OPINION | “GOOD WILL FOUNDATION” | GWF’s CAMPAIGN AGAINST VILNIUS’S ONE RESIDENT RABBI | US & ISRAELI MEMBERS OF THE BOARD PROVIDING LEGITIMIZATION [ARCHIVED] | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY ISSUES | TEXTBOOK CASE OF FAILURE OF RESTITUTION FOR VALUE OF PREWAR JEWISH RELIGIOUS PROPERTIES | STOLEN ELECTION SAGA | AJC MISADVENTURES IN LITHUANIA | CHABAD IN LITHUANIA | LITVAK AFFAIRS

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Shocking video of the assault on Vilnius’s one resident rabbi, Sholom Ber Krinsky, on 14 September 2026 by a security guard reportedly funded through the Good Will Foundation. The attack resulted in the rabbi being taken to hospital for emergency treatment. The incident occurred after the rabbi encountered Israeli tourists speaking Hebrew who asked to have a quick look inside Vilnius’s one functioning synagogue, and invited them in. Both visiting couples have issued eyewitness statements. Both would have been happy to submit to thorough security checks before entering. Neither couple expected to witness the rabbi being physically assaulted. See Defending History’s section documenting the saga.

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VILNIUS—The office of Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, Vilnius’s resident rabbi for the past 32 years, today released two letters received on 12 November: one from the official, state-restitution-funded “Lithuanian Jewish Community” (unsigned), and the other from the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO), signed by Nachliel Dison, a longtime member of the board of the “Good Will Foundation” (GWF), which distributes Lithuanian state restitution funds.

Instead of offering even the most rudimentary apology for the violent attack (see video) perpetrated against the rabbi on 14 September by a security guard reportedly funded through the Good Will Foundation, the two near-simultaneous letters present a remarkable contrast between bureaucratic formulations and the reality of physical violence.

The unsigned letter from the official Lithuanian Jewish Community makes no mention whatsoever of the assault. Instead, citing a purported review by security experts of the European Jewish Congress, without providing the review itself, it reprimands the rabbi for allegedly violating security procedures on 14 September and again on 4 November, and warns him against further breaches.

The WJRO letter signed by Nachliel Dison does acknowledge that the confrontation on 14 September “became physical,” but offers neither a direction mention nor a statement of regret or condemnation of the violence. Instead, it proceeds to defend the Good Will Foundation’s grant-making procedures, financial transparency and auditing arrangements, while assuring the rabbi that Chabad Lithuania, like other eligible applicants, is free to apply for funding. It also explicitly rejects the characterization of the GWF’s work and WJRO’s role presented in the rabbi’s correspondence.

The latter assurance is regarded by many here as disingenuous, given what critics describe as the de facto exclusion from meaningful restitution support of Jewish religious and cultural life in Vilnius outside the quango’s own circle of allies and beneficiaries, coupled with campaigns of personal denigration and, in Rabbi Krinsky’s case, the shocking episode of physical violence.

Defending History readers are invited to consult the site’s sections documenting the lamentable history of alleged abuse of the Lithuanian government’s generous restitution arrangements, and the embittered campaign against the city’s one resident rabbi specifically.

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