VILNIUS JEWISH PUBLIC LIBRARY | DOUBLE GAMES | RED-BROWN COMMISSION

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VILNIUS—Yet again, the “Vilnius Jewish Public Library,” housed in exquisite city-center premises in a courtyard off the capital’s central Gedimino Boulevard, has been the base for a Holocaust-obfuscating event featuring stars of the state’s “Red-Brown Commission” who are dispatched far and wide to deny the existence of the state-sponsored “Double Genocide” campaign, to mitigate the campaign against Holocaust survivors, the efforts to glorify local collaborators, and to obscure entirely the Second Opinion expressed in the Seventy Years Declaration. Incredibly, the roster of invited speakers did not include Ms. Rūta Vanagaitė, author of Mūsiškiai, the new best-selling book on the Holocaust that has in effect revolutionized the country’s coming to terms with its Holocaust-era past. What is the “Jewish” Library afraid of?

For readers of English, the Jewish Community of Lithuania’s website has provided a summary of some aspects of the recent event at the library, which has turned into a major PR tool for some government circles, exactly as its founder feared when he gave or sold his collection to the newly-established library, which still employs no Jewish people, and has yet to invite a single speaker who is a critic of state policies, including any of the growing number of Lithuanians who have spoken out boldly and with courage on antisemitism and the Lithuanian Holocaust.