithuanian-related PR coming entirely out of the German state’s budget.

That official PR machinery is substantial. It includes the brigade’s own Panzerbrigade 45 Facebook page (20,000 followers)and official Instagram presence; the Bundeswehr website and Panzerbrigade 45 pages, with news reports, photographs and professionally produced videos; and the German Army’s Presse- und Informationszentrum des Heeres (PIZ Heer), the official Press and Information Centre of the Heer. Panzerbrigade 45 additionally maintains its own press operation at brigade headquarters in Vilnius, with dedicated media contacts and the address PzBrig45Presse@Bundeswehr.org. Official brigade releases are also distributed to the German press through the commercial Presseportal/news aktuell service; the distribution platform itself is private, but the material it carries in these cases originates with the Bundeswehr’s official press apparatus.

Bundestag/German gov. tracker for 2025-2026. Tracker of local campaign to defame the Jewish partisans: since 2006 and since 2025. Fania’s story from 2008. Video. 

Within this state communications system, Panzerbrigade 45 has repeatedly given prominent publicity to its cooperation with the Lithuanian Jewish-cemetery private NGO “Maceva” (whose earlier director was appointed head of the state Jewish museum after initiating the partnership with the Panzerbrigade) and to German soldiers cleaning historic Jewish cemeteries that do not abut the Panzerbrigade’s presence, that are all fenced in and solemnly protected by Lithuanian law.

The PR machine has produced repeated images of young soldiers scrubbing old Jewish gravestones in what is to some of Lithuania’s remaining Jews “a macabre ritual that begs the question of why the silence on the Vilna Partisans’ storied fort, that is at the doorstep of the Panzerbrigade 45’s grounds, that is neither fenced nor signposted, that is so directly relevant to the Holocaust education of the new German army arrival, and that the Bundestag and Government have pledged to preserve.”

Its Facebook page has presented this work as part of the brigade’s engagement with Jewish heritage and German historical responsibility, including the August 2026 feature Bewahrung jüdischen Erbes in Litauen, reporting work on hundreds of gravestones and emphasizing that this was already the brigade’s second joint undertaking with the cemetery-preserving NGO. The cemetery projects have therefore become a recurring and highly visible element in the brigade’s public image.

The “Maceva” cooperation has also entered official Bundestag reporting on German remembrance activities in Lithuania. Crucially, however, as noted above, Bundestag and Federal Government material has also discussed the surviving Jewish partisan camp in Rūdninkai and the need to preserve it. The issue is therefore not that the German state has never mentioned the fort. German parliamentary and governmental institutions plainly have.

Coverage in Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Der Spiegel, Berliner Zeitung, and Defending History.

The striking contrast lies specifically in Panzerbrigade 45’s own extensive PR operation. So far as we have been able to determine from its searchable Facebook and Instagram material, Bundeswehr publicity and official military press releases, the brigade has repeatedly showcased German soldiers cleaning centuries-old Jewish cemeteries elsewhere in Lithuania, while never publishing a comparable post or feature introducing its public to the surviving Jewish partisan fort in Rūdninkai Forest — the very area in which the brigade’s enormous new military presence and training infrastructure are being established. Official military publicity readily speaks about Rūdninkai as a brigade location, yet we have so far found no brigade-originated item explaining that the forest contains this extraordinary surviving site of Jewish armed resistance to the Nazis.

As far as our team has been able to ascertain, there has not been a single mention in Panzerbrigade 45’s own public-relations output of the deteriorating Jewish partisan fort in Rūdninkai Forest, close to the brigade’s own training area. If we have overlooked any such mention, we would be grateful if Panzerbrigade 45 would draw it to our attention.

Apart from outside comments placed on the brigade’s Facebook page, including ours, we have therefore so far found no instance in which Panzerbrigade 45 itself has brought the Jewish partisan fort to the attention of its substantial social-media and PR audience, even while Jewish-cemetery cleaning with “Maceva” has received repeated, positive and highly visible promotion through the brigade’s official communications channels. If we are wrong about this, please let us know and  we will immediately correct. Thank you.