LAST JEWISH PARTISAN FORT IN EUROPE | HISTORY | BLAMING THE VICTIMS | GERMANY | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS

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OPINION

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Please ask your elected officials to contact the German embassy in your country:

Please rapidly mark, fence and protect the ground sacred to Holocaust survivors and their families that now abuts the forest training grounds of the new German Brigade arriving in the Lithuanian forests as part of NATO. The fort, where 100 Vilna Ghetto partisans found refuge and valiantly fought the Nazis, is disappearing by the day, used for late night partying by the barracks builders, and very soon, if not corrected, by thousands of German troops… 

For decades, partisans veteran Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (1922–2024) took thousands of visitors from around the world to this major historic site in the Lithuanian forest. What a splendid opportunity this is for genuine Holocaust education of the young German troops heading eastward. Video of Fania at the fort in 2007.

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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky showing us around the Jewish partisan fort, in her Vilna Yiddish, in 2007 (video). Her last request to future generations. DH’s section on the Jewish partisan fort.

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VILNIUS—The Defending History community here in Vilnius respectfully calls on colleagues in the Jewish Labor Bund (NY, Melbourne, etc), Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot (Israel); “Nusach Vilna” (NY), “Following Fania” (Facebook), Medem Center (Paris), Vilnius ORT school’s one-week Yiddish summer course; YIVO, and others around the world who honor the Vilna Jewish partisans who valiantly fought the Nazis. Please speak out. The Jewish partisans’ legacy is now being at once defamed and cancelled.

Please do not remain silent about the German government’s failure to date to commit to honoring, marking, fencing and preserving the still-striking remnants of the last Jewish partisan fort of the Vilna Ghetto partisans that — by the majestic hand of history — sit right next door in the forest to the German Army’s brand new Forty-Fifth Brigade arriving in Lithuania as part of NATO. The bulk of the soldiers haven’t even arrived yet, but builders of their barracks use the site and the underground wooden bunkers for partying and it is rapidly disappearing and becoming a place for used beer cans, firecracker tubes, and other party remnants.

“This ground was sacred to the last Holocaust survivors of Lithuania and far beyond. Will it now be honored by modern democratic Germany as its forces move in to the same forest?”

Deeper damage to this precious historic site from the German Army’s arrival is already manifest. The deep-forest ambience has been shattered by vast woods clearing and road building not far. The access area is closed on days of shooting practice. The sounds of silence are replaced by the sounds of the current German Army’s imminent arrival.

Powerful local forces have “helped fix the issue” with PR bonanza stunts like having soldiers scrub old cemeteries elsewhere, with a rabbi flown in from Berlin officiating. The local rabbi who understands the issues and would not be instrumentalized for such purposes was not even informed. Scrubbing old cemeteries elsewhere, that are fenced in, respectfully marked by the state, and protected, is a truly very nice gesture, but nothing to do with the issue at hand. The latest.

Readers are asked to politely and respectfully contact German embassies and consulates internationally on the issue.

“But why might local authorities object?” Well, Fania was one of the heroic Jewish partisans subject to Vilnius prosecutors’ “Blame the victims” campaign to criminalize the anti-Nazi resistance as part of wider attempts to rewrite history. Back in 2009, Germany responded by awarding Fania the Federal Cross of Merit in a Vilnius ceremony.

There is no suggestion the German Army (or government) has any ill intention here. They are being misled by a few select ultranationalist Lithuanian state agencies dedicated to “fixing the history” and their ersatz paid-for “official Jewish authorities” who receive untold benefit and glories from betraying the very people they are sacredly committed to represent. Some German officials offer, off the record, that they suspect the territory allocated to them, literally abutting the Jewish fort (that nationalist elements of the Lithuanian government want to see disappeared without a trace) was itself “not a coincidence” and that is an issue for future historians. The majestic hand of history (or God, or Higher Powers), or an unfortunate East European ruse?

But whatever the recent history,  Germany so far not stood up publicly to those far-right, Holocaust revisionist elements in the brigade-hosting government here in Eastern Europe. This can still all easily be put right very rapidly. One year after the cemetery scrubbing spectacle, it would be quite easy for an event to be set up whereby German soldiers clean up the fort and meet with the children and grandchildren of whose who lived there during part of the Holocaust, in those underground wooden bunkers, while fighting the Nazis.

Unlike that old prewar cemetery, this fort is on their turf (even if technically some meters just outside their perimeter). Unlike that cemetery, it is neither marked nor enclosed. Unlike that cemetery its disappearance is coveted by powerful political forces. Unlike that cemetery, it is in grave danger of imminent disappearance in the absence of a modicum of signposting, demarcating, cleaning and — respecting.

And, last but not least, unlike that cemetery, it relates directly to the Holocaust, not to centuries-old cemeteries, to the Holocaust that transpired right here, where the Forty-Fifth Brigade is coming with thousands of troops.

Incidentally, German officials may be asked outright: How many German soldiers heading for Lithuania have so far even been told of the fort’s existence and importance, or taken there for a first viewing? 

German authorities must ask themselves: Are we sending thousands of German troops “back” to Lithuania to help today’s East European far right destroy the last vestige of Jewish resistance to the Nazis in the forests of Lithuania?

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Mini Photo Gallery

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Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky at one of the underground bunkers at the Jewish partisan fort outside Vilna in the forest where she resided from the day after her escape from the Vilna Ghetto on the morning of its liquidation (23 Sept. 1943) until the defeat of the Nazi occupiers in July 1944. Photo: DefendingHistory.com.

Ireland’s Ambassador Dónal Denham (left) and UK Ambassador Simon Butt visit the Jewish partisan fort in the forests of Lithuania, learning of its remarkable history in the annals of anti-Nazi resistance from survivor and veteran of the Jewish partisans Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky (c. 2009). Photo: DefendingHistory.com

Germany’s Ambassador Hans-Peter Annan awarding Jewish partisan veteran Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky the president’s federal cross of merit at the German Embassy in Vilnius in 2009. Left to right: Dr. Shimon Alperovich (head of the Lithuanian Jewish Community), Ambassador Annan, Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky and Dovid Katz, then professor of Yiddish at Vilnius University and editor of DefendingHistory.com.